Chapter IV

Peter the Great


Very prominent among the early regular buccaneers was a Frenchman who
came to be called Peter the Great. This man seems to have been one of
those adventurers who were not buccaneers in the earlier sense of the
word (by which I mean they were not traders who touched at Spanish
settlements to procure cattle and hides, and who were prepared to fight
any Spaniards who might interfere with them), but they were men who came
from Europe on purpose to prey upon Spanish possessions, whether on land
or sea. Some of them made a rough sort of settlement on the island of
Tortuga, and then it was that Peter the Great seems to have come into
prominence. He gathered about him a body of adherents, but although he
had a great reputation as an individual pirate, it seems to have been a
good while before he achieved any success as a leader.

The fortunes of Peter and his men must have been at a pretty low ebb
when they found themselves cruising in a large, canoe-shaped boat not
far from the island of Hispaniola. There were twenty-nine of them in
all, and they were not able to procure a vessel suitable for their
purpose. They had been a long time floating about in an aimless way,
hoping to see some Spanish merchant-vessel which they might attack and
possibly capture, but no such vessel appeared. Their provisions began to
give out, the men were hungry, discontented, and grumbling. In fact,
they were in almost as bad a condition as were the sailors of Columbus
just before they discovered signs of land, after their long and weary
voyage across the Atlantic.