“I don’t wonder you ask,” replied his father. “Yes, that was one of the odd things about them. Altogether the buccaneers were most paradoxical rascals. With all their villainies many of them were deeply religious at times and there are instances—as I shall tell you later—of crews actually mutinying because their captains made them work on Sunday and did not hold services aboard their ships. They seemed to feel that their notoriously wicked stronghold at Port Royal was not complete without a church and so they built one. They fitted it with bells taken from some raided church of the Dons, they provided altar pieces, vestments, candelabra and holy vessels of gold and silver, chalices set with priceless jewels, even paintings and tapestries torn and looted from the desecrated churches and cathedrals of the Spanish towns, and attended services in a house of God made a mockery and a blasphemy by its fittings won by blood and fire and the murder of innocent men, women and children. “And it was to this den of iniquity, this world-famed lair of the buccaneers, that young Morgan came after gaining his liberty in Barbados. Perhaps he had no idea of turning corsair and intended to get honest employment or even to make his way back to his father’s farm in Wales. But whatever his purpose may have been he found no ready means of earning a livelihood and enlisted as a seaman on a buccaneer ship. He was an apt pupil and was thrifty, and after the first two or three voyages he had saved enough money from his share of plunder to purchase a ship, or rather a controlling interest in one. He now was a full-fledged buccaneer captain and in his own vessel set sail for Yucatan, where he took several prizes and returned triumphantly to Jamaica. Here he met an old corsair named Mansvelt, who was busy organizing an expedition to pillage the towns along the Main, and Mansvelt, seeing in Morgan a most promising young villain, offered him the post of Vice Admiral of his fleet. With fifteen ships and five hundred men, Mansvelt and Morgan sailed away from Port Royal and swept down on the island of Old Providence—then known as St. Catherine—off the Costa Rican coast, and which at the time was strongly garrisoned by the Spaniards. After a short battle the island surrendered, and the buccaneers, after plundering the place, destroying the forts and burning the houses, sailed off with their holds crowded with prisoners. These they put safely ashore near Porto Bello and then cruised along the coasts of Panama and Costa Rica. The Dons, however, were everywhere on the lookout and every town swarmed with troops. Realizing that an attempt to take the places would be well nigh useless the buccaneers returned to St. Catherine, where they had left one hundred of their men, to find that the buccaneer in charge—Le Sieur Simon—had repaired the forts and defenses until the place was well nigh impregnable. Mansvelt’s idea was to retain the island as a basis for piratical raids