Two men rose out of it: Indians, or half–castes, their bodies naked from shoulder to waist. One of them sprang instantly ashore, then checked, peering in the dusk at the man Captain Blood was supporting.

'Que tal el patron?' he asked gruffly

'He has been hurt. Help him down carefully. Oh, make haste! Make haste!'

She remained on the quay, casting fearful glances over her shoulder whilst Blood and the Indians were bestowing the wounded man in the sternsheets. Then Blood, standing in the boat, proffered her his hand.

'Aboard, ma'am.' He was peremptory, and so as to save time and argument he added: 'I am coming with you.'

'But you can't. We sail at once. The boat will not return. We dare not linger, sir.'

'Faith, no more dare I. It is very well. I've said I am coming with you. Aboard, ma'am!' and without more ado, he almost pulled her into the boat, ordering the men to give way.

If she found the matter bewildering, she did not pursue it. Concern enough for her at the moment lay in the condition of her Englishman and the evidently urgent need of getting him away before his assailants returned, reinforced, to finish him. She could not waste moments so precious in arguing with an eccentric: possibly she had not even any thoughts to spare him.

As the boat shot away from the mole, she sank down in the sternsheets at the side of her companion, who had swooned. On his other side, Blood was kneeling, and the deft fingers of the buccaneer, who once had been a surgeon, located and gropingly examined that wound, high in the shoulder.

'Give yourself peace,' he comforted the girl. 'This is no great matter. A little bloodletting has made him faint. That is all. You'll soon have him well again.'

She breathed a little prayer of thanks, 'Gracias a Dios,' then, with a backward glance in the direction of the mole, urged the men to greater effort.

As the boat sped over the dark water towards a ship's lantern a half–mile away, the Englishman stirred and looked about him.

'What the plague…' he began, and struggled to rise.

Blood's hand restrained him. 'Quiet,' he said. 'There's no need for alarm. We're taking you aboard.'

'Taking me aboard? Who the devil are you?'

'Jorgito,' the girl cried, 'it is the gentleman who saved your life.'

'Odso! You're there, Isabelita?' His next question showed that he took in the situation. 'Are they following?'

When she had reassured him and pointed ahead to the ship's lantern towards which they were heading, he laughed softly, then cursed the Indians.

'Faster, you lazy dogs! Bend your backs to it, you louts.'

The rowers increased their effort, breathing stertorously. The man laughed again, softly, as before, a fleering, mocking sound.

'So, so. We've had the luck to win clear of that gin with no more than a scratch. Yet, God's my life, it's more than a scratch. I'm bleeding like a Christian martyr.'

'It's nothing,' Blood reassured him. 'You've lost some blood. But once aboard we'll staunch the wound and make you comfortable.'

'Faith, you talk like a sawbones.'

'It's what I am.'

'Gadso! Was there ever greater luck. Eh, Isabelita? A swordsman to rescue me and a doctor to heal me, all in one. There's a providence watching over me this night. An omen, sweetheart.'

'A mercy,' she corrected on a crooning note, and drew closer to him.

And now from their scraps of talk, Blood pieced together the tale of their exact relationship. They were an eloping pair, these two — this Englishman, whose name was George Fairfax, and this little hidalga of the great family of Sotomayor. His late assailants were her brother and two friends, bent upon frustrating the elopement. Her brother was the Spaniard who had escaped uninjured from the encounter, and it was his pursuit in force which she dreaded and for which she continually looked back towards the receding mole. By the time, however, that agitated lights came dancing at last along the water's edge, the long–boat was in the black shadow of a two–masted brig, bumping against her side, whilst from her deck a gruff English voice was hailing them.

The lady was the first to swarm the accommodation ladder. Then followed Fairfax, with Blood immediately and so closely behind as to support him and, indeed, partly carry him aboard.

At the head of the ladder they were received by a large man with a face that showed hot in the light of a lantern slung from the mainmast, who overwhelmed them with alarmed questions.

Fairfax, steadying himself against the bulkhead, gasped for breath, and broke into that interrogatory flow sharply to rap out his orders.

'Get under way at once, Tim. No time to get the boat aboard. Take her in tow. And don't stay to take up anchor. Cut the cable. Hoist sail and let's away. Thank God the wind serves. We shall have the Alcalde and all the alguaziles of la Hacha aboard if we delay. So stir your damned bones.'

Tim's roaring voice was passing on the orders and men were leaping to obey, when the lady set a hand on her lover's arm.

'But this gentleman, George. You forget him. He does not know where we go.'

Fairfax supported himself with a hand on Blood's shoulder. He turned his head to peer into the countenance of his preserver, and there was a scowl on the lean, dark face.

'Ye'll have gathered I can't be delayed,' he said.

'Faith, it's very glad to gather it I've been,' was the easy answer. 'And it's little I'm caring where you go, so long as it's away from Rio de la Hacha.'

The dark face lightened. The man laughed softly. 'Running away too, are you? Damn my blood! You're most accommodating. It seems all of a piece. Look alive, Tim. Can't these lubbers of yours move no faster?'

There was a blast from the master's whistle, and naked feet pattered at speed across the deck. Tim spoke briskly and savagely, to stimulate their efforts, then sprang to the side to shout his orders to the Indians still in the boat alongside.

'Get you below, sir,' he begged his employer. 'I'll come to you as soon as we are under way and the course is set.'

It was Blood who assisted Fairfax to the cabin — a place of fair proportions if rudely equipped, lighted by a slush–lamp that swung above the bare table. The lady, breathing tenderest solicitude, followed closely.

To receive them a negro lad emerged from a stateroom on the larboard side. He cried out at sight of the blood with which his master's shirt was drenched, and stood arrested, teeth and eyeballs flashing in that startled dusky face.

Assuming authority, Blood ordered him to lend a hand, and between them they carried Fairfax, whose senses were beginning to swim again, through the doorway which the steward had left open, and there removed his shoes and got him to bed.

Then Blood despatched the boy, who answered to the name of Alcatrace, to the galley for hot water and to the Captain of the ship's medicine–chest.

On the narrow bed, Fairfax, a man as tall and well–knit as Blood himself, reclined in a sitting posture, propped by all the pillows available. He wore his own hair, and the reddish–brown cloud of it half veiled his pallid, bony countenance as with eyes half closed his head lolled weakly forward.

Having disposed of him comfortably, Blood cut away his sodden shirt and laid bare his vigorous torso.

When the steward returned with a can of water, some linen and a cedar box containing the ship's poor store of medicines, the lady followed him into the stateroom, begging to be allowed to help. Through the ports that stood open to the purple tropical night, she heard the creak of blocks and the thud of the sails as they took the wind, and it was with immense relief that she felt at last under her feet the forward heave of the unleashed brig. One anxiety at least was now allayed, and the danger of recapture overpast.