After ten days spent in the country beyond the walls, Morgan returned to Panama, and found a shipload of Spanish prisoners newly arrived. Amongst these was a woman of exquisite beauty, the wife of a Spanish merchant, then absent on business in Peru. He had left her in the care of some relations, with whom she was captured. Esquemeling says: "Her years were few, and her beauty so great, as, peradventure, I may doubt whether in all Christendom any could be found to surpass her perfections, either of comeliness or honesty." Œxmelin, a more skilful observer, and who saw her, being a sharer in the expedition, describes her hair as ink black, and her complexion of dazzling purity. Her eyes were piercing, and the Spanish pride, usually so cold and repulsive, served in her only as a foil to her surpassing beauty, and to attract respect. The roughest sailors and rudest hunters grew eloquent when they praised her. The common men would willingly have drawn swords for such a prize. But their commander was already the slave of her whom he had captured. His demeanour changed: he was no longer brutal and truculent: he became sociable in manner, and more attentive to the richness of his dress, for lovers grow either more careless or more regardful of their attire.
The Buccaneer's aspect was changed. He separated the lady from the other prisoners, and treated her with marked respect. An old negress, who waited on her, served at once as an attendant and a spy. She was told to assure her mistress, that the Buccaneers were gentlemen and no thieves, and men who knew what politeness and gallantry were as well as any. The lady wept and entreated to be placed with the other prisoners, for she had heard that her relations were afraid of some plot against her good fame.
The lady, like other Spanish women, had been told by their priests and husbands, that the Buccaneers had the shape of beasts and not of men. The more intelligent reported they were robbers, murderers, and heretics; men who forswore the Holy Trinity, and did not believe in Jesus Christ. "The oaths of Morgan," says Esquemeling, with most commendable gravity, "soon convinced her that he had heard of a God." It was said, that a woman of Panama who had long desired to see a pirate, on their first entrance into the city cried out, "Jesu Maria, the thieves are men, like the Spaniards, after all;" and some volunteers, when they went out to meet Morgan's army, had promised to bring home a pirate's head as a curiosity.
Morgan, refusing to restore the beauty to her friends, treated her with more flattering care than before. Tapestries, robes, jewels, and perfumes, lay at her disposal. Such kindness, after all, was cheap generosity, and part of this treasure may even have been her husband's. In her innocence, she began to think better of the Buccaneers. They might be thieves, but they were not, she found, atheists, nor very cruel, for Captain Morgan sent her dishes from his own table. She at first received his visits with gratitude and pleasure, surprised at the rough, frank kindness of the seaman, and loudly denounced his slanderers, that had so cruelly attempted to poison her mind against him, her guardian and protector. The snares were well set, and the bird was fluttering in. But Heaven preserved her, and she passed through the furnace unhurt. Morgan soon threw off his disguise, and offered her all the treasures of the Indies if she would become his mistress. She refused his presents of gold and pearl, and resisted all his artifices. In vain he tried alternately kindness and severity. He threatened her with a thousand cruelties, and she replied, that her life was in his hands, but that her body should remain pure, though her soul was torn from it. On his advancing nearer, and threatening violence, she drew out a poignard, and would have slain him or herself, had he not left her uninjured. Enraged at her pride, as he miscalled her virtue, he determined to break her spirit by suffering. She was stripped of her richest apparel, and thrown into a dark cellar, with scarcely enough food allowed her to support life, and the chief demanded 30,000 piastres as her ransom, to prevent her being sold as a slave in Jamaica. Under this hardship the lady prayed like a second Una daily to God, for constancy and patience. Morgan, now convinced of her purity, and afraid of his men, who already began to express openly their sympathy with her sufferings, to account for his cruelty, accused her to his council of having abused his kindness by corresponding with the Spaniards, and declared that he had intercepted a letter written in her own hand. "I myself," says Esquemeling, "was an eye-witness of the lady's sufferings, and could never have judged such constancy and chastity to be found in the world, if my own eyes and ears had not assured me thereof." Amid the blood, and dust, and vapour of smoke, the virtue of this incomparable lady shines out like a pale evening star, visible above all the murky crimson of an autumn sunset.
A new danger now arose to Morgan from this adventure, for the seamen began to murmur, saying that the love of this beautiful Spaniard kept them lingering at Panama, and gave the Spaniards time to collect their forces, and surprise them on their return. But Morgan, having now stayed three weeks, and nothing more being left to plunder, gave orders to collect enough mules to carry the spoil to Cruz, where it could be shipped for Chagres, and so sent homeward.
There can be no doubt that various causes had for some time been undermining the long subsisting attachment between Morgan and his men. He had shown himself a slave to the passions which enchained their own minds, and their riches perhaps made them independent, and therefore mutinous. It was while the mules were collecting that he became aware of the loaded mine over which he stood. A plot was discovered, in which there were 100 conspirators. They had resolved to seize the two vessels they had captured in the South Sea, and with these to take possession of an island, which they could fortify for a stronghold. They would then fit out the first large Spanish vessel they could obtain, and with a good pilot and a bold captain start privateering on their own account, and work home by the straits of Magellan. As the spoil had not yet been divided, it is probable that all these men had broken the Buccaneer oath, and had secreted part of the plunder. They had already hidden in private places, cannons, muskets, provisions, and ammunition. They were on the very point of raising the anchor, when one of them betrayed the scheme, and Morgan at once ordered the vessel to be dismasted and the rigging burnt. The vessels he would also have destroyed, but these he spared at the intercession of the friend he had appointed their captain. From this time all confidence seems to have ceased between Morgan and his men. Many a king has been made a tyrant by the detection of a conspiracy. The men dreaded his vengeance, and he their treachery. From this hour he appears to have resolved to enrich himself and his immediate friends at any risk, leaving the French to shift for themselves. It is not improbable but that the old French and English feud may have had something to do with this quarrel. In war it ceased, but rankled out again in peace. The French seem to have been his greatest enemies, and the English friendly or indifferent. This distinction is visible even in the historians, for Esquemeling speaks of him with mere distrust, and Œxmelin with bitter hatred.
In a few days the mules were ready, and the gold packed in convenient bales, for Spanish or English gold it was all one to the mules. The costly church plate was beaten up into heavy shapeless lumps, and the heavier spoil was left behind or destroyed. Better burn it, they thought, than leave it to the accursed Spaniard, for we always hate those whom we have injured. The artillery of the town being carefully spiked, and all ready to depart, Morgan informed his prisoners that he was about to march, and that he should take with him all those who were either unable or unwilling at once to bring in their ransom. The sight was heart-rending, and the panic general. At his words, says the historian, there was not one but trembled, not one but hurried to write to his father, his brother, or his friends, praying for instant deliverance or it would be too late. The slaves were also priced, and hostages were sent to collect the money. While this was taking place, a party of 150 men were sent to Chagres to bring up the boats and to look out for ambuscades, it being reported that Don Juan Perez de Guzman, the fugitive president of Panama, had entrenched himself strongly at Cruz, and intended to dispute the passage. Some prisoners confessed that the president had indeed so intended, but could get no soldiers willing to fight, though he had sent for men as far as Carthagena; for the scattered troopers fled at the sight of even their own friends in the distance.
Having waited four days impatiently for the ransom, Morgan at last set out on his return on the 24th of February, 1671. He took with him a large amount of baggage, 175 beasts of burden laden with gold, silver, and jewels, and about 600 prisoners, men, women, children, and slaves, having first spiked all the cannon and burnt the gun-carriages. He marched in good order for fear of attack, with a van and rear-guard, and the prisoners guarded between the two divisions.
The departure was an affecting sight, as even the two historians, who were Buccaneers themselves and eye-witnesses, admit. Lamentations, cries, shrieks, and doleful sighs of women and children filled the air. The men wept silently, or muttered threats between their teeth, to avoid the blows of their unpitying drivers. Thirst and hunger added to their sufferings. Many of the women threw themselves on their knees at Morgan's feet and begged that he would permit them to return to Panama, there to live with their dear husbands and children in huts till the city could be rebuilt. But his fierce answer was, that he did not come there to hear lamentations, but to seek money, and that if that was not found, wherever it was hid, they should assuredly follow him to Jamaica. All the selfishness and all the goodness of each nature now came to the surface. The selfish fell into torpid and isolated despair—the good forgot their own sufferings in trying to relieve those of others.