Our strong men have been defeated. This house surrenders, as they did. Since you have conquered, it is all yours, and all the riches it contains. I have even had women brought here for the pleasures which it is said you are so eager for. I am an honorable woman and my daughter is still almost a little girl. We will be the only things that, appealing to your feelings (which I am sure you have), we request be respected.
Cordially yours,
La Marquesa de la Poza Rica
Since this was one of the two most splendid mansions in the town, it was taken over immediately by the pirates; and we were received in it as if we were gentlemen, welcomed with drinks, food, comforts, and women, with a huge party that had been readied with all the trimmings. When L’Olonnais, seated at the table, asked to whom they owed such a fine welcome, a servant brought him the note written by the good woman. He had not even done reading it when he gave orders to look for them, saying, Do not take anything from this house, freebooters, because what is fit for the cattle should not be of any interest to us if there are two pearls here with which to reward us! The servants and the whores tried to convince us to the contrary, but they only managed, with their persistence and their attempts to thwart the search, to earn their deaths. The house was turned upside down. They tortured a boy horribly so he would tell them where their mistresses were, but it was a futile torment, because he managed to die without saying a word, after being castrated and much of his body flayed, with huge chunks of his skin torn from him. Someone had the notion of setting fire to the house, but the Admiral discarded the idea, saying, These stupid women would prefer to die in the flames rather than surrender in our arms! It was only a coincidence that revealed to us the spot where they were hidden. On the second floor, when three men at once leaped up to pull down the fabric that covered the ceiling, behind which we thought they might be hiding, their boots came down sharply on the floor and stove in a slat by the corner. Looking down, one of them saw the gleam of an eye struck by a beam of sunlight that a fallen mirror had sent there to betray them. On taking up the floor, we discovered the two beauties, and with much scoffing, joking, and fondling that they tried to shake off, we took them down to the Admiral. We all stared at them — they really were a pair of pearls! — the mother in her haughtiness, the daughter in her gleaming freshness. The mother spoke in Spanish to L’Olonnais, and thinking that he did not understand Spanish, since he paid no attention to her, began to address him in French, with poignant words and an impeccable accent:
“Admiral, in accepting you as conqueror, I offered you everything in the house, and I personally prepared for your reception, about which I believe you will find nothing to complain. Since I know that you are a gentleman, I have only one request, that you respect us — me, because I am an honorable mother who has never known any man but my husband, and my daughter, my greatest treasure, who as you see is still almost a little girl. I beg you once more, although this house is no longer in a proper state”—she was looking around at the destruction brought about by our search—“for the reception you have deserved.”
“Marquesa, we are not cattle and we do not enjoy eating mud and grass, but we are accustomed to pearls. As you put it in your note, you are two of the finest gems this house possesses. We will touch nothing in it, not the money that we have found hidden away, not the silver, not the provisions. The only things we will take will be the two pearls.”
“Captain! I beg you, use me, then, but let them leave my daughter alone. I implore you!”
“Hold on, madame. Entreaties merely make L’Olonnais angry, and begging makes him furious. You are not to give me orders, you are Spanish and you have been defeated …”
And the dialogue went on in unhurried fashion, until the women, realizing themselves lost because the men were now raising their skirts with the points of their swords and ripping the fabric, tried to flee; and there in the midst of all the commotion, in front of everyone, including the girl’s mother, L’Olonnais gave it to the daughter while someone else did the mother, and I don’t know how many followed after them, one relieving the next, and when this gang was done they had other pirates brought in to keep on banging them. The abuse was so great that they were left scratched, torn where they weren’t bleeding (I saw it myself), like raw meat, with open sores in their private parts and surrounding flesh. When we all left, mother and daughter set fire to the house, I do not know where they got the strength, nor do I know how they could even get on their feet (even less do I understand how one of the two could possibly have wailed, screaming like a madwoman, again and again, I do not know which one it was, Fuck me, pirate! Fuck me, pirate! Fuck me, pirate!); and there they died, the same day we finished raping them, the same day the freebooters turned them from prudes into whores, from whores into spoiled meat.
The assault on Maracaibo lasted for two months. In four days on Aruba we finished totaling up the booty and weighed anchor in order to distribute it en route, as the original Contract provided, since before putting in at Tortuga we were to touch at a port called Île-à-Vache on Hispaniola, in order to sell the merchandise.
L’Olonnais, with the Vice Admiral, the surgeon, and seventy of the bravest, set sail a day earlier than the rest of the fleet, aboard a sloop, the fastest ship, carrying none of the booty but very well armed, to scout the way to Hispaniola and, if needed, to clear it of enemies, as we feared an ambush.
Just a few hours after having left the rest of our men the lookout called out “Ship ahoy!” to announce a warship that possibly may have come in search of us. We quickly came up with it and got it to follow us, circling Aruba at a distance to get it away from the booty our men were guarding, and leading it back to the island again but at the opposite end from our point of departure. It was nearly nighttime when we touched land once more, and even though we had left the Spaniards behind, we weren’t so far away from them that our other men were out of danger yet if the Spanish ship should start hunting for them once they lost track of us. We anchored the ship and disembarked, together with the sloop’s artillery, in piraguas we had gotten from the Bravos. We went inland somewhat, hiding our cannons and our persons in the thickness of the underbrush, in a darkness that was not total because the moon still tinted the sky blue and the branches an opaque gray, even though it was not full and consequently did not give off an intense light.
The dwellers of the forest did not seem to be frightened by our presence. We heard them rustling, together with the leaves and the small branches, and sometimes they brushed against the coarse bark of the trees, slid over the sand, or slipped around among the smooth rocks, though such words seem to exaggerate the miniscule movements we perceived, as if the animals were moving in their sleep, amid their dreams, as if our arrival had not even awakened them. Like many of the other freebooters, I was afraid of alligators, for which reason I had picked up a dog in Maracaibo for company, but on this occasion I received orders to leave him aboard ship, shut up in the empty hold, where we knew he already felt at home and also that he would not start barking amongst the rats, and even if he did bark there it did not matter much; this was a wise order on the part of the officer because the murmurings of the underbrush would have made the dog nervous and he would have made so much noise that, even though I might pick him up to calm him, my anxiety would have left me ashiver and my heart doing nothing but turning flip-flops.