sault, by seeing the English colours put forth at one of the
lesser castles, then entered by his men." A few minutes later the
conquerors came swaggering up to join him, "proclaiming victory with
loud shouts of joy."

Leaving his musketeers to fire at the Spanish gunners, Morgan turned
aside to reconnoitre. Making the capture of the lesser fort his excuse,
he sent a trumpet, with a white flag, to summon the main castle, where
the Governor had flown the Spanish standard. While the herald was gone
upon his errand, Morgan set some buccaneers to make a dozen scaling
ladders, "so broad that three or four men at once might ascend by them."
By the time they were finished, the trumpeter returned, bearing the
Governor's answer that "he would never surrender himself alive." When
the message had been given, Captain Morgan formed his soldiers into
companies, and bade the monks and nuns whom he had taken, to place the
ladders against the walls of the chief castle. He thought that the
Spanish Governor would hardly shoot down these religious persons, even
though they bore the ladders for the scaling parties. In this he was
very much mistaken. The Governor was there to hold the castle for his
Catholic Majesty, and, like "a brave and courageous soldier," he
"refused not to use his utmost endeavours to destroy whoever came near
the walls." As the wretched monks and nuns came tottering forward with
the ladders, they begged of him, "by all the Saints of Heaven," to haul
his colours down, to the saving of their lives. Behind them were the
pirates, pricking them forward with their pikes and knives. In front of
them were the cannon of their friends, so near that they could see the
matches burning in the hands of the gunners. "They ceased not to cry to
him," says the narrative; but they could not "prevail with the obstinacy
and fierceness that had possessed the Governor's mind"--"the Governor
valuing his honour before the lives of the Mass-mumblers." As they drew
near to the walls, they quickened their steps, hoping, no doubt, to get
below the cannon muzzles out of range. When they were but a few yards
from the walls, the cannon fired at them, while the soldiers pelted them
with a fiery hail of hand-grenades. "Many of the religious men and nuns
were killed before they could fix the ladders"; in fact, the poor folk
were butchered there in heaps, before the ladders caught against the
parapet. Directly the ladders held, the pirates stormed up with