in Santo Domingo, brought with him a few females of lax morality, whom the buccaneers took to wife in this fashion: "Your past is nothing to me, for then I did not know, and you did not then belong to me. I acquit you of all evil; but you must pledge me your word for the future." The foul troth was thus plighted, when striking his hand on the barrel of his gun the husband exclaimed: "This will avenge me should you prove false."[XXVI‑6] The deeds of Pierre Le Grande and Bartolomé Portuguez, who figure in the stories of buccaneering raids about the time of Montbar's exploits—the middle of the seventeenth century—require no record in these pages. The name that stands preëminent among all the cut-throats, who at this period infested the North Sea and the shores of the main, is that of a personage called François L'Olonnois, a native of France, but one whose natural ferocity almost forbids us to class him with the human race. Montbar, though his hate amounted to frenzy, was impelled only by indignation against the oppressors and sympathy for the sufferings of the oppressed, and would accept no share in the proceeds of his raids.[XXVI‑7] But no such half-human feeling, no shadow of honest intent, ever prompted the monster L'Olonnois. Montbar was an undiscerning fiend; L'Olonnois an arch-fiend, with no faculty impaired. Transported in youth to the West Indies, ere long he exchanged convict life for the more genial pursuits of a filibuster, and his first position among those rovers on sea and land was that of a common mariner. In that capacity he made several voyages, and so distinguished himself by his brute strength and fearlessness that the governor of Tortuga[XXVI‑8] supplied him with a ship and armament wherewith to reap a harvest of gold. The success which he achieved was great, and his operations attracted the attention of congenial cut-throats, who eagerly manned his decks, and at the same time stamped his name in crimson letters on the hearts of the race which he regarded as his prey. Even the elements attempted to arrest his destroying hand, and in one of his cruises cast his vessel on the shore of Campeche, where nearly all his comrades were killed by the Spaniards. But the devil did not abandon his high-priest. L'Olonnois, though severely wounded, and regarding himself and his party as lost, smeared himself with blood without being perceived, and fell apparently lifeless among the slain.[XXVI‑9] Stripping off the dress of a dead Spaniard when the enemy had departed, he crawled over the ghastly forms of his late comrades and hid in the woods; then he boldly entered a neighboring town, and by promise of freedom induced some slaves to go with him. Stealing a large canoe, in due time they reached the isle of Tortuga. [Sidenote: GLORIOUS BUTCHERY.]