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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At the appointed hour, eleven o'clock on the following day, the ships deftly felt their way into and through the channel under the fire of the guns of the tall stone castle, called the "Morro" or "San Pedro de la Roca", which so proudly crowned the precipitous cliff on the eastern side. The soldiers, who had taken the town so easily, advanced at the same time against its outworks on the landside, with their usual fierce shouts and menacing gestures, which so terrified their weak garrison, consisting only of a subaltern and thirty men, that they retired hastily into the citadel. This stronghold was also soon abandoned by them, after firing only two musket-shots, on the advance of a storming party. Hitherto this fortress had been deemed nearly impregnable, and it might easily have been held by a sufficient force, as it occupied the crest of a steep, rocky promontory and its walls facing the land were sixty-three feet in height. It was armed with thirty-four cannon, and its walls enclosed a church and quarters for a thousand soldiers.