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.

And now we come to the greatest of all the buccaneers, he who stands
pre-eminent among them, and whose name even to this day is a charm
to call up his deeds of daring, his dauntless courage, his truculent
cruelty, and his insatiate and unappeasable lust for gold--Capt. Henry
Morgan, the bold Welshman, who brought buccaneering to the height and
flower of its glory.

Having sold himself, after the manner of the times, f