By sunset two hundred and fifty Spaniards were masters of Bridgetown, the islanders were disarmed, and at Government House, Governor Steed--his gout forgotten in his panic--supported by Colonel Bishop and some lesser officers, was being informed by Don Diego, with an urbanity that was itself a mockery, of the sum that would be required in ransom.
For a hundred thousand pieces of eight and fifty head of cattle, Don Diego would forbear from reducing the place to ashes.

And what time that suave and courtly commander was settling these details with the apoplectic British Governor, the Spaniards were smashing and looting, feasting, drinking, and ravaging after the hideous manner of their kind.
Mr.Blood, greatly daring, ventured down at dusk into the town.

What he saw there is recorded by Jeremy Pitt to whom he subsequently related it--in that voluminous log from which the greater part of my narrative is derived.

I have no intention of repeating any of it here.

It is all too loathsome and nauseating, incredible, indeed, that men however abandoned could ever descend such an abyss of bestial cruelty and lust.
What he saw was fetching him in haste and white-faced out of that hell again, when in a narrow street a girl hurtled into him, wild-eyed, her unbound hair streaming behind her as she ran.