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spoil. He will take her a crucifix from Panama. Think, man! He is a Separatist from the church. He abhors crucifixes!”

Onward the buccaneers drove themselves toward Panama. They had eaten leather and bitter jungle roots, rodents and snakes and monkeys. Their cheeks were shallow cups under their cheek bones; their eyes glittered with fever. Now that their enthusiasm was gone, they were dragged onward by the knowledge of their captain's infallibility. Morgan could not fail because he never had failed. Surely he had a plan which would put the gold of the New World in their pockets. And the word gold, though it had lost its meaning of reality, was more important than the word hunger.

On the eighth morning a scout came to Captain Morgan.

“The way is blocked, sir. They have thrown up a little earthwork in front of us and mounted cannons.”

At a command, the head of the wriggling column swung to the left and began to gnaw its way through thicker underbrush. In the evening they came to the top of a small, round hill, and there below them was Panama laved in the golden light of the western sun. Each man searched his neighbors' face to be assured that this was not his own personal hallucination.

One pirate moved to the hill's edge. He stopped