like order such a motley crew.

He never broke them in, poor man. For just as matters were
beginning to right themselves, the French Revolution broke out; and
every French West Indian island burst into flame,--physical, alas!
as well as moral. Then hurried into Trinidad, to make confusion
worse confounded, French Royalist families, escaping from the
horrors in Hayti; and brought with them, it is said, many still
faithful house-slaves born on their estates. But the Republican
French, being nearly ten to one, were practical masters of the
island; and Don Chacon, whenever he did anything unpopular, had to
submit to 'manifestations,' with tricolour flag, Marseillaise, and
Ca Ira, about the streets of Port of Spain; and to be privately
informed by Admiral Artizabal that a guillotine was getting ready to
cut off the heads of all loyal Spaniards, French, and British. This
may have been an exaggeration: but wild deeds were possible enough
in those wild days. Artizabal, the story goes, threatened to hang a
certain ringleader (name not given) at his yard-arm. Chacon begged
the man's life, and the fellow was 'spared to become the persecutor
of his preserver, even to banishment, and death from a broken
heart.' {65}

At last the explosion came. The English sloop Zebra was sent down
into the Gulf of Paria to clear it of French privateers, manned by
the defeated maroons and brigands of the French islands, who were
paying respect to no flag, but pirating indiscriminately. Chacon
confessed himself glad enough to have them exterminated. He himself
could not protect his own trade. But the neutrality of the island
must be respected. Skinner, the Zebra's captain, sailed away
towards the Boca, and found, to his grim delight, that the