Things were reaching a stage in which Peter Blood could see no alternative to that of parting from these men whom a common misfortune had endeared to him. It was in this pass that Fate employed the tool she had forged in Captain Easterling.
One morning, three days after his interview with Mr. Blood at the Governor's house, the Captain came alongside the Cinco Llagas in the cockboat from his sloop. As he heaved his massive bulk into the waist of the ship, his bold dark eyes were everywhere at once. The Cinco Llagas was not only well–found, but irreproachably kept. Her decks were scoured, her cordage stowed, and everything in place. The muskets were ranged in the rack about the mainmast, and the brasswork on the scuttle–butts shone like gold, in the bright sunshine. Not such lubberly fellows, after all, these escaped rebels–convict who composed Mr. Blood's crew.
And there was Mr. Blood himself in his black and silver, looking like a Grande of Spain, doffing a black hat with a sweep of claret ostrich plume about it, and bowing until the wings of his periwig met across his face like the pendulous ears of a spaniel. With him stood Nathaniel Hagthorpe, a pleasant gentleman of Mr. Blood's own age, whose steady eye and clear–cut face announced the man of breeding; Jeremy Pitt, the flaxen–haired young Somerset shipmaster; the short, sturdy Nicholas Dyke who had been a petty officer and had served under King James when he was Duke of York. There was nothing of the ragamuffin about these, as Easterling had so readily imagined. Even the burly, rough–voiced Wolverstone had crowded his muscular bulk into Spanish fripperies for the occasion.
Having presented them, Mr. Blood invited the captain of the Bonaventure to the great cabin in the stern, which for spaciousness and richness of furniture surpassed any cabin Captain Easterling had ever entered.
A Negro servant in a white jacket — a lad hired here in Tortuga — brought, besides the usual rum and sugar and fresh limes, a bottle of golden Canary which had been in the ship's original equipment and which Mr. Blood recommended with solicitude to his unbidden guest.
Remembering Monsieur d'Ogeron's warning that Captain Easterling was dangerous, Mr. Blood deemed it wise to use him with all civility, if only so that being at his ease he should disclose in what he might be dangerous now.
They occupied the elegantly cushioned seats about the table of black oak, and Captain Easterling praised the Canary liberally so as to justify the liberality with which he consumed it. Thereafter he came to business by asking if Mr. Blood, upon reflection, had not perhaps changed his mind about selling the ship.
«If so be that you have,» he added, with a glance at Blood's four companions, «considering among how many the purchase money will be divided, you'll find me generous.»
If by this he had hoped to make an impression upon those four, their stolid countenances disappointed him.
Mr. Blood shook his head. «It's wasting your time, ye are, Captain. Whatever else we decide, we keep the Cinco Llagas.»
«Whatever you decide?» The great black brows went up on that shallow brow. «Ye're none so decided then as ye was, about this voyage to Europe? Why, then, I'll come at once to the business I'ld propose if ye wouldn't sell. It is that with this ship ye join the Bonaventure in a venture — a bonaventure.» And he laughed noisily at his own jest with a flash of white teeth behind the great black beard.
«You honour us. But we haven't a mind to piracy.»
Easterling gave no sign of offence. He waved a great ham of a hand as if to dismiss the notion.
«It ain't piracy I'm proposing.»
«What, then?»
«I can trust you?» Easterling asked, and his eyes included the four of them.
«Ye're not obliged to. And it's odds ye'll waste your time in any case.»
It was not encouraging. Nevertheless, Easterling proceeded. It might be known to them that he had sailed with Morgan. He had been with Morgan in the great march across the Isthmus of Panama. Now it was notorious that when the spoil came to be divided after the sack of that Spanish city, it was found to be far below the reasonable expectations of the buccaneers. There were murmurs that Morgan had not dealt fairly with his men; that he had abstracted before the division a substantial portion of the treasure taken. Those murmurs, Easterling could tell them, were well–founded. There were pearls and jewels from San Felipe of fabulous value, which Morgan had secretly appropriated for himself. But as the rumours grew and reached his ears, he became afraid of a search that should convict him. And so, midway on the journey across the Isthmus, he one night buried the treasure he had filched.
«Only one man knew this,» said Captain Easterling to his attentive listeners — for the tale was of a quality that at all times commands attention. «The man who helped him in a labour he couldn't ha' done alone. I be that man.»
He paused a moment to let the impressive fact sink home, and then resumed.
The business he proposed was that the fugitives on the Cinco Llagas should join him in an expedition to Darien to recover the treasure, sharing equally in it with his own men and on the scale usual among the Brethren of the Coast.
«If I put the value of what Morgan buried at five hundred thousand pieces of eight, I am being modest.»
It was a sum to set his audience staring. Even Blood stared, but not quite with the expression of the others.
«Sure, now, it's very odd,» said he thoughtfully.
«What is odd, Mr. Blood?»
Mr. Blood's answer took the form of another question. «How many do you number aboard the Bonaventure?»
«Something less than two hundred men.»
«And the twenty men who are with me make such a difference that you deem it worth while to bring us this proposal?»
Easterling laughed outright, a deep, guttural laugh. «I see that ye don't understand at all.» His voice bore a familiar echo of Mr. Blood's Irish intonation. «It's not the men I lack so much as a stout ship in which to guard the treasure when we have it. In a bottom such as this we'ld be as snug as in a fort, and I'ld snap my fingers at any Spanish galleon that attempted to molest me.»
«Faith, now I understand,» said Wolverstone, and Pitt and Dyke and Hagthorpe nodded with him. But the glittering blue eye of Peter Blood continued to stare unwinkingly upon the bulky pirate.
«As Wolverstone says, it's understandable. But a tenth of the prize which, by heads, is all that would come to the Cinco Llagas, is far from adequate in the circumstances.»
Easterling blew out his cheeks and waved his great hand in a gesture of bonhomie. «What share would you propose?»
«That's to be considered. But it would not be less than one fifth.»
The buccaneer's face remained impassive. He bowed his gaudily swathed head. «Bring these friends of yours to dine to–morrow aboard the Bonaventure, and we'll draw up the articles.»
For a moment Blood seemed to hesitate. Then in courteous terms he accepted the invitation.
But when the buccaneer had departed, he checked the satisfaction of his followers.
«I was warned that Captain Easterling is a dangerous man. That's to flatter him. For to be dangerous a man must be clever, and Captain Easterling is not clever.»
«What maggot's burrowing under your periwig, Peter?» wondered Wolverstone.
«I'm thinking of the reason he gave for desiring our association. It was the best he could do when bluntly asked the question.»
«It could not have been more reasonable,» said Hagthorpe emphatically. He was finding Blood unnecessarily difficult.
«Reasonable!» Blood laughed. «Specious, if you will. Specious until you come to examine it. Faith, now, it glitters, to be sure. But it isn't gold. A ship as strong as a fort in which to stow a half–million pieces of eight, and this fortress ship in the hands of ourselves. A trusting fellow this Easterling for a scoundrel.»