With fiendish cruelty Morgan ordered that the poor captives, most of whom were women and children, should be given barely enough food and water to keep them alive, his idea being, as our old friend Esquemelling explains, that “it would excite them more earnestly to seek money wherewith [[369]]to ransom themselves according to the tax which had been set upon every one.”
Never had the great forest trees and the smiling plains looked upon a more pitiful, a more harrowing scene than that of those starved and thirsty prisoners marching under the broiling sun, urged on with curses, coarse jests, and blows; wading rivers, stumbling through muck, clad in laces and silks and high-heeled, flimsy shoes, and bare-headed. Bereft of homes and loved ones, unaccustomed to hardship, unused to walking a dozen rods, these delicate, carefully nurtured ladies were flogged like beasts, and subjected to every insult and indignity. If they dropped from hunger or exhaustion, a blow from a pirate followed; if they stumbled and fell, they were jerked to their feet by their disheveled hair. “Nothing else was heard but lamentations, cries, shrieks and doleful sighs,” said Esquemelling, and many fell by the wayside and were ruthlessly trampled underfoot or more mercifully run through with a cutlass still stained with the blood of those cut down in the city. Many of the women fell upon their knees, begging Morgan to put an end to their sufferings with death, or to let them return to the bodies of those they loved; but to all the callous brute, who was [[370]]later honored by the King of England, replied that “he came not thither to hear lamentations and cries but rather to seek money.”
Though the villain was unmoved by the sights and scenes which should have melted a heart of stone, yet on that dreadful march he showed a streak of gallantry which he was known occasionally to exhibit. Among the prisoners taken at Panama was one “beautiful and virtuous lady,” a woman of wealth and refinement whom Morgan had selected for himself. But she being, as Esquemelling says, “in all respects like unto Susannah for constancy,” and having refused Morgan’s offers of pearls, gold, and money, and likewise having repulsed his amorous advances, Morgan stripped the rich garments from her back and cast her into a dungeon on a scant diet of bread and water. But so beautiful was the captive, and so brave and virtuous, that even the rough buccaneers took pity upon her, and Morgan, realizing that he had overstepped the bounds of even pirate propriety, released her and held her for ransom.
On the second day of the march this abused lady’s lamentations “now did pierce the skies,” and she declared to the two ruffians who guarded her that she had given orders to two priests to go to a certain spot and bring her ransom, that they had [[371]]promised to do so, but, having secured the cash, had made use of it to ransom one of their own brotherhood. The pirate guards carried the story to Morgan, who at once halted his march, interviewed a slave who had brought the lady word of the friars’ duplicity, and even apprehended the priests and wrung a confession from them. Thereupon he placed his hand on his heart, swept the ground with his plumed hat, begged a thousand pardons of his captive beauty, set her at liberty, provided her with an armed escort to accompany her to her home, and—wonder of wonders!—presented her with the ransom money as a gift! Not content with this, he hanged the two deceitful priests from the nearest tree, and calmly proceeded on his way.
It is needless to dwell upon that terrible march across the isthmus, the sack of towns en route, the sufferings of the captives, or the voyage down the Chagres. On March 9th the buccaneers and all their prisoners and loot arrived at San Lorenzo, and at once complaints arose that Morgan had retained more than his share of the loot. For when the vast treasure was divided as Morgan saw fit, it was found that the pirates received but a paltry two hundred pieces of eight each for their share. But though his followers accused him openly of cheating, none dared offer personal violence, and [[372]]he ordered the fort demolished, the guns taken aboard the buccaneers’ ships, and the buildings burned. Then, while the men were busy at these tasks, the detestable scoundrel sneaked off, boarded his own ship, and having secretly seized all the available provisions, sailed away, leaving his followers to fare as best they might—which was ill indeed.
Never in the history of the pirates had any captain been disloyal to his men in this way, and had the buccaneers been able to lay hands upon him Morgan’s career would have come to an abrupt as well as unpleasant end, then and there. Realizing that to go to Tortuga would mean falling into the wronged men’s hands, Morgan sailed boldly to Port Royal, where he was promptly arrested and, in company with the governor, was sent a prisoner to England. The rest of his story I have told. Knighted and honored, he came back to Jamaica as lieutenant-governor, a pirate Judas, to betray and hang his own men. He died in obscurity, but his deeds, nefarious as they were, will live forever. For years to come the ruins of old Panama will stand beside the Pacific, everlasting monuments to his ruthless villainy, and upon its bluff old San Lorenzo still stands, grim, frowning, but deserted! Its moat is dry and choked with weeds, its guns lie [[373]]dismounted and thick with rust; its vast underground passages and rooms are empty; its parapets are crumbling away. But within its dungeons may still be seen the manacles that held the few survivors of that bloody battle; beneath the massive walls the Chagres still ripples gently on its way to the sea; upon the bar the waves still break and roar where Morgan’s ships went down.
Standing here to-day, it is hard to realize that once the peaceful spot rang to the clash of steel, the crash of musketry, and the roar of cannon; that curses and shots, cries of St. Jago and St. George, shrieks of dying men, and the groans of wounded echoed from the hills; that these ancient, weather-beaten stones once ran with blood; that the weed-grown slopes were dotted with dead and dying men; that bodies lay piled in heaps about the sally-ports and guns, and that Don and buccaneer struggled in mortal combat where now gorgeous butterflies flit from flower to flower in the sun and swallows nest beneath the parapets.
For centuries old San Lorenzo has thus stood. For centuries it will stand. It is almost as enduring as the living rock on which it rests. Fire and shot have scarcely left a scar upon it. The pirates’ greatest efforts at destruction made hardly an impression. The elements affect it little, and until [[374]]its last age-gray stone has crumbled to dust it will bind the present with the past, and the past with Morgan—the greatest pirate of them all, the most daring, most famous, and most villainous of the buccaneers.