He Purchases Guns And
Large Quantities Of Ammunition For His Men, Together With A Few Hundred
Pounds Of Glass Beads.
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 advanced.
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 neighbour. 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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