The hungry sailors, who had lived scantily for four weeks, found the deserted houses well provided with flour, bread, pork, poultry, and brandy, and with these they made good cheer. The warehouses were brimming with merchandise, the cellars were flowing with Spanish wine. The more prudent fell to plunder, the more thoughtless to revel. The former class probably embraced the older, and the latter the younger men. Each party abused the vice from which he abstained, and gave himself up without scruple to his own more favourite indulgence. But soon the man weary of wine began to plunder, and the man loaded with pieces of eight began to drink. The moment that plunder ceased, waste began, and prudence and folly alike ended the day,--poor and drunk. The commanders at once seized on the best houses, indulging their natural love of order and justice, by placing sentinels at the larger shops and warehouses. The great monastery of the Cordeliers served them as a guard-house, for a long time the abode of thieves, yet never so manifestly as now; for a long time the shrine of mammon, yet now for the first time filled by his avowed worshippers. Had the town not been deserted, that night would have heard the groans of the victim of cruelty; as it was, it echoed only with the songs and shouts of debauchery. The Buccaneer had reached his Capua, but there were no Judiths ready to slay these Holofernes in their drunken sleep. Perhaps a night surprise would have failed. These men were still the vigilant hunters and the watchful sailors; sunken rocks and lurking Spaniards, breakers and wild bulls, reefs and wild panthers had taught them never to sleep unguarded and unwatched. The next day a fresh source of plunder was opened. Lolonnois--for Le Basque's command, even by land, seems to have been secondary--sent a body of 160 men to reconnoitre the neighbouring woods, where some of the inhabitants were, it was supposed, concealed. They returned the same night, discharging their guns, and dragging after them a miserable weeping train of twenty prisoners, men, women, and children; and, besides this, a sack of 20,000 pieces of eight, and many mules, laden with household goods and merchandise.