probable that any of the buccaneering vessels carried chaplains, opportunities of attending services must have been rare.  This captain seems to have wished to show that pirates in church know what they ought to do just as well as other people; it was for this reason that, when one of his men behaved himself in an improper and disorderly manner during the service, this proper-minded captain arose from his seat and shot the offender dead.

There was a Frenchman of that period who must have been a warm-hearted philanthropist, because, having read accounts of the terrible atrocities of the Spaniards in the western lands, he determined to leave his home and his family, and become a buccaneer, in order that he might do what he could for the suffering natives in the Spanish possessions.  He entered into the great work which he had planned for himself with such enthusiasm and zeal, that in the course of time he came to be known as “The Exterminator,” and if there had been more people of his philanthropic turn of mind, there would soon have been no inhabitants whatever upon the islands from which the Spaniards had driven out the Indians.

There was another person of that day,—­also a Frenchman,—­who became deeply involved in debt in his own country, and feeling that the principles of honor forbade him to live upon and enjoy what was really the property of others, he made up his mind to sail across the Atlantic, and become a buccaneer.  He hoped that if he should be successful in his new profession, and should be enabled to rob Spaniards for a term of years, he could return to France, pay off all his debts, and afterward live the life of a man of honor and respectability.

Other ideas which the buccaneers brought with them from their native countries soon showed themselves when these daring sailors began their lives as regular pirates; among these, the idea of organization was very prominent.  Of course it was hard to get a number of free and untrammelled crews to unite and obey the commands of a few officers.  But in time the buccaneers had recognized leaders, and laws were made for concerted action.  In consequence of this the buccaneers became a formidable body of men, sometimes superior to the Spanish naval and military forces.

It must be remembered that the buccaneers lived in a very peculiar age.  So far as the history of America is concerned, it might be called the age of blood and gold.  In the newly discovered countries there were no laws which European nations or individuals cared to observe.  In the West Indies and the adjacent mainlands there were gold and silver, and there were also valuable products of other kinds, and when the Spaniards sailed to their part of the new world, these treasures were the things for which they came.  The natives were weak and not able to defend themselves.  All the Spaniards had to do was to take what they could find, and when they could not find enough they made the poor Indians find it for them.  Here was a part of the world, and an age of the world, wherein it was the custom for men to do what they pleased, provided they felt themselves strong enough, and it was not to be supposed that any one European nation could expect a monopoly of this state of mind.