afterward fell to eating those leathern bags, as affording something to
the ferment of their stomachs."

Ten days they struggled through this bitter privation, doggedly forcing
their way onward, faint with hunger and haggard with weakness and fever.
Then, from the high hill and over the tops of the forest trees, they saw
the steeples of Panama, and nothing remained between them and their goal
but the fighting of four Spaniards to every one of them--a simple thing
which they had done over and over again.

Down they poured upon Panama, and out came the Spaniards to meet them;
four hundred horse, two thousand five hundred foot, and two thousand
wild bulls which had been herded together to be driven over the
buccaneers so that their ranks might be disordered and broken. The
buccaneers were only eight hundred strong; the others had either
fallen in battle or had dropped along the dreary pathway through the
wilderness; but in the space of two hours the Spaniards were flying
madly over the plain, minus six hundred who lay dead or dying behind
them.

As for the bulls, as many of them as were shot served as food there and
then for the half-famished pirates, for the buccaneers were never more
at home than in the slaughter of cattle.

Then they marched toward the city. Three hours' more fighting and
they were in the streets, howling, yelling, plundering, gorging,
dram-drinking, and giving full vent to all the vile and nameless lusts
that burned in their hearts like a hell of fire. And now followed the
usual sequence of events--rapine, cruelty, and extortion; only this time
there was no town to ransom, for Morgan had given orders that it should