The stately ship that had been allowed to sail so leisurely into
Carlisle Bay under her false colours was a Spanish privateer, coming to
pay off some of the heavy debt piled up by the predaceous Brethren of
the Coast, and the recent defeat by the Pride of Devon of two treasure
galleons bound for Cadiz. It happened that the galleon which escaped in
a more or less crippled condition was commanded by Don Diego de Espinosa
y Valdez, who was own brother to the Spanish Admiral Don Miguel de
Espinosa, and who was also a very hasty, proud, and hot-tempered
gentleman.
Galled by his defeat, and choosing to forget that his own conduct had
invited it, he had sworn to teach the English a sharp lesson which they
should remember. He would take a leaf out of the book of Morgan and
those other robbers of the sea, and make a punitive raid upon an English
settlement. Unfortunately for himself and for many others, his brother
the Admiral was not at hand to restrain him when for this purpose he
fitted out the Cinco Llagas at San Juan de Porto Rico. He chose for
his objective the island of Barbados, whose natural strength was apt to
render her defenders careless. He chose it also because thither had the
Pride of Devon been tracked by his scouts, and he desired a measure of
poetic justice to invest his vengeance. And he chose a moment when there
were no ships of war at anchor in Carlisle Bay.
He had succeeded so well in his intentions that he had aroused no
suspicion until he saluted the fort at short range with a broadside of
twenty guns.
And now the four gaping watchers in the stockade on the headland beheld
the great ship creep forward under the rising cloud of smoke,
her mainsail unfurled to increase her steering way, and go about
close-hauled to bring her larboard guns to bear upon the unready fort.
With the crashing roar of that second broadside, Colonel Bishop awoke
from stupefaction to a recollection of where his duty lay. In the town
below drums were beating frantically, and a trumpet was bleating, as
if the peril needed further advertising. As commander of the Barbados
Militia, the place of Colonel Bishop was at the head of his scanty
troops, in that fort which the Spanish guns were pounding into rubble.
Remembering it, he went off at the double, despite his bulk and the
heat, his negroes trotting after him.
Mr. Blood turned to Jeremy Pitt. He laughed grimly. “Now that,” said he,
“is what I call a timely interruption. Though what'll come of it,” he
added as an afterthought, “the devil himself knows.”
As a third broadside was thundering forth, he picked up the palmetto
leaf and carefully replaced it on the back of his fellow-slave.
And then into the stockade, panting and sweating, came Kent followed by
best part of a score of plantation workers, some of whom were black and
all of whom were in a state of panic. He led them into the low white
house, to bring them forth again, within a moment, as it seemed, armed
now with muskets and hangers and some of them equipped with bandoleers.
By this time the rebels-convict were coming in, in twos and threes,
having abandoned their work upon finding themselves unguarded and upon
scenting the general dismay.
Kent paused a moment, as his hastily armed guard dashed forth, to fling
an order to those slaves.
“To the woods!” he bade them. “Take to the woods, and lie close there,
until this is over, and we've gutted these Spanish swine.”
On that he went off in haste after his men, who were to be added to
those massing in the town, so as to oppose and overwhelm the Spanish
landing parties.
The slaves would have obeyed him on the instant but for Mr. Blood.
“What need for haste, and in this heat?” quoth he. He was surprisingly
cool, they thought. “Maybe there'll be no need to take to the woods at
all, and, anyway, it will be time enough to do so when the Spaniards are
masters of the town.”
And so, joined now by the other stragglers, and numbering in all a
round score--rebels-convict all--they stayed to watch from their
vantage-ground the fortunes of the furious battle that was being waged
below.
The landing was contested by the militia and by every islander capable
of bearing arms with the fierce resoluteness of men who knew that
no quarter was to be expected in defeat. The ruthlessness of Spanish
soldiery was a byword, and not at his worst had Morgan or L'Ollonais
ever perpetrated such horrors as those of which these Castilian
gentlemen were capable.
But this Spanish commander knew his business, which was more than could
truthfully be said for the Barbados Militia. Having gained the advantage
of a surprise blow, which had put the fort out of action, he soon showed
them that he was master of the situation. His guns turned now upon the
open space behind the mole, where the incompetent Bishop had marshalled
his men, tore the militia into bloody rags, and covered the landing
parties which were making the shore in their own boats and in several
of those which had rashly gone out to the great ship before her identity
was revealed.
All through the scorching afternoon the battle went on, the rattle and
crack of musketry penetrating ever deeper into the town to show that
the defenders were being driven steadily back. By sunset two hundred and
fifty Spaniards were masters of Bridgetown, the islanders were disarmed,
and at Government House, Governor Steed--his gout forgotten in his
panic--supported by Colonel Bishop and some lesser officers, was being
informed by Don Diego, with an urbanity that was itself a mockery, of
the sum that would be required in ransom.
For a hundred thousand pieces of eight and fifty head of cattle, Don
Diego would forbear from reducing the place to ashes. And what time
that suave and courtly commander was settling these details with the
apoplectic British Governor, the Spaniards were smashing and looting,
feasting, drinking, and ravaging after the hideous manner of their kind.
Mr. Blood, greatly daring, ventured down at dusk into the town. What
he saw there is recorded by Jeremy Pitt to whom he subsequently related
it--in that voluminous log from which the greater part of my narrative
is derived. I have no intention of repeating any of it here. It is
all too loathsome and nauseating, incredible, indeed, that men however
abandoned could ever descend such an abyss of bestial cruelty and lust.
What he saw was fetching him in haste and white-faced out of that hell
again, when in a narrow street a girl hurtled into him, wild-eyed, her
unbound hair streaming behind her as she ran. After her, laughing and
cursing in a breath, came a heavy-booted Spaniard. Almost he was upon
her, when suddenly Mr. Blood got in his way. The doctor had taken a
sword from a dead man's side some little time before and armed himself
with it against an emergency.
As the Spaniard checked in anger and surprise, he caught in the dusk the
livid gleam of that sword which Mr. Blood had quickly unsheathed.
“Ah, perro ingles!” he shouted, and flung forward to his death.
“It's hoping I am ye're in a fit state to meet your Maker,” said Mr.
Blood, and ran him through the body. He did the thing skilfully: with
the combined skill of swordsman and surgeon. The man sank in a hideous
heap without so much as a groan.
Mr. Blood swung to the girl, who leaned panting and sobbing against a
wall. He caught her by the wrist.
“Come!” he said.
But she hung back, resisting him by her weight. “Who are you?” she
demanded wildly.
“Will ye wait to see my credentials?” he snapped. Steps were clattering
towards them from beyond the corner round which she had fled from
that Spanish ruffian. “Come,” he urged again. And this time, reassured
perhaps by his clear English speech, she went without further questions.
They sped down an alley and then up another, by great good fortune
meeting no one, for already they were on the outskirts of the town. They
won out of it, and white-faced, physically sick, Mr. Blood dragged her
almost at a run up the hill towards Colonel Bishop's house. He told her
briefly who and what he was, and thereafter there was no conversation
between them until they reached the big white house. It was all in
darkness, which at least was reassuring. If the Spaniards had reached
it, there would be lights. He knocked, but had to knock again and yet
again before he was answered. Then it was by a voice from a window
above.
“Who is there?” The voice was Miss Bishop's, a little tremulous, but
unmistakably her own.
Mr. Blood almost fainted in relief. He had been imagining the
unimaginable. He had pictured her down in that hell out of which he had
just come. He had conceived that she might have followed her uncle into
Bridgetown, or committed some other imprudence, and he turned cold from
head to foot at the mere thought of what might have happened to her.
“It is I--Peter Blood,” he gasped.
“What do you want?”
It is doubtful whether she would have come down to open. For at such
a time as this it was no more than likely that the wretched plantation
slaves might be in revolt and prove as great a danger as the Spaniards.
But at the sound of her voice, the girl Mr. Blood had rescued peered up
through the gloom.
“Arabella!” she called. “It is I, Mary Traill.”
“Mary!” The voice ceased above on that exclamation, the head was
withdrawn. After a brief pause the door gaped wide. Beyond it in
the wide hall stood Miss Arabella, a slim, virginal figure in white,
mysteriously revealed in the gleam of a single candle which she carried.
Mr. Blood strode in followed by his distraught companion, who, falling
upon Arabella's slender bosom, surrendered herself to a passion of
tears. But he wasted no time.
“Whom have you here with you? What servants?” he demanded sharply.
The only male was James, an old negro groom.
“The very man,” said Blood. “Bid him get out horses. Then away with you
to Speightstown, or even farther north, where you will be safe. Here you
are in danger--in dreadful danger.”
“But I thought the fighting was over...” she was beginning, pale and
startled.
“So it is. But the deviltry's only beginning. Miss Traill will tell you
as you go. In God's name, madam, take my word for it, and do as I bid
you.”
“He... he saved me,” sobbed Miss Traill.
“Saved you?” Miss Bishop was aghast. “Saved you from what, Mary?”
“Let that wait,” snapped Mr. Blood almost angrily. “You've all the night
for chattering when you're out of this, and away beyond their reach.
Will you please call James, and do as I say--and at once!”
“You are very peremptory....”
“Oh, my God! I am peremptory! Speak, Miss Trail!, tell her whether I've
cause to be peremptory.”
“Yes, yes,” the girl cried, shuddering. “Do as he says--Oh, for pity's
sake, Arabella.”
Miss Bishop went off, leaving Mr. Blood and Miss Traill alone again.
“I... I shall never forget what you did, sir,” said she, through her
diminishing tears. She was a slight wisp of a girl, a child, no more.
“I've done better things in my time. That's why I'm here,” said Mr.
Blood, whose mood seemed to be snappy.
She didn't pretend to understand him, and she didn't make the attempt.
“Did you... did you kill him?” she asked, fearfully.
He stared at her in the flickering candlelight. “I hope so. It is very
probable, and it doesn't matter at all,” he said. “What matters is that
this fellow James should fetch the horses.” And he was stamping off to
accelerate these preparations for departure, when her voice arrested
him.
“Don't leave me! Don't leave me here alone!” she cried in terror.
He paused. He turned and came slowly back. Standing above her he smiled
upon her.
“There, there! You've no cause for alarm. It's all over now. You'll be
away soon--away to Speightstown, where you'll be quite safe.”
The horses came at last--four of them, for in addition to James who was
to act as her guide, Miss Bishop had her woman, who was not to be left
behind.
Mr. Blood lifted the slight weight of Mary Traill to her horse, then
turned to say good-bye to Miss Bishop, who was already mounted. He
said it, and seemed to have something to add. But whatever it was, it
remained unspoken. The horses started, and receded into the sapphire
starlit night, leaving him standing there before Colonel Bishop's door.
The last he heard of them was Mary Traill's childlike voice calling back
on a quavering note--
“I shall never forget what you did, Mr. Blood. I shall never forget.”
But as it was not the voice he desired to hear, the assurance brought
him little satisfaction. He stood there in the dark watching the
fireflies amid the rhododendrons, till the hoofbeats had faded. Then he
sighed and roused himself. He had much to do. His journey into the town
had not been one of idle curiosity to see how the Spaniards conducted
themselves in victory. It had been inspired by a very different purpose,
and he had gained in the course of it all the information he desired. He
had an extremely busy night before him, and must be moving.
He went off briskly in the direction of the stockade, where his
fellow-slaves awaited him in deep anxiety and some hope.