When the hubbub was a little abated, I was asked by a dozen persons at once what I was; whereon I recounted that having left, I did not say escaped, from a French ship on the coast, I had travelled hither, and on my way saw the Spaniards, and guessed their intentions. Then I told them of the bodies I had passed hanging from trees, at which they raised a great clamour of cursing; for these, as I had guessed, were their comrades, who had crossed the bay to hunt the day before. Then there was a proposal to man all the canoes, and go and attack the Spaniards; but just as this was acceded to with a loud shout, a light pirogue, which it seems had been fishing down the bay, ran in with the news that the ship had weighed anchor directly her boats returned, and made all sail to sea. On this there was a great groan given for the cowardice of the Don, and the crowd began to disperse. At this moment a young Englishman came up to me, and asked, with great solicitude, if one of the Buccaneers I had seen hanging was light haired with yellow moustaches. I replied in the affirmative; on which, in words of strong passion and feeling, he swore that he would bitterly revenge on the Spaniards the death of Benjamin, his ‘partner,’ as he called him, and, in short, broke out into a great paroxysm of grief and rage. Meantime, several of the Buccaneers offered me the hospitality of their huts, but my Englishman declared I must go to his, as he was now alone, which the rest consenting to, very cordially shook hands with me, and thanked me in French and English, and then I followed my new friend along the beach to his hut. There were a good many of these, irregularly placed, and beside several there smouldered a slow fire, making the lights I had seen in the bay. Over these fires there were gratings or hurdles of wood, and on them lumps of beef, rudely cut, drying and cooking little by little; great bales and heaps of hides lay about, the perfume exhaling from them not being by any means pleasant, and numbers of dogs howled and barked without ceasing. My conductor led me into a hut built like the others, of wood and clay, and thatched with some sort of thick leaf. The inside was lighted by a smoky lamp, showing two beds of hide with dirty blankets, and a clumsy table. There were shelves all round, whereon were ranged several guns, hangers, and long Spanish knives, with fish and boar-spears, and other weapons. Also I saw a mariner’s compass and some instruments for taking the latitude, so that I rightly guessed my host to be a sailor as well as a hunter. Besides these, there were strewn about, bits of net, canvas, bullock horns, and one or two panthers’ skins were arranged as coverlets for the beds.