The statements of the prisoners increased their fears of the overland route, but determining rather to die sword in hand than to pine away with hunger, they at once resolved upon their design. Running all the vessels ashore but the galley and piraguas, which would take them from the island to the mainland, leaving no other means of escape to the timorous, they formed four companies of seventy men, choosing ten men from each as a forlorn hope, to be relieved every morning. Those who were lamed were to have, as formerly, 1000 pieces of eight, the horses were to be kept for the crippled and wounded. The stragglers who were wounded were to have no reward, whilst violence, cowardice, and drunkenness were to be punished. While maturing their plans, a Spanish vessel approached, and anchoring, began to fire at the grounded vessels, and soon put them out of a condition to sail. Afraid of losing their piraguas, the Buccaneers sent their prisoners and baggage to some flats behind the island. The next day, the Frenchmen, sheltering themselves behind the rocks that ran out to the sea, kept the vessel at a distance; but now afraid of total destruction, the Buccaneers sent 100 men to the continent at night to secure horses, and wait for them at a certain port. On the next day, the Spanish ship took fire, and put out to sea to extinguish the flames. The next day the Buccaneers escaped by a stratagem. Having spent the whole night in hammering the vessel, as if careening, to prevent all suspicion of their departure, they charged all their guns, grenades, and four pieces of cannon, and tied to them pieces of lighted matches of various lengths, in order to keep up an alarm throughout the night. In the twilight they departed as secretly as they could, the prisoners carrying the surgeons' medicines, the carpenters' tools, and the wounded men.
On the 1st of January, 1688, the Buccaneers arrived on the continent. On the evening of the same day the men joined them with sixty-eight horses and several prisoners, all of whom dissuaded them in vain from attempting to go by Segovia, where the Spaniards were fully alarmed. The men, nothing deterred, packed up each his charge, and thrust their silver and ammunition into bags. Those who had too much to carry, gave it to those who had lost theirs by gaming, promising them half "in case it should please God to bring them safe to the North Sea." Ravenau de Lussan tells us his charge was lighter but not less valuable than the others, as he had converted 30,000 pieces of eight into pearls and precious stones. "But as the best part of this," he says, "was the product of luck I had at play, some of those who had been losers, as well in playing against me as others, becoming much discontented at their losses, plotted together to the number of seventeen or eighteen, to murder those who were richest amongst us. I was so happy as to be timely advertised of it by some friends, which did not a little disquiet my mind, for it was a very difficult task for a man, during so long a journey, to be able to secure himself from being surprised by those who were continually in the same company, and with whom we must eat, drink, and sleep, and who could cut off whom they pleased of us in the conflicts they might have with the Spaniards, by shooting us in the hurry." To frustrate this scheme, Ravenau therefore divided his treasure among several men, and by this means removed a weight both from his mind and body.
On the 2nd of January, after having said prayers and sunk their boats, the Buccaneers set out, resting at noon at a hatto. On the 4th they lay on a mountain plateau, the Spaniards visible on their flanks and rear. On the 5th the barricades began, and on the 6th, at an estantia, they found the following letter lying on a bed in the hall: "We are very glad that you have made choice of our province for your passage homewards, but are sorry you are not better laden with silver; however, if you have occasion for mules we will send them to you. We hope to have the French General Grogniet very quickly in our power, so we will leave you to judge what will become of his soldiers."
On the 7th the vanguard drove off an ambuscade, and lay that evening in a hatto. The Spaniards burnt all the provisions in the way, and set fire to the savannahs to windward, stifling the French horses with smoke and scaring them with the blaze. While their march was thus retarded and they waited for the fire to burn out, the enemy threw up intrenchments and erected barricades of trees. On the 8th the French set fire to a house at a sugar plantation, and, hiding till the Spaniards came to put it out, captured a prisoner, who told them that 300 auxiliaries were on the march to meet them. "These 300 men," says Lussan, "were our continual guard, for they gave us morning and evening the diversion of their trumpets, but it was like the music of the enchanted palace of Psyche, who heard it without seeing the musicians, for ours marched on each side of us, in places so covered with pine trees that it was impossible to perceive them."
During this march the Buccaneers never encamped but upon high ground, or in the open savannah, for fear of being hemmed in.
The advanced guard was now strengthened by forty men, who discharged their muskets at the entries and avenues of woods, to dislodge the ambuscades, but they did not shoot when the plain was open and free from wood; although the Spaniards, who were lying on their bellies on each side of them, opened their fire and killed two stragglers. On the 10th they repulsed an ambuscade and captured some horses. On the 11th they dispersed another ambuscade, and entered Segovia, but all the provisions had been burnt, and the Spaniards fired upon them from among the pine trees that grew on the hills around the town. Fortunately at this spot, where the old guides grew uncertain of the way, they captured a new prisoner, who led them twenty leagues to the river they were in search of.
The road now grew wilder, and dangers thickened around them. They had to creep with great danger to the tops of great mountains, or to bury themselves in narrow and dark valleys. The cold grew intense, and the fogs lasted for some hours after daybreak. In the plains no chill was felt, but the same heat that prevailed on the mountains after noon. "But," says Lussan, "the hopes of getting once more into our native country made us endure patiently all these toils, and served as so many wings to carry us."
On the 12th, they ascended several mountains, and had incredible trouble to clear the road of the Spanish barricades, and all night long the enemy fired into their camp. On the 18th, an hour before sunrise, they ascended an eminence which seemed advantageous for an encampment, and saw on the edge of an eminence, separated from them by a narrow valley, what they believed to be cattle feeding.
Rejoiced at the prospect of food, forty men were sent to reconnoitre. They returned with the dismal intelligence that the supposed oxen were really troopers' horses ready saddled, and that the mountain on which they stood was encircled by three intrenchments, rising one above another, commanding a stream that ran through the valley. They had no other way but this to pass, and there was no possibility of avoiding it. They added, that one of the Spaniards had seen them, and shook his naked cutlass at them from a distance. Every man's heart fell at this news, and their pining appetite sickened at the loss of its expected meal. There was no time for delay, for the Spaniards from the adjacent provinces were gathering in their rear, and if any time was lost they must be surrounded and overpowered by numbers. Ravenau de Lussan, the Xenophon of this retreat, did not attempt to conceal the extent of the danger. He confesses himself that they were hard put to it, and that escape would have seemed impossible to any other men but to those who had been hitherto successful in almost every undertaking. He addressed his companions, and artfully persuaded them to agree to his plans, by first elaborating the extent of their difficulties. He said that 10,000 men could not force their way through such intrenchments, guarded by so many men as the Spaniards had, judging from the number of their horses. Nor could they pass by the side of it, with all their horses and baggage, seeing that the path could only be entered in single file. Except the road, all was a thick, pathless forest, full of quagmires, and encumbered by fallen trees; and even if these impediments were passed, the Spaniards would have still to be fought with. The Buccaneers agreed to these as truisms, but cried out that it was to no purpose to talk of difficulties so apparent, without proposing some method of surmounting them, and suggesting some means for its execution. Upon this hint De Lussan spoke. He proposed to cross those woods, precipices, mountains, and rocks, how inaccessible soever they seemed, and gaining the weather-gauge of the enemy, take them at once in the rear, suddenly and unexpectedly. The success of this plan he would answer for at the peril of his life. The prisoners, horses, and baggage he resolved to leave guarded by eighty men, to keep off the 300 Spaniards who hovered around them at day and at night, encamped at a musket-shot distance. These eighty men could answer for four times as many Spaniards. After some deliberation, De Lussan's plan was agreed to, and the execution at once resolved upon. Examining the mountain carefully with the keen eyes of both hunters and sailors, they could see a road winding along the side of the mountain, above the highest intrenchment. This they could only trace here and there by light spots visible between the trees, but once across this they were safe. Full of hope, and with every faculty aroused, some of the men were sent to a spot higher than the main body, to cover another party who had on previous occasions proved themselves ingenious and expert, and who were sent to pick out the safest and most direct spots by which they could get in the rear of the enemy before day broke. As soon as these scouts returned the men made ready for their departure, leaving their baggage guarded by eighty men. To prevent suspicion, the officer in command had orders to make every sentinel he set or relieved in the night-time fire his fusil and to beat his drum at the usual hour. He was told that if God gave them the victory they would send a party to bring him off, but that if an hour after all firing ceased they saw no messenger, they were to provide for their own safety.
The immediate narrative of this wonderful escape we give in De Lussan's own words:—"Things being thus disposed," he says, "we said our prayers as low as we could, that the Spaniards might not hear us, from whom we were separated but by the valley. At the same time, we set forward to the number of 200 men by moonlight, it being now an hour within night; and about one more after our departure we heard the Spaniards also at their prayers, who, knowing we were encamped very near them, fired about 600 muskets in the air to frighten us. Besides, they also made a discharge at all the responses of the litany which they sang. We still pursued our march, and spent the whole night (in going down and then getting up) to advance half a-quarter of a league, which was the distance between them and us, through a country, as I have already said, so full of rocks, mountains, woods, and frightful precipices, that our posteriors and knees were of more use to us than our legs, it being impossible for us to travel thither otherwise. On the 14th, by break of day, as we got over the most dangerous parts of this passage, and had already seized upon a considerable ascent of the mountain by clambering up in great silence, and leaving the Spaniards' retrenchments to our left, we saw their party that went the rounds, who, thanks to the fogs, did not discover us. As soon as they were gone by, we went directly to the place where we saw them, and found it to be exactly the road we were minded to seize on. When we had made a halt for about half an hour to take breath, and that we had a little daylight to facilitate our march, we followed this road by the voice of the Spaniards, who were at their morning prayers, and we were but just beginning our march, when, unfortunately, we met with two out-sentinels, on whom we were forced to fire, and this gave the Spaniards notice, who thought of nothing less than to see us come down from above them upon their intrenchments, since they expected us no other way than from below; so that those who had the guard thereof, and were in number about 500 men, finding themselves on the outside, when they thought they had been within, and consequently open without any covert, took the alarm so hot, that falling all on them at the same time, we made them quit the place in a moment, and make their escape by the favour of the fog."