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Maurice LeBlanc - "Project Gutenberg surfs with a modem donated by Supra."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky - "Poor Folk"

William Makepeace Thackeray - "The Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan"

Harold MacGrath - "The Drums Of Jeopardy"

Captain Blood

R >> Rafael Sabatini >> Captain Blood




As Ogle left the quarter-deck, Blood turned, and came face to face
with Miss Bishop. She had been observing him with shining eyes, but
at sight of his dejected countenance, and the deep frown that scarred
his brow, her own expression changed. She approached him with a
hesitation entirely unusual to her. She set a hand lightly upon
his arm.

"You have chosen wisely, sir," she commended him, "however much
against your inclinations."

He looked with gloomy eyes upon her for whom he had made this
sacrifice.

"I owed it to you - or thought I did," he said.

She did not understand. "Your resolve delivered me from a horrible
danger," she admitted. And she shivered at the memory of it. "But
I do not understand why you should have hesitated when first it was
proposed to you. It is an honourable service."

"King James's?" he sneered.

"England's," she corrected him in reproof. "The country is all,
sir; the sovereign naught. King James will pass; others will
come and pass; England remains, to be honourably served by her sons,
whatever rancour they may hold against the man who rules her in
their time."

He showed some surprise. Then he smiled a little. "Shrewd advocacy,"
he approved it. "You should have spoken to the crew."

And then, the note of irony deepening in his voice: "Do you suppose
now that this honourable service might redeem one who was a pirate
and a thief?"

Her glance fell away. Her voice faltered a little in replying.
"If he ... needs redeeming. Perhaps ... perhaps he has been judged
too harshly."

The blue eyes flashed, and the firm lips relaxed their grim set.

"Why ... if ye think that," he said, considering her, an odd hunger
in his glance, "life might have its uses, after all, and even the
service of King James might become tolerable."

Looking beyond her, across the water, he observed a boat putting
off from one of the great ships, which, hove to now, were rocking
gently some three hundred yards away. Abruptly his manner changed.
He was like one recovering, taking himself in hand again. "If you
will go below, and get your gear and your woman, you shall presently
be sent aboard one of the ships of the fleet." He pointed to the
boat as he spoke.

She left him, and thereafter with Wolverstone, leaning upon the
rail, he watched the approach of that boat, manned by a dozen
sailors, and commanded by a scarlet figure seated stiffly in the
stern sheets. He levelled his telescope upon that figure.

"It'll not be Bishop himself," said Wolverstone, between question
and assertion.

"No." Blood closed his telescope. "I don't know who it is."

"Ha!" Wolverstone vented an ejaculation of sneering mirth. "For
all his eagerness, Bishop'd be none so willing to come, hisself.
He's been aboard this hulk afore, and we made him swim for it that
time. He'll have his memories. So he sends a deputy."

This deputy proved to be an officer named Calverley, a vigorous,
self-sufficient fellow, comparatively fresh from England, whose
manner made it clear that he came fully instructed by Colonel
Bishop upon the matter of how to handle the pirates.

His air, as he stepped into the waist of the Arabella, was haughty,
truculent, and disdainful.

Blood, the King's commission now in his pocket, and Lord Julian
standing beside him, waited to receive him, and Captain Calverley
was a little taken aback at finding himself confronted by two men
so very different outwardly from anything that he had expected.
But he lost none of his haughty poise, and scarcely deigned a
glance at the swarm of fierce, half-naked fellows lounging in a
semicircle to form a background.

"Good-day to you, sir," Blood hailed him pleasantly. "I have the
honour to give you welcome aboard the Arabella. My name is Blood
- Captain Blood, at your service. You may have heard of me."

Captain Calverley stared hard. The airy manner of this redoubtable
buccaneer was hardly what he had looked for in a desperate fellow,
compelled to ignominious surrender. A thin, sour smile broke on
the officer's haughty lips.

"You'll ruffle it to the gallows, no doubt," he said contemptuously.
"I suppose that is after the fashion of your kind. Meanwhile it's
your surrender I require, my man, not your impudence."

Captain Blood appeared surprised, pained. He turned in appeal to
Lord Julian.

"D' ye hear that now? And did ye ever hear the like? But what did
I tell ye? Ye see, the young gentleman's under a misapprehension
entirely. Perhaps it'll save broken bones if your lordship explains
just who and what I am."

Lord Julian advanced a step and bowed perfunctorily and rather
disdainfully to that very disdainful but now dumbfounded officer.
Pitt, who watched the scene from the quarter-deck rail, tells us
that his lordship was as grave as a parson at a hanging. But I
suspect this gravity for a mask under which Lord Julian was secretly
amused. =20

"I have the honour to inform you, sir," he said stiffly, "that
Captain Blood holds a commission in the King's service under the
seal of my Lord Sunderland, His Majesty's Secretary of State."

Captain Calverley's face empurpled; his eyes bulged. The buccaneers
in the background chuckled and crowed and swore among themselves in
their relish of this comedy. For a long moment Calverley stared in
silence at his lordship, observing the costly elegance of his dress,
his air of calm assurance, and his cold, fastidious speech, all of
which savoured distinctly of the great world to which he belonged.

"And who the devil may you be?" he exploded at last.

Colder still and more distant than ever grew his lordship's voice.

"You're not very civil, sir, as I have already noticed. My name is
Wade - Lord Julian Wade. I am His Majesty's envoy to these barbarous
parts, and my Lord Sunderland's near kinsman. Colonel Bishop has
been notified of my coming."

The sudden change in Calverley's manner at Lord Julian's mention of
his name showed that the notification had been received, and that
he had knowledge of it.

"I ... I believe that he has," said Calverley, between doubt and
suspicion. "That is: that he has been notified of the coming of
Lord Julian Wade. But ... but ... aboard this ship ...?" The
officer made a gesture of helplessness, and, surrendering to his
bewilderment, fell abruptly silent.

"I was coming out on the Royal Mary ..."

"That is what we were advised."

"But the Royal Mary fell a victim to a Spanish privateer, and I
might never have arrived at all but for the gallantry of Captain
Blood, who rescued me."

Light broke upon the darkness of Calverley's mind. "I see. I
understand."

"I will take leave to doubt it." His lordship's tone abated nothing
of its asperity. "But that can wait. If Captain Blood will show
you his commission, perhaps that will set all doubts at rest, and we
may proceed. I shall be glad to reach Port Royal."

Captain Blood thrust a parchment under Calverley's bulging eyes.
The officer scanned it, particularly the seals and signature. He
stepped back, a=20baffled, impotent man. He bowed helplessly.

"I must return to Colonel Bishop for my orders," he informed them.

At that moment a lane was opened in the ranks of the men, and
through this came Miss Bishop followed by her octoroon woman. Over
his shoulder Captain Blood observed her approach.

"Perhaps, since Colonel Bishop is with you, you will convey his
niece to him. Miss Bishop was aboard the Royal Mary also, and I
rescued her together with his lordship. She will be able to acquaint
her uncle with the details of that and of the present state of
affairs."

Swept thus from surprise to surprise, Captain Calverley could do no
more than bow again.

"As for me," said Lord Julian, with intent to make Miss Bishop's
departure free from all interference on the part of the buccaneers,
"I shall remain aboard the Arabella until we reach Port Royal. My
compliments to Colonel Bishop. Say that I look forward to making
his acquaintance there."



CHAPTER XXII

HOSTILITIES


In the great harbour of Port Royal, spacious enough to have given
moorings to all the ships of all the navies of the world, the
Arabella rode at anchor. Almost she had the air of a prisoner, for
a quarter of a mile ahead, to starboard, rose the lofty, massive
single round tower of the fort, whilst a couple of cables'-length
astern, and to larboard, rode the six men-of-war that composed
the Jamaica squadron.

Abeam with the Arabella, across the harbour, were the flat-fronted
white buildings of that imposing city that came down to the very
water's edge. Behind these the red roofs rose like terraces,
marking the gentle slope upon which the city was built, dominated
here by a turret, there by a spire, and behind these again a range
of green hills with for ultimate background a sky that was like a
dome of polished steel.

On a cane day-bed that had been set for him on the quarter-deck,
sheltered from the dazzling, blistering sunshine by an improvised
awning of brown sailcloth, lounged Peter Blood, a calf-bound,
well-thumbed copy of Horace's Odes neglected in his hands.

>From immediately below him came the swish of mops and the gurgle of
water in the scuppers, for it was still early morning, and under the
directions of Hayton, the bo'sun, the swabbers were at work in the
waist and forecastle. Despite the heat and the stagnant air, one of
the toilers found breath to croak a ribald buccaneering ditty:

"For we laid her board and board,
And we put her to the sword,
And we sank her in the deep blue sea.
So It's heigh-ho, and heave-a-ho!
Who'll sail for the Main with me?"

Blood fetched a sigh, and the ghost of a smile played over his lean,
sun-tanned face. Then the black brows came together above the vivid
blue eyes, and thought swiftly closed the door upon his immediate
surroundings.

Things had not sped at all well with him in the past fortnight since
his acceptance of the King's commission. There had been trouble
with Bishop from the moment of landing. As Blood and Lord Julian
had stepped ashore together, they had been met by a man who took
no pains to dissemble his chagrin at the turn of events and his
determination to change it. He awaited them on the mole, supported
by a group of officers.

"You are Lord Julian Wade, I understand," was his truculent
greeting. For Blood at the moment he had nothing beyond a malignant
glance.

Lord Julian bowed. "I take it I have the honour to address Colonel
Bishop, Deputy-Governor of Jamaica." It was almost as if his
lordship were giving the Colonel a lesson in deportment. The
Colonel accepted it, and belatedly bowed, removing his broad hat.
Then he plunged on.

"You have granted, I am told, the King's commission to this man."
His very tone betrayed the bitterness of his rancour. "Your motives
were no doubt worthy ... your gratitude to him for delivering you
from the Spaniards. But the thing itself is unthinkable, my lord.
The commission must be cancelled."

"I don't think I understand," said Lord Julian distantly.

"To be sure you don't, or you'd never ha' done it. The fellow's
bubbled you. Why, he's first a rebel, then an escaped slave, and
lastly a bloody pirate. I've been hunting him this year past."

"I assure you, sir, that I was fully informed of all. I do not
grant the King's commission lightly."

"Don't you, by God! And what else do you call this? But as His
Majesty's Deputy-Governor of Jamaica, I'll take leave to correct
your mistake in my own way.".

"Ah! And what way may that be?"

"There's a gallows waiting for this rascal in Port Royal."

Blood would have intervened at that, but Lord Julian forestalled him.

"I see, sir, that you do not yet quite apprehend the circumstances.
If it is a mistake to grant Captain Blood a commission, the mistake
is not mine. I am acting upon the instructions of my Lord
Sunderland; and with a full knowledge of all the facts, his lordship
expressly designated Captain Blood for this commission if Captain
Blood could be persuaded to accept it."

Colonel Bishop's mouth fell open in surprise and dismay.

"Lord Sunderland designated him?" he asked, amazed.

"Expressly."

His lordship waited a moment for a reply. None coming from the
speechless Deputy-Governor, he asked a question: "Would you still
venture to describe the matter as a mistake, sir? And dare you
take the risk of correcting it?"

"I ... I had not dreamed ..."

"I understand, sir. Let me present Captain Blood."

Perforce Bishop must put on the best face he could command. But
that it was no more than a mask for his fury and his venom was
plain to all.

>From that unpromising beginning matters had not improved; rather
had they grown worse.

Blood's thoughts were upon this and other things as he lounged
there on the day-bed. He had been a fortnight in Port Royal, his
ship virtually a unit now in the Jamaica squadron. And when the
news of it reached Tortuga and the buccaneers who awaited his
return, the name of Captain Blood, which had stood so high among
the Brethren of the Coast, would become a byword, a thing of
execration, and before all was done his life might pay forfeit
for what would be accounted a treacherous defection. And for
what had he placed himself in this position? For the sake of a
girl who avoided him so persistently and intentionally that he
must assume that she still regarded him with aversion. He had
scarcely been vouchsafed a glimpse of her in all this fortnight,
although with that in view for his main object he had daily haunted
her uncle's residence, and daily braved the unmasked hostility and
baffled rancour in which Colonel Bishop held him. Nor was that
the worst of it. He was allowed plainly to perceive that it was
the graceful, elegant young trifler from St. James's, Lord Julian
Wade, to whom her every moment was devoted. And what chance had he,
a desperate adventurer with a record of outlawry, against such a
rival as that, a man of parts, moreover, as he was bound to admit?

You conceive the bitterness of his soul. He beheld himself to be
as the dog in the fable that had dropped the substance to snatch
at a delusive shadow.

He sought comfort in a line on the open page before him:

"levius fit patientia quicquid corrigere est nefas."

Sought it, but hardly found it.

A boat that had approached unnoticed from the shore came scraping
and bumping against the great red hull of the Arabella, and a
raucous voice sent up a hailing shout. From the ship's belfry
two silvery notes rang clear and sharp, and a moment or two later
the bo'sun's whistle shrilled a long wail.

The sounds disturbed Captain Blood from his disgruntled musings.
He rose, tall, active, and arrestingly elegant in a scarlet,
gold-laced coat that advertised his new position, and slipping
the slender volume into his pocket, advanced to the carved rail
of the quarter-deck, just as Jeremy Pitt was setting foot upon
the companion.

"A note for you from the Deputy-Governor," said the master shortly,
as he proffered a folded sheet.

Blood broke the seal, and read. Pitt, loosely clad in shirt and
breeches, leaned against the rail the while and watched him,
unmistakable concern imprinted on his fair, frank countenance.

Blood uttered a short laugh, and curled his lip. "It is a very
peremptory summons," he said, and passed the note to his friend.

The young master's grey eyes skimmed it. Thoughtfully he stroked
his golden beard.

"You'll not go?" he said, between question and assertion.

" Why not? Haven't I been a daily visitor at the fort...?"

"But it'll be about the Old Wolf that he wants to see you. It gives
him a grievance at last. You know, Peter, that it is Lord Julian
alone has stood between Bishop and his hate of you. If now he can
show that ..."

"What if he can?" Blood interrupted carelessly. "Shall I be in
greater danger ashore than aboard, now that we've but fifty men
left, and they lukewarm rogues who would as soon serve the King as
me? Jeremy, dear lad, the Arabella's a prisoner here, bedad, 'twixt
the fort there and the fleet yonder. Don't be forgetting that."

Jeremy clenched his hands. "Why did ye let Wolverstone and the
others go?" he cried, with a touch of bitterness. "You should have
seen the danger."

"How could I in honesty have detained them? It was in the bargain.
Besides, how could their staying have helped me?" And as Pitt did
not answer him: "Ye see?" he said, and shrugged. "I'll be getting
my hat and cane and sword, and go ashore in the cock-boat. See it
manned for me."

"Ye're going to deliver yourself into Bishop's hands," Pitt warned
him.

"Well, well, maybe he'll not find me quite so easy to grasp as he
imagines. There's a thorn or two left on me." And with a laugh
Blood departed to his cabin.

Jeremy Pitt answered the laugh with an oath. A moment he stood
irresolute where Blood had left him. Then slowly, reluctance
dragging at his feet, he went down the companion to give the order
for the cock-boat.

"If anything should happen to you, Peter," he said, as Blood was
going over the side, "Colonel Bishop had better look to himself.
These fifty lads may be lukewarm at present, as you say, but - sink
me! - they'll be anything but lukewarm if there's a breach of faith."

"And what should be happening to me, Jeremy? Sure, now, I'll be
back for dinner, so I will."

Blood climbed down into the waiting boat. But laugh though he might,
he knew as well as Pitt that in going ashore that morning he carried
his life in his hands. Because of this, it may have been that when
he stepped on to the narrow mole, in the shadow of the shallow outer
wall of the fort through whose crenels were thrust the black noses
of its heavy guns, he gave order that the boat should stay for him
at that spot. He realized that he might have to retreat in a hurry.

Walking leisurely, he skirted the embattled wall, and passed through
the great gates into the courtyard. Half-a-dozen soldiers lounged
there, and in the shadow cast by the wall, Major Mallard, the
Commandant, was slowly pacing. He stopped short at sight of Captain
Blood, and saluted him, as was his due, but the smile that lifted
the officer's stiff mostachios was grimly sardonic. Peter Blood's
attention, however, was elsewhere.

On his right stretched a spacious garden, beyond which rose the
white house that was the residence of the Deputy-Governor. In that
garden's main avenue, that was fringed with palm and sandalwood,
he had caught sight of Miss Bishop alone. He crossed the courtyard
with suddenly lengthened stride.

"Good-morning to ye, ma'am," was his greeting as he overtook her;
and hat in hand now, he added on a note of protest: "Sure, it's
nothing less than uncharitable to make me run in this heat."

"Why do you run, then?" she asked him coolly, standing slim and
straight before him, all in white and very maidenly save in her
unnatural composure. "I am pressed," she informed him. "So you
will forgive me if I do not stay."

"You were none so pressed until I came," he protested, and if his
thin lips smiled, his blue eyes were oddly hard.

"Since you perceive it, sir, I wonder that you trouble to be so
insistent."

That crossed the swords between them, and it was against Blood's
instincts to avoid an engagement.

"Faith, you explain yourself after a fashion," said he. "But since
it was more or less in your service that I donned the King's coat,
you should suffer it to cover the thief and pirate."

She shrugged and turned aside, in some resentment and some regret.
Fearing to betray the latter, she took refuge in the former. "I
do my best," said she.

"So that ye can be charitable in some ways!" He laughed softly.
"Glory be, now, I should be thankful for so much. Maybe I'm
presumptuous. But I can't forget that when I was no better than a
slave in your uncle's household ir Barbados, ye used me with a
certain kindness."

"Why not? In those days you had some claim upon my kindness. You
were just an unfortunate gentleman then."

"And what else would you be calling me now?"

"Hardly unfortunate. We have heard of your good fortune on the
seas - how your luck has passed into a byword. And we have heard
other things: of your good fortune in other directions."

She spoke hastily, the thought of Mademoiselle d'Ogeron in her mind.
And instantly would have recalled the words had she been able. But
Peter Blood swept them lightly aside, reading into them none of her
meaning, as she feared he would.

"Aye - a deal of lies, devil a doubt, as I could prove to you."

"I cannot think why you should trouble to put yourself on your
defence," she discouraged him.

"So that ye may think less badly of me than you do."

"What I think of you can be a very little matter to you, sir."

This was a disarming stroke. He abandoned combat for expostulation.

"Can ye say that now? Can ye say that, beholding me in this livery
of a service I despise? Didn't ye tell me that I might redeem the
past? It's little enough I am concerned to redeem the past save
only in your eyes. In my own I've done nothing at all that I am
ashamed of, considering the provocation I received."

Her glance faltered, and fell away before his own that was so intent.

"I ... I can't think why you should speak to me like this," she
said, with less than her earlier assurance.

"Ah, now, can't ye, indeed?" he cried. "Sure, then, I'll be
telling ye."

"Oh, please." There was real alarm in her voice. "I realize fully
what you did, and I realize that partly, at least, you may have
been urged by consideration for myself. Believe me, I am very
grateful. I shall always be grateful."

"But if it's also your intention always to think of me as a thief
and a pirate, faith, ye may keep your, gratitude for all the good
it's like to do me."

A livelier colour crept into her cheeks. There was a perceptible
heave of the slight breast that faintly swelled the flimsy bodice
of white silk. But if she resented his tone and his words, she
stifled her resentment. She realized that perhaps she had,
herself, provoked his anger. She honestly desired to make amends.

"You are mistaken," she began. "It isn't that."

But they were fated to misunderstand each other.

Jealousy, that troubler of reason, had been over-busy with his wits
as it had with hers.

"What is it, then?" quoth he, and added the question: "Lord Julian?"

She started, and stared at him blankly indignant now.

"Och, be frank with me," he urged her, unpardonably. "'Twill be
a kindness, so it will."

For a moment she stood before him with quickened breathing, the
colour ebbing and flowing in her cheeks. Then she looked past him,
and tilted her chin forward.

"You... you are quite insufferable," she said. "I beg that you
will let me pass."

He stepped aside, and with the broad feathered hat which he still
held in his hand, he waved her on towards the house.

"I'll not be detaining you any longer, ma'am. After all, the cursed
thing I did for nothing can be undone. Ye'll remember afterwards
that it was your hardness drove me."

She moved to depart, then checked, and faced him again. It was she
now who was on her defence, her voice quivering with indignation.

"You take that tone! You dare to take that tone!" she cried,
astounding him by her sudden vehemence. "You have the effrontery
to upbraid me because I will not take your hands when I know how
they are stained; when I know you for a murderer and worse?"

He stared at her open-mouthed.

"A murderer- I?" he said at last.

"Must I name your victims? Did you not murder Levasseur?"

"Levasseur?" He smiled a little. "So they've told you about that!"

"Do you deny it?"

"I killed him, it is true. I can remember killing another man in
circumstances that were very similar. That was in Bridgetown on
the night of the Spanish raid. Mary Traill would tell you of it.
She was present."

He clapped his hat on his head with a certain abrupt fierceness,
and strode angrily away, before she could answer or even grasp the
full significance of what he had said.



CHAPTER XXIII

HOSTAGES


Peter Blood stood in the pillared portico of Government House, and
with unseeing eyes that were laden with pain and anger, stared out
across the great harbour of Port Royal to the green hills rising
from the farther shore and the ridge of the Blue Mountains beyond,
showing hazily through the quivering heat.

He was aroused by the return of the negro who had gone to announce
him, and following now this slave, he made his way through the
house to the wide piazza behind it, in whose shade Colonel Bishop
and my Lord Julian Wade took what little air there was.

"So ye've come," the Deputy-Governor hailed him, and followed the
greeting by a series of grunts of vague but apparently ill-humoured
import.

He did not trouble to rise, not even when Lord Julian, obeying the
instincts of finer breeding, set him the example. From under
scowling brows the wealthy Barbados planter considered his sometime
slave, who, hat in hand, leaning lightly upon his long beribboned
cane, revealed nothing in his countenance of the anger which was
being steadily nourished by this cavalier reception.

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