The  women  were  of  all  countries,  English  and  French,
Dutch,    Spaniards,    and     Portuguese,    with    a    good

(  338  )  F


82  ON   SHORE.
sprinkling  of  dark-skinned  natives.  All  the  white
women  had  been  taken  prisoners  at  some  time  or
other  from  vessels  which  had  fallen  into  the  pirates'
hands,  and  though  most  of  them  must  have  been  miser-
able enough  at  heart,  poor  creatures,  they  all  made  a
show  of  beino^  °'lad  to  see  the  men  back  again.  It  was
but  a  week,  I  learned,  since  the  pirates  had  sailed,  and
it  was  considered  a  great  stroke  of  luck  that  they
should  so  soon  have  effected  a  capture.
"  No  one  attended  to  me,  but  I  worked  hard  all  day
with  the  others  rowing  backwards  and  forwards  be-
tween the  shore  and  the  ship.  When  it  became  dusk
they  knocked  off  work,  and  the  men  went  off  to  their
huts,  for  it  seemed  that  each  of  them  had  a  wife,
brown-skinned  or  white.  Seeing  that  nobody  paid
any  attention  to  me  I  went  off  to  the  little  captain,
who  was  making  his  way  up  to  a  hut  of  a  better  class
than  the  others.
