Then, fearing that if he
remained he might find his resolution weakened, he gathered together his
men and his pillage, and sadly went away, leaving behind him a joyful
town and a weeping widow.
If the affection of the young Spanish lady for the buccaneer chief was
sufficient to make her take an interest in his subsequent career, she
would probably have been proud of him, for the ladies of those days had
a high opinion of brave men and successful warriors. De Lussan soon
proved that he was not only a good fighter, but that he was also an
able general, and his operations on the western coast of South America
were more like military campaigns than ordinary expeditions of lawless
buccaneers.
He attacked and captured the city of Panama, always an attractive prize
to the buccaneer forces, and after that he marched down the western
coast of South America, conquering and sacking many towns. As he now
carried on his business in a somewhat wholesale way, it could not fail
to bring him in a handsome profit, and in the course of time he felt
that he was able to retire from the active practice of his profession
and to return to France.
But as he was going back into the circles of respectability, he wished
to do so as a respectable man. He discarded his hat and plume, he threw
away his great cutlass and his heavy pistols, and attired in the costume
of a gentleman in society he prepared himself to enter again upon his
old life.
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