ngs she witnessed and heard were enough to
appall the stoutest heart that ever beat within the rudest breast. She
forgot her own danger in her sympathy for the suffering inhabitants of
the devoted town. Ghastly pale and sick with horror, she tottered and
staggered as she entered the room. As for the Senora Agapida, she had
collapsed long since, and for the last one hundred yards of the journey
had been dragged helplessly along by two of her captors, who threw her
in a senseless heap on the stone flagging of the great vaulted chamber.

The agony and suffering, the torture and death, the shame and dishonor
of his people affected Alvarado differently. His soul flamed within his
breast with pity for the one, rage for the other. He lusted and thirsted
to break away and single-handed rush upon the human wolves and tigers,
who were despoiling women, torturing men, murdering children, as if they
had been devils. The desire mastered him, and he writhed and struggled
in his bonds, but unavailingly.

It was a haggard, distracted pair, therefore, which was brought before
the chief buccaneer. Morgan sat at the head of the guardroom, on a
platform, a table before him strewn with reckless prodigality with
vessels of gold and silver stolen from altar and sideboard
indifferently, some piled high with food, others brimming with a variety
of liquors, from the rich old wines of Xeres to the fiery native rum. On
one side of the captain was a woman. Pale as a ghost, the young and
beautiful widow of a slaughtered officer, in her disordered array she
shrank terrified beneath his hand. L'Ollonois, Teach and de Lussan were
also in the room. By each one cowered another woman prisoner. Teach was
roaring out a song, that song of London town, with its rollicking
chorus:

"Though life now is pleasant and sweet to the sense,
We'll be damnably moldy a hundred years hence."

The room was full of plunder of one sort and another, and the buccaneers
were being served by frightened negro slaves, their footsteps quickened
and their obedience enforced by the sight of a dead black in one corner,
whom de Lussan had knifed a short time since because he had been slow in
coming to his call. The smell of spilled liquor, of burnt powder, and of
blood, indescribable and sickening, hung in the close, hot air. Lamps
and candles were flaring and spluttering in the room but the greater
illumination came through the open casements from the roaring fires of
bur