Meeting with some French slaves, the fugitive planned with them to escape in the night in a canoe, this being successfully carried out, they eventually arrived back at Tortuga, the pirate stronghold. Here the enterprising captain stole a small vessel, and again started off "on the account," plundering a village called De los Cagos in Cuba. The Governor of Havana receiving word of the notorious and apparently resurrected pirate's arrival sent a well-armed ship to take him, adding to the ship's company a negro executioner, with orders to hang all the pirate crew with the exception of L'Ollonais, who was to be brought back to Havana alive and in chains.
Instead of the Spaniards taking the Frenchman, the opposite happened, and everyone of them was murdered, including the negro hangman, with the exception of one man, who was sent with a written message to the Governor to tell him that in future L'Ollonais would kill every Spaniard he met with.
Joining with a famous filibuster, Michael de Basco, L'Ollonais soon organized a more important expedition, consisting of a fleet of eight vessels and 400 men. Sailing to the Gulf of Venezuela in 1667, they entered the lake, destroying the fort that stood to guard the entrance. Thence sailing to the city of Maracaibo they found all the inhabitants had fled in terror. The filibusters caught many of the inhabitants hiding in the neighbouring woods, and killed numbers of them in their attempts to force from the rest the hiding-places of their treasure. They next marched upon and attacked the town of Gibraltar, which was valiantly defended by the Spaniards, until the evening, when, having lost 500 men killed, they surrendered. For four weeks this town was pillaged, the inhabitants murdered, while torture and rape were daily occurrences. At last, to the relief of the wretched inhabitants, the buccaneers, with a huge booty, sailed away to Corso Island, a place of rendezvous of the French buccaneers. Here they divided their spoil, which totalled the great sum of 260,000 pieces of eight, which, when divided amongst them, gave each man above one hundred pieces of eight, as well as his share of plate, silk, and jewels.
Also, a share was allotted for the next-of-kin of each man killed, and extra rewards for those pirates who had lost a limb or an eye. L'Ollonais had now become most famous amongst the "Brethren of the Coast," and began to make arrangements for an even more daring expedition to attack and plunder the coast of Nicaragua. Here he burnt and pillaged ruthlessly, committing the most revolting cruelties on the Spanish inhabitants. One example of this monster's inhuman deeds will more than suffice to tell of. It happened that during an attack on the town of San Pedros the buccaneers had been caught in an ambuscade and many of them killed, although the Spaniards had at last turned and fled. The pirates killed most of their prisoners, but kept a few to be questioned by L'Ollonais so as to find some other way to the town. As he could get no information out of these men, the Frenchman drew his cutlass and with it cut open the breast of one of the Spaniards, and pulling out his still beating heart he began to bite and gnaw it with his teeth like a ravenous wolf, saying to the other prisoners, "I will serve you all alike, if you show me not another way."
Shortly after this, many of the buccaneers broke away from L'Ollonais and sailed under the command of Moses van Vin, the second in command. L'Ollonais, in his big ship, sailed to the coast of Honduras, but ran his vessel on a sand-bank and lost her. While building a new but small craft on one of the Las Pertas Islands, they cultivated beans and other vegetables, and also wheat, for which they baked bread in portable ovens which these French buccaneers carried about with them. It took them six months to build their long-boat, and when it was finished it would not carry more than half the number of buccaneers. Lots were drawn to settle who should sail and who remain behind. L'Ollonais steered the boat towards Cartagena, but was caught by the Indians, as described by Esquemeling. "Here suddenly his ill-fortune assailed him, which of a long time had been reserved for him as a punishment due to the multitude of horrible crimes, which in his licentious and wicked life he had committed. For God Almighty, the time of His divine justice being now already come, had appointed the Indians of Darien to be the instruments and executioners thereof."
These "instruments of God," having caught L'Ollonais, tore him in pieces alive, throwing his body limb by limb into the fire and his ashes into the air, to the intent "no trace nor memory might remain of such an infamous inhuman creature."
Thus died a monster of cruelty, who would, had he lived to-day, have been confined in an asylum for lunatics.
NEAL.
A fisherman of Cork.
Mutinied in a French ship sailing from Cork to Nantes in 1721, and, under the leadership of Philip Roche, murdered the captain and many of the crew and became a pirate.