This obstinate combat, so eager on both sides, had lasted about four hours, and night was fast approaching, when Lolonnois, ordering a last furious attack, put the now weakened Spaniards to flight, a great number of them being killed as soon as they turned their backs. The citizens then hung out a white flag, and, coming to a parley, agreed to surrender the town on condition of receiving two hours' respite. During this time, Lolonnois found that he had lost about thirty men, ten more being wounded. This demand of two hours was employed by the towns-people in loading themselves with their riches and preparing for flight—the Buccaneers virtuously abstaining from any molestation till the time had duly expired, and then pursuing the fugitives and plundering them of every maravedi. But neither their self-denial nor their vigilance was well rewarded, for fortune gave them nothing but a few leather sacks full of indigo, the rest, even in that short time, having been buried or destroyed—a disappointment which, we think, no reasonable person can regret. Lolonnois had particularly ordered that not only all the goods should be seized, but that every fugitive should be made prisoner.
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.
The time spent in thus watching outside the covert, they devoted to turtle fishing, dividing themselves into parties, each having his own station to prevent disputes. Their nets they made of the bark of the macoa tree; a natural pitch or bitumen for their boats they found in fused heaps upon the shore. The formation of this pitch, or "wax," as Esquemeling calls it, the sailors attributed to wild bees; the hollow trees in which they built being torn down by storms and swept down into the sea. The rest of their time—which never seems to have been wearisome, unless the subsequent mutiny indicates it, for these men had the tenacity of a slot-hound in the pursuit of blood—was spent in cruises among those Indians of the coast of Yucatan, who seek for amber on the shore. These tribes were the willing serfs of Spain, having served them without resistance for a full century. The Spaniards had, as they believed, converted the whole nation to Christianity by sending a priest to them once a-week, but, on their sudden return to idolatry, had begun to persecute them, angry at their own failure.
According to the Buccaneers' account, these Indian chiefs worshipped each a peculiar spirit, to whom they offered sacrifices of fire, burning incense of sweet-scented gums. They had a singular custom of carrying their new-born children into their temples, and leaving them for a night in a hole filled with wood-ashes, generally in an open place, untended, and where wild beasts could enter. Leaving the child here they found in the morning the foot-prints of some wild beast on the ashes. To this animal, whatever it might be, jaguar, snake, or cayman, they dedicated the child, whose patron god it became. To this animal the child prayed for vengeance against its enemies, and to it he offered sacrifices.
Their marriages were accompanied by a very beautiful and simple ceremony. A young man, having satisfied his intended bride's father as to his fitness to manage a plantation, was presented with a bow and arrow. He then visits the maiden, and puts on her head a wreath of green leaves and sweet-smelling flowers, taking off the crown usually worn by virgins. A meeting of her relations is then called, the maize juice is drunk, and the day after marriage the bride's garland is torn to pieces with cries and lamentations.
In these islands the Buccaneers found canoes of the Aregues Indians, which must have drifted 600 leagues. They had remained turtle-fishing and amber-seeking about three months, when the welcome tidings came that the enemy's vessel had ventured out. All hands were now employed in preparing the careening ships. It was, however, at last agreed to wait for its return, when, as they expected, it would not only contain merchandise but money. They therefore sent their canoes to observe her motions, and, hearing of the ambuscade, the Spaniards returned to port. Lolonnois, as weary of delay as a greyhound is vexed by a hare's repeated doubling, determined to do what Mahomet did when the mountain would not go to him; since the Spaniards would not come to him, he went himself to the Spaniards. Informed of their approach by spies, Indians or fishermen, the vessel was prepared to receive him. The decks were cleared, the boarding-nettings up, and the guns double-shotted. The Spaniard carried fifty-six pieces of cannon, and the crew were well provided with hand grenades, torches, fusees, and fire-balls, especially on the quarter-deck and bows, and a crew of some 130 men stood armed and threatening at their quarters. But Lolonnois cared for none of these things, and the rich cargo shone, to his eye, through the ship's transparent sides. With his small craft of twenty-two guns, with a single fly-boat as his only ally, he boldly attacked the enemy, but was at first beaten off.
To the Buccaneer a slight check was almost a certain precursor of victory; waiting till about sixty of the Spanish sailors had fallen from the fire of his deadly musketry, when their courage slackened, and the smoke of their powder lay in a dark mist round the bulwarks, hiding his movements, he boarded with four canoes, well manned. In spite of the brave defence, the Buccaneers fought with such fury that they forced the Spaniards to surrender.