The Chronicles of Captain Blood cb-2

by Rafael Sabatini

  «Will the dignity of your office restrain the Spanish Admiral, d'ye suppose?»

  «And the women, James!» his lady again reminded him. «Surely, James, in this extreme need — a whole squadron coming to attack you — his Majesty must approve your enlisting any aid.»

  Thus she began and thus continued, and now Macartney was moved to alliance with her against his Excellency's narrow stubbornness, until in the end the Captain–General was brought to sacrifice dignity to expediency. Still reluctant he demanded ill–humouredly to know the terms of the buccaneers.

  «For myself,» said Blood, «I ask nothing. I will organize your defences for the sake of the blood in my veins. But when the Spaniards have been driven off, I shall require a hundred pieces of eight for each of my men. I have two hundred of them.»

  His Excellency was scandalized. «Twenty thousand pieces!» He choked, and so far forgot his dignity as to haggle. But Blood was coldly firm, and in the end the price was agreed.

  That afternoon he set to work upon the defences of Saint John's.

  Fort Bay is an inlet some two miles in depth and a mile across its widest part. It narrows a little at the mouth, forming a slight bottle–neck. In the middle of this neck ran a long, narrow spit of sand, partly uncovered at extreme low water, with a channel on either side. The southern channel was safe only for vessels of shallow draught; in the narrow, northern channel, however, at the entrance to which the Arabella now rode at anchor, there was never less than eight fathoms, at times slightly increased by the small tides of this sea, so that this was the only gateway to the bay. The fort guarded this channel, occupying a shallow eminence on the northern promontory. It was a square, squat, machicolated structure of grey stone, and its armament consisted of a dozen ancient sakers and a half–dozen faucons with an extreme range of two thousand yards, guns these which provoked Captain Blood's contempt. He supplemented them by twelve sakers of more modern fashion, which he brought ashore from the Atrevida.

  Twelve more guns he landed from the Spanish ship, including two twelve–pounders. These, however, he reserved for another purpose. Fifty yards west of the fort on the extreme edge of the promontory he set about the construction of earthworks, and set about it at a rate which allowed Colonel Courtney some insight into buccaneer methods and the secret of their success.

  He landed a hundred of his men for the purpose and had them toiling almost naked in the broiling sun. To these he added three hundred whites and as many Negroes from Saint John's — practically the whole of its efficient male population — and he had them digging, banking, and filling the wickerwork gabions into the making of which he impressed the women. Others were sent to cut turf and fell trees, and fetch one and the other to the site of these operations. Throughout the afternoon the promontory seethed and crawled like an ant–heap. By sunset all was done. It seemed a miracle to the Captain–General. In six hours, under Blood's direction and the drive of his will, another fort had been constructed which by ordinary methods could not have been built in less than a week. And it was not only built and armed with the remaining twelve guns brought from the Atrevida and with a half–dozen powerful demicannons landed from the Arabella, it was so effectively dissembled that from the sea no suspicion of its existence could be formed. Strips of turf faced it so that it merged into the background of shallow cliff; cocoanut palms topped it and rose about it, clumps of white acacia and arnotto trees masked the gun emplacements so effectively as to render them invisible at half a mile.

  Colonel Courtney conceived that here was a deal of wasted labour. Why trouble to conceal fortifications whose display should have the effect of deterring an assailant?

  Blood explained. «If he's intimidated, he'll merely be postponing attack until some time when I'm not here to defend you. I mean either to destroy him or so to maul him that he'll be glad to leave British settlements alone in future.»

  That night Blood slept aboard the Arabella at her anchorage under the bluff. In the morning Saint John's was awakened and alarmed by the sound of heavy gunfire. The Captain–General ran from his house in a bed–gown, conceiving that the Spaniards were already here. The firing, however, proceeded from the new earthworks, and was directed upon the completely dismasted hull of the Atrevida which had been anchored fore and aft athwart the narrow fairway, right in the middle of the channel.

  The Captain–General dressed in haste, took horse and rode out to the bluff with Macartney. As he reached it, the firing ceased. The hulk, riddled with shot, was slowly settling down. She sank with a gurgle, as the now furious Governor flung himself from his horse beside the earthworks. Of Captain Blood, who with a knot of his rude followers was observing the end of the Atrevida, he stormily demanded to know in the name of Heaven and of Hell what folly this might be. Did Captain Blood realize that he had completely blocked the entrance to the harbour for all but vessels of the lightest draught?

  «That was the aim,» said Blood. «I've been at pains to find the shallowest part of the channel. She lies in six fathoms, reducing the depth to a bare two.»

  The Captain–General conceived that he was being mocked. Livid, he demanded why so insane a measure should have been taken, and this without consulting him. With a note of weariness in his voice, Captain Blood explained what should have been obvious. It gave some pause to the Governor's anger. Yet the suspicions natural to a man of such limited vision were not quieted.

  «But if to sink the hulk there was your only object, why in the devil's name did you waste shot and powder on her? Why didn't you scuttle her?»

  Blood shrugged. «A little gunnery practice. We accomplished two objects in one.»

  «Gunnery practice?» His Excellency was savage. «At that range? What are you telling me, man?»

  «You'll understand better when Don Miguel arrives.»

  «I'll understand now, if you please. I will so! Stab me! Ye'll observe that I command here in Antigua.»

  Blood was annoyed. He had never learnt to suffer fools gladly. «Faith, then your command outstrips your understanding if my object isn't plain. Meanwhile, there are some other matters yet to be settled, and time may be short.» With that he swung on his heel, and left the Captain–General spluttering.

  Blood had surveyed the coast, and found a snug inlet known as Willoughby's Cove, not two miles away, where the Arabella could lie concealed and yet so conveniently at hand that he and all his men might remain aboard. This at least was good news to Colonel Courtney, who was in dread of having pirates quartered on the town. Blood demanded that his men should be victualled, and required fifty head of cattle and twenty hogs. The Captain–General would have haggled with him, but was overborne in terms which did not improve their relations. The beasts were duly delivered and in the days that followed the buccaneers became buccaneers in earnest; the boucan fires were lighted on the shores of Willoughby's Cove, and there the flesh of the slaughtered animals was boucanned together with a quantity of turtle which the adventurers captured thereabouts.

  In these peaceful arts three days were consumed, until the Captain–General began to ask himself if the whole thing were not some evil game to cover nefarious ends of Captain Blood and his pirates. Blood, however, explained the delay. Not until Don Miguel had abandoned hope of being joined by Don Vicente de Casanegra with the Atrevida would he decide to sail without him.

  Another four days of inactivity went by, on each of which the Captain–General rode out to Willoughby's Cove to vent his suspicions in searching questions. The interviews increased daily in acrimony. Daily Blood expressed more and more plainly to the Captain–General that he saw little hope for the colonial future of a country which exercised so little discrimination in the election of her overseas governors.

  Don Miguel's squadron appeared off Antigua only just in time to avert an open rupture between the Captain–General and his buccaneer ally.

  Word being brought of this to Willoughby's Cove, early one Monday morning by one of the guards left in charge of the earthworks, Captain
Blood landed a hundred of his men, and marched them across to the bluff. Wolverstone was left in command aboard. Ogle, that formidable gunner, was already quartered at the fort with a gun–crew.

  Six miles out at sea standing directly for the harbour of Saint John's, with a freshening breeze from the northwest to temper the increasing heat of the morning sun, came four stately ships under full spread of sail, the banner of Castile afloat from the head of each mainmast.

  From the parapet of the old fort Captain Blood surveyed them through his telescope. At his elbow, with Macartney in attendance, stood the Captain–General perceiving at last that the Spanish menace was a reality.

  Don Miguel commanded at the time the Virgen del Pilar, the finest and most powerful vessel in which he had yet sailed since Blood had sunk the Milagrosa some months before. She was a great black–hulled galleon of forty guns, including in her armament several heavy demi–cannon with a range of three thousand yards. Of the other three ships, two, if inferior, were still formidable thirty–gun frigates, whilst the last was really little better than a sloop of ten guns.

  Blood closed his telescope and prepared for action in the old fort. The new one was for the moment left inactive.

  Within a half–hour battle was joined. Don Miguel's advance had all the rashness which Blood knew of old.

  He made no attempt to shorten sail until within two thousand yards. He conceived, no doubt, that he was taking the place entirely unawares, and that the antiquated guns of the fort would probably be inadequate. Nevertheless, he must dispose of them before attempting to enter the harbour. To be sure of making short work of it, he continued to advance until Blood computed him within a thousand yards.

  «On my soul,» said Blood, «he'll be meaning to get within pistol–range, or else he thinks the fort of no account at all. Wake him up, Ogle. Let him have a salute.»

  Ogle's crew had been carefully laying their guns, and they had followed the advance with the twelve sakers from the Atrevida. Others stood at hand with linstocks, rammers, and water–tubs, to serve the gunners.

  Ogle gave the word, and the twelve guns were touched off as one, with a deafening roar. Within that easy range even the five–pound shot of these comparatively small cannon did some little damage to two of the Spanish ships. The moral effect of thus surprising those who came to surprise was even greater. The Admiral instantly signalled them to go about. In doing so they poured broadside after broadside into the fort, and for some minutes the place was a volcano, smoke and dust rising in a dense column above the flying stones and crumbling masonry. Blinded by it the buccaneers had no vision of what the Spaniards might be doing. But Blood guessed it, and cleared every man from the fort into shelter behind it during the brief respite before the second broadsides came. When that was over, he drove them back again into the battered fortress, which for a while now had nothing more to fear, and the original antiquated guns of Saint John's were brought into action. The faucons were fired at random through the cloud of dust that hid them merely as a display and to let the Spaniards know that the fort was still alive. Then, as the cloud lifted, the five–pounders spoke, in twos and threes, carefully aimed at the ships which were now beating to windward. They did little damage; but this was less important than to keep the Spaniards in play.

  Meanwhile, the gun–crews were busy with the sakers from the Atrevida. Water–tubs had been emptied over them, and now with swabs and wads and rammers at work the reloading was proceeding.

  The Captain–General, idle amid this terrific activity, required presently to know why powder was so ineffectively being wasted by these pop–guns, when in the earthworks there were cannon of long range which might be hammering the Spaniards with twenty–four and thirty–pound shot. When he was answered evasively, he passed from suggestion to command, whereupon he was invited not to interfere with carefully laid plans.

  An altercation was saved by the return of the Spaniards to the attack and a repetition of all that had gone before. Again the fort was smashed and pounded, and this time two Negroes were killed and a half–dozen buccaneers were injured by flying masonry, despite Blood's precaution to get them out of the place before the broadsides came.

  When the second attack had been beaten off and the Spaniards were again retiring to reload, Blood resolved to withdraw the guns from a fort in which another half–dozen broadsides might completely bury them. Negroes and buccaneers and men of the Antiguan militia were indiscriminately employed on the business and harnessed to the guns. Even so it took an hour to get them all clear of the rubble and emplaced anew on the landward side of the fort, where Ogle and his men proceeded once more to load and carefully to lay them. The body of the fort meanwhile served to screen the operation from the Spaniards as they sailed in for the third time. Now the English held their fire whilst another storm of metal crashed upon those battered but empty ramparts. When it was over, the fort was a shapeless heap of rubble, and the little army lying concealed behind the ruins heard the Spanish cheer that announced their conviction that all was done, since no single shot had been fired to answer their bombardment.

  Proudly, confidently, Don Miguel came on. No need now to stand off to reload. Already the afternoon was well advanced and he would house his men in Saint John's before nightfall. The haze of dust and smoke, whilst serving to screen the defenders and their new emplacements from the sight of the enemy, could yet be penetrated at close quarters by the watchful eyes of the buccaneers. The Virgen del Pilar was within five hundred yards of the harbour's mouth, when six sakers, charged now with langrel, chain, and cross–bar, swept her decks with murderous effect and some damage to her shrouds. Six faucons, similarly charged, followed after a moment's pause, and, if their fire was less effective, it yet served to increase the confusion and the alarm of so unexpected an attack.

  In the pause they could hear the blare of a trumpet aboard the Virgen, screeching the Admiral's orders to the other ships of his squadron. Then, as in the haste of their manoeuvre to go about, the Spaniards yawed a moment, broadside on, Blood gave the signal, and two by two the remaining sakers sent their five–pound round shot in search of Spanish timbers. Odd ones took effect, and one very fortunate cannon–ball smashed the mainmast of one of the frigates. In her crippled state and the desperate haste resulting from it, she fouled the sloop, and before the two vessels could disentangle themselves and follow the retreat of the others, their decks had been raked again and again by langrel and cross–bar from water–cooled and hurriedly reloaded guns.

  Blood, who had been crouching with the rest, stood up at last as the firing ceased, its work temporarily accomplished. He looked into the long, solemn face of Colonel Courtney, and laughed.

  «Faith! It's another slaughter of the innocents, so it is.»

  The Captain–General smiled sourly back at him. «If you had done as I desired you …»

  Blood interrupted without ceremony. «On my soul, now! Are ye not content? If I'd done as you desired me, I'd have put all my cards on the table by now. It's saving my trumps I am until the Admiral plays as I want him to.»

  «And if the Admiral doesn't, Captain Blood?»

  «He will, for one thing because it's in the nature of him; for another because there's no other way to play at all. And so ye may go home and sleep in peace, placing your trust in Providence and me.»

  «I do not care for the association, sir,» said the Governor frostily.

  «But ye will. On my soul, ye will. For we do fine things when we work together, Providence and I.»

  An hour before sunset the Spaniards were hove to a couple of miles out at sea, and becalmed. The Antiguans, white and black, dismissed by Blood, went home to sup, all but some two score whom he retained for emergencies. Then his buccaneers sat down under the sky to a generous supply of meat and a limited amount of rum.

  The sun went down into the jade waters of the Caribbean, and darkness followed almost as upon the extinction of a lamp, the soft, purple darkness of a moonless night irradiated by
a myriad stars.

  Captain Blood stood up and nosed the air. The north–westerly breeze, which had died down towards evening, was springing up again. He ordered all fires and lights to be extinguished, so as to encourage that for which he hoped.

  Out at sea in the fine cabin of the Virgen del Pilar, the proud, noble, brave, incompetent Admiral of the Caribbean held a council of war which was no council; for he had summoned his captains merely so that he might impose his will upon them. At dead midnight, by when all in Saint John's should be asleep, in the conviction that no further attack would come until morning, they would creep past the fort under cover of darkness and with all lights extinguished. Daylight should find them at anchor a mile or more beyond it, in the bay, with their guns trained upon the town. That must be checkmate to the Antiguans.

  Upon this they acted, and with sails trimmed to the favouring breeze, and shortened so as to lessen the gurgle of water at their prows, they nosed gently forward through the velvety gloom. With the Virgen leading, they reached the entrance of the harbour and the darker waters between the shadowy bluffs on either side. Here all was deathly still. Not a light showed save the distant phosphorescent line where the waters met the shore; not a sound disturbed the stillness save the silken rustle of the sea against their sides. Already within two hundred yards of the fort, and of the spot where the Atrevida had been sunk to block the channel, the Virgen crept on, her bulwarks lined with silent, watchful men, Don Miguel, leaning immovable as a statue upon the poop–rail. He was abreast of the fort and counting the victory already won, when suddenly his keel grated, and, grating ever harder, drove shuddering onwards for some yards, to be finally gripped and held as if by some monstrous hand in the depths below, whilst overhead under pressure of a wind to which the vessel no longer yielded, the sails drummed loudly to an accompaniment of groaning cordage and clattering blocks.