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 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 was 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 be repossessed by the abominable pirates whom he had constrained to abandon her. It remained, therefore, before scuttling her only to transship 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 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 cockboat from the yellow galleon standing in the roadstead, with the flag of Spain floating from her main truck. Having landed him, the cock–boat went smartly about and was pulled back to the ship, from which circumstance 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.