- Don Juan Alvarado: My dear child, there is no reason why we shouldn't be married tomorrow.
- Contessa Francesca: Tomorrow, your excellency?
- Don Juan Alvarado: Well, yesterday, unfortunately, is impossible.
- Capt. Laurent Van Horn: We were blown off our course by a hurricane, and our ship crashed on the rocks outside your harbor.
- Don Juan Alvarado: Most inconsiderate of my rocks. I shall have them reprimanded.
- Capt. Laurent Van Horn: Consider yourselves not so much my prisoners, but my honored guests. It would please me if you were to recommend my piracy to your friends when you return home.
- Don Juan Alvarado: Commandante, in the future, we will apply the word "beautiful" to all the ladies who have previously appeared on these premises. You will now invent a new word meaning "much more than beautiful", which will be applied exclusively to La Contessa Francesca.
- Pillery Gow: Oh, let's hang him from the yardarm!
- Paree: Bring him head-out on fire!
- Pillery Gow: No, no, we got to do this properly. Step by step, limb from limb.
- Contessa Francesca: Can't you let him live somehow? Find a way for him to do some useful work?
- Don Juan Alvarado: Work? No, Contessa, yours is the cruelest of all suggestions.
- Don Juan Alvarado: All I ever hear from you is that every golden minute has 60 golden seconds. Why does it have to have 60 golden seconds? Why can't it have 30 golden seconds? And why do they have to be golden? Why can't they be silver?
- Mario Du Billar: I know the man. He'll not rest until he frees the Contessa and Anne Bonney, or is killed in the attempt.
- Don Juan Alvarado: The latter alternative is the more likely. And, incidentally, the more satisfactory.
- Don Juan Alvarado: I promised you 10,000 pieces of eight.
- Mario Du Billar: 50,000 was the sum you mentioned, your excellency.
- Don Juan Alvarado: 50 was the sum I mentioned, but 10,000 was what I had in mind.
- Prologue: The Spanish Main - cruel, oppressive and ruthless, where power alone was a man's single title to everything he held dear, including his very life. It was, thus, a cruel fate that a peaceful Dutch pilgrim ship should be driven there by torrential waves - and crash upon the rocks immediately outside Cartagena, its most remorseless citadel.
- Pillery Gow: Here, how can you believe him?
- Capt. Laurent Van Horn: Who tells you I do?
- Paree: He's such a liar, if he bids me "good morning", I figure it's night, and go to bed. Every word he says...
- Capt. Laurent Van Horn: Not every word. Some are true and some are not... a kind of hash. But I won't swallow it before I find out what it's made of.