Page:A Mainsail Haul - Masefield - 1913.djvu/149

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CAPTAIN COXON
137

the English, and cast into prison at Campeachy. One or two trading ketches, laden with supplies of logwood, were snapped up by Spanish "Armadillies," while the Spanish guarda-costas, from San Juan de Ulloa, received orders to destroy any logwood cutter's settlement which they could find. John Coxon was troubled by these gentry, and lost a part of his business. The Jamaican Government could not allow him to make reprisals; nor was it strong enough to protect a station so far away as the Lagoon. The Governor gave order that in future all logwood ships were to sail in fleets not less than four ships strong. This arrangement worked fairly well, until the final destruction of the logwood industry a few years later.

After 1672 the Bay of Campeachy attracted large numbers of buccaneers, who found the "windward" seas too hot to hold them. The camps in the Lagoon of Tides became rather more riotous than they had been. The lumbermen began to make forays along the coasts, when business was slack, with the result that their virtuous members became "debauched" into "wickedness." We fear that one of the first to be "debauched" was