Promptly on receipt of the desired permission from Lopez, Crittenden, with his one hundred and twenty men, set out to join him. They had proceeded only three miles when the little band was attacked by a body of five hundred Spaniards. Crittenden's men quickly took to cover, and fought so desperately that in spite of the fact that they were so greatly outnumbered, they killed a large number of the Spanish forces, and put the others to rout. But Crittenden, it would seem, had not learned the proper lesson from the earlier division of Lopez's forces, and his own plight in consequence, for he now decided to make the mistake a second time. The little band had made slow progress, because of the necessity for transporting the supplies in carts, and Crittenden made up his mind to leave Captain Kelly for the time with forty men to defend the supplies, and with the remaining eighty himself to lead an attack against the Spaniards who were now rallying. But the Spanish soldiers were better trained than were Crittenden's men, and the Spanish leader was cleverer in manoeuvres and had a greater knowledge of the country. He had no difficulty in effecting a separation between the two bodies of Crittenden's men, and he forced those under Crittenden to flee for their lives. They took refuge in a wooded ravine, where they remained for two days and nights without food and without water, in constant terror of a Spanish attack. Realizing that if they stayed where they were they faced no better fate than slow starvation, they finally, under cover of the night, emerged from their hiding-place and made their way to the coast, where they took possession of four small boats and set out to sea, in the hope of reaching Key West, or of being picked up by some other expedition, since they had no doubt that several were already on their way from the United States. Two days later, starving, and almost mad for want of fresh water, driven by the tides back to the shore and aground on the rocks, they were captured and taken to Havana.
The Spanish General Bustillos, gives the following account of their apprehension:
"Your Excellency: I started yesterday from Bahia Honda, in the steamer _Habanera_, with a view to reconnoiter the coast of Playitas and Morillo, in order to remove all the means by which the pirates could possibly escape; or in case of more expeditions to these points, to remove the means of disembarkation. At seven o'clock in the morning, I communicated with the inhabitants of Morillo, and was informed by the inhabitants that, at 10 o'clock on the preceding night, one part of them embarked in four boats. Having calculated the hour of their sailing and distance probably made in 10 hours and supposing they had taken the direction of New Orleans--I proceeded in that direction 18 miles, with full steam, but after having accomplished that distance, I could not discover any of those I pursued. Believing the road they had followed was within the rocks, I directed my steamer to that point, and made the greatest exertions to encounter the fugitive pirates. At 10 o'clock I detected the 4 boats navigating along the coast and I could only seize one. Two others were upon the rocks of the island, the fourth upon the rocks of Cargo Levisa. When I seized the men of the first boat, I armed the boats of the ship in order to pursue the second and third, which were on the rocks, but the officers of the army who were in the boats, as well as the troops and sailors, the commander of the boat, Don Ignacio de Arrellano and the captain of the steamer _Cardenas_, Don Francisco Estolt threw themselves in the water to pursue the pirates of whom two only escaped. Having left their arms we did not pursue them in order to occupy ourselves with the boat in Cargo Levisa, for it was one of the largest and contained more men. These, twenty-four in number, were hidden within a small neck, having the boat drawn up among the rocks; and here the pirates were seized. The number of prisoners was fifty well armed men, headed by a chief and five officers."