“Never did heaven look down upon a more pitiable, awful spectacle than that presented by the buccaneers with their captives. Surrounded by the armed buccaneers, the prisoners—many of them tender, high-bred ladies and young children—were forced over the rough trail and across rivers. ‘Nothing,’ says Esquemeling, ‘was to be heard save the lamentations, cries, shrieks and doleful sighs of those who were persuaded that Morgan designed to transport them to his own country as slaves.’ Given barely enough food and water to sustain life, many of them wounded, all terrified and frightened, they were forced on by blows, curses, prods with swords or rawhide lashes. Women, unable to endure, fell upon their knees and implored Morgan to permit them to go back to their loved ones to live in huts of straw as they had no houses left, but to one and all he replied, with a laugh, that he came not to hear lamentations and cries but to gain money. Often, the women and children would stagger and fall, and if unable to rise were pistoled or run through, the others staggering over their dead bodies. And yet, in the midst of this awful march, Morgan exhibited that strange paradoxical nature of his and performed a gallant and commendable act. It happened that among the prisoners was a lady who belonged on the island of Taboga, a most lovely and virtuous woman according to Esquemeling, and to her buccaneer guards she stated, amid her sobs and shrieks, that she had sent two priests to secure her ransom, but that having obtained the money they had used it to secure the release of their own friends. This tale reached Morgan’s ears and instantly he halted his men, made an investigation and finding it true at once released the woman, made her a present of the amount of her ransom, swept off his plumed hat, bent his knee and kissed her finger-tips and, with expressions of deepest sorrow for her state, sent her happily on her way with an armed escort. Then, to even scores, he made prisoners of the treacherous priests, and, as Esquemeling tells us, ‘used them according to the deserts of their incompassionate intrigues.’ “By the time La Cruz was reached on March 5, 1671, the bulk of the captives who still lived had been ransomed, and, embarking with those remaining and with a number of new prisoners taken at La Cruz, Morgan and his men started down the Chagres. “When midway to San Lorenzo, Morgan again halted, ordered every one searched to be sure they had concealed no booty and, to show his fairness, insisted that he too must be searched, ‘even to the soles of his boots.’ Then once more they resumed their way, and on March 9th reached the mouth of the Chagres and the fortress.