On the tenth day they debouched upon a plain before the City of Panama, where the governor awaited with his troops. There were two squadrons of cavalry and four regiments of foot, besides guns, and the pirates heartily wished themselves at home with their mothers. Happily the Spanish governor was too sly, for he had prepared a herd of wild bulls with Indian herders to drive into the pirate ranks, which bulls, in sheer stupidity, rushed his own battalions. Such bulls as tried to fly through the pirate lines were readily shot down, but the rest brought dire confusion. Then began a fierce battle, in which the Spaniards lost six hundred men before they bolted. Afterward through a fearful storm of fire from great artillery, the pirates stormed the city and took possession. Of course, by this time, the rich galleons had made away to sea with their treasure, and the citizens had carried off everything worth moving, to the woods. Moreover, the pirates were hasty in burning the town, so that the treasures which had been buried in wells or cellars were lost beyond all finding. During four weeks, this splendid capital of the Indies burned, while the people hid in the woods; and the pirates tortured everybody they could lay hands on with fiendish cruelty. Morgan himself, caught a beautiful lady and threw her into a cellar full of filth because she would not love him. Even in their retreat to the Atlantic, the pirates carried off six hundred prisoners, who rent the air with their lamentations, and were not even fed until their ransoms arrived. Before reaching Chagres, Morgan had every pirate stripped to make sure that all loot was fairly divided. The common pirates were bitterly offended at the dividend of only two hundred pieces of eight per man, but Morgan stole the bulk of the plunder for himself, and returned a millionaire to Jamaica. Charles II knighted him and made him governor of Jamaica as a reward for robbing the Spaniards. Afterwards his majesty changed his mind, and Morgan died a prisoner in the tower of London as a punishment for the very crime which had been rewarded with a title and a vice-royalty. XXXVII A. D. 1682 THE VOYAGEURS This chapter must begin with a very queer tale of rivers as adventurers exploring for new channels. Millions of years ago the inland seas--Superior, Michigan and Huron--had their overflow down the Ottawa Valley, reaching the Saint Lawrence at the Island of Montreal. But, when the glaciers of the great ice age blocked the Ottawa Valley, the three seas had to find another outlet, so they made a channel through the Chicago River, down the Des Plaines, and the Illinois, into the Mississippi.