This offer was accepted gladly, for de Basco had a great reputation as a fighter in Europe as well as in America.
When everything had been made ready, L'Olonnois set sail for Maracaibo with a fleet of eight ships.

On the way they captured two Spanish vessels, both of which were rich prizes, and at last they arrived before the town which they intended to capture.
Maracaibo was a prosperous place of three or four thousand inhabitants; they were rich people living in fine houses, and many of them had plantations which extended out into the country.

In every way the town possessed great attractions to piratical marauders, but there were difficulties in the way; being such an important place, of course it had important defences.

On an island in the harbor there was a strong fort, or castle, and on another island a little further from the town there was a tall tower, on the top of which a sentinel was posted night and day to give notice of any approaching enemy.

Between these two islands was the only channel by which the town could be approached from the sea.
But in preparing these defences the authorities had thought only of defending themselves against ordinary naval forces and had not anticipated the extraordinary naval methods of the buccaneers who used to be merely sea-robbers, who fell upon ships after they had left their ports, but who now set out to capture not only ships at sea but towns on land.
L'Olonnois had too much sense to run his ships close under the guns of the fortress, against which he could expect to do nothing, for the buccaneers relied but little upon their cannon, and so they paid no more attention to the ordinary harbor than if it had not been there, but sailed into a fresh-water lake at some distance from the town, and out of sight of the tower.