Still, even at this low estimate, the average was over a thousand dollars for each pirate. Having finished this important business, they set sail for Tortuga, where most of them were, in a few days, to squander all the fruits of their robberies and murders, in the most riotous dissipation. After a four-weeks’ voyage they reached the great rendezvous of the buccaneers. The island was crowded with gamblers and abandoned women, and every conceivable haunt of dissipation. For three weeks Tortuga presented a spectacle of frenzied and maddened carousal, which could not have been surpassed. Men, insane with drink, rushed through the streets, slashing with their sabres in all directions. Casks of rum and wine were placed in the streets, standing on end, with the heads knocked out, and every passer-by was compelled to drink. The women, more loathsome in their wickedness than the men, reeled through the thoroughfares, in the richest silks and satins, and bedecked with glittering jewelry of which a duchess might be proud. There were oaths and brawls and bloody duels. In the delirium of these demoniac orgies gold watches were fried for a costly breakfast, and were served up with boiled pearls and jewels. Two French vessels chanced just then to enter the port, laden with wine and brandy. This was throwing fresh fuel upon the fiery conflagration of violence, sin, and shame then raging in this miniature city of all the fiends. In the course of three weeks nearly all of these thieves had squandered everything. The riches they had gained by murder and the endurance and the infliction of untold miseries, had all passed into the hands of the gamblers, the liquor dealers, and the abandoned women. John Esquemeling, who witnessed these scenes, of which he wrote an account, says that the governor of the island bought of these buccaneers a shipload of cocoa, for not one-twentieth part its real value. He sent it to Europe, and realized over five hundred thousand dollars from the profits. Lolonois, though fiercely brave, and with unusual native strength of mind, was a low, degraded, brutal man. He indulged in these bacchanal orgies with the meanest of his crew. No one was guilty of greater excesses. No one sank to greater depths in the mire of loathsome wickedness. Not one short month had passed ere he was reeling through the streets a filthy and ragged beggar. He was also deeply involved in debt. He could conceive of but one mode of extrication. That was to set out upon another piratic expedition. The ravages of the pirates had been so great that the commerce of those seas was almost annihilated. Merchant ships abandoned the ocean, unless attended by a very strong convoy. This it was which led the buccaneers to go in fleets, so as to land in sufficient strength to desolate the coasts and to sack towns and cities.