“’Sblood!” he muttered. “We feared some such Spanish trick. Well, that means I’ve got to hurry.”
“Hurry, Roger?” she breathed. “You mean, you must go—tonight?”
“Morgan must be warned,” Blake told her softly. “Not that I want to go, so soon.”
She pressed close; the touch of her breasts, of her soft, undulant body was a rhythmic, blood-maddening pressure. “It has been so long, Roger,” she gasped. “Can’t you come back—to me?”
He smashed his mouth down on hers until her answering lips became writhing flame against his. “I’ll be back,” he promised, thickly. “As soon as the message has gone. Do you wait for me.”
Tearing himself away from her, he left the alley. In the street, a squat, one-eyed man in the same rough dress fell into step. “What learned you from the jade?” he growled.
“Call her ‘jade’ again and I’ll jam a thumb into the one eye you have left, rascal,” Blake laughed at him. “But the Spanish dogs try to trick us, Dick. Old De Vaca did not go to Cartagena, as we heard. He lays back to Manzanilla, waiting until we attack the town and our decks are stripped of men.”
Black Richard, the huge, bull-muscled giant who led the cutlassed cut-throats of Henry Morgan’s terrible boarding-parties, rumbled from his thick chest. “And how do you know she does not lie?”
“Not to me, she doesn’t lie, Richard. She tells me at such times as all maids tell the truth.”
“Hah! They lie as well to their lovers as to other men…
“To hell with you!”
“For the sake of your neck,” the thick man grumbled, “I hope the wench knows whereof she speaks. What will Morgan do?”
“That I don’t know,” Blake said. “But you get the news to him, as fast as that big carcass can pull oars, and let him decide.”
“I?” Richard parroted. “Do you not return to the ship also?”
“Not I. I have business at Cristobal.”
“’Tis rare business that keeps an officer of Morgan’s ashore in Panama this night. I hope the Spaniards gut you like a turkey.”
“They’ll gut us all if you don’t haul your trouser patches out to Morgan right speedily,” Blake warned him, grinning. They came to a dark, deserted section of the wharf. A skiff bumped against stone facing in the black water below. Black Richard lowered himself, with the agility of a monkey, into it.
“What shall I tell Morgan, when he asks for you,” he growled.
“Tell him I’ve got to put my initials in my share of tomorrow’s loot. Get gone!”
Richard sheered off with one mighty shove and the skiff disappeared seaward. Blake listened for a moment to the hushed rattle of oar-locks. Sound died away to the sucking of waves against stone piling.
There was no shout of alarm from any guarda costa or thick-witted sentry along the sea-wall. So Blake retraced his steps, sticking close to the shadows, into San Cristobal.
Behind the tavern again, he tapped cautiously at the wooden shutter of a certain window. The shutter swung open and he pulled himself up and through the narrow opening. Warm arms came up to meet him.
He strained her yielding body to him and then pulled away the silken mantle which his fingers found between themselves and damp, satin skin. They trailed down her smooth back, to the slim waist-curve above the flares of her hips; hungrily he crushed her to him, found hot, eager lips and kissed her until the young body moulded to his was a writhing caress of abandon.
He felt the naked warmth of her arms about his neck; the firm breasts tortured into flat cushions upon his chest. Blake lifted her and sank to the cot with the girl on his lap. Almost roughly, he bent his face to the pulsing, smooth flesh of her throat.
She pulled at his head, tiny nails digging into his neck, with one hand. The fingers of the other made little, seeking paths of fire down his body. “Roger!” she gasped.
* * * *
Blake watched the sky through the shutter cracks grow brilliant with the rising tropic moon. Beside him, Rosa murmured, “Will Morgan still attack the town, Roger?”
“That I don’t know. Sometime, surely. Perhaps not until we have taken care of the old butcher, De Vaca.”
Her lips were soft against his cheek. “Will you come to me when he does, Roger? The thought of Morgan’s pirates frightens me.”
Something in her voice rang a warning bell in Blake’s consciousness. Before he could think again, the door slammed sharply open and a lantern’s beam blinded him.
The lean, saturnine Spaniard behind the lantern spoke sharply. “Bind him!” Roger Blake whipped an iron fist to one chin as soldiers flooded the room. The man went down in a crash of clanging armor, his jaw shattered, but the others bore Blake down before he could strike another blow.
The lantern swung to Rosa, trying vainly to cover ivory nakedness with two small hands.
The Spanish officer bowed to her. “Well done, querida,” he said, sardonically. “Short of Morgan himself, we could ask no better return for our pieces of silver than the great Roger Blake.”
“Silver!” she cried. Then piteously, “No, Roger, no! Believe me, he lies.”
Her semi-nudity forgotten, she ran to Blake. He laughed and tore her arms from about his neck. She fell back against the cot and lay there, sobbing.
“Your knife, Blake!” the Spaniard snapped.
A soldier yanked it from Blake’s sash and offered it, hilt foremost. “It will give me pleasure, some day, to give you such a blade, other end first, Don Diego,” Blake told him, coolly.
“I’m afraid you’ll not live to see that day,” the other sneered. “Out with him.”
They hustled him roughly out the door and through the sudden quiet, watchful mob in the tavern. There were men of Morgan’s in that crowd, Blake knew. Which or how many, he did not know.
* * * *
But, shackled to a stone pillar in a dank dungeon deep below the great stone fortress of San Cristobal, it seemed he would have plenty of time in which to think of that—and other things. Such was the way in which Roger Blake, trusted lieutenant of the famed Sir Henry Morgan, had been caught, like an inexperienced boy, by the lure of slim legs and a girl’s soft breasts. He cursed himself in a growling sailor’s litany until breathless. But, in the back of his head was, after all, the saving thought that Morgan had been warned.
“Ho! Such language, cockerel!” a deep voice rumbled from the gloom, “How did you happen to run foul of the guard?”
“Black Richard! Didn’t you reach Morgan?”
“Aye,” the voice chuckled. “But, like a fool, I came back to look after you. They took me as I stepped ashore. But you—you have not told me—”
“’Twas the wench, Dick,” Blake told him, bitterly. “You may call her jade, now, to your heart’s content. She betrayed me to Narvaez.”
“Don Diego!” Richard breathed. “The Captain of the Guard! He’d not climb from a warm bed to catch any common sailor. She must have told him who you were.”
“I said she betrayed me, fool.”
“Then…the message, man! The information about De Vaca’s fleet must be false!”
“Of course,” Blake said, dully. “Unless Morgan stands to sea, he is trapped, somehow. They had something devilish in mind or they would never have taken the trouble to dupe me as they have.”
“Not quite correct, Blake,” Don Diego Narvaez spoke from the arched doorway. “The pleasure of seeing you hung will be well worth my trouble.”
Rosa stood close to the Spaniard’s shoulder, her face a disdainful mask as she stared coldly at Roger Blake. “It was really very little trouble, Don Diego,” she said contemptuously.
“He looks not much like the daredevil Blake of whom we had heard such tall tales, does he, chiquita?” Narvaez laughed, pulling her to him. “I think you and I will laugh together often as we think of him chai
ned to the wall like a runaway slave. Or dangling from a rope, as he soon will.”
“You she-turtle!” Blake said, slowly and distinctly, ignoring Narvaez. “You ill-smelling mother of mangy curs! When Morgan’s niggers have done with you, I’ll have them lash you across a hogshead and roll you from one end of Cristobal to the other.”
Black Richard roared. “That nimble brain of yours has come back to you, Roger. May I live to see it!”
“You won’t,” Narvaez promised, wolfishly, turning to leave. But the girl leaped at Blake in fury. She spat full in his face and raked at him with maddened, claw-like fingers. Blake drove her away with a careless, open-handed slap and she reeled back into Narvaez’s arms. Puzzled, Roger Blake watched the guard captain drag her, screaming with rage, from the dungeon. That blow had never touched her!
Something gleamed dully on the floor and he put his foot over it quickly. Barefooted in his seaman’s masquerade, he felt plainly the outline of the dirk. The one he had seen leap from her sash in the tavern!
His head whirling, he leaned back against the rough stone and tried to fit this new piece into the bloody puzzle. Rosa, the drunken lieutenant, the fact that Black Richard was allowed to reach Morgan, unhindered, and then caught as soon as he tried to return—all parts of an elaborate scheme to bring Morgan’s ships into some trap at Manzanilla Point. But why the knife?
It was too much. And there were other, immediate things to be done! Black Richard was growling, “And the next time, Roger, I’ll wager you’ll listen to me and not set out after every pretty leg and wriggling stern that crosses your course.”
“Listen to me,” Blake rasped. “Raise a disturbance that will get that sentry in here. But not too much noise. Fall in a fit…foam at the mouth…but get him here! Quickly, man!”
Tearing strips from his shirt, he bound the haft of the knife securely to the bottom of his foot. With a muttered curse at such fool’s play, Richard clanked his chains, and followed orders. He groaned and gasped, sucking at his lips like a madman. The sentry heard and put his head in.
“Silence, dogs!” he roared. Richard redoubled his efforts, rolling and squirming about the floor as lustily as the length of his shackles would let him. The sentry came in and aimed an angry kick at his ribs.
Blake had measured his distance. Flat on his back, he lay at the utmost limit of the chains fastened to his wrists. He drove his right foot up at the soldier’s middle with all the tautened power in his long body.
The man toppled forward with an agonized grunt, a bloody mess bursting from his riven belly. Winding his long legs about the writhing corpse, Blake dragged it to him until his fingers could reach the keys at his belt.
Freeing himself and Richard, he caught up the cutlass from the dead sentry. They crept cautiously into the corridor and along it toward the winding stairway that led up to the outer air and freedom.
Some sound must have betrayed them. Blake came around a bend in the stairway and looked straight into the muzzle of a musket. It belched flame in his face and a mighty hand struck him across the head, felling him. As he went down, he saw a jumbled picture of Black Richard going down under the clubbed barrel.
* * * *
Light filtered back into his dazed, aching consciousness, his wrists were fast again.
This time, to a wooden post in the center of a low, dim-lit room. Narvaez, the yellow-bearded man whom Rosa had called Don Jaime beside him, stood a few feet away, watching Blake’s fluttering eye-lids.
“It’s a thick skull you own, Blake,” he said shortly. “It turns musket balls like granite.”
Blake looked about the room. Rows of iron ring-bolts in the blood-caked wall and a dozen devilish contrivances about the floor told him what he had already suspected—that he was in the fortress’ torture chamber. He saw Black Richard at the next post and he groaned as his eyes came to the slender figure lashed to the one beyond.
“Rosa!” he gasped.
“Yes, Rosa!” Narvaez bit. “We were afraid that you’d not regain consciousness in time to watch your traitorous mistress keep her appointment with the Iron Maiden. You should not have kept the blade with which you gutted my guard, Blake. For her sake. Too many of us had seen it at her belt.”
“The Iron Maiden! You murdering devil!”
“Aye, he’s that, and more,” Black Richard growled. “But wait ’till Morgan catches him. He’ll wish he’d not delayed to torture women.”
“I fear that Sir Henry Morgan will be long in coming,” Narvaez sneered. “He swallowed your message, hook and all. Even now he makes ready for sea. He will set sail with the tide for Manzanilla Point to fall upon Admiral De Vaca. But De Vaca will be far at sea. Morgan will find himself becalmed, under the fire of shore batteries concealed in the sand which he had not known were there. When he tries to man his boats and beat out to sea, De Vaca will come down with the westerly wind and smash him from the other side. I very much fear that that will be the end of your gallant Morgan.”
Blake gazed past him. “Rosa,” he asked, “why did you do this? What had I done to deserve it?”
She raised wet cheeks. “I love you, Roger,” she said simply. “I did not do it for silver. Don Diego promised that, if I betrayed Morgan and succeeded in keeping you with me, he would spare your life. I…like a fool…believed him. Morgan would be dead and you would be safe and with me. There’d be no more black flag of Morgan’s for you to sail under.”
“Then…the knife… Blake whispered.
“Was all I could do to help you, Roger,” she finished for him, bravely. “After I knew that Don Diego meant to break his promise. Now I will die with you. Roger… I’m not afraid…even of the…the Iron Maiden…if you’ll say that you don’t hate me.”
“She’s a brave wench, at that,” Black Richard muttered. “Being a woman, she couldn’t help being a little treacherous. Tell her that we don’t hold it against her, Roger lad.”
“Enough of this!” Narvaez snarled. “Prepare the Maiden!”
Two soldiers leaped beside a great wooden figure which Blake had steadfastly refused to look upon until now. He shuddered as he saw the monstrous thing, the outside carved into the rough semblance of a woman. A very pious woman; hands folded on chest and eyes raised upward. The men swung it open. Split in half and hinged, it yawned blackly to show the rows of needle-sharp spikes with which the interior was studded.
“Strip her!” Narvaez ordered. The men untied Rosa’s thongs and dragged her into the center of the room. Stripping her bodice off her shoulders, one pawed avidly at the fastenings of her skirt in place below wide-set, perfect breasts.
“Tear it off, fools!” the Spaniard snapped, tongue-tip at his red snarling lips. “She’ll have no more use for it.”
The soldier yanked and the thin cloth split, baring gleaming thighs and soft-moulded hips. Blake snarled, deep in his throat, at the sight of that sweet body. A single, silken wisp remained about her upper thighs.
They pulled her roughly to the maiden and bound her, outspread, by the wrist and ankle within it. A crank turned slowly and the mighty front of the thing began to close.” She forced her quivering lips to smile and whispered. “Good-bye, Roger!”
Blake tore at his bonds, but they gave no more than steel. “Rosa,” he gasped, “God forgive me! You’ll be avenged on these Spanish butchers!”
The halves of the Maiden swung slowly, inexorably together. As they came near closing, the helpless girl within shrieked in a long crescendo of heart wrenching agony.
Narvaez, almost beside himself in a bestial frenzy, flung up his hand. “Open!” he ordered, thickly. His men reversed the crank and the maiden swung apart again.
The girl had fainted. Her limp body hung lifelessly in its cruel shackles. From her ankles, up swelling lovely limbs to curving, stomach and full, pear-shaped breasts, her warm ivory skin gleamed with tiny scarlet drops. It was as if
some heathen worshipers had set the matchless image of their goddess with innumerable little rubies. Some of the drops broke and ran, netting the ivory in a wavering tracery of crimson.
“See?” Narvaez panted. “The Maiden’s embrace has but touched her skin. The next time we show her to you, each of those pin-pricks will be a spouting fountain.” Little trickles of saliva ran down his chin as he screamed, “Close it! All the way, this time!”
The crank began to creak again. Black Richard, frothing like a maniac, went berserk. The rope-maker who had fashioned the lashings about the black one’s wrists had not thought to hold a maddened bull. The ropes parted like so much rotten twine. Richard leaped on Narvaez. Blake cried, “No, Dick! That black devil belongs to me!”
Richard wasn’t listening. He sent Narvaez spinning with one sledge-hammer blow and then Don Jaime went down with a shattered skull. He caught the two men-at-arms over the crank with a great hand on each throat. Huge muscles knotted and Blake heard a sickening crack, and then another. Both men went limp.
Black Richard shook himself like a great dog. Slowly, he took a dagger from one of the two corpses at his feet and slashed Blake’s bonds.
“That was well-done, Richard!” Roger Blake chuckled. He stopped and pulled a rapier from Don Jaime’s lifeless body; then leaped to the Maiden. He cranked it open and took Rosa’s still limp form from its fastening. He lowered her gently to a bench and stooped over her.
Richard’s roar warned him. “Roger! Behind you!” He whirled to face Narvaez, and take the man’s leaping blade across his guard.
“Ah, Don Diego,” he grinned, mirthlessly, “you were mistaken. I do have opportunity to offer you my steel, again—point foremost!” He feinted low and, as the Spaniard’s guard came down, shifted lightning-like to his throat. The needle-pointed rapier slit Narvaez’s jugular, passing through until the hilt smashed against the guard captain’s chin.
“Good eye, lad!” Black Richard grunted. “Now, get something around that wench of yours and let’s be gone before we have the town about our ears.”
“And before the tide sets out with Morgan,” Roger Blake reminded. “There’s still damage to be undone.”
The Spicy-Adventure Page 31