“Then, to wring confessions of where the miserable folk had secreted their valuables, Morgan commenced such a series of devilish tortures and inhumanities as the world had probably never seen before or since. One poor wretch who was a mere serving man was captured while wearing a pair of his master’s ‘taffety breeches’ which he had donned in the confusion of the attack. Moreover, hanging to the trousers was a small key, and these things convinced the buccaneers that the fellow was well-to-do and that the key belonged to some secret chest containing his wealth. In vain the fellow protested that he knew nothing of it, that the garments and the key were his master’s and that he was merely a servant. Paying no heed to his screams, the buccaneers placed him on the rack and stretched him until his arms were pulled from their sockets. Still the man protested his ignorance and the inhuman monsters twisted a thong about his forehead until his eyes popped from their orbits. Even this awful torture was, of course, without result, and stringing him up by the thumbs, they flogged him within an inch of his life, sliced off his ears and nose, singed his bleeding sightless features with burning straw and, still unsuccessful in their attempts to learn the supposed secret of his treasure, they ordered a slave to run him through with a lance. There is no need to describe other examples of Morgan’s fiendishness. He spared neither young nor old, men or women, and the priests and nuns were treated with even greater cruelty than any others. Only the most prominent and important men and women were free from tortures, and these Morgan herded together to hold, under threat of death or worse, for ransom. “For three weeks the buccaneers occupied the ruined city, torturing, slaying, committing every devilishness imaginable, until even Morgan’s men sickened with the sights and a large portion of them planned to steal away in a ship and desert their leader. Morgan, however, heard of the plot, destroyed all the ships and ordered preparations made to leave the city and return to San Lorenzo. But before he left he sent certain prisoners to outlying districts demanding ransoms for those he held, and for days wealth flowed in from friends of the captives and many were freed. Still, hundreds remained, and on the 14th of February, 1671, Morgan and his men left the city, and, with one hundred and seventy-two pack mules laden with booty and six hundred prisoners, he started on the long and terrible overland trip.