At first the Maroons had only desired to plunder, but since indiscriminate plunder could not be allowed in a community that was striving to be civilised, and they found themselves driven farther and farther into the woods and mountains by assailants who were probably not very tender towards those who fell into their hands, they began reprisals. “Murder,” says Dallas, “attended all their successes; not only men but women and children were sacrificed to their fury, and even people of their own colour if unconnected with them. Over such as secretly favoured them, while they apparently remained at peace on the plantations they exercised a dominion... and made them subservient to their designs. By these Cudjoe was always apprised in time of the parties that were fitted out.” I can imagine the planters talking at their tables, the house servants waiting with unmoved or even sympathetic faces, and yet carrying the news to the field labourers. That would be enough. At night one of them would steal off to the mountains that are so near to every estate in Jamaica. They might not even wait for the night. A strange black man would not be noticeable and he might lie hidden in any hut. Knowing the numbers that were coming against them, something of their plans, and best of all knowing the country so thoroughly, it was an easy matter for Cudjoe and his lieutenants, escaped slaves, or descendants of slaves as they were, to circumvent the plans laid against them. Again and again the white assailants were caught in ambush, were slain, and--worse still for those who came after them--Cudjoe supplied his men with arms and ammunition from what they left behind them. It was, as a matter of fact, fairly easy for the Maroons to get arms and ammunition. The times were such that of necessity every man went armed and must be able to get ammunition easily. “There was no restriction,” says Dallas, “in the sale of powder and firearms, and there can be no doubt that Cudjoe had friends who made a regular purchase of them under pretence of being hunters and fowlers for their masters.... Nay, a Maroon himself might, carrying a few fowls, and a basket of provisions on his head, pass unnoticed and unknown through the immense crowd of negroes frequenting the markets in the large towns.” And these wild men, too, had learned, taught in a hard school, to be careful. They never threw a shot away as the white men did. Every bullet with them was bound to find its billet. The marksmanship of the Maroons became proverbial. Oh, we can see easily enough how it was that Cudjoe managed to protract the war for years.