Together they burst into the cabin, Blood coming last. The negro servant had laid the table for supper with the usual six places, and had just lighted the great silver lamp, for with sunset the daylight faded almost instantly.
Don Juan was emerging at that moment from one of the larboard cabins. He closed the door, and stood for a dozen heart–beats with his back to it, surveying that invasion almost mistrustfully. It determined him to turn the key in the lock, draw it out and put it in his pocket. From that lesser cabin, in which clearly the lady had been bestowed, there came no sound.
«She's quiet at last, God be praised,» laughed one of the officers.
«Worn out with screeching,» explained another. «Lord! Was there ever such a wild–cat? A woman of spirit that, from the way she fought; a little devil worth the taming. It's a task I envy you, Juan.»
Veraguas hailed the prize as well–deserved by such brilliant leadership, and then whilst questionable quips and jests were still being bandied, Don Juan, smiling grimly, introspectively, ordered them to table.
«We'll sup briefly, if you please,» he announced, as he unbuckled his harness, and by the remark produced a fresh storm of hilarity on the subject of his haste and at the expense of the poor victim beyond that door.
When at last they sat down Captain Blood thrust himself upon Don Juan's notice with a question: «And Colonel de Coulevain?»
The handsome face darkened. «A malediction on him! He was away from Basseterre, organizing defences at Les Carmes.»
Blood raised his brows, adopted a tone of faint concern. «Then the account remains unsettled in spite of all your brave efforts.»
«Not quite. Not quite.»
«By Heaven, no!» said another with a laugh. «Madame de Coulevain should give an ample quittance.»
«Madame de Coulevain?» said Blood, although the question was unnecessary as were the glances that travelled towards the locked cabin door to answer him. He laughed. «Now that…» He paused. «That is an artistic vengeance, Don Juan, whatever the offence.» And, with Hell in his soul, he laughed again, softly, in admiring approval.
Don Juan shrugged and sighed. «Yet I would I had found him and made him pay in full.»
But Captain Blood would not leave it there. «If you really hate the man, think of the torment to which you have doomed him, always assuming that he loves his wife. Surely by comparison with that the peace of death would be no punishment at all.»
«Maybe, maybe.» Don Juan was short. Disappointment seemed to have spoiled his temper, or perhaps impatience fretted him. «Give me wine, Absolom. God of my life! How I thirst!»
The negro poured for them. Don Juan drained his bumper at a draught. Blood did the same, and the goblets were replenished.
Blood toasted the Spanish commander in voluble terms. He was no great judge, he declared, of an action afloat; but he could not conceive that the one he had witnessed that day could have been better fought by any commander living.
Don Juan smiled his gratification; the toast was drunk with relish, and the cups were filled again. Then others talked, and Blood lapsed into thought.
He reflected that soon now, supper being done, Don Juan would drive them all to their quarters. Captain Blood's own were on the starboard side of the great cabin. But would he be suffered to remain there now, so near at hand? If so, he might yet avail that unhappy lady, and already he knew precisely how. The danger lay in that he might be sent elsewhere to–night.
He roused himself and broke in upon the talk, called noisily for more wine, and after that for yet more, in which the others who had sweated profusely in that day's action kept him company gladly enough. He broke into renewed eulogies of Don Juan's skill and valour, and it was presently observed that his speech was slurred and indistinct, and that he hiccoughed and repeated himself foolishly.
Thus he provoked ridicule, and when it was forthcoming he displayed annoyance, and appealed to Don Juan to inform these merry and befuddled gentlemen that he at least was sober; but his speech grew thicker even whilst he was protesting.
When Veraguas taxed him with being drunk he grew almost violent, spoke of his Dutch origin to remind them that he came of a nation of great drinkers, and offered to drink any man in the Caribbean under the table. Boastfully, to prove his words, he called for more wine, and having drunk it lapsed gradually into silence. His eyelids dropped heavily, his body sagged, and presently, to the hilarity of all who beheld here a boaster confounded, he slid from his chair and came to rest upon the cabin floor, nor attempted to rise again.
Veraguas stirred him contemptuously and ungently with his foot. He gave no sign of life. He lay inert as a log, breathing stertorously.
Don Juan got up abruptly. «Put the fool to bed. And get you gone too; all of you.»
Don Pedro was borne, insensible, amid laughter and some rude handling, to his cabin. His neckcloth was loosed, and so they left him, closing the door upon him.
Then, in compliance with Don Juan's renewed command, they all departed noisily, and the commander locked the door of the now empty great cabin.
Alone, he came slowly back to the table, and stood a moment listening to the uncertain steps and the merry voices retreating down the gangway. His goblet stood half–full. He picked it up and drank. Then, setting it down, and proceeding without haste, he drew from his pocket the key of the cabin in which Madame de Coulevain had been bestowed. He crossed the floor, thrust the key into the lock and turned it. But before he could throw open the door a sound behind him made him turn again.
His drunken guest was leaning against the bulkhead beside the open door of his stateroom. His clothes were in disorder, his face vacuous, and he stood so precariously that it was a wonder the gentle heave of the ship did not pitch him off his balance. He moved his lips like a man nauseated, and parted them with a dry click.
«Wha's o'clock?» was his foolish question.
Don Juan relaxed his stare to smile, although a thought impatiently.
The drunkard babbled on: «I…I don't…remember…» He broke off. He lurched forward. «Thousand devils! I…I thirst!»
«To bed with you! To bed!» cried Don Juan. «To bed? Of…of course to bed. Whither…else? Eh? But first…a cup.»
He reached the table. He lurched round it, a man carried forward by his own impetus, and came to rest opposite the Spaniard, whose velvet eyes watched him with angry contempt. He found a goblet and a jug, a heavy, encrusted silver jug, shaped like an amphora with a handle on either side of its long neck. He poured himself wine, drank, and set down the cup; then he stood swaying slightly, and put forth his right hand as if to steady himself. It came to rest on the neck of the silver jug.
Don Juan, watching him ever with impatient scorn, may have seen for the fraction of a second the vacuity leave that countenance, and the vivid blue eyes under their black brows grow cold and hard as sapphires. But before the second was spent, before the brain could register what the eyes beheld, the body of that silver jug had crashed into his brow, and the commander of the Estremadura knew nothing more.
Captain Blood, without a trace now of drunkenness in face or gait, stepped quickly round the table, and went down on one knee beside the man he had felled. Don Juan lay quite still on the gay Eastern carpet, his handsome face clay–coloured with a trickle of blood across it from the wound between the half–closed eyes. Captain Blood contemplated his work without pity or compunction. If there was cowardice in the blow which had taken the Spaniard unawares from a hand which he supposed friendly, that cowardice was born of no fear for himself, but for the helpless lady in that larboard cabin. On her account he could take no risk of Don Juan's being able to give the alarm; and, anyway, this cruel, soulless profligate deserved no honourable consideration.