During the capitulation and for some time after, Captain Blood and the
greater portion of his buccaneers had been at their post on the heights
of Nuestra Senora de la Poupa, utterly in ignorance of what was taking
place. Blood, although the man chiefly, if not solely, responsible
for the swift reduction of the city, which was proving a veritable
treasure-house, was not even shown the consideration of being called to
the council of officers which with M. de Rivarol determined the terms of
the capitulation.
This was a slight that at another time Captain Blood would not have
borne for a moment. But at present, in his odd frame of mind, and its
divorcement from piracy, he was content to smile his utter contempt of
the French General. Not so, however, his captains, and still less
his men. Resentment smouldered amongst them for a while, to flame
out violently at the end of that week in Cartagena. It was only by
undertaking to voice their grievance to the Baron that their captain was
able for the moment to pacify them. That done, he went at once in quest
of M. de Rivarol.
He found him in the offices which the Baron had set up in the town, with
a staff of clerks to register the treasure brought in and to cast up the
surrendered account-books, with a view to ascertaining precisely what
were the sums yet to be delivered up. The Baron sat there scrutinizing
ledgers, like a city merchant, and checking figures to make sure that
all was correct to the last peso. A choice occupation this for the
General of the King's Armies by Sea and Land. He looked up irritated by
the interruption which Captain Blood's advent occasioned.
“M. le Baron,” the latter greeted him. “I must speak frankly; and you
must suffer it. My men are on the point of mutiny.”
M. de Rivarol considered him with a faint lift of the eyebrows.
“Captain Blood, I, too, will speak frankly; and you, too, must suffer
it. If there is a mutiny, you and your captains shall be held personally
responsible. The mistake you make is in assuming with me the tone of an
ally, whereas I have given you clearly to understand from the first that
you are simply in the position of having accepted service under me.
Your proper apprehension of that fact will save the waste of a deal of
words.”
Blood contained himself with difficulty. One of these fine days, he
felt, that for the sake of humanity he must slit the comb of this
supercilious, arrogant cockerel.
“You may define our positions as you please,” said he. “But I'll remind
you that the nature of a thing is not changed by the name you give it.
I am concerned with facts; chiefly with the fact that we entered
into definite articles with you. Those articles provide for a certain
distribution of the spoil. My men demand it. They are not satisfied.”
“Of what are they not satisfied?” demanded the Baron.
“Of your honesty, M. de Rivarol.”
A blow in the face could scarcely have taken the Frenchman more aback.
He stiffened, and drew himself up, his eyes blazing, his face of a
deathly pallor. The clerks at the tables laid down their pens, and
awaited the explosion in a sort of terror.
For a long moment there was silence. Then the great gentleman delivered
himself in a voice of concentrated anger. “Do you really dare so much,
you and the dirty thieves that follow you? God's Blood! You shall answer
to me for that word, though it entail a yet worse dishonour to meet you.
Faugh!”
“I will remind you,” said Blood, “that I am speaking not for myself,
but for my men. It is they who are not satisfied, they who threaten that
unless satisfaction is afforded them, and promptly, they will take it.”
“Take it?” said Rivarol, trembling in his rage. “Let them attempt it,
and....”
“Now don't be rash. My men are within their rights, as you are aware.
They demand to know when this sharing of the spoil is to take place, and
when they are to receive the fifth for which their articles provide.”
“God give me patience! How can we share the spoil before it has been
completely gathered?”
“My men have reason to believe that it is gathered; and, anyway, they
view with mistrust that it should all be housed aboard your ships, and
remain in your possession. They say that hereafter there will be no
ascertaining what the spoil really amounts to.”
“But--name of Heaven!--I have kept books. They are there for all to
see.”
“They do not wish to see account-books. Few of them can read. They want
to view the treasure itself. They know--you compel me to be blunt--that
the accounts have been falsified. Your books show the spoil of Cartagena
to amount to some ten million livres. The men know--and they are very
skilled in these computations--that it exceeds the enormous total of
forty millions. They insist that the treasure itself be produced and
weighed in their presence, as is the custom among the Brethren of the
Coast.”
“I know nothing of filibuster customs.” The gentleman was disdainful.
“But you are learning quickly.”
“What do you mean, you rogue? I am a leader of armies, not of plundering
thieves.”
“Oh, but of course!” Blood's irony laughed in his eyes. “Yet, whatever
you may be, I warn you that unless you yield to a demand that I consider
just and therefore uphold, you may look for trouble, and it would not
surprise me if you never leave Cartagena at all, nor convey a single
gold piece home to France.”
“Ah, pardieu! Am I to understand that you are threatening me?”
“Come, come, M. le Baron! I warn you of the trouble that a little
prudence may avert. You do not know on what a volcano you are sitting.
You do not know the ways of buccaneers. If you persist, Cartagena will
be drenched in blood, and whatever the outcome the King of France will
not have been well served.”
That shifted the basis of the argument to less hostile ground. Awhile
yet it continued, to be concluded at last by an ungracious undertaking
from M. de Rivarol to submit to the demands of the buccaneers. He gave
it with an extreme ill-grace, and only because Blood made him realize at
last that to withhold it longer would be dangerous. In an engagement,
he might conceivably defeat Blood's followers. But conceivably he might
not. And even if he succeeded, the effort would be so costly to him in
men that he might not thereafter find himself in sufficient strength to
maintain his hold of what he had seized.
The end of it all was that he gave a promise at once to make the
necessary preparations, and if Captain Blood and his officers would wait
upon him on board the Victorieuse to-morrow morning, the treasure
should be produced, weighed in their presence, and their fifth share
surrendered there and then into their own keeping.
Among the buccaneers that night there was hilarity over the sudden
abatement of M. de Rivarol's monstrous pride. But when the next dawn
broke over Cartagena, they had the explanation of it. The only ships
to be seen in the harbour were the Arabella and the Elizabeth riding
at anchor, and the Atropos and the Lachesis careened on the beach for
repair of the damage sustained in the bombardment. The French ships were
gone. They had been quietly and secretly warped out of the harbour under
cover of night, and three sails, faint and small, on the horizon to
westward was all that remained to be seen of them. The absconding M. de
Rivarol had gone off with the treasure, taking with him the troops and
mariners he had brought from France. He had left behind him at Cartagena
not only the empty-handed buccaneers, whom he had swindled, but also
M. de Cussy and the volunteers and negroes from Hispaniola, whom he had
swindled no less.
The two parties were fused into one by their common fury, and before the
exhibition of it the inhabitants of that ill-fated town were stricken
with deeper terror than they had yet known since the coming of this
expedition.
Captain Blood alone kept his head, setting a curb upon his deep chagrin.
He had promised himself that before parting from M. de Rivarol he would
present a reckoning for all the petty affronts and insults to which that
unspeakable fellow--now proved a scoundrel--had subjected him.
“We must follow,” he declared. “Follow and punish.”
At first that was the general cry. Then came the consideration that
only two of the buccaneer ships were seaworthy--and these could
not accommodate the whole force, particularly being at the moment
indifferently victualled for a long voyage. The crews of the Lachesis
and Atropos and with them their captains, Wolverstone and Yberville,
renounced the intention. After all, there would be a deal of treasure
still hidden in Cartagena. They would remain behind to extort it whilst
fitting their ships for sea. Let Blood and Hagthorpe and those who
sailed with them do as they pleased.
Then only did Blood realize the rashness of his proposal, and in
attempting to draw back he almost precipitated a battle between the two
parties into which that same proposal had now divided the buccaneers.
And meanwhile those French sails on the horizon were growing less and
less. Blood was reduced to despair. If he went off now, Heaven knew what
would happen to the town, the temper of those whom he was leaving being
what it was. Yet if he remained, it would simply mean that his own
and Hagthorpe's crews would join in the saturnalia and increase the
hideousness of events now inevitable. Unable to reach a decision, his
own men and Hagthorpe's took the matter off his hands, eager to give
chase to Rivarol. Not only was a dastardly cheat to be punished but
an enormous treasure to be won by treating as an enemy this French
commander who, himself, had so villainously broken the alliance.
When Blood, torn as he was between conflicting considerations, still
hesitated, they bore him almost by main force aboard the Arabella.
Within an hour, the water-casks at least replenished and stowed aboard,
the Arabella and the Elizabeth put to sea upon that angry chase.
“When we were well at sea, and the Arabella's course was laid,” writes
Pitt, in his log, “I went to seek the Captain, knowing him to be in
great trouble of mind over these events. I found him sitting alone
in his cabin, his head in his hands, torment in the eyes that stared
straight before him, seeing nothing.”
“What now, Peter?” cried the young Somerset mariner. “Lord, man, what is
there here to fret you? Surely 't isn't the thought of Rivarol!”
“No,” said Blood thickly. And for once he was communicative. It may well
be that he must vent the thing that oppressed him or be driven mad by
it. And Pitt, after all, was his friend and loved him, and, so, a proper
man for confidences. “But if she knew! If she knew! O God! I had thought
to have done with piracy; thought to have done with it for ever. Yet
here have I been committed by this scoundrel to the worst piracy that
ever I was guilty of. Think of Cartagena! Think of the hell those devils
will be making of it now! And I must have that on my soul!”
“Nay, Peter--'t isn't on your soul; but on Rivarol's. It is that dirty
thief who has brought all this about. What could you have done to
prevent it?”
“I would have stayed if it could have availed.”
“It could not, and you know it. So why repine?”
“There is more than that to it,” groaned Blood. “What now? What remains?
Loyal service with the English was made impossible for me. Loyal service
with France has led to this; and that is equally impossible hereafter.
What to live clean, I believe the only thing is to go and offer my sword
to the King of Spain.”
But something remained--the last thing that he could have
expected--something towards which they were rapidly sailing over
the tropical, sunlit sea. All this against which he now inveighed so
bitterly was but a necessary stage in the shaping of his odd destiny.
Setting a course for Hispaniola, since they judged that thither must
Rivarol go to refit before attempting to cross to France, the Arabella
and the Elizabeth ploughed briskly northward with a moderately
favourable wind for two days and nights without ever catching a
glimpse of their quarry. The third dawn brought with it a haze which
circumscribed their range of vision to something between two and three
miles, and deepened their growing vexation and their apprehension that
M. de Rivarol might escape them altogether.
Their position then--according to Pitt's log--was approximately 75 deg.
30' W. Long. by 17 deg. 45' N. Lat., so that they had Jamaica on their
larboard beam some thirty miles to westward, and, indeed, away to the
northwest, faintly visible as a bank of clouds, appeared the great ridge
of the Blue Mountains whose peaks were thrust into the clear upper air
above the low-lying haze. The wind, to which they were sailing very
close, was westerly, and it bore to their ears a booming sound which in
less experienced ears might have passed for the breaking of surf upon a
lee shore.
“Guns!” said Pitt, who stood with Blood upon the quarter-deck. Blood
nodded, listening.
“Ten miles away, perhaps fifteen--somewhere off Port Royal, I should
judge,” Pitt added. Then he looked at his captain. “Does it concern us?”
he asked.
“Guns off Port Royal... that should argue Colonel Bishop at work. And
against whom should he be in action but against friends of ours I think
it may concern us. Anyway, we'll stand in to investigate. Bid them put
the helm over.”
Close-hauled they tacked aweather, guided by the sound of combat, which
grew in volume and definition as they approached it. Thus for an hour,
perhaps. Then, as, telescope to his eye, Blood raked the haze, expecting
at any moment to behold the battling ships, the guns abruptly ceased.
They held to their course, nevertheless, with all hands on deck,
eagerly, anxiously scanning the sea ahead. And presently an object
loomed into view, which soon defined itself for a great ship on fire. As
the Arabella with the Elizabeth following closely raced nearer on their
north-westerly tack, the outlines of the blazing vessel grew clearer.
Presently her masts stood out sharp and black above the smoke and
flames, and through his telescope Blood made out plainly the pennon of
St. George fluttering from her maintop.
“An English ship!” he cried.
He scanned the seas for the conqueror in the battle of which this grim
evidence was added to that of the sounds they had heard, and when
at last, as they drew closer to the doomed vessel, they made out the
shadowy outlines of three tall ships, some three or four miles away,
standing in toward Port Royal, the first and natural assumption was
that these ships must belong to the Jamaica fleet, and that the burning
vessel was a defeated buccaneer, and because of this they sped on to
pick up the three boats that were standing away from the blazing hulk.
But Pitt, who through the telescope was examining the receding squadron,
observed things apparent only to the eye of the trained mariner, and
made the incredible announcement that the largest of these three vessels
was Rivarol's Victorieuse.
They took in sail and hove to as they came up with the drifting boats,
laden to capacity with survivors. And there were others adrift on some
of the spars and wreckage with which the sea was strewn, who must be
rescued.