Caribbean (47 page)

Then followed a day of horror. More than a hundred privateers, a number never matched before, died in their attempt to subdue this stubborn fort, whose Spanish defenders lost all but a few of their
force. And never in Ned’s prior experience had so many Spanish soldiers fought with such valor, especially the castellan, who was driven back by concentrated fire first to a corner of his fort, then from room to room, fighting with cutlass all the way, until he was at last forced into a corner, where he held off three buccaneers until a fourth rushed in to administer the
coup de grâce
. Ned, who had been one of the three and nearly slain by this heroic man, knelt over the corpse, retrieved the Spaniard’s sword, and placed it over his fallen body with the handle serving as a cross. There the castellan lay as flames embraced him and his fort.

On 19 January 1671, when Admiral Morgan and his near two thousand men started their trip up the Chagres River in their fleet of canoas, none were aware, Admiral Morgan least of all, that they were engaged in what would turn out to be one of the most ill-prepared expeditions in military history. For when one of his sailors, seeing that he had left behind all their food supplies in order to carry weapons needed for the assault on Panamá, asked: “What are we going to eat on our march?” he said lightly, as had many other generals in history: “We’ll live off the land.”

Unfortunately, there was no land. The Chagres River did not drain into fine farmlands populated by Indians in little grass huts tending cattle, harvesting fruit trees, and growing vegetables. It drained only into swamps that contained no huts, no cattle, and to the amazement of the sailors, not even any fruit trees. So this huge army of men went three days without one bite to eat. On the fourth day there was a perverse kind of joy among the troops, for scouts cried: “Ambush ahead!” To the starving marchers it did not mean danger, but a chance to fight a devil-may-care battle and capture some food. However, when they reached the site of the supposed ambush, they found to their horror that the Spaniards had fled, leaving behind not a morsel of food. All they left was a half-score of leather field bags such as soldiers in all countries prefer for the safekeeping of their valuables, and these the famished sailors ate. One of them wrote later:

Ned almost missed this feast, such as it was, because he was scouting up the river when the leather was distributed, but when he returned and saw the men chewing on what he assumed was food, he cried in panic: “Where’s mine?” and Mompox took him by the arm, sat him down, hushed the protest, and explained what the sailors were trying to eat. Then he separated his apportionment of roasted leather and gave his friend half. Ned later told Will Tatum: “It saved my life. I couldn’t have gone another day.”

The ninth day was one never to be forgotten, for after an excruciating climb to the top of a sizable hill, the starving men looked south and saw a sight which stunned them with its beauty and significance, as Ned Pennyfeather wrote when he recalled it:

As they descended they came upon a valley containing a quantity of cows, bulls, horses, goats and asses. Butchering the animals hastily, they started great fires for barbecuing, but many, including Mompox and Ned, could not wait for the meat to cook. As soon as it began to smoke they grabbed it from the brands and began eating, the blood spilling down their fronts as they gorged themselves.

On the tenth day since their capture of the fort at the Chagres, Admiral Morgan and his replenished men were ready to launch their attack on Panamá, whose numerous defenders awaited them in battle order on a flat plain before their city. In addition to trained troops, able cavalry and strong leadership, the Spaniards had a secret weapon in which they placed much reliance: two immense herds of wild bulls to be released simultaneously against the pirates at a propitious moment. With a cry of
“Viva el Rey!”
the cavalry started the charge, reinforced by valiant foot soldiers, and for two hours the battle raged, with the Spaniards unable to break the dogged ranks of the invaders, who knew that if they lost this fight, their days in Spanish prisons would be hellish and short.

At the start of the third hour the Spaniards released their wild bulls, twelve hundred in each herd, left flank and right. They rushed straight at the pirates, heard the noise of battle, stampeded, and doubled back right into the Spaniards, who, in total confusion, retreated pell-mell toward the city, with Morgan’s men roaring after them.

Morgan’s entry into Panamá was bitterly contested, and so many of his men lost their lives that a rage began to consume him. When he found that fleeing soldiers and civilians had taken refuge in ditches, hoping to surrender after the fury had passed, he ordered his men to shoot them all, men and women alike, and not a prisoner was taken. Inside the gates he came upon a large group of nuns and monks, and in his blind fury, he shouted: “They’re about to attack!” and he led his men in a charge which slaughtered them indiscriminately.

His rage intensified even more when he gained the city and found that from the huge warehouses along the seafront all silver had been evacuated, and from the fabulously rich monasteries and churches all embellishments had vanished. Morgan had won a tremendous victory against huge odds, but he gained only the shell of a city. Its treasures had escaped him.

In a fury that now knew no bounds and recognized none of the limits of decency, he turned Panamá over to the pillage of his sailors, and after they had rampaged for several days he ordered his men to
set the city afire. During the four weeks he and his men remained there the endless flames raged, until everything was consumed. Churches, monasteries, homes, warehouses—all were destroyed in one consuming blaze. Only the rock-built tower of the cathedral remained to mark where this splendid crossroads city had been.

In the meantime, Morgan’s men, enraged by the absence of the wealth they had suffered so much to get, went about capturing as many citizens as they could find and putting them to the torture to make them reveal their hiding places. Both Will Tatum and Mompox participated in seeking out the fugitives and then subjecting them to the refined tortures the pirates had perfected in earlier raids. They used the rack, fire, the horrible
woolding
, dismemberment, rape, and when their patience ran out, murder. The sack of Panamá accounted for some four hundred soldiers dead on the battlefields, many times that number of civilians slain in the interrogations.

This time Ned did not participate in chasing down those in hiding; instead, he was given charge of the interrogations. It became his duty to attempt to ferret out where the riches of Panamá were hidden, and because he shared in the disappointment of his mates, and knowing that if they did not uncover the hidden treasures they would return to Port Royal with little reward for their days of battle and starvation, he became a ruthless interrogator. When women refused to reveal family secrets, he had no compunction in shouting to his assistants: “Ask her again,” and the torture would be escalated until the prisoner sometimes died there in the improvised room in which Ned worked.

Among those captured was a man of obvious importance and considerable wealth, found by Tatum and Mompox during a raid far from the city. When he delivered him for questioning, Will said: “He had three menservants who gave their lives protecting him. Mompox and me, we had to kill them. This one knows something.”

No one ever learned who he was, and Ned began to think that he might be a member of some religious order. Finally, after torments that few could have withstood, the man broke into demonic laughter: “You damned fools! You idiots! Bring Morgan here and I’ll reveal everything,” and when Morgan hurried to the questioning room, the prisoner, lashed to the rack, looked at him with the infinite contempt of a dying man: “You great ass! You posturing general without a grain of sense!”

“Ask him where it’s hidden!” Morgan shrieked, and when Ned
repeated the question, the Spaniard said: “You had it in your grasp, Morgan. It was all there, two boat lengths from shore when you roared into our city … our beautiful city.” For a moment it seemed that the man was going to weep, not from pain but from sorrow over the burning of his city, so Morgan told the men working the rack: “Tighten it,” and after the man screamed involuntarily, he said with infuriating calm: “Before you came I ordered all the treasures in Panamá—plate from the churches, bullion from the warehouses, great treasures from the monasteries and official buildings, everything, a pirate’s dream of wealth … I placed it in that little galleon you saw when you stormed our city.” He gasped, for speaking was a painful effort with death so near. “But you, Morgan, you utter fool, you jackass. When you came in you allowed your men to revel and get drunk and rape and burn churches. What a pitiful general. And all the while the tremendous treasure you sought was within your reach …” Taut ropes prevented him from raising his head, so he dropped his voice to a whisper, causing Morgan to bend forward to hear where the treasure had fled, whereupon the dying man spat full in his face.

“Tighten the ropes!” Morgan shouted, and slowly the man was torn apart.

The rape and burning of Panamá occupied Morgan from 28 January to 24 February, exactly four weeks, and when he and his men were satiated with the desolation they had caused, they marched almost empty-handed back to the headwaters of the Chagres River, down which they sped in the canoas they had left behind a month earlier. During the trip Ned had ample opportunity to study his commander, for Morgan rode in his canoa and Ned had several occasions to talk with him. Morgan never deviated from the conclusion he had reached when first alerted to the fact that somehow the riches of Panamá had eluded him: “It was a noble effort. If we’d done nothing but reduce that fearful fort, it would have been a triumph. English vessels can use this river in the campaigns ahead. And the sacking of their great silver port! When the King of Spain hears what we did these weeks he’ll tremble in his bed.” Actually, the new king was a ten-year-old near-idiot whose inadequacy marked the end of Hapsburg rule in Spain, the substitution of the French Bourbons, and the decline of
Spanish power throughout the world and especially in the Caribbean.

Morgan, of course, knew nothing of these European matters: “A man does what he can, Ned, and there’ll be spoils enough. Not lavish, but enough.” As to his carelessness in allowing the treasure ship to escape when he had it almost within his fingers: “At Porto Bello and Maracaibo, we had good luck we didn’t deserve; at Panamá, bad luck we did deserve. Did you say you took part in all three raids? If you saved your shares, the average won’t be trivial.”

As their boat passed the place where they had found the leather bags which they ate, Morgan laughed: “A couple of days without meat never hurt any man. Tightens up his belly.” But Ned had to speak: “It was ten days, sir,” and the famous admiral grew sober: “Yes, and at seven or eight I wondered if I could go on, but at nine and ten when I began to smell the sea …” He stared at the banks of the river that had been so inhospitable: “I’d not like to make that trip again … well, not that way. But you and I’ll be making other good trips in our day, that we will.”

Ned treasured these conversations with Morgan, for in them the great admiral displayed a warmth and understanding of his people that was otherwise not visible. In action he seemed a remorseless man willing to sacrifice anything, any human life, to achieve his brutal aims, and the Spaniards he had caused to die on his three culminating trips were uncountable, many as a result of fair and open military action, about the same number during interrogations regarding their hidden wealth, real or supposed. But in the closing days of this extraordinary expedition he proved himself to be a most extraordinary man whose fame, Ned thought, would reverberate throughout the Caribbean as long as men loved the sea and the heroic actions possible thereon.

As San Lorenzo became visible, that remnant whose reduction had cost so many lives, Ned felt driven to let Morgan know how much he admired him: “Admiral, my father died when I was too young to know him. After these adventures with you, I’ll always think of you as the kind of father I wish I’d known,” and Morgan, only thirty-six years old at the time, said gruffly: “I’ve watched you, Ned. You’re a real man. I’d be proud to have a son like you.”

But Ned was to change his opinion of Admiral Morgan; his assessment came in the opening pages of an extensive log he kept of
events which transpired after the expedition returned to the fort at San Lorenzo and the sailors prepared to reboard their ships for the return to Port Royal. Rendered into acceptable English, with its arbitrary spellings clarified, it reads: