Because suddenly the road we were walking on became so soft to our step that we sank into it, and in our confusion we did not know what to do with our feet, where to put them; but the Indian, without the least hesitation tearing branches from the palms and other trees and casting them beneath his feet, urged us with signs to do the same; and although we saved ourselves from drowning in the fetid mud, for a short while we thought nothing was going to keep us from burying ourselves in these watery lands, because the false path the Spaniards had laid out to snare us ended at the water; yet the clever Bravo guide, without losing a step, turned half around and by shouting persuaded us to hurry, afraid that night would overtake us in the midst of that swamp, which was what the Spaniards wanted. That was when we saw the alligator, that fearful animal, rise out of nowhere. The color of the mud itself, sluggish as mud as well, it surged up from the deepest part of the swamp, moving as if it were flying where it was impossible to travel without clumsiness or feeling itself as heavy as stone — its swiftness doubly astonishing since these animals swallow stones to give their bodies more weight and enable them to hunt their prey in the way they do. The enormous animal moved its huge body without difficulty on its short legs, and, opening its gigantic jaws, seized one of our men and carried him off, plunging deep into the water with him and resting its heavy body on the unfortunate man until he drowned, then returning the body to dry land and depositing it on the sand, ready to come after another of us and kill him by drowning him and then to leave him in the sun to rot, because these animals only eat flesh that is decomposing; but the brave Indian, with only his knife, launched himself fiercely after the animal, killed it, and before our eyes opened its belly for us to see the stones the terrifying alligator carried within its body in order to sink the victims of its appetite.
We retraced our steps and the Indian rediscovered the right path. But at that point the Spaniards were waiting for us with cannons, muskets, and piles of good gunpowder. That was when the event took place that I already have mentioned: They fired so often and in such great disorder (even causing wounds among themselves because of the confusion into which they fell) that soon we took care of them and considered them beaten. In three hours five hundred of them were killed, and ourselves worn out; but not so much so that L’Olonnais would not carry through what he proposed to do when he first saw the Bravo guide had erred: He had him tied to a tree trunk, laid his breast open with a sword, and pulled out his heart, all the while shouting that this animal had almost carried us to defeat, that he was not going to pardon the guide’s carelessness, that the treatment he was giving him was exactly what he deserved — and in the light of the bonfire that had been lit to cure the many wounded, I saw the Bravo’s eyes looking on with an indescribable expression, with living eyes still, as L’Olonnais ate his brave heart; and so brave was he that he spit in L’Olonnais’s face before falling forever, perhaps, into the arms of death. We slept right there, having neither the strength nor valor to leave the field of battle, more afraid of the alligators than of the dead, and as soon as dawn broke we gathered up the bodies. Fourteen of our men we buried there, the majority having been consumed by their fevers rather than by gunpowder gone astray. The bodies of the Spaniards together with that of the Bravo guide were loaded onto two boats and set adrift a couple of leagues into the lake.
Organized into several columns, we entered Gibraltar. Still they defended themselves. First we attacked the monastery situated at the base of the walls, thinking to protect ourselves from the bullets with the bodies of the monks and nuns; and undoubtedly, out of the respect they hold for such persons, the Spaniards would not have fired at us were it not for the shouts of the former: Death to these heretics! Shoot, so the Lord will gather us unto Him! Kill them! since for Christians death does not exist, but eternal life! Shoot, shoot! Do not be cowardly. Death to the heretics! They killed them all.
Within the city, the superiority of the Spaniards was still notable. We fought furiously, but as they were protected within their buildings and made all the stronger by their familiar knowledge of the place, they gave us no quarter.
L’Olonnais ordered the retreat.
They scarcely saw we were outside the town when they came rushing out in order to follow us, which is what our Admiral hoped for. There we were able to trounce them, and those who were not killed or did not fall into our hands fled in the din of the battle.
We entered Gibraltar now like furious wolves. We raped the women, we pillaged the church, we destroyed the images, we leveled it all, we took three hundred prisoners, men, women, children, and slaves, and put a price on each one, ransom money for all of them. The majority died of hunger because there was little food. For ourselves we set aside all the cassava roots, as well as the poultry and the pigs, and in order to feed the others we had some donkeys killed; but they preferred to die rather than eat such filthy meat, especially when the worms got into it and it seemed more like swarms of flies than food.
With the prisoners L’Olonnais went off into a fury of cruelty, submitting them to awful tortures so they would confess where they had hidden the great riches of Gibraltar and Maracaibo, and to verify whether there might perhaps be another army to attack us. He cut off the tongues of those who would not speak, he branded their bodies and cut off their limbs, he burned them or did terrible things to their bodies that left no mark but made their inner organs burst. After having ruled Gibraltar for four weeks, we demanded extortion money not to burn the place down. We asked for ten thousand pieces of eight not to set fire to the town, for lack of which we would burn it and reduce it to ashes. We gave them two days to bring in this sum, and the conquered citizens being unable to scrape it together so quickly, we set the town alight in several places. The Spaniards begged us to put out the fire, and that we did, aided by the residents who came together, but since we had spread tar and oil over the stones of the buildings we had set fire to, no matter how hard we worked we were unable to avoid the destruction of part of it, especially the convent church, which was reduced to dust, down to the foundations. After receiving the money mentioned above, we carried silver, furniture, money, jewels, and goods aboard, together with a great number of slaves that had neither paid off their ransom nor yet died.
EIGHT
The Bravos, their bodies painted in vivid colors, were waiting for us in front of the spot where, under the Spaniards, the governing palace had been located, an esplanade of goodly size, bare of vegetation, in the center of which, on a wooden platform the way they do, the body of the Indian whose heart L’Olonnais had torn out was awaiting us. Women on their knees surrounded him, weeping and screaming, striking their heads against the ground. The men were calling out and shouting, walking back and forth.
In astonishment, we saw this scene from our flotilla, and also the men we had left behind, moored only a few yards out from the wharf, loaded with the booty stolen from the city.
A piragua approached L’Olonnais’s ship. In it there came an interpreter from the Bravos who in good French said he had orders from his chief to bring L’Olonnais before him in order to give an explanation of what had occurred (sensible words to which L’Olonnais would not give ear) and ventured to affirm himself deceived by the peaceful L’Olonnais they had known, a quiet man who had seemed like an inoffensive animal; but who, now, as in the midst of a fight, before their very eyes becomes inflamed and turns into a demon, into a fury, a hurricane, and without listening to the messenger, orders a small boat to let our men know they are to bring their ship over to us, and that for no reason will he go to meet the Bravos’ chief, for they were nothing but savages while he was a Frenchman and had no reason to explain himself to anyone, much less to the Bravos, who were not in the least brave and courageous since they had been vanquished by those ignorant Spaniards.