t be found within
the walls. Ned acted as guide.

The streets of Lima were deserted, as the news of the landing of a
party from the English ship spread through the town; shops were
closed and windows barred, and it was as through a city of the dead
that the band passed rapidly along, until they reached the prison
of the Inquisition. Here the doors were broken down, and the
English sailors entered the ghastly prison. The cells were found to
be tenanted only by natives, most of them men who had been captured
in the hills, and who had refused to accept the Catholic religion.
These were all loosed, and allowed to depart in freedom for the
mountains, taking with them a store of such provisions for the way
as could be found within the walls.

The sight of the torture room roused the fury of the sailors to the
utmost pitch and, breaking into the part wherein dwelt the
principal inquisitors, these were seized and hung from their
windows. The contents of the various rooms were then heaped
together, a light applied, and in a few minutes a glow of flame
told the people of Lima that the dreaded prison of the Inquisition
was no more.

The party then returned through the streets to the ship, and took
part in the further operations commanded by the admiral. Proceeding
from vessel to vessel, they took out all goods which they fancied,
and which were either valuable, or might be useful to them in their
further voyaging. They hewed down the masts of all the largest
ships and, cutting their cables, allowed them to drift on shore.

No more astonishing scene was ever witnessed than that of thirty
ships, backed by a garrison and considerable population on shore,
allowing themselves to be thus despoiled and wrecked by the crew of
one; and this a vessel inferior in size, and in the numerical
strength of her crew, to many of those within the harbor.

The next day a party landed and stripped many of the churches of
their valuables, and also levied a contribution upon the principal
inhabitants. Ned and Tom, not thinking it worth while at this time
to enter into a controversy, with the comrades to whom they had
been so recently restored, as to the legality of their acts, simply
declined to make part of the party who landed; alleging that they
had had enough of the shore of the South American continent for the
rest of their lives.

The 15th of February, the date upon which the Golden Hind arrived
at the port of Lima, was indeed one to be r