These buccaneering conventions were gradually imposed upon all the West-Indian neighborhood, by the title of uncompromising strength, and became known as the "Usage of the Coast." When the Brothers met with any remonstrance which referred the rights of navigators and settlers back to the Common Law of Europe, they were accustomed to defend their Usage, saying that their baptism had absolved them from all previous obligations. This was an allusion to the marine ceremony called in later times "Crossing the Line," and administered only upon that occasion; but at first it was performed when vessels were passing the Raz de Fonteneau, on their way to and from the Channel, and originated before navigators crossed the Atlantic or passed the Tropic of Cancer. The Raz, or Tide-Race, was a dangerous passage off the coast of Brittany; some religious observance among the early sailors, dictated by anxiety, appears to have degenerated into the Neptunian frolic, which included a copious christening of salt water for the raw hands, and was kept up long after men had ceased to fear the unknown regions of the ocean. Perhaps an aspersion with holy-water was a part of the original rite, on the ground that the mariner was passing into new countries, once thought uninhabited, as into a strange new-world, to sanctify the hardiness and propitiate the Ruler of Sea and Air. The Dutch, also, performed some ceremony in passing the rocks, then called Barlingots, which lie off the mouth of the Tagus. Gradually the usage went farther out to sea; and the farther it went, of course, the more unrestrained it grew. This was the baptism which regenerated Law for the Buccaneers. It also absolved them from the use of their own names, which might, indeed, in many cases have been but awkward conveniences; and they were not known except by _sobriquets_. But when they became _habitans_ or settlers, and took wives, their surnames appeared for the first time in the marriage-contract; so that it was a proverb in the islands,--"You don't know people till they marry." The institution of marriage was not introduced among the Buccaneers for many years after their settlement of the western coast. In the mean time they selected women for extemporaneous partners, to whom they addressed a few significant words before taking them home to their _ajoupas_, to the effect that their antecedents were not worth minding, but _this_, slightly tapping the musket, "which never deceived me, will avenge me, if _you_ do."