As the door slammed after the departing Admiral, Lord Julian turned to
Arabella, and actually smiled. He felt that he was doing better, and
gathered from it an almost childish satisfaction--childish in all the
circumstances. “Decidedly I think I had the last word there,” he said,
with a toss of his golden ringlets.
Miss Bishop, seated at the cabin-table, looked at him steadily, without
returning his smile. “Does it matter, then, so much, having the last
word? I am thinking of those poor fellows on the Royal Mary. Many of
them have had their last word, indeed. And for what? A fine ship sunk,
a score of lives lost, thrice that number now in jeopardy, and all for
what?”
“You are overwrought, ma'am. I....”
“Overwrought!” She uttered a single sharp note of laughter. “I assure
you I am calm. I am asking you a question, Lord Julian. Why has this
Spaniard done all this? To what purpose?”
“You heard him.” Lord Julian shrugged angrily. “Blood-lust,” he
explained shortly.
“Blood-lust?” she asked. She was amazed. “Does such a thing exist, then?
It is insane, monstrous.”
“Fiendish,” his lordship agreed. “Devil's work.”
“I don't understand. At Bridgetown three years ago there was a Spanish
raid, and things were done that should have been impossible to men,
horrible, revolting things which strain belief, which seem, when I
think of them now, like the illusions of some evil dream. Are men just
beasts?”
“Men?” said Lord Julian, staring. “Say Spaniards, and I'll agree.”
He was an Englishman speaking of hereditary foes. And yet there was a
measure of truth in what he said. “This is the Spanish way in the New
World. Faith, almost it justifies such men as Blood of what they do.”
She shivered, as if cold, and setting her elbows on the table, she took
her chin in her hands, and sat staring before her.
Observing her, his lordship noticed how drawn and white her face had
grown. There was reason enough for that, and for worse. Not any other
woman of his acquaintance would have preserved her self-control in such
an ordeal; and of fear, at least, at no time had Miss Bishop shown any
sign. It is impossible that he did not find her admirable.
A Spanish steward entered bearing a silver chocolate service and a box
of Peruvian candies, which he placed on the table before the lady.
“With the Admiral's homage,” he said, then bowed, and withdrew.
Miss Bishop took no heed of him or his offering, but continued to stare
before her, lost in thought. Lord Julian took a turn in the long low
cabin, which was lighted by a skylight above and great square windows
astern. It was luxuriously appointed: there were rich Eastern rugs on
the floor, well-filled bookcases stood against the bulkheads, and there
was a carved walnut sideboard laden with silverware. On a long, low
chest standing under the middle stern port lay a guitar that was gay
with ribbons. Lord Julian picked it up, twanged the strings once as if
moved by nervous irritation, and put it down.
He turned again to face Miss Bishop.
“I came out here,” he said, “to put down piracy. But--blister me!--I
begin to think that the French are right in desiring piracy to continue
as a curb upon these Spanish scoundrels.”
He was to be strongly confirmed in that opinion before many hours
were past. Meanwhile their treatment at the hands of Don Miguel was
considerate and courteous. It confirmed the opinion, contemptuously
expressed to his lordship by Miss Bishop, that since they were to be
held to ransom they need not fear any violence or hurt. A cabin was
placed at the disposal of the lady and her terrified woman, and another
at Lord Julian's. They were given the freedom of the ship, and bidden to
dine at the Admiral's table; nor were his further intentions regarding
them mentioned, nor yet his immediate destination.
The Milagrosa, with her consort the Hidalga rolling after her, steered
a south by westerly course, then veered to the southeast round Cape
Tiburon, and thereafter, standing well out to sea, with the land no more
than a cloudy outline to larboard, she headed directly east, and so ran
straight into the arms of Captain Blood, who was making for the Windward
Passage, as we know. That happened early on the following morning. After
having systematically hunted his enemy in vain for a year, Don Miguel
chanced upon him in this unexpected and entirely fortuitous fashion. But
that is the ironic way of Fortune. It was also the way of Fortune that
Don Miguel should thus come upon the Arabella at a time when, separated
from the rest of the fleet, she was alone and at a disadvantage. It
looked to Don Miguel as if the luck which so long had been on Blood's
side had at last veered in his own favour.
Miss Bishop, newly risen, had come out to take the air on the
quarter-deck with his lordship in attendance--as you would expect of so
gallant a gentleman--when she beheld the big red ship that had once been
the Cinco Llagas out of Cadiz. The vessel was bearing down upon them,
her mountains of snowy canvas bellying forward, the long pennon with
the cross of St. George fluttering from her main truck in the morning
breeze, the gilded portholes in her red hull and the gilded beak-head
aflash in the morning sun.
Miss Bishop was not to recognize this for that same Cinco Llagas which
she had seen once before--on a tragic day in Barbados three years
ago. To her it was just a great ship that was heading resolutely,
majestically, towards them, and an Englishman to judge by the pennon
she was flying. The sight thrilled her curiously; it awoke in her an
uplifting sense of pride that took no account of the danger to herself
in the encounter that must now be inevitable.
Beside her on the poop, whither they had climbed to obtain a better
view, and equally arrested and at gaze, stood Lord Julian. But he shared
none of her exultation. He had been in his first sea-fight yesterday,
and he felt that the experience would suffice him for a very
considerable time. This, I insist, is no reflection upon his courage.
“Look,” said Miss Bishop, pointing; and to his infinite amazement he
observed that her eyes were sparkling. Did she realize, he wondered,
what was afoot? Her next sentence resolved his doubt. “She is English,
and she comes resolutely on. She means to fight.”
“God help her, then,” said his lordship gloomily. “Her captain must be
mad. What can he hope to do against two such heavy hulks as these? If
they could so easily blow the Royal Mary out of the water, what will
they do to this vessel? Look at that devil Don Miguel. He's utterly
disgusting in his glee.”
From the quarter-deck, where he moved amid the frenzy of preparation,
the Admiral had turned to flash a backward glance at his prisoners. His
eyes were alight, his face transfigured. He flung out an arm to point
to the advancing ship, and bawled something in Spanish that was lost to
them in the noise of the labouring crew.
They advanced to the poop-rail, and watched the bustle. Telescope in
hand on the quarter-deck, Don Miguel was issuing his orders. Already the
gunners were kindling their matches; sailors were aloft, taking in sail;
others were spreading a stout rope net above the waist, as a protection
against falling spars. And meanwhile Don Miguel had been signalling to
his consort, in response to which the Hidalga had drawn steadily
forward until she was now abeam of the Milagrosa, half cable's length to
starboard, and from the height of the tall poop my lord and Miss Bishop
could see her own bustle of preparation. And they could discern signs of
it now aboard the advancing English ship as well. She was furling tops
and mainsail, stripping in fact to mizzen and sprit for the coming
action. Thus, almost silently without challenge or exchange of signals,
had action been mutually determined.
Of necessity now, under diminished sail, the advance of the Arabella was
slower; but it was none the less steady. She was already within saker
shot, and they could make out the figures stirring on her forecastle and
the brass guns gleaming on her prow. The gunners of the Milagrosa raised
their linstocks and blew upon their smouldering matches, looking up
impatiently at the Admiral.
But the Admiral solemnly shook his head.
“Patience,” he exhorted them. “Save your fire until we have him. He is
coming straight to his doom--straight to the yardarm and the rope that
have been so long waiting for him.”
“Stab me!” said his lordship. “This Englishman may be gallant enough to
accept battle against such odds. But there are times when discretion is
a better quality than gallantry in a commander.”
“Gallantry will often win through, even against overwhelming strength,”
said Miss Bishop. He looked at her, and noted in her bearing only
excitement. Of fear he could still discern no trace. His lordship was
past amazement. She was not by any means the kind of woman to which life
had accustomed him.
“Presently,” he said, “you will suffer me to place you under cover.”
“I can see best from here,” she answered him. And added quietly: “I am
praying for this Englishman. He must be very brave.”
Under his breath Lord Julian damned the fellow's bravery.
The Arabella was advancing now along a course which, if continued, must
carry her straight between the two Spanish ships. My lord pointed
it out. “He's crazy surely!” he cried. “He's driving straight into a
death-trap. He'll be crushed to splinters between the two. No wonder
that black-faced Don is holding his fire. In his place, I should do the
same.”
But even at that moment the Admiral raised his hand; in the waist, below
him, a trumpet blared, and immediately the gunner on the prow touched
off his guns. As the thunder of them rolled out, his lordship saw ahead
beyond the English ship and to larboard of her two heavy splashes.
Almost at once two successive spurts of flame leapt from the brass
cannon on the Arabella's beak-head, and scarcely had the watchers on the
poop seen the shower of spray, where one of the shots struck the
water near them, then with a rending crash and a shiver that shook the
Milagrosa from stem to stern, the other came to lodge in her forecastle.
To avenge that blow, the Hidalga blazed at the Englishman with both
her forward guns. But even at that short range--between two and three
hundred yards--neither shot took effect.
At a hundred yards the Arabella's forward guns, which had meanwhile
been reloaded, fired again at the Milagrosa, and this time smashed her
bowsprit into splinters; so that for a moment she yawed wildly to port.
Don Miguel swore profanely, and then, as the helm was put over to swing
her back to her course, his own prow replied. But the aim was too high,
and whilst one of the shots tore through the Arabella's shrouds and
scarred her mainmast, the other again went wide. And when the smoke of
that discharge had lifted, the English ship was found almost between the
Spaniards, her bows in line with theirs and coming steadily on into what
his lordship deemed a death-trap.
Lord Julian held his breath, and Miss Bishop gasped, clutching the
rail before her. She had a glimpse of the wickedly grinning face of Don
Miguel, and the grinning faces of the men at the guns in the waist.
At last the Arabella was right between the Spanish ships prow to poop
and poop to prow. Don Miguel spoke to the trumpeter, who had mounted the
quarter-deck and stood now at the Admiral's elbow. The man raised the
silver bugle that was to give the signal for the broadsides of both
ships. But even as he placed it to his lips, the Admiral seized his arm,
to arrest him. Only then had he perceived what was so obvious--or should
have been to an experienced sea-fighter: he had delayed too long and
Captain Blood had outmanoeuvred him. In attempting to fire now upon the
Englishman, the Milagrosa and her consort would also be firing into each
other. Too late he ordered his helmsman to put the tiller hard over and
swing the ship to larboard, as a preliminary to manoeuvring for a less
impossible position of attack. At that very moment the Arabella seemed
to explode as she swept by. Eighteen guns from each of her flanks
emptied themselves at that point-blank range into the hulls of the two
Spanish vessels.
Half stunned by that reverberating thunder, and thrown off her balance
by the sudden lurch of the ship under her feet, Miss Bishop hurtled
violently against Lord Julian, who kept his feet only by clutching
the rail on which he had been leaning. Billowing clouds of smoke to
starboard blotted out everything, and its acrid odour, taking them
presently in the throat, set them gasping and coughing.
From the grim confusion and turmoil in the waist below arose a clamour
of fierce Spanish blasphemies and the screams of maimed men. The
Milagrosa staggered slowly ahead, a gaping rent in her bulwarks; her
foremast was shattered, fragments of the yards hanging in the netting
spread below. Her beak-head was in splinters, and a shot had smashed
through into the great cabin, reducing it to wreckage.
Don Miguel was bawling orders wildly, and peering ever and anon through
the curtain of smoke that was drifting slowly astern, in his anxiety to
ascertain how it might have fared with the Hidalga.
Suddenly, and ghostly at first through that lifting haze, loomed the
outline of a ship; gradually the lines of her red hull became more and
more sharply defined as she swept nearer with poles all bare save for
the spread of canvas on her sprit.
Instead of holding to her course as Don Miguel had expected she would,
the Arabella had gone about under cover of the smoke, and sailing now
in the same direction as the Milagrosa, was converging sharply upon her
across the wind, so sharply that almost before the frenzied Don Miguel
had realized the situation, his vessel staggered under the rending
impact with which the other came hurtling alongside. There was a rattle
and clank of metal as a dozen grapnels fell, and tore and caught in the
timbers of the Milagrosa, and the Spaniard was firmly gripped in the
tentacles of the English ship.
Beyond her and now well astern the veil of smoke was rent at last and
the Hidalga was revealed in desperate case. She was bilging fast, with
an ominous list to larboard, and it could be no more than a question of
moments before she settled down. The attention of her hands was being
entirely given to a desperate endeavour to launch the boats in time.
Of this Don Miguel's anguished eyes had no more than a fleeting but
comprehensive glimpse before his own decks were invaded by a wild,
yelling swarm of boarders from the grappling ship. Never was confidence
so quickly changed into despair, never was hunter more swiftly converted
into helpless prey. For helpless the Spaniards were. The swiftly
executed boarding manoeuvre had caught them almost unawares in the
moment of confusion following the punishing broadside they had sustained
at such short range. For a moment there was a valiant effort by some
of Don Miguel's officers to rally the men for a stand against these
invaders. But the Spaniards, never at their best in close-quarter
fighting, were here demoralized by knowledge of the enemies with whom
they had to deal. Their hastily formed ranks were smashed before they
could be steadied; driven across the waist to the break of the poop
on the one side, and up to the forecastle bulkheads on the other, the
fighting resolved itself into a series of skirmishes between groups. And
whilst this was doing above, another horde of buccaneers swarmed through
the hatch to the main deck below to overpower the gun-crews at their
stations there.
On the quarter deck, towards which an overwhelming wave of buccaneers
was sweeping, led by a one-eyed giant, who was naked to the waist, stood
Don Miguel, numbed by despair and rage. Above and behind him on the
poop, Lord Julian and Miss Bishop looked on, his lordship aghast at the
fury of this cooped-up fighting, the lady's brave calm conquered at last
by horror so that she reeled there sick and faint.
Soon, however, the rage of that brief fight was spent. They saw the
banner of Castile come fluttering down from the masthead. A buccaneer
had slashed the halyard with his cutlass. The boarders were in
possession, and on the upper deck groups of disarmed Spaniards stood
huddled now like herded sheep.
Suddenly Miss Bishop recovered from her nausea, to lean forward staring
wild-eyed, whilst if possible her cheeks turned yet a deadlier hue than
they had been already.
Picking his way daintily through that shambles in the waist came a tall
man with a deeply tanned face that was shaded by a Spanish headpiece. He
was armed in back-and-breast of black steel beautifully damascened with
golden arabesques. Over this, like a stole, he wore a sling of scarlet
silk, from each end of which hung a silver-mounted pistol. Up the broad
companion to the quarter-deck he came, toying with easy assurance, until
he stood before the Spanish Admiral. Then he bowed stiff and formally.
A crisp, metallic voice, speaking perfect Spanish, reached those two
spectators on the poop, and increased the admiring wonder in which Lord
Julian had observed the man's approach.
“We meet again at last, Don Miguel,” it said. “I hope you are satisfied.
Although the meeting may not be exactly as you pictured it, at least it
has been very ardently sought and desired by you.”
Speechless, livid of face, his mouth distorted and his breathing
laboured, Don Miguel de Espinosa received the irony of that man to whom
he attributed his ruin and more beside. Then he uttered an inarticulate
cry of rage, and his hand swept to his sword. But even as his fingers
closed upon the hilt, the other's closed upon his wrist to arrest the
action.
“Calm, Don Miguel!” he was quietly but firmly enjoined. “Do not
recklessly invite the ugly extremes such as you would, yourself, have
practised had the situation been reversed.”
A moment they stood looking into each other's eyes.
“What do you intend by me?” the Spaniard enquired at last, his voice
hoarse.
Captain Blood shrugged. The firm lips smiled a little. “All that I
intend has been already accomplished. And lest it increase your rancour,
I beg you to observe that you have brought it entirely upon yourself.
You would have it so.” He turned and pointed to the boats, which his men
were heaving from the boom amidships. “Your boats are being launched.
You are at liberty to embark in them with your men before we scuttle
this ship. Yonder are the shores of Hispaniola. You should make them
safely. And if you'll take my advice, sir, you'll not hunt me again.
I think I am unlucky to you. Get you home to Spain, Don Miguel, and to
concerns that you understand better than this trade of the sea.”
For a long moment the defeated Admiral continued to stare his hatred
in silence, then, still without speaking, he went down the companion,
staggering like a drunken man, his useless rapier clattering behind him.
His conqueror, who had not even troubled to disarm him, watched him go,
then turned and faced those two immediately above him on the poop. Lord
Julian might have observed, had he been less taken up with other things,
that the fellow seemed suddenly to stiffen, and that he turned pale
under his deep tan. A moment he stood at gaze; then suddenly and swiftly
he came up the steps. Lord Julian stood forward to meet him.
“Ye don't mean, sir, that you'll let that Spanish scoundrel go free?” he
cried.
The gentleman in the black corselet appeared to become aware of his
lordship for the first time.
“And who the devil may you be?” he asked, with a marked Irish accent.
“And what business may it be of yours, at all?”
His lordship conceived that the fellow's truculence and utter lack
of proper deference must be corrected. “I am Lord Julian Wade,” he
announced, with that object.
Apparently the announcement made no impression.
“Are you, indeed! Then perhaps ye'll explain what the plague you're
doing aboard this ship?”
Lord Julian controlled himself to afford the desired explanation. He did
so shortly and impatiently.
“He took you prisoner, did he--along with Miss Bishop there?”
“You are acquainted with Miss Bishop?” cried his lordship, passing from
surprise to surprise.
But this mannerless fellow had stepped past him, and was making a leg
to the lady, who on her side remained unresponsive and forbidding to
the point of scorn. Observing this, he turned to answer Lord Julian's
question.
“I had that honour once,” said he. “But it seems that Miss Bishop has a
shorter memory.”
His lips were twisted into a wry smile, and there was pain in the blue
eyes that gleamed so vividly under his black brows, pain blending with
the mockery of his voice. But of all this it was the mockery alone that
was perceived by Miss Bishop; she resented it.
“I do not number thieves and pirates among my acquaintance, Captain
Blood,” said she; whereupon his lordship exploded in excitement.
“Captain Blood!” he cried. “Are you Captain Blood?”
“What else were ye supposing?”
Blood asked the question wearily, his mind on other things. “I do not
number thieves and pirates among my acquaintance.” The cruel phrase
filled his brain, reechoing and reverberating there.
But Lord Julian would not be denied. He caught him by the sleeve
with one hand, whilst with the other he pointed after the retreating,
dejected figure of Don Miguel.
“Do I understand that ye're not going to hang that Spanish scoundrel?”
“What for should I be hanging him?”
“Because he's just a damned pirate, as I can prove, as I have proved
already.”
“Ah!” said Blood, and Lord Julian marvelled at the sudden haggardness of
a countenance that had been so devil-may-care but a few moments since.
“I am a damned pirate, myself; and so I am merciful with my kind. Don
Miguel goes free.”
Lord Julian gasped. “After what I've told you that he has done? After
his sinking of the Royal Mary? After his treatment of me--of us?” Lord
Julian protested indignantly.
“I am not in the service of England, or of any nation, sir. And I am not
concerned with any wrongs her flag may suffer.”
His lordship recoiled before the furious glance that blazed at him out
of Blood's haggard face. But the passion faded as swiftly as it had
arisen. It was in a level voice that the Captain added:
“If you'll escort Miss Bishop aboard my ship, I shall be obliged to you.
I beg that you'll make haste. We are about to scuttle this hulk.”
He turned slowly to depart. But again Lord Julian interposed. Containing
his indignant amazement, his lordship delivered himself coldly. “Captain
Blood, you disappoint me. I had hopes of great things for you.”
“Go to the devil,” said Captain Blood, turning on his heel, and so
departed.