Macartney, purple in the face, was fingering his sword–hilt. But it was the Colonel, livid with passion, who answered, waving one of his bony, freckled hands.
«You infamous pirate scoundrel! You damned escaped convict! You've forgot one thing: that until you can get back to your pestilential buccaneers, none of this can happen.»
«We have to thank him for the warning, sir,» Captain Macartney jeered.
«Ah, bah! Ye've no imagination, as I suspected yesterday. Your muleteer gave me a glimpse of what to expect from you. I took my measures accordingly, so I did. I left orders with my lieutenant to assume at twelve o'clock that war had been declared, and to land the guns and haul them to the fort, whence they command the town. I left your mules with him for the purpose.» He glanced at the timepiece on the overmantel. «It's nearly half–past twelve already. From your windows here you can see the fort.» He stood up and proffered his telescope. «Assure yourself that what I have said is happening.»
There was a pause in which the Captain–General considered him with eyes of hate. Then in silence he took the telescope and went to the window. When he turned from it again, he was fierce as a rattlesnake. «But you forget one thing still. That we hold you. I'll send word to your pirate scum that at the first shot from them I'll hang you. The guard, Macartney. There's been talk enough.»
«Oh, a moment yet,» Blood begged. «Ye're so plaguily hasty in your conclusions. Wolverstone has my orders, and no threat to my life will swerve him from them by a hair's breadth. Hang me if you will.» He shrugged. «If I set great store by life, I should hardly follow the trade of a buccaneer. But when you've hanged me, be sure that not one stone of Saint John's will be left upon another, not man, woman, or child will my buccaneers spare in avenging me. Consider that, and consider at the same time your duty to this colony and to your king — this duty by which you rightly set such store.»
The Governor's pale eyes stabbed him as if they would reach his soul. Calm and intrepid he stood before them, so calm in all the circumstances as almost to intimidate.
The Colonel looked at Macartney, as if for help. He found none there. Irritably he broke out at last: «Oh, stab me! I am well served for dealing with a pirate! To be rid of you, I'll pay you your twenty thousand pieces, and so farewell and be damned to you.»
«Twenty thousand pieces!» Blood raised his eyebrows in surprise. «But that was whilst I was your ally; that was before ye declared war upon me.»
«What the devil do you mean now?»
«That since ye admit defeat, we will pass to the discussion of terms.»
«Terms? What terms?» The Captain–General's exasperation was swiftly mounting him.
«You shall hear them. First, the twenty thousand pieces of eight that you owe my men for services rendered. Next, thirty thousand for the redemption of the town from the bombardment that is preparing.»
«What? By God, sir …»
«Next,» Captain Blood pursued relentlessly, «ten thousand pieces for your own ransom, ten thousand for the ransom of your own family, and five thousand for that of other persons of consequences in Saint John's, including Captain Macartney here. That makes seventy–five thousand pieces of eight, and they must be paid within the next hour, since later will be too late.»
The Captain–General looked unutterable things. He tried to speak. But speech failed him. He sat down heavily. At last he found his voice. It came thick and quavering.
«You … you abuse my patience! You surely … You think me mad?»
«Best hang him, Colonel, and have done,» Macartney exploded.
«And thereby destroy the colony it is your duty at all costs — at all costs, mark you — to preserve.»
The Captain–General passed a hand across his wet, pallid brow, and groaned.
They talked, of course, for some time yet; but ever within the circle of what had been said already, until in the end Colonel Courtney broke into a laugh that was almost hysterical.
«Stab me, sir! It only remains to marvel at your moderation. You might have asked seven hundred thousand pieces, or seven millions …»
«True,» Blood interrupted him. «But then I am by nature moderate, and also I have a notion of the resources of your treasury.»
«But the time!» cried the Governor desperately, to show that he had yielded. «How can I collect the sum within an hour?»
«I'll be reasonable. Send me the money to the bluff by sunset, and I'll withdraw. And now I'll take my leave at once, so as to suspend the operations. It's a very good day I'll be wishing you.»
They let him go, perforce. And at sunset Captain Macartney rode out to the gun emplacements of the buccaneers followed by a Negro leading a mule on which the gold was laden.
Captain Blood came forward alone to receive him.
«It isn't what you'ld have got from me,» said the choleric captain through his teeth.
«I'll remember that in case you should ever command a settlement. And now, sir, to business. What do these sacks hold?»
«You'll find five thousand pieces in each.»
«Then set me down four of them: the twenty thousand pieces for which I agreed to serve Antigua. The rest you can take back to the Captain–General with my compliments. Let the experience teach him, and you, too, Captain, darling, that a man's first duty is less to his office than to his own honour, and that he cannot perform it unless he fulfils the engagements of his word.»
Captain Macartney sucked in his breath. «Gads life!» he exclaimed huskily. «And you're a pirate!»
Sternly came the vibrant, metallic voice of the buccaneer. «I am Captain Blood.»
V — BLOOD MONEY
Captain Blood was pleased with the world — which is but another way of saying that he was pleased with himself.
He stood on the mole at Cayona and surveyed the shipping in the rockbound harbour. With pride he considered the five great ships that now made up his fleet, every spar and timber of which had once been the property of Spain. There was his own flagship, the Arabella, of forty guns, that once had been the Cinco Llagas out of Cadiz, with her red bulwarks and gilded ports aflame in the evening sunlight, with the scarcely less powerful blue and white Elizabeth beside her. Beyond them rode the three smaller twenty–gun vessels captured in the great affair at Maracaybo from which Blood was lately returned. These ships, originally named the Infanta, the San Felipe, and the Santo Niño, Blood had renamed after the three Parcae, the Clotho, the Lachesis, and the Atropos, by which it was his intention playfully to convey that they were the arbiters of the fate of any Spaniard henceforth encountered by them upon the seas.
Captain Blood took satisfaction in his own delicate, scholarly humour. He was, as I have said, well pleased with himself. His following numbered close upon a thousand men, and he could double this number whenever he pleased. For his luck was passing into a proverb, and luck is the highest quality that can be sought in a leader of hazardous enterprises. Not the great Henry Morgan himself in his best days had wielded such authority and power. Not even Montbar — surnamed by Spain the Exterminator — had been more dreaded by Spaniards in his day that was Don Pedro Sangre, as they translated Peter Blood's name, accounting it most apt.
Order, he knew, was being taken against him. Not only the King of Spain, of whose power he had made a mock, but also the King of England, whom he accounted, and with some reason, a contemptible fellow, were concerting measures for his destruction; and news had lately come to Tortuga that, nearer at hand, the Spanish Admiral, Don Miguel de Espinosa, who had been the latest and most terrible sufferer at his hands, had proclaimed that he would pay ten thousand pieces of eight to any man who should deliver up to him the person of Captain Blood alive. Don Miguel's was a vindictiveness that was not to be satisfied by mere death.