"From Chagre, Captain Morgan sent presently after his arrival, a great boat unto Porto Bello, wherein were all the prisoners he had taken at the Isle of St. Catherine, demanding by them a considerable ransom for the Castle of Chagre, where he then was, threatening otherwise to ruin and demolish it even to the ground. To this message those of Porto Bello made answer: they would not give one farthing towards the ransom of the said castle, and that the English might do with it as they pleased. This answer being come, the dividend was made of all the spoil they had purchased in that voyage. Thus every company and every particular person therein included received their portion of what was gotten; or rather what part thereof Captain Morgan was pleased to give them. For so it was, that the rest of his companions, even of his own nation, complained of his proceedings in this particular, and feared not to tell him openly to his face, that he had reserved the best jewels to himself. For they judged it impossible that no greater share should belong unto them than two hundred pieces of eight per capita, of so many valuable purchases and robberies as they had obtained. Which small sum they thought too little reward for so much labour and such huge and manifest dangers as they had so often exposed their lives unto. But Captain Morgan was deaf to all these and many other complaints of this kind, having designed in his mind to cheat them of as much as he could."[315] On 6th March 1671, Morgan, after demolishing the fort and other edifices at Chagre and spiking all the guns, got secretly on board his own ship, if we are to believe Exquemelin, and followed by only three or four vessels of the fleet, returned to Port Royal. The rest of the fleet scattered, most of the ships having "much ado to find sufficient victuals and provisions for their voyage to Jamaica." At the end of August not more than ten vessels of the original thirty-six had made their way back to the English colony. Morgan, with very inadequate means, accomplished a feat which had been the dream of Drake and other English sailors for a century or more, and which Admiral Vernon in 1741 with a much greater armament feared even to attempt. For display of remarkable leadership and reckless bravery the expedition against Panama has never been surpassed. Its brilliance was only clouded by the cruelty and rapacity of the victors--a force levied without pay and little discipline, and unrestrained, if not encouraged, in brutality by Morgan himself. Exquemelin's accusation against Morgan, of avarice and dishonesty in the division of the spoil amongst his followers, is, unfortunately for the admiral's reputation, too well substantiated. Richard Browne, the surgeon-general of the fleet, estimated the plunder at over L70,000 "besides other rich goods," of which the soldiers were miserably cheated, each man receiving but L10 as his share. At Chagre, he writes, the leaders gave what they pleased "for which ...