Page:A Mainsail Haul - Masefield - 1913.djvu/147

Rh with their rightful calling; while the title "logwood cutter" looked rather better on a Charge Sheet. Very soon the creeks of the Lagoon were peopled by little settlements of buccaneers, who built themselves huts of palm leaves, and laboured very hard at their new craft. Many of them stayed there all the year round, cutting timber and stacking it, and selling it to the merchant ships which came thither from Port Royal. They lived together in little gangs, with their common casks of rum and sugar, and such wives as they could buy in Jamaica, or steal from the local Indians. They called the present Carmen Island Beef Island, and made some arrangement with Juan de Acosta for the slaughtering of the beeves for their food. Five days in each week they cut logwood. On the sixth they took their guns and went hunting. The seventh they observed as the Sabbath. When a ship came to the Lagoon all work was laid aside. The cutters went aboard her, and passed the rest of the day in drinking her commander's rum and firing off her guns. If the captain were sparing of his rum and powder, they gave him a cargo of bad wood. Thus did they encourage a generous spirit and a virtuous