The affair at Maracaybo is to be considered as Captain Blood's
buccaneering masterpiece. Although there is scarcely one of the many
actions that he fought--recorded in such particular detail by Jeremy
Pitt--which does not afford some instance of his genius for naval
tactics, yet in none is this more shiningly displayed than in those two
engagements by which he won out of the trap which Don Miguel de Espinosa
had sprung upon him.
The fame which he had enjoyed before this, great as it already was, is
dwarfed into insignificance by the fame that followed. It was a fame
such as no buccaneer--not even Morgan--has ever boasted, before or
since.
In Tortuga, during the months he spent there refitting the three ships
he had captured from the fleet that had gone out to destroy him, he
found himself almost an object of worship in the eyes of the wild
Brethren of the Coast, all of whom now clamoured for the honour of
serving under him. It placed him in the rare position of being able
to pick and choose the crews for his augmented fleet, and he chose
fastidiously. When next he sailed away it was with a fleet of five fine
ships in which went something over a thousand men. Thus you behold him
not merely famous, but really formidable. The three captured Spanish
vessels he had renamed with a certain scholarly humour the Clotho,
Lachesis, and Atropos, a grimly jocular manner of conveying to the world
that he made them the arbiters of the fate of any Spaniards he should
henceforth encounter upon the seas.
In Europe the news of this fleet, following upon the news of the Spanish
Admiral's defeat at Maracaybo, produced something of a sensation. Spain
and England were variously and unpleasantly exercised, and if you care
to turn up the diplomatic correspondence exchanged on the subject, you
will find that it is considerable and not always amiable.
And meanwhile in the Caribbean, the Spanish Admiral Don Miguel de
Espinosa might be said--to use a term not yet invented in his day--to
have run amok. The disgrace into which he had fallen as a result of the
disasters suffered at the hands of Captain Blood had driven the Admiral
all but mad. It is impossible, if we impose our minds impartially,
to withhold a certain sympathy from Don Miguel. Hate was now this
unfortunate man's daily bread, and the hope of vengeance an obsession to
his mind. As a madman he went raging up and down the Caribbean seeking
his enemy, and in the meantime, as an hors d'oeuvre to his vindictive
appetite, he fell upon any ship of England or of France that loomed
above his horizon.
I need say no more to convey the fact that this illustrious sea-captain
and great gentleman of Castile had lost his head, and was become a
pirate in his turn. The Supreme Council of Castile might anon condemn
him for his practices. But how should that matter to one who already was
condemned beyond redemption? On the contrary, if he should live to lay
the audacious and ineffable Blood by the heels, it was possible that
Spain might view his present irregularities and earlier losses with a
more lenient eye.
And so, reckless of the fact that Captain Blood was now in vastly
superior strength, the Spaniard sought him up and down the trackless
seas. But for a whole year he sought him vainly. The circumstances in
which eventually they met are very curious.
An intelligent observation of the facts of human existence will reveal
to shallow-minded folk who sneer at the use of coincidence in the arts
of fiction and drama that life itself is little more than a series of
coincidences. Open the history of the past at whatsoever page you will,
and there you shall find coincidence at work bringing about events that
the merest chance might have averted. Indeed, coincidence may be defined
as the very tool used by Fate to shape the destinies of men and nations.
Observe it now at work in the affairs of Captain Blood and of some
others.
On the 15th September of the year 1688--a memorable year in the annals
of England--three ships were afloat upon the Caribbean, which in their
coming conjunctions were to work out the fortunes of several persons.
The first of these was Captain Blood's flagship the Arabella, which had
been separated from the buccaneer fleet in a hurricane off the Lesser
Antilles. In somewhere about 17 deg. N. Lat., and 74 deg. Long., she
was beating up for the Windward Passage, before the intermittent
southeasterly breezes of that stifling season, homing for Tortuga, the
natural rendezvous of the dispersed vessels.
The second ship was the great Spanish galleon, the Milagrosa, which,
accompanied by the smaller frigate Hidalga, lurked off the Caymites,
to the north of the long peninsula that thrusts out from the southwest
corner of Hispaniola. Aboard the Milagrosa sailed the vindictive Don
Miguel.
The third and last of these ships with which we are at present concerned
was an English man-of-war, which on the date I have given was at anchor
in the French port of St. Nicholas on the northwest coast of Hispaniola.
She was on her way from Plymouth to Jamaica, and carried on board a
very distinguished passenger in the person of Lord Julian Wade, who
came charged by his kinsman, my Lord Sunderland, with a mission of
some consequence and delicacy, directly arising out of that vexatious
correspondence between England and Spain.
The French Government, like the English, excessively annoyed by the
depredations of the buccaneers, and the constant straining of relations
with Spain that ensued, had sought in vain to put them down by enjoining
the utmost severity against them upon her various overseas governors.
But these, either--like the Governor of Tortuga--throve out of a
scarcely tacit partnership with the filibusters, or--like the Governor
of French Hispaniola--felt that they were to be encouraged as a check
upon the power and greed of Spain, which might otherwise be exerted to
the disadvantage of the colonies of other nations. They looked, indeed,
with apprehension upon recourse to any vigorous measures which must
result in driving many of the buccaneers to seek new hunting-grounds in
the South Sea.
To satisfy King James's anxiety to conciliate Spain, and in response to
the Spanish Ambassador's constant and grievous expostulations, my Lord
Sunderland, the Secretary of State, had appointed a strong man to the
deputy-governorship of Jamaica. This strong man was that Colonel
Bishop who for some years now had been the most influential planter in
Barbados.
Colonel Bishop had accepted the post, and departed from the plantations
in which his great wealth was being amassed with an eagerness that had
its roots in a desire to pay off a score of his own with Peter Blood.
From his first coming to Jamaica, Colonel Bishop had made himself felt
by the buccaneers. But do what he might, the one buccaneer whom he
made his particular quarry--that Peter Blood who once had been his
slave--eluded him ever, and continued undeterred and in great force
to harass the Spaniards upon sea and land, and to keep the relations
between England and Spain in a state of perpetual ferment, particularly
dangerous in those days when the peace of Europe was precariously
maintained.
Exasperated not only by his own accumulated chagrin, but also by the
reproaches for his failure which reached him from London, Colonel Bishop
actually went so far as to consider hunting his quarry in Tortuga
itself and making an attempt to clear the island of the buccaneers it
sheltered. Fortunately for himself, he abandoned the notion of so insane
an enterprise, deterred not only by the enormous natural strength of the
place, but also by the reflection that a raid upon what was, nominally
at least, a French settlement, must be attended by grave offence to
France. Yet short of some such measure, it appeared to Colonel Bishop
that he was baffled. He confessed as much in a letter to the Secretary
of State.
This letter and the state of things which it disclosed made my Lord
Sunderland despair of solving this vexatious problem by ordinary means.
He turned to the consideration of extraordinary ones, and bethought him
of the plan adopted with Morgan, who had been enlisted into the King's
service under Charles II. It occurred to him that a similar course might
be similarly effective with Captain Blood. His lordship did not omit
the consideration that Blood's present outlawry might well have been
undertaken not from inclination, but under stress of sheer necessity;
that he had been forced into it by the circumstances of his
transportation, and that he would welcome the opportunity of emerging
from it.
Acting upon this conclusion, Sunderland sent out his kinsman, Lord
Julian Wade, with some commissions made out in blank, and full
directions as to the course which the Secretary considered it desirable
to pursue and yet full discretion in the matter of pursuing them. The
crafty Sunderland, master of all labyrinths of intrigue, advised his
kinsman that in the event of his finding Blood intractable, or judging
for other reasons that it was not desirable to enlist him in the King's
service, he should turn his attention to the officers serving under him,
and by seducing them away from him leave him so weakened that he must
fall an easy victim to Colonel Bishop's fleet.
The Royal Mary--the vessel bearing that ingenious, tolerably
accomplished, mildly dissolute, entirely elegant envoy of my Lord
Sunderland's--made a good passage to St. Nicholas, her last port of
call before Jamaica. It was understood that as a preliminary Lord Julian
should report himself to the Deputy-Governor at Port Royal, whence at
need he might have himself conveyed to Tortuga. Now it happened that the
Deputy-Governor's niece had come to St. Nicholas some months earlier on
a visit to some relatives, and so that she might escape the insufferable
heat of Jamaica in that season. The time for her return being now at
hand, a passage was sought for her aboard the Royal Mary, and in view of
her uncle's rank and position promptly accorded.
Lord Julian hailed her advent with satisfaction. It gave a voyage that
had been full of interest for him just the spice that it required
to achieve perfection as an experience. His lordship was one of your
gallants to whom existence that is not graced by womankind is more or
less of a stagnation. Miss Arabella Bishop--this straight up and down
slip of a girl with her rather boyish voice and her almost boyish ease
of movement--was not perhaps a lady who in England would have commanded
much notice in my lord's discerning eyes. His very sophisticated,
carefully educated tastes in such matters inclined him towards the
plump, the languishing, and the quite helplessly feminine. Miss
Bishop's charms were undeniable. But they were such that it would take a
delicate-minded man to appreciate them; and my Lord Julian, whilst of a
mind that was very far from gross, did not possess the necessary degree
of delicacy. I must not by this be understood to imply anything against
him.
It remained, however, that Miss Bishop was a young woman and a lady; and
in the latitude into which Lord Julian had strayed this was a phenomenon
sufficiently rare to command attention. On his side, with his title and
position, his personal grace and the charm of a practised courtier, he
bore about him the atmosphere of the great world in which normally he
had his being--a world that was little more than a name to her, who had
spent most of her life in the Antilles. It is not therefore wonderful
that they should have been attracted to each other before the Royal
Mary was warped out of St. Nicholas. Each could tell the other much upon
which the other desired information. He could regale her imagination
with stories of St. James's--in many of which he assigned himself a
heroic, or at least a distinguished part--and she could enrich his mind
with information concerning this new world to which he had come.
Before they were out of sight of St. Nicholas they were good friends,
and his lordship was beginning to correct his first impressions of her
and to discover the charm of that frank, straightforward attitude of
comradeship which made her treat every man as a brother. Considering
how his mind was obsessed with the business of his mission, it is not
wonderful that he should have come to talk to her of Captain Blood.
Indeed, there was a circumstance that directly led to it.
“I wonder now,” he said, as they were sauntering on the poop, “if
you ever saw this fellow Blood, who was at one time on your uncle's
plantations as a slave.”
Miss Bishop halted. She leaned upon the taffrail, looking out towards
the receding land, and it was a moment before she answered in a steady,
level voice:
“I saw him often. I knew him very well.”
“Ye don't say!” His lordship was slightly moved out of an
imperturbability that he had studiously cultivated. He was a young man
of perhaps eight-and-twenty, well above the middle height in stature
and appearing taller by virtue of his exceeding leanness. He had a thin,
pale, rather pleasing hatchet-face, framed in the curls of a golden
periwig, a sensitive mouth and pale blue eyes that lent his countenance
a dreamy expression, a rather melancholy pensiveness. But they were
alert, observant eyes notwithstanding, although they failed on this
occasion to observe the slight change of colour which his question had
brought to Miss Bishop's cheeks or the suspiciously excessive composure
of her answer.
“Ye don't say!” he repeated, and came to lean beside her. “And what
manner of man did you find him?”
“In those days I esteemed him for an unfortunate gentleman.”
“You were acquainted with his story?”
“He told it me. That is why I esteemed him--for the calm fortitude with
which he bore adversity. Since then, considering what he has done, I
have almost come to doubt if what he told me of himself was true.”
“If you mean of the wrongs he suffered at the hands of the Royal
Commission that tried the Monmouth rebels, there's little doubt that it
would be true enough. He was never out with Monmouth; that is certain.
He was convicted on a point of law of which he may well have been
ignorant when he committed what was construed into treason. But, faith,
he's had his revenge, after a fashion.”
“That,” she said in a small voice, “is the unforgivable thing. It has
destroyed him--deservedly.”
“Destroyed him?” His lordship laughed a little. “Be none so sure of
that. He has grown rich, I hear. He has translated, so it is said, his
Spanish spoils into French gold, which is being treasured up for him in
France. His future father-in-law, M. d'Ogeron, has seen to that.”
“His future father-in-law?” said she, and stared at him round-eyed, with
parted lips. Then added: “M. d'Ogeron? The Governor of Tortuga?”
“The same. You see the fellow's well protected. It's a piece of news I
gathered in St. Nicholas. I am not sure that I welcome it, for I am
not sure that it makes any easier a task upon which my kinsman, Lord
Sunderland, has sent me hither. But there it is. You didn't know?”
She shook her head without replying. She had averted her face, and her
eyes were staring down at the gently heaving water. After a moment she
spoke, her voice steady and perfectly controlled.
“But surely, if this were true, there would have been an end to his
piracy by now. If he... if he loved a woman and was betrothed, and was
also rich as you say, surely he would have abandoned this desperate
life, and...”
“Why, so I thought,” his lordship interrupted, “until I had the
explanation. D'Ogeron is avaricious for himself and for his child. And
as for the girl, I'm told she's a wild piece, fit mate for such a man as
Blood. Almost I marvel that he doesn't marry her and take her a-roving
with him. It would be no new experience for her. And I marvel, too, at
Blood's patience. He killed a man to win her.”
“He killed a man for her, do you say?” There was horror now in her
voice.
“Yes--a French buccaneer named Levasseur. He was the girl's lover and
Blood's associate on a venture. Blood coveted the girl, and killed
Levasseur to win her. Pah! It's an unsavoury tale, I own. But men live
by different codes out in these parts....”
She had turned to face him. She was pale to the lips, and her hazel eyes
were blazing, as she cut into his apologies for Blood.
“They must, indeed, if his other associates allowed him to live after
that.”
“Oh, the thing was done in fair fight, I am told.”
“Who told you?”
“A man who sailed with them, a Frenchman named Cahusac, whom I found in
a waterside tavern in St. Nicholas. He was Levasseur's lieutenant,
and he was present on the island where the thing happened, and when
Levasseur was killed.”
“And the girl? Did he say the girl was present, too?”
“Yes. She was a witness of the encounter. Blood carried her off when he
had disposed of his brother-buccaneer.”
“And the dead man's followers allowed it?” He caught the note of
incredulity in her voice, but missed the note of relief with which it
was blent. “Oh, I don't believe the tale. I won't believe it!”
“I honour you for that, Miss Bishop. It strained my own belief that men
should be so callous, until this Cahusac afforded me the explanation.”
“What?” She checked her unbelief, an unbelief that had uplifted her from
an inexplicable dismay. Clutching the rail, she swung round to face his
lordship with that question. Later he was to remember and perceive in
her present behaviour a certain oddness which went disregarded now.
“Blood purchased their consent, and his right to carry the girl off. He
paid them in pearls that were worth more than twenty thousand pieces of
eight.” His lordship laughed again with a touch of contempt. “A handsome
price! Faith, they're scoundrels all--just thieving, venal curs. And
faith, it's a pretty tale this for a lady's ear.”
She looked away from him again, and found that her sight was blurred.
After a moment in a voice less steady than before she asked him:
“Why should this Frenchman have told you such a tale? Did he hate this
Captain Blood?”
“I did not gather that,” said his lordship slowly. “He related it... oh,
just as a commonplace, an instance of buccaneering ways.
“A commonplace!” said she. “My God! A commonplace!”
“I dare say that we are all savages under the cloak that civilization
fashions for us,” said his lordship. “But this Blood, now, was a man
of considerable parts, from what else this Cahusac told me. He was a
bachelor of medicine.”
“That is true, to my own knowledge.”
“And he has seen much foreign service on sea and land. Cahusac
said--though this I hardly credit--that he had fought under de Ruyter.”
“That also is true,” said she. She sighed heavily. “Your Cahusac seems
to have been accurate enough. Alas!”
“You are sorry, then?”
She looked at him. She was very pale, he noticed.
“As we are sorry to hear of the death of one we have esteemed. Once I
held him in regard for an unfortunate but worthy gentleman. Now....”
She checked, and smiled a little crooked smile. “Such a man is best
forgotten.”
And upon that she passed at once to speak of other things. The
friendship, which it was her great gift to command in all she met, grew
steadily between those two in the little time remaining, until the event
befell that marred what was promising to be the pleasantest stage of his
lordship's voyage.
The marplot was the mad-dog Spanish Admiral, whom they encountered on
the second day out, when halfway across the Gulf of Gonaves. The Captain
of the Royal Mary was not disposed to be intimidated even when Don
Miguel opened fire on him. Observing the Spaniard's plentiful seaboard
towering high above the water and offering him so splendid a mark,
the Englishman was moved to scorn. If this Don who flew the banner of
Castile wanted a fight, the Royal Mary was just the ship to oblige him.
It may be that he was justified of his gallant confidence, and that
he would that day have put an end to the wild career of Don Miguel de
Espinosa, but that a lucky shot from the Milagrosa got among some powder
stored in his forecastle, and blew up half his ship almost before the
fight had started. How the powder came there will never now be known,
and the gallant Captain himself did not survive to enquire into it.
Before the men of the Royal Mary had recovered from their consternation,
their captain killed and a third of their number destroyed with him, the
ship yawing and rocking helplessly in a crippled state, the Spaniards
boarded her.
In the Captain's cabin under the poop, to which Miss Bishop had been
conducted for safety, Lord Julian was seeking to comfort and encourage
her, with assurances that all would yet be well, at the very moment when
Don Miguel was stepping aboard. Lord Julian himself was none so steady,
and his face was undoubtedly pale. Not that he was by any means a
coward. But this cooped-up fighting on an unknown element in a thing of
wood that might at any moment founder under his feet into the depths
of ocean was disturbing to one who could be brave enough ashore.
Fortunately Miss Bishop did not appear to be in desperate need of the
poor comfort he was in case to offer. Certainly she, too, was pale, and
her hazel eyes may have looked a little larger than usual. But she had
herself well in hand. Half sitting, half leaning on the Captain's table,
she preserved her courage sufficiently to seek to calm the octoroon
waiting-woman who was grovelling at her feet in a state of terror.
And then the cabin-door flew open, and Don Miguel himself, tall,
sunburned, and aquiline of face, strode in. Lord Julian span round, to
face him, and clapped a hand to his sword.
The Spaniard was brisk and to the point.
“Don't be a fool,” he said in his own tongue, “or you'll come by a
fool's end. Your ship is sinking.”
There were three or four men in morions behind Don Miguel, and Lord
Julian realized the position. He released his hilt, and a couple of
feet or so of steel slid softly back into the scabbard. But Don Miguel
smiled, with a flash of white teeth behind his grizzled beard, and held
out his hand.
“If you please,” he said.
Lord Julian hesitated. His eyes strayed to Miss Bishop's. “I think you
had better,” said that composed young lady, whereupon with a shrug his
lordship made the required surrender.
“Come you--all of you--aboard my ship,” Don Miguel invited them, and
strode out.
They went, of course. For one thing the Spaniard had force to compel
them; for another a ship which he announced to be sinking offered them
little inducement to remain. They stayed no longer than was necessary to
enable Miss Bishop to collect some spare articles of dress and my lord
to snatch up his valise.
As for the survivors in that ghastly shambles that had been the Royal
Mary, they were abandoned by the Spaniards to their own resources. Let
them take to the boats, and if those did not suffice them, let them swim
or drown. If Lord Julian and Miss Bishop were retained, it was because
Don Miguel perceived their obvious value. He received them in his cabin
with great urbanity. Urbanely he desired to have the honour of being
acquainted with their names.
Lord Julian, sick with horror of the spectacle he had just witnessed,
commanded himself with difficulty to supply them. Then haughtily he
demanded to know in his turn the name of their aggressor. He was in
an exceedingly ill temper. He realized that if he had done nothing
positively discreditable in the unusual and difficult position into
which Fate had thrust him, at least he had done nothing creditable.
This might have mattered less but that the spectator of his indifferent
performance was a lady. He was determined if possible to do better now.
“I am Don Miguel de Espinosa,” he was answered. “Admiral of the Navies
of the Catholic King.”
Lord Julian gasped. If Spain made such a hubbub about the depredations
of a runagate adventurer like Captain Blood, what could not England
answer now?
“Will you tell me, then, why you behave like a damned pirate?” he asked.
And added: “I hope you realize what will be the consequences, and the
strict account to which you shall be brought for this day's work, for
the blood you have murderously shed, and for your violence to this lady
and to myself.”
“I offer you no violence,” said the Admiral, smiling, as only the man
who holds the trumps can smile. “On the contrary, I have saved your
lives....”
“Saved our lives!” Lord Julian was momentarily speechless before such
callous impudence. “And what of the lives you have destroyed in wanton
butchery? By God, man, they shall cost you dear.”
Don Miguel's smile persisted. “It is possible. All things are possible.
Meantime it is your own lives that will cost you dear. Colonel Bishop is
a rich man; and you, milord, are no doubt also rich. I will consider and
fix your ransom.”
“So that you're just the damned murderous pirate I was supposing you,”
stormed his lordship. “And you have the impudence to call yourself
the Admiral of the Navies of the Catholic King? We shall see what your
Catholic King will have to say to it.”
The Admiral ceased to smile. He revealed something of the rage that had
eaten into his brain. “You do not understand,” he said. “It is that I
treat you English heretic dogs just as you English heretic dogs have
treated Spaniards upon the seas--you robbers and thieves out of hell!
I have the honesty to do it in my own name--but you, you perfidious
beasts, you send your Captain Bloods, your Hagthorpes, and your Morgans
against us and disclaim responsibility for what they do. Like Pilate,
you wash your hands.” He laughed savagely. “Let Spain play the part of
Pilate. Let her disclaim responsibility for me, when your ambassador
at the Escurial shall go whining to the Supreme Council of this act of
piracy by Don Miguel de Espinosa.”
“Captain Blood and the rest are not admirals of England!” cried Lord
Julian.
“Are they not? How do I know? How does Spain know? Are you not liars
all, you English heretics?”
“Sir!” Lord Julian's voice was harsh as a rasp, his eyes flashed.
Instinctively he swung a hand to the place where his sword habitually
hung. Then he shrugged and sneered: “Of course,” said he, “it sorts with
all I have heard of Spanish honour and all that I have seen of yours
that you should insult a man who is unarmed and your prisoner.”
The Admiral's face flamed scarlet. He half raised his hand to strike.
And then, restrained, perhaps, by the very words that had cloaked the
retorting insult, he turned on his heel abruptly and went out without
answering.