hurches were sacked until nothing was left but the bare walls; men
and women were tortured to compel them to disclose where more treasure
lay hidden.

Then, having wrenched all that they could from Maracaibo, they entered
the lake and descended upon Gibraltar, where the rest of the
panic-stricken inhabitants were huddled together in a blind terror.

The governor of Merida, a brave soldier who had served his king in
Flanders, had gathered together a troop of eight hundred men, had
fortified the town, and now lay in wait for the coming of the pirates.
The pirates came all in good time, and then, in spite of the brave
defense, Gibraltar also fell. Then followed a repetition of the scenes
that had been enacted in Maracaibo for the past fifteen days, only
here they remained for four horrible weeks, extorting money--money!
ever money!--from the poor poverty-stricken, pest-ridden souls crowded
into that fever hole of a town.

Then they left, but before they went they demanded still more
money--ten thousand pieces of eight--as a ransom for the town, which
otherwise should be given to the flames. There was some hesitation on
the part of the Spaniards, some disposition to haggle, but there was
no hesitation on the part of l'Olonoise. The torch was set to the town
as he had promised, whereupon the money was promptly paid, and the
pirates were piteously begged to help quench the spreading flames.
This they were pleased to do, but in spite of all their efforts nearly
half of the town was consumed.

After that they returned to Maracaibo again, where they demanded a
ransom of thirty thousand pieces of eight for the city. There was no
haggling here, thanks to the fate of Gibraltar; only it was utterly
impossible to raise that much money in all of the poverty-stricken
region. But at last the matter was compromised, and the town was
redeemed for twenty thousand pieces of eight and five hundred head of
cattle, and tortured Maracaibo was quit of them.

In the Ile de la Vache the buccaneers shared among themselves two
hundred and sixty thousand pieces of eight, besides jewels and bales
of silk and linen and miscellaneous plunder to a vast amount.

Such was the one great deed of l'Olonoise; from that time his star
steadily declined--for even nature seemed fighting against such a
monster--until at last he died a miserable, nameless death at the
hands of an unknown tribe of Indians upon the Isthmus of Darien.

* * *