Captain Blood
by
Rafael Sabatini
Part 4 out of 7
CHAPTER XV
THE RANSOM
In the glory of the following morning, sparkling and clear after
the storm, with an invigorating, briny tang in the air from the
salt-ponds on the south of the island, a curious scene was played
on the beach of the Virgen Magra, at the foot of a ridge of
bleached dunes, beside the spread of sail from which Levasseur
had improvised a tent.
Enthroned upon an empty cask sat the French filibuster to transact
important business: the business of making himself safe with the
Governor of Tortuga.
A guard of honour of a half-dozen officers hung about him; five of
them were rude boucan-hunters, in stained jerkins and leather
breeches; the sixth was Cahusac. Before him, guarded by two
half-naked negroes, stood young d'Ogeron, in frilled shirt and
satin small-clothes and fine shoes of Cordovan leather. He was
stripped of doublet, and his hands were tied behind him. The
young gentleman's comely face was haggard. Near at hand, and
also under guard, but unpinioned, mademoiselle his sister sat
hunched upon a hillock of sand. She was very pale, and it was
in vain that she sought to veil in a mask of arrogance the fears
by which she was assailed.
Levasseur addressed himself to M. d'Ogeron. He spoke at long length.
In the end -
"I trust, monsieur," said he, with mock suavity, "that I have made
myself quite clear. So that there may be no misunderstandings, I
will recapitulate. Your ransom is fixed at twenty thousand pieces
of eight, and you shall have liberty on parole to go to Tortuga to
collect it. In fact, I shall provide the means to convey you
thither, and you shall have a month in which to come and go.
Meanwhile, your sister remains with me as a hostage. Your father
should not consider such a sum excessive as the price of his son's
liberty and to provide a dowry for his daughter. Indeed, if
anything, I am too modest, pardi! M. d'Ogeron is reputed a wealthy
man."
M. d'Ogeron the younger raised his head and looked the Captain
boldly in the face.
"I refuse - utterly and absolutely, do you understand? So do your
worst, and be damned for a filthy pirate without decency and without
honour."
"But what words!" laughed Levasseur. "What heat and what
foolishness! You have not considered the alternative. When you do,
you will not persist in your refusal. You will not do that in any
case. We have spurs for the reluctant. And I warn you against
giving me your parole under stress, and afterwards playing me false.
I shall know how to find and punish you. Meanwhile, remember your
sister's honour is in pawn to me. Should you forget to return with
the dowry, you will not consider it unreasonable that I forget to
marry her."
Levasseur's smiling eyes, intent upon the young man's face, saw the
horror that crept into his glance. M. d'Ogeron cast a wild glance
at mademoiselle, and observed the grey despair that had almost
stamped the beauty from her face. Disgust and fury swept across
his countenance.
Then he braced himself and answered resolutely:
"No, you dog! A thousand times, no!"
"You are foolish to persist." Levasseur spoke without anger, with
a coldly mocking regret. His fingers had been busy tying knots in
a length of whipcord. He held it up. "You know this? It is a
rosary of pain that has wrought the conversion of many a stubborn
heretic. It is capable of screwing the eyes out of a man's head
by way of helping him to see reason. As you please."
He flung the length of knotted cord to one of the negroes, who in
an instant made it fast about the prisoner's brows. Then between
cord and cranium the black inserted a short length of metal, round
and slender as a pipe-stem. That done he rolled his eyes towards
Levasseur, awaiting the Captain's signal.
Levasseur considered his victim, and beheld him tense and braced,
his haggard face of a leaden hue, beads of perspiration glinting on
his pallid brow just beneath the whipcord.
Mademoiselle cried out, and would have risen: but her guards
restrained her, and she sank down again, moaning.
"I beg that you will spare yourself and your sister," said the
Captain, "by being reasonable. What, after all, is the sum I have
named? To your wealthy father a bagatelle. I repeat, I have been
too modest. But since I have said twenty thousand pieces of eight,
twenty thousand pieces it shall be."
"And for what, if you please, have you said twenty thousand pieces
of eight?"
In execrable French, but in a voice that was crisp and pleasant,
seeming to echo some of the mockery that had invested Levasseur's,
that question floated over their heads.
Startled, Levasseur and his officers looked up and round. On the
crest of the dunes behind them, in sharp silhouette against the
deep cobalt of the sky, they beheld a tall, lean figure scrupulously
dressed in black with silver lace, a crimson ostrich plume curled
about the broad brim of his hat affording the only touch of colour.
Under that hat was the tawny face of Captain Blood.
Levasseur gathered himself up with an oath of amazement. He had
conceived Captain Blood by now well below the horizon, on his way
to Tortuga, assuming him to have been so fortunate as to have
weathered last night's storm.
Launching himself upon the yielding sand, into which he sank to the
level of the calves of his fine boots of Spanish leather, Captain
Blood came sliding erect to the beach. He was followed by
Wolverstone, and a dozen others. As he came to a standstill, he
doffed his hat, with a flourish, to the lady. Then he turned to
Levasseur.
"Good-morning, my Captain," said he, and proceeded to explain his
presence. "It was last night's hurricane compelled our return. We
had no choice but to ride before it with stripped poles, and it
drove us back the way we had gone. Moreover - as the devil would
have it! - the Santiago sprang her mainmast; and so I was glad to
put into a cove on the west of the island a couple of miles away,
and we've walked across to stretch our legs, and to give you
good-day. But who are these?" And he designated the man and the
woman.
Cahusac shrugged his shoulders, and tossed his long arms to heaven.
"Voila!" said he, pregnantly, to the firmament.
Levasseur gnawed his lip, and changed colour. But he controlled
himself to answer civilly:
"As you see, two prisoners."
"Ah! Washed ashore in last night's gale, eh?"
"Not so." Levasseur contained himself with difficulty before that
irony. "They were in the Dutch brig."
"I don't remember that you mentioned them before."
"I did not. They are prisoners of my own - a personal matter.
They are French."
"French!" Captain Blood's light eyes stabbed at Levasseur, then at
the prisoners.
M. d'Ogeron stood tense and braced as before, but the grey horror
had left his face. Hope had leapt within him at this interruption,
obviously as little expected by his tormentor as by himself. His
sister, moved by a similar intuition, was leaning forward with
parted lips and gaping eyes.
Captain Blood fingered his lip, and frowned thoughtfully upon
Levasseur.
"Yesterday you surprised me by making war upon the friendly Dutch.
But now it seems that not even your own countrymen are safe from
you."
"Have I not said that these... that this is a matter personal to
me?"
"Ah! And their names?"
Captain Blood's crisp, authoritative, faintly disdainful manner
stirred Levasseur's quick anger. The blood crept slowly back into
his blenched face, and his glance grew in insolence, almost in
menace. Meanwhile the prisoner answered for him.
"I am Henri d'Ogeron, and this is my sister."
"D'Ogeron?" Captain Blood stared. "Are you related by chance to
my good friend the Governor of Tortuga?"
"He is my father."
Levasseur swung aside with an imprecation. In Captain Blood,
amazement for the moment quenched every other emotion.
"The saints preserve us now! Are you quite mad, Levasseur? First
you molest the Dutch, who are our friends; next you take prisoners
two persons that are French, your own countrymen; and now, faith,
they're no less than the children of the Governor of Tortuga, which
is the one safe place of shelter that we enjoy in these islands...."
Levasseur broke in angrily:
"Must I tell you again that it is a matter personal to me? I make
myself alone responsible to the Governor of Tortuga."
"And the twenty thousand pieces of eight? Is that also a matter
personal to you?"
"It is."
"Now I don't agree with you at all." Captain Blood sat down on the
cask that Levasseur had lately occupied, and looked up blandly. "I
may inform you, to save time, that I heard the entire proposal that
you made to this lady and this gentleman, and I'll also remind you
that we sail under articles that admit no ambiguities. You have
fixed their ransom at twenty thousand pieces of eight. That sum
then belongs to your crews and mine in the proportions by the
articles established. You'll hardly wish to dispute it. But what
is far more grave is that you have concealed from me this part of
the prizes taken on your last cruise, and for such an offence as
that the articles provide certain penalties that are something
severe in character."
"Ho, ho!" laughed Levasseur unpleasantly. Then added: "If you
dislike my conduct we can dissolve the association."
"That is my intention. But we'll dissolve it when and in the manner
that I choose, and that will be as soon as you have satisfied the
articles under which we sailed upon this cruise.
"What do you mean?"
"I'll be as short as I can," said Captain Blood. "I'll waive for
the moment the unseemliness of making war upon the Dutch, of taking
French prisoners, and of provoking the anger of the Governor of
Tortuga. I'll accept the situation as I find it. Yourself you've
fixed the ransom of this couple at twenty thousand pieces, and, as
I gather, the lady is to be your perquisite. But why should she be
your perquisite more than another's, seeing that she belongs by the
articles to all of us, as a prize of war?"
Black as thunder grew the brow of Levasseur.
"However," added Captain Blood, "I'll not dispute her to you if you
are prepared to buy her."
"Buy her?"
"At the price you have set upon her."
Levasseur contained his rage, that he might reason with the Irishman.
"That is the ransom of the man. It is to be paid for him by the
Governor of Tortuga."
"No, no. Ye've parcelled the twain together - very oddly, I
confess. Ye've set their value at twenty thousand pieces, and for
that sum you may have them, since you desire it; but you'll pay for
them the twenty thousand pieces that are ultimately to come to you
as the ransom of one and the dowry of the other; and that sum shall
be divided among our crews. So that you do that, it is conceivable
that our followers may take a lenient view of your breach of the
articles we jointly signed."
Levasseur laughed savagely. "Ah ca! Credieu! The good jest!"
"I quite agree with you," said Captain Blood.
To Levasseur the jest lay in that Captain Blood, with no more than
a dozen followers, should come there attempting to hector him who
had a hundred men within easy call. But it seemed that he had left
out of his reckoning something which his opponent had counted in.
For as, laughing still, Levasseur swung to his officers, he saw that
which choked the laughter in his throat. Captain Blood had shrewdly
played upon the cupidity that was the paramount inspiration of those
adventurers. And Levasseur now read clearly on their faces how
completely they adopted Captain Blood's suggestion that all must
participate in the ransom which their leader had thought to
appropriate to himself.
It gave the gaudy ruffian pause, and whilst in his heart he cursed
those followers of his, who could be faithful only to their greed,
he perceived - and only just in time - that he had best tread warily.
"You misunderstand," he said, swallowing his rage. "The ransom is
for division, when it comes. The girl, meanwhile, is mine on that
understanding."
"Good!" grunted Cahusac. "On that understanding all arranges
itself."
"You think so?" said Captain Blood. "But if M. d'Ogeron should
refuse to pay the ransom? What then?" He laughed, and got lazily
to his feet. "No, no. If Captain Levasseur is meanwhile to keep
the girl, as he proposes, then let him pay this ransom, and be
his the risk if it should afterwards not be forthcoming."
"That's it!" cried one of Levasseur's officers. And Cahusac added:
"It's reasonable, that! Captain Blood is right. It is in the
articles."
"What is in the articles, you fools?" Levasseur was in danger of
losing his head. "Sacre Dieu! Where do you suppose that I have
twenty thousand pieces? My whole share of the prizes of this
cruise does not come to half that sum. I'll be your debtor until
I've earned it. Will that content you?"
All things considered, there is not a doubt that it would have
done so had not Captain Blood intended otherwise.
"And if you should die before you have earned it? Ours is a calling
fraught with risks, my Captain."
"Damn you!" Levasseur flung upon him livid with fury. "Will nothing
satisfy you?"
"Oh, but yes. Twenty thousand pieces of eight for immediate
division."
"I haven't got it."
"Then let some one buy the prisoners who has."
"And who do you suppose has it if I have not?"
"I have," said Captain Blood.
"You have!" Levasseur's mouth fell open. "You... you want the
girl?"
"Why not? And I exceed you in gallantry in that I will make
sacrifices to obtain her, and in honesty in that I am ready to pay
for what I want."
Levasseur stared at him foolishly agape. Behind him pressed his
officers, gaping also.
Captain Blood sat down again on the cask, and drew from an inner
pocket of his doublet a little leather bag. "I am glad to be
able to resolve a difficulty that at one moment seemed insoluble."
And under the bulging eyes of Levasseur and his officers, he
untied the mouth of the bag and rolled into his left palm four or
five pearls each of the size of a sparrow's egg. There were
twenty such in the bag, the very pick of those taken in that raid
upon the pearl fleet. "You boast a knowledge of pearls, Cahusac.
At what do you value this?"
The Breton took between coarse finger and thumb the proffered
lustrous, delicately iridescent sphere, his shrewd eyes appraising
it.
"A thousand pieces," he answered shortly.
"It will fetch rather more in Tortuga or Jamaica," said Captain
Blood, "and twice as much in Europe. But I'll accept your valuation.
They are almost of a size, as you can see. Here are twelve,
representing twelve thousand pieces of eight, which is La Foudre's
share of three fifths of the prize, as provided by the articles.
For the eight thousand pieces that go to the Arabella, I make
myself responsible to my own men. And now, Wolverstone, if you
please, will you take my property aboard the Arabella?" He stood
up again, indicating the prisoners.
"Ah, no!" Levasseur threw wide the floodgates of his fury. "Ah,
that, no, by example! You shall not take her...." He would have
sprung upon Captain Blood, who stood aloof, alert, tight-lipped,
and watchful.
But it was one of Levasseur's own officers who hindered him.
"Nom de Dieu, my Captain! What will you do? It is settled;
honourably settled with satisfaction to all."
"To all?" blazed Levasseur. "Ah ca! To all of you, you animals!
But what of me?"
Cahusac, with the pearls clutched in his capacious hand, stepped up
to him on the other side. "Don't be a fool, Captain. Do you want
to provoke trouble between the crews? His men outnumber us by
nearly two to one. What's a girl more or less? In Heaven's name,
let her go. He's paid handsomely for her, and dealt fairly with us."
"Dealt fairly?" roared the infuriated Captain. "You...." In all
his foul vocabulary he could find no epithet to describe his
lieutenant. He caught him a blow that almost sent him sprawling.
The pearls were scattered in the sand.
Cahusac dived after them, his fellows with him. Vengeance must
wait. For some moments they groped there on hands and knees,
oblivious of all else. And yet in those moments vital things were
happening.
Levasseur, his hand on his sword, his face a white mask of rage,
was confronting Captain Blood to hinder his departure.
"You do not take her while I live!" he cried.
"Then I'll take her when you're dead," said Captain Blood, and his
own blade flashed in the sunlight. "The articles provide that any
man of whatever rank concealing any part of a prize, be it of the
value of no more than a peso, shall be hanged at the yardarm. It's
what I intended for you in the end. But since ye prefer it this
way, ye muckrake, faith, I'll be humouring you."
He waved away the men who would have interfered, and the blades
rang together.
M. d'Ogeron looked on, a man bemused, unable to surmise what the
issue either way could mean for him. Meanwhile, two of Blood's men
who had taken the place of the Frenchman's negro guards, had removed
the crown of whipcord from his brow. As for mademoiselle, she had
risen, and was leaning forward, a hand pressed tightly to her
heaving breast, her face deathly pale, a wild terror in her eyes.
It was soon over. The brute strength, upon which Levasseur so
confidently counted, could avail nothing against the Irishman's
practised skill. When, with both lungs transfixed, he lay prone
on the white sand, coughing out his rascally life, Captain Blood
looked calmly at Cahusac across the body.
"I think that cancels the articles between us," he said. With
soulless, cynical eyes Cahusac considered the twitching body of
his recent leader. Had Levasseur been a man of different temper,
the affair might have ended in a very different manner. But,
then, it is certain that Captain Blood would have adopted in
dealing with him different tactics. As it was, Levasseur commanded
neither love nor loyalty. The men who followed him were the very
dregs of that vile trade, and cupidity was their only inspiration.
Upon that cupidity Captain Blood had deftly played, until he had
brought them to find Levasseur guilty of the one offence they
deemed unpardonable, the crime of appropriating to himself something
which might be converted into gold and shared amongst them all.
Thus now the threatening mob of buccaneers that came hastening to
the theatre of that swift tragi-comedy were appeased by a dozen
words of Cahusac's.
Whilst still they hesitated, Blood added something to quicken their
decision.
"If you will come to our anchorage, you shall receive at once your
share of the booty of the Santiago, that you may dispose of it as you
please."
They crossed the island, the two prisoners accompanying them, and
later that day, the division made, they would have parted company
but that Cahusac, at the instances of the men who had elected him
Levasseur's successor, offered Captain Blood anew the services of
that French contingent.
"If you will sail with me again," the Captain answered him, "you may
do so on the condition that you make your peace with the Dutch, and
restore the brig and her cargo."
The condition was accepted, and Captain Blood went off to find his
guests, the children of the Governor of Tortuga.
Mademoiselle d'Ogeron and her brother - the latter now relieved of
his bonds - sat in the great cabin of the Arabella, whither they
had been conducted.
Wine and food had been placed upon the table by Benjamin, Captain
Blood's negro steward and cook, who had intimated to them that it
was for their entertainment. But it had remained untouched.
Brother and sister sat there in agonized bewilderment, conceiving
that their escape was but from frying-pan to fire. At length,
overwrought by the suspense, mademoiselle flung herself upon her
knees before her brother to implore his pardon for all the evil
brought upon them by her wicked folly.
M. d'Ogeron was not in a forgiving mood.
"I am glad that at least you realize what you have done. And now
this other filibuster has bought you, and you belong to him. You
realize that, too, I hope."
He might have said more, but he checked upon perceiving that the
door was opening. Captain Blood, coming from settling matters with
the followers of Levasseur, stood on the threshold. M. d'Ogeron
had not troubled to restrain his high-pitched voice, and the Captain
had overheard the Frenchman's last two sentences. Therefore he
perfectly understood why mademoiselle should bound up at sight of
him, and shrink back in fear.
"Mademoiselle," said he in his vile but fluent French, "I beg you
to dismiss your fears. Aboard this ship you shall be treated with
all honour. So soon as we are in case to put to sea again, we
steer a course for Tortuga to take you home to your father. And
pray do not consider that I have bought you, as your brother has
just said. All that I have done has been to provide the ransom
necessary to bribe a gang of scoundrels to depart from obedience
to the arch-scoundrel who commanded them, and so deliver you from
all peril. Count it, if you please, a friendly loan to be repaid
entirely at your convenience."
Mademoiselle stared at him in unbelief. M. d'Ogeron rose to his feet.
"Monsieur, is it possible that you are serious?"
"I am. It may not happen often nowadays. I may be a pirate. But
my ways are not the ways of Levasseur, who should have stayed in
Europe, and practised purse-cutting. I have a sort of honour
- shall we say, some rags of honour? - remaining me from better
days." Then on a brisker note he added: "We dine in an hour, and
I trust that you will honour my table with your company. Meanwhile,
Benjamin will see, monsieur, that you are more suitably provided
in the matter of wardrobe."
He bowed to them, and turned to depart again, but mademoiselle
detained him.
"Monsieur!" she cried sharply.
He checked and turned, whilst slowly she approached him, regarding
him between dread and wonder.
"Oh, you are noble!"
"I shouldn't put it as high as that myself," said he.
"You are, you are! And it is but right that you should know all."
"Madelon!" her brother cried out, to restrain her.
But she would not be restrained. Her surcharged heart must overflow
in confidence.
"Monsieur, for what befell I am greatly at fault. This man - this
Levasseur...."
He stared, incredulous in his turn. "My God! Is it possible?
That animal!"
Abruptly she fell on her knees, caught his hand and kissed it
before he could wrench it from her.
"What do you do?" he cried.
"An amende. In my mind I dishonoured you by deeming you his like,
by conceiving your fight with Levasseur a combat between jackals.
On my knees, monsieur, I implore you to forgive me."
Captain Blood looked down upon her, and a smile broke on his lips,
irradiating the blue eyes that looked so oddly light in that tawny
face.
"Why, child," said he, "I might find it hard to forgive you the
stupidity of having thought otherwise."
As he handed her to her feet again, he assured himself that he had
behaved rather well in the affair. Then he sighed. That dubious
fame of his that had spread so quickly across the Caribbean would
by now have reached the ears of Arabella Bishop. That she would
despise him, he could not doubt, deeming him no better than all
the other scoundrels who drove this villainous buccaneering trade.
Therefore he hoped that some echo of this deed might reach her also,
and be set by her against some of that contempt. For the whole
truth, which he withheld from Mademoiselle d'Ogeron, was that in
venturing his life to save her, he had been driven by the thought
that the deed must be pleasing in the eyes of Miss Bishop could
she but witness it.
CHAPTER XVI
THE TRAP
That affair of Mademoiselle d'Ogeron bore as its natural fruit an
improvement in the already cordial relations between Captain Blood
and the Governor of Tortuga. At the fine stone house, with its
green-jalousied windows, which M. d'Ogeron had built himself in a
spacious and luxuriant garden to the east of Cayona, the Captain
became a very welcome guest. M. d'Ogeron was in the Captain's debt
for more than the twenty thousand pieces of eight which he had
provided for mademoiselle's ransom; and shrewd, hard bargain-driver
though he might be, the Frenchman could be generous and understood
the sentiment of gratitude. This he now proved in every possible
way, and under his powerful protection the credit of Captain Blood
among the buccaneers very rapidly reached its zenith.
So when it came to fitting out his fleet for that enterprise against
Maracaybo, which had originally been Levasseur's project, he did not
want for either ships or men to follow him. He recruited five
hundred adventurers in all, and he might have had as many thousands
if he could have offered them accommodation. Similarly without
difficulty he might have increased his fleet to twice its strength of
ships but that he preferred to keep it what it was. The three
vessels to which he confined it were the Arabella, the La Foudre,
which Cahusac now commanded with a contingent of some sixscore
Frenchmen, and the Santiago, which had been refitted and rechristened
the Elizabeth, after that Queen of England whose seamen had humbled
Spain as Captain Blood now hoped to humble it again. Hagthorpe, in
virtue of his service in the navy, was appointed by Blood to command
her, and the appointment was confirmed by the men.
It was some months after the rescue of Mademoiselle d'Ogeron - in
August of that year 1687 - that this little fleet, after some minor
adventures which I pass over in silence, sailed into the great lake
of Maracaybo and effected its raid upon that opulent city of the
Main.
The affair did not proceed exactly as was hoped, and Blood's force
came to find itself in a precarious position. This is best explained
in the words employed by Cahusac - which Pitt has carefully recorded
- in the course of an altercation that broke out on the steps of the
Church of Nuestra Senora del Carmen, which Captain Blood had
impiously appropriated for the purpose of a corps-de-garde. I have
said already that he was a papist only when it suited him.
The dispute was being conducted by Hagthorpe, Wolverstone, and Pitt
on the one side, and Cahusac, out of whose uneasiness it all arose,
on the other. Behind them in the sun-scorched, dusty square,
sparsely fringed by palms, whose fronds drooped listlessly in the
quivering heat, surged a couple of hundred wild fellows belonging to
both parties, their own excitement momentarily quelled so that they
might listen to what passed among their leaders.
Cahusac appeared to be having it all his own way, and he raised
his harsh, querulous voice so that all might hear his truculent
denunciation. He spoke, Pitt tells us, a dreadful kind of English,
which the shipmaster, however, makes little attempt to reproduce.
His dress was as discordant as his speech. It was of a kind to
advertise his trade, and ludicrously in contrast with the sober
garb of Hagthorpe and the almost foppish daintiness of Jeremy Pitt.
His soiled and blood-stained shirt of blue cotton was open in front,
to cool his hairy breast, and the girdle about the waist of his
leather breeches carried an arsenal of pistols and a knife, whilst
a cutlass hung from a leather baldrick loosely slung about his body;
above his countenance, broad and flat as a Mongolian's, a red scarf
was swathed, turban-wise, about his head.)
"Is it that I have not warned you from the beginning that all was
too easy?" he demanded between plaintiveness and fury. "I am no fool,
my friends. I have eyes, me. And I see. I see an abandoned fort
at the entrance of the lake, and nobody there to fire a gun at us
when we came in. Then I suspect the trap. Who would not that had
eyes and brain? Bah! we come on. What do we find? A city,
abandoned like the fort; a city out of which the people have taken
all things of value. Again I warn Captain Blood. It is a trap,
I say. We are to come on; always to come on, without opposition,
until we find that it is too late to go to sea again, that we cannot
go back at all. But no one will listen to me. You all know so much
more. Name of God! Captain Blood, he will go on, and we go on. We
go to Gibraltar. True that at last, after long time, we catch the
Deputy-Governor; true, we make him pay big ransom for Gibraltar;
true between that ransom and the loot we return here with some two
thousand pieces of eight. But what is it, in reality, will you tell
me? Or shall I tell you? It is a piece of cheese - a piece of
cheese in a mousetrap, and we are the little mice. Goddam! And the
cats - oh, the cats they wait for us! The cats are those four
Spanish ships of war that have come meantime. And they wait for us
outside the bottle-neck of this lagoon. Mort de Dieu! That is what
comes of the damned obstinacy of your fine Captain Blood."
Wolverstone laughed. Cahusac exploded in fury.
"Ah, sangdieu! Tu ris, animal? You laugh! Tell me this: How do
we get out again unless we accept the terms of Monsieur the Admiral
of Spain?"
From the buccaneers at the foot of the steps came an angry rumble
of approval. The single eye of the gigantic Wolverstone rolled
terribly, and he clenched his great fists as if to strike the
Frenchman, who was exposing them to mutiny. But Cahusac was not
daunted. The mood of the men enheartened him.
"You think, perhaps, this your Captain Blood is the good God. That
he can make miracles, eh? He is ridiculous, you know, this Captain
Blood; with his grand air and his...."
He checked. Out of the church at that moment, grand air and all,
sauntered Peter Blood. With him came a tough, long-legged French
sea-wolf named Yberville, who, though still young, had already won
fame as a privateer commander before the loss of his own ship had
driven him to take service under Blood. The Captain advanced
towards that disputing group, leaning lightly upon his long ebony
cane, his face shaded by a broad-plumed hat. There was in his
appearance nothing of the buccaneer. He had much more the air of
a lounger in the Mall or the Alameda - the latter rather, since
his elegant suit of violet taffetas with gold-embroidered
button-holes was in the Spanish fashion. But the long, stout,
serviceable rapier, thrust up behind by the left hand resting
lightly on the pummel, corrected the impression. That and those
steely eyes of his announced the adventurer.
"You find me ridiculous, eh, Cahusac?" said he, as he came to a halt
before the Breton, whose anger seemed already to have gone out of
him. "What, then, must I find you?" He spoke quietly, almost
wearily. "You will be telling them that we have delayed, and that
it is the delay that has brought about our danger. But whose is the
fault of that delay? We have been a month in doing what should have
been done, and what but for your blundering would have been done,
inside of a week."
"Ah ca! Nom de Dieu! Was it my fault that...."
"Was it any one else's fault that you ran your ship La Foudre
aground on the shoal in the middle of the lake? You would not be
piloted. You knew your way. You took no soundings even. The
result was that we lost three precious days in getting canoes to
bring off your men and your gear. Those three days gave the folk
at Gibraltar not only time to hear of our coming, but time in which
to get away. After that, and because of it, we had to follow the
Governor to his infernal island fortress, and a fortnight and best
part of a hundred lives were lost in reducing it. That's how we
come to have delayed until this Spanish fleet is fetched round from
La Guayra by a guarda-costa; and if ye hadn't lost La Foudre, and
so reduced our fleet from three ships to two, we should even now be
able to fight our way through with a reasonable hope of succeeding.
Yet you think it is for you to come hectoring here, upbraiding us
for a situation that is just the result of your own ineptitude."
He spoke with a restraint which I trust you will agree was admirable
when I tell you that the Spanish fleet guarding the bottle-neck exit
of the great Lake of Maracaybo, and awaiting there the coming forth
of Captain Blood with a calm confidence based upon its overwhelming
strength, was commanded by his implacable enemy, Don Miguel de
Espinosa y Valdez, the Admiral of Spain. In addition to his duty to
his country, the Admiral had, as you know, a further personal
incentive arising out of that business aboard the Encarnacion a year
ago, and the death of his brother Don Diego; and with him sailed his
nephew Esteban, whose vindictive zeal exceeded the Admiral's own.
Yet, knowing all this, Captain Blood could preserve his calm in
reproving the cowardly frenzy of one for whom the situation had not
half the peril with which it was fraught for himself. He turned
from Cahusac to address the mob of buccaneers, who had surged nearer
to hear him, for he had not troubled to raise his voice. "I hope
that will correct some of the misapprehension that appears to have
been disturbing you," said he.
"There's no good can come of talking of what's past and done," cried
Cahusac, more sullen now than truculent. Whereupon Wolverstone
laughed, a laugh that was like the neighing of a horse. "The
question is: what are we to do now?"
"Sure, now, there's no question at all," said Captain Blood.
"Indeed, but there is," Cahusac insisted. "Don Miguel, the Spanish
Admiral, have offer us safe passage to sea if we will depart at once,
do no damage to the town, release our prisoners, and surrender all
that we took at Gibraltar."
Captain Blood smiled quietly, knowing precisely how much Don Miguel's
word was worth. It was Yberville who replied, in manifest scorn of
his compatriot:
"Which argues that, even at this disadvantage as he has us, the
Spanish Admiral is still afraid of us."
"That can be only because he not know our real weakness," was the
fierce retort. "And, anyway, we must accept these terms. We have
no choice. That is my opinion."
"Well, it's not mine, now," said Captain Blood. "So, I've refused
them."
"Refuse'!" Cahusac's broad face grew purple. A muttering from the
men behind enheartened him. "You have refuse'? You have refuse'
already - and without consulting me?"
"Your disagreement could have altered nothing. You'd have been
outvoted, for Hagthorpe here was entirely of my own mind. Still,"
he went on, "if you and your own French followers wish to avail
yourselves of the Spaniard's terms, we shall not hinder you. Send
one of your prisoners to announce it to the Admiral. Don Miguel
will welcome your decision, you may be sure."
Cahusac glowered at him in silence for a moment. Then, having
controlled himself, he asked in a concentrated voice:
"Precisely what answer have you make to the Admiral?"
A smile irradiated the face and eyes of Captain Blood. "I have
answered him that unless within four-and-twenty hours we have his
parole to stand out to sea, ceasing to dispute our passage or hinder
our departure, and a ransom of fifty thousand pieces of eight for
Maracaybo, we shall reduce this beautiful city to ashes, and
thereafter go out and destroy his fleet."
The impudence of it left Cahusac speechless, But among the English
buccaneers in the square there were many who savoured the audacious
humour of the trapped dictating terms to the trappers. Laughter
broke from them. It spread into a roar of acclamation; for bluff
is a weapon dear to every adventurer. Presently, when they
understood it, even Cahusac's French followers were carried off
their feet by that wave of jocular enthusiasm, until in his truculent
obstinacy Cahusac remained the only dissentient. He withdrew in
mortification. Nor was he to be mollified until the following day
brought him his revenge. This came in the shape of a messenger from
Don Miguel with a letter in which the Spanish Admiral solemnly vowed
to God that, since the pirates had refused his magnanimous offer to
permit them to surrender with the honours of war, he would now await
them at the mouth of the lake there to destroy them on their coming
forth. He added that should they delay their departure, he would
so soon as he was reenforced by a fifth ship, the Santo Nino, on its
way to join him from La Guayra, himself come inside to seek them at
Maracaybo.
This time Captain Blood was put out of temper.
"Trouble me no more," he snapped at Cahusac, who came growling to
him again. "Send word to Don Miguel that you have seceded from me.
He'll give you safe conduct, devil a doubt. Then take one of the
sloops, order your men aboard and put to sea, and the devil go
with you."
Cahusac would certainly have adopted that course if only his men had
been unanimous in the matter. They, however, were torn between
greed and apprehension. If they went they must abandon their share
of the plunder, which was considerable, as well as the slaves and
other prisoners they had taken. If they did this, and Captain
Blood should afterwards contrive to get away unscathed - and from
their knowledge of his resourcefulness, the thing, however unlikely,
need not be impossible - he must profit by that which they now
relinquished. This was a contingency too bitter for contemplation.
And so, in the end, despite all that Cahusac could say, the surrender
was not to Don Miguel, but to Peter Blood. They had come into the
venture with him, they asserted, and they would go out of it with
him or not at all. That was the message he received from them that
same evening by the sullen mouth of Cahusac himself.
He welcomed it, and invited the Breton to sit down and join the
council which was even then deliberating upon the means to be
employed. This council occupied the spacious patio of the
Governor's house - which Captain Blood had appropriated to his
own uses - a cloistered stone quadrangle in the middle of which
a fountain played coolly under a trellis of vine. Orange-trees
grew on two sides of it, and the still, evening air was heavy
with the scent of them. It was one of those pleasant
exterior-interiors which Moorish architects had introduced to
Spain and the Spaniards had carried with them to the New World.
Here that council of war, composed of six men in all, deliberated
until late that night upon the plan of action which Captain Blood
put forward.
The great freshwater lake of Maracaybo, nourished by a score of
rivers from the snow-capped ranges that surround it on two sides,
is some hundred and twenty miles in length and almost the same
distance across at its widest. It is - as has been indicated -
in the shape of a great bottle having its neck towards the sea
at Maracaybo.
Beyond this neck it widens again, and then the two long, narrow
strips of land known as the islands of Vigilias and Palomas block
the channel, standing lengthwise across it. The only passage out
to sea for vessels of any draught lies in the narrow strait between
these islands. Palomas, which is some ten miles in length, is
unapproachable for half a mile on either side by any but the
shallowest craft save at its eastern end, where, completely
commanding the narrow passage out to sea, stands the massive fort
which the buccaneers had found deserted upon their coming. In the
broader water between this passage and the bar, the four Spanish
ships were at anchor in mid-channel. The Admiral's Encarnacion,
which we already know, was a mighty galleon of forty-eight great
guns and eight small. Next in importance was the Salvador with
thirty-six guns; the other two, the Infanta and the San Felipe,
though smaller vessels, were still formidable enough with their
twenty guns and a hundred and fifty men apiece.
Such was the fleet of which the gauntlet was to be run by Captain
Blood with his own Arabella of forty guns, the Elizabeth of
twenty-six, and two sloops captured at Gibraltar, which they had
indifferently armed with four culverins each. In men they had a
bare four hundred survivors of the five hundred-odd that had left
Tortuga, to oppose to fully a thousand Spaniards manning the
galleons.
The plan of action submitted by Captain Blood to that council was
a desperate one, as Cahusac uncompromisingly pronounced it.
"Why, so it is," said the Captain. "But I've done things more
desperate." Complacently he pulled at a pipe that was loaded with
that fragrant Sacerdotes tobacco for which Gibraltar was famous,
and of which they had brought away some hogsheads. "And what is
more, they've succeeded. Audaces fortuna juvat. Bedad, they knew
their world, the old Romans."
He breathed into his companions and even into Cahusac some of his
own spirit of confidence, and in confidence all went busily to
work. For three days from sunrise to sunset, the buccaneers
laboured and sweated to complete the preparations for the action
that was to procure them their deliverance. Time pressed. They
must strike before Don Miguel de Espinosa received the reenforcement
of that fifth galleon, the Santo Nino, which was coming to join him
from La Guayra.
Their principal operations were on the larger of the two sloops
captured at Gibraltar; to which vessel was assigned the leading part
in Captain Blood's scheme. They began by tearing down all bulkheads,
until they had reduced her to the merest shell, and in her sides
they broke open so many ports that her gunwale was converted into
the semblance of a grating. Next they increased by a half-dozen the
scuttles in her deck, whilst into her hull they packed all the tar
and pitch and brimstone that they could find in the town, to which
they added six barrels of gunpowder, placed on end like guns at the
open ports on her larboard side. On the evening of the fourth day,
everything being now in readiness, all were got aboard, and the
empty, pleasant city of Maracaybo was at last abandoned. But they
did not weigh anchor until some two hours after midnight. Then,
at last, on the first of the ebb, they drifted silently down towards
the bar with all canvas furled save only their spiltsails, which,
so as to give them steering way, were spread to the faint breeze
that stirred through the purple darkness of the tropical night.
The order of their going was as follows: Ahead went the improvised
fire-ship in charge of Wolverstone, with a crew of six volunteers,
each of whom was to have a hundred pieces of eight over and above
his share of plunder as a special reward. Next came the Arabella.
She was followed at a distance by the Elizabeth, commanded by
Hagthorpe, with whom was the now shipless Cahusac and the bulk of
his French followers. The rear was brought up by the second sloop
and some eight canoes, aboard of which had been shipped the
prisoners, the slaves, and most of the captured merchandise. The
prisoners were all pinioned, and guarded by four buccaneers with
musketoons who manned these boats in addition to the two fellows
who were to sail them. Their place was to be in the rear and they
were to take no part whatever in the coming fight.
As the first glimmerings of opalescent dawn dissolved the darkness,
the straining eyes of the buccaneers were able to make out the tall
rigging of the Spanish vessels, riding at anchor less than a quarter
of a mile ahead. Entirely without suspicion as the Spaniards were,
and rendered confident by their own overwhelming strength, it is
unlikely that they used a vigilance keener than their careless habit.
Certain it is that they did not sight Blood's fleet in that dim light
until some time after Blood's fleet had sighted them. By the time
that they had actively roused themselves, Wolverstone's sloop was
almost upon them, speeding under canvas which had been crowded to
her yards the moment the galleons had loomed into view.
Straight for the Admiral's great ship, the Encarnacion, did
Wolverstone head the sloop; then, lashing down the helm, he kindled
from a match that hung ready lighted beside him a great torch of
thickly plaited straw that had been steeped in bitumen. First it
glowed, then as he swung it round his head, it burst into flame,
just as the slight vessel went crashing and bumping and scraping
against the side of the flagship, whilst rigging became tangled
with rigging, to the straining of yards and snapping of spars
overhead. His six men stood at their posts on the larboard side,
stark naked, each armed with a grapnel, four of them on the gunwale,
two of them aloft. At the moment of impact these grapnels were
slung to bind the Spaniard to them, those aloft being intended to
complete and preserve the entanglement of the rigging.
Aboard the rudely awakened galleon all was confused hurrying,
scurrying, trumpeting, and shouting. At first there had been a
desperately hurried attempt to get up the anchor; but this was
abandoned as being already too late; and conceiving themselves on
the point of being boarded, the Spaniards stood to arms to ward
off the onslaught. Its slowness in coming intrigued them, being
so different from the usual tactics of the buccaneers. Further
intrigued were they by the sight of the gigantic Wolverstone
speeding naked along his deck with a great flaming torch held high.
Not until he had completed his work did they begin to suspect the
truth - that he was lighting slow-matches - and then one of their
officers rendered reckless by panic ordered a boarding-party on to
the shop.
The order came too late. Wolverstone had seen his six fellows drop
overboard after the grapnels were fixed, and then had sped, himself,
to the starboard gunwale. Thence he flung his flaming torch down
the nearest gaping scuttle into the hold, and thereupon dived
overboard in his turn, to be picked up presently by the longboat
from the Arabella. But before that happened the sloop was a thing
of fire, from which explosions were hurling blazing combustibles
aboard the Encarnacion, and long tongues of flame were licking
out to consume the galleon, beating back those daring Spaniards
who, too late, strove desperately to cut her adrift.
And whilst the most formidable vessel of the Spanish fleet was
thus being put out of action at the outset, Blood had sailed in
to open fire upon the Salvador. First athwart her hawse he had
loosed a broadside that had swept her decks with terrific effect,
then going on and about, he had put a second broadside into her
hull at short range. Leaving her thus half-crippled, temporarily,
at least, and keeping to his course, he had bewildered the crew
of the Infanta by a couple of shots from the chasers on his
beak-head, then crashed alongside to grapple and board her, whilst
Hagthorpe was doing the like by the San Felipe.
And in all this time not a single shot had the Spaniards contrived
to fire, so completely had they been taken by surprise, and so
swift and paralyzing had been Blood's stroke.
Boarded now and faced by the cold steel of the buccaneers, neither
the San Felipe nor the Infanta offered much resistance. The sight
of their admiral in flames, and the Salvador drifting crippled from
the action, had so utterly disheartened them that they accounted
themselves vanquished, and laid down their arms.
If by a resolute stand the Salvador had encouraged the other two
undamaged vessels to resistance, the Spaniards might well have
retrieved the fortunes of the day. But it happened that the
Salvador was handicapped in true Spanish fashion by being the
treasure-ship of the fleet, with plate on board to the value of
some fifty thousand pieces. Intent above all upon saving this
from falling into the hands of the pirates, Don Miguel, who, with
a remnant of his crew, had meanwhile transferred himself aboard
her, headed her down towards Palomas and the fort that guarded the
passage. This fort the Admiral, in those days of waiting, had
taken the precaution secretly to garrison and rearm. For the
purpose he had stripped the fort of Cojero, farther out on the
gulf, of its entire armament, which included some cannon-royal of
more than ordinary range and power.
With no suspicion of this, Captain Blood gave chase, accompanied
by the Infanta, which was manned now by a prize-crew under the
command of Yberville. The stern chasers of the Salvador
desultorily returned the punishing fire of the pursuers; but
such was the damage she, herself, sustained, that presently,
coming under the guns of the fort, she began to sink, and finally
settled down in the shallows with part of her hull above water.
Thence, some in boats and some by swimming, the Admiral got his
crew ashore on Palomas as best he could.
And then, just as Captain Blood accounted the victory won, and that
his way out of that trap to the open sea beyond lay clear, the fort
suddenly revealed its formidable and utterly unsuspected strength.
With a roar the cannons-royal proclaimed themselves, and the
Arabella staggered under a blow that smashed her bulwarks at the
waist and scattered death and confusion among the seamen gathered
there.
Had not Pitt, her master, himself seized the whipstaff and put the
helm hard over to swing her sharply off to starboard, she must have
suffered still worse from the second volley that followed fast upon
the first.
Meanwhile it had fared even worse with the frailer Infanta.
Although hit by one shot only, this had crushed her larboard timbers
on the waterline, starting a leak that must presently have filled
her, but for the prompt action of the experienced Yberville in
ordering her larboard guns to be flung overboard. Thus lightened,
and listing now to starboard, he fetched her about, and went
staggering after the retreating Arabella, followed by the fire of
the fort, which did them, however, little further damage.
Out of range, at last, they lay to, joined by the Elizabeth and the
San Felipe, to consider their position,
CHAPTER XVII
THE DUPES
It was a crestfallen Captain Blood who presided aver that hastily
summoned council held on the poop-deck of the Arabella in the
brilliant morning sunshine. It was, he declared afterwards, one
of the bitterest moments in his career. He was compelled to digest
the fact that having conducted the engagement with a skill of which
he might justly be proud, having destroyed a force so superior in
ships and guns and men that Don Miguel de Espinosa had justifiably
deemed it overwhelming, his victory was rendered barren by three
lucky shots from an unsuspected battery by which they had been
surprised. And barren must their victory remain until they could
reduce the fort that still remained to defend the passage.
At first Captain Blood was for putting his ships in order and making
the attempt there and then. But the others dissuaded him from
betraying an impetuosity usually foreign to him, and born entirely
of chagrin and mortification, emotions which will render unreasonable
the most reasonable of men. With returning calm, he surveyed the
situation. The Arabella was no longer in case to put to sea; the
Infanta was merely kept afloat by artifice, and the San Felipe was
almost as sorely damaged by the fire she had sustained from the
buccaneers before surrendering.
Clearly, then, he was compelled to admit in the end that nothing
remained but to return to Maracaybo, there to refit the ships before
attempting to force the passage.
And so, back to Maracaybo came those defeated victors of that short,
terrible fight. And if anything had been wanting further to
exasperate their leader, he had it in the pessimism of which Cahusac
did not economize expressions. Transported at first to heights of
dizzy satisfaction by the swift and easy victory of their inferior
force that morning, the Frenchman was now plunged back and more
deeply than ever into the abyss of hopelessness. And his mood
infected at least the main body of his own followers.
"It is the end," he told Captain Blood. "This time we are
checkmated."
"I'll take the liberty of reminding you that you said the same
before," Captain Blood answered him as patiently as he could.
"Yet you've seen what you've seen, and you'll not deny that in ships
and guns we are returning stronger than we went. Look at our
present fleet, man."
"I am looking at it," said Cahusac.
"Pish! Ye're a white-livered cur when all is said."
"You call me a coward?"
"I'll take that liberty."
The Breton glared at him, breathing hard. But he had no mind to
ask satisfaction for the insult. He knew too well the kind of
satisfaction that Captain Blood was likely to afford him. He
remembered the fate of Levasseur. So he confined himself to words.
"It is too much! You go too far!" he complained bitterly.
"Look you, Cahusac: it's sick and tired I am of your perpetual
whining and complaining when things are not as smooth as a convent
dining-table. If ye wanted things smooth and easy, ye shouldn't
have taken to the sea, and ye should never ha' sailed with me, for
with me things are never smooth and easy. And that, I think, is
all I have to say to you this morning."
Cahusac flung away cursing, and went to take the feeling of his men.
Captain Blood went off to give his surgeon's skill to the wounded,
among whom he remained engaged until late afternoon. Then, at last,
he went ashore, his mind made up, and returned to the house of the
Governor, to indite a truculent but very scholarly letter in purest
Castilian to Don Miguel.
"I have shown your excellency this morning of what I am capable,"
he wrote. "Although outnumbered by more than two to one in men,
in ships, and in guns, I have sunk or captured the vessels of the
great fleet with which you were to come to Maracaybo to destroy us.
So that you are no longer in case to carry out your boast, even
when your reenforcements on the Santo Nino, reach you from La Guayra.
From what has occurred, you may judge of what must occur. I should
not trouble your excellency with this letter but that I am a humane
man, abhorring bloodshed. Therefore before proceeding to deal with
your fort, which you may deem invincible, as I have dealt already
with your fleet, which you deemed invincible, I make you, purely out
of humanitarian considerations, this last offer of terms. I will
spare this city of Maracaybo and forthwith evacuate it, leaving
behind me the forty prisoners I have taken, in consideration of your
paying me the sum of fifty thousand pieces of eight and one hundred
head of cattle as a ransom, thereafter granting me unmolested passage
of the bar. My prisoners, most of whom are persons of consideration,
I will retain as hostages until after my departure, sending them
back in the canoes which we shall take with us for that purpose. If
your excellency should be so ill-advised as to refuse these terms,
and thereby impose upon me the necessity of reducing your fort at
the cost of some lives, I warn you that you may expect no quarter
from us, and that I shall begin by leaving a heap of ashes where this
pleasant city of Maracaybo now stands."
The letter written, he bade them bring him from among the prisoners
the Deputy-Governor of Maracaybo, who had been taken at Gibraltar.
Disclosing its contents to him, he despatched him with it to Don
Miguel.
His choice of a messenger was shrewd. The Deputy-Governor was of
all men the most anxious for the deliverance of his city, the one
man who on his own account would plead most fervently for its
preservation at all costs from the fate with which Captain Blood
was threatening it. And as he reckoned so it befell. The
Deputy-Governor added his own passionate pleading to the proposals
of the letter.
But Don Miguel was of stouter heart. True, his fleet had been partly
destroyed and partly captured. But then, he argued, he had been
taken utterly by surprise. That should not happen again. There
should be no surprising the fort. Let Captain Blood do his worst at
Maracaybo, there should be a bitter reckoning for him when eventually
he decided - as, sooner or later, decide he must - to come forth.
The Deputy-Governor was flung into panic. He lost his temper, and
said some hard things to the Admiral. But they were not as hard as
the thing the Admiral said to him in answer.
"Had you been as loyal to your King in hindering the entrance of
these cursed pirates as I shall be in hindering their going forth
again, we should not now find ourselves in our present straits.
So weary me no more with your coward counsels. I make no terms
with Captain Blood. I know my duty to my King, and I intend to
perform it. I also know my duty to myself. I have a private score
with this rascal, and I intend to settle it. Take you that message
back."
So back to Maracaybo, back to his own handsome house in which
Captain Blood had established his quarters, came the Deputy-Governor
with the Admiral's answer. And because he had been shamed into a
show of spirit by the Admiral's own stout courage in adversity, he
delivered it as truculently as the Admiral could have desired. "And
is it like that?" said Captain Blood with a quiet smile, though the
heart of him sank at this failure of his bluster. "Well, well, it's
a pity now that the Admiral's so headstrong. It was that way he
lost his fleet, which was his own to lose. This pleasant city of
Maracaybo isn't. So no doubt he'll lose it with fewer misgivings.
I am sorry. Waste, like bloodshed, is a thing abhorrent to me. But
there ye are! I'll have the faggots to the place in the morning,
and maybe when he sees the blaze to-morrow night he'll begin to
believe that Peter Blood is a man of his word. Ye may go, Don
Francisco."
The Deputy-Governor went out with dragging feet, followed by
guards, his momentary truculence utterly spent.
But no sooner had he departed than up leapt Cahusac, who had been
of the council assembled to receive the Admiral's answer. His face
was white and his hands shook as he held them out in protest.
"Death of my life, what have you to say now?" he cried, his voice
husky. And without waiting to hear what it might be, he raved on:
"I knew you not frighten the Admiral so easy. He hold us entrap',
and he knows it; yet you dream that he will yield himself to your
impudent message. Your fool letter it have seal' the doom of us
all."
"Have ye done?" quoth Blood quietly, as the Frenchman paused
for breath.
"No, I have not."
"Then spare me the rest. It'll be of the same quality, devil a
doubt, and it doesn't help us to solve the riddle that's before us."
"But what are you going to do? Is it that you will tell me?" It
was not a question, it was a demand.
"How the devil do I know? I was hoping you'd have some ideas
yourself. But since Ye're so desperately concerned to save your
skin, you and those that think like you are welcome to leave us.
I've no doubt at all the Spanish Admiral will welcome the abatement
of our numbers even at this late date. Ye shall have the sloop as
a parting gift from us, and ye can join Don Miguel in the fort for
all I care, or for all the good ye're likely to be to us in this
present pass."
"It is to my men to decide," Cahusac retorted, swallowing his fury,
and on that stalked out to talk to them, leaving the others to
deliberate in peace.
Next morning early he sought Captain Blood again. He found him
alone in the patio, pacing to and fro, his head sunk on his breast.
Cahusac mistook consideration for dejection. Each of us carries
in himself a standard by which to measure his neighbour.
"We have take' you at your word, Captain," he announced, between
sullenness and defiance. Captain Blood paused, shoulders hunched,
hands behind his back, and mildly regarded the buccaneer in silence.
Cahusac explained himself. "Last night I send one of my men to the
Spanish Admiral with a letter. I make him offer to capitulate if
he will accord us passage with the honours of war. This morning I
receive his answer. He accord us this on the understanding that we
carry nothing away with us. My men they are embarking them on the
sloop. We sail at once."
"Bon voyage," said Captain Blood, and with a nod he turned on his
heel again to resume his interrupted mediation.
"Is that all that you have to say to me?" cried Cahusac.
"There are other things," said Blood over his shoulder. "But I
know ye wouldn't like them."
"Ha! Then it's adieu, my Captain." Venomously he added: "It is
my belief that we shall not meet again."
"Your belief is my hope," said Captain Blood.
Cahusac flung away, obscenely vituperative. Before noon he was
under way with his followers, some sixty dejected men who had
allowed themselves to be persuaded by him into that empty-handed
departure - in spite even of all that Yberville could do to prevent
it. The Admiral kept faith with him, and allowed him free passage
out to sea, which, from his knowledge of Spaniards, was more than
Captain Blood had expected.
Meanwhile, no sooner had the deserters weighed anchor than Captain
Blood received word that the Deputy-Governor begged to be allowed
to see him again. Admitted, Don Francisco at once displayed the
fact that a night's reflection had quickened his apprehensions for
the city of Maracaybo and his condemnation of the Admiral's
intransigence.
Captain Blood received him pleasantly.
"Good-morning to you, Don Francisco. I have postponed the bonfire
until nightfall. It will make a better show in the dark."
Don Francisco, a slight, nervous, elderly man of high lineage and
low vitality, came straight to business.
"I am here to tell you, Don Pedro, that if you will hold your hand
for three days, I will undertake to raise the ransom you demand,
which Don Miguel de Espinosa refuses."
Captain Blood confronted him, a frown contracting the dark brows
above his light eyes:
"And where will you be raising it?" quoth he, faintly betraying his
surprise.
Don Francisco shook his head. "That must remain my affair," he
answered. "I know where it is to be found, and my compatriots must
contribute. Give me leave for three days on parole, and I will see
you fully satisfied. Meanwhile my son remains in your hands as a
hostage for my return." And upon that he fell to pleading. But in
this he was crisply interrupted.
"By the Saints! Ye're a bold man, Don Francisco, to come to me
with such a tale - to tell me that ye know where the ransom's to be
raised, and yet to refuse to say. D'ye think now that with a match
between your fingers ye'd grow more communicative?"
If Don Francisco grew a shade paler, yet again he shook his head.
"That was the way of Morgan and L'Ollonais and other pirates. But
it is not the way of Captain Blood. If I had doubted that I should
not have disclosed so much."
The Captain laughed. "You old rogue," said he. "Ye play upon my
vanity, do you?"
"Upon your honour, Captain."
"The honour of a pirate? Ye're surely crazed!"
"The honour of Captain Blood," Don Francisco insisted. "You have
the repute of making war like a gentleman."
Captain Blood laughed again, on a bitter, sneering note that made
Don Francisco fear the worst. He was not to guess that it was
himself the Captain mocked.
"That's merely because it's more remunerative in the end. And that
is why you are accorded the three days you ask for. So about it,
Don Francisco. You shall have what mules you need. I'll see to it."
Away went Don Francisco on his errand, leaving Captain Blood to
reflect, between bitterness and satisfaction, that a reputation for
as much chivalry as is consistent with piracy is not without its
uses.
Punctually on the third day the Deputy-Governor was back in Maracaybo
with his mules laden with plate and money to the value demanded and a
herd of a hundred head of cattle driven in by negro slaves.
These bullocks were handed over to those of the company who
ordinarily were boucan-hunters, and therefore skilled in the curing
of meats, and for best part of a week thereafter they were busy at
the waterside with the quartering and salting of carcases.
While this was doing on the one hand and the ships were being
refitted for sea on the other, Captain Blood was pondering the riddle
on the solution of which his own fate depended. Indian spies whom
he employed brought him word that the Spaniards, working at low tide,
had salved the thirty guns of the Salvador, and thus had added yet
another battery to their already overwhelming strength. In the end,
and hoping for inspiration on the spot, Captain Blood made a
reconnaissance in person. At the risk of his life, accompanied by
two friendly Indians, he crossed to the island in a canoe under cover
of dark. They concealed themselves and the canoe in the short thick
scrub with which that side of the island was densely covered, and
lay there until daybreak. Then Blood went forward alone, and with
infinite precaution, to make his survey. He went to verify a
suspicion that he had formed, and approached the fort as nearly as
he dared and a deal nearer than was safe.
On all fours he crawled to the summit of an eminence a mile or so
away, whence he found himself commanding a view of the interior
dispositions of the stronghold. By the aid of a telescope with
which he had equipped himself he was able to verify that, as he
had suspected and hoped, the fort's artillery was all mounted on
the seaward side.
Satisfied, he returned to Maracaybo, and laid before the six who
composed his council - Pitt, Hagthorpe, Yberville, Wolverstone,
Dyke, and Ogle - a proposal to storm the fort from the landward
side. Crossing to the island under cover of night, they would take
the Spaniards by surprise and attempt to overpower them before they
could shift their guns to meet the onslaught.
With the exception of Wolverstone, who was by temperament the kind
of man who favours desperate chances, those officers received the
proposal coldly. Hagthorpe incontinently opposed it.
"It's a harebrained scheme, Peter," he said gravely, shaking his
handsome head. "Consider now that we cannot depend upon approaching
unperceived to a distance whence we might storm the fort before the
cannon could be moved. But even if we could, we can take no cannon
ourselves; we must depend entirely upon our small arms, and how
shall we, a bare three hundred" (for this was the number to which
Cahusac's defection had reduced them), "cross the open to attack
more than twice that number under cover?"
The others - Dyke, Ogle, Yberville, and even Pitt, whom loyalty to
Blood may have made reluctant - loudly approved him. When they had
done, "I have considered all," said Captain Blood. "I have weighed
the risks and studied how to lessen them. In these desperate
straits...."
He broke off abruptly. A moment he frowned, deep in thought; then
his face was suddenly alight with inspiration. Slowly he drooped
his head, and sat there considering, weighing, chin on breast. Then
he nodded, muttering, "Yes," and again, "Yes." He looked up, to
face them. "Listen," he cried. "You may be right. The risks may
be too heavy. Whether or not, I have thought of a better way. That
which should have been the real attack shall be no more than a feint.
Here, then, is the plan I now propose."
He talked swiftly and clearly, and as he talked one by one his
officers' faces became alight with eagerness. When he had done,
they cried as with one voice that he had saved them.
"That is yet to be proved in action," said he.
Since for the last twenty-four hours all had been in readiness for
departure, there was nothing now to delay them, and it was decided
to move next morning.
Such was Captain Blood's assurance of success that he immediately
freed the prisoners held as hostages, and even the negro slaves,
who were regarded by the others as legitimate plunder. His only
precaution against those released prisoners was to order them into
the church and there lock them up, to await deliverance at the
hands of those who should presently be coming into the city.
Then, all being aboard the three ships, with the treasure safely
stowed in their holds and the slaves under hatches, the buccaneers
weighed anchor and stood out for the bar, each vessel towing three
piraguas astern.
The Admiral, beholding their stately advance in the full light of
noon, their sails gleaming white in the glare of the sunlight,
rubbed his long, lean hands in satisfaction, and laughed through
his teeth.
"At last!" he cried. "God delivers him into my hands!" He turned
to the group of staring officers behind him. "Sooner or later it
had to be," he said. "Say now, gentlemen, whether I am justified
of my patience. Here end to-day the troubles caused to the subjects
of the Catholic King by this infamous Don Pedro Sangre, as he once
called himself to me."
He turned to issue orders, and the fort became lively as a hive.
The guns were manned, the gunners already kindling fuses, when the
buccaneer fleet, whilst still heading for Palomas, was observed to
bear away to the west. The Spaniards watched them, intrigued.
Within a mile and a half to westward of the fort, and within a
half-mile of the shore - that is to say, on the very edge of the
shoal water that makes Palomas unapproachable on either side by
any but vessels of the shallowest draught - the four ships cast
anchor well within the Spaniards' view, but just out of range of
their heaviest cannon.
Sneeringly the Admiral laughed.
"Aha! They hesitate, these English dogs! Por Dios, and well
they may."
"They will be waiting for night," suggested his nephew, who stood
at his elbow quivering with excitement.
Don Miguel looked at him, smiling. "And what shall the night avail
them in this narrow passage, under the very muzzles of my guns? Be
sure, Esteban, that to-night your father will be paid for."
He raised his telescope to continue his observation of the
buccaneers. He saw that the piraguas towed by each vessel were
being warped alongside, and he wondered a little what this manoeuver
might portend. Awhile those piraguas were hidden from view behind
the hulls. Then one by one they reappeared, rowing round and away
from the ships, and each boat, he observed, was crowded with armed
men. Thus laden, they were headed for the shore, at a point where
it was densely wooded to the water's edge. The eyes of the
wondering Admiral followed them until the foliage screened them from
his view.
Then he lowered his telescope and looked at his officers.
"What the devil does it mean?" he asked.
None answered him, all being as puzzled as he was himself.
After a little while, Esteban, who kept his eyes on the water,
plucked at his uncle's sleeve. "There they go!" he cried, and
pointed.
And there, indeed, went the piraguas on their way back to the ships.
But now it was observed that they were empty, save for the men who
rowed them. Their armed cargo had been left ashore.
Back to the ships they pulled, to return again presently with a
fresh load of armed men, which similarly they conveyed to Palomas.
And at last one of the Spanish officers ventured an explanation:
"They are going to attack us by land - to attempt to storm the fort."
"Of course." The Admiral smiled. "I had guessed it. Whom the gods
would destroy they first make mad."
"Shall we make a sally?" urged Esteban, in his excitement.
"A sally? Through that scrub? That would be to play into their
hands. No, no, we will wait here to receive this attack. Whenever
it comes, it is themselves will be destroyed, and utterly. Have no
doubt of that."
But by evening the Admiral's equanimity was not quite so perfect.
By then the piraguas had made a half-dozen journeys with their loads
of men, and they had landed also - as Don Miguel had clearly observed
through his telescope - at least a dozen guns.
His countenance no longer smiled; it was a little wrathful and a
little troubled now as he turned again to his officers.
"Who was the fool who told me that they number but three hundred
men in all? They have put at least twice that number ashore
already."
Amazed as he was, his amazement would have been deeper had he been
told the truth: that there was not a single buccaneer or a single
gun ashore on Palomas. The deception had been complete. Don Miguel
could not guess that the men he had beheld in those piraguas were
always the same; that on the journeys to the shore they sat and
stood upright in full view; and that on the journeys back to the
ships, they lay invisible at the bottom of the boats, which were
thus made to appear empty.
The growing fears of the Spanish soldiery at the prospect of a
night attack from the landward side by the entire buccaneer force
- and a force twice as strong as they had suspected the pestilent
Blood to command - began to be communicated to the Admiral.
In the last hours of fading daylight, the Spaniards did precisely
what Captain Blood so confidently counted that they would do -
precisely what they must do to meet the attack, preparations for
which had been so thoroughly simulated. They set themselves to
labour like the damned at those ponderous guns emplaced to
command the narrow passage out to sea.
Groaning and sweating, urged on by the curses and even the whips
of their officers, they toiled in a frenzy of panic-stricken haste
to shift the greater number and the more powerful of their guns
across to the landward side, there to emplace them anew, so that
they might be ready to receive the attack which at any moment now
might burst upon them from the woods not half a mile away.
Thus, when night fell, although in mortal anxiety of the onslaught
of those wild devils whose reckless courage was a byword on the seas
of the Main, at least the Spaniards were tolerably prepared for it.
Waiting, they stood to their guns.
And whilst they waited thus, under cover of the darkness and as the
tide began to ebb, Captain Blood's fleet weighed anchor quietly; and,
as once before, with no more canvas spread than that which their
sprits could carry, so as to give them steering way - and even these
having been painted black - the four vessels, without a light
showing, groped their way by soundings to the channel which led to
that narrow passage out to sea.
The Elizabeth and the Infanta, leading side by side, were almost
abreast of the fort before their shadowy bulks and the soft gurgle
of water at their prows were detected by the Spaniards, whose
attention until that moment had been all on the other side. And
now there arose on the night air such a sound of human baffled fury
as may have resounded about Babel at the confusion of tongues. To
heighten that confusion, and to scatter disorder among the Spanish
soldiery, the Elizabeth emptied her larboard guns into the fort as
she was swept past on the swift ebb.
At once realizing - though not yet how - he had been duped, and that
his prey was in the very act of escaping after all, the Admiral
frantically ordered the guns that had been so laboriously moved to
be dragged back to their former emplacements, and commanded his
gunners meanwhile to the slender batteries that of all his powerful,
but now unavailable, armament still remained trained upon the
channel. With these, after the loss of some precious moments, the
fort at last made fire.
It was answered by a terrific broadside from the Arabella, which had
now drawn abreast, and was crowding canvas to her yards. The enraged
and gibbering Spaniards had a brief vision of her as the line of
flame spurted from her red flank, and the thunder of her broadside
drowned the noise of the creaking halyards. After that they saw her
no more. Assimilated by the friendly darkness which the lesser
Spanish guns were speculatively stabbing, the escaping ships fired
never another shot that might assist their baffled and bewildered
enemies to locate them.
Some slight damage was sustained by Blood's fleet. But by the time
the Spaniards had resolved their confusion into some order of
dangerous offence, that fleet, well served by a southerly breeze,
was through the narrows and standing out to sea.
Thus was Don Miguel de Espinosa left to chew the bitter cud of a
lost opportunity, and to consider in what terms he would acquaint
the Supreme Council of the Catholic King that Peter Blood had got
away from Maracaybo, taking with him two twenty-gun frigates that
were lately the property of Spain, to say nothing of two hundred
and fifty thousand pieces of eight and other plunder. And all this
in spite of Don Miguel's four galleons and his heavily armed fort
that at one time had held the pirates so securely trapped.
Heavy, indeed, grew the account of Peter Blood, which Don Miguel
swore passionately to Heaven should at all costs to himself be
paid in full.
Nor were the losses already detailed the full total of those suffered
on this occasion by the King of Spain. For on the following evening,
off the coast of Oruba, at the mouth of the Gulf of Venezuela,
Captain Blood's fleet came upon the belated Santo Nino, speeding
under full sail to reenforce Don Miguel at Maracaybo.
At first the Spaniard had conceived that she was meeting the
victorious fleet of Don Miguel, returning from the destruction of
the pirates. When at comparatively close quarters the pennon of St.
George soared to the Arabella's masthead to disillusion her, the
Santo Nino chose the better part of valour, and struck her flag.
Captain Blood ordered her crew to take to the boats, and land
themselves at Oruba or wherever else they pleased. So considerate
was he that to assist them he presented them with several of the
piraguas which he still had in tow.
"You will find," said he to her captain, "that Don Miguel is in an
extremely bad temper. Commend me to him, and say that I venture to
remind him that he must blame himself for all the ills that have
befallen him. The evil has recoiled upon him which he loosed when
he sent his brother unofficially to make a raid upon the island of
Barbados. Bid him think twice before he lets his devils loose upon
an English settlement again."
With that he dismissed the Captain, who went over the side of the
Santo Nino, and Captain Blood proceeded to investigate the value of
this further prize. When her hatches were removed, a human cargo
was disclosed in her hold.
"Slaves," said Wolverstone, and persisted in that belief cursing
Spanish devilry until Cahusac crawled up out of the dark bowels of
the ship, and stood blinking in the sunlight.
There was more than sunlight to make the Breton pirate blink. And
those that crawled out after him - the remnants of his crew - cursed
him horribly for the pusillanimity which had brought them into the
ignominy of owing their deliverance to those whom they had deserted
as lost beyond hope.
Their sloop had encountered and had been sunk three days ago by the
Santo Nino, and Cahusac had narrowly escaped hanging merely that
for some time he might be a mock among the Brethren of the Coast.
For many a month thereafter he was to hear in Tortuga the jeering
taunt:
"Where do you spend the gold that you brought back from Maracaybo?"
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MILAGROSA
The affair at Maracaybo is to be considered as Captain Blood's
buccaneering masterpiece. Although there is scarcely one of the
many actions that he fought - recorded in such particular detail by
Jeremy Pitt - which does not afford some instance of his genius for
naval tactics, yet in none is this more shiningly displayed than
in those two engagements by which he won out of the trap which Don
Miguel de Espinosa had sprung upon him.
The fame which he had enjoyed before this, great as it already was,
is dwarfed into insignificance by the fame that followed. It was
a fame such as no buccaneer - not even Morgan - has ever boasted,
before or since.
In Tortuga, during the months he spent there refitting the three
ships he had captured from the fleet that had gone out to destroy
him, he found himself almost an object of worship in the eyes of
the wild Brethren of the Coast, all of whom now clamoured for the
honour of serving under him. It placed him in the rare position
of being able to pick and choose the crews for his augmented fleet,
and he chose fastidiously. When next he sailed away it was with a
fleet of five fine ships in which went something over a thousand
men. Thus you behold him not merely famous, but really formidable.
The three captured Spanish vessels he had renamed with a certain
scholarly humour the Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, a grimly jocular
manner of conveying to the world that he made them the arbiters of
the fate of any Spaniards he should henceforth encounter upon the
seas.
In Europe the news of this fleet, following upon the news of the
Spanish Admiral's defeat at Maracaybo, produced something of a
sensation. Spain and England were variously and unpleasantly
exercised, and if you care to turn up the diplomatic correspondence
exchanged on the subject, you will find that it is considerable
and not always amiable.
And meanwhile in the Caribbean, the Spanish Admiral Don Miguel de
Espinosa might be said - to use a term not yet invented in his
day - to have run amok. The disgrace into which he had fallen as
a result of the disasters suffered at the hands of Captain Blood
had driven the Admiral all but mad. It is impossible, if we
impose our minds impartially, to withhold a certain sympathy from
Don Miguel. Hate was now this unfortunate man's daily bread, and
the hope of vengeance an obsession to his mind. As a madman he
went raging up and down the Caribbean seeking his enemy, and in
the meantime, as an hors d'oeuvre to his vindictive appetite, he
fell upon any ship of England or of France that loomed above his
horizon.
I need say no more to convey the fact that this illustrious
sea-captain and great gentleman of Castile had lost his head, and
was become a pirate in his turn. The Supreme Council of Castile
might anon condemn him for his practices. But how should that matter
to one who already was condemned beyond redemption? On the contrary,
if he should live to lay the audacious and ineffable Blood by the
heels, it was possible that Spain might view his present irregularities
and earlier losses with a more lenient eye.
And so, reckless of the fact that Captain Blood was now in vastly
superior strength, the Spaniard sought him up and down the trackless
seas. But for a whole year he sought him vainly. The circumstances
in which eventually they met are very curious.
An intelligent observation of the facts of human existence will
reveal to shallow-minded folk who sneer at the use of coincidence
in the arts of fiction and drama that life itself is little more
than a series of coincidences. Open the history of the past at
whatsoever page you will, and there you shall find coincidence at
work bringing about events that the merest chance might have
averted. Indeed, coincidence may be defined as the very tool used
by Fate to shape the destinies of men and nations.
Observe it now at work in the affairs of Captain Blood and of some
others.
On the 15th September of the year 1688 - a memorable year in the
annals of England - three ships were afloat upon the Caribbean,
which in their coming conjunctions were to work out the fortunes of
several persons.
The first of these was Captain Blood's flagship the Arabella, which
had been separated from the buccaneer fleet in a hurricane off the
Lesser Antilles. In somewhere about 17 deg. N. Lat., and 74 deg.
Long., she was beating up for the Windward Passage, before the
intermittent southeasterly breezes of that stifling season, homing
for Tortuga, the natural rendezvous of the dispersed vessels.
The second ship was the great Spanish galleon, the Milagrosa, which,
accompanied by the smaller frigate Hidalga, lurked off the Caymites,
to the north of the long peninsula that thrusts out from the
southwest corner of Hispaniola. Aboard the Milagrosa sailed the
vindictive Don Miguel.
The third and last of these ships with which we are at present
concerned was an English man-of-war, which on the date I have given
was at anchor in the French port of St. Nicholas on the northwest
coast of Hispaniola. She was on her way from Plymouth to Jamaica,
and carried on board a very distinguished passenger in the person
of Lord Julian Wade, who came charged by his kinsman, my Lord
Sunderland, with a mission of some consequence and delicacy, directly
arising out of that vexatious correspondence between England and
Spain.
The French Government, like the English, excessively annoyed by the
depredations of the buccaneers, and the constant straining of
relations with Spain that ensued, had sought in vain to put them
down by enjoining the utmost severity against them upon her various
overseas governors. But these, either - like the Governor of Tortuga
- throve out of a scarcely tacit partnership with the filibusters,
or - like the Governor of French Hispaniola - felt that they were
to be encouraged as a check upon the power and greed of Spain, which
might otherwise be exerted to the disadvantage of the colonies of
other nations. They looked, indeed, with apprehension upon recourse
to any vigorous measures which must result in driving many of the
buccaneers to seek new hunting-grounds in the South Sea.
To satisfy King James's anxiety to conciliate Spain, and in response
to the Spanish Ambassador's constant and grievous expostulations,
my Lord Sunderland, the Secretary of State, had appointed a strong
man to the deputy-governorship of Jamaica. This strong man was that
Colonel Bishop who for some years now had been the most influential
planter in Barbados.
Colonel Bishop had accepted the post, and departed from the
plantations in which his great wealth was being amassed with an
eagerness that had its roots in a desire to pay off a score of his
own with Peter Blood.
From his first coming to Jamaica, Colonel Bishop had made himself
felt by the buccaneers. But do what he might, the one buccaneer
whom he made his particular quarry - that Peter Blood who once had
been his slave - eluded him ever, and continued undeterred and in
great force to harass the Spaniards upon sea and land, and to keep
the relations between England and Spain in a state of perpetual
ferment, particularly dangerous in those days when the peace of
Europe was precariously maintained.
Exasperated not only by his own accumulated chagrin, but also by
the reproaches for his failure which reached him from London,
Colonel Bishop actually went so far as to consider hunting his
quarry in Tortuga itself and making an attempt to clear the
island of the buccaneers it sheltered. Fortunately for himself,
he abandoned the notion of so insane an enterprise, deterred not
only by the enormous natural strength of the place, but also by
the reflection that a raid upon what was, nominally at least, a
French settlement, must be attended by grave offence to France.
Yet short of some such measure, it appeared to Colonel Bishop
that he was baffled. He confessed as much in a letter to the
Secretary of State.
This letter and the state of things which it disclosed made my Lord
Sunderland despair of solving this vexatious problem by ordinary
means. He turned to the consideration of extraordinary ones, and
bethought him of the plan adopted with Morgan, who had been enlisted
into the King's service under Charles II. It occurred to him that
a similar course might be similarly effective with Captain Blood.
His lordship did not omit the consideration that Blood's present
outlawry might well have been undertaken not from inclination, but
under stress of sheer necessity; that he had been forced into it by
the circumstances of his transportation, and that he would welcome
the opportunity of emerging from it.
Acting upon this conclusion, Sunderland sent out his kinsman, Lord
Julian Wade, with some commissions made out in blank, and full
directions as to the course which the Secretary considered it
desirable to pursue and yet full discretion in the matter of pursuing
them. The crafty Sunderland, master of all labyrinths of intrigue,
advised his kinsman that in the event of his finding Blood
intractable, or judging for other reasons that it was not desirable
to enlist him in the King's service, he should turn his attention
to the officers serving under him, and by seducing them away from
him leave him so weakened that he must fall an easy victim to Colonel
Bishop's fleet.
The Royal Mary - the vessel bearing that ingenious, tolerably
accomplished, mildly dissolute, entirely elegant envoy of my Lord
Sunderland's - made a good passage to St. Nicholas, her last port
of call before Jamaica. It was understood that as a preliminary
Lord Julian should report himself to the Deputy-Governor at Port
Royal, whence at need he might have himself conveyed to Tortuga.
Now it happened that the Deputy-Governor's niece had come to St.
Nicholas some months earlier on a visit to some relatives, and so
that she might escape the insufferable heat of Jamaica in that
season. The time for her return being now at hand, a passage was
sought for her aboard the Royal Mary, and in view of her uncle's
rank and position promptly accorded.
Lord Julian hailed her advent with satisfaction. It gave a voyage
that had been full of interest for him just the spice that it
required to achieve perfection as an experience. His lordship was
one of your gallants to whom existence that is not graced by
womankind is more or less of a stagnation. Miss Arabella Bishop
- this straight up and down slip of a girl with her rather boyish
voice and her almost boyish ease of movement - was not perhaps a
lady who in England would have commanded much notice in my lord's
discerning eyes. His very sophisticated, carefully educated tastes
in such matters inclined him towards the plump, the languishing,
and the quite helplessly feminine. Miss Bishop's charms were
undeniable. But they were such that it would take a delicate-minded
man to appreciate them; and my Lord Julian, whilst of a mind that
was very far from gross, did not possess the necessary degree of
delicacy. I must not by this be understood to imply anything against
him.
It remained, however, that Miss Bishop was a young woman and a lady;
and in the latitude into which Lord Julian had strayed this was a
phenomenon sufficiently rare to command attention. On his side,
with his title and position, his personal grace and the charm of a
practised courtier, he bore about him the atmosphere of the great
world in which normally he had his being - a world that was little
more than a name to her, who had spent most of her life in the
Antilles. It is not therefore wonderful that they should have been
attracted to each other before the Royal Mary was warped out of St.
Nicholas. Each could tell the other much upon which the other
desired information. He could regale her imagination with stories
of St. James's - in many of which he assigned himself a heroic, or
at least a distinguished part - and she could enrich his mind with
information concerning this new world to which he had come.
Before they were out of sight of St. Nicholas they were good friends,
and his lordship was beginning to correct his first impressions of
her and to discover the charm of that frank, straightforward attitude
of comradeship which made her treat every man as a brother.
Considering how his mind was obsessed with the business of his
mission, it is not wonderful that he should have come to talk to her
of Captain Blood. Indeed, there was a circumstance that directly
led to it.
"I wonder now," he said, as they were sauntering on the poop, "if
you ever saw this fellow Blood, who was at one time on your uncle's
plantations as a slave."
Miss Bishop halted. She leaned upon the taffrail, looking out
towards the receding land, and it was a moment before she answered
in a steady, level voice:
"I saw him often. I knew him very well."
"Ye don't say!" His lordship was slightly moved out of an
imperturbability that he had studiously cultivated. He was a young
man of perhaps eight-and-twenty, well above the middle height in
stature and appearing taller by virtue of his exceeding leanness.
He had a thin, pale, rather pleasing hatchet-face, framed in the
curls of a golden penwig, a sensitive mouth and pale blue eyes that
lent his countenance a dreamy expression, a rather melancholy
pensiveness. But they were alert, observant eyes notwithstanding,
although they failed on this occasion to observe the slight change
of colour which his question had brought to Miss Bishop's cheeks
or the suspiciously excessive composure of her answer.
"Ye don't say!" he repeated, and came to lean beside her. "And what
manner of man did you find him?"
"In those days I esteemed him for an unfortunate gentleman."
"You were acquainted with his story?"
"He told it me. That is why I esteemed him - for the calm fortitude
with which he bore adversity. Since then, considering what he has
done, I have almost come to doubt if what he told me of himself was
true."
"If you mean of the wrongs he suffered at the hands of the Royal
Commission that tried the Monmouth rebels, there's little doubt that
it would be true enough. He was never out with Monmouth; that is
certain. He was convicted on a point of law of which he may well
have been ignorant when he committed what was construed into treason.
But, faith, he's had his revenge, after a fashion."
"That," she said in a small voice, "is the unforgivable thing. It
has destroyed him - deservedly."
"Destroyed him?" His lordship laughed a little. "Be none so sure
of that. He has grown rich, I hear. He has translated, so it is
said, his Spanish spoils into French gold, which is being treasured
up for him in France. His future father-in-law, M. d'Ogeron, has
seen to that."
"His future father-in-law?" said she, and stared at him round-eyed,
with parted lips. Then added: "M. d'Ogeron? The Governor of
Tortuga?"
"The same. You see the fellow's well protected. It's a piece of
news I gathered in St. Nicholas. I am not sure that I welcome it,
for I am not sure that it makes any easier a task upon which my
kinsman, Lord Sunderland, has sent me hither. But there it is.
You didn't know?"
She shook her head without replying. She had averted her face, and
her eyes were staring down at the gently heaving water. After a
moment she spoke, her voice steady and perfectly controlled.
"But surely, if this were true, there would have been an end to his
piracy by now. If he... if he loved a woman and was betrothed, and
was also rich as you say, surely he would have abandoned this
desperate life, and...."
"Why, so I thought," his lordship interrupted, "until I had the
explanation. D'Ogeron is avaricious for himself and for his child.
And as for the girl, I'm told she's a wild piece, fit mate for such
a man as Blood. Almost I marvel that he doesn't marry her and take
her a-roving with him. It would be no new experience for her. And
I marvel, too, at Blood's patience. He killed a man to win her."
"He killed a man for her, do you say?" There was horror now in her
voice.
"Yes - a French buccaneer named Levasseur. He was the girl's lover
and Blood's associate on a venture. Blood coveted the girl, and
killed Levasseur to win her. Pah! It's an unsavoury tale, I own.
But men live by different codes out in these parts...."
She had turned to face him. She was pale to the lips, and her hazel
eyes were blazing, as she cut into his apologies for Blood.
"They must, indeed, if his other associates allowed him to live
after that."
"Oh, the thing was done in fair fight, I am told."
"Who told you?"
"A man who sailed with them, a Frenchman named Cahusac, whom I found
in a waterside tavern in St. Nicholas. He was Levasseur's
lieutenant, and he was present on the island where the thing
happened, and when Levasseur was killed."
"And the girl? Did he say the girl was present, too?"
"Yes. She was a witness of the encounter. Blood carried her off
when he had disposed of his brother-buccaneer."
"And the dead man's followers allowed it?" He caught the note of
incredulity in her voice, but missed the note of relief with which
it was blent. "Oh, I don't believe the tale. I won't believe it!"
"I honour you for that, Miss Bishop. It strained my own belief that
men should be so callous, until this Cahusac afforded me the
explanation."
"What?" She checked her unbelief, an unbelief that had uplifted
her from an inexplicable dismay. Clutching the rail, she swung
round to face his lordship with that question. Later he was to
remember and perceive in her present behaviour a certain oddness
which went disregarded now.
"Blood purchased their consent, and his right to carry the girl
off. He paid them in pearls that were worth more than twenty
thousand pieces of eight." His lordship laughed again with a touch
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