The Buccaneer chief, having stayed a few days at San Pedro, and "committed most horrid insolences," was anxious to send for a new reinforcement, and attack the town of Guatimala--a place a long way distant, and defended by 400 men. On his men as usual refusing to accede to an apparently rash project, Lolonnois contented himself by pillaging San Pedro, intending to impress a recollection of his visit upon the grateful inhabitants by burning their town. He obtained no great booty, for the inhabitants were a poor people, trading in nothing but dyes. If he had chosen to carry away their stores of indigo, he might have realised more than 40,000 crowns; but the Buccaneers cared for nothing but coin and bullion, and were too ignorant, too lazy, and too improvident to stop their debauches by loading their vessels with a perishable cargo of uncertain value. Having remained now eighteen days in San Pedro without obtaining much, for the West Indian Spaniard had already learned to hide as skilfully as the Hindoo ryot, Lolonnois called together his prisoners, and demanded from them a ransom as the condition of sparing their town. They doggedly answered, with all the insolence of despair, that he had taken from them all they had, and that they had nothing more to give; that they could not coin without gold, and that, as far as they went, he might do what he liked to the town. Lolonnois then reduced the town to ashes, and, marching to the sea-side to rejoin his companions, found that they had been employing their time, innocently and usefully, in capturing the fishing-boats of Guatimala. Some Indians, newly taken, informed him that a _hourque_, a vessel of 800 tons, bringing goods from Spain to the Honduras, was then lying in the great river of Guatimala. Resolving to careen and victual at the islands on the other side of the gulf, they left two canoes at the mouth of the river to give notice when the vessel should venture forth.