There were, when the purple gloom of the tropical night descended upon
the Caribbean, not more than ten men on guard aboard the Cinco Llagas,
so confident--and with good reason--were the Spaniards of the complete
subjection of the islanders. And when I say that there were ten men on
guard, I state rather the purpose for which they were left aboard than
the duty which they fulfilled. As a matter of fact, whilst the main body
of the Spaniards feasted and rioted ashore, the Spanish gunner and his
crew--who had so nobly done their duty and ensured the easy victory of
the day--were feasting on the gun-deck upon the wine and the fresh meats
fetched out to them from shore. Above, two sentinels only kept vigil, at
stem and stern. Nor were they as vigilant as they should have been, or
else they must have observed the two wherries that under cover of the
darkness came gliding from the wharf, with well-greased rowlocks, to
bring up in silence under the great ship's quarter.
From the gallery aft still hung the ladder by which Don Diego had
descended to the boat that had taken him ashore. The sentry on guard in
the stern, coming presently round this gallery, was suddenly confronted
by the black shadow of a man standing before him at the head of the
ladder.
“Who's there?” he asked, but without alarm, supposing it one of his
fellows.
“It is I,” softly answered Peter Blood in the fluent Castillan of which
he was master.
“Is it you, Pedro?” The Spaniard came a step nearer.
“Peter is my name; but I doubt I'll not be the Peter you're expecting.”
“How?” quoth the sentry, checking.
“This way,” said Mr. Blood.
The wooden taffrail was a low one, and the Spaniard was taken completely
by surprise. Save for the splash he made as he struck the water,
narrowly missing one of the crowded boats that waited under the counter,
not a sound announced his misadventure. Armed as he was with corselet,
cuissarts, and headpiece, he sank to trouble them no more.
“Whist!” hissed Mr. Blood to his waiting rebels-convict. “Come on, now,
and without noise.”
Within five minutes they had swarmed aboard, the entire twenty of them
overflowing from that narrow gallery and crouching on the quarter-deck
itself. Lights showed ahead. Under the great lantern in the prow they
saw the black figure of the other sentry, pacing on the forecastle. From
below sounds reached them of the orgy on the gun-deck: a rich male voice
was singing an obscene ballad to which the others chanted in chorus:
“Y estos son los usos de Castilla y de Leon!”
“From what I've seen to-day I can well believe it,” said Mr. Blood, and
whispered: “Forward--after me.”
Crouching low, they glided, noiseless as shadows, to the quarter-deck
rail, and thence slipped without sound down into the waist. Two thirds
of them were armed with muskets, some of which they had found in the
overseer's house, and others supplied from the secret hoard that Mr.
Blood had so laboriously assembled against the day of escape. The
remainder were equipped with knives and cutlasses.
In the vessel's waist they hung awhile, until Mr. Blood had satisfied
himself that no other sentinel showed above decks but that inconvenient
fellow in the prow. Their first attention must be for him. Mr. Blood,
himself, crept forward with two companions, leaving the others in the
charge of that Nathaniel Hagthorpe whose sometime commission in the
King's Navy gave him the best title to this office.
Mr. Blood's absence was brief. When he rejoined his comrades there was
no watch above the Spaniards' decks.
Meanwhile the revellers below continued to make merry at their ease
in the conviction of complete security. The garrison of Barbados was
overpowered and disarmed, and their companions were ashore in complete
possession of the town, glutting themselves hideously upon the fruits
of victory. What, then, was there to fear? Even when their quarters were
invaded and they found themselves surrounded by a score of wild,
hairy, half-naked men, who--save that they appeared once to have been
white--looked like a horde of savages, the Spaniards could not believe
their eyes.
Who could have dreamed that a handful of forgotten plantation-slaves
would have dared to take so much upon themselves?
The half-drunken Spaniards, their laughter suddenly quenched, the song
perishing on their lips, stared, stricken and bewildered at the levelled
muskets by which they were checkmated.
And then, from out of this uncouth pack of savages that beset them,
stepped a slim, tall fellow with light-blue eyes in a tawny face, eyes
in which glinted the light of a wicked humour. He addressed them in the
purest Castilian.
“You will save yourselves pain and trouble by regarding yourselves my
prisoners, and suffering yourselves to be quietly bestowed out of harm's
way.”
“Name of God!” swore the gunner, which did no justice at all to an
amazement beyond expression.
“If you please,” said Mr. Blood, and thereupon those gentlemen of Spain
were induced without further trouble beyond a musket prod or two to drop
through a scuttle to the deck below.
After that the rebels-convict refreshed themselves with the good things
in the consumption of which they had interrupted the Spaniards. To taste
palatable Christian food after months of salt fish and maize dumplings
was in itself a feast to these unfortunates. But there were no excesses.
Mr. Blood saw to that, although it required all the firmness of which he
was capable.
Dispositions were to be made without delay against that which must
follow before they could abandon themselves fully to the enjoyment of
their victory. This, after all, was no more than a preliminary skirmish,
although it was one that afforded them the key to the situation. It
remained to dispose so that the utmost profit might be drawn from it.
Those dispositions occupied some very considerable portion of the
night. But, at least, they were complete before the sun peeped over
the shoulder of Mount Hilibay to shed his light upon a day of some
surprises.
It was soon after sunrise that the rebel-convict who paced the
quarter-deck in Spanish corselet and headpiece, a Spanish musket on his
shoulder, announced the approach of a boat. It was Don Diego de Espinosa
y Valdez coming aboard with four great treasure-chests, containing each
twenty-five thousand pieces of eight, the ransom delivered to him at
dawn by Governor Steed. He was accompanied by his son, Don Esteban, and
by six men who took the oars.
Aboard the frigate all was quiet and orderly as it should be. She
rode at anchor, her larboard to the shore, and the main ladder on her
starboard side. Round to this came the boat with Don Diego and his
treasure. Mr. Blood had disposed effectively. It was not for nothing
that he had served under de Ruyter. The swings were waiting, and the
windlass manned. Below, a gun-crew held itself in readiness under the
command of Ogle, who--as I have said--had been a gunner in the Royal
Navy before he went in for politics and followed the fortunes of
the Duke of Monmouth. He was a sturdy, resolute fellow who inspired
confidence by the very confidence he displayed in himself.
Don Diego mounted the ladder and stepped upon the deck, alone, and
entirely unsuspicious. What should the poor man suspect?
Before he could even look round, and survey this guard drawn up to
receive him, a tap over the head with a capstan bar efficiently handled
by Hagthorpe put him to sleep without the least fuss.
He was carried away to his cabin, whilst the treasure-chests, handled
by the men he had left in the boat, were being hauled to the deck. That
being satisfactorily accomplished, Don Esteban and the fellows who had
manned the boat came up the ladder, one by one, to be handled with the
same quiet efficiency. Peter Blood had a genius for these things, and
almost, I suspect, an eye for the dramatic. Dramatic, certainly, was the
spectacle now offered to the survivors of the raid.
With Colonel Bishop at their head, and gout-ridden Governor Steed
sitting on the ruins of a wall beside him, they glumly watched the
departure of the eight boats containing the weary Spanish ruffians who
had glutted themselves with rapine, murder, and violences unspeakable.
They looked on, between relief at this departure of their remorseless
enemies, and despair at the wild ravages which, temporarily at least,
had wrecked the prosperity and happiness of that little colony.
The boats pulled away from the shore, with their loads of laughing,
jeering Spaniards, who were still flinging taunts across the water at
their surviving victims. They had come midway between the wharf and the
ship, when suddenly the air was shaken by the boom of a gun.
A round shot struck the water within a fathom of the foremost boat,
sending a shower of spray over its occupants. They paused at their oars,
astounded into silence for a moment. Then speech burst from them like
an explosion. Angrily voluble they anathematized this dangerous
carelessness on the part of their gunner, who should know better than
to fire a salute from a cannon loaded with shot. They were still cursing
him when a second shot, better aimed than the first, came to crumple one
of the boats into splinters, flinging its crew, dead and living, into
the water.
But if it silenced these, it gave tongue, still more angry, vehement,
and bewildered to the crews of the other seven boats. From each the
suspended oars stood out poised over the water, whilst on their feet in
the excitement the Spaniards screamed oaths at the ship, begging Heaven
and Hell to inform them what madman had been let loose among her guns.
Plump into their middle came a third shot, smashing a second boat with
fearful execution. Followed again a moment of awful silence, then among
those Spanish pirates all was gibbering and jabbering and splashing of
oars, as they attempted to pull in every direction at once. Some were
for going ashore, others for heading straight to the vessel and there
discovering what might be amiss. That something was very gravely amiss
there could be no further doubt, particularly as whilst they discussed
and fumed and cursed two more shots came over the water to account for
yet a third of their boats.
The resolute Ogle was making excellent practice, and fully justifying
his claims to know something of gunnery. In their consternation the
Spaniards had simplified his task by huddling their boats together.
After the fourth shot, opinion was no longer divided amongst them. As
with one accord they went about, or attempted to do so, for before they
had accomplished it two more of their boats had been sunk.
The three boats that remained, without concerning themselves with their
more unfortunate fellows, who were struggling in the water, headed back
for the wharf at speed.
If the Spaniards understood nothing of all this, the forlorn islanders
ashore understood still less, until to help their wits they saw the flag
of Spain come down from the mainmast of the Cinco Llagas, and the
flag of England soar to its empty place. Even then some bewilderment
persisted, and it was with fearful eyes that they observed the return
of their enemies, who might vent upon them the ferocity aroused by these
extraordinary events.
Ogle, however, continued to give proof that his knowledge of gunnery was
not of yesterday. After the fleeing Spaniards went his shots. The last
of their boats flew into splinters as it touched the wharf, and its
remains were buried under a shower of loosened masonry.
That was the end of this pirate crew, which not ten minutes ago had
been laughingly counting up the pieces of eight that would fall to
the portion of each for his share in that act of villainy. Close upon
threescore survivors contrived to reach the shore. Whether they had
cause for congratulation, I am unable to say in the absence of any
records in which their fate may be traced. That lack of records is in
itself eloquent. We know that they were made fast as they landed, and
considering the offence they had given I am not disposed to doubt that
they had every reason to regret the survival.
The mystery of the succour that had come at the eleventh hour to
wreak vengeance upon the Spaniards, and to preserve for the island the
extortionate ransom of a hundred thousand pieces of eight, remained yet
to be probed. That the Cinco Llagas was now in friendly hands could no
longer be doubted after the proofs it had given. But who, the people
of Bridgetown asked one another, were the men in possession of her, and
whence had they come? The only possible assumption ran the truth very
closely. A resolute party of islanders must have got aboard during
the night, and seized the ship. It remained to ascertain the precise
identity of these mysterious saviours, and do them fitting honour.
Upon this errand--Governor Steed's condition not permitting him to go
in person--went Colonel Bishop as the Governor's deputy, attended by two
officers.
As he stepped from the ladder into the vessel's waist, the Colonel
beheld there, beside the main hatch, the four treasure-chests, the
contents of one of which had been contributed almost entirely by
himself. It was a gladsome spectacle, and his eyes sparkled in beholding
it.
Ranged on either side, athwart the deck, stood a score of men in two
well-ordered files, with breasts and backs of steel, polished Spanish
morions on their heads, overshadowing their faces, and muskets ordered
at their sides.
Colonel Bishop could not be expected to recognize at a glance in these
upright, furbished, soldierly figures the ragged, unkempt scarecrows
that but yesterday had been toiling in his plantations. Still less could
he be expected to recognize at once the courtly gentleman who advanced
to greet him--a lean, graceful gentleman, dressed in the Spanish
fashion, all in black with silver lace, a gold-hilted sword dangling
beside him from a gold embroidered baldrick, a broad castor with a
sweeping plume set above carefully curled ringlets of deepest black.
“Be welcome aboard the Cinco Llagas, Colonel, darling,” a voice vaguely
familiar addressed the planter. “We've made the best of the Spaniards'
wardrobe in honour of this visit, though it was scarcely yourself we had
dared hope to expect. You find yourself among friends--old friends of
yours, all.” The Colonel stared in stupefaction. Mr. Blood tricked out
in all this splendour--indulging therein his natural taste--his face
carefully shaven, his hair as carefully dressed, seemed transformed into
a younger man. The fact is he looked no more than the thirty-three years
he counted to his age.
“Peter Blood!” It was an ejaculation of amazement. Satisfaction followed
swiftly. “Was it you, then...?”
“Myself it was--myself and these, my good friends and yours.” Mr. Blood
tossed back the fine lace from his wrist, to wave a hand towards the
file of men standing to attention there.
The Colonel looked more closely. “Gad's my life!” he crowed on a note
of foolish jubilation. “And it was with these fellows that you took
the Spaniard and turned the tables on those dogs! Oddswounds! It was
heroic!”
“Heroic, is it? Bedad, it's epic! Ye begin to perceive the breadth and
depth of my genius.”
Colonel Bishop sat himself down on the hatch-coaming, took off his broad
hat, and mopped his brow.
“Y'amaze me!” he gasped. “On my soul, y'amaze me! To have recovered the
treasure and to have seized this fine ship and all she'll hold! It will
be something to set against the other losses we have suffered. As Gad's
my life, you deserve well for this.”
“I am entirely of your opinion.”
“Damme! You all deserve well, and damme, you shall find me grateful.”
“That's as it should be,” said Mr. Blood. “The question is how well we
deserve, and how grateful shall we find you?”
Colonel Bishop considered him. There was a shadow of surprise in his
face.
“Why--his excellency shall write home an account of your exploit, and
maybe some portion of your sentences shall be remitted.”
“The generosity of King James is well known,” sneered Nathaniel
Hagthorpe, who was standing by, and amongst the ranged rebels-convict
some one ventured to laugh.
Colonel Bishop started up. He was pervaded by the first pang of
uneasiness. It occurred to him that all here might not be as friendly as
appeared.
“And there's another matter,” Mr. Blood resumed. “There's a matter of
a flogging that's due to me. Ye're a man of your word in such matters,
Colonel--if not perhaps in others--and ye said, I think, that ye'd not
leave a square inch of skin on my back.”
The planter waved the matter aside. Almost it seemed to offend him.
“Tush! Tush! After this splendid deed of yours, do you suppose I can be
thinking of such things?”
“I'm glad ye feel like that about it. But I'm thinking it's mighty lucky
for me the Spaniards didn't come to-day instead of yesterday, or it's
in the same plight as Jeremy Pitt I'd be this minute. And in that case
where was the genius that would have turned the tables on these rascally
Spaniards?”
“Why speak of it now?”
Mr. Blood resumed: “ye'll please to understand that I must, Colonel,
darling. Ye've worked a deal of wickedness and cruelty in your time, and
I want this to be a lesson to you, a lesson that ye'll remember--for
the sake of others who may come after us. There's Jeremy up there in the
round-house with a back that's every colour of the rainbow; and the poor
lad'll not be himself again for a month. And if it hadn't been for the
Spaniards maybe it's dead he'd be by now, and maybe myself with him.”
Hagthorpe lounged forward. He was a fairly tall, vigorous man with a
clear-cut, attractive face which in itself announced his breeding.
“Why will you be wasting words on the hog?” wondered that sometime
officer in the Royal Navy. “Fling him overboard and have done with him.”
The Colonel's eyes bulged in his head. “What the devil do you mean?” he
blustered.
“It's the lucky man ye are entirely, Colonel, though ye don't guess the
source of your good fortune.”
And now another intervened--the brawny, one-eyed Wolverstone, less
mercifully disposed than his more gentlemanly fellow-convict.
“String him up from the yardarm,” he cried, his deep voice harsh and
angry, and more than one of the slaves standing to their arms made echo.
Colonel Bishop trembled. Mr. Blood turned. He was quite calm.
“If you please, Wolverstone,” said he, “I conduct affairs in my own way.
That is the pact. You'll please to remember it.” His eyes looked along
the ranks, making it plain that he addressed them all. “I desire that
Colonel Bishop should have his life. One reason is that I require him as
a hostage. If ye insist on hanging him, ye'll have to hang me with him,
or in the alternative I'll go ashore.”
He paused. There was no answer. But they stood hang-dog and
half-mutinous before him, save Hagthorpe, who shrugged and smiled
wearily.
Mr. Blood resumed: “Ye'll please to understand that aboard a ship there
is one captain. So.” He swung again to the startled Colonel. “Though
I promise you your life, I must--as you've heard--keep you aboard as a
hostage for the good behaviour of Governor Steed and what's left of the
fort until we put to sea.”
“Until you...” Horror prevented Colonel Bishop from echoing the
remainder of that incredible speech.
“Just so,” said Peter Blood, and he turned to the officers who had
accompanied the Colonel. “The boat is waiting, gentlemen. You'll have
heard what I said. Convey it with my compliments to his excellency.”
“But, sir...” one of them began.
“There is no more to be said, gentlemen. My name is Blood--Captain
Blood, if you please, of this ship the Cinco Llagas, taken as a prize of
war from Don Diego de Espinosa y Valdez, who is my prisoner aboard.
You are to understand that I have turned the tables on more than the
Spaniards. There's the ladder. You'll find it more convenient than being
heaved over the side, which is what'll happen if you linger.”
They went, though not without some hustling, regardless of the
bellowings of Colonel Bishop, whose monstrous rage was fanned by terror
at finding himself at the mercy of these men of whose cause to hate him
he was very fully conscious.
A half-dozen of them, apart from Jeremy Pitt, who was utterly
incapacitated for the present, possessed a superficial knowledge
of seamanship. Hagthorpe, although he had been a fighting officer,
untrained in navigation, knew how to handle a ship, and under his
directions they set about getting under way.
The anchor catted, and the mainsail unfurled, they stood out for the
open before a gentle breeze, without interference from the fort.
As they were running close to the headland east of the bay, Peter
Blood returned to the Colonel, who, under guard and panic-stricken, had
dejectedly resumed his seat on the coamings of the main batch.
“Can ye swim, Colonel?”
Colonel Bishop looked up. His great face was yellow and seemed in that
moment of a preternatural flabbiness; his beady eyes were beadier than
ever.
“As your doctor, now, I prescribe a swim to cool the excessive heat
of your humours.” Blood delivered the explanation pleasantly, and,
receiving still no answer from the Colonel, continued: “It's a mercy for
you I'm not by nature as bloodthirsty as some of my friends here. And
it's the devil's own labour I've had to prevail upon them not to be
vindictive. I doubt if ye're worth the pains I've taken for you.”
He was lying. He had no doubt at all. Had he followed his own wishes and
instincts, he would certainly have strung the Colonel up, and accounted
it a meritorious deed. It was the thought of Arabella Bishop that had
urged him to mercy, and had led him to oppose the natural vindictiveness
of his fellow-slaves until he had been in danger of precipitating a
mutiny. It was entirely to the fact that the Colonel was her uncle,
although he did not even begin to suspect such a cause, that he owed
such mercy as was now being shown him.
“You shall have a chance to swim for it,” Peter Blood continued. “It's
not above a quarter of a mile to the headland yonder, and with ordinary
luck ye should manage it. Faith, you're fat enough to float. Come on!
Now, don't be hesitating or it's a long voyage ye'll be going with us,
and the devil knows what may happen to you. You're not loved any more
than you deserve.”
Colonel Bishop mastered himself, and rose. A merciless despot, who had
never known the need for restraint in all these years, he was doomed by
ironic fate to practise restraint in the very moment when his feelings
had reached their most violent intensity.
Peter Blood gave an order. A plank was run out over the gunwale, and
lashed down.
“If you please, Colonel,” said he, with a graceful flourish of
invitation.
The Colonel looked at him, and there was hell in his glance. Then,
taking his resolve, and putting the best face upon it, since no other
could help him here, he kicked off his shoes, peeled off his fine coat
of biscuit-coloured taffetas, and climbed upon the plank.
A moment he paused, steadied by a hand that clutched the ratlines,
looking down in terror at the green water rushing past some
five-and-twenty feet below.
“Just take a little walk, Colonel, darling,” said a smooth, mocking
voice behind him.
Still clinging, Colonel Bishop looked round in hesitation, and saw the
bulwarks lined with swarthy faces--the faces of men that as lately as
yesterday would have turned pale under his frown, faces that were now
all wickedly agrin.
For a moment rage stamped out his fear. He cursed them aloud venomously
and incoherently, then loosed his hold and stepped out upon the plank.
Three steps he took before he lost his balance and went tumbling into
the green depths below.
When he came to the surface again, gasping for air, the Cinco Llagas
was already some furlongs to leeward. But the roaring cheer of mocking
valediction from the rebels-convict reached him across the water, to
drive the iron of impotent rage deeper into his soul.