When at last he broke the brooding silence, his words seemed to have no bearing whatever upon the situation.
«Though you may mean to sell me to Spain, sure there's no reason why ye should let me die of thirst in the meantime. I've a throat that's like the salt ponds on Saltatudos, so I have.»
Although he had a definite purpose to serve, to which he made his thirst a pretext, yet that thirst itself was real, and it was suffered by his captors in common with himself. The air of the room, whose door and window were tight–barred, was stifling. Sam passed a hand across his dank brow and swept away the moisture.
«Hell! The heat!» he muttered. «And now I thirst myself.»
Cahusac licked his dry lips.
«Is there nothing in the house?» he asked.
«No. But it's only a step to The King of France.»
He rose. «I'll go fetch a jack of wine.»
Hope soared wildly in the breast of Captain Blood.
It was precisely for this that he had played. Knowing their drinking habit, and how easily suggestion must arouse their desire to indulge it, he had hoped to send one of them upon that errand, and that the one to go would be Sam. With Cahusac he was sure he could make a deal at once.
And then Cahusac, the fool, ruined all by his excessive eagerness. He, too, was on his feet.
«A jack of wine! Yes, yes!» he cried. «Make haste. I, too, am thirsty.»
Almost was there a quiver in his voice. Sam's ears detected it. He stood arrested, pondering his associate, and reading in his face the little rascal's treacherous intent.
He smiled a little.
«On second thoughts,» said he, slowly, «it will be best if you goes and I stays on guard.»
Cahusac's mouth fell open; almost he turned pale. Inwardly Captain Blood cursed him for a triple fool. «D'ye mean that ye don't trust me?» he demanded. «It ain't that — not exactly,» he was answered.
«But it's me that stays.»
Cahusac became really and vehemently angry. «Ah, ca! Name of God! If you don't trust me with him, I don't trust you neither.»
«You don't need to. You know that I dursn't be tempted by his promises. That's why I'm the one to stay.»
For a long moment the two ruffianly associates glowered at each other in angry silence. Then Cahusac's glance became sullen. He shrugged and turned aside, as if grudgingly admittingly that Sam's reasoning was unanswerable. He stood pondering with narrowed eyes. Finally he bestirred himself as if with sudden resolve.
«Ah, bah, I go!» he declared, and abruptly went.
As the door closed on the departing Frenchman, Sam resumed his seat at the table. Blood listened to the quickly receding footsteps until they had faded in the distance; then he broke the silence with a laugh that startled his companion.
Sam looked up sharply.
«What's amusing you now, Captain?»
Blood would have preferred, as we know, to deal with Cahusac. Cahusac was a certainty. Sam was hardly a possibility, obsessed as he obviously was by the fear of Spain. Still, that possibility must be exploited, however slender it might appear.
«Your rashness, bedad!» answered Captain Blood. «Yell not trust him to remain on guard, yet ye trust him out of your sight.»
«And what harm can he do?»
«He might not return alone,» said the Captain darkly.
«Blister me!» cried Sam. «If he tries any such tricks, I'll pistol him at sight. That's how I serves them that gets tricky with me.»
«Ye'd be wise to serve him so in any case. He's a treacherous tyke, Sam, as I should know. Ye've baffled him to–night, and he's not the man to forgive. Ye should know that from his betrayal of me. But ye don't know. Ye've eyes, Sam, but no more sight than a blind puppy. And a head, Sam, but no more brains than are contained in a melon, or you'd never hesitate between Spain and me.»
«Oh, that's it, is it?»
«Just that. Just fifty thousand pieces of eight that I offer, and that I pledge my honour to pay you, as well as pledging my honour to bear no malice and seek no vengeance. Even Cahusac assures you that my word is good, and was ready enough to accept it.»
He paused. The rascally hunter was considering him silently, his face clay–coloured and the perspiration standing in beads upon his brow.
Presently he spoke hoarsely.
«Fifty thousand pieces, you said?» quoth he softly.
«To be sure. For where's the need to share with the French cur? D'ye dream he'd share with you if he could make it all his own by slipping a knife into your back? Come, Sam, make a bold bid for fortune. Damn your fears of Spain! Spain's a phantom! I'll protect you from Spain. You can lie safe aboard my flagship.»
Sam's eyes flashed momentarily, then grew troubled again by thought.
«Fifty thousand. Ah, but the risk!»
«Sure, there's no risk at all,» said Blood. «Not half the risk you run when it comes out that you sold me to Spain, as come out it will. Man, ye'll never leave Tortuga alive. And if ye did, my buccaneers would hunt ye to the end of the earth.»
«But who's to tell?»
«There's always someone. Ye were a fool to undertake this job, a bigger fool to have taken Cahusac for partner. Hasn't he talked openly of vengeance? And won't he, therefore, be the first man suspected? And when they get him, as get him they will, isn't it as sure as judgment that he'll tell on you?»
«By Heaven, I believe you in that!» cried the man, presented with facts which he had never paused to consider.
«Faith, you may believe me in the rest as readily, Sam.»
«Wait! Let me think!»
As once before, Captain Blood judged wisely that he had said enough for the moment. So far his success with Sam had been greater than he had dared to hope. The seed he had sown might now be left awhile to germinate.
The minutes sped, and Sam, elbows on the table and head in his hand, sat still and thoughtful. When at last he looked up, and the yellow light beat once more upon his face, Blood saw that it was pallid and gleaming. He tried to conjecture how far the poison he had dropped into Sam's mind might have done its work. Presently Sam plucked a pistol from his belt and examined the priming. This seemed to Blood significant. But it was more significant still that he did not replace the pistol in his belt. He sat nursing it, his yellowish face grimly set, his coarse lips tight with purpose.
«Sam,» said Captain Blood softly, «what have you decided?»
«I'll put it out of the power of that French mongrel to bubble me,» said the ruffian.
«And nothing else?»
«The rest can wait.»
With difficulty Captain Blood bridled his eagerness to force the pace.
Followed an apparently interminable time of waiting, in a silence broken only by the ticking of the Captain's watch where it lay upon the table. Then, faintly at first, but swiftly growing louder as it drew nearer, came a patter of steps in the lane outside. The door was pushed open, and Cahusac appeared carrying a great black jack.
Sam was already on his feet beyond the table, his right hand behind him.
«You've been a long time gone!» he grumbled. «What kept you?»
Cahusac was pale, and breathing rather hard, as if he had been running. Blood, whose mind was preternaturally alert, knowing that he had not run, looked elsewhere for a reason, and guessed it to lie in either fear or excitement.
«I made all haste,» was the Frenchman's answer. «But I was athirst myself, and I stayed to quench it. Here's your wine.»
He set the leathern jack upon the table.
And on the instant, almost at point–blank range, Sam shot him through the heart.
Through the rising cloud of smoke, whose acrid smell took him sharply in the throat and set him coughing, Blood saw a picture that he was to retain in his mind to the end of his days. Face downwards on the floor lay Cahusac with twitching limbs, whilst Sam leaned forward, across the table to watch him, a grin on his long, animal face.