As he had announced, three or four days later two Spanish vessels anchored at St. Kitts. They bore at their stern the Castilian flag reversed, in sign of humiliation, while above it proudly fluttered the French ensign. There was one horrible circumstance, however, which chilled even the bravest with horror. These vessels bore at their bowsprit, and at their cross-jack, as well as at the main and foreyard, groups of corpses. By Montbarts order, the crews of the two vessels had been hung, without showing mercy even to a boy. The chief of the adventurers generously gave the cargo of the two ships to the colonists, only asking for sufficient land in return, on which to build a house. This request was at once granted; the newcomers then disarmed their lugger, came ashore, and began their installation. Montbarts was a young man of about seven or eight-and-twenty, with manly and marked features, and a fixed and piercing eye. The expression of his face was essentially sad, mocking, and cruel: a dead pallor; spread over his face, added, were it possible, a strangeness to his whole person. Tall and powerfully built, though supple and graceful, his gestures were elegant and noble, while his speech was soft, and the terms he employed were carefully chosen. He exercised a singular fascination over those who approached him, or whom accident brought into relation with him. They felt at once repulsed and attracted by this singular man, who seemed the only one of his species on the earth, and who, without appearing to be anxious for it, imposed his will upon all, gained obedience by a sign or a frown, and who only seemed to live when he was in the thick of a fight, when fires crossed above his head, forming him an aureole of flame, when corpses were piled up around him, when blood flowed beneath his feet, and when bullets whistled in his ears, and when he rushed drunk with powder and carnage upon the deck of a Spanish ship. Such was what was said of him by his comrades, and by those who had been struck by his singular countenance, and wished to know him: but beyond this moral and physical portrait of the man, it was impossible to obtain the slightest information as to his past life. Not one of the sailors who came with him knew the slightest episode of it, or, as was probable, refused to discover anything. Hence, when the colonists perceived that all their questions would remain unanswered, they gave up the useless task of asking them. They accepted Montbarts for what it pleased him to be, the more so, as his, former life not only did not concern them, but also interested them very slightly.