“Take the guns!” shouted Woodes Rogers. “Scale the barricade and spike the pieces!”
With a mighty roar the jack-tars ran for the engines of death; leaping over the wall of the defenses; bayonetting the gunners; turning the spitting war-engines upon the cavalry, which, in confusion and dismay, was driven down a crooked lane. It was the last stand. The English standard soon waved from the flag-pole of the House of Justice.
“And now,” cried Captain Rogers, gleefully, “I’ll meet the worthy Padres and treat with them for a ransom. We’ll make them pay full well to get back the neat little town of Guayaquil.”
Crestfallen and abashed, the city fathers were soon brought before the privateer.
“Señor,” said they, “your men can fight like devils. Señor, you are the first man to have taken our town, and many a Buccaneer has endeavored to do so!”
Captain Rogers smiled.
“Tut! Tut!” said he. “The English can always battle. But—Fathers—you must pay me well for this affair. I demand thirty thousand pieces of eight ($35,000 or about £6,750) as ransom for your fair city. I will give you two days in which to collect it.”
The worthy Padres hung their heads.
“You English,” said they, “are cruel extortioners.”
Yet—in two day’s time—the British marched to their boats with colors flying, bugles blowing, and drums beating a rollicking tattoo. Captain Rogers brought up the rear with a few men. He had secured the ransom and fairly smiled with exuberant joy. “Our sailors,” says he, “kept continually dropping their pistols, cutlasses, and pole-axes; which shows they had grown careless and very weak—weary of being soldiers—and it was high time that we should be gone from hence to the shores of Merrie England.”