But when they were near enough, they saw that the vessel was not a merchantman, probably piled with gold and treasure, but a man-of-war belonging to the Spanish fleet.

In fact, it was the vessel of the vice-admiral.

This was an astonishing and disheartening state of things.

It was very much as if a lion, hearing the approach of probable prey, had sprung from the thicket where he had been concealed, and had beheld before him, not a fine, fat deer, but an immense and scrawny elephant.
But the twenty-nine buccaneers in the crew were very hungry.

They had not come out upon those waters to attack men-of-war, but, more than that, they had not come out to perish by hunger and thirst.