It would be somewhere about ten o'clock on the following morning, a
full hour before the time appointed for sailing, when a canoe brought up
alongside La Foudre, and a half-caste Indian stepped out of her and went
up the ladder. He was clad in drawers of hairy, untanned hide, and a red
blanket served him for a cloak. He was the bearer of a folded scrap of
paper for Captain Levasseur.
The Captain unfolded the letter, sadly soiled and crumpled by contact
with the half-caste's person. Its contents may be roughly translated
thus:
“My well-beloved--I am in the Dutch brig Jongvrow, which is about to
sail. Resolved to separate us for ever, my cruel father is sending me to
Europe in my brother's charge. I implore you, come to my rescue. Deliver
me, my well-beloved hero!--Your desolated Madeleine, who loves you.”
The well-beloved hero was moved to the soul of him by that passionate
appeal. His scowling glance swept the bay for the Dutch brig, which
he knew had been due to sail for Amsterdam with a cargo of hides and
tobacco.
She was nowhere to be seen among the shipping in that narrow, rock-bound
harbour. He roared out the question in his mind.
In answer the half-caste pointed out beyond the frothing surf that
marked the position of the reef constituting one of the stronghold's
main defences. Away beyond it, a mile or so distant, a sail was standing
out to sea. “There she go,” he said.
“There!” The Frenchman gazed and stared, his face growing white. The
man's wicked temper awoke, and turned to vent itself upon the messenger.
“And where have you been that you come here only now with this? Answer
me!”
The half-caste shrank terrified before his fury. His explanation, if he
had one, was paralyzed by fear. Levasseur took him by the throat, shook
him twice, snarling the while, then hurled him into the scuppers. The
man's head struck the gunwale as he fell, and he lay there, quite still,
a trickle of blood issuing from his mouth.
Levasseur dashed one hand against the other, as if dusting them.
“Heave that muck overboard,” he ordered some of those who stood idling
in the waist. “Then up anchor, and let us after the Dutchman.”
“Steady, Captain. What's that?” There was a restraining hand upon his
shoulder, and the broad face of his lieutenant Cahusac, a burly, callous
Breton scoundrel, was stolidly confronting him.
Levasseur made clear his purpose with a deal of unnecessary obscenity.
Cahusac shook his head. “A Dutch brig!” said he. “Impossible! We should
never be allowed.”
“And who the devil will deny us?” Levasseur was between amazement and
fury.
“For one thing, there's your own crew will be none too willing. For
another there's Captain Blood.”
“I care nothing for Captain Blood....”
“But it is necessary that you should. He has the power, the weight of
metal and of men, and if I know him at all he'll sink us before
he'll suffer interference with the Dutch. He has his own views of
privateering, this Captain Blood, as I warned you.”
“Ah!” said Levasseur, showing his teeth. But his eyes, riveted upon that
distant sail, were gloomily thoughtful. Not for long. The imagination
and resource which Captain Blood had detected in the fellow soon
suggested a course.
Cursing in his soul, and even before the anchor was weighed, the
association into which he had entered, he was already studying ways
of evasion. What Cahusac implied was true: Blood would never suffer
violence to be done in his presence to a Dutchman; but it might be done
in his absence; and, being done, Blood must perforce condone it, since
it would then be too late to protest.
Within the hour the Arabella and La Foudre were beating out to sea
together. Without understanding the change of plan involved, Captain
Blood, nevertheless, accepted it, and weighed anchor before the
appointed time upon perceiving his associate to do so.
All day the Dutch brig was in sight, though by evening she had dwindled
to the merest speck on the northern horizon. The course prescribed
for Blood and Levasseur lay eastward along the northern shores of
Hispaniola. To that course the Arabella continued to hold steadily
throughout the night. When day broke again, she was alone. La Foudre
under cover of the darkness had struck away to The northeast with every
rag of canvas on her yards.
Cahusac had attempted yet again to protest against this.
“The devil take you!” Levasseur had answered him. “A ship's a ship, be
she Dutch or Spanish, and ships are our present need. That will suffice
for the men.”
His lieutenant said no more. But from his glimpse of the letter, knowing
that a girl and not a ship was his captain's real objective, he gloomily
shook his head as he rolled away on his bowed legs to give the necessary
orders.
Dawn found La Foudre close on the Dutchman's heels, not a mile astern,
and the sight of her very evidently flustered the Jongvrow. No doubt
mademoiselle's brother recognizing Levasseur's ship would be responsible
for the Dutch uneasiness. They saw the Jongvrow crowding canvas in a
futile endeavour to outsail them, whereupon they stood off to starboard
and raced on until they were in a position whence they could send
a warning shot across her bow. The Jongvrow veered, showed them her
rudder, and opened fire with her stern chasers. The small shot went
whistling through La Foudre's shrouds with some slight damage to her
canvas. Followed a brief running fight in the course of which the
Dutchman let fly a broadside.
Five minutes after that they were board and board, the Jongvrow held
tight in the clutches of La Foudre's grapnels, and the buccaneers
pouring noisily into her waist.
The Dutchman's master, purple in the face, stood forward to beard the
pirate, followed closely by an elegant, pale-faced young gentleman in
whom Levasseur recognized his brother-in-law elect.
“Captain Levasseur, this is an outrage for which you shall be made to
answer. What do you seek aboard my ship?”
“At first I sought only that which belongs to me, something of which I
am being robbed. But since you chose war and opened fire on me with some
damage to my ship and loss of life to five of my men, why, war it is,
and your ship a prize of war.”
From the quarter rail Mademoiselle d'Ogeron looked down with glowing
eyes in breathless wonder upon her well-beloved hero. Gloriously heroic
he seemed as he stood towering there, masterful, audacious, beautiful.
He saw her, and with a glad shout sprang towards her. The Dutch master
got in his way with hands upheld to arrest his progress. Levasseur did
not stay to argue with him: he was too impatient to reach his mistress.
He swung the poleaxe that he carried, and the Dutchman went down in
blood with a cloven skull. The eager lover stepped across the body and
came on, his countenance joyously alight.
But mademoiselle was shrinking now, in horror. She was a girl upon the
threshold of glorious womanhood, of a fine height and nobly moulded,
with heavy coils of glossy black hair above and about a face that was of
the colour of old ivory. Her countenance was cast in lines of arrogance,
stressed by the low lids of her full dark eyes.
In a bound her well-beloved was beside her, flinging away his bloody
poleaxe, he opened wide his arms to enfold her. But she still shrank
even within his embrace, which would not be denied; a look of dread had
come to temper the normal arrogance of her almost perfect face.
“Mine, mine at last, and in spite of all!” he cried exultantly,
theatrically, truly heroic.
But she, endeavouring to thrust him back, her hands against his breast,
could only falter: “Why, why did you kill him?”
He laughed, as a hero should; and answered her heroically, with the
tolerance of a god for the mortal to whom he condescends: “He stood
between us. Let his death be a symbol, a warning. Let all who would
stand between us mark it and beware.”
It was so splendidly terrific, the gesture of it was so broad and fine
and his magnetism so compelling, that she cast her silly tremors and
yielded herself freely, intoxicated, to his fond embrace. Thereafter he
swung her to his shoulder, and stepping with ease beneath that burden,
bore her in a sort of triumph, lustily cheered by his men, to the
deck of his own ship. Her inconsiderate brother might have ruined that
romantic scene but for the watchful Cahusac, who quietly tripped him up,
and then trussed him like a fowl.
Thereafter, what time the Captain languished in his lady's smile within
the cabin, Cahusac was dealing with the spoils of war. The Dutch crew
was ordered into the longboat, and bidden go to the devil. Fortunately,
as they numbered fewer than thirty, the longboat, though perilously
overcrowded, could yet contain them. Next, Cahusac having inspected the
cargo, put a quartermaster and a score of men aboard the Jongvrow, and
left her to follow La Foudre, which he now headed south for the Leeward
Islands.
Cahusac was disposed to be ill-humoured. The risk they had run in
taking the Dutch brig and doing violence to members of the family of
the Governor of Tortuga, was out of all proportion to the value of their
prize. He said so, sullenly, to Levasseur.
“You'll keep that opinion to yourself,” the Captain answered him. “Don't
think I am the man to thrust my neck into a noose, without knowing how
I am going to take it out again. I shall send an offer of terms to the
Governor of Tortuga that he will be forced to accept. Set a course for
the Virgen Magra. We'll go ashore, and settle things from there. And
tell them to fetch that milksop Ogeron to the cabin.”
Levasseur went back to the adoring lady.
Thither, too, the lady's brother was presently conducted. The Captain
rose to receive him, bending his stalwart height to avoid striking the
cabin roof with his head. Mademoiselle rose too.
“Why this?” she asked Levasseur, pointing to her brother's pinioned
wrists--the remains of Cahusac's precautions.
“I deplore it,” said he. “I desire it to end. Let M. d'Ogeron give me
his parole....”
“I give you nothing,” flashed the white-faced youth, who did not lack
for spirit.
“You see.” Levasseur shrugged his deep regret, and mademoiselle turned
protesting to her brother.
“Henri, this is foolish! You are not behaving as my friend. You....”
“Little fool,” her brother answered her--and the “little” was out of
place; she was the taller of the twain. “Little fool, do you think
I should be acting as your friend to make terms with this blackguard
pirate?”
“Steady, my young cockerel!” Levasseur laughed. But his laugh was not
nice.
“Don't you perceive your wicked folly in the harm it has brought
already? Lives have been lost--men have died--that this monster might
overtake you. And don't you yet realize where you stand--in the power
of this beast, of this cur born in a kennel and bred in thieving and
murder?”
He might have said more but that Levasseur struck him across the mouth.
Levasseur, you see, cared as little as another to hear the truth about
himself.
Mademoiselle suppressed a scream, as the youth staggered back under the
blow. He came to rest against a bulkhead, and leaned there with bleeding
lips. But his spirit was unquenched, and there was a ghastly smile on
his white face as his eyes sought his sister's.
“You see,” he said simply. “He strikes a man whose hands are bound.”
The simple words, and, more than the words, their tone of ineffable
disdain, aroused the passion that never slumbered deeply in Levasseur.
“And what should you do, puppy, if your hands were unbound?” He took his
prisoner by the breast of his doublet and shook him. “Answer me! What
should you do? Tchah! You empty windbag! You....” And then came a
torrent of words unknown to mademoiselle, yet of whose foulness her
intuitions made her conscious.
With blanched cheeks she stood by the cabin table, and cried out to
Levasseur to stop. To obey her, he opened the door, and flung her
brother through it.
“Put that rubbish under hatches until I call for it again,” he roared,
and shut the door.
Composing himself, he turned to the girl again with a deprecatory smile.
But no smile answered him from her set face. She had seen her beloved
hero's nature in curl-papers, as it were, and she found the spectacle
disgusting and terrifying. It recalled the brutal slaughter of the Dutch
captain, and suddenly she realized that what her brother had just said
of this man was no more than true. Fear growing to panic was written on
her face, as she stood there leaning for support against the table.
“Why, sweetheart, what is this?” Levasseur moved towards her. She
recoiled before him. There was a smile on his face, a glitter in his
eyes that fetched her heart into her throat.
He caught her, as she reached the uttermost limits of the cabin, seized
her in his long arms and pulled her to him.
“No, no!” she panted.
“Yes, yes,” he mocked her, and his mockery was the most terrible thing
of all. He crushed her to him brutally, deliberately hurtful because she
resisted, and kissed her whilst she writhed in his embrace. Then, his
passion mounting, he grew angry and stripped off the last rag of hero's
mask that still may have hung upon his face. “Little fool, did you
not hear your brother say that you are in my power? Remember it, and
remember that of your own free will you came. I am not the man with whom
a woman can play fast and loose. So get sense, my girl, and accept what
you have invited.” He kissed her again, almost contemptuously, and flung
her off. “No more scowls,” he said. “You'll be sorry else.”
Some one knocked. Cursing the interruption, Levasseur strode off to
open. Cahusac stood before him. The Breton's face was grave. He came
to report that they had sprung a leak between wind and water, the
consequence of damage sustained from one of the Dutchman's shots. In
alarm Levasseur went off with him. The leakage was not serious so long
as the weather kept fine; but should a storm overtake them it might
speedily become so. A man was slung overboard to make a partial stoppage
with a sail-cloth, and the pumps were got to work.
Ahead of them a low cloud showed on the horizon, which Cahusac
pronounced one of the northernmost of the Virgin Islands.
“We must run for shelter there, and careen her,” said Levasseur. “I
do not trust this oppressive heat. A storm may catch us before we make
land.”
“A storm or something else,” said Cahusac grimly. “Have you noticed
that?” He pointed away to starboard.
Levasseur looked, and caught his breath. Two ships that at the distance
seemed of considerable burden were heading towards them some five miles
away.
“If they follow us what is to happen?” demanded Cahusac.
“We'll fight whether we're in case to do so or not,” swore Levasseur.
“Counsels of despair.” Cahusac was contemptuous. To mark it he spat upon
the deck. “This comes of going to sea with a lovesick madman. Now, keep
your temper, Captain, for the hands will be at the end of theirs if we
have trouble as a result of this Dutchman business.”
For the remainder of that day Levasseur's thoughts were of anything but
love. He remained on deck, his eyes now upon the land, now upon those
two slowly gaining ships. To run for the open could avail him nothing,
and in his leaky condition would provide an additional danger. He must
stand at bay and fight. And then, towards evening, when within three
miles of shore and when he was about to give the order to strip
for battle, he almost fainted from relief to hear a voice from the
crow's-nest above announce that the larger of the two ships was the
Arabella. Her companion was presumably a prize.
But the pessimism of Cahusac abated nothing.
“That is but the lesser evil,” he growled. “What will Blood say about
this Dutchman?”
“Let him say what he pleases.” Levasseur laughed in the immensity of his
relief.
“And what about the children of the Governor of Tortuga?”
“He must not know.”
“He'll come to know in the end.”
“Aye, but by then, morbleu, the matter will be settled. I shall have
made my peace with the Governor. I tell you I know the way to compel
Ogeron to come to terms.”
Presently the four vessels lay to off the northern coast of La Virgen
Magra, a narrow little island arid and treeless, some twelve miles
by three, uninhabited save by birds and turtles and unproductive of
anything but salt, of which there were considerable ponds to the south.
Levasseur put off in a boat accompanied by Cahusac and two other
officers, and went to visit Captain Blood aboard the Arabella.
“Our brief separation has been mighty profitable,” was Captain
Blood's greeting. “It's a busy morning we've both had.” He was in high
good-humour as he led the way to the great cabin for a rendering of
accounts.
The tall ship that accompanied the Arabella was a Spanish vessel of
twenty-six guns, the Santiago from Puerto Rico with a hundred and twenty
thousand weight of cacao, forty thousand pieces of eight, and the value
of ten thousand more in jewels. A rich capture of which two fifths under
the articles went to Levasseur and his crew. Of the money and jewels a
division was made on the spot. The cacao it was agreed should be taken
to Tortuga to be sold.
Then it was the turn of Levasseur, and black grew the brow of Captain
Blood as the Frenchman's tale was unfolded. At the end he roundly
expressed his disapproval. The Dutch were a friendly people whom it was
a folly to alienate, particularly for so paltry a matter as these hides
and tobacco, which at most would fetch a bare twenty thousand pieces.
But Levasseur answered him, as he had answered Cahusac, that a ship was
a ship, and it was ships they needed against their projected enterprise.
Perhaps because things had gone well with him that day, Blood ended
by shrugging the matter aside. Thereupon Levasseur proposed that the
Arabella and her prize should return to Tortuga there to unload the
cacao and enlist the further adventurers that could now be shipped.
Levasseur meanwhile would effect certain necessary repairs, and
then proceeding south, await his admiral at Saltatudos, an island
conveniently situated--in the latitude of 11 deg. 11' N.--for their
enterprise against Maracaybo.
To Levasseur's relief, Captain Blood not only agreed, but pronounced
himself ready to set sail at once.
No sooner had the Arabella departed than Levasseur brought his ships
into the lagoon, and set his crew to work upon the erection of temporary
quarters ashore for himself, his men, and his enforced guests during the
careening and repairing of La Foudre.
At sunset that evening the wind freshened; it grew to a gale, and from
that to such a hurricane that Levasseur was thankful to find himself
ashore and his ships in safe shelter. He wondered a little how it might
be faring with Captain Blood out there at the mercy of that terrific
storm; but he did not permit concern to trouble him unduly.