Don Diego de Espinosa y Valdez awoke, and with languid eyes in aching
head, he looked round the cabin, which was flooded with sunlight from
the square windows astern. Then he uttered a moan, and closed his eyes
again, impelled to this by the monstrous ache in his head. Lying thus,
he attempted to think, to locate himself in time and space. But between
the pain in his head and the confusion in his mind, he found coherent
thought impossible.
An indefinite sense of alarm drove him to open his eyes again, and once
more to consider his surroundings.
There could be no doubt that he lay in the great cabin of his own
ship, the Cinco Llagas, so that his vague disquiet must be, surely,
ill-founded. And yet, stirrings of memory coming now to the assistance
of reflection, compelled him uneasily to insist that here something was
not as it should be. The low position of the sun, flooding the cabin
with golden light from those square ports astern, suggested to him at
first that it was early morning, on the assumption that the vessel was
headed westward. Then the alternative occurred to him. They might be
sailing eastward, in which case the time of day would be late afternoon.
That they were sailing he could feel from the gentle forward heave of
the vessel under him. But how did they come to be sailing, and he, the
master, not to know whether their course lay east or west, not to be
able to recollect whither they were bound?
His mind went back over the adventure of yesterday, if of yesterday it
was. He was clear on the matter of the easily successful raid upon the
Island of Barbados; every detail stood vividly in his memory up to the
moment at which, returning aboard, he had stepped on to his own deck
again. There memory abruptly and inexplicably ceased.
He was beginning to torture his mind with conjecture, when the door
opened, and to Don Diego's increasing mystification he beheld his best
suit of clothes step into the cabin. It was a singularly elegant and
characteristically Spanish suit of black taffetas with silver lace that
had been made for him a year ago in Cadiz, and he knew each detail of it
so well that it was impossible he could now be mistaken.
The suit paused to close the door, then advanced towards the couch on
which Don Diego was extended, and inside the suit came a tall, slender
gentleman of about Don Diego's own height and shape. Seeing the wide,
startled eyes of the Spaniard upon him, the gentleman lengthened his
stride.
“Awake, eh?” said he in Spanish.
The recumbent man looked up bewildered into a pair of light-blue eyes
that regarded him out of a tawny, sardonic face set in a cluster of
black ringlets. But he was too bewildered to make any answer.
The stranger's fingers touched the top of Don Diego's head, whereupon
Don Diego winced and cried out in pain.
“Tender, eh?” said the stranger. He took Don Diego's wrist between thumb
and second finger. And then, at last, the intrigued Spaniard spoke.
“Are you a doctor?”
“Among other things.” The swarthy gentleman continued his study of the
patient's pulse. “Firm and regular,” he announced at last, and dropped
the wrist. “You've taken no great harm.”
Don Diego struggled up into a sitting position on the red velvet couch.
“Who the devil are you?” he asked. “And what the devil are you doing in
my clothes and aboard my ship?”
The level black eyebrows went up, a faint smile curled the lips of the
long mouth.
“You are still delirious, I fear. This is not your ship. This is my
ship, and these are my clothes.”
“Your ship?” quoth the other, aghast, and still more aghast he added:
“Your clothes? But... then....” Wildly his eyes looked about him. They
scanned the cabin once again, scrutinizing each familiar object. “Am I
mad?” he asked at last. “Surely this ship is the Cinco Llagas?”
“The Cinco Llagas it is.”
“Then....” The Spaniard broke off. His glance grew still more troubled.
“Valga me Dios!” he cried out, like a man in anguish. “Will you tell me
also that you are Don Diego de Espinosa?”
“Oh, no, my name is Blood--Captain Peter Blood. This ship, like this
handsome suit of clothes, is mine by right of conquest. Just as you, Don
Diego, are my prisoner.”
Startling as was the explanation, yet it proved soothing to Don Diego,
being so much less startling than the things he was beginning to
imagine.
“But... Are you not Spanish, then?”
“You flatter my Castilian accent. I have the honour to be Irish. You
were thinking that a miracle had happened. So it has--a miracle wrought
by my genius, which is considerable.”
Succinctly now Captain Blood dispelled the mystery by a relation of
the facts. It was a narrative that painted red and white by turns the
Spaniard's countenance. He put a hand to the back of his head, and there
discovered, in confirmation of the story, a lump as large as a pigeon's
egg. Lastly, he stared wild-eyed at the sardonic Captain Blood.
“And my son? What of my son?” he cried out. “He was in the boat that
brought me aboard.”
“Your son is safe; he and the boat's crew together with your gunner and
his men are snugly in irons under hatches.”
Don Diego sank back on the couch, his glittering dark eyes fixed upon
the tawny face above him. He composed himself. After all, he possessed
the stoicism proper to his desperate trade. The dice had fallen against
him in this venture. The tables had been turned upon him in the very
moment of success. He accepted the situation with the fortitude of a
fatalist.
With the utmost calm he enquired:
“And now, Senior Capitan?”
“And now,” said Captain Blood--to give him the title he had
assumed--“being a humane man, I am sorry to find that ye're not dead
from the tap we gave you. For it means that you'll be put to the trouble
of dying all over again.”
“Ah!” Don Diego drew a deep breath. “But is that necessary?” he asked,
without apparent perturbation.
Captain Blood's blue eyes approved his bearing. “Ask yourself,” said he.
“Tell me, as an experienced and bloody pirate, what in my place would
you do, yourself?”
“Ah, but there is a difference.” Don Diego sat up to argue the matter.
“It lies in the fact that you boast yourself a humane man.”
Captain Blood perched himself on the edge of the long oak table. “But
I am not a fool,” said he, “and I'll not allow a natural Irish
sentimentality to stand in the way of my doing what is necessary and
proper. You and your ten surviving scoundrels are a menace on this ship.
More than that, she is none so well found in water and provisions. True,
we are fortunately a small number, but you and your party inconveniently
increase it. So that on every hand, you see, prudence suggests to
us that we should deny ourselves the pleasure of your company, and,
steeling our soft hearts to the inevitable, invite you to be so obliging
as to step over the side.”
“I see,” said the Spaniard pensively. He swung his legs from the couch,
and sat now upon the edge of it, his elbows on his knees. He had taken
the measure of his man, and met him with a mock-urbanity and a suave
detachment that matched his own. “I confess,” he admitted, “that there
is much force in what you say.”
“You take a load from my mind,” said Captain Blood. “I would not appear
unnecessarily harsh, especially since I and my friends owe you so very
much. For, whatever it may have been to others, to us your raid upon
Barbados was most opportune. I am glad, therefore, that you agree the I
have no choice.”
“But, my friend, I did not agree so much.”
“If there is any alternative that you can suggest, I shall be most happy
to consider it.”
Don Diego stroked his pointed black beard.
“Can you give me until morning for reflection? My head aches so damnably
that I am incapable of thought. And this, you will admit, is a matter
that asks serious thought.”
Captain Blood stood up. From a shelf he took a half-hour glass, reversed
it so that the bulb containing the red sand was uppermost, and stood it
on the table.
“I am sorry to press you in such a matter, Don Diego, but one glass is
all that I can give you. If by the time those sands have run out you can
propose no acceptable alternative, I shall most reluctantly be driven to
ask you to go over the side with your friends.”
Captain Blood bowed, went out, and locked the door. Elbows on his knees
and face in his hands, Don Diego sat watching the rusty sands as they
filtered from the upper to the lower bulb. And what time he watched, the
lines in his lean brown face grew deeper. Punctually as the last grains
ran out, the door reopened.
The Spaniard sighed, and sat upright to face the returning Captain Blood
with the answer for which he came.
“I have thought of an alternative, sir captain; but it depends upon
your charity. It is that you put us ashore on one of the islands of this
pestilent archipelago, and leave us to shift for ourselves.”
Captain Blood pursed his lips. “It has its difficulties,” said he
slowly.
“I feared it would be so.” Don Diego sighed again, and stood up. “Let us
say no more.”
The light-blue eyes played over him like points of steel.
“You are not afraid to die, Don Diego?”
The Spaniard threw back his head, a frown between his eyes.
“The question is offensive, sir.”
“Then let me put it in another way--perhaps more happily: You do not
desire to live?”
“Ah, that I can answer. I do desire to live; and even more do I desire
that my son may live. But the desire shall not make a coward of me for
your amusement, master mocker.” It was the first sign he had shown of
the least heat or resentment.
Captain Blood did not directly answer. As before he perched himself on
the corner of the table.
“Would you be willing, sir, to earn life and liberty--for yourself, your
son, and the other Spaniards who are on board?”
“To earn it?” said Don Diego, and the watchful blue eyes did not miss
the quiver that ran through him. “To earn it, do you say? Why, if the
service you would propose is one that cannot hurt my honour....”
“Could I be guilty of that?” protested the Captain. “I realize that even
a pirate has his honour.” And forthwith he propounded his offer. “If you
will look from those windows, Don Diego, you will see what appears to be
a cloud on the horizon. That is the island of Barbados well astern. All
day we have been sailing east before the wind with but one intent--to
set as great a distance between Barbados and ourselves as possible. But
now, almost out of sight of land, we are in a difficulty. The only man
among us schooled in the art of navigation is fevered, delirious, in
fact, as a result of certain ill-treatment he received ashore before we
carried him away with us. I can handle a ship in action, and there are
one or two men aboard who can assist me; but of the higher mysteries of
seamanship and of the art of finding a way over the trackless wastes of
ocean, we know nothing. To hug the land, and go blundering about
what you so aptly call this pestilent archipelago, is for us to court
disaster, as you can perhaps conceive. And so it comes to this: We
desire to make for the Dutch settlement of Curacao as straightly as
possible. Will you pledge me your honour, if I release you upon parole,
that you will navigate us thither? If so, we will release you and your
surviving men upon arrival there.”
Don Diego bowed his head upon his breast, and strode away in thought to
the stern windows. There he stood looking out upon the sunlit sea and
the dead water in the great ship's wake--his ship, which these English
dogs had wrested from him; his ship, which he was asked to bring safely
into a port where she would be completely lost to him and refitted
perhaps to make war upon his kin. That was in one scale; in the other
were the lives of sixteen men. Fourteen of them mattered little to him,
but the remaining two were his own and his son's.
He turned at length, and his back being to the light, the Captain could
not see how pale his face had grown.
“I accept,” he said.