“Then, to wring confessions of where the miserable folk had secreted their valuables, Morgan commenced such a series of devilish tortures and inhumanities as the world had probably never seen before or since. One poor wretch who was a mere serving man was captured while wearing a pair of his master’s ‘taffety breeches’ which he had donned in the confusion of the attack. Moreover, hanging to the trousers was a small key, and these things convinced the buccaneers that the fellow was well-to-do and that the key belonged to some secret chest containing his wealth. In vain the fellow protested that he knew nothing of it, that the garments and the key were his master’s and that he was merely a servant. Paying no heed to his screams, the buccaneers placed him on the rack and stretched him until his arms were pulled from their sockets. Still the man protested his ignorance and the inhuman monsters twisted a thong about his forehead until his eyes popped from their orbits. Even this awful torture was, of course, without result, and stringing him up by the thumbs, they flogged him [[112]]within an inch of his life, sliced off his ears and nose, singed his bleeding sightless features with burning straw and, still unsuccessful in their attempts to learn the supposed secret of his treasure, they ordered a slave to run him through with a lance. There is no need to describe other examples of Morgan’s fiendishness. He spared neither young nor old, men or women, and the priests and nuns were treated with even greater cruelty than any others. Only the most prominent and important men and women were free from tortures, and these Morgan herded together to hold, under threat of death or worse, for ransom.
“For three weeks the buccaneers occupied the ruined city, torturing, slaying, committing every devilishness imaginable, until even Morgan’s men sickened with the sights and a large portion of them planned to steal away in a ship and desert their leader. Morgan, however, heard of the plot, destroyed all the ships and ordered preparations made to leave the city and return to San Lorenzo. But before he left he sent certain prisoners to outlying districts demanding ransoms for those he held, and for days wealth flowed in from friends of the captives and many were freed. Still, hundreds remained, and on the 14th of February, [[113]]1671, Morgan and his men left the city, and, with one hundred and seventy-two pack mules laden with booty and six hundred prisoners, he started on the long and terrible overland trip.
“Never did heaven look down upon a more pitiable, awful spectacle than that presented by the buccaneers with their captives. Surrounded by the armed buccaneers, the prisoners—many of them tender, high-bred ladies and young children—were forced over the rough trail and across rivers. ‘Nothing,’ says Esquemeling, ‘was to be heard save the lamentations, cries, shrieks and doleful sighs of those who were persuaded that Morgan designed to transport them to his own country as slaves.’ Given barely enough food and water to sustain life, many of them wounded, all terrified and frightened, they were forced on by blows, curses, prods with swords or rawhide lashes. Women, unable to endure, fell upon their knees and implored Morgan to permit them to go back to their loved ones to live in huts of straw as they had no houses left, but to one and all he replied, with a laugh, that he came not to hear lamentations and cries but to gain money. Often, the women and children would stagger and fall, and if unable to rise were pistoled or run [[114]]through, the others staggering over their dead bodies. And yet, in the midst of this awful march, Morgan exhibited that strange paradoxical nature of his and performed a gallant and commendable act. It happened that among the prisoners was a lady who belonged on the island of Taboga, a most lovely and virtuous woman according to Esquemeling, and to her buccaneer guards she stated, amid her sobs and shrieks, that she had sent two priests to secure her ransom, but that having obtained the money they had used it to secure the release of their own friends. This tale reached Morgan’s ears and instantly he halted his men, made an investigation and finding it true at once released the woman, made her a present of the amount of her ransom, swept off his plumed hat, bent his knee and kissed her finger-tips and, with expressions of deepest sorrow for her state, sent her happily on her way with an armed escort. Then, to even scores, he made prisoners of the treacherous priests, and, as Esquemeling tells us, ‘used them according to the deserts of their incompassionate intrigues.’
“By the time La Cruz was reached on March 5, 1671, the bulk of the captives who still lived had been ransomed, and, embarking with those [[115]]remaining and with a number of new prisoners taken at La Cruz, Morgan and his men started down the Chagres.
“When midway to San Lorenzo, Morgan again halted, ordered every one searched to be sure they had concealed no booty and, to show his fairness, insisted that he too must be searched, ‘even to the soles of his boots.’ Then once more they resumed their way, and on March 9th reached the mouth of the Chagres and the fortress.
“Soon after he arrived, Morgan loaded a boat with the prisoners he had taken at St. Catherine and sent them to Porto Bello with a demand that a ransom should be paid for the evacuation of San Lorenzo without its being destroyed. This time, however, Morgan’s bluff was called, and a message was returned stating that not a farthing would be paid and Morgan could do as he pleased with the castle.
“Meantime, the loot was divided—Morgan doing the dividing—and at once grumblings and complaints arose and the men openly accused Morgan of keeping far more than his agreed share. And there is little wonder that they did, for, despite the immense booty taken, Morgan gave but two hundred pieces of eight to each man! [[116]]
“Then Morgan showed his yellow streak and, sneaking secretly aboard his ship, while at his orders his men were demolishing the fort, he sailed away, leaving the buccaneers to follow as best they might. With scarcely any provisions, with no commander of experience, the deserted buccaneers were in a sad state. As Esquemeling quaintly says, ‘Morgan left us all in such a miserable condition as might well serve for a lively representation of what reward attends wickedness at the latter end of life.’ As a matter of fact, they separated, took to sea in the remaining ships and scattered to the four winds, carrying on a desultory and more or less successful buccaneering life on their own account. Thus, by treachery, Morgan possessed himself of his men’s hard-won loot, he double-crossed and deserted the men who, rough and villainous as they were, had stood by him through thick and thin and had made his most famous deed possible, and his career as a buccaneer was over.
The buccaneers’ fleet