In Cuba he divided 250,000 pieces-of-eight, and
a great booty in other treasure. A few weeks saw it all in the
hands of the tavern-keepers and women of the place.
Morgan's next performance was a new sack of Maracaibo, now much
stronger than L'Olonnois had found it. After the most appalling
cruelties, not fit to be told, he returned, passing the castles at
the mouth of the port by an ingenious stratagem. Running boatload
after boatload of men to the land side, he brought them back by
stealth, leading the garrison to expect an attack from that quarter.
The guns were massed to landward, and no sooner was this done than
Morgan sailed up through the channel with but little loss. Why the
Spaniards did not close the passage with a boom does not appear.
Probably they were glad to be quit of Morgan on any terms.
A great Spanish fleet he routed by the ingenious employment of a
fire-ship. In a later expedition a strong place was taken by a
curious accident. One of the buccaneers was shot through the body
with an arrow. He drew it out, wrapped it in cotton, fired it from
his musket, and so set light to a roof and burned the town.
His raid on Panama was extraordinary for the endurance of his men.
For days they lived on the leather of bottles and belts. "Some, who
were never out of their mothers' kitchens, may ask how these pirates
could eat and digest these pieces of leather, so hard and dry? Whom
I answer--that could they once experience what hunger, or rather
famine is, they would find the way, as the pirates did.
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