Having now accomplished their purpose, without much return for their three months' patience, Lolonnois called a general council of the fleet, and declared his intention of going to Guatimala. Upon this announcement a division arose in the assembly, and the hoarse murmurs of a coming tempest were heard around the speaker. Many of the adventurers, new to the trade, could no longer conceal their weariness and their disappointment. They had set sail from Tortuga with the feeling with which a country boy comes to London. They had believed that pieces of eight grew on the trees like pears, and had overlooked the dragons that guarded the Hesperian trees. Having seen their predecessors return home laden with the plunder of Maracaibo, many had overlooked the toil and dangers by which it was won, in the sight of the joy and prodigality with which it was lavished; they had seen only the rich pearls, and forgotten the stormy seas from which they had been gathered. They were weary of the hardships, and mutinous for want of food. The mere seeker for gold could not endure what was submitted to by those who were desirous of earning distinction. The older hands laughed at their pinings, derided their complaints, and swore that they would rather die and starve there, than return home with empty purses, to be the scorn and laughing-stock of all Hispaniola. The majority of the experienced men, foreseeing that the voyage to Nicaragua would not succeed, and was "little to their purpose," separated from Lolonnois, and set sail secretly in the swift sailing vessel that Moses Vauclin had captured in the port of Cavallo, and which he now commanded, boasting, with reason, that it was the swiftest sailing vessel that had been seen in the West Indies for fifty years. With Moses Vauclin went Pierre le Picard, who, seeing others desert Lolonnois, resolved to do the same.