ng four Spanish guns. He then sailed to the
Canaries and to the coast of Guinea, plundering ships and stealing
negroes, and finally, in November 1682, arrived at the city of San
Domingo, where he tried to dispose of his black cargo. From San Domingo
he made for Petit Goave picked up 300 men, and sailed to join Laurens in
the Gulf of Honduras.[445] Laurens, too, had distinguished himself but a
short time before by capturing a Spanish ship bound from Havana for San
Domingo and Porto Rico with about 120,000 pieces of eight to pay off the
soldiers. The freebooters had shared 700 pieces of eight per man, and
carrying their prize to Petit Goave had compounded with the French
governor for a part of the booty.[446]

The buccaneers assembled near Cape Catoche to the number of about 1000
men, and sailed in the middle of May for Vera Cruz. Learning from some
prisoners that the Spaniards on shore were expecting two ships from
Caracas, they crowded the landing party of about 800 upon two of their
vessels, displayed the Spanish colours, and stood in for the city. The
unfortunate inhabitants mistook them for their own people, and even
lighted fires to pilot them in. The pirates landed at midnight on 17th
May about two miles from the town, and by daybreak had possession of the
city and its forts. They found the soldiers and sentinels asleep, and
"all the people in the houses as quiet and still as if in their graves."
For four days they held the place, plundering the churches, houses and
convents; and not finding enough plate and jewels to meet their
expectations, they threatened to burn the cathedral and all the
prisoners within it, unless a ransom was brought in from the surrounding
country. The governor, Don Luis de Cordova, was on the third day
discovered by an Englishman hidden in the hay in a stable, and was
ransomed for 70,000 pieces of eight. Meanwhile the Spanish Flota of
twelve or fourteen ships from Cadiz had for two days been lying outside
the harbour and within sight of the city; yet it did not venture to land
or to attack the empty buccaneer vessels. The proximity of such an
armament, however, made the freebooters uneasy, especially as the
Spanish viceroy was approaching with an army from the direction of
Mexico. On the fourth day, therefore, they sailed away in the very face
of the Flota to a neighbouring cay, where they divided the pillage into
a thousand or more shares of 800 pieces of eight each. Vanhorn alone is
said