CHAPTER 5.


 BUCCANEERS AND PIRATES


 A favourite buccaneer resort was the islet called Casinas,
now St. George's Caye. Here in 1677 Father Jose Delgado, a
Dominican, met Captain Bartholomew Sharpe. The priest
had come from Cajabon in Vera Paz, overland by way of
Manche, to the region between the Boom and the mouth of
the Texach or Belize River with a dozen Indians on his way
to Bacalar. Late one evening they reached a spot where a fire
was built to warm themselves and their clothes. The priest
was nearly dead from hunger, and the rain had wet him all
that night. At 5 o'clock in the morning he went to the water's
edge to dry a towel in order to have something warm over the
stomach. While putting on the towel five English pirates
saw him, fired a load of shot when he asked for quarter, and
so his raised left arm received a shot lengthwise.
 The milk of a tree was put on the wound- which bled pro-
fusely. The pirates took the rope from his hammock, tied
his hands behind his back, and half hung him up to the
branch of a tree. Then another Englishman came and de-
manded patacaa." The priest replied that he had only a box.
"Pataca, pataca," the pirate insisted in anger and knocked the
priest senseless with a blow on the chest with the butt of his
musket. Soon the pirate returned with vile oaths, made a
circle by joining the tips of his thumb and index finger, and
again demanded patacaa." Now the priest understood, said
"plata, plata," and gave this pirate his box with sixty dol-
lars in change and some church ornaments. Here we see that