fended the bridges, a strong sea breeze was sweeping the flames through the town. Both the bucaneers and the citizens tried to stop the fire, blowing up some of the houses in its path and tearing down others, but by the next morning, Old Panama was a heap of ashes.
Morgan camped in the ruins for a month, torturing prisoners and hunting for treasure. He found much less than he expected, for a galleon had escaped to sea with all that belonged to the church and the king. After plundering the islands and all the country round, and receiving ransom for their prisoners, the bucaneers returned to Fort San Lorenzo. Here that old villain Morgan got the treasure on board his own ship and sailed away, leaving his comrades in the lurch. With this doubly stolen money, he not only bought a pardon from King Charles II, but became Sir Henry Morgan, lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, and a most merciless catcher and hanger of bucaneers!
Among the men deserted by Morgan was Jan Esquemeling, a Dutchman, who wrote a most entertaining book on "The Bucaneers of America." In it he declares that Old Panama contained two thousand richly furnished mansions, besides five thousand smaller houses. Now Esquemeling never entered the city until it was already on fire, and to any one acquainted with the facts, this part of his narrative reads like a boasting pirate's yarn, smacking strongly of Sindbad the Sailor. Yet on the strength of it, modern historians have credited Old Panama with a population of from thirty to fifty thousand and luxury
That far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind.
