The expedition started on its return journey overland, and after twelve days arrived at Chagres. Here the great quantity of booty was divided up among the crews; but the men were not satisfied with their share, protested that they had been cheated of their full amount, and much discontent ensued. There can be little doubt but that this was so, and that Morgan had enriched himself at the expense of his men. However, he managed to slip away to his ship, followed by only a handful of his former fleet, and once again found himself in Jamaica. Here he received the formal thanks of the governor, but there was trouble brewing. For while Morgan had been away, a treaty had been signed at Madrid concerning Spanish America. It is true that Modyford had, in those days of slow communication, known nothing of it; but he was recalled, and he returned to England a prisoner to answer for his having supported and encouraged buccaneering. The following year Morgan was also sent to England in a frigate, but Charles II. took a great liking to this dare-devil, and in 1674 sent him back again to Jamaica, this time with the rank of Colonel and with the title of knighthood, to be not a buccaneer but Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica. If ever there was an instance of the ungodly flourishing, here it is. Fourteen years longer did Morgan continue to live in this island as a rich man possessing social prestige. It is true that he made a good governor, but although he had defeated Alonso, reduced Panama, made a clever escape from Maracaibo, taken Santa Catalina and been a veritable thorn in the side of the Spaniards, yet he had been a brute, and he died a brute. He was a blackmailer on a large scale, he was unmercifully a tyrant, and he was a profligate. It is only because he attacked the enemies of his own Government, and because he was lucky to obtain the commissions demanded by law, that he is prevented from being reckoned as a mere common pirate. But if there is honour among most thieves, what shall we say of Morgan’s dishonesty and harshness in cheating the very men who had fought under him of their fair share of plunder when the battle was won? It is, perhaps, hardly fair to judge even a Morgan except by the prevailing standard of his time. But those who care to look up the details of Morgan’s private life will find much to condemn even if there is something to admire in his exceptional cleverness and undoubted courage. The sea is a hard school and makes hard men harder, and in those days when might was right and every ocean more or less in a chaotic state of lawlessness, when poverty, or chance, or despair, or the irresistible longing for adventure drove men to become pirates, there was no living for a soft-hearted sailor. He had to fight or be fought: he had to swim with the tide, or else sink. The luckiest and cleverest became the worst terrors of the sea, while the least fortunate had either to submit to the strong or else end their days in captivity.