Captain Blood

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It was soon after sunrise that the rebel-convict who paced the
quarter-deck in Spanish corselet and headpiece, a Spanish musket on
his shoulder, announced the approach of a boat. It was Don Diego
de Espinosa y Valdez=20coming aboard with four great treasure-chests,
containing each twenty-five thousand pieces of eight, the ransom
delivered to him at dawn by Governor Steed. He was accompanied
by his son, Don Esteban, and by six men who took the oars.

Aboard the frigate all was quiet and orderly as it should be. She
rode at anchor, her larboard to the shore, and the main ladder on
her starboard side. Round to this came the boat with Don Diego and
his treasure. Mr. Blood had disposed effectively. It was not for
nothing that he had served under de Ruyter. The swings were waiting,
and the windlass manned. Below, a gun-crew held itself in readiness
under the command of Ogle, who - as I have said - had been a gunner
in the Royal Navy before he went in for politics and followed the
fortunes of the Duke of Monmouth. He was a sturdy, resolute fellow
who inspired confidence by the very confidence he displayed in
himself.

Don Diego mounted the ladder and stepped upon the deck, alone, and
entirely unsuspicious. What should the poor man suspect?

Before he could even look round, and survey this guard drawn up to
receive him, a tap over the head with a capstan bar efficiently
handled by Hagthorpe put him to sleep without the least fuss.

He was carried away to his cabin, whilst the treasure-chests, handled
by the men he had left in the boat, were being hauled to the deck.
That being satisfactorily accomplished, Don Esteban and the fellows
who had manned the boat came up the ladder, one by one, to be handled
with the same quiet efficiency. Peter Blood had a genius for these
things, and almost, I suspect, an eye for the dramatic. Dramatic,
certainly, was the spectacle now offered to the survivors of the raid.

With Colonel Bishop at their head, and gout-ridden Governor Steed
sitting on the ruins of a wall beside him, they glumly watched the
departure of the eight boats containing the weary Spanish ruffians
who had glutted themselves with rapine, murder, and violences
unspeakable.

They looked on, between relief at this departure of their remorseless
enemies, and despair at the wild ravages which, temporarily at least,
had wrecked the prosperity and happiness of that little colony.

The boats pulled away from the shore, with their loads of laughing,
jeering Spaniards, who were still flinging taunts across the water at
their surviving victims. They had come midway between the wharf and
the ship, when suddenly the air was shaken by the boom of a gun.

A round shot struck the water within a fathom of the foremost boat,
sending a shower of spray over its occupants. They paused at their
oars, astounded into silence for a moment. Then speech burst from
them like an explosion. Angrily voluble they anathematized this
dangerous carelessness on the part of their gunner, who should know
better than to fire a salute from a cannon loaded with shot. They
were still cursing him when a second shot, better aimed than the
first, came to crumple one of the boats into splinters, flinging its
crew, dead and living, into the water.

But if it silenced these, it gave tongue, still more angry, vehement,
and bewildered to the crews of the other seven boats. From each the
suspended oars stood out poised over the water, whilst on their feet
in the excitement the Spaniards screamed oaths at the ship, begging
Heaven and Hell to inform them what madman had been let loose among
her guns.

Plump into their middle came a third shot, smashing a second boat
with fearful execution. Followed again a moment of awful silence,
then among those Spanish pirates all was gibbering and jabbering
and splashing of oars, as they attempted to pull in every direction
at once. Some were for going ashore, others for heading straight
to the vessel and there discovering what might be amiss. That
something was very gravely amiss there could be no further doubt,
particularly as whilst they discussed and fumed and cursed two more
shots came over the water to account for yet a third of their boats.

The resolute Ogle was making excellent practice, and
fully justifying his claims to know something of gunnery.
In their consternation the Spaniards had simplified his
task by huddling their boats together.

After the fourth shot, opinion was no longer divided
amongst them. As with one accord they went about, or
attempted to do so, for before they had accomplished it
two more of their boats 'had been sunk.

The three boats that remained, without concerning themselves with
their more unfortunate fellows, who were struggling in the water,
headed back for the wharf at speed.

If the Spaniards understood nothing of all this, the forlorn
islanders ashore understood still less, until to help their wits
they saw the flag of Spain come down from the mainmast of the Cinco
Llagas, and the flag of England soar to its empty place. Even then
some bewilderment persisted, and it was with fearful eyes that they
observed the return of their enemies, who might vent upon them the
ferocity aroused by these extraordinary events.

Ogle, however, continued to give proof that his knowledge of gunnery
was not of yesterday. After the fleeing Spaniards went his shots.
The last of their boats flew into splinters as it touched the wharf,
and its remains were buried under a shower of loosened masonry.

That was the end of this pirate crew, which not ten minutes ago had
been laughingly counting up the pieces of eight that would fall to
the portion of each for his share in that act of villainy. Close
upon threescore survivors contrived to reach the shore. Whether
they had cause for congratulation, I am unable to say in the absence
of any records in which their fate may be traced. That lack of
records is in itself eloquent. We know that they were made fast as
they landed, and considering the offence they had given I am not
disposed to doubt that they had every reason to regret the survival.

The mystery of the succour that had come at the eleventh hour to
wreak vengeance upon the Spaniards, and to preserve for the island
the extortionate ransom of a hundred thousand pieces of eight,
remained yet to be probed. That the Cinco Llagas was now in friendly
hands could no longer be doubted after the proofs it had given. But
who, the people of Bridgetown asked one another, were the men in
possession of her, and whence had they come? The only possible
assumption ran the truth very closely. A resolute party of islanders
must have got aboard during the night, and seized the ship. It
remained to ascertain the precise identity of these mysterious
saviours, and do them fitting honour.

Upon this errand - Governor Steed's condition not permitting him to
go in person - went Colonel Bishop as the Governor's deputy, attended
by two officers.

As he stepped from the ladder into the vessel's waist, the Colonel
beheld there, beside the main hatch, the four treasure-chests, the
contents of one of which had been contributed almost entirely by
himself. It was a gladsome spectacle, and his eyes sparkled in
beholding it.

Ranged on either side, athwart the deck, stood a score of men in
two well-ordered files, with breasts and backs of steel, polished
Spanish morions on their heads, overshadowing their faces, and
muskets ordered at their sides.

Colonel Bishop could not be expected to recognize at a glance in
these upright, furbished, soldierly figures the ragged, unkempt
scarecrows that but yesterday had been toiling in his plantations.
Still less could he be expected to recognize at once the courtly
gentleman who advanced to greet him - a lean, graceful gentleman,
dressed in the Spanish fashion, all in black with silver lace, a
gold-hilted sword dangling beside him from a gold embroidered
baldrick, a broad castor with a sweeping plume set above carefully
curled ringlets of deepest black.

"Be welcome aboard the Cinco Llagas, Colonel, darling," a voice
vaguely familiar addressed the planter. "We've made the best of
the Spaniards' wardrobe in honour of this visit, though it was
scarcely yourself we had dared hope to expect. You find yourself
among friends - old friends of yours, all." The Colonel stared in
stupefaction. Mr. Blood tricked out in all this, splendour -=20
indulging therein his natural taste - his face carefully shaven,
his hair as carefully dressed, seemed transformed into a younger
man. The fact is he looked no more than the thirty-three years he
counted to his age.

"Peter Blood!" It was an ejaculation of amazement. Satisfaction
followed swiftly. "Was it you, then ... ?"

"Myself it was - myself and these, my good friends and yours." Mr.
Blood tossed back the fine lace from his wrist, to wave a hand
towards the file of men standing to attention there.

The Colonel looked more closely. "Gad's my life!" he crowed on a
note of foolish jubilation. "And it was with these fellows that you
took the Spaniard and turned the tables on those dogs! Oddswounds!
It was heroic!"

"Heroic, is it? Bedad, it's epic! Ye begin to perceive the breadth
and depth of my genius."

Colonel Bishop sat himself down on the hatch-coaming, took off his
broad hat, and mopped his brow.

"Y' amaze me!" he gasped. "On my soul, y' amaze me! To have
recovered the treasure and to have seized this fine ship and all
she'll hold! It will be something to set against the other losses we
have suffered. As Gad's my life, you deserve well for this."

"I am entirely of your opinion."

"Damme! You all deserve well, and damme, you shall find me grateful."

"That's as it should be," said Mr. Blood. "The question is how well
we deserve, and how grateful shall we find you?"

Colonel Bishop considered him. There was a shadow of surprise in
his face.

"Why - his excellency shall write home an account of your exploit,
and maybe some portion of your sentences=20shall be remitted."

"The generosity of King James is well known," sneered Nathaniel
Hagthorpe, who was standing by, and amongst the ranged
rebels-convict some one ventured to laugh.

Colonel Bishop started up. He was pervaded by the first pang of
uneasiness. It occurred to him that all here might not be as
friendly as appeared.

"And there's another matter," Mr. Blood resumed. "There's a matter
of a flogging that's due to me. Ye're a man of your word in such
matters, Colonel - if not perhaps in others - and ye said, I think,
that ye'd not leave a square inch of skin on my back."

The planter waved the matter aside. Almost it seemed to offend him.

"Tush! Tush! After this splendid deed of yours, do you suppose I
can be thinking of such things?"

"I'm glad ye feel like that about it. But I'm thinking it's
mighty lucky for me the Spaniards didn't come to-day instead of
yesterday, or it's in the same plight as Jeremy Pitt I'd be this
minute. And in that case where was the genius that would have
turned the tables on these rascally Spaniards?"

"Why speak of it now?" Mr. Blood resumed: "ye'll please to
understand that I must, Colonel, darling. Ye've worked a deal of
wickedness and cruelty in your time, and I want this to be a
lesson to you, a lesson that ye'll remember - for the sake of
others who may come after us. There's Jeremy up there in the
round-house with a back that's every colour of the rainbow; and
the poor lad'll not be himself again for a month. And if it hadn't
been for the Spaniards maybe it's dead he'd be by now, and maybe
myself with him."

Hagthorpe lounged forward. He was a fairly tall, vigorous man
with a clear-cut, attractive face which in itself announced his
breeding.

"Why will you be wasting words on the hog?" wondered that sometime
officer in the Royal Navy. "Fling him overboard and have done with
him."

The Colonel's eyes bulged in his head "What the devil do you mean?"
he blustered.

"It's the lucky man ye are entirely, Colonel, though ye don't guess
the source of your good fortune."

And now another intervened - the brawny, one-eyed Wolverstone, less
mercifully disposed than his more gentlemanly fellow-convict.

"String him up from the yardarm," he cried, his deep voice harsh and
angry, and more than one of the slaves standing to their arms made
echo.

Colonel Bishop trembled. Mr. Blood turned. He was quite calm.

"If you please, Wolverstone," said he, "I conduct affairs in my own
way. That is the pact. You'll please to remember it." His eyes
looked along the ranks, making it plain that he addressed them all.
"I desire that Colonel Bishop should have his life. One reason is
that I require him as a hostage. If ye insist on hanging him, ye'll
have to hang me with him, or in the alternative I'll go ashore."

He paused. There was no answer. But they stood hang-dog and
half-mutinous before him, save Hagthorpe, who shrugged and smiled
wearily.=20

Mr. Blood resumed: "Ye'll please to understand that aboard a ship
there is one captain. So." He swung again to the startled Colonel.
"Though I promise you your life, I must - as you've heard - keep
you aboard as a hostage for the good behaviour of Governor Steed
and what's left of the fort until we put to sea."

"Until you ..." Horror prevented Colonel Bishop from echoing the
remainder of that incredible speech.

"Just so," said Peter Blood, and he turned to the officers who had
accompanied the Colonel. "The boat is waiting, gentlemen. You'll
have heard what I said. Convey it with my compliments to his
excellency."

"But, sir ..." one of them began.

"There is no more to be said, gentlemen. My name is Blood - Captain
Blood, if you please, of this ship the Cinco Llagas, taken as a
prize of war from Don Diego de Espinosa y Valdez, who is my prisoner
aboard. You are to understand that I have turned the tables on more
than the Spaniards. There's the ladder. You'll find it more
convenient than being heaved over the side, which is what'll happen
if you linger.

They went, though not without some hustling, regardless of the
bellowings of Colonel Bishop, whose monstrous rage was fanned by
terror at finding himself at the mercy of these men of whose cause
to hate him he was very fully conscious.

A half-dozen of them, apart from Jeremy Pitt, who was utterly
incapacitated for the present, possessed a superficial knowledge
of seamanship. Hagthorpe, although he had been a fighting officer,
untrained in navigation, knew how to handle a ship, and under his
directions they set about getting under way.

The anchor catted, and the mainsail unfurled, they stood out for
the open before a gentle breeze, without interference from the fort.

As they were running close to the headland east of the bay, Peter
Blood returned to the Colonel, who, under guard and panic-stricken,
had dejectedly resumed his seat on the coamings of the main batch.

"Can ye swim, Colonel?"

Colonel Bishop looked up. His great face was yellow and seemed in
that moment of a preternatural flabbiness; his beady eyes were
beadier than ever.

"As your doctor, now, I prescribe a swim to cool the excessive heat
of your humours." Blood delivered the explanation pleasantly, and,
receiving still no answer from the Colonel, continued: "It's a mercy
for you I'm not by nature as bloodthirsty as some of my friends here.
And it's the devil's own labour I've had to prevail upon them not
to be vindictive. I doubt if ye're worth the pains I've taken for
you."

He was lying. He had no doubt at all. Had he followed his own
wishes and instincts, he would certainly have strung the Colonel up,
and accounted it a meritorious deed. It was the thought of Arabella
Bishop that had urged him to mercy, and had led him to oppose the
natural vindictiveness of his fellow-slaves until he had been in
danger of precipitating a mutiny. It was entirely to the fact that
the Colonel was her uncle, although he did not even begin to suspect
such a cause, that he owed such mercy as was now being shown him.

"You shall have a chance to swim for it," Peter Blood continued.
"It's not above a quarter of a mile to the headland yonder, and with
ordinary luck ye should manage it. Faith, you're fat enough to
float. Come on! Now, don't be hesitating or it's a long voyage
ye'll be going with us, and the devil knows what may happen to you.
You're not loved any more than you deserve."

Colonel Bishop mastered himself, and rose. A merciless despot, who
had never known the need for restraint in all these years, he was
doomed by ironic fate to practise restraint in the very moment when
his feelings had reached their most violent intensity.

Peter Blood gave an order. A plank was run out over the gunwale,
and lashed down.

"If you please, Colonel," said he, with a graceful flourish of
invitation.

The Colonel looked at him, and there was hell in his glance. Then,
taking his resolve, and putting the best face upon it, since no
other could help him here, he kicked off his shoes, peeled off his
fine coat of biscuit-coloured taffetas, and climbed upon the plank.

A moment he paused, steadied by a hand that clutched the ratlines,
looking down in terror at the green water rushing past some
five-and-twenty feet below.

"Just take a little walk, Colonel, darling," said a smooth, mocking
voice behind him.

Still clinging, Colonel Bishop looked round in hesitation, and saw
the bulwarks lined with swarthy faces - the faces of men that as
lately as yesterday would have turned pale under his frown, faces
that were now all wickedly agrin.

For a moment rage stamped out his fear. He cursed them aloud
venomously and incoherently, then loosed his hold and stepped out
upon the plank. Three steps he took before he lost his balance and
went tumbling into the green depths below.

When he came to the surface again, gasping for air, the Cinco Llagas
was already some furlongs to leeward. But the roaring cheer of
mocking valediction from the rebels-convict reached him across the
water, to drive the iron of impotent rage deeper into his soul.

CHAPTER X

DON DIEGO

Don Diego de Espinosa y Valdez awoke, and with languid eyes in
aching head, he looked round the cabin, which was flooded with
sunlight from the square windows astern. Then he uttered a moan,
and closed his eyes again, impelled to this by the monstrous ache
in his head. Lying thus, he attempted to think, to locate himself
in time and space. But between the pain in his head and the
confusion in his mind, he found coherent thought impossible.

An indefinite sense of alarm drove him to open his eyes again, and
once more to consider his surroundings.

There could be no doubt that he lay in the great cabin of his own
ship, the Cinco Llagas, so that his vague disquiet must be, surely,
ill-founded. And yet, stirrings of memory coming now to the
assistance of reflection, compelled him uneasily to insist that
here something was not as it should be. The low position of the
sun, flooding the cabin with golden light from those square ports
astern, suggested to him at first that it was early morning, on
the assumption that the vessel was headed westward. Then the
alternative occurred to him. They might be sailing eastward, in
which case the time of day would be late afternoon. That they
were sailing he could feel from the gentle forward heave of the
vessel under him. But how did they come to be sailing, and he,
the master, not to know whether their course lay east or west, not
to be able to recollect whither they were bound?

His mind went back over the adventure of yesterday, if of yesterday
it was. He was clear on the matter of the easily successful raid
upon the Island of Barbados; every detail stood vividly in his
memory up to the moment at which, returning aboard, he had stepped
on to his own deck again. There memory abruptly and inexplicably
ceased.

He was beginning to torture his mind with conjecture, when the door
opened, and to Don Diego's increasing mystification he beheld his
best suit of clothes step into the cabin. It was a singularly
elegant and characteristically Spanish suit of black taffetas with
silver lace that had been made for him a year ago in Cadiz, and he
knew each detail of it so well that it was impossible he could now
be mistaken.

The suit paused to close the door, then advanced towards the couch
on which Don Diego was extended, and inside the suit came a tall,
slender gentleman of about Don Diego's own height and shape. Seeing
the wide, startled eyes of the Spaniard upon him, the gentleman
lengthened his stride.

"Awake, eh?" said he in Spanish.

The recumbent man looked up bewildered into a pair of light-blue
eyes that regarded him out of a tawny, sardonic face set in a
cluster of black ringlets. But he was too bewildered to make any
answer.

The stranger's fingers touched the top of Don Diego's head,
whereupon Don Diego winced and cried out in pain.

"Tender, eh?" said the stranger. He took Don Diego's wrist between
thumb and second finger. And then, at last, the intrigued Spaniard
spoke.

"Are you a doctor?"

"Among other things." The swarthy gentleman continued his study of
the patient's pulse. "Firm and regular," he announced at last, and
dropped the wrist. "You've taken no great harm."

Don Diego struggled up into a sitting position on the red velvet
couch.

"Who the devil are you?" he asked. "And what the devil are you
doing in my clothes and aboard my ship?"

The level black eyebrows went up, a faint smile curled the lips of
the long mouth.

"You are still delirious, I fear. This is not your ship. This is
my ship, and these are my clothes."

"Your ship?" quoth the other, aghast, and still more aghast he added:
"Your clothes? But ... Then ..." Wildly his eyes looked about him.
They scanned the cabin once again, scrutinizing each familiar object.
"Am I mad?" he asked at last. "Surely this ship is the Cinco Llagas?"

"The Cinco Llagas it is."

"Then ..." The Spaniard broke off. His glance grew still more
troubled. "Valga me Dios!" he cried out, like a man in anguish.
"Will you tell me also that you are Don Diego de Espinosa?"

"Oh, no, my name is Blood - Captain Peter Blood. This ship, like
this handsome suit of clothes, is mine by right of conquest. Just
as you, Don Diego, are my prisoner."

Startling as was the explanation, yet it proved soothing to Don
Diego, being so much less startling than the things he was beginning
to imagine.

"But ... Are you not Spanish, then?"

"You flatter my Castilian accent. I have the honour to be Irish.
You were thinking that a miracle had happened. So it has - a
miracle wrought by my genius, which is considerable."

Succinctly now Captain Blood dispelled the mystery by a relation of
the facts. It was a narrative that painted red and white by turns
the Spaniard's countenance. He put a hand to the back of his head,
and there discovered, in confirmation of the story, a lump as large
as a pigeon's egg. Lastly, he stared wild-eyed at the sardonic
Captain Blood.

"And my son? What of my son?" he cried out. "He was in the boat
that brought me aboard."

"Your son is safe; he and the boat's crew together with your gunner
and his men are snugly in irons under hatches."

Don Diego sank back on the couch, his glittering dark eyes fixed
upon the tawny face above him. He composed himself. After all, he
possessed the stoicism proper to his desperate trade. The dice had
fallen against him in this venture. The tables had been turned upon
him in the very moment of success. He accepted the situation with
the fortitude of a fatalist.

With the utmost calm he enquired:

"And now, Senior Capitan?"

"And now," said Captain Blood - to give him the title he had assumed
- "being a humane man, I am sorry to find that ye're not dead from
the tap we gave you. For it means that you'll be put to the trouble
of dying all over again."

"Ah!" Don Diego drew a deep breath. "But is that necessary?" he
asked, without apparent perturbation.

Captain Blood's blue eyes approved his bearing. "Ask yourself," said
he. "Tell me, as an experienced and bloody pirate, what in my place
would you do, yourself?"

"Ah, but there is a difference." Don Diego sat up to argue the
matter." It lies in the fact that you boast yourself a humane man."

Captain Blood perched himself on the edge of the long oak table."
But I am not a fool," said he, "and I'll not allow a natural Irish
sentimentality to stand in the way of my doing what is necessary
and proper. You and your ten surviving scoundrels are a menace on
this ship. More than that, she is none so well found in water and
provisions. True, we are fortunately a small number, but you and
your party inconveniently increase it. So that on every hand, you
see, prudence suggests to us that we should deny ourselves the
pleasure of your company, and, steeling our soft hearts to the
inevitable, invite you to be so obliging as to step over the side."

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