Читать книгу The Life of Sir Henry Morgan. With an account of the English settlement of the island of Jamaica онлайн

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An attack from the sea with so weak a fleet was clearly hopeless and assault by land seemed scarcely less perilous, but Morgan believed he might possibly surprise the defenders.

Having provisioned his ships with dried and salted meat, and taken in a sufficient supply of water and wood for a long voyage from the Cuban coast, he sailed southward across the Caribbean without landing at Jamaica. Adverse and variable winds prevented him from approaching Puerto Bello very closely by sea and, although midsummer heat had set in, he decided to leave his ships at a distance and undertake a laborious journey of more than a hundred miles in canoes. The boldness of this project deterred the French privateers associated with him from taking any part in it, and much diminished his actual force. Some weeks after his return to Port Royal, Morgan with his chief officers appeared before the governor and gave a very concise and matter-of-fact verbal account of their astonishing victory, which was written down by a secretary and sent to London for the information of the Secretary of State.