It was a crestfallen Captain Blood who presided over that hastily
summoned council held on the poop-deck of the Arabella in the brilliant
morning sunshine. It was, he declared afterwards, one of the bitterest
moments in his career. He was compelled to digest the fact that having
conducted the engagement with a skill of which he might justly be proud,
having destroyed a force so superior in ships and guns and men that Don
Miguel de Espinosa had justifiably deemed it overwhelming, his victory
was rendered barren by three lucky shots from an unsuspected battery
by which they had been surprised. And barren must their victory remain
until they could reduce the fort that still remained to defend the
passage.
At first Captain Blood was for putting his ships in order and making the
attempt there and then. But the others dissuaded him from betraying an
impetuosity usually foreign to him, and born entirely of chagrin
and mortification, emotions which will render unreasonable the most
reasonable of men. With returning calm, he surveyed the situation. The
Arabella was no longer in case to put to sea; the Infanta was merely
kept afloat by artifice, and the San Felipe was almost as sorely damaged
by the fire she had sustained from the buccaneers before surrendering.
Clearly, then, he was compelled to admit in the end that nothing
remained but to return to Maracaybo, there to refit the ships before
attempting to force the passage.
And so, back to Maracaybo came those defeated victors of that short,
terrible fight. And if anything had been wanting further to exasperate
their leader, he had it in the pessimism of which Cahusac did not
economize expressions. Transported at first to heights of dizzy
satisfaction by the swift and easy victory of their inferior force that
morning, the Frenchman was now plunged back and more deeply than ever
into the abyss of hopelessness. And his mood infected at least the main
body of his own followers.
“It is the end,” he told Captain Blood. “This time we are checkmated.”
“I'll take the liberty of reminding you that you said the same before,”
Captain Blood answered him as patiently as he could. “Yet you've seen
what you've seen, and you'll not deny that in ships and guns we are
returning stronger than we went. Look at our present fleet, man.”
“I am looking at it,” said Cahusac.
“Pish! Ye're a white-livered cur when all is said.”
“You call me a coward?”
“I'll take that liberty.”
The Breton glared at him, breathing hard. But he had no mind to ask
satisfaction for the insult. He knew too well the kind of satisfaction
that Captain Blood was likely to afford him. He remembered the fate of
Levasseur. So he confined himself to words.
“It is too much! You go too far!” he complained bitterly.
“Look you, Cahusac: it's sick and tired I am of your perpetual whining
and complaining when things are not as smooth as a convent dining-table.
If ye wanted things smooth and easy, ye shouldn't have taken to the sea,
and ye should never ha' sailed with me, for with me things are never
smooth and easy. And that, I think, is all I have to say to you this
morning.”
Cahusac flung away cursing, and went to take the feeling of his men.
Captain Blood went off to give his surgeon's skill to the wounded, among
whom he remained engaged until late afternoon. Then, at last, he went
ashore, his mind made up, and returned to the house of the Governor, to
indite a truculent but very scholarly letter in purest Castilian to Don
Miguel.
“I have shown your excellency this morning of what I am capable,” he
wrote. “Although outnumbered by more than two to one in men, in ships,
and in guns, I have sunk or captured the vessels of the great fleet with
which you were to come to Maracaybo to destroy us. So that you are no
longer in case to carry out your boast, even when your reenforcements
on the Santo Nino, reach you from La Guayra. From what has occurred, you
may judge of what must occur. I should not trouble your excellency with
this letter but that I am a humane man, abhorring bloodshed. Therefore
before proceeding to deal with your fort, which you may deem invincible,
as I have dealt already with your fleet, which you deemed invincible, I
make you, purely out of humanitarian considerations, this last offer of
terms. I will spare this city of Maracaybo and forthwith evacuate it,
leaving behind me the forty prisoners I have taken, in consideration of
your paying me the sum of fifty thousand pieces of eight and one hundred
head of cattle as a ransom, thereafter granting me unmolested passage of
the bar. My prisoners, most of whom are persons of consideration, I will
retain as hostages until after my departure, sending them back in the
canoes which we shall take with us for that purpose. If your excellency
should be so ill-advised as to refuse these terms, and thereby impose
upon me the necessity of reducing your fort at the cost of some lives, I
warn you that you may expect no quarter from us, and that I shall begin
by leaving a heap of ashes where this pleasant city of Maracaybo now
stands.”
The letter written, he bade them bring him from among the prisoners
the Deputy-Governor of Maracaybo, who had been taken at Gibraltar.
Disclosing its contents to him, he despatched him with it to Don Miguel.
His choice of a messenger was shrewd. The Deputy-Governor was of all men
the most anxious for the deliverance of his city, the one man who on his
own account would plead most fervently for its preservation at all costs
from the fate with which Captain Blood was threatening it. And as he
reckoned so it befell. The Deputy-Governor added his own passionate
pleading to the proposals of the letter.
But Don Miguel was of stouter heart. True, his fleet had been partly
destroyed and partly captured. But then, he argued, he had been taken
utterly by surprise. That should not happen again. There should be no
surprising the fort. Let Captain Blood do his worst at Maracaybo, there
should be a bitter reckoning for him when eventually he decided--as,
sooner or later, decide he must--to come forth. The Deputy-Governor was
flung into panic. He lost his temper, and said some hard things to the
Admiral. But they were not as hard as the thing the Admiral said to him
in answer.
“Had you been as loyal to your King in hindering the entrance of these
cursed pirates as I shall be in hindering their going forth again, we
should not now find ourselves in our present straits. So weary me no
more with your coward counsels. I make no terms with Captain Blood. I
know my duty to my King, and I intend to perform it. I also know my
duty to myself. I have a private score with this rascal, and I intend to
settle it. Take you that message back.”
So back to Maracaybo, back to his own handsome house in which Captain
Blood had established his quarters, came the Deputy-Governor with the
Admiral's answer. And because he had been shamed into a show of spirit
by the Admiral's own stout courage in adversity, he delivered it as
truculently as the Admiral could have desired. “And is it like that?”
said Captain Blood with a quiet smile, though the heart of him sank
at this failure of his bluster. “Well, well, it's a pity now that the
Admiral's so headstrong. It was that way he lost his fleet, which was
his own to lose. This pleasant city of Maracaybo isn't. So no doubt
he'll lose it with fewer misgivings. I am sorry. Waste, like bloodshed,
is a thing abhorrent to me. But there ye are! I'll have the faggots to
the place in the morning, and maybe when he sees the blaze to-morrow
night he'll begin to believe that Peter Blood is a man of his word. Ye
may go, Don Francisco.”
The Deputy-Governor went out with dragging feet, followed by guards, his
momentary truculence utterly spent.
But no sooner had he departed than up leapt Cahusac, who had been of the
council assembled to receive the Admiral's answer. His face was white
and his hands shook as he held them out in protest.
“Death of my life, what have you to say now?” he cried, his voice husky.
And without waiting to hear what it might be, he raved on: “I knew you
not frighten the Admiral so easy. He hold us entrap', and he knows it;
yet you dream that he will yield himself to your impudent message. Your
fool letter it have seal' the doom of us all.”
“Have ye done?” quoth Blood quietly, as the Frenchman paused for breath.
“No, I have not.”
“Then spare me the rest. It'll be of the same quality, devil a doubt,
and it doesn't help us to solve the riddle that's before us.”
“But what are you going to do? Is it that you will tell me?” It was not
a question, it was a demand.
“How the devil do I know? I was hoping you'd have some ideas yourself.
But since Ye're so desperately concerned to save your skin, you and
those that think like you are welcome to leave us. I've no doubt at all
the Spanish Admiral will welcome the abatement of our numbers even at
this late date. Ye shall have the sloop as a parting gift from us, and
ye can join Don Miguel in the fort for all I care, or for all the good
ye're likely to be to us in this present pass.”
“It is to my men to decide,” Cahusac retorted, swallowing his fury, and
on that stalked out to talk to them, leaving the others to deliberate in
peace.
Next morning early he sought Captain Blood again. He found him alone
in the patio, pacing to and fro, his head sunk on his breast. Cahusac
mistook consideration for dejection. Each of us carries in himself a
standard by which to measure his neighbour.
“We have take' you at your word, Captain,” he announced, between
sullenness and defiance. Captain Blood paused, shoulders hunched, hands
behind his back, and mildly regarded the buccaneer in silence. Cahusac
explained himself. “Last night I send one of my men to the Spanish
Admiral with a letter. I make him offer to capitulate if he will accord
us passage with the honours of war. This morning I receive his answer.
He accord us this on the understanding that we carry nothing away with
us. My men they are embarking them on the sloop. We sail at once.”
“Bon voyage,” said Captain Blood, and with a nod he turned on his heel
again to resume his interrupted mediation.
“Is that all that you have to say to me?” cried Cahusac.
“There are other things,” said Blood over his shoulder. “But I know ye
wouldn't like them.”
“Ha! Then it's adieu, my Captain.” Venomously he added: “It is my belief
that we shall not meet again.”
“Your belief is my hope,” said Captain Blood.
Cahusac flung away, obscenely vituperative. Before noon he was under way
with his followers, some sixty dejected men who had allowed themselves
to be persuaded by him into that empty-handed departure--in spite even
of all that Yberville could do to prevent it. The Admiral kept faith
with him, and allowed him free passage out to sea, which, from his
knowledge of Spaniards, was more than Captain Blood had expected.
Meanwhile, no sooner had the deserters weighed anchor than Captain Blood
received word that the Deputy-Governor begged to be allowed to see him
again. Admitted, Don Francisco at once displayed the fact that a night's
reflection had quickened his apprehensions for the city of Maracaybo and
his condemnation of the Admiral's intransigence.
Captain Blood received him pleasantly.
“Good-morning to you, Don Francisco. I have postponed the bonfire until
nightfall. It will make a better show in the dark.”
Don Francisco, a slight, nervous, elderly man of high lineage and low
vitality, came straight to business.
“I am here to tell you, Don Pedro, that if you will hold your hand for
three days, I will undertake to raise the ransom you demand, which Don
Miguel de Espinosa refuses.”
Captain Blood confronted him, a frown contracting the dark brows above
his light eyes:
“And where will you be raising it?” quoth he, faintly betraying his
surprise.
Don Francisco shook his head. “That must remain my affair,” he answered.
“I know where it is to be found, and my compatriots must contribute.
Give me leave for three days on parole, and I will see you fully
satisfied. Meanwhile my son remains in your hands as a hostage for my
return.” And upon that he fell to pleading. But in this he was crisply
interrupted.
“By the Saints! Ye're a bold man, Don Francisco, to come to me with such
a tale--to tell me that ye know where the ransom's to be raised, and yet
to refuse to say. D'ye think now that with a match between your fingers
ye'd grow more communicative?”
If Don Francisco grew a shade paler, yet again he shook his head.
“That was the way of Morgan and L'Ollonais and other pirates. But it is
not the way of Captain Blood. If I had doubted that I should not have
disclosed so much.”
The Captain laughed. “You old rogue,” said he. “Ye play upon my vanity,
do you?”
“Upon your honour, Captain.”
“The honour of a pirate? Ye're surely crazed!”
“The honour of Captain Blood,” Don Francisco insisted. “You have the
repute of making war like a gentleman.”
Captain Blood laughed again, on a bitter, sneering note that made Don
Francisco fear the worst. He was not to guess that it was himself the
Captain mocked.
“That's merely because it's more remunerative in the end. And that
is why you are accorded the three days you ask for. So about it, Don
Francisco. You shall have what mules you need. I'll see to it.”
Away went Don Francisco on his errand, leaving Captain Blood to reflect,
between bitterness and satisfaction, that a reputation for as much
chivalry as is consistent with piracy is not without its uses.
Punctually on the third day the Deputy-Governor was back in Maracaybo
with his mules laden with plate and money to the value demanded and a
herd of a hundred head of cattle driven in by negro slaves.
These bullocks were handed over to those of the company who ordinarily
were boucan-hunters, and therefore skilled in the curing of meats, and
for best part of a week thereafter they were busy at the waterside with
the quartering and salting of carcases.
While this was doing on the one hand and the ships were being refitted
for sea on the other, Captain Blood was pondering the riddle on the
solution of which his own fate depended. Indian spies whom he employed
brought him word that the Spaniards, working at low tide, had salved the
thirty guns of the Salvador, and thus had added yet another battery
to their already overwhelming strength. In the end, and hoping for
inspiration on the spot, Captain Blood made a reconnaissance in person.
At the risk of his life, accompanied by two friendly Indians, he crossed
to the island in a canoe under cover of dark. They concealed themselves
and the canoe in the short thick scrub with which that side of the
island was densely covered, and lay there until daybreak. Then Blood
went forward alone, and with infinite precaution, to make his survey. He
went to verify a suspicion that he had formed, and approached the fort
as nearly as he dared and a deal nearer than was safe.
On all fours he crawled to the summit of an eminence a mile or so away,
whence he found himself commanding a view of the interior dispositions
of the stronghold. By the aid of a telescope with which he had equipped
himself he was able to verify that, as he had suspected and hoped, the
fort's artillery was all mounted on the seaward side.
Satisfied, he returned to Maracaybo, and laid before the six who
composed his council--Pitt, Hagthorpe, Yberville, Wolverstone, Dyke, and
Ogle--a proposal to storm the fort from the landward side. Crossing
to the island under cover of night, they would take the Spaniards by
surprise and attempt to overpower them before they could shift their
guns to meet the onslaught.
With the exception of Wolverstone, who was by temperament the kind of
man who favours desperate chances, those officers received the proposal
coldly. Hagthorpe incontinently opposed it.
“It's a harebrained scheme, Peter,” he said gravely, shaking his
handsome head. “Consider now that we cannot depend upon approaching
unperceived to a distance whence we might storm the fort before the
cannon could be moved. But even if we could, we can take no cannon
ourselves; we must depend entirely upon our small arms, and how shall
we, a bare three hundred” (for this was the number to which Cahusac's
defection had reduced them), “cross the open to attack more than twice
that number under cover?”
The others--Dyke, Ogle, Yberville, and even Pitt, whom loyalty to Blood
may have made reluctant--loudly approved him. When they had done, “I
have considered all,” said Captain Blood. “I have weighed the risks and
studied how to lessen them. In these desperate straits....”
He broke off abruptly. A moment he frowned, deep in thought; then his
face was suddenly alight with inspiration. Slowly he drooped his head,
and sat there considering, weighing, chin on breast. Then he nodded,
muttering, “Yes,” and again, “Yes.” He looked up, to face them.
“Listen,” he cried. “You may be right. The risks may be too heavy.
Whether or not, I have thought of a better way. That which should have
been the real attack shall be no more than a feint. Here, then, is the
plan I now propose.”
He talked swiftly and clearly, and as he talked one by one his officers'
faces became alight with eagerness. When he had done, they cried as with
one voice that he had saved them.
“That is yet to be proved in action,” said he.
Since for the last twenty-four hours all had been in readiness for
departure, there was nothing now to delay them, and it was decided to
move next morning.
Such was Captain Blood's assurance of success that he immediately freed
the prisoners held as hostages, and even the negro slaves, who were
regarded by the others as legitimate plunder. His only precaution
against those released prisoners was to order them into the church
and there lock them up, to await deliverance at the hands of those who
should presently be coming into the city.
Then, all being aboard the three ships, with the treasure safely stowed
in their holds and the slaves under hatches, the buccaneers weighed
anchor and stood out for the bar, each vessel towing three piraguas
astern.
The Admiral, beholding their stately advance in the full light of noon,
their sails gleaming white in the glare of the sunlight, rubbed his
long, lean hands in satisfaction, and laughed through his teeth.
“At last!” he cried. “God delivers him into my hands!” He turned to the
group of staring officers behind him. “Sooner or later it had to be,” he
said. “Say now, gentlemen, whether I am justified of my patience. Here
end to-day the troubles caused to the subjects of the Catholic King by
this infamous Don Pedro Sangre, as he once called himself to me.”
He turned to issue orders, and the fort became lively as a hive. The
guns were manned, the gunners already kindling fuses, when the buccaneer
fleet, whilst still heading for Palomas, was observed to bear away to
the west. The Spaniards watched them, intrigued.
Within a mile and a half to westward of the fort, and within a half-mile
of the shore--that is to say, on the very edge of the shoal water that
makes Palomas unapproachable on either side by any but vessels of
the shallowest draught--the four ships cast anchor well within the
Spaniards' view, but just out of range of their heaviest cannon.
Sneeringly the Admiral laughed.
“Aha! They hesitate, these English dogs! Por Dios, and well they may.”
“They will be waiting for night,” suggested his nephew, who stood at his
elbow quivering with excitement.
Don Miguel looked at him, smiling. “And what shall the night avail them
in this narrow passage, under the very muzzles of my guns? Be sure,
Esteban, that to-night your father will be paid for.”
He raised his telescope to continue his observation of the buccaneers.
He saw that the piraguas towed by each vessel were being warped
alongside, and he wondered a little what this manoeuver might portend.
Awhile those piraguas were hidden from view behind the hulls. Then one
by one they reappeared, rowing round and away from the ships, and each
boat, he observed, was crowded with armed men. Thus laden, they were
headed for the shore, at a point where it was densely wooded to the
water's edge. The eyes of the wondering Admiral followed them until the
foliage screened them from his view.
Then he lowered his telescope and looked at his officers.
“What the devil does it mean?” he asked.
None answered him, all being as puzzled as he was himself.
After a little while, Esteban, who kept his eyes on the water, plucked
at his uncle's sleeve. “There they go!” he cried, and pointed.
And there, indeed, went the piraguas on their way back to the ships.
But now it was observed that they were empty, save for the men who rowed
them. Their armed cargo had been left ashore.
Back to the ships they pulled, to return again presently with a fresh
load of armed men, which similarly they conveyed to Palomas. And at last
one of the Spanish officers ventured an explanation:
“They are going to attack us by land--to attempt to storm the fort.”
“Of course.” The Admiral smiled. “I had guessed it. Whom the gods would
destroy they first make mad.”
“Shall we make a sally?” urged Esteban, in his excitement.
“A sally? Through that scrub? That would be to play into their hands.
No, no, we will wait here to receive this attack. Whenever it comes, it
is themselves will be destroyed, and utterly. Have no doubt of that.”
But by evening the Admiral's equanimity was not quite so perfect. By
then the piraguas had made a half-dozen journeys with their loads
of men, and they had landed also--as Don Miguel had clearly observed
through his telescope--at least a dozen guns.
His countenance no longer smiled; it was a little wrathful and a little
troubled now as he turned again to his officers.
“Who was the fool who told me that they number but three hundred men in
all? They have put at least twice that number ashore already.”
Amazed as he was, his amazement would have been deeper had he been told
the truth: that there was not a single buccaneer or a single gun ashore
on Palomas. The deception had been complete. Don Miguel could not guess
that the men he had beheld in those piraguas were always the same; that
on the journeys to the shore they sat and stood upright in full view;
and that on the journeys back to the ships, they lay invisible at the
bottom of the boats, which were thus made to appear empty.
The growing fears of the Spanish soldiery at the prospect of a night
attack from the landward side by the entire buccaneer force--and a
force twice as strong as they had suspected the pestilent Blood to
command--began to be communicated to the Admiral.
In the last hours of fading daylight, the Spaniards did precisely what
Captain Blood so confidently counted that they would do--precisely what
they must do to meet the attack, preparations for which had been so
thoroughly simulated. They set themselves to labour like the damned at
those ponderous guns emplaced to command the narrow passage out to sea.
Groaning and sweating, urged on by the curses and even the whips of
their officers, they toiled in a frenzy of panic-stricken haste to shift
the greater number and the more powerful of their guns across to the
landward side, there to emplace them anew, so that they might be ready
to receive the attack which at any moment now might burst upon them from
the woods not half a mile away.
Thus, when night fell, although in mortal anxiety of the onslaught of
those wild devils whose reckless courage was a byword on the seas of the
Main, at least the Spaniards were tolerably prepared for it. Waiting,
they stood to their guns.
And whilst they waited thus, under cover of the darkness and as the tide
began to ebb, Captain Blood's fleet weighed anchor quietly; and, as once
before, with no more canvas spread than that which their sprits could
carry, so as to give them steering way--and even these having been
painted black--the four vessels, without a light showing, groped their
way by soundings to the channel which led to that narrow passage out to
sea.
The Elizabeth and the Infanta, leading side by side, were almost abreast
of the fort before their shadowy bulks and the soft gurgle of water at
their prows were detected by the Spaniards, whose attention until that
moment had been all on the other side. And now there arose on the night
air such a sound of human baffled fury as may have resounded about Babel
at the confusion of tongues. To heighten that confusion, and to scatter
disorder among the Spanish soldiery, the Elizabeth emptied her larboard
guns into the fort as she was swept past on the swift ebb.
At once realizing--though not yet how--he had been duped, and that his
prey was in the very act of escaping after all, the Admiral frantically
ordered the guns that had been so laboriously moved to be dragged back
to their former emplacements, and commanded his gunners meanwhile to
the slender batteries that of all his powerful, but now unavailable,
armament still remained trained upon the channel. With these, after the
loss of some precious moments, the fort at last made fire.
It was answered by a terrific broadside from the Arabella, which had
now drawn abreast, and was crowding canvas to her yards. The enraged
and gibbering Spaniards had a brief vision of her as the line of flame
spurted from her red flank, and the thunder of her broadside drowned
the noise of the creaking halyards. After that they saw her no more.
Assimilated by the friendly darkness which the lesser Spanish guns were
speculatively stabbing, the escaping ships fired never another shot that
might assist their baffled and bewildered enemies to locate them.
Some slight damage was sustained by Blood's fleet. But by the time the
Spaniards had resolved their confusion into some order of dangerous
offence, that fleet, well served by a southerly breeze, was through the
narrows and standing out to sea.
Thus was Don Miguel de Espinosa left to chew the bitter cud of a lost
opportunity, and to consider in what terms he would acquaint the
Supreme Council of the Catholic King that Peter Blood had got away from
Maracaybo, taking with him two twenty-gun frigates that were lately
the property of Spain, to say nothing of two hundred and fifty thousand
pieces of eight and other plunder. And all this in spite of Don Miguel's
four galleons and his heavily armed fort that at one time had held the
pirates so securely trapped.
Heavy, indeed, grew the account of Peter Blood, which Don Miguel swore
passionately to Heaven should at all costs to himself be paid in full.
Nor were the losses already detailed the full total of those suffered
on this occasion by the King of Spain. For on the following evening,
off the coast of Oruba, at the mouth of the Gulf of Venezuela, Captain
Blood's fleet came upon the belated Santo Nino, speeding under full sail
to reenforce Don Miguel at Maracaybo.
At first the Spaniard had conceived that she was meeting the victorious
fleet of Don Miguel, returning from the destruction of the pirates. When
at comparatively close quarters the pennon of St. George soared to the
Arabella's masthead to disillusion her, the Santo Nino chose the better
part of valour, and struck her flag.
Captain Blood ordered her crew to take to the boats, and land themselves
at Oruba or wherever else they pleased. So considerate was he that to
assist them he presented them with several of the piraguas which he
still had in tow.
“You will find,” said he to her captain, “that Don Miguel is in an
extremely bad temper. Commend me to him, and say that I venture to
remind him that he must blame himself for all the ills that have
befallen him. The evil has recoiled upon him which he loosed when
he sent his brother unofficially to make a raid upon the island of
Barbados. Bid him think twice before he lets his devils loose upon an
English settlement again.”
With that he dismissed the Captain, who went over the side of the Santo
Nino, and Captain Blood proceeded to investigate the value of this
further prize. When her hatches were removed, a human cargo was
disclosed in her hold.
“Slaves,” said Wolverstone, and persisted in that belief cursing Spanish
devilry until Cahusac crawled up out of the dark bowels of the ship, and
stood blinking in the sunlight.
There was more than sunlight to make the Breton pirate blink. And
those that crawled out after him--the remnants of his crew--cursed him
horribly for the pusillanimity which had brought them into the ignominy
of owing their deliverance to those whom they had deserted as lost
beyond hope.
Their sloop had encountered and had been sunk three days ago by the
Santo Nino, and Cahusac had narrowly escaped hanging merely that for
some time he might be a mock among the Brethren of the Coast.
For many a month thereafter he was to hear in Tortuga the jeering taunt:
“Where do you spend the gold that you brought back from Maracaybo?”