“For fifteen days the revel was maintained, every citizen who looked as if he had money being put to the torture to compel him to confess where he had hidden it. When all had been extorted that seemed possible the buccaneers made ready to depart. But first Morgan demanded 100,000 pieces of eight, in default of which he would burn the city and blow up the castles. The wretched citizens sought aid of the President of Panama who was as unwilling to help them with gold as with powder and lead. In some miraculous way they raised it, and Morgan and his men departed, making their way to that town of revelry, Port Royal, of which I have already spoken, at the entrance to Kingston harbor. Perhaps it is fair to contrast with Esquemeling’s story of the exploit Morgan’s official report--for this worthy had a royal commission for his deeds. The Captain reported that he had left Porto Bello in as good condition as he found it, that its people had been well treated, so much so that “several ladies of great quality and other prisoners who were offered their liberty to go to the President’s camp refused, saying they were now prisoners to a person of quality who was more tender of their honors than they doubted to find in the President’s camp; and so voluntarily continued with him.” [Illustration: A GROUP OF CUEPA TREES] Captain Morgan’s own testimony to his kindness to prisoners and his regard for female honor impresses one as quite as novel and audacious as his brilliant idea of forcing priests and nuns to carry the scaling ladders with which to assault a fortress defended by devout Catholics. Yet except for little incidents of this sort the whole crew--Spanish conquistadores, French filibusters and British buccaneers--were very tenacious of the forms of religion and ostentatious piety. The Spaniards were always singing Te Deums, and naming their engines of war after the saints; Captain Daniels, a French filibuster, shot dead a sailor for irreverent behavior during mass; the English ships had divine service every Sunday and profanity and gambling were sometimes prohibited in the enlistment articles. All of which goes to show that people may be very religious and still a pest to humanity--nor is it necessary to turn to the buccaneers for instances of this fact. CHAPTER IV SAN LORENZO AND PANAMA