After Morgan had safely reached Jamaica with all his booty, the idea renewed itself in his mind of returning to St. Catherine, fortifying the place and putting it in complete order, and then occupying it as a station for all pirates, with himself the supreme governor and king of the buccaneers.  But before he had completed his arrangements for doing this there was a change in the affairs at Jamaica:  the king of England, having listened to the complaints of the Spanish crown, had recalled the former Governor and put him on trial to answer for the manner in which he allowed the island to be used by the pirates for their wicked purposes against a friendly nation, and had sent a new Governor with orders to allow no buccaneers in Jamaica, and in every way to suppress piracy in those parts.

Now the shrewd Morgan saw that his present business was likely to become a very undesirable one, and he accordingly determined to give it up.  Having brutally pillaged and most cruelly treated the Spaniards as long as he was able to do so, and having cheated and defrauded his friends and companions to the utmost extent possible, he made up his mind to reform, and a more thoroughly base and contemptible reformed scoundrel was never seen on the face of the earth.

Morgan was now a rich man, and he lost no time in becoming very respectable.  He endeavored to win favor with the new Governor, and was so successful that when that official was obliged to return to England on account of his health, he left the ex-pirate in charge of the affairs of the island in the capacity of Deputy-Governor.  More than this, King Charles, who apparently had heard of Morgan’s great bravery and ability, and had not cared to listen to anything else about him, knighted him, and this preeminent and inhuman water-thief became Sir Henry Morgan.

In his new official capacity Morgan was very severe upon his former associates, and when any of them were captured and brought before him, he condemned some to be imprisoned and some to be hung, and in every way apparently endeavored to break up the unlawful business of buccaneering.

About this time John Esquemeling betook himself to Europe with all possible despatch, for he had work to do and things to tell with which the Deputy-Governor would have no sympathy whatever.  He got away safely, and he wrote his book, and if he had not had this good fortune, the world would have lost a great part of the story of what happened to the soft little baby who was born among the quiet green fields of Wales.

Even during the time that he was Deputy-Governor, Morgan was suspected of sharing in the gains of some buccaneers at the same time that he punished others, and after the death of Charles II. he was sent to England and imprisoned, but what eventually became of him we do not know.  If he succeeded in ill-using and defrauding his Satanic Majesty, there is no record of the fact.

Chapter XX