Many of these
unfortunates had had nothing to hide, and therefore could give no
information to their brutal inquisitors, and others died without telling
what they had done with their valuables. When the town had been
thoroughly searched and sifted, the pirates sent men out into the little
villages and plantations in the country, and even hunters and small
farmers were captured and made to give up everything they possessed
which was worth taking.
For nearly three weeks these outrageous proceedings continued, and to
prove that they were lower than the brute beasts they allowed the
greater number of the prisoners collected in the church, to perish of
hunger. There were not provisions enough in the town for the pirates'
own uses and for these miserable creatures also, and so, with the
exception of a small quantity of mule flesh, which many of the prisoners
could not eat, they got nothing whatever, and slowly starved.
When L'Olonnois and his friends had been in possession of Gibraltar for
about a month, they thought it was time to leave, but their greedy souls
were not satisfied with the booty they had already obtained, and they
therefore sent messages to the Spaniards who were still concealed in the
forests, that unless in the course of two days a ransom of ten thousand
pieces of eight were paid to them, they would burn the town to the
ground.
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