Some slight damage was sustained by Blood's fleet. But by the time
the Spaniards had resolved their confusion into some order of
dangerous offence, that fleet, well served by a southerly breeze,
was through the narrows and standing out to sea.
Thus was Don Miguel de Espinosa left to chew the bitter cud of a
lost opportunity, and to consider in what terms he would acquaint
the Supreme Council of the Catholic King that Peter Blood had got
away from Maracaybo, taking with him two twenty-gun frigates that
were lately the property of Spain, to say nothing of two hundred
and fifty thousand pieces of eight and other plunder. And all this
in spite of Don Miguel's four galleons and his heavily armed fort
that at one time had held the pirates so securely trapped.
Heavy, indeed, grew the account of Peter Blood, which Don Miguel
swore passionately to Heaven should at all costs to himself be
paid in full.
Nor were the losses already detailed the full total of those suffered
on this occasion by the King of Spain. For on the following evening,
off the coast of Oruba, at the mouth of the Gulf of Venezuela,
Captain Blood's fleet came upon the belated Santo Nino, speeding
under full sail to reenforce Don Miguel at Maracaybo.
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