CHAPTER XVII
THE BRIDGE OF THE WORLD
Although Morgan rose to fame in Jamaica, yet in the island he is unhonored and unsung; and it was across leagues of heaving sea and along the shores of the Spanish Main that his marvelous, execrable enterprises were carried out. In order to follow in his wake I was compelled to bid farewell to my men and the stanch little Vigilant and continue my way by steamer.
It was with deep regret that I parted with faithful Sam, hideous-faced Trouble, dignified Joseph, and all the other care-free, happy-go-lucky black and brown members of my crew, for we had got along famously together and they seemed more like old friends than employees. But I knew that sooner or later I should see them all again: in the West Indies one is ever meeting old friends and acquaintances, and as Jules, the half-Carib Dominican, expressed it when he said good-bye, “Morne pas ka encountre; moune ka encountre tojou. [Only mountains never meet; people always meet again.]”
Out of the harbor the Vigilant sailed, past sleepy Port Royal at the tip of the Palisados and, heading eastward, bore off toward the distant Virgins. Outward after her forged the big steamer and, swinging her sharp prow westward, surged onward toward Central America, over the same course that Sir Henry sailed as with his crew of ruffians he swept down upon Porto Bello. Standing at the steamer’s taffrail, I watched the little schooner heeling to the breeze. Wider and wider spread the stretch of heaving blue between us, until, like the flash of a sea-gull’s wings, her white sails twinkled upon the horizon and were gone.
I was on deck at daybreak the following morning, gazing through my glasses at the gray and lofty peak of Old Providence,—the St. Catherine that Mansvelt had thought to make a pirate kingdom and which Morgan later had sacked and pillaged on his way to Panama.
In those days Old Providence was an important stronghold, a miniature Gibraltar guarding the approaches to the coast and ever heavily fortified and garrisoned. But to-day it is a forlorn and all but deserted spot, the home of fisherfolk and a few farmers who cultivate their precarious crops upon the rugged hillsides, and of so little worth that Panama left it in the undisputed possession of Colombia when she gained her independence. Passing the sea-girt volcanic isle to-day, one marvels that the pirates ever should have wasted ammunition and lives upon it; but to them it was a strategic point, and could they have but held it, the fate of Central America might have been very different. Instead of a series of small republics, the land from Mexico to Colombia might now be a colony of Britain.
Beyond Old Providence the wide, unbroken sea stretched away to the horizon, until at last dim mountains, the tip of the Andes, rose before our bows, and clearer and ever clearer grew the land, the coast of the Spanish Main. Rising in green hills from the water, it swept inward, an undulating sea of verdure, to the cloud-draped blue peaks: a vast, untamed wilderness with no vestige of settlement or civilization, until, as the hills became lower and the mountain ranges more distant, we passed the half-hidden entrance to Porto Bello and far ahead saw the smoke-pall and the low land that marked Colon and the entrance to the Panama Canal.
Past the lofty wireless towers, the huge hangars, and the white buildings of Coco Solo, past the great Hotel Washington, past the vast breakwater we steamed, and, gliding through the narrow entrance between the two long ridges of rock and concrete that protect—or, rather, are supposed to protect—the harbor, entered the waters of the Zone, where our steamer was warped into the huge concrete-and-steel piers at Cristobal.
How old Morgan and his fellow buccaneers would stare and rub their eyes could they but glimpse this terminus of the great ditch that links the two oceans, with its puffing locomotives, its row of huge docks, its scores of mighty steamships, and its innumerable honking motor-cars! It was a morass in their day, and for nearly two centuries thereafter; for Colon was built upon a swamp and enjoys the distinction of being one of the few towns, if not the only town, constructed in order to establish a starting-place for a railway, instead of the railway being built to accommodate a town. Originally the place was called Aspinwall, in honor of the projector of the trans-isthmian railroad, and there resulted a ludicrous state of affairs, a petty squabble between two nations that probably has no equal.
Although the Americans who built the town called it Aspinwall, the Colombians had their own ideas on the subject, and to perpetuate the name of the great discoverer they christened it Colon. The United States Government then took a hand and, refusing to recognize any such town as Colon, declined to deliver mail addressed thereto. But that was a game which two could play, and the Colombians promptly refused to accept or deliver mail addressed to Aspinwall. As in most cases, possession was nine points of the law, and as the binomial port was unquestionably on Colombian territory, the United States at last backed down and grudgingly agreed that “Colon” it should remain.
Colon is a far from interesting city, but it is clean and sanitary and no longer the sordid, disease-ridden, filthy hole that it was in pre-canal days. Moreover, despite the lurid tales of fiction-writers, Colon is as orderly and law-abiding as any port, and while it possesses an inordinate number of cheap cabarets and cheaper bar-rooms, and is frequented by hundreds of Uncle Sam’s sailors nightly, not to mention a multitude of seamen, canal-zone employees, and natives, yet serious crimes are rare and vice hides itself in out-of-the-way streets in a restricted district. But Colon’s reputation as the “wickedest city in America” has not long been a thing of the past. Five years ago both Colon and Panama were such hotbeds of iniquity that the commanding general of the United States forces on the isthmus was compelled to issue a general order prohibiting sailors and soldiers from entering Panamanian territory.
As a result of this order, Panama was compelled to clean up its two chief towns, for without the patronage of the Americans they would have been in sore straits, and while the Government was slow about it (for the average Panamanian is far from squeamish in regard to either physical or moral filth), the herculean task was at last accomplished and our men of the army and navy were once more permitted to roam through the streets and frequent the resorts of the Panamanian towns.
Little need be said of Colon, or of Cristobal, the spick-and-span little American town on the zone side of the railway which forms the boundary between American and Panamanian territory, or—what is of more importance to the majority of visitors—the boundary between a very dry and a very wet land.
Neither possesses any historical associations, and neither had been dreamed of in the days of the buccaneers. But near at hand, a scant twenty-five miles down the coast and easily accessible by motor-boat, is the ancient stronghold of Porto Bello, the grim old citadel that defied Drake, the treasure-house that fell to Morgan and his men, the Atlantic terminus of the celebrated Gold Road.
Within the vaults of Porto Bello have been stored countless millions of treasure. To this port, winding their way through the jungles, along the roughly paved road from Panama, came the long mule-trains, laden with the riches of the despoiled Incas; with the output of the marvelous mines of Darien and Veraguas; with the gems and jewels of Aztec kings and princes; with bullion and plate; with the treasures of the Indies. With jangling bells the gaily caparisoned mules trotted over the rough cobbles, splashed through the rivers, and plunged up the steep slopes; with cracking whips and hoarse shouts the sandaled drivers ran beside them, in picturesque Spanish cursing their beasts and urging them forward; chained together in groups, the bronze-skinned Indian and ebon-hued African slaves stumbled along, groaning, footsore, bleeding from the lash; while leading the way and bringing up the rear were the mail-clad soldiery, the plumed officers, the proud hidalgos and such well-to-do travelers as saw fit to travel from ocean to ocean across this Bridge of the World.
Long centuries have passed since the last treasure-train wound its slow way across the isthmus by the Gold Road. Huge trees have sprung from between its cobbles and have spread their vast network of branches above the spots where fever-stricken slaves dropped dying under the hoofs of the gold-laden mules. The forest has obliterated the once broad way; the jungle has hidden with its impenetrable curtain long stretches of the celebrated highroad; steeply arched bridges have crumbled into the tumbling rivers, and wayside stopping-places, where the long mule-teams halted for rest and refreshment, are mere mounds of giant ferns and huge-leafed plants. But still, so the natives say, ghostly figures may sometimes be seen traversing the highway. Through the silence of the midnight jungle come the tinkle of mule-bells and the clatter of hoofs on stone; weird lights flicker and dance between the trees, and the screams of mortals in agony and the groans of the dying make one’s blood run cold. No natives willingly go near the old road after nightfall, for to them it is accursed, a way paved with dead men’s bones, a trail of blood and death; and piously they cross themselves and speak in hushed and fearful voices at mention of it.
No one can say how many millions in gold and silver and jewels have been carried over this forest road from Panama to Porto Bello. For years it was the only route from the Pacific to the Atlantic, or vice versa, and over it flowed all the treasures that the ruthless Dons wrested from the New World; over it passed thousands of hardy Spaniards who sought to win fortune and fame from the new-found lands, and who left their bones in morass, jungle, and sea, from California to Patagonia.
Rich indeed were the pickings to be had in those days, and the loot of Inca and Aztec, of Toltec and Maya, the output of countless mines, and fortunes in pearls from the outlying isles were carried over the Gold Road and stored in the vaults of Porto Bello to await the plate-fleet with its convoys which was to bear the stupendous treasure across the sea to Spain.
A tempting spot to rob was Porto Bello, a vast coffer fairly bursting with riches, and many an avaricious buccaneer sighed regretfully as he cast covetous eyes toward the town and thought of the incalculable wealth that reposed in safety behind the grim walls and bristling guns of San Jerome Castle, on the heights above the quiet harbor.
But San Jerome had been built with all the art and skill of the best Spanish engineers; it had been devised to guard the treasures of New Spain, and to guard them well. No ship could enter the port without passing under its guns; no man could approach by land without exposing himself to the ever-watchful sentries and a withering fire of musketry and cannon. It was not only a castle and a group of forts but a citadel as well—a vast pile of massive walls, of moats and battlements, of out jutting sentry-boxes—and ever garrisoned with a thousand men or more.
It was thought impregnable, beyond the possibility of capture; the Dons believed the riches within were as safe as though in the treasury of Madrid itself. But the very year that the fortifications were completed William Parker with two hundred rough-and-tumble pirates took the place by storm, burned a part of the town, and got safely away with a tremendous amount of booty.
Alarmed and chagrined to think that the hated British had cracked the vault they had thought so safe, the Spanish had the castle strengthened and enlarged; more heavy guns were mounted and the garrison increased, and the Dons again breathed freely. For sixty years and six the treasure lay safe; the mighty walls resisted all assaults; the cannon roared defiance, and above the battlements Spain’s banner of blood and gold defied the world.
And then, like a bolt from a clear sky, came Morgan. With a fleet of nine ships and a scant five hundred men he landed on a wild, uninhabited stretch of coast and marched on the town at dead of night. Guided by an Englishman who had been a captive in Porto Bello, his forces approached the castle and a few men were sent forward, to steal silently upon the outermost sentry. Leaping on the unsuspecting Spaniard, they bore him to earth ere he could utter a sound, and, binding and gagging him, took him to Morgan. At threat of death by torture the poor fellow gave what information he could of the citadel and its garrison, and promised as well to follow out the orders of the pirates. Creeping like shadows under the walls of an outlying fort, the buccaneers posted themselves with weapons ready and ordered their prisoner to call out to his fellow soldiers, advising them to surrender, as an overwhelming force was about to attack.
In reply, the garrison at once began firing into the darkness, and with wild shouts and yells the pirates rushed this outer fort and, aided by the darkness and the terror which they always inspired, soon took the place. Having once threatened to destroy all within if they refused to surrender, Morgan was as good as his word. Herding the defenseless soldiers and officers in a single room, he set fire to the magazine, blowing the prisoners and the fort to atoms. The shouts, shots, and explosion had aroused the city and the other forts, and, believing that a tremendous force of the enemy must be upon them, the inhabitants became panic-stricken, rushing hither and thither, throwing their valuables into wells and cisterns, striving to escape to the near-by forest, and utterly demoralized. As a result, there was little resistance, and, slashing and shooting their way through the wild-eyed throngs, the pirates dashed to the cloisters in the town and, battering in the doors, made prisoners of the priests and nuns.
Meanwhile the governor, unable to rally the townspeople, retreated to the main fort, San Jerome, [9] and from this point maintained an incessant fusillade upon the pirates. Unable to approach closely, the buccaneers sought what shelter they could find, and, being accomplished marksmen, picked off the Spanish gunners each time they attempted to recharge their cannon. For hours,—from daybreak until noon,—the conflict raged, and for a time it seemed doubtful which side would be the victors. Several times the pirates took their lives in their hands and, dashing under the walls, attempted to start fires at the castle’s doors, but each time they left dead and dying behind as the Dons threw bombs and blazing pitch upon them from the parapets. Finding they were making no headway, even Morgan himself began to despair, and with ready devilishness he proceeded to carry out a scheme of such downright villainy that it could have been born only in the mind of a monster. Hastily constructing a number of broad ladders, he notified the governor that unless the place were surrendered, he would force the nuns and monks to place the ladders and scale the walls. He knew full well that the Dons would hesitate to shoot down the holy men and women.
But the governor of Porto Bello was a man of no ordinary courage and determination, and replied that never would he surrender as long as he remained alive. Thereupon the nuns and monks were dragged forward and, prodded and flogged, were forced to lift the ladders, place them against the walls, and form a screen for the pirates swarming in their rear.
Praying and crossing themselves, beseeching the governor to surrender, the monks in blood-stained cassocks, the white-faced nuns with garments stripped from their quivering bodies, swollen and bruised from cruel blows, lifted the heavy ladders only to fall dead and wounded by scores from the shots of their own countrymen. But others were forced forward, until at last the ladders were in place and, with pistols and cutlasses drawn, the buccaneers swarmed up the walls. Heedless of the fire from above, shouting, swearing, and ever pressing on, they gained the parapet and like fiends incarnate leaped among the Spaniards, cutting and hacking, shooting and stabbing, and so terrorizing the soldiers by their onrush that many threw down their arms and fled.
Presently only the governor remained, fighting alone, his back to a wall, his sword flashing, his dark eyes gleaming defiance, his gray beard streaked with blood. Amazed at his courage, appreciating his bravery, the buccaneers offered him quarter, and even his own wife and daughters pleaded with him to surrender. But the old hidalgo would have none of this, and defiantly he shouted that he would die as a valiant soldier rather than be hanged as a coward. Over and over again the pirates, at Morgan’s orders, strove to rush the old man and make him prisoner, but each time his flashing sword formed a circle of death beyond which none could pass until he fell, shot down by the pirate chieftain.
Porto Bello was now in the buccaneers’ hands. Herding the people, wounded and well alike, into cells where, as Esquemelling says, “to the intent their own complaints might be the cure of their hurts for no other was afforded them,” they were left under guard while the victors fell to eating and drinking. Soon the majority were outrageously drunk, and had the Dons rallied and attacked they might have retaken the place, for, again to quote Esquemelling, who was an eye-witness, “if there had been found fifty courageous men they might easily have taken the city and killed all the pirates.”
For several days thereafter Porto Bello was such a scene of debauchery, of inhumanity, of agony and suffering as the sun has seldom looked upon. The buccaneers went about looting and ravishing, and, realizing that much of the treasure had been hidden, they tortured the prisoners to compel them to divulge the hiding-places. Every devilish device of the Inquisition, and worse, was brought into play. Men and women were broken on the wheel and torn on the rack; they were spitted and roasted over fires, quartered and hacked to bits, flayed alive, blinded, dipped in boiling pitch, subjected to unspeakable agonies before their loved ones’ eyes, until, satiated with bloodshed, convinced that every centavo had been found, the pirates desisted. For fifteen awful days they remained in the stricken town, dying like rats of fever and excesses, daily casting scores of festering corpses into the sea, but so drunk with victory that no heed was given to their own losses or to the threats of an overwhelming force approaching from Panama.
Then, realizing that he must leave, Morgan demanded that the stricken inhabitants pay a ransom for the deliverance of the city, and, ambushing the approaching Spanish troops, he drove them back along the Gold Road. Knowing that his threats to burn the town and to massacre the few remaining inhabitants would be carried out if the ransom were not paid, the people scraped from hiding-places the sum of one hundred thousand pieces of eight, and turned them over to the ruthless conqueror. Rarely did Harry Morgan break his word to an enemy (which was about his only redeeming trait), and so, the ransom being paid, he prepared to evacuate the town with all the treasure he had won, which amounted to more than a quarter of a million dollars in cash and as much more in merchandise—truly, a rich haul!
But before he departed there entered into this awful tragedy a bit of that humor that ever was cropping up with Morgan. Marveling how any one could have taken Porto Bello with its supposedly impregnable forts, its mighty guns, and its horde of soldiery,—to say nothing of its citizens, who were reputed to be brave fighters,—the Viceroy of Panama despatched a messenger to the pirate, begging him to “send him some small pattern of those arms wherewith he had taken with such violence so great a city.” Courteously (now that hostilities were over and the ransom paid) Sir Henry received the messenger, entertained him,—with stolen wine and looted provender, of course,—and sent him back to the viceroy bearing a pistol and a handful of bullets along with a message to the effect that he “desired the viceroy to accept that slender pattern of the arms wherewith he had taken Porto Bello and keep them for a twelvemonth; after which time he promised to come to Panama and fetch them away.”
We can readily imagine with what thanksgiving the harried, tortured, robbed inhabitants of Porto Bello saw the last of the pirates leave, and watched the sails of their ships as they sank from sight below the horizon. But never again would they trust to the old forts to safeguard their treasure. As a result of Morgan’s raid the Gold Road was abandoned between Porto Bello and Las Cruces on the Chagres. The mighty fortress of San Lorenzo at the river’s mouth was strengthened, and the treasure bound for Spain was brought via land and the Chagres River to the ships lying in safety under the guns of San Lorenzo.
But Porto Bello remained; its forts stand, and to-day one may wander about old Fort San Jerome. The ruins are in a good state of preservation, the chapel, the house of the valiant old governor, the cloisters from which the nuns and monks were dragged to form a human shield for the pirates, the massive treasury, and the huge barracks still stand; and one may yet trace the outlines and foundations of the old town.
Nearly as strong to-day as in the time of Morgan is old San Jerome, with its massive walls, its lantern-shaped sentry-boxes, the deeply carved coats of arms above its portals, its embrasures, and its battlements; but the modern Porto Bello is merely a native village of squalid huts and unkempt streets. Its glories have long since departed; the Gold Road is no more. Once the most fabulously rich of New-World cities, the third greatest stronghold of Spain on the Spanish Main, and the storehouse for millions, Porto Bello is to-day almost forgotten and unknown.
The splendid harbor that once sheltered pennant-gay galleons and proud frigates now gleams beneath the sun with only the humble fishing-boats and dugout canoes to ripple its blue surface. Over the spot where Drake lies fathoms deep beneath the sea, the speeding keels of steamships pass unheedingly. Where the white-faced friars reared the ladders under a storm of bullets, tangled lianas and broad-leafed vines drape the gray walls. Gay flowering shrubs hide the scars of battle and the rusting cannon on the slope up which the pirates stormed, and lizards sun themselves upon the spot where the proud and valiant governor sold his life so dearly.
Peaceful and calm is Porto Bello above its lovely bay. The age-gray fort is set in entrancing scenery, and it is hard indeed to realize that it was once the scene of bloodshed and carnage, that the green hills have echoed to the roar of cannon and the shrieks of the dying, that here, upon these very stones, Don and Briton, soldier and pirate struggled in mortal combat.