threw down their arms and begged for quarter, but the courageous Governor, sword in hand, backed against a wall and prepared to resist until the last. Even the buccaneers were won by his bravery and offered quarter if he would surrender, but his only answer was to taunt them and shout back that, ‘I would rather die a valiant soldier than be hanged as a coward.’ “So struck was Morgan by the man’s heroism that he ordered his men to take him alive, and over and over again they closed in upon him. But he was a magnificent swordsman; before his thrusts and blows the buccaneers fell wounded and dead, and deaf to the entreaties of his wife and children, the brave man fought on. At last, finding it impossible to make him prisoner, Morgan ordered him to be shot down, and the brave old Don fell, with his blood-stained sword, among the ring of buccaneers he had killed. The castle was now in Morgan’s hands, and, gathering together the wounded Spaniards, he callously tossed them into a small room, ‘to the intent their own complaints might be the cure of their hurts, for no other was afforded them,’ as Esquemeling puts it. “Then, devoting themselves to a wild orgy of feasting and drinking, the buccaneers gave themselves up to debauchery and excesses until, as Esquemeling points out, they were so maudlin that ‘fifty men might easily have taken the city and killed all the buccaneers.’ But unfortunately the fifty men were not available, and on the following day as usual the buccaneers proceeded to loot the town and torture the people into confessions of the hiding places of their riches. Many died on the rack or were torn to pieces, and while the buccaneers were practicing every devilish cruelty they could invent, word of the taking of Porto Bello had been carried by fugitives to the governor of Panama. He immediately prepared to equip an expedition to attack the buccaneers, but before it arrived Morgan was getting ready to leave, having been in possession of Porto Bello fifteen days. Before departing, however, he sent word to the Governor General, demanding a ransom of one hundred thousand pieces of eight if he did not wish Porto Bello burned and destroyed. Instead of sending the ransom, the Governor dispatched a force of armed men to attack the buccaneers. This Morgan had expected, and, stationing a hundred of his men in ambush in a narrow pass, he put the Spaniards to rout and repeated his threats to the people of the unfortunate town. By hook and by crook the inhabitants managed to raise the huge sum, and Morgan commenced his evacuation in accordance with his promise.