He laughed again, observing Blood's rueful countenance.
A gust of rage swept through the ranks of the buccaneers pressing behind their leader. The news had run as swiftly as flame over gunpowder, and with similar effect in the explosion it produced. With yells of execration and sinister baring of weapons, they would have flung themselves upon the Spanish commander, who — in their view — had cheated them, and they would have torn him there and then to pieces, had not Blood swung round and made of his own body a shield for Don Domingo.
«Hold!» he commanded, in a voice that blared like a trumpet. «Don Domingo is my prisoner, and I have pledged my word that he shall suffer no violence!»
Yberville it was who fiercely voiced the common thought.
«Will you keep faith with a Spanish dog who has cheated us? Let him be hanged!»
«It was his duty, and I'll have no man hanged for doing no more than that!»
For a moment Blood's voice was drowned in uproar. But he stood his ground impassively, his light eyes stern, his hand upheld, imposing some measure of restraint upon them.
«Silence, there, and listen! You are wasting time. The harm is far from being beyond repair. The gold has but a few hours' start. You, Yberville, and you, Hagthorpe, re–embark your companies at once, and follow. You should come up with them before they reach the Gulf, but even if you don't, it is still a far cry to Panama, and you'll overtake them long before they're in sight of it. Away with you! Wolverstone's company will await your return here with me.»
It was the only thing that could have stayed their fury and prevented a massacre of the unarmed Spaniards. They did not wait to be told a second time, but poured out of the fort and out of the town faster than they had poured into it. The only grumblers were the six score men of Wolverstone's company who were bidden to remain behind. They locked up the Spaniards, all together, in one of the long pent–houses that made up the interior of the fort. Then they scattered about the little town in quest of victuals and such loot as there might be.
Blood turned his attention to the wounded. These, both his own men and the Spaniards, had been carried into another of the pent–houses, where beds of hay and dried leaves had been improvised for them. There were between forty and fifty of them in all, of which number one quarter were buccaneers. In killed and wounded the Spanish loss had been upwards of a hundred men; that of the buccaneers between thirty and forty.
With a half dozen assistants, of whom one was a Spaniard who had some knowledge of medicine, Blood went briskly to work to set limbs and patch up wounds. Absorbed in his task, he paid no heed to the sounds outside, where the Indians, who had gone to earth during the fighting, were now encamped, until suddenly a piercing scream disturbed him.
Before he could move or speak, the door of the hut was wrenched open, and a woman, hugging an infant to her breast, reeled in, calling him wildly by his Hispanicised name.
«Don Pedro! Don Pedro Sangre!» Then, as he stepped forward, frowning, she gasped for breath, clutched her throat, and fell on her knees before him, crying agonizedly in Spanish: «Save him! They are murdering him — murdering him!»
She was a lithe young thing that had scarcely yet crossed the threshold of womanhood, whom at a casual glance you might, from her apparel and general appearance, have supposed a Spaniard of the peasant class. Her blue–black hair and liquid black eyes were such as you might see in many an Andalusian, nor was her skin much swarthier. Only the high cheekbones and peculiar, dusky lips proclaimed, upon a closer inspection, her real race.
«What is it?» said Blood. «Whom are they murdering?»
A shadow darkened the sunlit doorway and Brazo Largo entered, dignified and grimly purposeful.
Overmastering terror of the advancing Indian froze the crouching woman's tongue.
Now he was standing over her. He stooped and set his hand upon her shrinking shoulder. He spoke to her swiftly in the guttural tongue of Darien, and though Blood understood no word of it, yet he could not mistake the note of stern command.
Wildly, a mad thing, she looked up at Captain Blood.
«He bids me go to see them roasting him alive! Mercy, Don Pedro! Save him!»
«Save whom?» barked the Captain, almost in exasperation.
Brazo Largo answered him, explaining:
«She to be my daughter — this. Captain Domingo, he come village, one year now, and carry her away with him. Caramba! Now I roast him, and take her home.» He turned to the girl. «Vamos,» he commanded, continuing to use his primitive Spanish, «you to come with me. You see him roast, then you come back village.»
Captain Blood found the explanation ample. In a flash he recalled Guanahani's excessive eagerness to conduct him to the Spanish gold at Santa Maria, and how that eagerness had momentarily awakened suspicion in him. Now he understood. In urging this raid on Santa Maria, Brazo Largo had used him and his buccaneers to exploit a private vengeance and to recover an abducted daughter from Domingo Fuentes. But however deserving of punishment that abduction might appear, it was also revealed that, whether the girl had gone off willingly or not with the Spanish captain, his subsequent treatment of her had been such that she now desired to stay with him, and was concerned to the point of madness for his life and safety.
«Is it true what he says — that Don Domingo is your lover?» the Captain asked her.
«He is my husband, my married husband, and my love,» she answered, a passion of entreaty in her liquid eyes. «This is our little baby. Do not let them kill him, Don Pedro! Oh, if they do,» she moaned, «I shall kill myself!»
Captain Blood looked across at the grim–faced Indian.
«You hear? The Spaniard has been good to her. She desires his life. And his offence being as you say, it is her will that decked his fate. What have you done with him?»
Both clamoured at once, the father in angry, almost incoherent, remonstrance, the girl in passionate gratitude. She sprang up and caught Blood's arm to drag him thence.
But Brazo Largo, still protesting, barred the way. He conveyed that in his view Captain Blood was violating the alliance between them.
«Alliance!» snorted Blood. «You have been using me for purposes of your own. You should have been frank with me and told me of your quarrel with Don Domingo before I pledged myself that he should suffer no violence. As it is…»
He shrugged, and went out quickly with the young mother. Brazo Largo stalked after them, glowering and thoughtful.
Outside, Blood ran into Wolverstone and a score of men who were returning from the town. He ordered them to follow him, telling them that the Indians were murdering the Spanish captain.
«Good luck to them!» quoth Wolverstone, who had been drinking.
Nevertheless, he followed, and his men with him, being in reality less bloody in deed than in speech.
Beyond the breach in the palisade they came upon the Indians — some forty of them — kindling a fire. Near at hand lay the helpless Don Domingo, bound with leather thongs. The girl sped to him, crooning soft Spanish endearments. He smiled in answer out of a white face that yet retained something of scornful calm. Captain Blood, more practical, followed with a knife and slashed away the prisoner's bonds.
There was a movement of anger among the Indians, instantly quelled by Brazo Largo. He spoke to them rapidly, and they stood disappointed but impassive. Wolverstone's men were there, musket in hand, blowing on their fuses.
They escorted Don Domingo back to the fort, his little wife tripping between him an the buccaneer captain, whom she enlightened on the score of the Indians' ready obedience to her father.
«He told them that you must have your way since you had pledged your word that Domingo's life should be safe. But that presently you would depart. Then they would return and deal with him and the other few Spaniards left here.»