“Here they suffered greatly, being compelled to pass the night in the open in a pouring rain and enduring agonies from biting insects and mosquitoes. On the morning of the ninth day they came to a steep hill from the summit of which they saw the Pacific gleaming in the sun and with two ships sailing from Panama to Taboga. Elated at finding themselves so near their goal they hurried down the slope and in a little meadow discovered a number of cattle, horses and asses. Hastily butchering and dressing these they kindled huge fires, half cooked the still warm flesh over the flames and gorged themselves like beasts. Indeed, to once more quote Esquemeling, ‘they more resembled cannibals than Europeans at this banquet, the blood many times running down from their beards to their middles.’ “Continuing, they came at evening in sight of a party of two hundred Spaniards, who challenged them and then retreated, and before nightfall they saw the tower of the cathedral of Old Panama looming against the sky. Sounding their trumpets, beating their drums, throwing hats in air; leaping and shouting with joy, the buccaneers, knowing the end of their awful march was over, pitched their camp for the night in preparation of an assault on the morrow. “But the buccaneers were not to rest in peace. Fifty horsemen appeared, taunting and insulting the English just out of gunshot, and soon the big cannon of the forts began to thunder and roar and the shot fell all about the buccaneers’ camp. Soon thereafter a party of fully two hundred cavalry galloped across the fields from the town, and presently the buccaneers discovered that they were completely surrounded and, from being the besiegers they had been transformed into the besieged. “But having done so much and survived, the rough corsairs gave no thought or worry to this and ‘began every one to open his satchel and without napkin or plate fell to eating very heartily the remaining pieces of bulls’ and horses’ flesh which they had reserved since noon. This being done they laid themselves down upon the grass with great repose and huge satisfaction, expecting only with impatience the dawning of the next day.’ Thus does Esquemeling describe that fateful evening, the close of the day which foreshadowed the doom of the richest city of New Spain and which ere another sun set would be a blazing funeral pyre and a bloody shambles with the shrieks and screams of tortured beings rending the air and rising loud above the roaring of the flames.” CHAPTER VI THE SACK OF PANAMA “There’s something I’d like to ask, Uncle Henry,” said Fred, as Mr. Bickford paused in his narrative and reached for an old book. “You spoke of the British flag flying from San Lorenzo. I thought the pirates always used a black flag with a skull and bones.”