[The following is in regards to the long, horrifying march that the pirate captain Henry Morgan and his men undertook on their way to raid the Spanish settlement of Panama. They suffered greatly on the march, and at this point they were on the verge of starvation.]
Roderick was now so desperate that he began to chew at the leather, and the other men grabbed at the sacks as well, “as being desirous to afford something to the ferment of their stomachs, which now was grown so sharp that it did gnaw their very bowels, having nothing else to prey upon.”
As knives flashed out and the leather was ripped into portions, the Brethren smoldered. There wasn’t enough of the cowhide to go around; the strongest got a piece of the bags, while others only watched them force it down. As they left the stockade and resumed their journey, Esquemeling makes a startling claim: The buccaneers were so famished that they were ready to eat their enemy. “Finding no victuals, they were now infinitely desirous to meet [the Spaniards],” he tells us, “intending to devour some of them rather than perish.”
Source:
Talty, Stephan. “The Isthmus.” Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign. New York: Crown Publishing Group (NY), 2007. 224. Print.
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