He recruited five hundred adventurers in all, and he might have had as many thousands if he could have offered them accommodation.

Similarly without difficulty he might have increased his fleet to twice its strength of ships but that he preferred to keep it what it was.

The three vessels to which he confined it were the Arabella, the La Foudre, which Cahusac now commanded with a contingent of some sixscore Frenchmen, and the Santiago, which had been refitted and rechristened the Elizabeth, after that Queen of England whose seamen had humbled Spain as Captain Blood now hoped to humble it again.

Hagthorpe, in virtue of his service in the navy, was appointed by Blood to command her, and the appointment was confirmed by the men.
It was some months after the rescue of Mademoiselle d'Ogeron--in August of that year 1687--that this little fleet, after some minor adventures which I pass over in silence, sailed into the great lake of Maracaybo and effected its raid upon that opulent city of the Main.
The affair did not proceed exactly as was hoped, and Blood's force came to find itself in a precarious position.

This is best explained in the words employed by Cahusac--which Pitt has carefully recorded--in the course of an altercation that broke out on the steps of the Church of Nuestra Senora del Carmen, which Captain Blood had impiously appropriated for the purpose of a corps-de-garde.