Captain Willis 53
station" to sail from St. Christopher and ascertain whether the
island was still in possession of the English.
 In 1639, one Willis began to gather together on his own
account, without commission from anybody, a group of Eng-
lish and a few Scottish adventurers drawn mostly from those
expelled from Nevis and those who had been stalked by bad
luck in their flight from island to island in search of a living.
When these numbered three hundred, he went to Tortuga,
pretended friendship for four months, then suddenly dis-
armed the forty Frenchmen who were there and made them
do his bidding. It was at the same time, 1639-1640, that Cap-
tain Henry Hawley, governor of Barbadoes from 1630-1640,
made a bold attempt to take the island and set up as an in-
dependent ruler. He had reconquered Barbadoes in 1629 for
the Earl of Carlisle with the very same tactics used by Willis
to seize Tortuga. Samuel Colson's secession from the Earl
of Warwick to establish his own post on the Cockscomb
Coast is another instance.
 Willis was now master of Tortuga. This, however, caused
jealousy amongst the French who felt that they ought to have
got this Spanish plum. They said that Willis was maltreat-
ing their countrymen. Amongst those who went back and
forth with gossip to De Poincy, Governor of the French An-
tilles at St. Christopher, was Le Vasseur, an engineer naval
officer who had served with Belain d'Esnambuc. He was a
Huguenot, and because the Huguenots were giving trouble to
De Poincy he gave Le Vasseur fifty of them and sent him on
the errand against Willis, promising to bear one-half the
expense. Le Vasseur went with his 50 Huguenot buccaneers
to Port Magot, which is to the windward of Saint Domingue,
and remained there three months in order to become versed
in all that was important to know about Willis, to undermine
his soldiers from this distance, and so remove the plank from
under his feet.
 Although his forces were still very inferior to the English,
Le Vasseur resolved to go and attack them, confident that the
few Frenchmen who were amongst them would come over