Captain Blood

by SABATINI, RAFAEL

  “Will ye settle a slight dispute for us, Don Diego?” said he lightly. “We are arguing, Mr. Pitt and I, as to which is the North Star.”

  “So?” The Spaniard’s tone was easy; there was almost a suggestion that laughter lurked behind it, and the reason for this was yielded by his next sentence. “But you tell me Mr. Pitt he is your navigant?”

  “For lack of a better,” laughed the Captain, good-humoredly contemptuous. “Now I am ready to wager him a hundred pieces of eight that that is the North Star.” And he flung out an arm towards a point of light in the heavens straight abeam. He afterwards told Pitt that had Don Diego confirmed him, he would have run him through upon that instant. Far from that, however, the Spaniard freely expressed his scorn.

  “You have the assurance that is of ignorance, Don Pedro; and you lose. The North Star is this one.” And he indicated it.

  “You are sure?”

  “But my dear Don Pedro!” The Spaniard’s tone was one of amused protest. “But is it possible that I mistake? Besides, is there not the compass? Come to the binnacle and see there what course we make.”

  His utter frankness, and the easy manner of one who has nothing to conceal resolved at once the doubt that had leapt so suddenly in the mind of Captain Blood. Pitt was satisfied less easily.

  “In that case, Don Diego, will you tell me, since Curaçao is our destination, why our course is what it is?”

  Again there was no faintest hesitation on Don Diego’s part. “You have reason to ask,” said he, and sighed. “I had hope’ it would not be observe’. I have been careless—oh, of a carelessness very culpable. I neglect observation. Always it is my way. I make too sure. I count too much on dead reckoning. And so today I find when at last I take out the quadrant that we do come by a half degree too much south, so that Curaçao is now almost due north. That is what cause the delay. But we will be there tomorrow.”

  The explanation, so completely satisfactory, and so readily and candidly forthcoming, left no room for further doubt that Don Diego should have been false to his parole. And when presently Don Diego had withdrawn again, Captain Blood confessed to Pitt that it was absurd to have suspected him. Whatever his antecedents, he had proved his quality when he announced himself ready to die sooner than enter into any undertaking that could hurt his honor or his country.

  New to the seas of the Spanish Main and to the ways of the adventurers who sailed it, Captain Blood still entertained illusions. But the next dawn was to shatter them rudely and forever.

  Coming on deck before the sun was up, he saw land ahead, as the Spaniard had promised them last night. Some ten miles ahead it lay, a long coast-line filling the horizon east and west, with a massive headland jutting forward straight before them. Staring at it, he frowned. He had not conceived that Curaçao was of such considerable dimensions. Indeed, this looked less like an island than the main itself.

  Beating out aweather, against the gentle landward breeze he beheld a great ship on their starboard bow, that he conceived to be some three or four miles off, and—as well as he could judge her at that distance—of a tonnage equal if not superior to their own. Even as he watched her she altered her course, and going about came heading towards them, closehauled.

  A dozen of his fellows were astir on the forecastle, looking eagerly ahead, and the sound of their voices and laughter reached him across the length of the stately Cinco Llagas.

  “There,” said a soft voice behind him in liquid Spanish, “is the Promised Land, Don Pedro.”

  It was something in that voice, a muffled note of exultation, that awoke suspicion in him, and made whole the half-doubt he had been entertaining. He turned sharply to face Don Diego, so sharply that the sly smile was not effaced from the Spaniard’s countenance before Captain Blood’s eyes had flashed upon it.

  “You find an odd satisfaction in the sight of it—all things considered,” said Mr. Blood.

  “Of course.” The Spaniard rubbed his hands, and Mr. Blood observed that they were unsteady. “The satisfaction of a mariner.”

  “Or of a traitor—which?” Blood asked him quietly. And as the Spaniard fell back before him with suddenly altered countenance that confirmed his every suspicion, he flung an arm out in the direction of the distant shore. “What land is that?” he demanded. “Will you have the effrontery to tell me that is the coast of Curaçao?”

  He advanced upon Don Diego suddenly, and Don Diego, step by step, fell back. “Shall I tell you what land it is? Shall I?” His fierce assumption of knowledge seemed to dazzle and daze the Spaniard. For still Don Diego made no answer. And then Captain Blood drew a bow at a venture—or not quite at a venture. Such a coast-line as that, if not of the main itself, and the main he knew it could not be, must belong to either Cuba or Hispaniola. Now knowing Cuba to lie farther north and west of the two, it followed, he reasoned swiftly, that if Don Diego meant betrayal he would steer for the nearer of these Spanish territories. “That land, you treacherous, forsworn Spanish dog, is the island of Hispaniola.”

  Having said it, he closely watched the swarthy face now overspread with pallor, to see the truth or falsehood of his guess reflected there. But now the retreating Spaniard had come to the middle of the quarter-deck, where the mizzen sail made a screen to shut them off from the eyes of the Englishmen below. His lips writhed in a snarling smile.

  “Ah, perro inglés! You know too much,” he said under his breath, and sprang for the Captain’s throat.

  Tight-locked in each other’s arms, they swayed a moment, then together went down upon the deck, the Spaniard’s feet jerked from under him by the right leg of Captain Blood. The Spaniard had depended upon his strength, which was considerable. But it proved no match for the steady muscles of the Irishman, tempered of late by the vicissitudes of slavery. He had depended upon choking the life out of Blood, and so gaining the half-hour that might be necessary to bring up that fine ship that was beating towards them—a Spanish ship, perforce, since none other would be so boldly cruising in these Spanish waters off Hispaniola. But all that Don Diego had accomplished was to betray himself completely, and to no purpose. This he realized when he found himself upon his back, pinned down by Blood, who was kneeling on his chest, whilst the men summoned by their Captain’s shout came clattering up the companion.

  “Will I say a prayer for your dirty soul now, whilst I am in this position?” Captain Blood was furiously mocking him.

  But the Spaniard, though defeated, now beyond hope for himself, forced his lips to smile, and gave back mockery for mockery.

  “Who will pray for your soul, I wonder, when that galleon comes to lie board and board with you?”

  “That galleon!” echoed Captain Blood with sudden and awful realization that already it was too late to avoid the consequences of Don Diego’s betrayal of them.

  “That galleon,” Don Diego repeated, and added with a deepening sneer: “Do you know what ship it is? I will tell you. It is the Encarnacion, the flagship of Don Miguel de Espinosa, the Lord Admiral of Castile, and Don Miguel is my brother. It is a very fortunate encounter. The Almighty, you see, watches over the destinies of Catholic Spain.”

  There was no trace of humor or urbanity now in Captain Blood. His light eyes blazed: his face was set.

  He rose, relinquishing the Spaniard to his men. “Make him fast,” he bade them. “Truss him, wrist and heel, but don’t hurt him—not so much as a hair of his precious head.”

  The injunction was very necessary. Frenzied by the thought that they were likely to exchange the slavery from which they had so lately escaped for a slavery still worse, they would have torn the Spaniard limb from limb upon the spot. And if they now obeyed their Captain and refrained, it was only because the sudden steely note in his voice promised for Don Diego Valdez something far more exquisite than death.

  “You scum! You dirty pirate! You man of honor!” Captain Blood apostrophized his prisoner.

  But Don Diego looked up at him and laughed.

  “You un
derrated me.” He spoke English, so that all might hear. “I tell you that I was not fear death, and I show you that I was not fear it. You no understand. You just an English dog.”

  “Irish, if you please,” Captain Blood corrected him. “And your parole, you tyke of Spain?”

  “You think I give my parole to leave you sons of filth with this beautiful Spanish ship, to go make war upon other Spaniards! Ha!” Don Diego laughed in his throat. “You fool! You can kill me. Pish! It is very well. I die with my work well done. In less than an hour you will be the prisoners of Spain, and the Cinco Llagas will go belong to Spain again.”

  Captain Blood regarded him steadily out of a face which, if impassive, had paled under its deep tan. About the prisoner, clamant, infuriated, ferocious, the rebels-convict surged, almost literally “athirst for his blood.”

  “Wait,” Captain Blood imperiously commanded, and turning on his heel, he went aside to the rail. As he stood there deep in thought, he was joined by Hagthorpe, Wolverstone, and Ogle the gunner. In silence they stared with him across the water at that other ship. She had veered a point away from the wind, and was running now on a line that must in the end converge with that of the Cinco Llagas.

  “In less than half-an-hour,” said Blood presently, “we shall have her athwart our hawse, sweeping our decks with her guns.”

  “We can fight,” said the one-eyed giant with an oath.

  “Fight!” sneered Blood. “Undermanned as we are, mustering a bare twenty men, in what case are we to fight? No, there would be only one way. To persuade her that all is well aboard, that we are Spaniards, so that she may leave us to continue on our course.”

  “And how is that possible?” Hagthorpe asked.

  “It isn’t possible,” said Blood. “If it were . . .” And then he broke off, and stood musing, his eyes upon the green water. Ogle, with a bent for sarcasm, interposed a suggestion bitterly.

  “We might send Don Diego de Espinosa in a boat manned by his Spaniards to assure his brother the Admiral that we are all loyal subjects of his Catholic Majesty.”

  The Captain swung round, and for an instant looked as if he would have struck the gunner. Then his expression changed: the light of inspiration was in his glance.

  “Bedad! ye’ve said it. He doesn’t fear death, this damned pirate; but his son may take a different view. Filial piety’s mighty strong in Spain.” He swung on his heel abruptly, and strode back to the knot of men about his prisoner. “Here!” he shouted to them. “Bring him below.” And he led the way down to the waist, and thence by the booby hatch to the gloom of the ’tween-decks, where the air was rank with the smell of tar and spun yarn. Going aft he threw open the door of the spacious wardroom, and went in followed by a dozen of the hands with the pinioned Spaniard. Every man aboard would have followed him but for his sharp command to some of them to remain on deck with Hagthorpe.

  In the ward-room the three stern chasers were in position, loaded, their muzzles thrusting through the open ports, precisely as the Spanish gunners had left them.

  “Here, Ogle, is work for you,” said Blood, and as the burly gunner came thrusting forward through the little throng of gaping men, Blood pointed to the middle chaser: “Have that gun hauled back,” he ordered.

  When this was done, Blood beckoned those who held Don Diego.

  “Lash him across the mouth of it,” he bade them, and whilst, assisted by another two, they made haste to obey, he turned to the others. “To the roundhouse, some of you, and fetch the Spanish prisoners. And you, Dyke, go up and bid them set the flag of Spain aloft.”

  Don Diego, with his body stretched in an arc across the cannon’s mouth, legs and arms lashed to the carriage on either side of it, eyeballs rolling in his head, glared maniacally at Captain Blood. A man may not fear to die, and yet be appalled by the form in which death comes to him.

  From frothing lips he hurled blasphemies and insults at his tormentor.

  “Foul barbarian! Inhuman savage! Accursed heretic! Will it not content you to kill me in some Christian fashion?”

  Captain Blood vouchsafed him a malignant smile, before he turned to meet the fifteen manacled Spanish prisoners, who were thrust into his presence.

  Approaching, they had heard Don Diego’s outcries; at close quarters now they beheld with horror-stricken eyes his plight. From amongst them a comely, olive-skinned stripling, distinguished in bearing and apparel from his companions, started forward with an anguished cry of “Father!”

  Writhing in the arms that made haste to seize and hold him, he called upon heaven and hell to avert this horror, and lastly, addressed to Captain Blood an appeal for mercy that was at once fierce and piteous. Considering him, Captain Blood thought with satisfaction that he displayed the proper degree of filial piety.

  He afterwards confessed that for a moment he was in danger of weakening, that for a moment his mind rebelled against the pitiless thing it had planned. But to correct the sentiment he evoked a memory of what these Spaniards had performed in Bridgetown. Again he saw the white face of that child Mary Traill as she fled in horror before the jeering ruffian whom he had slain, and other things even more unspeakable seen on that dreadful evening rose now before the eyes of his memory to stiffen his faltering purpose. The Spaniards had shown themselves without mercy or sentiment or decency of any kind; stuffed with religion, they were without a spark of that Christianity, the Symbol of which was mounted on the mainmast of the approaching ship. A moment ago this cruel, vicious Don Diego had insulted the Almighty by his assumption that He kept a specially benevolent watch over the destinies of Catholic Spain. Don Diego should be taught his error.

  Recovering the cynicism in which he had approached his task, the cynicism essential to its proper performance, he commanded Ogle to kindle a match and remove the leaden apron from the touch-hole of the gun that bore Don Diego. Then, as the younger Espinosa broke into fresh intercessions mingled with imprecations, he wheeled upon him sharply.

  “Peace!” he snapped. “Peace, and listen! It is no part of my intention to blow your father to hell as he deserves, or indeed to take his life at all.”

  Having surprised the lad into silence by that promise—a promise surprising enough in all the circumstances—he proceeded to explain his aims in that faultless and elegant Castilian of which he was fortunately master—as fortunately for Don Diego as for himself.

  “It is your father’s treachery that has brought us into this plight and deliberately into risk of capture and death aboard that ship of Spain. Just as your father recognized his brother’s flagship, so will his brother have recognized the Cinco Llagas. So far, then, all is well. But presently the Encarnacion will be sufficiently close to perceive that here all is not as it should be. Sooner or later, she must guess or discover what is wrong, and then she will open fire or lay us board and board. Now, we are in no case to fight, as your father knew when he ran us into this trap. But fight we will, if we are driven to it. We make no tame surrender to the ferocity of Spain.”

  He laid his hand on the breech of the gun that bore Don Diego.

  “Understand this clearly: to the first shot from the Encarnacion this gun will fire the answer. I make myself clear, I hope?”

  White-faced and trembling, young Espinosa stared into the pitiless blue eyes that so steadily regarded him.

  “If it is clear?” he faltered, breaking the utter silence in which all were standing. “But, name of God, how should it be clear? How should I understand? Can you avert the fight? If you know a way, and if I, or these, can help you to it—if that is what you mean—in Heaven’s name let me hear it.”

  “A fight would be averted if Don Diego de Espinosa were to go aboard his brother’s ship, and by his presence and assurances inform the Admiral that all is well with the Cinco Llagas, that she is indeed still a ship of Spain as her flag now announces. But of course Don Diego cannot go in person, because he is . . . otherwise engaged. He has a slight touch of fever—shall we say?—that detains him in hi
s cabin. But you, his son, may convey all this and some other matters together with his homage to your uncle. You shall go in a boat manned by six of these Spanish prisoners, and I—a distinguished Spaniard delivered from captivity in Barbados by your recent raid—will accompany you to keep you in countenance. If I return alive, and without accident of any kind to hinder our free sailing hence, Don Diego shall have his life, as shall every one of you. But if there is the least misadventure, be it from treachery or ill-fortune—I care not which—the battle, as I have had the honor to explain, will be opened on our side by this gun, and your father will be the first victim of the conflict.”

  He paused a moment. There was a hum of approval from his comrades, an anxious stirring among the Spanish prisoners. Young Espinosa stood before him, the color ebbing and flowing in his cheeks. He waited for some direction from his father. But none came. Don Diego’s courage, it seemed, had sadly waned under that rude test. He hung limply in his fearful bonds, and was silent. Evidently he dared not encourage his son to defiance, and presumably was ashamed to urge him to yield. Thus, he left decision entirely with the youth.

  “Come,” said Blood. “I have been clear enough, I think. What do you say?”

  Don Esteban moistened his parched lips, and with the back of his hand mopped the anguish-sweat from his brow. His eyes gazed wildly a moment upon the shoulders of his father, as if beseeching guidance. But his father remained silent. Something like a sob escaped the boy.

  “I . . . I accept,” he answered at last, and swung to the Spaniards. “And you—you will accept too,” he insisted passionately. “For Don Diego’s sake and for your own—for all our sakes. If you do not, this man will butcher us all without mercy.”