Page:Cup of Gold-1929.djvu/194

The black night came. Nearly all of the city was in flame, a garden of red fire. The tower of the Cathedral crashed down and threw a heaven of sparks into the air. Panama was dying in a bed of flame, and the buccaneers were murdering the people in the streets.

All night the captain sat in the audience chamber while his men brought in the gathered plunder. They piled golden bars on the floor like cord-wood, bars so heavy that two men carried each of them with difficulty. There were little stacks of jewels like glittering haycocks, and in a corner the precious vestments of the church were heaped, the stock of a heavenly old clothes market.

Henry Morgan sat in a tall chair carved in the likeness of many serpents.

“Have you found La Santa Roja?”

“No, sir. The women of the town are more like devils.”

Prisoners were brought in to be put to the torture with a thumbscrew taken from the Spanish prison.

“Kneel! Your wealth? [Silence] Turn, Joe!”

“Mercy! Mercy! I will lead you; I swear it. A cistern near my house.”

Another—

“Kneel! Your wealth? Turn, Joe!”

“I will lead you.”

As regular, ruthless, and unfeeling they were as master slaughterers in a cow pen.

“Have you found La Santa Roja? I will hang all of you if she is harmed.”