How Morgan was helped by Some Religious People
When the Welsh buccaneer started out on another expedition his company
consisted entirely of Englishmen, and was not nearly so large as it had
been; when he announced to his followers that he intended to attack the
fortified town of Porto Bello, on the mainland, there was a general
murmuring among the men, for Porto Bello was one of the strongest towns
possessed by the Spaniards, and the buccaneers did not believe that
their comparatively small force would be able to take it. But Morgan
made them a speech in which he endeavored to encourage them to follow
him in this difficult undertaking. One of his arguments was, that
although their numbers were small, their hearts were large; but he
produced the greatest effect upon them when he said that as they were
but a few, each man's share of the booty would be much larger than if it
must be divided among a great number. This touched the souls of the
pirates, and they vowed to follow their leader wherever he might take
them.
The buccaneers found Porto Bello a very hard nut to crack; they landed
and marched upon the town, which was defended by several forts or
castles. Even when one of these had been taken by assault, and after it
had been blown up with all its garrison, who had been taken prisoners,
still the town was not intimidated, and the Governor vowed he would
never surrender, but would die fighting to the last. The pirates raged
like demons; they shot down every man they could see at the cannon or
upon the walls, and they made desperate efforts to capture the principal
fort, but they did not succeed, and after a long time Morgan began to
despair. The garrison was strong and well commanded, and whenever the
pirates attempted to scale the wall they were shot down, while fire-pots
full of powder, with stones and other missiles, were hurled upon them.
At last the wily Morgan had an idea. He set his men to work to make some
ladders high enough to reach to the top of the walls, and wide enough to
allow three or four men to go up abreast. If he could get these properly
set up, his crew of desperate tiger-cats could make a combined rush and
get over the walls. But to carry the ladders and place them would be
almost impossible, for the men who bore them would surely be shot down
before they could finish the work. But it was not Morgan's plan that his
men should carry these ladders. He had captured some convents in the
suburbs of the town, with a number of nuns and monks, known as
"religious people," and he now ordered these poor creatures, the women
as well as the men, to take up the ladders and place them against the
walls, believing that the Spanish Governor would not allow his soldiers
to fire at these innocent persons whom the pirates had forced to do
their will.
But the Governor was determined to defend the town no matter who had to
suffer, and so the soldiers fired at the nuns and monks just as though
they were buccaneers or any other enemies. The "religious people" cried
out in terror, and screamed to their friends not to fire upon them; but
the soldiers obeyed the commands of the Governor, while the pirates were
swearing terribly behind them and threatening them with their pistols,
and so the poor nuns and monks had to press forward, many of them
dropping dead or wounded. They continued their work until the ladders
were placed, and then over the walls went the pirates, with yells and
howls of triumph, and not long after that the town was taken. The
Governor died, fighting in the principal fort, and the citizens and
soldiers all united in the most vigorous defence; but it was of no use.
Each pirate seemed to have not only nine lives, but nine arms, each one
wielding a cutlass or aiming a pistol.
When the fighting was over, the second act in the horrible drama took
place as usual. The pirates ate, drank, rioted, and committed all manner
of outrages and cruelties upon the inhabitants, closing the performance
with the customary threat that if the already distressed and
impoverished inhabitants did not pay an enormous ransom, their town
would be burned.
Before the ransom was paid, the Governor of Panama heard what was going
on at Porto Bello, and sent a force to the assistance of the town, but
this time the buccaneers did not hastily retreat, Morgan knew of a
narrow defile through which the Spanish forces must pass, and there he
posted a number of his men, who defended the pass so well that the
Spaniards were obliged to retreat. This Governor must have been a
student of military science; he was utterly astounded when he heard that
this pirate leader, with less than four hundred men, had captured the
redoubtable town of Porto Bello, defended by a strong garrison and
inhabited by citizens who were brave and accustomed to fighting, and,
being anxious to increase his knowledge of improved methods of warfare,
he sent a messenger to Morgan "desiring him to send him some small
pattern of those arms wherewith he had taken with such violence so great
a city." The pirate leader received the messenger with much courtesy,
and sent to the Governor a pistol and a few balls, "desiring him to
accept that slender pattern of the arms wherewith he had taken Porto
Bello, and keep them for a twelvemonth; after which time he promised to
come to Panama and fetch them away."
This courteous correspondence was continued by the Governor returning
the pistol and balls with thanks, and also sending Morgan a handsome
gold ring with the message that he need not trouble himself to come to
Panama; for, if he did, he would meet with very different fortune from
that which had come to him at Porto Bello.
Morgan put the ring on his finger and postponed his reply, and, as soon
as the ransom was paid, he put his booty on board his ships and
departed. When the spoils of Porto Bello came to be counted, it was
found that they were of great value, and each man received a lordly
share.
When Captain Morgan was ready to set out on another expedition, he found
plenty of pirates ready to join him, and he commanded all the ships and
men whom he enlisted to rendezvous at a place called the Isle of Cows. A
fine, large, English ship had recently come to Jamaica from New England,
and this vessel also joined Morgan's forces on the island, where the
pirate leader took this ship as his own, being much the best and largest
vessel of the fleet.
Besides the ships belonging to Morgan, there was in the harbor where
they were now congregated, a fine vessel belonging to some French
buccaneers, and Morgan desired very much that this vessel should join
his fleet, but the French cherished hard feelings against the English,
and would not join them.
Although Morgan was a brave man, his meanness was quite equal to his
courage, and he determined to be revenged upon these Frenchmen who had
refused to give him their aid, and therefore played a malicious trick
upon them. Sometime before, this French vessel, being out of provisions
when upon the high seas, had met an English ship, and had taken from her
such supplies as it had needed. The captain did not pay for these, being
out of money as well as food, not an uncommon thing among buccaneers,
but they gave the English notes of exchange payable in Jamaica; but as
these notes were never honored, the people of the English ship had never
been paid for their provisions.
This affair properly arranged in Morgan's mind, he sent a very polite
note to the captain of the French ship and some of his officers,
inviting them to dine with him on his own vessel. The French accepted
the invitation, but when Morgan received them on board his ship he did
not conduct them down to dinner; instead of that, he began to upbraid
them for the manner in which they had treated an English crew, and then
he ordered them to be taken down below and imprisoned in the hold.
Having accomplished this, and feeling greatly elated by this piece of
sly vengeance, he went into his fine cabin, and he and his officers sat
down to the grand feast he had prepared.
There were fine times on board this great English ship; the pirates were
about to set forth on an important expedition, and they celebrated the
occasion by eating and drinking, firing guns, and all manner of riotous
hilarity. In the midst of the wild festivities--and nobody knew how it
happened--a spark of fire got into the powder magazine, and the ship
blew up, sending the lifeless bodies of three hundred English sailors,
and the French prisoners, high into the air. The only persons on board
who escaped were Morgan and his officers who were in the cabin close to
the stern of the vessel, at some distance from the magazine.
This terrible accident threw the pirate fleet into great confusion for a
time; but Morgan soon recovered himself, and, casting about to see what
was the best thing to be done, it came into his head that he would act
the part of the wolf in the fable of the wolf and the lamb. As there
was no way of finding out how the magazine happened to explode, he took
the ground that the French prisoners whom he had shut up in the hold,
had thrown a lighted match into the magazine, wishing thus to revenge
themselves even though they should, at the same time, lose their own
lives. The people of the French ship bitterly opposed any such view of
the case, but their protestations were of no use; they might declare as
much as they pleased that it was impossible for them to make the waters
muddy, being lower down in the stream than the wolfish pirate who was
accusing them, but it availed nothing. Morgan sprang upon them and their
ship, and sent them to Jamaica, where, upon his false charge, they were
shut up in prison, and so remained for a long time.
Such atrocious wickedness as the treatment of the nuns and monks,
described in this chapter, would never have been countenanced in any
warfare between civilized nations. But Morgan's pirates were not making
war; they were robbers and murderers on a grand scale. They had no right
to call themselves civilized; they were worse than barbarians.
[Illustration: "Morgan began to upbraid them, and ordered them taken
below."--p. 151.]