“He was deaf and obdurate to all the entreaties of the citizens, who sent to inform him that the pirates were not men, but devils, and that they fought with such fury that the Spanish officers had stabbed themselves in very despair, at seeing a supposed impregnable fortress taken by a handful of people, when it should have held out against twice that number.”[A]
[A] The Monarchs of the Main, by George W. Thornbury, Esq., vol. ii. p. 35.
The governor was astonished at their exploits. Four hundred men had captured a city which he said any general in Europe would have found it necessary to blockade in due form. It is indicative of the almost inconceivable state of public opinion in those times, that the governor of Panama, Don Juan Perez de Guzman, who had acquired considerable renown for his bravery in the wars in Flanders, should have sent a courteous message to Morgan, expressive of his astonishment and admiration in view of his heroic achievement, and begging Morgan to send him a pattern of the arms with which he had gained so wonderful a victory. The scornful pirate sent a common musket and a handful of bullets to the governor, with the following sarcastic message:
“I beg your excellency to accept these as a small pattern of the arms with which I have taken Puerto Velo. Your excellency need not trouble yourself to return them. In the course of a twelvemonth I will visit Panama in person, and will fetch them away myself.”
The governor replied: “I return the weapons you sent me, and thank you for the loan of them. It is a pity that a man of so much courage is not in the service of a great and good prince. I hope that Captain Morgan will not trouble himself to come and see me at Panama. Should he do so, he surely will not fare so well as he has at Puerto Velo.”
It is very difficult to credit the statement made by Thornbury that “the envoy, having delivered this message, so chivalrous in its tone, presented Morgan with a beautiful gold ring, set with a costly emerald, as a remembrance of his master Don Guzman, who had already supplied the English chief with fresh provisions.”[A]
[A] Monarchs of the Main, vol. i. p. 38.
Puerto Velo was left to its fate. The pirates left scarcely anything behind but the tiles and the paving-stones. Many of the best guns Morgan carried off. Of the rest, all which he could not burst he spiked. He then set sail. Behind him were smouldering ruins, pestilence, poverty, misery, and death.
Eight days’ sail brought the fleet to Cuba. Upon that vast and sparsely inhabited island there were many solitary harbors and coves where the silence of the wilderness reigned. Into one of these lonely spots Morgan ran his fleet. Here he divided the spoil. It was indeed a beggarly pittance which they had obtained as the fruit of so much toil, suffering, and crime. In coin or bullion they counted but two hundred and sixty thousand dollars. There was a large amount of silks and other merchandise, which, was not deemed of much value.
The division was amicably made, and they spread their sails to return to Jamaica, there to squander, in a few days of insane excess, all that they had gained through weary months of danger, toil, suffering, and crime. The entrance of a richly laden piratic fleet into the harbor of Kingston was an occasion of public rejoicing. The gamblers, the courtezans, the rumsellers were all overjoyed. Even the children expected to see the strange visitors scatter their doubloons through the streets to be scrambled for.