In triumph! But what a triumph! They had now been fifteen days in Puerto Velo. Famine and disease were assailing them with more cruel attacks than sabre or pistol can inflict. Recklessly they had wasted their provisions. They could not eat their gold or their silver, or the spoil which they had stored away in the holds of their ships. They had already consumed the mules and the horses. Their blood, inflamed by debaucheries and almost boiling beneath a meridian sun, produced the most loathsome and painful disorders. The slightest wound would fester and cause death. No wonder they were reckless. Better far to die than to live in such misery. This was the triumph to which the pirate Morgan returned. The Spanish prisoners suffered still more than their captors. Crowded together in apartments whose awful impurity tainted the air; deprived of every comfort; witnessing intense sufferings which they could not alleviate, but which they were compelled to share; despondent, starving, dying, there was for them no relief but such as death gives. The Spanish governor, who had shown such utter want of military ability in marching into the ambuscade, was as self-conceited and boastful as he was incompetent. Notwithstanding his ignominious repulse, he sent to Morgan the following message: “If you do not immediately withdraw, with your ships, from Porto Velo, I will march upon you with a resistless force. You shall receive no quarter. Every man shall be put to death.” Morgan sent back the reply, “If you do not immediately send me one hundred and eighty thousand dollars in gold, I will lay every building in Puerto Velo in ashes; I will blow up the forts; and I will put every captive I have to the sword, man, woman, and child.” The pride of the governor would not allow him to purchase the retreat of the pirates. He sent to Carthagena imploring that some ships might be sent from there to block up the pirates in the river. But they had no sufficient force to make the attempt. The citizens were very anxious to have the money sent. But the governor kept them in suspense in hopes of gaining time. “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] [Footnote A: The Monarchs of the Main, by George W. Thornbury, Esq., vol. ii. p. 35.]