“With the ship captured from the Spaniards, L’Ollonois cruised along the Spanish Main, took several ships and returned to Tortuga with the idea of fitting out a large company of ships and boldly attacking the Spanish towns and cities, as well as their vessels. The fleet he gathered together consisted of eight ships, the largest carrying ten guns, and with six hundred and sixty buccaneers. But long before they reached the South American coast they were flushed with success. Near Porto Rico they captured a ship of sixteen guns laden with cacao and with treasure consisting of forty thousand pieces of eight and over ten thousand dollars’ worth of jewels, and near the island of Saona they took the payship of the Dons and obtained nearly four tons of gunpowder, many muskets and twelve thousand pieces of eight. It would be tiresome to describe in detail their arrival at Maracaibo, their taking of the forts and their capture of the town. The Spaniards resisted valiantly, but were beaten back and then commenced a series of orgies, of cruelties and of inhumanities which are almost without an equal. The people, as soon as they realized the town would fall to L’Ollonois and his freebooters, took to the outlying country, and these refugees the buccaneers hunted down and dragged before their chief. In order to make them confess where they had hidden their valuables—although L’Ollonois had already obtained vast plunder—they were put on the rack, broken on the wheel, cut to pieces, flayed alive and subjected to every cruelty and torture the corsairs could devise. For fifteen days the buccaneers occupied the town and butchered and tortured the inhabitants until, convinced that no more loot could be secured, they left Maracaibo, sailed up the Lake and took the town of Gibraltar. Here they were ambushed and many killed, but in comparison to the losses of the Dons the buccaneers suffered little, losing but forty men killed and about fifty wounded, while over five hundred Spaniards were killed and several hundred taken prisoners. Many of the captives died from starvation or illness under the buccaneers’ treatment, many more were butchered for pure sport and hundreds were put to the torture. Then, not satisfied, L’Ollonois threatened to burn the town unless he was paid ten thousand pieces of eight and when this was not instantly forthcoming he actually set fire to the place. However, the money being eventually paid, the buccaneers had the decency to aid the inhabitants in putting out the conflagration, for, oddly enough, they usually kept to their promises, and after eighteen days set sail for Maracaibo again. Here they demanded a payment of thirty thousand pieces of eight under penalty of having the town destroyed, and the poor harassed and cowed Dons managed to raise the sum and with heartfelt thanks saw the fleet sail away. When Tortuga was reached and a division of spoils made it was found that over two