t any employment more
profitable than that of shooting fish with a bow and arrows, our doughty
pirate now desired to make a grand strike, and if he could take a town
and pillage it of everything valuable it contained, he would make a very
good fortune in a very short time, and might retire, if he chose, from
the active practice of his profession.

The town which Roc and Tributor determined to attack was Merida, in
Yucatan, and although this was a bold and rash undertaking, the two
pirates were bold and rash enough for anything. Roc had been a prisoner
in Merida, and on account of his knowledge of the town he believed that
he and his followers could land upon the coast, and then quietly advance
upon the town without their approach being discovered. If they could do
this, it would be an easy matter to rush upon the unsuspecting garrison,
and, having annihilated these, make themselves masters of the town.

But their plans did not work very well; they were discovered by some
Indians, after they had landed, who hurried to Merida and gave notice of
the approach of the buccaneers. Consequently, when Roc and his
companions reached the town they found the garrison prepared for them,
cannons loaded, and all the approaches guarded. Still the pirates did
not hesitate; they advanced fiercely to the attack just as they were
accustomed to do when they were boarding a Spanish vessel, but they soon
found that fighting on land was very different from fighting at sea. In
a marine combat it is seldom that a party of boarders is attacked in the
rear by the enemy, although on land such methods of warfare may always
be expected; but Roc and Tributor did not expect anything of the kind,
and they were, therefore, greatly dismayed when a party of horsemen from
the town, who had made a wide detour through the woods, suddenly charged
upon their rear. Between the guns of the garrison and the sabres of the
horsemen the buccaneers had a very hard time, and it was not long before
they were completely defeated. Tributor and a great many of the pirates
were killed or taken, and Roc, the Brazilian, had a terrible fall.

This most memorable fall occurred in the estimation of John Esquemeling,
who knew all about the attack on Merida, and who wrote the account of
it. But he had never expected to be called upon to record that his
great hero, Roc, the Brazilian, saved his life, after the utter defeat
of himself and his companions, by ignominiously running aw