Mooring off the bar, Lolonnois lost no time in landing to attack the fort that guarded the very door through which he must pass. The batteries consisted of simple gabions or baskets masked with turf, and concealing fourteen pieces of cannon and 250 men, with flanking earthworks thrown up to protect the gunners. Lolonnois and Le Basque landed at a league from the fort, and advanced at the head of their men. The governor, seeing them land, had prepared an ambuscade, in hopes of attacking them at the same time in flank and rear. The Buccaneers, discovering this, got before the Spaniards, and routed them so utterly that not a single man returned to the fort, which was instantly attacked "with the usual desperation of this sort of people," says Esquemeling. The fighting continued for three hours. The Buccaneers, aiming with hunters' precision, killed so many of the Spaniards, and reduced their numbers so terribly, that the survivors could not prevent the savage swordsmen storming the embrasures, slaying half the survivors, and taking the rest prisoners. A few survivors are said by one writer to have fled in confusion into Maracaibo, crying, "The pirates will presently be here with 2,000 men." The rest of the day Lolonnois spent in destroying the fort he had captured, first signalling his ships to come in as the danger was over. His men levelled the earth ramparts, spiked the guns, buried the dead, and sent the wounded on board the fleet. The next day, very early in the morning, the ships weighed anchor and directed their course, in close-winged phalanx, like a flock of locusts, towards the doomed city of Maracaibo, now only six leagues distant. They made but slow way, in spite of all their impatience, for there was very little wind; and it was not till the next morning that they drew in sight of the town, standing pleasantly on the cool shore, with its galleries of shaded balconies, its towers and steeples--the goal to which they steered. Suspicious of ambuscades after the danger at the bar, Lolonnois put his men into canoes, and pulled to shore under protection of salvos from his great guns, which he ordered to be pointed at the woods which lined the beach. Half the men went in the canoes, and half remained on board; but these furious discharges were thrown away, the Spaniards having long since fled. To their great astonishment, the town itself was deserted. The people, remembering the horrors of a former Buccaneer descent, when Maracaibo had been "sacked to the uttermost," had escaped to Gibraltar in their boats and canoes, taking with them all the jewels and money they could carry. To the alarmed friends who received them, they said that the fort of the bar had been taken, and nothing been saved, nor any soldiers escaped. At Gibraltar they believed themselves safe, thinking the Buccaneers would pillage the unfortunate and defenceless town and then retreat over the bar.