The Piratical Expedition Being Complete,
He Pays His Men Five Months' Wages In Advance, At The Rate Of Forty-Five
Piastres (Nine Shillings) Per Month, And He Agrees To Give Them Eighty
Piastres Per Month For Any Period Exceeding The Five Months For Which
They Are Paid.
His men receive their advance partly in cash and partly
in cotton stuffs for clothes at an exorbitant price.
Every man has a
strip of paper, upon which is written, by the clerk of the expedition,
the amount he has received both in goods and money, and this paper he
must produce at the final settlement.
The vessels sail about December, and on arrival at the desired locality
the party disembark and proceed into the interior, until they arrive at
the village of some negro chief, with whom they establish an intimacy.
Charmed with his new friends, the power of whose weapons he
acknowledges, the negro chief does not neglect the opportunity of
seeking their alliance to attack a hostile neighbor. Marching throughout
the night, guided by their negro hosts, they bivouac within an hour's
march of the unsuspecting village doomed to an attack about half an hour
before break of day. The time arrives, and, quietly surrounding the
village while its occupants are still sleeping, they fire the grass huts
in all directions and pour volleys of musketry through the flaming
thatch. Panic-stricken, the unfortunate victims rush from their burning
dwellings, and the men are shot down like pheasants in a battue, while
the women and children, bewildered in the danger and confusion, are
kidnapped and secured.
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