This was the baptism which regenerated Law for the Buccaneers. It also absolved them from the use of their own names, which might, indeed, in many cases have been but awkward conveniences; and they were not known except by _sobriquets_. But when they became _habitans_ or settlers, and took wives, their surnames appeared for the first time in the marriage-contract; so that it was a proverb in the islands,--"You don't know people till they marry."
The institution of marriage was not introduced among the Buccaneers for many years after their settlement of the western coast. In the mean time they selected women for extemporaneous partners, to whom they addressed a few significant words before taking them home to their _ajoupas_, to the effect that their antecedents were not worth minding, but _this_, slightly tapping the musket, "which never deceived me, will avenge me, if _you_ do."
These women, with the exception of one or two organized emigrations of poor, but honest, girls, were the sweepings of the streets of Paris and London. They were sometimes deported with as little ceremony as the _engagés_, and sometimes collected by the Government, especially of France, for the deliberate purpose of meeting the not over nice demands of the adventurers; for it was the interest of France to pet Tortuga and the western coast. All the French islands were stocked in the same manner. Du Tertre devotes a page to the intrigues of a Mademoiselle de la Fayolle, who appeared in St. Christophe with a strong force of these unfortunate women, in 1643. They were collected from St. Joseph's Hospital in Paris, to prevent the colonists from leaving the island in search of wives. Mademoiselle came with letters from the Queen and other ladies of quality, and quite dazzled M. Aubert, the Governor, who proposed to his wife that she should be accommodated in the chateau. She had a restless and managing temper, and her power lasted as long as her merchandise.
In 1667 there was an auction-sale of fifty girls without character at Tortuga. They went off so well that fifty more were soon supplied. Schoelcher says that in the twelfth volume of the "Archives de la Marine" there is a note of "one hundred nymphs for the Antilles and a hundred more for San Domingo," under the date of 1685.
