74 The Beginning of British Honduras
Juan or Desaguadero, where hostile Indians inflicted heavy
loss and almost barred his passage into Nicaragua. Despair-
ing of a chance to return to Tortuga, they had to separate
against dying from hunger, and so one group went to Cape
Gracias a Dios where the Moskito Indians were ever fond
of pirates, and L'Ollonois went south towards Darien. He
had to land to pillage for food, got very little, and fell into
the hands of wild Indians who hacked him into quarters
which they roasted and ate. He was 41 years old and it was
1671.
 Two of the fundamental customs of the buccaneers were
the election of their captain and officers and the sharing in
true and regular form of the prizes taken in an expedition.
Every buccaneer swore to observe these rules of the code and
signed to their oath by marking the cross. The pain of death
was given to any comrade who brought a woman aboard in
disguise, as the custom prescribed no woman had the right to
remain on their vessels on account of quarrels. Some Vikings
too had the rule that no woman was allowed within the fort-
ress. Theft from a comrade was severely punished according
to the code, and when it happened the colleague's nose and
ears were cut off and he was marooned on an uninhabited is-
land. Not without pride did they call themselves "les Freres
de la Cote," or brethren of the coast, but the Spaniards called
them "los mendigos de la mar" or beggars of the sea. On
entering this fraternity one lost his name, forgot his past, and
became a unit in a troop again and again decimated and re-
newed. Many were deserters from the vessels of the French
navy, younger sons of noble houses of Gascony, Normandy.
and Flanders, Protestants from La Rochelle and Dieppe, Eng-
lish Catholics and Scotch Puritans, and indentured servants
of three years who had broken their contracts. French was
the language mainly spoken, with a little English and Dutch.
This moving mass was always ready for some hardy enterprise
against a richly laden Spanish galleon or against an opulent
town drowsing on the Spanish Main. The governors of the