Behold me now, therefore, a Buccaneer on the coast of Hispaniola! I let my beard and moustache grow, and they and my hair, which was naturally luxuriant, mingling, I speedily looked as grim and grisly as any of them. My comrade, Nicky, was a good man and true; he had really felt the death of Benjamin his partner, and so had been at first more grave and more reserved than usual. But as this natural feeling wore away, he became truly a merry madcap, with a jest, sometimes of the coarsest, or a lusty sea-song, or a tale of brave privateersmen, ever in his mouth. Under his tuition, I soon became a good shot, and learned to break up a bull or cow most scientifically with the knife. Also I became acquainted with the various trees and shrubs, birds and beasts of the coast. I knew how to fell the mountain cabbage, and to roast the savoury plantain in the hot cinders. I could bake the mealy cassava cake, and I knew how to bore the Frank palm for the luscious sap which flows from the wounded bark. Besides, these great forests and fair beaches teem with infinite food. We turned the lazy turtles which we found upon the shore, or hunted for their eggs in the hot sand. We intercepted and roasted the land-crab in his annual journey from the mountains; we shot the guano or yellow lizard, as he whimpered in the boughs, and prejudice being set aside, found his flesh like that of a barn-door fowl; while the racoon and the monkey both formed good roasts when we tired of pork and beef. Then on every pond bred flocks of fat ducks, and, in the season, the delicious ortolan fed amid the guinea grass. Great hosts of pigeons built in the high trees and the rocks, and the bright-coloured woodpeckers afforded us many a savoury dish. For the sea, the Mosquito men kept us well supplied. Standing in the bows of the canoe, with their barbed spears poised and ready, and their keen eyes fixed upon the water beneath, there was hardly a fish at which they darted their harpoons which the next moment lay not quivering and bleeding in the bottom of the boat. CHAPTER V. HOW WE ENCOUNTER GREAT DANGERS, THE SPANIARDS ATTACKING US.