Finally his questing hazel eyes returned to a second and closer inspection of the waiting group.

'My name is Walker,' he announced with a truculent air and in an accent that proclaimed a northern origin. 'Captain Walker. And I'll be glad to know who the devil you may be that ye're so poxy ready with your gunfire. If ye've put a shot athwart my bows 'cause o' they emblems o' Popery on my mains'l, supposing me a Spaniard, faith, then ye're just the men I be looking for.'

Blood was austere. 'If you are the captain of that ship, it's glad I'd be to learn how that comes to be the case.'

'Ay, ay. So ye may, ecod! It's a long tale, Cap'n, and an ugly.'

Blood took the hint. 'Come below,' he said, 'and let us have it.'

It was in the great cabin of the Arabella with its carved and gilded bulkheads, its hangings of green damask, its costly plate and books and pictures and other sybaritic equipment such as the rough little North Country seaman had never dreamed could be found under a ship's deck, that the tale was told. It was told to the four who had received this odd visitor, and after Blood had presented himself and his associates, thereby momentarily abating some of the little shipmaster's truculence. But he recovered all his heat and fury when they came to sit about the table, on which the negro steward had set Canary Sack and Nantes brandy and a jug of meg, and it roared in him as he related what he had endured.

He had sailed, he told them, from Plymouth, six months earlier, bound in the first instance for the Coast of Guinea, where he had taken aboard three hundred able–bodied young negroes, bought with beads and knives and axes from an African chieftain with whom he had already previously done several similar tradings. With this valuable cargo under hatches he was making his way to Jamaica, where a ready market awaited him, when, at the end of September, somewhere off the Bahamas, he was caught by an early storm, forerunner of the approaching hurricane season.

'By the mercy o' God we came through it afloat. But we was so battered and feckless that I had to jettison all my guns. Under the strain we had sprung a leak that kept us pumping for our lives; most o' my upper works was gone, and my mizzen was in such a state that I couldna' wi' safety ha' spread a night–shift on it. I must run to the nearest port for graving, and the nearest port happened to be Havana.

'When the port Alcalde had come aboard, seen for hisself my draggle–tailed condition, and that, anyway, wi'out guns I were toothless, as ye might say, he let me come into the shelter o' the lagoon, and there, without careening, we set about repairs.

'To pay for what we lacked I offered to trade the Alcalde some o' they blacks I carried. Now happen, as I was to learn, that the mines had been swept by a plague o' some kind — smallpox or yellow fever or summut — and they was mighty short o' slaves to work them. The Alcalde would buy the lot, he says, if I would sell. Seeing how it was with me, I were glad enough to lighten the ship by being rid o' the whole cargo, and I looked on the Alcalde's need as a crowning mercy to get me out of all my difficulties. But that weren't the end o' the windfall, as I supposed it. Instead o' gold, the Alcalde proposed to me that I takes payment in green hides, which, as ye may know, is the chief product of the island of Cuba. Naught could ha' suited me better, for I knew as I could sell the hides in England for three times the purchase price, and maybe a trifle over. So he gives me a bill o' lading for the hides, which it were agreed we should take aboard so soon as we was fit to sail.

'I pushed on wi' repairs, counting my fortune made, and looking on a voyage that at one time had seemed as if it must end in shipwreck, like to prove the most profitable as I had ever made.

'But I were reckoning without Spanish villainy. For when we was at last in case to put to sea again, and I sends word to the Alcalde that we was ready to load the hides of his bill of lading, the mate, which I had sent ashore, comes me back wi' a poxy message that the Captain–General — as they call the Governor in Cuba — would not allow the shipment, seeing as how it was against the law for any foreigner to trade in a Spanish settlement, and the Alcalde advised us to put to sea at once, whilst the Captain–General was in a mind to permit it.

'Ye'll maybe guess my feelings. Tom Walker, I may tell ye, bain't the man to let hisself be impudently robbed by anyone, whether pick–pocket or Captain–General. So I goes ashore myself. Not to the Alcalde. Oh no. I goes straight to the Captain–General hisself, a high–and–mighty Castilian grande, wi' a name as long as my arm. For short, they calls him Don Ruiz Perera de Valdoro y Peñascon, no less, and he's Count of Marcos too. A grande of the grandest.

'I slaps down my bill o' lading afore him, and tells him straightly how the thieving Alcalde had dealt by me, certain sure in my fecklessness that justice would be done at once.

'But from the way he shrugged and smiled I knew him for a villain afore ever he spoke. "Ye've been told the law, I believe," says he, wi' a leering curl to his mangy lip. "And ye've been rightly told. It is forbidden us by decree of His Catholic Majesty to buy from or sell to any foreign trader. The hides may not be shipped."

'It were a sour disappointment to me, seeing the profit on which I'd reckoned. But I keeps my temper to myself. "So be it," says I, "although it comes mighty hard on me and the law might ha' been thought of afore I were given this poxy bill o' lading. Howsomever, here it be; and ye can have it back in return for my three hundred negros."

'At that he scowls and tries to stare me down, twirling his moustachios the while. "God gi' me patience wi' you!" says he. "That transaction too were illegal. Ye had no right to trade your slaves here."

'"I traded them at the Alcalde's request, Excellency," I reminds him.

'"My friend," says he, "if you was to commit murder at someone else's request, would that excuse the crime?"

'"It's not me what's broke the law," says I, "but him which bought the slaves from me."

'"Ye're both guilty. Therefore, neither must profit. The slaves is confiscate to the State."

'Now, I've told ye, sirs, as how I was making no ado about suffering the loss of my lawful profit on the hides. But to be stripped naked, as it were, by that heuck–fingered Spanish gentleman, robbed o' a cargo o' blacks, the worth o' which I had agreed at ten thousand pieces of eight — Od rot my soul! — that was more nor I could stomach. My temper got the better o' me, and I ups and storms in a mighty rage at that fine Castilian nobleman — Don Ruiz Perera de Valdoro y Peñascon — crying shame on him for such iniquity, and demanding that at least he pay me in gold the price o' my slaves.

'The cool villain lets me rant myself out, then shows me his teeth again in another o' his wicked, fleering smiles.

'"My friend," says he, "ye've no cause to make this pother, no cause to complain at all. Why, you heretic fool, let me tell you as I am doing far less than my strict duty, which would be to seize your ship, your crew and your person, and send you to Cadiz or Seville there to purge the heresies wi' which your kind be troubling the world."'

Captain Walker paused there, to compose himself a little from the passion into which his memories had whipped him. He mopped his brow, and took a pull at the bumbo before resuming.

'Od rot me for a coward, but my courage went out o' me like sweat at they words. "Better be robbed," says I to myself, "than be cast into the Fires o' the Faith in a fool's coat." So I takes my leave of his Excellency afore his sense o' duty might get the better o' what he calls his compassion — damn his dirty soul!'

Again he paused, and then went on. 'Ye may be supposing that the end o' my trouble. But bide a while; for it weren't, nor yet the worst.