That affair of Mademoiselle d'Ogeron bore as its natural fruit an
improvement in the already cordial relations between Captain Blood
and the Governor of Tortuga. At the fine stone house, with its
green-jalousied windows, which M. d'Ogeron had built himself in a
spacious and luxuriant garden to the east of Cayona, the Captain became
a very welcome guest. M. d'Ogeron was in the Captain's debt for more
than the twenty thousand pieces of eight which he had provided for
mademoiselle's ransom; and shrewd, hard bargain-driver though he might
be, the Frenchman could be generous and understood the sentiment of
gratitude. This he now proved in every possible way, and under his
powerful protection the credit of Captain Blood among the buccaneers
very rapidly reached its zenith.
So when it came to fitting out his fleet for that enterprise against
Maracaybo, which had originally been Levasseur's project, he did not
want for either ships or men to follow him. He recruited five hundred
adventurers in all, and he might have had as many thousands if he could
have offered them accommodation. Similarly without difficulty he might
have increased his fleet to twice its strength of ships but that he
preferred to keep it what it was. The three vessels to which he confined
it were the Arabella, the La Foudre, which Cahusac now commanded with a
contingent of some sixscore Frenchmen, and the Santiago, which had been
refitted and rechristened the Elizabeth, after that Queen of England
whose seamen had humbled Spain as Captain Blood now hoped to humble it
again. Hagthorpe, in virtue of his service in the navy, was appointed by
Blood to command her, and the appointment was confirmed by the men.
It was some months after the rescue of Mademoiselle d'Ogeron--in August
of that year 1687--that this little fleet, after some minor adventures
which I pass over in silence, sailed into the great lake of Maracaybo
and effected its raid upon that opulent city of the Main.
The affair did not proceed exactly as was hoped, and Blood's force came
to find itself in a precarious position. This is best explained in the
words employed by Cahusac--which Pitt has carefully recorded--in the
course of an altercation that broke out on the steps of the Church
of Nuestra Senora del Carmen, which Captain Blood had impiously
appropriated for the purpose of a corps-de-garde. I have said already
that he was a papist only when it suited him.
The dispute was being conducted by Hagthorpe, Wolverstone, and Pitt on
the one side, and Cahusac, out of whose uneasiness it all arose, on the
other. Behind them in the sun-scorched, dusty square, sparsely fringed
by palms, whose fronds drooped listlessly in the quivering heat, surged
a couple of hundred wild fellows belonging to both parties, their own
excitement momentarily quelled so that they might listen to what passed
among their leaders.
Cahusac appeared to be having it all his own way, and he raised
his harsh, querulous voice so that all might hear his truculent
denunciation. He spoke, Pitt tells us, a dreadful kind of English, which
the shipmaster, however, makes little attempt to reproduce. His dress
was as discordant as his speech. It was of a kind to advertise his
trade, and ludicrously in contrast with the sober garb of Hagthorpe
and the almost foppish daintiness of Jeremy Pitt. His soiled and
blood-stained shirt of blue cotton was open in front, to cool his hairy
breast, and the girdle about the waist of his leather breeches carried
an arsenal of pistols and a knife, whilst a cutlass hung from a leather
baldrick loosely slung about his body; above his countenance, broad and
flat as a Mongolian's, a red scarf was swathed, turban-wise, about his
head.
“Is it that I have not warned you from the beginning that all was too
easy?” he demanded between plaintiveness and fury. “I am no fool, my
friends. I have eyes, me. And I see. I see an abandoned fort at the
entrance of the lake, and nobody there to fire a gun at us when we came
in. Then I suspect the trap. Who would not that had eyes and brain? Bah!
we come on. What do we find? A city, abandoned like the fort; a city out
of which the people have taken all things of value. Again I warn Captain
Blood. It is a trap, I say. We are to come on; always to come on,
without opposition, until we find that it is too late to go to sea
again, that we cannot go back at all. But no one will listen to me. You
all know so much more. Name of God! Captain Blood, he will go on, and we
go on. We go to Gibraltar. True that at last, after long time, we catch
the Deputy-Governor; true, we make him pay big ransom for Gibraltar;
true between that ransom and the loot we return here with some two
thousand pieces of eight. But what is it, in reality, will you tell me?
Or shall I tell you? It is a piece of cheese--a piece of cheese in a
mousetrap, and we are the little mice. Goddam! And the cats--oh, the
cats they wait for us! The cats are those four Spanish ships of war that
have come meantime. And they wait for us outside the bottle-neck of this
lagoon. Mort de Dieu! That is what comes of the damned obstinacy of your
fine Captain Blood.”
Wolverstone laughed. Cahusac exploded in fury.
“Ah, sangdieu! Tu ris, animal? You laugh! Tell me this: How do we get
out again unless we accept the terms of Monsieur the Admiral of Spain?”
From the buccaneers at the foot of the steps came an angry rumble of
approval. The single eye of the gigantic Wolverstone rolled terribly,
and he clenched his great fists as if to strike the Frenchman, who was
exposing them to mutiny. But Cahusac was not daunted. The mood of the
men enheartened him.
“You think, perhaps, this your Captain Blood is the good God. That he
can make miracles, eh? He is ridiculous, you know, this Captain Blood;
with his grand air and his....”
He checked. Out of the church at that moment, grand air and all,
sauntered Peter Blood. With him came a tough, long-legged French
sea-wolf named Yberville, who, though still young, had already won fame
as a privateer commander before the loss of his own ship had driven him
to take service under Blood. The Captain advanced towards that disputing
group, leaning lightly upon his long ebony cane, his face shaded by a
broad-plumed hat. There was in his appearance nothing of the buccaneer.
He had much more the air of a lounger in the Mall or the Alameda--the
latter rather, since his elegant suit of violet taffetas with
gold-embroidered button-holes was in the Spanish fashion. But the long,
stout, serviceable rapier, thrust up behind by the left hand resting
lightly on the pummel, corrected the impression. That and those steely
eyes of his announced the adventurer.
“You find me ridiculous, eh, Cahusac?” said he, as he came to a halt
before the Breton, whose anger seemed already to have gone out of him.
“What, then, must I find you?” He spoke quietly, almost wearily. “You
will be telling them that we have delayed, and that it is the delay that
has brought about our danger. But whose is the fault of that delay? We
have been a month in doing what should have been done, and what but for
your blundering would have been done, inside of a week.”
“Ah ca! Nom de Dieu! Was it my fault that....”
“Was it any one else's fault that you ran your ship La Foudre aground on
the shoal in the middle of the lake? You would not be piloted. You knew
your way. You took no soundings even. The result was that we lost three
precious days in getting canoes to bring off your men and your gear.
Those three days gave the folk at Gibraltar not only time to hear of our
coming, but time in which to get away. After that, and because of it,
we had to follow the Governor to his infernal island fortress, and a
fortnight and best part of a hundred lives were lost in reducing it.
That's how we come to have delayed until this Spanish fleet is fetched
round from La Guayra by a guarda-costa; and if ye hadn't lost La Foudre,
and so reduced our fleet from three ships to two, we should even now be
able to fight our way through with a reasonable hope of succeeding.
Yet you think it is for you to come hectoring here, upbraiding us for a
situation that is just the result of your own ineptitude.”
He spoke with a restraint which I trust you will agree was admirable
when I tell you that the Spanish fleet guarding the bottle-neck exit
of the great Lake of Maracaybo, and awaiting there the coming forth
of Captain Blood with a calm confidence based upon its overwhelming
strength, was commanded by his implacable enemy, Don Miguel de Espinosa
y Valdez, the Admiral of Spain. In addition to his duty to his country,
the Admiral had, as you know, a further personal incentive arising out
of that business aboard the Encarnacion a year ago, and the death of
his brother Don Diego; and with him sailed his nephew Esteban, whose
vindictive zeal exceeded the Admiral's own.
Yet, knowing all this, Captain Blood could preserve his calm in
reproving the cowardly frenzy of one for whom the situation had not half
the peril with which it was fraught for himself. He turned from Cahusac
to address the mob of buccaneers, who had surged nearer to hear him, for
he had not troubled to raise his voice. “I hope that will correct some
of the misapprehension that appears to have been disturbing you,” said
he.
“There's no good can come of talking of what's past and done,” cried
Cahusac, more sullen now than truculent. Whereupon Wolverstone laughed,
a laugh that was like the neighing of a horse. “The question is: what
are we to do now?”
“Sure, now, there's no question at all,” said Captain Blood.
“Indeed, but there is,” Cahusac insisted. “Don Miguel, the Spanish
Admiral, have offer us safe passage to sea if we will depart at once, do
no damage to the town, release our prisoners, and surrender all that we
took at Gibraltar.”
Captain Blood smiled quietly, knowing precisely how much Don Miguel's
word was worth. It was Yberville who replied, in manifest scorn of his
compatriot:
“Which argues that, even at this disadvantage as he has us, the Spanish
Admiral is still afraid of us.”
“That can be only because he not know our real weakness,” was the fierce
retort. “And, anyway, we must accept these terms. We have no choice.
That is my opinion.”
“Well, it's not mine, now,” said Captain Blood. “So, I've refused them.”
“Refuse'!” Cahusac's broad face grew purple. A muttering from the men
behind enheartened him. “You have refuse'? You have refuse' already--and
without consulting me?”
“Your disagreement could have altered nothing. You'd have been outvoted,
for Hagthorpe here was entirely of my own mind. Still,” he went on,
“if you and your own French followers wish to avail yourselves of the
Spaniard's terms, we shall not hinder you. Send one of your prisoners to
announce it to the Admiral. Don Miguel will welcome your decision, you
may be sure.”
Cahusac glowered at him in silence for a moment. Then, having controlled
himself, he asked in a concentrated voice:
“Precisely what answer have you make to the Admiral?”
A smile irradiated the face and eyes of Captain Blood. “I have answered
him that unless within four-and-twenty hours we have his parole to stand
out to sea, ceasing to dispute our passage or hinder our departure,
and a ransom of fifty thousand pieces of eight for Maracaybo, we shall
reduce this beautiful city to ashes, and thereafter go out and destroy
his fleet.”
The impudence of it left Cahusac speechless. But among the English
buccaneers in the square there were many who savoured the audacious
humour of the trapped dictating terms to the trappers. Laughter broke
from them. It spread into a roar of acclamation; for bluff is a weapon
dear to every adventurer. Presently, when they understood it, even
Cahusac's French followers were carried off their feet by that wave of
jocular enthusiasm, until in his truculent obstinacy Cahusac remained
the only dissentient. He withdrew in mortification. Nor was he to be
mollified until the following day brought him his revenge. This came
in the shape of a messenger from Don Miguel with a letter in which
the Spanish Admiral solemnly vowed to God that, since the pirates had
refused his magnanimous offer to permit them to surrender with the
honours of war, he would now await them at the mouth of the lake there
to destroy them on their coming forth. He added that should they delay
their departure, he would so soon as he was reenforced by a fifth ship,
the Santo Nino, on its way to join him from La Guayra, himself come
inside to seek them at Maracaybo.
This time Captain Blood was put out of temper.
“Trouble me no more,” he snapped at Cahusac, who came growling to him
again. “Send word to Don Miguel that you have seceded from me. He'll
give you safe conduct, devil a doubt. Then take one of the sloops, order
your men aboard and put to sea, and the devil go with you.”
Cahusac would certainly have adopted that course if only his men had
been unanimous in the matter. They, however, were torn between greed and
apprehension. If they went they must abandon their share of the plunder,
which was considerable, as well as the slaves and other prisoners
they had taken. If they did this, and Captain Blood should afterwards
contrive to get away unscathed--and from their knowledge of his
resourcefulness, the thing, however unlikely, need not be impossible--he
must profit by that which they now relinquished. This was a contingency
too bitter for contemplation. And so, in the end, despite all that
Cahusac could say, the surrender was not to Don Miguel, but to Peter
Blood. They had come into the venture with him, they asserted, and
they would go out of it with him or not at all. That was the message
he received from them that same evening by the sullen mouth of Cahusac
himself.
He welcomed it, and invited the Breton to sit down and join the council
which was even then deliberating upon the means to be employed. This
council occupied the spacious patio of the Governor's house--which
Captain Blood had appropriated to his own uses--a cloistered stone
quadrangle in the middle of which a fountain played coolly under a
trellis of vine. Orange-trees grew on two sides of it, and the still,
evening air was heavy with the scent of them. It was one of those
pleasant exterior-interiors which Moorish architects had introduced to
Spain and the Spaniards had carried with them to the New World.
Here that council of war, composed of six men in all, deliberated until
late that night upon the plan of action which Captain Blood put forward.
The great freshwater lake of Maracaybo, nourished by a score of rivers
from the snow-capped ranges that surround it on two sides, is some
hundred and twenty miles in length and almost the same distance across
at its widest. It is--as has been indicated--in the shape of a great
bottle having its neck towards the sea at Maracaybo.
Beyond this neck it widens again, and then the two long, narrow strips
of land known as the islands of Vigilias and Palomas block the channel,
standing lengthwise across it. The only passage out to sea for vessels
of any draught lies in the narrow strait between these islands. Palomas,
which is some ten miles in length, is unapproachable for half a mile
on either side by any but the shallowest craft save at its eastern end,
where, completely commanding the narrow passage out to sea, stands the
massive fort which the buccaneers had found deserted upon their coming.
In the broader water between this passage and the bar, the four Spanish
ships were at anchor in mid-channel. The Admiral's Encarnacion, which we
already know, was a mighty galleon of forty-eight great guns and eight
small. Next in importance was the Salvador with thirty-six guns; the
other two, the Infanta and the San Felipe, though smaller vessels, were
still formidable enough with their twenty guns and a hundred and fifty
men apiece.
Such was the fleet of which the gauntlet was to be run by Captain Blood
with his own Arabella of forty guns, the Elizabeth of twenty-six, and
two sloops captured at Gibraltar, which they had indifferently armed
with four culverins each. In men they had a bare four hundred survivors
of the five hundred-odd that had left Tortuga, to oppose to fully a
thousand Spaniards manning the galleons.
The plan of action submitted by Captain Blood to that council was a
desperate one, as Cahusac uncompromisingly pronounced it.
“Why, so it is,” said the Captain. “But I've done things more
desperate.” Complacently he pulled at a pipe that was loaded with that
fragrant Sacerdotes tobacco for which Gibraltar was famous, and of
which they had brought away some hogsheads. “And what is more, they've
succeeded. Audaces fortuna juvat. Bedad, they knew their world, the old
Romans.”
He breathed into his companions and even into Cahusac some of his own
spirit of confidence, and in confidence all went busily to work. For
three days from sunrise to sunset, the buccaneers laboured and sweated
to complete the preparations for the action that was to procure them
their deliverance. Time pressed. They must strike before Don Miguel de
Espinosa received the reenforcement of that fifth galleon, the Santo
Nino, which was coming to join him from La Guayra.
Their principal operations were on the larger of the two sloops captured
at Gibraltar; to which vessel was assigned the leading part in Captain
Blood's scheme. They began by tearing down all bulkheads, until they
had reduced her to the merest shell, and in her sides they broke open
so many ports that her gunwale was converted into the semblance of a
grating. Next they increased by a half-dozen the scuttles in her deck,
whilst into her hull they packed all the tar and pitch and brimstone
that they could find in the town, to which they added six barrels of
gunpowder, placed on end like guns at the open ports on her larboard
side. On the evening of the fourth day, everything being now in
readiness, all were got aboard, and the empty, pleasant city of
Maracaybo was at last abandoned. But they did not weigh anchor until
some two hours after midnight. Then, at last, on the first of the ebb,
they drifted silently down towards the bar with all canvas furled save
only their spiltsails, which, so as to give them steering way, were
spread to the faint breeze that stirred through the purple darkness of
the tropical night.
The order of their going was as follows: Ahead went the improvised
fire-ship in charge of Wolverstone, with a crew of six volunteers, each
of whom was to have a hundred pieces of eight over and above his share
of plunder as a special reward. Next came the Arabella. She was followed
at a distance by the Elizabeth, commanded by Hagthorpe, with whom was
the now shipless Cahusac and the bulk of his French followers. The rear
was brought up by the second sloop and some eight canoes, aboard of
which had been shipped the prisoners, the slaves, and most of the
captured merchandise. The prisoners were all pinioned, and guarded by
four buccaneers with musketoons who manned these boats in addition to
the two fellows who were to sail them. Their place was to be in the rear
and they were to take no part whatever in the coming fight.
As the first glimmerings of opalescent dawn dissolved the darkness, the
straining eyes of the buccaneers were able to make out the tall rigging
of the Spanish vessels, riding at anchor less than a quarter of a mile
ahead. Entirely without suspicion as the Spaniards were, and rendered
confident by their own overwhelming strength, it is unlikely that they
used a vigilance keener than their careless habit. Certain it is that
they did not sight Blood's fleet in that dim light until some time
after Blood's fleet had sighted them. By the time that they had actively
roused themselves, Wolverstone's sloop was almost upon them, speeding
under canvas which had been crowded to her yards the moment the galleons
had loomed into view.
Straight for the Admiral's great ship, the Encarnacion, did Wolverstone
head the sloop; then, lashing down the helm, he kindled from a match
that hung ready lighted beside him a great torch of thickly plaited
straw that had been steeped in bitumen. First it glowed, then as he
swung it round his head, it burst into flame, just as the slight vessel
went crashing and bumping and scraping against the side of the flagship,
whilst rigging became tangled with rigging, to the straining of yards
and snapping of spars overhead. His six men stood at their posts on the
larboard side, stark naked, each armed with a grapnel, four of them on
the gunwale, two of them aloft. At the moment of impact these grapnels
were slung to bind the Spaniard to them, those aloft being intended to
complete and preserve the entanglement of the rigging.
Aboard the rudely awakened galleon all was confused hurrying, scurrying,
trumpeting, and shouting. At first there had been a desperately hurried
attempt to get up the anchor; but this was abandoned as being already
too late; and conceiving themselves on the point of being boarded,
the Spaniards stood to arms to ward off the onslaught. Its slowness in
coming intrigued them, being so different from the usual tactics of the
buccaneers. Further intrigued were they by the sight of the gigantic
Wolverstone speeding naked along his deck with a great flaming torch
held high. Not until he had completed his work did they begin to suspect
the truth--that he was lighting slow-matches--and then one of their
officers rendered reckless by panic ordered a boarding-party on to the
shop.
The order came too late. Wolverstone had seen his six fellows drop
overboard after the grapnels were fixed, and then had sped, himself,
to the starboard gunwale. Thence he flung his flaming torch down the
nearest gaping scuttle into the hold, and thereupon dived overboard in
his turn, to be picked up presently by the longboat from the Arabella.
But before that happened the sloop was a thing of fire, from which
explosions were hurling blazing combustibles aboard the Encarnacion, and
long tongues of flame were licking out to consume the galleon, beating
back those daring Spaniards who, too late, strove desperately to cut her
adrift.
And whilst the most formidable vessel of the Spanish fleet was thus
being put out of action at the outset, Blood had sailed in to open fire
upon the Salvador. First athwart her hawse he had loosed a broadside
that had swept her decks with terrific effect, then going on and about,
he had put a second broadside into her hull at short range. Leaving her
thus half-crippled, temporarily, at least, and keeping to his course,
he had bewildered the crew of the Infanta by a couple of shots from the
chasers on his beak-head, then crashed alongside to grapple and board
her, whilst Hagthorpe was doing the like by the San Felipe.
And in all this time not a single shot had the Spaniards contrived to
fire, so completely had they been taken by surprise, and so swift and
paralyzing had been Blood's stroke.
Boarded now and faced by the cold steel of the buccaneers, neither the
San Felipe nor the Infanta offered much resistance. The sight of their
admiral in flames, and the Salvador drifting crippled from the action,
had so utterly disheartened them that they accounted themselves
vanquished, and laid down their arms.
If by a resolute stand the Salvador had encouraged the other two
undamaged vessels to resistance, the Spaniards might well have
retrieved the fortunes of the day. But it happened that the Salvador was
handicapped in true Spanish fashion by being the treasure-ship of the
fleet, with plate on board to the value of some fifty thousand pieces.
Intent above all upon saving this from falling into the hands of the
pirates, Don Miguel, who, with a remnant of his crew, had meanwhile
transferred himself aboard her, headed her down towards Palomas and the
fort that guarded the passage. This fort the Admiral, in those days of
waiting, had taken the precaution secretly to garrison and rearm. For
the purpose he had stripped the fort of Cojero, farther out on the gulf,
of its entire armament, which included some cannon-royal of more than
ordinary range and power.
With no suspicion of this, Captain Blood gave chase, accompanied by
the Infanta, which was manned now by a prize-crew under the command of
Yberville. The stern chasers of the Salvador desultorily returned the
punishing fire of the pursuers; but such was the damage she, herself,
sustained, that presently, coming under the guns of the fort, she began
to sink, and finally settled down in the shallows with part of her hull
above water. Thence, some in boats and some by swimming, the Admiral got
his crew ashore on Palomas as best he could.
And then, just as Captain Blood accounted the victory won, and that his
way out of that trap to the open sea beyond lay clear, the fort suddenly
revealed its formidable and utterly unsuspected strength. With a roar
the cannons-royal proclaimed themselves, and the Arabella staggered
under a blow that smashed her bulwarks at the waist and scattered death
and confusion among the seamen gathered there.
Had not Pitt, her master, himself seized the whipstaff and put the helm
hard over to swing her sharply off to starboard, she must have suffered
still worse from the second volley that followed fast upon the first.
Meanwhile it had fared even worse with the frailer Infanta. Although
hit by one shot only, this had crushed her larboard timbers on the
waterline, starting a leak that must presently have filled her, but for
the prompt action of the experienced Yberville in ordering her
larboard guns to be flung overboard. Thus lightened, and listing now
to starboard, he fetched her about, and went staggering after the
retreating Arabella, followed by the fire of the fort, which did them,
however, little further damage.
Out of range, at last, they lay to, joined by the Elizabeth and the San
Felipe, to consider their position.