He set fire to the city in various quarters, carefully spreading the report that the conflagration was kindled by the Spaniards themselves. The fire spread with such rapidity that, in a few hours, nearly all of the business portion was laid in ashes. Most of the humbler buildings were of wood, with thatched roofs. They burned like tinder. Two hundred stores, with all their contents, were destroyed. The Genoese Warehouses were burned. There were many poor slaves imprisoned in them. They were consumed by the all-devouring flames.
This energetic commander, as pitiless as any beast which ever howled in the jungle, had accomplished his purpose. His troops were driven out of the flaming streets into the fields, and there they were compelled to encamp. These wretched men, satiated with gluttony, drunkenness, and debauchery, began now to awake, with new eagerness, to their old passion for plunder.
Four vessels were dispatched to visit the islands and to cruise along the coast in both directions. One hundred and sixty men were sent back to Chagres to convey supplies to the troops in garrison there, and to inform them of the great victory. Daily companies of two hundred men, one party relieving another, were sent out to explore the region around. They returned every night with a group of pale and trembling prisoners, and with mules laden with treasure. These unhappy captives were tortured to compel them to reveal where treasure, of which they knew nothing, was concealed. The father, the mother, the maiden daughter, and the child were alike stretched on the bed of torture. Neither innocence, beauty, nor virtue afforded the female captive any protection.
A pauper Spaniard, not much more than half-witted, wandered, during the confusion, into a rich man’s house, stripped off his rags, and clothed himself in costly linen with breeches of bright red taffeta and a coat of silk velvet. As he was foolishly strutting about admiring his finery, the pirates broke in, and seized him as their prize. They believed, or assumed to believe, that he was the master of the house, and demanded that he should inform them where he had concealed his treasure.
In vain he pointed to his rags and protested, by all the saints, that he had lived upon charity. There was nothing he could reveal. These cruel men stretched him on the rack. They dislocated his joints. They twisted a cord around his forehead, “till his eyes appeared as big as eggs, and were ready to fall out.” They hung him up by the thumbs and scourged him. They cut off his nose and ears and singed his face with blazing straw. Then with the thrusts of their lances they put him to death.
“After this execrable manner,” writes Esquemeling, “did many others of these miserable prisoners finish their days; the common sport and recreation of these pirates being these, and other tragedies not inferior to these.”
CHAPTER XXII.
The Return from Panama.
Return of the Explorers.—The Beautiful Captive.—Sympathy in her behalf.—Embarrassments of Morgan.—Inflexible Virtue of the Captive.—The Conspiracy.—Efficiency of Morgan.—His Obduracy.—The Search of the Pirates.—The Return March.—Morgan Cheats the Pirates.—Runs Away.
The vessels which Morgan sent out to the islands, and to cruise along the shore, all returned within about eight days. They came laden with merchandise and with captives. The fate of the female captives was dreadful. In this treatment none of the men were worse than Morgan himself. In one of the shiploads of captives there was a Spanish lady of exquisite beauty. She was quite young, and the wife of a wealthy merchant, then absent in Peru. She is described by both Esquemeling and Oexemelin as a lady endowed with such loveliness as is rarely seen upon earth. Esquemeling writes: