Trading companies were now organized, and licenses granted to establish colonies. The islet of Tortuga, lying to the north-west of Santo Domingo, was captured almost without resistance. There storehouses were built, and there for a time were the head-quarters of the pirates. Tortuga was recaptured by the Spaniards in 1638, and the freebooters received no quarter; a few of them escaped to the woods; others were away on piratical or other expeditions; and though some of them fell into the hands of the Spaniards and were massacred, the latter soon abandoned the island, and in the following year the freebooters at Tortuga mustered three hundred men. For the first time the pirates now elected a leader, and their numbers were soon recruited by French, English, and Dutch volunteers. Though they were regarded by the Spaniards as foes, they were esteemed by other European nations as allies and champions, and so rapid was the growth of their settlements that in 1641 we find governors appointed, and at San Cristóbal a governor-general named De Poincy, in charge of the French filibusters, in the Indies. During that year Tortuga was garrisoned by French troops, and the English were driven out, both from that islet and from Santo Domingo, securing harborage elsewhere in the islands. Nevertheless, corsairs of both nations often made common cause; and in 1654 a large party of buccaneers and filibusters, ascending a river a little to the south of Cape Gracias á Dios, plundered the settlement of Nueva Segovia. In the same year Tortuga was again recaptured by the Spaniards, but in 1660 fell once more into the hands of the French; and in their conquest of Jamaica in 1655 the British troops were reënforced by a large party of buccaneers. [Sidenote: CUSTOMS OF CORSAIRS.]