Title: The Chronicles of Captain Blood (1931)
Author: Rafael Sabatini
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.: 0701201.txt
Language:  English
Date first posted: December 2007
Date most recently updated: December 2007


Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editions
which are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright notice
is included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particular
paper edition.

Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing this
file.

This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg of Australia License which may be viewed online at
http://gutenberg.net.au/licence.html

To contact Project Gutenberg of Australia go to http://gutenberg.net.au

--------------------------------------------------------------------------


Title: The Chronicles of Captain Blood (1931)
Author: Rafael Sabatini




INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The Odyssey of Captain Blood, given to the world some years ago, was
derived from various sources, disclosed in the course of its compilation,
of which the most important is the log of the _Arabella_, kept by the
young Somersetshire shipmaster Jeremy Pitt. This log amounts to just such
a chronicle of Blood's activities upon the Caribbean as that which
Esquemeling, in similar case, has left of the exploits of that other
great buccaneer, Sir Henry Morgan.

The compilation of the Odyssey, whilst it exhausted all other available
collateral sources of information, was very far from exhausting the
material left by Pitt. From that log of his were taken only those
episodes which bore more or less directly upon the main outline of
Blood's story, which it was then proposed to relate and elucidate. The
selection presented obvious difficulties; and omissions, reluctantly
made, were compelled by the necessity of presenting a straightforward and
consecutive narrative.

It has since been felt, however, that some of the episodes then omitted
might well be assembled in a supplementary volume which may shed
additional light upon the methods and habits of the buccaneering
fraternity in general and Captain Blood in particular.

It will be remembered by those who have read the volume entitled _Captain
Blood: His Odyssey_, and it may briefly be repeated here for the
information of those who have not, that Peter Blood was the son of an
Irish medicus, who had desired that his son should follow in his own
honourable and humane profession. Complying with this parental wish,
Peter Blood had received, at the early age of twenty, the degree of
baccalaureus medicinae at Trinity College, Dublin. He showed, however,
little disposition to practice the peaceful art for which he had
brilliantly qualified. Perhaps a roving strain derived from his
Somersetshire mother, in whose veins ran the blood of the Frobishers, was
responsible for his restiveness. Losing his father some three months
after taking his degree, he set out to see the world, preferring to open
himself a career with the sword of the adventurer rather than with the
scalpel of the surgeon.

After some vague wanderings on the continent of Europe we find him in the
service of the Dutch, then at war with France. Again it may have been the
Frobisher blood and a consequent predilection for the sea which made him
elect to serve upon that element. He enjoyed the advantage of holding a
commission under the great De Ruyter, and he fought in the Mediterranean
engagement in which that famous Dutch Admiral lost his life. What he
learnt under him Pitt's chronicle shows him applying in his later days
when he had become the most formidable buccaneer leader on the Caribbean.

After the Peace of Nimeguen and until the beginning of 1685, when he
reappears in England, little is known of his fortune, beyond the facts
that he spent two years in a Spanish prison--where we must suppose that
he acquired the fluent and impeccable Castilian which afterwards served
him so often and so well--and that later he was for a while in the
service of France, which similarly accounts for his knowledge of the
French language.

In January of 1685 we find him at last, at the age of thirty-two,
settling down in Bridgewater to practise the profession for which he had
been trained. But for the Monmouth Rebellion, in whose vortex he was
quite innocently caught up some six months later, this might have been
the end of his 'career as an adventurer. And but for the fact that what
came to him, utterly uninvited by him, was not in its ultimate
manifestation unacceptable, we should have to regard him as one of the
victims of the ironical malignity of Fortune aided and abetted, as it
ever is, by the stupidity and injustice of man.

In his quality as a surgeon he was summoned on the morning after the
battle of Sedgemoor to the bedside of a wounded gentleman who had been
out with Monmouth, The dignity of his calling did not permit him to weigh
legal quibbles or consider the position in which he might place himself
in the eyes of a rigid and relentless law. All that counted with him was
that a human being required his medical assistance, and he went to give it.

Surprised in the performance of that humanitarian duty by a party of
dragoons who were hunting fugitives from the battle, he was arrested
together with his patient. His patient being convicted of high treason
for having been in arms against his king, Peter Blood suffered with him
the same conviction under the statute which ordains that who succours or
comforts a traitor is himself a traitor.

He was tried at Taunton before Judge Jeffreys in the course of the Bloody
Assize, and sentenced to death.

Afterwards the sentence was commuted to transportation, not out of any
spirit of mercy, but because it was discovered that to put to death the
thousands that were implicated in the Monmouth Rebellion was to destroy
valuable human merchandise which could be converted into money in the
colonies. Slaves were required for work in the plantations, and the
wealthy planters overseas who were willing to pay handsomely for the
negroes rounded up in Africa by slavers would be no less ready to
purchase white men. Accordingly, these unfortunate rebels under sentence
of death were awarded in batches to this lady or that gentleman of the
Court to be turned by them to profitable account.

Peter Blood was in one of these batches, which included also Jeremy Pitt
and some others who were later to be associated with him in an even
closer bond than that of their present common misfortune.

This batch was shipped to Barbadoes, and sold there. And then, at last,
Fate eased by a little her cruel grip of Peter Blood. When it was
discovered that he was a man of medicine, and because in Barbadoes a
medical man of ability was urgently required, his purchaser perceived how
he could turn this slave to better account than by merely sending him to
the sugar plantations. He was allowed to practise as a doctor. And since
the pursuit of this demanded a certain liberty of action, this liberty,
within definite limits, was accorded him. He employed it to plan an
escape in association with a number of his fellow slaves.

The attempt was practically frustrated, when the arrival of a Spanish
ship of war at Bridgetown and the circumstances attending it suddenly
disclosed to the ready wits and resolute will of Peter Blood a better way
of putting it into execution.

The Spaniards, having subjected Bridgetown to bombardment, effected a
landing there and took possession of the place, holding it to ransom. To
accomplish this, and having nothing to fear from a town which had been
completely subdued, they left their fine ship, the _Cinco Llagas_ out of
Cadiz, at anchor in the bay with not more than a half-score of men aboard
to guard her. Nor did these keep careful watch. Persuaded, like their
brethren ashore, that there was nothing to be apprehended from the
defeated English colonists, they abandoned themselves that night, again
like their brethren ashore, to a jovial carousal.

This was Blood's opportunity. With a score of plantation slaves to whom
none gave a thought at such a time, he quietly boarded the _Cinco
Llagas_, overpowered the watch and took possession of her.

In the morning, when the glutted Spaniards were returning in boats laden
with the plunder of Bridgetown, Peter Blood turned their own guns upon
them, smashed their boats with round shot, and sailed away with his crew
of rebels-convict to turn their reconquered liberty to such account as
Fate might indicate.




CONTENTS

THE BLANK SHOT
THE TREASURE SHIP
THE KING'S MESSENGER
THE WAR INDEMNITY
BLOOD MONEY
THE GOLD AT SANTA MARIA
THE LOVE STORY OF JEREMY PITT
THE EXPIATION OF MADAME DE COULEVAIN
THE GRATITUDE OF MONSIEUR DE COULEVAIN
GALLOWS KEY




I - THE BLANK SHOT


Captain Easterling, whose long duel with Peter Blood finds an important
place in the chronicles which Jeremy Pitt has left us, must be regarded
as the instrument chosen by Fate to shape the destiny of those
rebels-convict who fled from Barbadoes in the captured _Cinco Llagas_.

The lives of men are at the mercy of the slenderest chances. A whole
destiny may be influenced by no more than the set of the wind at a given
moment. And Peter Blood's, at a time when it was still fluid, was
certainly fashioned by the October hurricane which blew Captain
Easterling's ten-gun sloop into Cayona Bay, where the _Cinco Llagas_ had
been riding idly at anchor for close upon a month.

Blood and his associates had run to this buccaneer stronghold of Tortuga,
assured of finding shelter there whilst they deliberated upon their
future courses. They had chosen it because it was the one haven in the
Caribbean where they could count upon being unmolested and where no
questions would be asked of them. No English settlement would harbour
them because of their antecedents. The hand of Spain would naturally be
against them not only because they were English, but, further, because
they were in possession of a Spanish ship. They could trust themselves to
no ordinary French colony because of the recent agreement between the
Governments of France and England for the apprehension and interchange of
any persons escaping from penal settlements. There remained the Dutch,
who were neutral. But Blood regarded neutrality as the most untrustworthy
of all conditions, since it implies liberty of action in any direction.
Therefore he steered clear of the Dutch as of the others and made for
Tortuga, which, belonging to the French West India Company, was nominally
French, but nominally only. Actually it was of no nationality, unless the
Brethren of the Coast, as the buccaneering fraternity was called, could
be deemed to constitute a nation. At least it can be said that no law ran
in Tortuga that was at issue with the laws governing that great
brotherhood. It suited the French Government to give the protection of
its flag to these lawless men, so that in return they might serve French
interests by acting as a curb upon Spanish greed and aggressiveness in
the West Indies.

At Tortuga, therefore, the escaped rebels-convict dwelt in peace aboard
the _Cinco Llagas_ until Easterling came to disturb that peace and force
them into action and into plans for their future, which, without him,
they might have continued to postpone.

This Easterling--as nasty a scoundrel as ever sailed the
Caribbean--carried under hatches some tons of cacao of which he had
lightened a Dutch merchantman homing from the Antilles. The exploit, he
realized, had not covered him with glory; for glory in that pirate's eyes
was measurable by profit; and the meagre profit in this instance was not
likely to increase him in the poor esteem in which he knew himself to be
held by the Brethren of the Coast. Had he suspected the Dutchman of being
no more richly laden he would have let her pass unchallenged. But having
engaged and boarded her, he had thought it incumbent upon him and his
duty to his crew of rascals to relieve her of what she carried. That she
should have carried nothing of more value than cacao was a contingency
for which he blamed the evil fortune which of late had dogged him--an
evil fortune which was making it increasingly difficult for him to find
men to sail with him.

Considering these things, and dreaming of great enterprises, he brought
his sloop _Bonaventure_ into the shelter of the rock-bound harbour of
Tortuga, a port designed by very Nature for a stronghold. Walls of rock,
rising sheer, and towering like mountains, protect it upon either side
and shape it into a miniature gulf. It is only to be approached by two
channels demanding skilful pilotage. These were commanded by the Mountain
Fort, a massive fortress with which man had supplemented the work of
Nature. Within the shelter of this harbour, the French and English
buccaneers who made it their lair might deride the might of the King of
Spain, whom they regarded as their natural enemy, since it was his
persecution of them when they had been peaceful boucan-hunters which had
driven them to the grim trade of sea-rovers.

Within that harbour Easterling dismissed his dreams to gaze upon a
curious reality. It took the shape of a great red-hulled ship riding
proudly at anchor among the lesser craft, like a swan amid a gaggle of
geese. When he had come near enough to read the name _Cinco Llagas_
boldly painted in letters of gold above her counter, and under this the
port of origin, Cadiz, he rubbed his eyes so that he might read again.
Thereafter he sought in conjecture an explanation of the presence of that
magnificent ship of Spain in this pirates' nest of Tortuga. A thing of
beauty she was, from gilded beak-head above which the brass cannons
glinted in the morning sun, to towering sterncastle, and a thing of power
as announced by the forty guns which Easterling's practised eye computed
her to carry behind her closed ports.

The _Bonaventure_ cast anchor within a cable's length of the great ship,
in ten fathoms, close under the shadow of the Mountain Fort on the
harbour's western side, and Easterling went ashore to seek the
explanation of this mystery.

In the market-place beyond the mole he mingled with the heterogeneous
crowd that converted the quays of Cayona into an image of Babel. There
were bustling traders of many nations, chiefly English, French and Dutch;
planters and seamen of various degrees; buccaneers who were still genuine
boucanhunters and buccaneers who were frankly pirates; lumbermen,
beachcombers, Indians, fruit-selling half-castes, negro slaves, and all
the other types of the human family that daily loafed or trafficked
there. He found presently a couple of well-informed rogues very ready
with the singular tale of how that noble vessel out of Cadiz came to ride
so peacefully at anchor in Cayona Bay, manned by a parcel of escaped
plantation slaves.

To such a man as Easterling, it was an amusing and even an impressive
tale. He desired more particular knowledge of the men who had engaged in
such an enterprise. He learned that they numbered not above a score and
that they were all political offenders--rebels who in England had been
out with Monmouth, preserved from the gallows because of the need of
slaves in the West Indian plantations. He learned all that was known of
their leader, Peter Blood: that he was by trade a man of medicine, and
the rest.

It was understood that, because of this, and with a view of resuming his
profession, Blood desired to take ship for Europe at the first occasion
and that most of his followers would accompany him. But one or two wilder
spirits, men who had been trained to the sea, were likely to remain
behind and join the Brotherhood of the Coast.

All this Easterling learned in the market-place behind the mole, whence
his fine, bold eyes continued to con the great red ship.

With such a vessel as that under his feet there was no limit to the
things he might achieve. He began to see visions. The fame of Henry
Morgan, with whom once he had sailed and under whom he had served his
apprenticeship to piracy, should become a pale thing beside his own.
These poor escaped convicts should be ready enough to sell a ship which
had served its purpose by them, and they should not be exorbitant in
their notions of her value. The cacao aboard the _Bonaventure_ should
more than suffice to pay for her.

Captain Easterling smiled as he stroked his crisp black beard. It had
required his own keen wits to perceive at once an opportunity to which
all others had been blind during that long month in which the vessel had
been anchored there. It was for him to profit by his perceptions.

He made his way through the rudely-built little town by the road white
with coral dust--so white under the blazing sun that a man's eyes ached
to behold it and sought instinctively the dark patches made by the
shadows of the limp exiguous palms by which it was bordered.

He went so purposefully that he disregarded the hails greeting him from
the doorway of the tavern of The King of France, nor paused to crush a
cup with the gaudy buccaneers who filled the place with their noisy
mirth. The Captain's business that morning was with Monsieur d'Ogeron,
the courtly, middle-aged Governor of Tortuga, who in representing the
French West India Company seemed to represent France herself, and who,
with the airs of a minister of state, conducted affairs of questionable
probity but of unquestionable profit to his company.

In the fair, white, green-shuttered house, pleasantly set amid fragrant
pimento trees and other aromatic shrubs, Captain Easterling was received
with dignified friendliness by the slight, elegant Frenchman who brought
to the wilds of Tortuga a faint perfume of the elegancies of Versailles.
Coming from the white glare outside into the cool spacious room, to which
was admitted only such light as filtered between the slats of the closed
shutters, the Captain found himself almost in darkness until his eyes had
adjusted themselves.

The Governor offered him a chair and gave him his attention.

In the matter of the cacao there was no difficulty. Monsieur d'Ogeron
cared not whence it came. That he had no illusions on the subject was
shown by the price per quintal at which he announced himself prepared to
purchase. It was a price representing rather less than half the value of
the merchandise. Monsieur d'Ogeron was a diligent servant of the French
West India Company.

Easterling haggled vainly, grumbled, accepted, and passed to the major
matter. He desired to acquire the Spanish ship in the bay. Would Monsieur
d'Ogeron undertake the purchase for him from the fugitive convicts who,
he understood, were in possession of her.

Monsieur d'Ogeron took time to reply. "It is possible," he said at last,
"that they may not wish to sell."

"Not sell? A God's name what use is the ship to those poor ragamuffins?"

"I mention only a possibility," said Monsieur d'Ogeron. "Come to me again
this evening, and you shall have your answer."

When Easterling returned as bidden, Monsieur d'Ogeron was not alone. As
the Governor rose to receive his visitor, there rose with him a tall,
spare man in the early thirties from whose shaven face, swarthy as a
gipsy's, a pair of eyes looked out that were startlingly blue, level, and
penetrating. If Monsieur d'Ogeron in dress and air suggested Versailles,
his companion as markedly suggested the Alameda. He was very richly
dressed in black in the Spanish fashion, with an abundance of silver lace
and a foam of fine point at throat and wrists, and he wore a heavy black
periwig whose curls descended to his shoulders.

Monsieur d'Ogeron presented him: "Here, Captain, is Mr Peter Blood to
answer you in person."

Easterling was almost disconcerted, so different was the man's appearance
from anything that he could have imagined. And now this singular escaped
convict was bowing with the grace of a courtier, and the buccaneer was
reflecting that these fine Spanish clothes would have been filched from
the locker of the commander of the _Cinco Llagas_. He remembered
something else.

"Ah yes. To be sure. The physician," he said, and laughed for no apparent
reason.

Mr. Blood began to speak. He had a pleasant voice whose metallic quality
was softened by a drawling Irish accent. But what he said made Captain
Easterling impatient. It was not his intention to sell the _Cinco
Llagas_.

Aggressively before the elegant Mr. Blood stood now the buccaneer, a
huge, hairy, dangerous-looking man, in coarse shirt and leather breeches,
his cropped head swathed in a red-and-yellow kerchief. Aggressively he
demanded Blood's reasons for retaining a ship that could be of no use to
him and his fellow convicts.

Blood's voice was softly courteous in reply, which but increased
Easterling's contempt of him. Captain Easterling heard himself assured
that he was mistaken in his assumptions. It was probable that the
fugitives from Barbadoes would employ the vessel to return to Europe, so
as to make their way to France or Holland.

"Maybe we're not quite as ye're supposing us, Captain. One of my
companions is a shipmaster, and three others have served, in various
ways, in the King's Navy."

"Bah!" Easterling's contempt exploded loudly. "The notion's crazy. What
of the perils of the sea, man? Perils of capture? How will ye face those
with your paltry crew? Have ye considered that?"

Still Captain Blood preserved his pleasant temper. "What we lack in men
we make up in weight of metal. Whilst I may not be able to navigate a
ship across the ocean, I certainly know how to fight a ship at need. I
learnt it under de Ruyter."

The famous name gave pause to Easterling's scorn. "Under de Ruyter?"

"I held a commission with him some years ago." Easterling was plainly
dumbfounded. "I thought it's a doctor ye was."

"I am that, too," said the Irishman simply.

The buccaneer expressed his disgusted amazement in a speech liberally
festooned with oaths. And then Monsieur d'Ogeron made an end of the
interview. "So that you see, Captain Easterling, there is no more to be
said in the matter."

Since, apparently, there was not, Captain Easterling sourly took his
leave. But on his disgruntled way back to the mole he thought that
although there was no more to be said there was a good deal to be done.
Having already looked upon the majestic _Cinco Llagas_ as his own, he was
by no means disposed to forgo the prospect of possession.

Monsieur d'Ogeron also appeared to think that there was still at least a
word to be added, and he added it after Easterling's departure. "That,"
he said quietly, "is a nasty and a dangerous man. You will do well to
bear it in mind, Monsieur Blood."

Blood treated the matter lightly. "The warning was hardly necessary. The
fellow's person would have announced the blackguard to me even if I had
not known him for a pirate."

A shadow that was almost suggestive of annoyance flitted across the
delicate features of the Governor of Tortuga.

"Oh, but a filibuster is not of necessity a blackguard, nor is the career
of a filibuster one for your contempt, Monsieur Blood. There are those
among the buccaneers who do good service to your country and to mine by
setting a restraint upon the rapacity of Spain, a rapacity which is
responsible for their existence. But for the buccaneers, in these waters,
where neither France nor England can maintain a fleet, the Spanish
dominion would be as absolute as it is inhuman. You will remember that
your country honoured Henry Morgan with a knighthood and the
deputy-governorship of Jamaica. And he was an even worse pirate, if it is
possible, than your Sir Francis Drake, or Hawkins or Frobisher, or
several others I could name, whose memory your country also honours."

Followed upon this from Monsieur d'Ogeron, who derived considerable
revenues from the percentages he levied by way of harbour dues on all
prizes brought into Tortuga, solemn counsels that Mr. Blood should follow
in the footsteps of those heroes. Being outlawed as he was, in possession
of a fine ship and the nucleus of an able following, and being, as he had
proved, a man of unusual resource, Monsieur d'Ogeron did not doubt that
he would prosper finely as a filibuster.

Mr. Blood didn't doubt it himself. He never doubted himself. But he did
not on that account incline to the notion. Nor, probably, but for that
which ensued, would he ever have so inclined, however much the majority
of his followers might have sought to persuade him.

Among these, Hagthorpe, Pitt, and the giant Wolverstone, who had lost an
eye at Sedgemoor, were perhaps the most persistent. It was all very well
for Blood, they told him, to plan a return to Europe. He was master of a
peaceful art in the pursuit of which he might earn a livelihood in France
or Flanders. But they were men of the sea, and knew no other trade. Dyke,
who had been a petty officer in the Navy before he embarked on politics
and rebellion, held similar views, and Ogle, the gunner, demanded to know
of Heaven and Hell and Mr. Blood what guns they thought the British
Admiralty would entrust to a man who had been out with Monmouth.

Things were reaching a stage in which Peter Blood could see no
alternative to that of parting from these men whom a common misfortune
had endeared to him. It was in this pass that Fate employed the tool she
had forged in Captain Easterling.

One morning, three days after his interview with Mr. Blood at the
Governor's house, the Captain came alongside the _Cinco Llagas_ in the
cockboat from his sloop. As he heaved his massive bulk into the waist of
the ship, his bold, dark eyes were everywhere at once. The _Cinco Llagas_
was not only well-found, but irreproachably kept. Her decks were scoured,
her cordage stowed, and everything in place. The muskets were ranged in
the rack about the mainmast, and the brasswork on the scuttle-butts shone
like gold in the bright sunshine. Not such lubberly fellows, after all,
these escaped rebels-convict who composed Mr. Blood's crew.

And there was Mr. Blood himself in his black and silver, looking like a
Grandee of Spain, doffing a black hat with a sweep of claret ostrich
plume about it, and bowing until the wings of his periwig met across his
face like the pendulous ears of a spaniel. With him stood Nathaniel
Hagthorpe, a pleasant gentleman of Mr. Blood's own age, whose steady eye
and clear-cut face announced the man of breeding; Jeremy Pitt, the
flaxen-haired young Somerset shipmaster; the short, sturdy Nicholas Dyke,
who had been a petty officer and had served under King James when he was
Duke of York. There was nothing of the' ragamuffin about these, as
Easterling had so readily imagined. Even the burly, rough-voiced
Wolverstone had crowded his muscular bulk into Spanish fripperies for the
occasion.

Having presented them, Mr. Blood invited the captain of the _Bonaventure_
to the great cabin in the stern, which for spaciousness and richness of
furniture surpassed any cabin Captain Easterling had ever entered.

A negro servant in a white jacket--a lad hired here in Tortuga--brought,
besides the usual rum and sugar and fresh limes, a bottle of golden
Canary which had been in the ship's original equipment and which Mr.
Blood recommended with solicitude to his unbidden guest.

Remembering Monsieur d'Ogeron's warning that Captain Easterling was
dangerous, Mr. Blood deemed it wise to use him with all civility, if only
so that being at his ease he should disclose in what he might be
dangerous now.

They occupied the elegantly cushioned seats about the table of black oak,
and Captain Easterling praised the Canary liberally to justify the
liberality with which he consumed it. Thereafter he came to business by
asking if Mr. Blood, upon reflection, had not perhaps changed his mind
about selling the ship.

"If so be that you have," he added, with a glance at Blood's four
companions, "considering among how many the purchase money will be
divided, you'll find me generous."

If by this he had hoped to make an impression upon those four, their
stolid countenances disappointed him.

Mr. Blood shook his head. "It's wasting your time, ye are, Captain.
Whatever else we decide, we keep the _Cinco Llagas_."

"Whatever you decide?" The great black brows went up on that shallow
brow. "Ye're none so decided than as ye was about this voyage to Europe?
Why, then, I'll come at once to the business I'd propose if ye wouldn't
sell. It is that with this ship ye join the _Bonaventure_ in a venture--a
bonaventure," and he laughed noisily at his own jest with a flash of
white teeth behind the great black beard.

"You honour us. But we haven't a mind to piracy."

Easterling gave no sign of offence. He waved a great ham of a hand as if
to dismiss the notion. "It ain't piracy I'm proposing."

"What then?"

"I can trust you?"--Easterling asked, and his eyes included the four of
them.

"Ye're not obliged to. And it's odds ye'll waste your time in any case."

It was not encouraging. Nevertheless, Easterling proceeded. It might be
known to them that he had sailed with Morgan. He had been with Morgan in
the great march across the Isthmus of Panama. Now it was notorious that
when the spoil came to be divided after the sack of that Spanish city it
was found to be far below the reasonable expectations of the buccaneers.
There were murmurs that Morgan had not dealt fairly with his men; that he
had abstracted before the division a substantial portion of the treasure
taken. Those murmurs, Easterling could tell them, were well founded.
There were pearls and jewels from San Felipe of fabulous value, which
Morgan had secretly appropriated for himself. But as the rumours grew and
reached his ears, he became afraid of a search that should convict him.
And so, midway on the journey across the Isthmus, he one night buried the
treasure he had filched.

"Only one man knew this," said Captain Easterling to his attentive
listeners--for the tale was of a quality that at all times commands
attention. "The man who helped him in a labour he couldn't ha' done
alone. I am that man."

He paused a moment to let the impressive fact sink home, and then
resumed.

The business he proposed was that the fugitives on the _Cinco Llagas_
should join him in an expedition to Darien to recover the treasure,
sharing equally in it with his own men and on the scale usual among the
Brethren of the Coast.

"If I put the value of what Morgan buried at five hundred thousand pieces
of eight, I am being modest."

It was a sum to set his audience staring. Even Blood stared, but not
quite with the expression of the others.

"Sure, now, it's very odd," said he thoughtfully. "What is odd, Mr.
Blood?"

Mr. Blood's answer took the form of another question. "How many do you
number aboard the _Bonaventure_?"

"Something less than two hundred men."

"And the twenty men who are with me make such a difference that you deem
it worth while to bring us this proposal?"

Easterling laughed outright, a deep, guttural laugh. "I see that ye don't
understand at all." His voice bore a familiar echo of Mr. Blood's Irish
intonation. "It's not the men I lack so much as a stout ship in which to
guard the treasure when we have it. In a bottom such as this we'd be as
snug as in a fort, and I'd snap my fingers at any Spanish galleon that
attempted to molest me."

"Faith, now I understand," said Wolverstone, and Pitt and Dyke and
Hagthorpe nodded with him. But the glittering blue eye of Peter Blood
continued to stare unwinkingly upon the bulky pirate.

"As Wolverstone says, it's understandable. But a tenth of the prize,
which, by heads, is all that would come to the _Cinco Llagas_, is far
from adequate in the circumstances."

Easterling blew out his cheeks and waved his great hand in a gesture of
bonhomie. "What share would you propose?"

"That's to be considered. But it would not be less than one-fifth."

The buccaneer's face remained impassive. He bowed his gaudily swathed
head. "Bring these friends of yours to dine to-morrow aboard the
_Bonaventure_, and we'll draw up the articles."

For a moment Blood seemed to hesitate. Then in courteous terms he
accepted the invitation.

But when the buccaneer had departed he checked the satisfaction of his
followers.

"I was warned that Captain Easterling is a dangerous man. That's to
flatter him. For to be dangerous a man must be clever, and Captain
Easterling is not clever."

"What maggot's burrowing under your periwig, Peter?" wondered
Wolverstone.

"I'm thinking of the reason he gave for desiring our association. It was
the best he could do when bluntly asked the question."

"It could not have been more reasonable," said Hagthorpe, emphatically.
He was finding Blood unnecessarily difficult.

"Reasonable!" Blood laughed. "Specious, if you will. Specious until you
come to examine it. Faith now, it glitters, to be sure. But it isn't
gold. A ship as strong as a fort in which to stow a half-million pieces
of eight, and this fortress ship in the hands of ourselves. A trusting
fellow this Easterling for a scoundrel!"

They thought it out, and their eyes grew round. Pitt, however, was not
yet persuaded. "In his need he'll trust our honour."

Blood looked at him with scorn. "I never knew a man with eyes like
Easterling's to trust to anything but possession. If he means to stow
that treasure aboard this ship, and I could well believe that part of it,
it is because he means to be in possession of this ship by the time he
does so. Honour! Bah! Could such a man believe that honour would prevent
us from giving him the slip one night once we had the treasure aboard, or
even of bringing our weight of metal to bear upon his sloop and sinking
her? It's fatuous you are, Jeremy, with your talk of honour."

Still the thing was not quite clear to Hagthorpe. "What, then, do you
suppose to be his reason for inviting us to join him?"

"The reason that he gave. He wants our ship, be it for the conveyance of
his treasure, if it exists, be it for other reasons. Didn't he first seek
to buy the _Cinco Llagas_? Oh, he wants her, naturally enough; but he
wants not us, nor would he keep us long, be sure of that."

And yet, perhaps because the prospect of a share in Morgan's treasure
was, as Blood said, a glittering one, his associates were reluctant to
abandon it. To gain alluring objects men are always ready to take
chances, ready to believe what they hope. So now Hagthorpe, Pitt, and
Dyke. They came to the opinion that Blood was leaping to conclusions from
a prejudice sown in him by Monsieur d'Ogeron, who may have had reasons of
his own to serve. Let them at least dine to-morrow with Easterling, and
hear what articles he proposed.

"Can you be sure that we shall not be poisoned?" wondered Blood.

But this was pushing prejudice too far. They mocked him freely. How could
they be poisoned by meat and drink that Easterling must share with them?
And what end would thus be served? How would that give Easterling
possession of the Cinco Llagas?

"By swarming aboard her with a couple of score of his ruffians and taking
the men here unawares at a time when there would be none to lead them."

"What?" cried Hagthorpe. "Here in Tortuga? In this haven of the
buccaneers? Come, come, Peter! I must suppose there is some honour among
thieves."

"You may suppose it. I prefer to suppose nothing of the kind. I hope no
man will call me timorous; and yet I'd as soon be called that as rash."

The weight of opinion, however, was against him.

Every man of the rebels-convict crew was as eager for the enterprise when
it came to be disclosed as were the three leaders.

And so, despite himself, at eight bells on the morrow, Captain Blood went
over with Hagthorpe, Pitt, and Dyke, to dine aboard the _Bonaventure_.
Wolverstone was left behind in charge of the _Cinco Llagas_.

Easterling welcomed them boisterously, supported by his entire crew of
ruffians. Some eight score of them swarmed in the waist, on the
forecastle, and even on the poop, and all were armed. It was not
necessary that Mr. Blood should point out to his companions how odd it
was that all these fellows should have been summoned for the occasion
from the taverns ashore which they usually frequented. Their presence and
the leering mockery stamped upon their villainous countenances made
Blood's three followers ask themselves at last if Blood had not been
justified of his misgivings, and made them suspect with him that they had
walked into a trap.

It was too late to retreat. By the break of the poop, at the entrance of
the gangway leading to the cabin, stood Captain Easterling waiting to
conduct them.

Blood paused there a moment to look up into the pellucid sky above the
rigging about which the gulls were circling. He glanced round and up at
the grey fort perched on its rocky eminence, all bathed in ardent
sunshine. He looked towards the mole, forsaken now in the noontide heat,
and then across the crystalline sparkling waters towards the great red
_Cinco Llagas_ where she rode in majesty and strength. To his uneasy
companions it seemed as if he were wondering from what quarter help might
come if it were needed. Then, responding to Easterling's inviting
gesture, he passed into the gloom of the gangway, followed by the others.

Like the rest of the ship, which the first glance had revealed for
dishevelled and unclean, the cabin was in no way comparable with that of
the stately _Cinco Llagas_. It was so low that there was barely headroom
for tall men like Blood and Hagthorpe. It was ill-furnished, containing
little more than the cushioned lockers set about a deal table that was
stained and hacked. Also, for all that the horn windows astern were open,
the atmosphere of the place was heavy with an acrid blend of vile smells
in which spunyarn and bilge predominated.

The dinner proved to be much as the surroundings promised. The fresh pork
and fresh vegetables had been befouled in cooking, so that, in forcing
himself to eat, the fastidious stomach of Mr. Blood was almost turned.

The company provided by Easterling matched the rest. A half-dozen of his
fellows served him as a guard of honour. They had been elected, he
announced, by the men, so that they might agree the articles on behalf of
all. To these had been added a young Frenchman named Joinville, who was
secretary to Monsieur d'Ogeron and stood there to represent the Governor
and to lend, as it were, a legal sanction to what was to be done. If the
presence of this rather vacuous pale-eyed gentleman served to reassure
Mr. Blood a little, it served to intrigue him more.

Amongst them they crowded the narrow confines of the cabin, and
Easterling's fellows were so placed along the two sides of the table that
no two of the men from the _Cinco Llagas_ sat together. Blood and the
captain of the _Bonaventure_ immediately faced each other across the
board.

Business was left until dinner was over and the negro who waited on them
had withdrawn. Until then the men of the _Bonaventure_ kept things gay
with the heavily salted talk that passed for wit amongst them. At last,
the table cleared of all save bottles, and pens and ink being furnished
together with a sheet of paper each to Easterling and Blood, the captain
of the _Bonaventure_ opened the matter of the terms, and Peter Blood
heard himself for the first time addressed, as Captain. Easterling's
first words were to inform him shortly that the one-fifth share he had
demanded was by the men of the _Bonaventure_ accounted excessive.

Momentarily Peter Blood's hopes rose.

"Shall we deal in plain terms now, Captain? Do you mean that they'll not
be consenting to them?"

"What else should I mean?"

"In that case, Captain, it only remains for us to take our leave, in your
debt for this liberal entertainment and the richer for the improvement in
our acquaintance."

The elaborate courtesy of those grossly inaccurate terms did not seem to
touch the ponderous Easterling. His bold, craftily-set eyes stared
blankly from his great red face. He mopped the sweat from his brow before
replying.

"You'll take your leave?" There was a sneering undertone to his guttural
voice. "I'll trouble you in turn to be plain with me. I likes plain men
and lain words. D'ye mean that yell quit from the business?"

Two or three of his followers made a rumbling challenging echo to his
question.

Captain Blood--to give him now the title Easterling had bestowed upon
him--had the air of being intimidated. He hesitated, looking as if for
guidance to his companions, who returned him only uneasy glances.

"If," he said at length, "you find our terms unreasonable, I must assume
ye'll not be wishing to go further, and it only remains for us to
withdraw."

He spoke with a diffidence which amazed his own followers, who had never
known him other than bold in the face of any odds. It provoked a sneer
from Easterling, who found no more than he had been expecting from a
leech turned adventurer by circumstances.

"Faith, Doctor," said he, "ye were best to get back to your cupping and
bleeding, and leave ships to men as can handle them."

There was a lightning flash from those blue eyes, as vivid as it was
transient. The swarthy countenance never lost its faint air of
diffidence. Meanwhile Easterling had swung to the Governor's
representative, who sat on his immediate right.

"What d'ye think of that, Mossoo Joinville?"

The fair, flabby young Frenchman smiled amiably upon Blood's diffidence.
"Would it not be wise and proper, sir, to hear what terms Captain
Easterling now proposes?"

"I'll hear them. But--"

"Leave the buts till after, Doctor," Easterling cut in. "The terms we'll
grant are the terms I told ye. Your men share equally with mine."

"But that means no more than a tenth for the _Cinco Llagas_." And Blood,
too, now appealed to M. Joinville. "Do you, sir, account that fair? I
have explained to Captain Easterling that for what we lack in men we more
than make up in weight of metal, and our guns are handled by a gunner
such as I dare swear has no compeer in the Caribbean. A fellow named
Ogle--Ned Ogle. A remarkable gunner is Ned Ogle. The very devil of a
gunner, as you'd believe if you'd seen him pick those Spanish boats off
the water in Bridgetown Harbour."

He would have continued upon the subject of Ned Ogle had not Easterling
interrupted him. "Hell, man! What's a gunner more or less?"

"Oh, an ordinary gunner, maybe. But this is no ordinary gunner. An eye he
has. Gunners like Ogle are like poets: they are born, so they are. He'll
put you a shot between wind and water, will Ogle, as neatly as you might
pick your teeth."

Easterling banged the table. "What's all this to the point?"

"It may be something. And meanwhile it shows you the valuable ally ye're
acquiring." And he was off again on the subject of his gunner. "He was
trained in the King's Navy, was Ned Ogle, and a bad day for the King's
Navy it was when Ogle took to politics and followed the Protestant
champion to Sedgemoor."

"Leave that," growled one of the officers of the _Bonaventure_, a ruffian
who answered to the name of Chard. "Leave it, I say, or we'll waste the
day in talk."

Easterling confirmed this with a coarse oath. Captain Blood observed that
they did not mean to spare offensiveness, and his speculations on their
aims starting from that took a fresh turn.

Joinville intervened. "Could you not compromise with Captain Blood? After
all, there is some reason on his side. He might reasonably claim to put a
hundred men aboard his ship, and in that case he would naturally take a
heavier share."

"In that case he might be worth it," was the truculent answer.

"I am worth it as it is," Blood insisted.

"Ah, bah!" he was answered, with a flick of finger and thumb under his
very nose.

He began to suspect that Easterling sought to entice him into an act of
rashness, in reply to which he and his followers would probably be
butchered where they sat, and M. Joinville would afterwards be
constrained to bear witness to the Governor that the provocation had
proceeded from the guests. He perceived at last the probable reason for
the Frenchman's presence.

But at the moment Joinville was remonstrating. "Come, come, Captain
Easterling! Thus you will never reach agreement. Captain Blood's ship is
of advantage to you, and we have to pay for what is advantageous. Could
you not offer him an eighth or even a seventh share?"

Easterling silenced the growl of disagreement from Chard, and became
almost suave. "What would Captain Blood say to that?"

Captain Blood considered for a long moment. Then he shrugged. "I say what
you know I must say: that I can say nothing until I have taken the wishes
of my followers. We'll resume the discussion when I have done so--another
day."

"Oh, s'death!" roared Easterling. "Do you play with us? Haven't you
brought your officers with you, and ain't they empowered to speak for
your men same as mine? Whatever we settles here, my men abides by. That's
the custom of the Brethren of the Coast. And I expect the same from you.
And I've the right to expect it, as you can tell him, Mossoo Joinville."

The Frenchman nodded gloomily, and Easterling roared on.

"We are not children, by God! And we're not here to play, but to agree
terms. And, by God, we'll agree them before you leave."

"Or not, as the case may be," said Blood quietly. It was to be remarked
that he had lost his diffidence by now.

"Or not? What the devil do you mean with your `or not'?" Easterling came
to his feet in a vehemence that Peter Blood believed assumed, as the
proper note at this stage of the comedy he was playing.

"I mean or not, quite simply." He accounted that the time had come to
compel the buccaneers to show their hand. "If we fail to agree terms,
why, that's the end of the matter."

"Oho! The end of the matter, eh? Stab me, but it may prove the beginning
of it."

Blood smiled up into his face, and cool as ice he commented: "That's what
I was supposing. But the beginning of what, if you please, Captain
Easterling?"

"Indeed, indeed, Captain!" cried Joinville. "What can you mean?"

"Mean?" Captain Easterling glared at the Frenchman. He appeared to be
extremely angry. "Mean?" he repeated. "Look you, Mossoo, this fellow
here, this Blood, this doctor, this escaped convict, made believe that he
would enter into articles with us so as to get from me the secret of
Morgan's treasure. Now that he's got it, he makes difficulties about the
articles. He no longer wants to join us, it seems. He proposes to
withdraw. It'll be plain to you why he proposes to withdraw, Mossoo
Joinville; just as it'll be plain to you why I can't permit it."

"Why, here's paltry invention!" sneered Blood. "What do I know of his
secret beyond his tale of a treasure buried somewhere?"

"Not somewhere. You know where. For I've been fool enough to tell you."

Blood actually laughed, and by his laughter scared his companions, to
whom the danger of their situation was now clear enough.

"Somewhere on the Isthmus of Darien! There's precision, on my soul! With
that information I can go straight to the spot and set my hand on it! As
for the rest, M. Joinville, I invite you to observe it's not myself is
making difficulties about the articles. On the one-fifth share which I
asked from the outset, I might have been prepared to join Captain
Easterling. But now that I'm confirmed in all that I suspected of him and
more, why, I wouldn't join him for a half share in this treasure,
supposing it to exist at all, which I do not."

That brought every man of the _Bonaventure_ to his feet as if it had been
a signal, and they were clamorous too, until Easterling waved them into
silence. Upon that silence cut the tenor voice of M. Joinville.

"You are a singularly rash man, Captain Blood."

"Maybe, maybe," says Blood, light and airily. "Time will show. The last
word's not yet been said."

"Then here's to say it," quoth Easterling, quietly sinister on a sudden.
"I was about to warn you that ye'll not be allowed to leave this ship
with the information ye possess until the articles is signed. But since
ye so clearly show your intentions, why, things have gone beyond
warnings."

From his seat at the table, which he retained, Captain Blood looked up at
the sinister bulk of the captain of the _Bonaventure_, and the three men
from the _Cinco Llagas_ observed with mingled amaze-men and dismay that
he was smiling. At first so unusually diffident and timid; now so
deliberately and recklessly provoking. He was beyond understanding. It
was Hagthorpe who spoke for them.

"What do you mean, Captain? What do you intend by us?"

"Why, to clap you into irons, and stow you under hatches, where you can
do no harm."

"My God, sir--" Hagthorpe was beginning, when Captain Blood's crisp
pleasant voice cut across his speech.

"And you, M. Joinville, will permit this without protest?"

Joinville spread his hands, thrust out a nether lip, and shrugged. "You
have brought it on yourself, Captain Blood."

"So that is what you are here to report to Monsieur d'Ogeron! Well,
well!" He laughed with a touch of bitterness.

And then, abruptly, on the noontide stillness outside came the thunder of
a gun to shake them all. Followed the screaming of startled gulls, a
pause in which men eyed one another, and then, a shade uneasily, came the
question from Easterling, addressed to no one in particular:

"What the devil's that?"

It was Blood who answered him pleasantly. "Now don't let it alarm ye,
Captain darling. It's just a salute fired in your honour by Ogle, the
gunner--the highly skilful gunner--of the _Cinco Llagas_. Have I told you
about him yet?" His eyes embraced the company in the question.

"A salute?" quoth Easterling. "By Hell, what do you mean? A salute?"

"Why, just a courtesy, as a reminder to us and a warning to you. It's
reminder to us that we've taken up an hour of your time, and that we must
put no further strain upon your hospitality." He got to his feet, and
stood, easy and elegant in his Spanish suit of black and silver. "It's a
very good day we'll be wishing you, Captain."

Inflamed of countenance, Easterling plucked a pistol from his belt. "You
play-acting buffoon! Ye don't leave this ship!"

But Captain Blood continued to smile. "Fith, that will be very bad for
the ship, and for all aboard her, including this ingenuous Monsieur
Joinville, who really believes you'll pay him the promised share of your
phantom treasure for bearing false witness against me, so as to justify
you in the eyes of the Governor for seizing the _Cinco Llagas_. Ye see, I
am under no delusions concerning you, my dear Captain. For a rogue ye're
a thought too transparent."

Easterling loosed a volley of minatory obscenity, waving his pistol. He
was restrained from using it only by an indefinable uneasiness aroused by
his guest's bantering manner.

"We are wasting time," Blood interrupted him, "and the moments, believe
me, are growing singularly precious. You'd best know where you stand. My
orders to Ogle were that if within ten minutes of his firing that salute
I and my friends here were not over the side of the _Bonaventure_, he was
to put a round shot into your forecastle along the water-line, and as
many more after that as may be necessary to sink you by the head. I do
not think that many will be necessary. Ogle is a singularly skilful
marksman. He served with distinction as a gunner in the King's Navy. I
think I've told you about him."

It was Joinville who broke the moment's silence that followed. "God of my
life!" he bleated, bounding to his feet. "Let me out of this!"

"Oh, stow your squealing, you French rat!" snarled the infuriated
Easterling. Then he turned his fury upon Blood, balancing the pistol
ominously. "You sneaking leech! You college offal! You'd ha' done better
to ha' stuck to your cupping and bleedings, as I told you."

His murderous intention was plain. But Blood was too swift for him.
Before any could so much as guess his purpose, he had snatched up by its
neck the flagon of Canary that stood before him and crashed it across
Captain Easterling's left temple.

As the captain of the _Bonaventure_ reeled back against the cabin
bulkhead, Peter Blood bowed slightly to him.

"I regret," said he, "that I have no cup; but, as you see, I can practise
phlebotomy with a bottle."

Easterling sagged down in a limp unconscious mass at the foot of the
bulkhead. The spectacle stirred his officers. There was a movement
towards Captain Blood, and a din of raucous voices, and someone laid
hands upon him. But above the uproar rang his vibrant voice.

"Be warned! The moments are speeding. The ten minutes have all but fled,
and either I and my friends depart, or we all sink together in this
bottom."

"In God's name, bethink you of it!" cried Joinville, and started for the
door.

A buccaneer who did bethink him of it and who was of a practical turn of
mind, seized him about the body and flung him back.

"You there;" he shouted to Captain Blood. "You and your men go first. And
bestir yourselves! We've no mind to drown like rats."

They went as they were bidden, curses pursuing them and threats of a
reckoning to follow with Captain Easterling.

Either the ruffians aswarm on the deck above were not in the secret of
Easterling's intentions, or else a voice of authority forbade them to
hinder the departure of Captain Blood and his companions.

In the cock-boat, midway between the two vessels, Hagthorpe found his
voice at last.

"On my soul's salvation, Peter, there was a moment when I thought our
sands were run."

"Ay, ay," said Pitt with fervour. "And even as it was they might have
been." He swung to Peter Blood, where he sat in the sternsheets. "Suppose
that for one reason or another we had not got out in those ten minutes,
and Ogle had opened fire in earnest? What then?"

"Ah!" said Blood. "Our real danger lay in that he wasn't like to do it."

"But if you so ordered him?"

"Nay, that's just what I forgot to do. All I told him was to loose a
blank shot when we had been gone an hour. I thought that however things
went it might prove useful. And on my soul, I believe it did. Lord!" He
took off his hat, and mopped his brow under the staring eyes of his
companions.

"I wonder now if it's the heat that's making me sweat like this."



II - THE TREASURE SHIP

It was a saying of Captain Blood's that the worth of a man manifests
itself not so much in the ability to plan great undertakings as in the
vision which perceives opportunity and the address which knows how to
seize it.

He had certainly displayed these qualities in possessing himself of that
fine Spanish ship the _Cinco Llagas_, and he had displayed them again in
foiling the designs of that rascally buccaneer Captain Easterling to rob
him of that noble vessel.

Meanwhile his own and his vessel's near escape made it clear to all who
followed him that there was little safety for them in Tortuga waters, and
little trust to be placed in buccaneers. At a general council held that
same afternoon in the ship's waist Blood propounded the simple philosophy
that when a man is attacked he must either fight or run.

"And since we are in no case to fight when attacked, as no doubt we shall
be, it but remains to play the coward's part if only so that we may
survive to prove ourselves brave men some other day."

They agreed with him. But whilst the decision to run was taken, it was
left to be determined later whither they should run. At the moment all
that mattered was to get away from Tortuga and the further probable
attentions of Captain Easterling.

Thus it fell out that in the dead of the following night, which if clear
was moonless, the great frigate which lately had been the pride of the
Cadiz shipyards weighed anchor as quietly as such an operation might be
performed. With canvas spread to the faint favouring breeze from the
shore, and with the ebb tide to help the manoeuvre, the _Cinco Llagas_
stood out to sea. If groan of windlass, rattle of chain, and creak of
blocks had betrayed the action to Easterling aboard the _Bonaventure_, a
cable's length away, it was not in Easterling's power to thwart Blood's
intention.

At least three-quarters of his rascally crew were in the taverns ashore,
and Easterling was not disposed to attempt boarding operations with the
remnant of his men, even though that remnant outnumbered by two to one
the hands of the _Cinco Llagas_. Moreover, even had his full complement
of two hundred been aboard, Easterling would still have offered no
opposition to that departure. Whilst in Tortuga waters he might have
attempted to get possession of the _Cinco Llagas_ quietly and by
strategy, not even his recklessness could consider seizing her violently
by force in such a sanctuary, especially as the French Governor, Monsieur
d'Ogeron, appeared to be friendly disposed towards Blood and his fellow
fugitives.

Out on the open sea it would be another matter; and the tale he would
afterwards tell of the manner in which the _Cinco Llagas_ should have
come into his possession would be such as no one in Cayona would be in a
position to contradict.

So Captain Easterling suffered Peter Blood to depart unhindered, and was
well content to let him go. Nor did he display any undue and betraying
haste to follow. He made his preparations with leisureliness, and did not
weigh anchor until the afternoon of the morrow. He trusted his wits to
give him the direction Blood must take and depended upon the greater
speed of the _Bonaventure_ to overhaul him before he should have gone far
enough for safety. His reasoning was shrewd enough. Since he knew that
the _Cinco Llagas_ was not victualled for a long voyage, there could be
no question yet of any direct attempt to sail for Europe.

First she must be equipped, and since to equip her Blood dared approach
no English or Spanish settlement, it followed that he must steer for one
of the neutral Dutch colonies, and there take his only remaining chance.
Nor was Blood likely without experienced pilotage to venture among the
dangerous reefs of the Bahamas. It was therefore an easy inference that
his destination would be the Leeward Islands with intent to put in at San
Martin, Saba, or Santa Eustacia. Confident, then, of overtaking him
before he could make the nearest of those Dutch settlements, two hundred
leagues away, the pursuing _Bonaventure_ steered an easterly course along
the northern shores of Hispaniola.

Things, however, were not destined to be so simple as Easterling
conjectured. The wind, at first favourable, veered towards evening to the
east, and increased throughout the night in vehemence; so that by
dawn--an angry dawn with skies ominously flushed--the _Bonaventure_ had
not merely made no progress, but had actually drifted some miles out of
her course. Then the wind shifted to the south towards noon, and it came
on to blow harder than ever. It blew up a storm from the Caribbean, and
for twenty-four hours the _Bonaventure_ rode it out with bare yards and
hatches battened against the pounding seas that broke athwart her and
tossed her like a cork from trough to crest.

It was fortunate that the burly Easterling was not only a stout fighter
but also an able seaman. Under his skilled handling the _Bonaventure_
came through the ordeal unscathed, to resume the chase when at last the
storm had passed and the wind had settled to a steady breeze from the
south-west. With crowded canvas the sloop now went scudding through the
heaving seas which the storm had left.

Easterling heartened his followers with the reminder that the hurricane
which had delayed them must no less have delayed the _Cinco Llagas_;
that, indeed, considering the lubbers who handled the erstwhile Spanish
frigate, it was likely that the storm had made things easier for the
_Bonaventure_.

What exactly the storm had done for them they were to discover on the
following morning, when off Cape Engaņo they sighted a galleon which at
first, in the distance, they supposed to be their quarry, but which very
soon they perceived to be some other vessel. That she was Spanish was
advertised not only by the towering build, but by the banner of Castile
which she flew beneath the Crucifix at the head of her mainmast. On the
yards of this mainmast all canvas was close-reefed, and under the spread
of only foresail mizzen and spirit she was labouring clumsily towards the
Mona Passage with the wind on her larboard quarter.

The sight of her in her partially maimed condition stirred Easterling
like a hound at sight of a deer. For the moment the quest of the _Cinco
Llagas_ was forgotten. Here was more immediate prey, and of a kind to be
easily reduced.

At the poop rail he bawled his orders rapidly. In obedience the decks
were cleared with feverish speed and the nettings spread from stem to
stern to catch any spars that might be shot down in the approaching
action. Chard, Easterling's lieutenant, a short, powerful man, who was a
dullard in all things save the handling Of a ship and the wielding of a
cutlass, took the helm. The gunners at their stations cleared the leaden
aprons from the touchholes and swung their glowing matches, ready for the
word of command. For however disorderly and unruly Easterling's crew
might be at ordinary times, it knew the need for discipline when battle
was to be joined.

Watchful on the poop, the buccaneer captain surveyed the Spaniard upon
which he was rapidly bearing down, and observed with scorn the scurry of
preparation on her decks. His practised eye read her immediate past
history at a glance, and his harsh guttural voice announced what he read
to Chard, who stood below him at the whipstaff.

"She would be homing for Spain when the hurricane caught her. She's
sprung her mainmast and likely suffered other damage besides, and she's
beating back for San Domingo for repairs." Easterling laughed in his
throat and stroked his dense black beard. The dark, bold eyes in his
great red face glinted wickedly. "Give me a homing Spaniard, Chard.
There'll be treasure aboard that hulk. By God, we're in luck at last."

He was indeed. It had long been his grievance, and the true reason of his
coveting the _Cinco Llagas_, that his sloop the _Bonaventure_ was unequal
to tackling the real prizes of the Caribbean. And he would never have
dared to attack this heavily-armed galleon but that in her crippled
condition she was unable to manoeuvre so as to bring her guns to bear
upon his flanks.

She, gave him now a broadside from her starboard quarter, and by doing so
sealed her own doom. The _Bonaventure_, coming head on, presented little
target, and save for a round shot in her forecastle took no damage.
Easterling answered the fire with the chasers on his prow, aiming high,
and sweeping the Spaniard's decks. Then, nimbly avoiding her clumsy
attempt to go about and change their relative positions, the
_Bonaventure_ was alongside on the quarter of her empty guns. There was a
rattling, thudding jar, a creak of entangled rigging, a crack and clatter
of broken spars and the thud of grapnels rending into the Spaniard's
timbers to bind her fast, mid then, tight-locked, the two vessels went
drifting down wind, whilst the buccaneers, led by the colossal
Easterling, and after discharging a volley of musketry, swarmed like ants
over the Spaniard's bulwarks. Two hundred of them there were, fierce
fellows in loose leathern breeches, some with shirts as well, but the
majority naked to the waist, and by that brown muscular nakedness the
more terrific of aspect.

To receive them stood a bare fifty Spaniards in corselet and morion,
drawn up in the galleon's waist as if upon parade, with muskets calmly
levelled and a hawk-faced officer in a plumed hat commanding them.

The officer spoke an order, and a volley from the muskets momentarily
checked the assault. Then, like an engulfing wave, the buccaneer mob went
over the Spanish soldiers, and the ship, the _Santa Barbara_, was taken.

There was not perhaps upon the seas at the time a more cruel, ruthless
man than Easterling and those who sailed with him adopted, as men will,
their captain's standard of ferocity. Brutally they exterminated the
Spanish soldiery, heaving the bodies overboard, and as brutally they
dealt with those manning the guns on the main deck below, although these
unfortunates readily surrendered in the vain hope of being allowed to
keep their lives.

Within ten minutes of the invasion of the _Santa Barbara_ there remained
alive upon her of her original crew only the captain, Don Ildefonso de
Paiva, whom Easterling had stunned with the butt of a pistol, the
navigating officer, and four deck-hands, who had been aloft at the
moment of boarding. These six Easterling spared for the present because
he accounted that they might prove useful.

Whilst his men were busy in the shrouds about the urgent business of
disentangling and where necessary repairing, the buccaneer captain began
upon the person of Don Ildefonso the investigation of his capture.

The Spaniard, sickly and pallid and with a lump on his brow where the
pistol-butt had smitten him, sat on a locker in the handsome roomy cabin,
with pinioned wrists, but striving nevertheless to preserve the haughty
demeanour proper to a gentleman of Castile in the presence of an impudent
sea-robber. Thus until Easterling, towering over him, savagely threatened
to loosen his tongue by the artless persuasions of torture. Then Don
Ildefonso, realizing the futility of resistance, curtly answered the
pirate's questions. From these answers and his subsequent investigations,
Easterling discovered his capture to exceed every hope he could have
formed.

There had fallen into his hands--which of late had known so little
luck--one of those prizes which had been the dream of every sea-rover
since the days of Francis Drake. The _Santa Barbara_ was a treasure-ship
from Porto Bello, laden with gold and silver which had been conveyed
across the Isthmus from Panama. She had put forth under the escort of
three strong ships of war, with intent to call at San Domingo to
revictual before crossing to Spain. But in the recent storm which had
swept the Caribbean she had been separated from her consorts, and with
damaged mainmast had been driven through the Mona Passage by this gale.
She had been beating hack for San Domingo in the hope of rejoining there
her escort or else awaiting there another fleet for Spain.

The treasure in her hold was computed by Easterling when his gleaming
eyes came to consider those ingots at between two and three hundred
thousand pieces of eight. It was a prize such as does not come the way of
a pirate twice in his career, and it meant fortune for himself and those
who sailed with him.

Now the possession of fortune is inevitably attended by anxiety, and
Easterling's besetting anxiety at the moment was to convey his prize with
all possible speed to the security of Tortuga.

From his own sloop he took two score men to form a prize crew for the
Spaniard, and himself remained aboard her because he could not suffer
himself to be parted from the treasure. Then, with damage hurriedly
repaired, the two ships went about, and started upon their voyage.
Progress was slow, the wind being none too favourable and the _Santa
Barbara_ none too manageable, and it was past noon before they once more
had Cape Raphael abeam. Easterling was uneasy in this near proximity to
Hispaniola, and was for taking a wide sweep that would carry them well
out to sea, when from the crow's nest of the _Santa Barbara_ came a hail,
and a moment later the object first espied by the look-out was visible to
them all.

There, rounding Cape Raphael, not two miles away, and steering almost to
meet them, came a great red ship under full sail. Easterling's telescope
confirmed at once what the naked eye had led him incredulously to
suspect. This vessel was the _Cinco Llagas_, the original object of his
pursuit, which in his haste he must have outsailed.

The truth was that, overtaken by the storm as they approached Samana,
Jeremy Pitt, who navigated the _Cinco Llagas_, had run for the shelter of
Samana Bay, and under the lee of a headland had remained snug and
unperceived, to come forth again when the gale had spent itself.

Easterling, caring little how the thing had happened, perceived in this
sudden and unexpected appearance of the _Cinco Llagas_ a sign that
Fortune, hitherto so niggardly, was disposed now to overwhelm him with
her favours. Let him convey himself and the _Santa Barbara's_ treasure
aboard that stout red ship, and in strength he could make good speed
home.

Against a vessel so heavily armed and so undermanned as the _Cinco
Llagas_ there could be no question of any but boarding tactics, and it
did not seem to Captain Easterling that this should offer much difficulty
to the swifter and more easily handled _Bonaventure_, commanded by a man
experienced in seamanship and opposed by a lubberly follower who was by
trade a surgeon.

So Easterling signalled Chard to be about the easy business, and Chard,
eager enough to square accounts with the man who once already had done
them the injury of slipping like water through their fingers, put the
helm over and ordered his men to their stations.

Captain Blood, summoned from the cabin by Pitt, mounted the poop, and
telescope in hand, surveyed t he activities aboard his old friend the
_Bonaventure_. He remained in no doubt of their significance. He might be
a surgeon, but hardly a lubberly one, as Chard so rashly judged him. His
service under de Ruyter in those earlier adventurous days when medicine
was neglected by him had taught him more of fighting tactics than
Easterling had ever known. He was not perturbed. He would show these
pirates how he had profited by the lessons learnt under that great
admiral.

Just as for the _Bonaventure_ it was essential to employ boarding
tactics, so for the _Cinco Llagas_ it was vital to depend on gunfire. For
with no more than twenty men in all, she could not face the odds of
almost ten to one, as Blood computed them, of a hand-to-hand engagement.
So now he ordered Pitt to put down the helm, and, keeping as close to the
wind as possible, to steer a course that would bring them on to the
_Bonaventure's_ quarter. To the main deck below he ordered Ogle, that
sometime gunner of the King's Navy, taking for his gun crew all but six
of the hands who would be required for work above.

Chard perceived at once the aim of the manoeuvre, and swore through his
teeth, for Blood had the weather gauge of him. He was further handicapped
by the fact that since the _Cinco Llagas_ was to be captured for their
own purposes it must be no part of his work to cripple her by gunfire
before attempting to board. Moreover, he perceived the risk to himself of
the attempt, resulting from the longer range and heavier calibre of the
guns of the _Cinco Llagas_, if she were resolutely handled. And there
appeared to be no lack of resolution about her present master.

Meanwhile the distance between the ships was rapidly lessening, and Chard
realized that unless he acted quickly he would be within range with his
flank exposed. Unable to bring his ship any closer to the wind, he went
about on a south-easterly course with intent to circle widely and so get
to windward to the _Cinco Llagas_.

Easterling, watching the manoeuvre from the deck of the _Santa Barbara_,
and not quite understanding its purpose, cursed Chard for a fool. He
cursed him the more virulently when he saw the _Cinco Llagas_ veer
suddenly to larboard and follow as if giving chase. Chard, however,
welcomed this, and taking in sail allowed the other to draw closer. Then
with all canvas spread once more, the _Bonaventure_ was off with the wind
on her quarter to attempt her circling movement.

Blood understood, and took in sail in his turn, standing so that as the
_Bonaventure_ turned north she must offer him her flank within range of
his heavy guns. Hence Chard, to avoid this, must put up his helm and run
south once more.

Easterling watched the two ships sailing away from him in a succession of
such manoeuvres for position, and, purple with rage, demanded of Heaven
and Hell whether he could believe his eyes, which told him only Chard was
running away from the lubberly leech. Chard, however, was far from any
such intention. With masterly patience and self-control he awaited his
chance to run in and grapple. And with equal patience and doggedness
Blood saw to it that he should be given no such chance.

In the end it became a question of who should commit the first blunder,
and it was Chard who committed it. In his almost excessive anxiety to
avoid coming broadside on with the _Cinco Llagas_, he forgot the chasers
on her beak-head, and at last in playing for position allowed her to come
too near. He realized his blunder when those two guns roared suddenly
behind him and the shot went tearing through his shrouds. It angered him,
and in his anger he replied with his stern chasers; but their inferior
calibre left their fire ineffective. Then, utterly enraged, he swung the
_Bonaventure_ about, so as to put a broadside athwart the hawse of the
other, and by crippling her sailing powers lay her at the mercy of his
boarders.

The heavy ground swell, however, combined with the length of the range
utterly to defeat his object, and his broadside thundered forth in
impotence to leave a cloud of smoke between himself and the _Cinco
Llagas_. Instantly Blood swung broadside on, and emptied his twenty
larboard guns into that smoke-cloud, hoping to attain the _Bonaventure's_
exposed flank beyond. The attempt was equally unsuccessful, but it served
to show Chard the mettle of the man he was engaging--a man with whom it
was not safe to take such chances. Nevertheless, one more chance he took,
and went briskly about, so as to charge through the billowing smoke, and
so bear down upon the other ship before she could suspect the design. The
manoeuvre, however, was too protracted for success. By the time the
_Bonaventure_ was upon her fresh course the smoke had dispersed
sufficiently to betray her tactics to Blood, and the _Cinco Llagas_,
lying well over to larboard, was ripping through the water at twice the
speed of the _Bonaventure_, now ill-served by the wind.

Again Chard put the helm over and raced to intercept the other and to get
to windward of her. But Blood, now a mile away, and with a safety margin
of time, went, about and returned so as to bring his star board guns to
bear at the proper moment. To elude this Chard once more headed south and
presented no more than his counter as a target.

In this manner the two vessels worked gradually away until the _Santa
Barbara_, with the raging, blaspheming Easterling aboard, was no more
than a speck on the northern horizon; and still they were as far as ever
from joining battle.

Chard cursed the wind which favoured Captain Blood, and cursed Captain
Blood who knew so well how to take and maintain the advantage of his
position. The lubberly surgeon appeared possessed of perfect
understanding of the situation and uncannily ready to meet each move of
his opponent. Occasional shots continued to be exchanged by the chasers
of each vessel, each aiming high so as to damage the other's sailing
powers, yet, at the long range separating them, without success.

Peter Blood at the poop rail, in a fine back-and-breast and steel cap of
black damascened steel, which had been the property of the original
Spanish commander of the _Cinco Llagas_, was growing weary and anxious.
To Hagthorpe similarly armed beside him, to Wolverstone whom no armour
aboard would fit, and to Pitt at the whipstaff, immediately below, he
confessed it in the tone of his question:

"How long can this ducking and dodging continue? And however long it
continues what end can it have but one? Sooner or later the wind will
drop or veer, or else it's ourselves will drop from sheer weariness. When
that happens we'll be at that scoundrel's mercy."

"There's always the unexpected," said young Pitt.

"Why, so there is, and I thank you for reminding me of it, Jerry. Let's
put our hopes in it, for all that I can't see whence it's to come."

It was coming at that moment, and coming quickly, although Blood was the
only one of them who recognized it when he saw it. They were standing in
towards the land at the end of a long westerly run, when round the point
of Espada, less than a mile away, a towering heavily-armed ship came
sailing as close to the wind as she dared, her ports open and the mouths
of a score of guns gaping along her larboard flank, the banner of Castile
flapping aloft in the breeze.

At sight of this fresh enemy of another sort Wolverstone loosed an oath
that sounded like a groan. "And that's the end of us!" he cried.

"I'm by no means sure, now, that it may not be the beginning," Blood
answered him, with something that sounded like laughter in his voice,
which when last heard had been jaded and dispirited. And his orders,
flowing fast, showed clearly what was in his mind. "Run me the flag of
Spain aloft, and bid Ogle empty his chasers at the _Bonaventure_ as we go
about."

As Pitt put the helm over, and with straining cordage and creaking blocks
the _Cinco Llagas_ swung slowly round, the gold and scarlet banner of
Castile broke bravely from her maintruck. An instant later the two guns
on her forecastle thundered forth, ineffectually in one way, but very
effectually in another. Their fire conveyed very plainly to the Spanish
newcomer that here he beheld a compatriot ship in pursuit of an English
rover.

Explanations no doubt must follow, especially if upon the discovery of
the identity of the _Cinco Llagas_ the Spaniards should happen to be
already acquainted with her recent history. But that could not come until
they had disposed of the _Bonaventure_, and Blood was more than content
to let the future take care of itself.

Meanwhile the Spanish ship, a guarda-costa from San Domingo, which whilst
on patrol had been attracted beyond the Point of Espada by the sound of
gunfire out at sea, behaved precisely as was to be expected. Even without
the flag now floating at her masthead, the Spanish origin of the _Cinco
Llagas_ was plain to read in the lines of her; that she was engaged with
this equally obvious English sloop was no less plain. The guarda-costa
went into the fight without a moment's hesitation, and loosed a broadside
at the _Bonaventure_ as she was in the act of going about to escape this
sudden and unforeseen peril.

Chard raged like a madman as the sloop shuddered under blows at stem and
stern and her shattered bowsprit hung in a tangle of cordage athwart her
bows. In his frenzy he ordered the fire to be returned, and did some
damage to the guarda-costa, but not of a kind to impair her mobility. The
Spaniard, warming to the battle, went about so as to pound the sloop with
her starboard guns, and Chard, having lost his head by now, swung round
also so as to return or even anticipate that fire.

Not until he had done so did it occur to him that with empty guns he was
helplessly vulnerable to an onslaught from the _Cinco Llagas_. For Blood,
too, espying the opportunity whilst yet it was shaping, had gone about,
drawn level, and hurled at him the contents of his heavy artillery. That
broadside at comparatively short range swept his deck, shattered the
windows of the coach, and one well-placed shot opened a wound in the bows
of the _Bonaventure_ almost on the waterline, through which the sea
rushed into the hold at every roll of the crippled vessel.

Chard realized that he was doomed, and his bitterness was deepened by
perception of the misapprehension at the root of his destruction. He saw
the Spanish flag at the masthead of the _Cinco Llagas_, and grinned in
livid malice.

On a last inspiration, he struck his colours in token of surrender. It
was his forlorn hope that the guardacosta, accepting this, and ignorant
of his strength in men, would rush in to grapple him, in which case he
would turn the tables on the Spaniards and, possessing himself of the
guarda-costa, might yet come out of the adventure with safety and credit.

But the vigilant Captain Blood guessed, if not the intention, at least
the possibility, as well as the alternative possibility of explanations
dangerous to himself from the captured Chard to the Spanish commander. To
provide against either danger, he sent for Ogle, and under his
instructions that skilful gunner crashed a thirty-two-pound shot into the
_Bonaventure's_ waterline amidships, so as to supplement the leakage
already occurring forward.

The captain of the guarda-costa may have wondered why his compatriot
should continue to fire upon a ship that had struck her colours, but the
circumstance would hardly seem to him suspicious, although it might be
vexatious, for its consequence appeared to be the inevitable destruction
of a vessel that might yet have been turned to account.

As for Chard, he had no time for speculations of any kind. The
_Bonaventure_ was now making water so fast that his only hope of saving
the lives of himself and his men lay in attempting to run her aground
before she sank. So he headed her for, the shoals at the foot of the
Point of Espada, thanking God that she might now run before the wind,
although at an ominously diminishing speed, despite the fact that the
buccaneers heaved their cannon overboard to lighten her as they went. She
grounded at last in the shallows, with the seas breaking over her stern
and forecastles, which alone remained above water. These and the shrouds
were now black with the men who had climbed to safety. The guardacosta
stood off with idly flapping sails, waiting, her captain wondering to
behold the _Cinco Llagas_ half a mile away already heading northwards.

Aboard her presently Captain Blood was inquiring of Pitt if a knowledge
of Spanish signals was included in his lore of the sea, and if so would
he read the signals that the guarda-costa was flying. The young
ship-master confessed that it was not, and expressed the opinion that as
a consequence they had but escaped the frying-pan to fall into the fire.

"Now here's a lack of faith in Madame Fortune," said Blood. "We'll just
be dipping our flag in salute to them, to imply that we've business
elsewhere, and be off to attend to it. We look like honest Spaniards.
Even through a telescope, in this Spanish armour, Hagthorpe and I must
look like a pair of dons. Let's go and see how it's faring with the
ingenious Easterling. I'm thinking the time has come to improve our
acquaintance with him."

The guarda-costa, if surprised at the unceremonious departure of the
vessel she had assisted in the destruction of that pirate sloop, cannot
have suspected her bona-fides. Either taking it for granted that she had
business elsewhere, or else because too intent upon making prisoners of
the crew of the _Bonaventure_, she made no attempt to follow.

And so it fell out that some two hours later Captain Easterling, waiting
off the coast between Cape Raphael and Cape Engaņo, beheld to his
stupefaction and horror the swift approach of Peter Blood's red ship. He
had listened attentively and in some uneasiness to the distant cannonade,
but he had assumed its cessation to that the _Cinco Llagas_ was taken.
The sight now of that frigate, sailing briskly, jauntily, and undamaged,
defied belief. What had happened to Chard? There was no sign of him upon
the sea. Could he have blundered so badly as to have allowed. Captain
Blood to sink him?

Speculation on this point was presently quenched by speculation of an
infinitely graver character. What might be this damned doctor-convict's
present intention? If Easterling had been in case to board him he would
have known no apprehension, for even his prize crew on the _Santa
Barbara_ outnumbered Blood's men by more than two to one. But the
crippled _Santa Barbara_ could never be laid board and board with the
_Cinco Llagas_ unless Blood desired it, and if Wood meant mischief as a
result of what had happened with the _Bonaventure_ the _Santa Barbara_
must lie at the mercy of his guns.

The reflexion, vexatious enough in itself, was maddening to Easterling
when he considered what he carried under hatches. Fortune, it now began
to seem, had not favoured him at all. She had merely mocked him by
allowing him to grasp something which he could not hold.

But this was by no means the end of his vexation. For now, as if the
circumstances in themselves had not been enough to enrage a man, his
prize crew turned almost mutinous. Led by a scoundrel named Gunning, a
man almost as massive and ruthless as Easterling himself, they furiously
blamed their captain and his excessive and improvident greed for the
peril in which they found themselves--a peril of death or capture
embittered by the thought of the wealth they held. With such a prize in
his hands, Easterling should have taken no risks. He should have kept the
_Bonaventure_ at hand for protection, and paid no heed to the empty hulk
of the _Cinco Llagas_. This they told him in terms of fiercest
vituperation, whose very justice left him without answer other than
insults, which he liberally supplied.

Whilst they wrangled, the _Cinco Llagas_ drew nearer, and now
Easterling's quartermaster called his attention to the signals she was
flying. These demanded the immediate presence aboard her of the commander
of the _Santa Barbara_.

Easterling was taken with panic. The high colour receded from his cheeks,
his heavy lips grew purple. He vowed that he would see Doctor Blood in
Hell before he went.

His men assured him that they would see him in Hell, and shortly, if he
did not go.

Gunning reminded him that Blood could not possibly know what the _Santa
Barbara_ carried, and that therefore it should be possible to cozen him
into allowing her to go her ways without further molestation.

A gun thundered from the _Cinco Llagas_, to send a warning shot across
the bows of the _Santa Barbara_. That was enough. Gunning thrust the
quartermaster aside, and himself seized the helm and put it over, so that
the ship lay hove to, as a first intimation of compliance. After that the
buccaneers launched the cock-boat and a half-dozen of them swarmed down
to man her, whilst, almost at pistol-point, Gunning compelled Captain
Easterling to follow them.

When presently he climbed into the waist of the _Cinco Llagas_ where she
lay hove to, a cable's length away across the sunlit waters, there was
hell in his eyes and terror in his soul. Straight and tall, in Spanish
corselet and headpiece, the despised doctor stood forward to receive him.
Behind him stood Hagthorpe and a half-score of his followers. He seemed
to smile.

"At last, Captain, ye stand where ye have so long hoped to stand: on the
deck of the _Cinco Llagas_."

Easterling grunted ragefully for only answer to that raillery. His great
hands twitched as if he would have them at his Irish mocker's throat.
Captain Blood continued to address him.

"It's an ill thing, Captain, to attempt to grasp more than you can
comfortably hold. Ye'll not be the first to find himself empty-handed as
a consequence. That was a fine fast-sailing sloop of yours, the
_Bonaventure_. Ye should have been content. It's a pity that she'll sail
no more; for she's sunk, or will be entirely at high water." Abruptly he
asked: '"How many hands are with you?" and he had to repeat the question
before he was sullenly answered that forty men remained aboard the _Santa
Barbara_.

"What boats does she carry?"

"Three with the cock-boat."

"That should be enough to accommodate your following. You'll order them
into those boats at once if you value their lives, for in fifteen minutes
from now I shall open fire on the ship and sink her. This because I can
spare no men for a prize crew, nor can I leave her afloat to be
repossessed by you and turned to further mischief."

Easterling began a furious protest that was mixed with remonstrances of
the peril to him and his of landing on Hispaniola. Blood cropped it
short.

"Ye're receiving such mercy as you probably never showed to any whom ye
compelled to surrender. Ye'd best profit by my tenderness. If the
Spaniards on Hispaniola spare you when you land there, you can get back
to your hunting and boucanning, for which ye're better fitted than the
sea. Away with you now."

But Easterling did not at once depart. He stood with feet planted wide,
swaying on his powerful legs, clenching and unclenching his hands. At
last he took his decision.

"Leave me that ship, and in Tortuga, when I get there, I'll pay you fifty
thousand pieces of eight. That's better nor the empty satisfaction of
turning us adrift."

"Away with you!" was all that Blood answered him, his tone more
peremptory.

"A hundred thousand!" cried Easterling.

"Why not a million?" wondered Blood. "It's as easily promised, and the
promise as easily broken. Oh, I'm like to take your word, Captain
Easterling, as like as I am to believe that ye command such a sum as a
hundred thousand pieces of eight."

Easterling's baleful eyes narrowed. Behind his black beard his thick lips
tightened. Almost they smiled. Since there was nothing to be done without
disclosures, nothing should be done at all. Let Blood sink a treasure
which in any case must now be lost to Easterling. There was in the
thought a certain bitter negative satisfaction.

"I pray that we may meet again, Captain Blood," he said, falsely, grimly
unctuous. "I'll have something to tell you then that'll make you sorry
for what you do now."

"If we meet again I've no doubt the occasion will be one for many
regrets. Good-day to you, Captain Easterling. Ye've just fifteen minutes,
ye'll remember."

Easterling sneered and shrugged, and then abruptly turned and climbed
down to the rocking boat that awaited him below.

When he came to announce Blood's message to his buccaneers they stormed
and raged so fiercely at the prospect of thus being cheated of everything
that they could be heard across the water aboard the _Cinco Llagas_, to
the faintly scornful amusement of Blood, who was far from suspecting the
true reason of all this hubbub.

He watched the lowering of the boats, and was thereafter amazed to see
the decks of the _Santa Barbara_ empty of that angry vociferous mob. The
buccaneers had gone below before leaving each man intent upon taking as
much of the treasure as he could carry upon his person. Captain Blood
became impatient.

"Pass the word down to Ogle to put a shot into her forecastle. Those
rogues need quickening."

The roar of the gun, and the impact of the twenty-four-pound shot as it
smashed through the timbers of the high forward structure, brought the
buccaneers swarming upon deck again, and thence to the waiting boats with
the speed of fear. Yet a certain order they preserved for their safety's
sake, for in the sea that was running the capsizing of a boat would have
been an easy matter.

They pushed off, their wet oars flashed in the brilliant sunlight, and
they began to draw away towards the promontory not more than two miles to
windward. Once they were clear, Blood gave the word to open fire, when
Hagthorpe clutched his arm.

"Wait, man! Wait! Look! There's someone still aboard her!"

Surprised, Blood looked, first with his naked eye, then through his
telescope. He beheld a bareheaded gentleman in corselet and thigh-boots,
who clearly was no buccaneer of the kind that sailed with Easterling, and
who stood on the poop frantically waving a scarf. Blood with quick to
guess his identity.

"It'll be one of the Spaniards who were aboard when Easterling took the
ship and whose throat he forgot to cut."

He ordered a boat to be launched, and sent six men with Dyke, who had
some knowledge of Spanish, to bring the Spaniard off.

Don Ildefonso, who, callously left to drown in the doomed ship, had
worked himself free of the thong that bound his wrists, stood in the
forechains to await the coming of that boat. He was quivering with
excitement at this deliverance of himself and the vessel in his charge
with her precious freight--a deliverance which he regarded as little
short of miraculous. For like the guarda-costa, Don Ildefonso, even if he
had not recognized the Spanish lines of this great ship which had come so
unexpectedly to the rescue, must have been relieved of all doubt by the
flag of Spain which had been allowed to remain floating at the masthead
of the _Cinco Llagas_.

So with speech bubbling eagerly out of him in that joyous excitement of
his, the Spanish commander poured into the ears of Dyke, when the boat
brought up alongside, the tale of what had happened to them and what they
carried. Because of this it was necessary that they should lend him a
dozen men so that with the six now under hatches on the _Santa Barbara_
he might bring his precious cargo safely into San Domingo.

To Dyke this was an amazing and exciting narrative. But he did not on
that account lose grip of his self-possession. Lest too much Spanish
should betray him to Don Ildefonso, he took refuge in curtness.

"Bueno," said he. "I'll inform my captain." Under his breath he ordered
his men to push off and head back for the _Cinco Llagas_.

When Blood heard the tale and had digested his amazement, he laughed.

"So this is what that rogue would have told me if ever we met again.
Faith it's a satisfaction to be denied him."

Ten minutes later the _Cinco Llagas_ lay board and board with the _Santa
Barbara_.

In the distance Easterling and his men, observing the operation, rested
on their oars to stare and mutter. They saw themselves cheated of even
the meagre satisfaction for which they had looked in the sinking of an
unsuspected treasure. Easterling burst into fresh profanity.

"It'll be that damned Spaniard I forgot in the cabin who'll ha' blabbed
of the gold; Oh, 'sdeath! This is what comes o' being soft-hearted; if
only I'd cut his throat now..."

Meanwhile to Don Ildefonso, who had been able to make nothing of this
boarding manoeuvre, Captain Blood, save for the light eyes in his bronzed
face, looking every inch a Spaniard, and delivering himself in the
impeccable Castilian of which he was master, was offering explanations.

He was unable to spare a crew to man the _Santa Barbara_, for his own
following was insufficient. Nor dared he leave her afloat, since in that
case she would he repossessed by the abominable pirates whom he had
constrained to abandon her. It remained, therefore, before scuttling her
only to tranship the treasure with which Don Ildefonso informed him she
was laden. At the same time he would be happy to offer Don Ildefonso and
his six surviving hands the hospitality of the _Cinco Llagas_ as far as
Tortuga, or, if Don Ildefonso preferred it, as seemed probable, Captain
Blood would seize a favourable moment for allowing them to take one of
his boats and land themselves upon the coast of Hispaniola.

Now this speech was the most amazing thing that had yet happened to Don
Ildefonso in that day of amazements.

"Tortuga!" he exclaimed. "Tortuga! You sail to Tortuga, do you say? But
what to do there? In God's name who are you, then? What are you?"

"As for who I am, I am called Peter Blood. As for what I am, faith, I
scarce know myself."

"You are English!" cried the Spaniard in sudden horror of partial
understanding.

"Ah no. That, at least, I am not." Captain Blood drew himself up with
great dignity. "I have the honour to be Irish."

"Ah, bah! Irish or English, it is all one."

"Indeed and it is not. There's all the difference in the world between
the two."

The Spaniard looked at him with angry eyes. His face was livid, his mouth
scornful. "English or Irish, the truth is you are just a cursed pirate."

Blood's eyes looked wistful. He fetched a sigh. "I'm afraid you are
right," he admitted. "It's a thing I've sought to avoid. But what am I to
do now, when Fate thrusts it upon me in this fashion, and insists that I
make so excellent a beginning?"



III - THE KING'S MESSENGER


On a brilliant May morning of the year 1690 a gentleman stepped ashore at
Santiago de Porto Rico, followed by a negro servant shouldering a valise.
He had been brought to the mole in a cock-boat from the yellow galleon
standing in the roadstead, with the flag of Spain floating from her
maintruck. Having landed him, the cock-boat went smartly about, and was
pulled back to the ship, from which circumstances the gaping idlers on
the mole assumed that this gentleman had come to stay.

They stared at him with interest, as they would have stared at any
stranger. This, however, was a man whose exterior repaid their attention,
a man to take the eye. Even the wretched white slaves toiling half-naked
on the fortifications, and the Spanish soldiery guarding them, stood at
gaze.

Tall, straight, and vigorously spare, our gentleman was dressed with
sombre Spanish elegance in black And silver. The curls of his black
periwig fell to his shoulders, and his keen shaven face with its
high-bridged nose and disdainful lips was shaded by a broad black hat
about the crown of which swept a black ostrich plume. Jewels flashed at
his breast, a foam of Mechlin almost concealed his hands, and there were
ribbons to the long gold-mounted ebony cane he carried. A fop from the
Alameda he must have seemed but for the manifest vigour of him and the
air of assurance and consequence with which he bore himself. He carried
his dark finery with an indifference to the broiling tropical heat which
argued an iron constitution, and his glance was so imperious that the
eyes of the inquisitive fell away abashed before it.

He asked the way to the Governor's residence, and the officer commanding
the guard over the toiling white prisoners detached a soldier to conduct
him.

Beyond the square, which architecturally, and saving for the palm trees
throwing patches of black shadow on the dazzling white sun-drenched
ground, might have belonged to some little town in Old Spain, past the
church with its twin spires and marble steps, they came, by tall,
wrought-iron gates, into a garden, and by an avenue of acacias to a big
white house with deep external galleries all clad in jessamine. Negro
servants in ridiculously rich red-and-yellow liveries admitted our
gentleman, and went to announce to the Governor of Porto Rico the arrival
of Don Pedro de Queiroz on a mission from King Philip.

Not every day did a messenger from the King of Spain arrive in this
almost the least of his Catholic Majesty's overseas dominions. Indeed,
the thing had never happened before, and Don Jayme de Villamarga, whilst
thrilled to the marrow by the announcement, knew not whether to assign
the thrill to pride or to alarm.

A man of middle height, big of head and paunch, and of less than mediocre
intelligence, Don Jayme was one of those gentlemen who best served Spain
by being absent from her, and this no doubt had been considered in
appointing him Governor of Porto Rico. Not even his awe of majesty,
represented by Don Pedro, could repress his naturally self-sufficient
manner he was pompous in his reception of him, and remained
unintimidated by the cold haughty stare of Don Pedro's eyes--eyes of a
singularly deep blue, contrasting oddly with his bronzed face. A
Dominican monk, elderly, tall and gaunt, kept his excellency company.

"Sir, I give you welcome." Don Jayme spoke as if his mouth were full. "I
trust you will announce to me that I have the honour to meet with his
majesty's approbation."

Don Pedro made him a deep obeisance, with a sweep of his plumed hat,
which, together with his cane, he thereafter handed to one of the negro
lackeys. "It is to signify the royal approbation that I am here, happily,
after some adventures. I have just landed from the _San Tomas_, after a
voyage of some vicissitudes. She has gone on to San Domingo, and it may
be three or four days before she returns to take me off again. For that
brief while I must make free with your excellency's hospitality." He
seemed to claim it as a right rather than ask it as a favour.

"Ah!" was all that Don Jayme permitted himself to answer. And with head
on one side, a fatuous smile on the thick lips under his grizzled
moustache, he waited for the visitor to enter into details of the royal
message.

The visitor, however, displayed no haste. He looked about him at the cool
spacious room with its handsome furnishings of carved oak and walnut, its
tapestries and pictures, all imported from the Old World, and inquired,
in that casual manner of the man who is at home in every environment, if
he might be seated. His excellency with some loss of dignity made haste
to set a chair.

Composedly, with a thin smile which Don Jayme disliked, the messenger sat
down and crossed his legs.

"We are," he announced, "in some sort related, Don Jayme."

Don Jayme stared. "I am not aware of the honour."

"That is why I am at the trouble of informing you. Your marriage, sir,
established the bond. I am a distant cousin of Doņa Hernanda."

"Oh! My wife!" His excellency's tone in some subtle way implied contempt
for that same wife and her relations. "I had remarked your name:
Queiroz." This also explained to him the rather hard and open accent of
Don Pedro's otherwise impeccable Castilian. "You will, then, be
Portuguese, like Doņa Hernanda?" and again his tone implied contempt of
Portuguese, and particularly perhaps of Portuguese who were in the
service of the King of Spain, from whom Portugal had re-established her
independence a half-century ago.

"Half Portuguese, of course. My family--"

"Yes, yes." Thus the testy Don Jayme interrupted him. "But your message
from his majesty?"

"Ah yes. Your impatience, Don Jayme, is natural." Don Pedro was faintly
ironical. "You will forgive me that I should have intruded family
matters. My message, then. It will be no surprise to you, sir, that
eulogistic reports should have reached his majesty, whom God preserve--"
he bowed his head in reverence, compelling Don Jayme to do the same--"not
only of the good government of this important island of Porto Rico, but
also of the diligence employed by you to rid these seas of the pestilent
rovers, particularly the English buccaneers who trouble our shipping and
the peace of our Spanish settlements."

There was nothing in this to surprise Don Jayme. Not even upon
reflection. Being a fool, he did not suspect that Porto Rico was the
worst governed of any Spanish settlement in the West Indies. As for the
rest, he had certainly encouraged the extirpation of the buccaneers from
the Caribbean. Quite recently, and quite fortuitously be it added, he had
actually contributed materially to this desirable end, as he was not slow
to mention.

With chin high and chest puffed out, he moved, strutting, before Don
Pedro as he delivered himself. It was gratifying to be appreciated in the
proper quarter. It encouraged endeavour. He desired to be modest. Yet in
justice to himself he must assert that under his government the island
was tranquil and prosperous. Frey Luis here could bear him out in this.
The Faith was firmly planted, and there was no heresy in any form in
Porto Rico. And as for the matter of the buccaneers, he had done all that
a man in his position could do. Not perhaps as much as he could have
desired to do. After all, his office kept him ashore. Had Don Pedro
remarked the new fortifications he was building? The work was all but
complete, and he did not think that even the infamous Captain Blood would
have the hardihood to pay him a visit. He had already shown that
redoubtable buccaneer that he was not a man with whom it was prudent to
trifle. A party of this Captain Blood's men had dared to land on the
southern side of the island a few days ago. But Don Jayme's followers
were vigilant. He saw to that. A troop of horse was in the neighbourhood
at the time. It had descended upon the pirates and had taught them a
sharp lesson. He laughed as he spoke of it; laughed at the thought of it;
and Don Pedro politely laughed with him, desiring with courteous and
appreciative interest to know more of this.

"You killed them all, of course?" he suggested, his contempt of them
implicit in his tone.

"Not yet." His excellency spoke with a relish almost fierce. "But I have
them under my hand. Six of them, who were captured. We have not yet
decided upon their end. Perhaps the rope. Perhaps an auto-da-fé and the
fires of the Faith for them. They are heretics all, of course. It is a
matter I am still considering with Frey Luis here."

"Well, well," said Don Pedro, as if the subject began to weary him. "Will
your excellency hear the remainder of my message?"

The Governor was annoyed by this suggestion that his lengthy exposition
had amounted to an interruption. Stiffly he bowed to the representative
of majesty. "My apologies," said he in a voice of ice.

But the lofty Don Pedro paid little heed to his manner. He drew from an
inner pocket of his rich coat a folded parchment and a small flat leather
case.

"I have to explain, your excellency, the condition in which this comes to
you. I have said, although I do not think you heeded it, that I arrive
here after a voyage of many vicissitudes. Indeed, it is little short of a
miracle that r am here at all, considering what I have undergone. I, too,
have been a victim of that infernal dog, Captain Blood. The ship on which
I originally sailed from Cadiz was sunk by him a week ago. More fortunate
than my cousin Don Rodrigo de Queiroz, who accompanied me and who remains
a prisoner in that infamous pirate's hands, I made my escape. It is a
long tale with which I will not weary you."

"It would not weary me," exclaimed his excellency, forgetting his dignity
in his interest.

But Don Pedro waved aside the implied request for details. "Later! Later,
perhaps, if you care to hear of it. It is not important. What is
important on your excellency's account is that I escaped. I was picked up
by the _San Tomas_, which has brought me here, and so I am happily able
to discharge my mission." He held up the folded parchment. "I but mention
it to explain how this has come to suffer by sea-water, though not to the
extent of being illegible. It is a letter from his majesty's Secretary of
State informing you that our Sovereign, whom God preserve, has been
graciously pleased to create you, in recognition of the services I have
mentioned, a knight of the most noble order of St. James of Compostella."

Don Jayme went first white, then red, in his incredulous excitement. With
trembling fingers he took the letter and unfolded it. It was certainly
damaged by sea-water. Some words were scarcely legible. The ink in which
his own surname had been written had run into a smear, as had that of his
government of Porto Rico, and some other words here and there. But the
amazing substance of the letter was indeed as Don Pedro announced, and
the royal signature was unimpaired.

As Don Jayme raised his eyes at last from the document, Don Pedro,
proffering the leather case, touched a spring in it. It flew open, and
the Governor gazed upon rubies that glowed like live coals against their
background of black velvet.

"And here," said Don Pedro, "is the insignia; the cross of the most
noble order in which you are invested."

Don Jayme took the case gingerly, as if it had been some holy thing, and
gazed upon the smouldering cross. The friar came to stand beside him,
murmuring congratulatory words. Any knighthood would have been an
honourable, an unexpected, reward for Don Jayme's services to the crown
of Spain. But that of all orders this most exalted and coveted order of
St. James of Compostella should have been conferred upon him was
something that almost defied belief. The Governor of Porto Rico was
momentarily awed by the greatness of the thing that had befallen him.

And yet when a few minutes later the room was entered by a little lady,
young and delicately lovely, Don Jayme had already recovered his habitual
poise of self-sufficiency.

The lady, beholding a stranger, an elegant, courtly stranger, who rose
instantly upon her advent, paused in the doorway, hesitating, timid. Then
she addressed Don Jayme.

"Pardon. I did not know you occupied."

Don Jayme appealed, sneering, to the friar. "She did not know me
occupied! I am the King's representative in Porto Rico, his majesty's
Governor of this island, and my wife does not know that I am occupied,
conceives that I have leisure. It is unbelievable. But come in, Hernanda.
Come in." He grew more playful. "Acquaint yourself with the honours the
King bestows upon his poor servant. This may help you to realize what his
majesty does me the justice to realize, although you may have failed to
do so: that my occupations here are onerous."

Timidly she advanced, obedient to his invitation. "What is it, Jayme?"

"What is it?" He seemed to mimic her. "It is merely this." He displayed
the order. "His majesty invests me with the cross of Saint James of
Compostella, that is all."

She grew conscious that she was mocked. Her pale, delicate face flushed a
little. But there was no accompanying sparkle of her great, dark, wistful
eyes to proclaim it a flush of pleasure. Rather, thought Don Pedro, she
flushed from shame and resentment at being so contemptuously used before
a stranger and at the boorishness of a husband who could so use her.

"I am glad, Jayme," she said, in a gentle, weary voice. "I felicitate
you. I am glad."

"Ah! You are glad. Frey Alonso, you will observe that Doņa Hernanda is
glad." Thus he sneered at her without even the poor, grace of being
witty. "This gentleman, by whose hand the order came, is a kinsman of
yours, Hernanda."

She turned aside, to look again at that elegant stranger. Her gaze was
blank. Yet she hesitated to deny him. Kinship when claimed by gentlemen
charged by kings with missions of investiture is not lightly to be denied
in the presence of such a husband as Don Jayme. And, after all, hers was
a considerable family, and must include many with whom she was not
personally acquainted.

The stranger bowed until the curls of his periwig met across his face.
"You will not remember me, Doņa Hernanda. I am, nevertheless, your
cousin, and you will have heard of me from our other cousin, Rodrigo. I
am Pedro de Queiroz."

"You are Pedro?" She stared the harder. "Why, then..." She laughed a
little. "Oh, but I remember Pedro. We played together as children. Pedro
and I."

Something in her tone seemed to deny him. But he confronted her
unperturbed.

"That would be at Santarem," said he.

"At Santarem it was." His readiness appeared now to bewilder her. "But
you were a fat, sturdy boy then, and your hair was golden."

He laughed. "I have become lean in growing, and I favour a black
periwig."

"Which makes your eyes a startling blue. I do not remember that you had
blue eyes."

"God help us, ninny!" croaked her husband. "You never could remember
anything."

She turned to look at him, and for all that her lip quivered, her eyes
steadily met his sneering glance. She seemed about to speak, checked
herself, and then spoke at last, very quietly. "Oh yes. There are some
things a woman never forgets."

"And on the subject of memory," said Don Pedro, addressing the Governor
with cold dignity, "I do not remember that there are any ninnies in our
family."

"Faith, then, you needed to come to Porto Rico to discover it," his
excellency retorted with his loud, coarse laugh.

"Ah!" Don Pedro sighed. "That may not be the end of my discoveries."

There was something in his tone which Don Jayme did not like. He threw
back his big 'head and frowned. "You mean?" he demanded.

Don Pedro was conscious of an appeal in the little lady's dark, liquid
eyes. He yielded to it, laughed, and answered:

"I have yet to discover where your excellency proposes to lodge me during
the days in which I must inflict myself upon you. If I might now
withdraw..."

The Governor swung to Doņa Hernanda. "You hear? Your kinsman needs to
remind us of our duty to a guest. It will not have occurred to you to
make provision for him."

"But I did not know...I was not told of his presence until I found him
here."

"Well, well. You know now. And we dine in half an hour."

At dinner Don Jayme was in high spirits, which is to say that he was
alternately pompous and boisterous, and occasionally filled the room with
his loud jarring laugh.

Don Pedro scarcely troubled to dissemble his dislike of him. His manner
became more and more frigidly aloof, and he devoted his attention and
addressed his conversation more and more exclusively to the despised
wife.

"I have news for you," he told her, when they had come to the dessert,
"of our Cousin Rodrigo."

"Ah!" sneered her husband. "She'll welcome news of him. She ever had a
particular regard for her Cousin Rodrigo, and he for her."

She flushed, keeping her troubled eyes lowered. Don Pedro came to the
rescue, swiftly, easily. "Regard for one another is common among the
members of our family. Every Queiroz owes a duty to every other, and is
at all times ready to perform it." He looked very straightly at Don Jayme
as he spoke, as if inviting him to discover more in the words than they
might seem to carry. "And that is at the root of what I am to tell you,
cousin Hernanda. As I have already informed his excellency, the ship in
which Don Rodrigo and I sailed from Spain together was set upon and sunk
by that infamous pirate Captain Blood. We were both captured, but I was
so fortunate as to make my escape."

"You have not told us how. You must tell us how," the Governor
interrupted him.

Don Pedro waved a hand disdainfully. "It is no great matter, and I soon
weary of talking of myself. But...if you insist...some other time. At
present I am to tell you of Rodrigo. He remains a prisoner in the hands
of Captain Blood. But do not be unduly alarmed."

There was need for his reassuring tone. Doņa I Hernanda, who had been
hanging on his words, had turned deathly white.

"Do not be alarmed. Rodrigo is in good health, and his life is safe.
Also, from my own experience, I know that this Blood, infamous pirate
though he be, is not without chivalrous ideals, and, piracy apart, he is
a man of honour."

"Piracy apart?" Laughter exploded from Don

Jayme. "On my soul, that's humorous! You deal in paradox, Don Pedro. Eh,
Frey Alonso?" The lean friar smiled mechanically. Doņa Hernanda, pale and
piteous, suffered in silence the interruption. Don Pedro frowned.

"The paradox is not in me, but in Captain Blood. An indemoniated robber,
yet he practises no wanton cruelty, and he keeps his word. Therefore, I
say you need have no apprehension on the score of Don Rodrigo's fate. His
ransom has been agreed between himself and Captain Blood, and I have
undertaken to procure it. Meanwhile he is well and courteously treated,
and, indeed, a sort of friendship has come to exist between himself and
his pirate captor."

"Faith, that I can believe!" cried the Governor, Whilst Doņa Hernanda
sank back in her chair with a sigh of relief. "Rodrigo was ever ready to
consort with rogues. Was he not, Hernanda?"

"I..." She bridled indignantly, then curbed herself, "I never observed
it."

"You never observed it! I ask myself have you ever observed anything?
Well, well, and so Rodrigo's to be ransomed. At what is his ransom
fixed?"

"You desire to contribute?" cried Don Pedro with a certain friendly
eagerness.

The Governor started as if he had been stung. His countenance became
gravely blank. "Not I, by the Virgin! Not I. That is entirely a matter
for the family of Queiroz."

Don Pedro's smile perished. He sighed. "True! True! And yet...I've a
notion you'll come to contribute something before all is ended."

"Dismiss it," laughed Don Jayme, "for that way lies disappointment."

They rose from table soon thereafter and withdrew to the noontide rest
the heat made necessary.

They did not come together again until supper, which was served in that
same room, in the comparative cool of eventide and by the light of a
score of candles in heavy silver branches brought from Spain.

The Governor's satisfaction at the signal honour of which he was the
recipient appeared to have grown with contemplation of it. He was
increasingly jovial and facetious, but not on this account did he spare
Doņa Hernanda his sneers. Rather did he make her the butt of his coarse
humours, inviting the two men to laugh with him at the shortcomings he
indicated in her. Don Pedro, however, did not laugh. He remained
preternaturally grave, indeed almost compassionate, as he observed the
tragic patience on that long-suffering wife's sweet face.

She looked so slight and frail in her stiff black satin gown, which
rendered more dazzling by contrast the whiteness of her neck and
shoulders, even as her lustrous, smoothly-dressed black hair stressed the
warm pallor of her gentle countenance. A little statue in ebony and ivory
she seemed to Don Pedro's fancy, and almost as lifeless until after
supper he found himself alone with her in the deep jessamine-clad
galleries that stood open to the cool night breezes blowing from the sea.

His excellency had gone off to indite a letter of grateful acknowledgment
to the King, and had taken the friar to assist him. He had commended his
guest to the attention of his wife, whilst commiserating with him upon
the necessity. She had led Don Pedro out into the scented purple tropic
night, and stepping now beside him came at last to life, and addressed
him in a breathless anxiety.

"What you told us to-day of Don Rodrigo de Queiroz, is it true? That he
is a prisoner in the hands of Captain Blood, but unhurt and safe,
awaiting ransom?"

"Most scrupulously true in all particulars."

"You...you pledge your word for that? Your honour as a gentleman? For I
must assume you a gentleman, since you bear commissions from the King."

"And on no other ground?" quoth he, a little taken aback.

"Do you pledge me your word?" she insisted.

"Unhesitatingly. My word of honour. Why should you doubt me?"

"You give me cause. You are not truthful in all things. Why, for
instance, do you say you are my cousin?"

"You do not, then, remember me?"

"I remember Pedro de Queiroz. The years might have given you height and
slenderness; the sun might have tanned your face, and under your black
periwig your hair may still be fair, though I take leave to doubt it. But
what, I ask myself, could have changed the colour of your eyes? For your
eyes are blue, and Pedro's were dark brown."

He was silent a moment, like a man considering, and she watched his
stern, handsome face, made plain by the light beating upon it from the
windows of the house. He did not meet her glance. Instead his eyes sought
the sea, gleaming under the bright stars and reflecting the twinkling
lights of ships in the roadstead, watched the fireflies flitting among
the bushes in pursuit of moths, looked anywhere but at the little figure
at his side.

At last he spoke, quietly, almost humorously, in admission of the
imposture. "We hoped you would have forgotten such a detail."

"We?" she questioned him.

"Rodrigo and I. He is at least my friend. He was hastening to you when
this thing befell him. That is how we came to be on the same ship."

"And he desired you to do this?"

"He shall tell you so himself when he arrives. He will be here in a few
days, depend on it. As soon as I can ransom him, which will be very soon
after my departure. When I was escaping--for, unlike him, I had given no
parole--he desired that if I came here I should claim to be your cousin,
so as to stand at need in his place until he comes."

She was thoughtful, and her bosom rose and fell in agitation. In silence
they moved a little way in step.

"You took a foolish risk," she said, thereby showing her acceptance of
his explanation.

"A gentleman," said he sententiously, "will always take a risk to serve a
lady."

"Were you serving me?"

"Does it seem to you that I could be serving myself?"

"No. You could not have been doing that."

"Why question further, then? Rodrigo wished it so. He will explain his
motives fully when he comes. Meanwhile, as your cousin, I am in his
place. If this boorish husband burdens you overmuch..."

"What are you saying?" Her voice rang with alarm.

"That I am Rodrigo's deputy. So that you remember it, that is all I ask."

"I thank you, cousin," she said, and left him.

Three days Don Pedro continued as the guest of the Governor of Porto
Rico, and they were much as that first day, saving that daily Don Jayme
continued to increase in consciousness of his new dignity as a knight of
Saint James of Compostella, and became, consequently, daily more
insufferable. Yet Don Pedro suffered him with exemplary fortitude, and at
times seemed even disposed to feed the Governor's egregious vanity. Thus,
on the third night at supper, Don Pedro cast out the suggestion that his
excellency should signalize the honour with which the King had
distinguished him by some gesture that should mark the occasion and
render it memorable in the annals of the island.

Don Jayme swallowed the suggestion avidly. "Ah yes! That is an admirable
thought. What do you counsel that I do?"

Don Pedro smiled with flattering deprecation. "Not for me to counsel Don
Jayme de Villamarga. But the gesture should be worthy of the occasion."

"Indeed, yes. That is true." But the dullard's wits are barren of ideas.
"The question now is what might be considered worthy?"

Frey' Alonso suggested a ball at Government House, and was applauded in
this by Doņa Hernanda. Don Pedro, apologetically to the lady, thought a
ball would have significance only for those who were bidden to it.
Something was required that should impress all social orders in Porto
Rico.

"Why not an amnesty?" he inquired at last.

"An amnesty?" The three of them looked at him in questioning wonder.

"Why not? It is a royal gesture, true. But is not a governor in some sort
royal, a viceroy, a representative of royalty, the one to whom men look
for royal gestures? To mark your accession to this dignity, throw open
your gaols, Don Jayme, as do kings upon, their coronation."

Don Jayme conquered his stupefaction at the magnitude of the act
suggested, and smote the table with his fist, protesting that here was a
notion worth adopting. To-morrow he would announce it in a proclamation,
and set all prisoners free, their sentences remitted.

"That is," he added, "all but six, whose pardon would hardly please the
colony."

"I think," said Don Pedro, "that exceptions would stultify the act. There
should be no exceptions."

"But these are exceptional prisoners. Can you have forgotten that I told
you I had made captive six buccaneers out of a party that had the
temerity to land on Porto Rico?"

Don Pedro frowned, reflecting. "Ah, true!" he cried at last. "I
remember."

"And did I tell you, sir, that one of these men is that dog Wolverstone?"
He pronounced it Volverstohn.

"Wolverstone?" said Don Pedro, who also pronounced it Volverstohn. "You
have captured Wolverstone!" It was clear that he was profoundly
impressed; as well he might be, for Wolverstone, who was nowadays the
foremost of Blood's lieutenants, was almost as well known to Spaniards
and as detested by them as Blood himself. "You have captured
Wolverstone!" he repeated, and for the first time looked at Don Jayme
with eyes of unmistakable respect. "You did not tell me that. Why, in
that case, my friend, you have clipped one of Blood's wings. Without
Wolverstone he is shorn of half his power. His own destruction may follow
now at any moment, and Spain will owe that to you."

Don Jayme spread his hands in an affectation of modesty. "It is something
towards deserving the honour his majesty has bestowed upon me."

"Something?" echoed Don Pedro. "If the King had known this, he might have
accounted the order of Saint James of Compostella inadequate."

Doņa Hernanda looked at him sharply, to see whether he dealt in irony.
But he seemed quite sincere, so much so that for once he had shed the
hauteur in which he usually arrayed himself. He resumed after a moment's
pause.

"Of course, of course, you cannot include these men in the amnesty. They
are pot common malefactors. They are enemies of Spain." Abruptly, with a
hint of purpose, he asked: "How will you deal with them?"

Don Jayme thrust out a nether lip considering. "I am still undecided
whether to hang them out of hand or to let Frey Alonso hold his
auto-da-fé upon them and consign them to the fire as heretics. I think I
told you so."

"Yes, yes. But I did not then know that Wolverstone is one of them. That
makes a difference."

"What difference?"

"Oh, but consider. Give this matter thought. With thought you'll see for
yourself what you should do. It's plain enough."

Don Jayme considered awhile as he was bidden. Then shrugged his
shoulders.

"Faith, sir, it may be plain enough to you. But I confess that I see no
choice beyond that of rope or fire."

"Ultimately, yes. One or the other. But not here in Porto Rico. That is
to smother the effulgence of your achievement. Send them to Spain, Don
Jayme. Send them to his majesty, as an earnest of the zeal for which he
has been pleased to honour you. Show him thus how richly you deserve that
honour and even greater honours. Let that be your acknowledgment."

Don Jayme was staring at him with dilating eyes. His face glowed. "I vow
to Heaven I should never have thought of it," he said at last.

"Your modesty made you blind to the opportunity."

"It may be that," Don Jayme admitted.

"But you perceive it now that I indicate it?"

"Oh, I perceive it. Yes, the King of Spain shall be impressed."

Frey Alonso seemed downcast. He had been counting upon his auto-da-fé.
Doņa Hernanda was chiefly intrigued by the sudden geniality of her
hitherto haughty and disdainful pretended cousin. Meanwhile Don Pedro
piled Pelion upon Ossa.

"It should prove to his majesty that your excellency is wasted in so
small a settlement as Porto Rico. I see you as governor of some more
important colony. Perhaps as viceroy...Who shall say? You have displayed
a zeal such as has rarely been displayed by any Spanish governor
overseas."

"But how and when to send them to Spain?" wondered Don Jayme, who no
longer questioned the expediency of doing so.

"Why, that is a matter in which I can serve your excellency. I can convey
them for you on the _San Tomas_, which should call for me at any moment
now. You will write another letter to his majesty, offering him these
evidences of your zeal, and I will bear it together with these captives.
Your general amnesty can wait until I've sailed with them. Thus there
will be nothing to mar it. It will be complete and properly imposing."

So elated and so grateful to his guest for his suggestion was Don Jayme
that he actually went the length of addressing him as cousin in the
course of thanking him.

The matter, it seemed, had presented itself for discussion only just in
time. For early on the following morning Santiago was startled by the
boom of a gun, and turning out to ascertain the reason, beheld again the
yellow Spanish ship which had brought Don Pedro coming to anchor in the
bay.

Don Pedro himself sought the Governor with the information that this was
the