The Fortunes of Captain Blood
( Captain Blood - 3 )
Rafael Sabatini
Captain Blood, the remarkable physician turned pirate returns for more thrilling adventures at sea. Time and again, he falls headlong into deep peril, each time emerging victorious. Yet when everything is stacked against him, can he keep his honour until the bitter end?
The Fortunes of Captain Blood
Rafael Sabatini
Episode 1
THE DRAGON'S JAW
I
She was a beautiful ship, in the frigate class, fashioned, not merely in her lines, but in her details, with an extreme of that loving care that Spanish builders not infrequently bestowed. She had been named, as if to blend piety with loyalty, the San Felipe, and she had been equipped with a fastidiousness to match the beauty of her lines.
The great cabin, flooded with sunlight from the tall stern windows of horn, which now stood open above the creaming wake, had been made luxurious by richly carved furnishings, by hangings of green damask and by the gilded scrollwork of the bulkheads. Here Peter Blood, her present owner, bending over the Spaniard who reclined on a day bed by the stern locker, was reverting for the moment to his original trade of surgery. His hands, as strong as they were shapely, and by deftness rendered as delicate of touch as a woman's, had renewed the dressing of the Spaniard's thigh, where the fractured bone had pierced the flesh. He made now a final adjustment of the strappings that held the splint in place, stood up, and by a nod dismissed the negro steward who had been his acolyte.
'It is very well, Don Ilario.' He spoke quietly in a Spanish that was fluent and even graceful. 'I can now give you my word that you will walk on your two legs again.'
A wan smile dispelled some of the shadows from the hollows which suffering had dug in the patient's patrician countenance. 'For that,' he said, 'the thanks to God and you. A miracle.'
'No miracle at all. Just surgery.'
'Ah! But the surgeon, then? That is the miracle. Will men believe me when I say I was made whole again by Captain Blood?'
The Captain, tall and lithe, was in the act of rolling down the sleeves of his fine cambric shirt. Eyes startlingly blue under black eyebrows, in a hawk–face tanned to the colour of mahogany, gravely considered the Spaniard.
'Once a surgeon, always a surgeon,' he said, as if by way of explanation. 'And I was a surgeon once, as you may have heard.'
'As I have discovered for myself, to my profit. But by what queer alchemy of Fate does a surgeon become a buccaneer?'
Captain Blood smiled reflectively. 'My troubles came upon me from considering only — as in your case — a surgeon's duty; from beholding in a wounded man a patient, without concern for how he came by his wounds. He was a poor rebel who had been out with the Duke of Monmouth. Who comforts a rebel is himself a rebel. So runs the law among Christian men. I was taken red–handed in the abominable act of dressing his wounds, and for that I was sentenced to death. The penalty was commuted, not from mercy. Slaves were needed in the plantations. With a shipload of other wretches, I was carried overseas to be sold in Barbados. I escaped, and I think I must have died at somewhere about the time that Captain Blood came to life. But the ghost of the surgeon still walks in the body of the buccaneer, as you have found, Don Ilario.'
'To my great profit and deep gratitude. And the ghost still practises the dangerous charity that slew the surgeon?'
'Ah!' The vivid eyes flashed him a searching look, observed the flush on the Spaniard's pallid cheekbones, the queer expression of his glance.
'You are not afraid that history may repeat itself?'
'I do not care to be afraid of anything,' said Captain Blood, and he reached for his coat. He settled to his shoulders the black satin garment rich with silver lace, adjusted before a mirror the costly Mechlin at his throat, shook out the curls of his black periwig, and stood forth, an elegant incarnation of virility, more proper to the ante–chambers of the Escurial than to the quarter–deck of a buccaneer ship.
'You must rest now and endeavour to sleep until eight bells is made. You show no sign of fever. But tranquillity is still my prescription for you. At eight bells I will return.'
The patient, however, showed no disposition to be tranquil.
'Don Pedro… Before you go… Wait. This situation puts me to shame. I cannot lie so under this great obligation to you. I sail under false colours.'
Blood's shaven lips had an ironic twist. 'I have, myself, found it convenient at times.'
'Ah, but how different! My honour revolts.' Abruptly, his dark eyes steadily meeting the Captain's, he continued: 'You know me only as one of four shipwrecked Spaniards you rescued from that rock of the St Vincent Keys and have generously undertaken to land at San Domingo. Honour insists that you should know more.'
Blood seemed mildly amused. 'I doubt if you could add much to my knowledge. You are Don Ilario de Saavedra, the King of Spain's new Governor of Hispaniola. Before the gale that wrecked you, your ship formed part of the squadron of the Marquis of Riconete, who is to co–operate with you in the Caribbean in the extermination of that endemonized pirate and buccaneer, that enemy of God and Spain, whose name is Peter Blood.'
Don Ilario's blank face betrayed the depth of his astonishment. 'Virgen Santissima — Virgin Most Holy! You know that?'
'With commendable prudence you put your commission in your pocket when your ship was about to founder. With a prudence no less commendable, I took a look at it soon after you came aboard. We are not fastidious in my trade.'
If the simple explanation removed one astonishment, it replaced it by another. 'And in spite of that, you not only use me tenderly, you actually convey me to San Domingo!' Then his expression changed. 'Ah, I see. You trust my gratitude, and…'
But there Captain Blood interrupted him. 'Gratitude?' He laughed. 'It is the last emotion in which I should put my trust. I trust to nothing but myself, sir. I have told you that I do not care to be afraid of anything. Your obligation is not to the buccaneer, it is to the surgeon; and that is an obligation to a ghost. So dismiss it. Do not trouble your mind with problems of where your duty lies: whether to me or to your king. I am forewarned. That is enough for me. Give yourself peace, Don Ilario.'
He departed, leaving the Spaniard bewildered and bemused.
Coming out into the waist, where some two score of his buccaneers, the half of the ship's full company, were idling, he detected a sullenness in the air, which earlier had been fresh and clear. There had, however, been no steadiness in the weather since the hurricane some ten days ago, on the morrow of which he had rescued the injured Don Ilario and his three companions from the rocky islet on which the storm had cast them up. It was due to these country winds of some violence, with intermittent breathless calms, that the San Felipe was still no nearer to her destination than a point some twenty miles south of Saona. She was barely crawling over a gently heaving oily sea of deepest violet, her sails alternately swelling and sagging. The distant highlands of Hispaniola on the starboard quarter, which earlier had been clearly visible, had vanished now behind an ashen haze.
Chaffinch, the sailing master, standing by the whip staff at the break of the poop, spoke to him as he passed. 'There's more mischief coming, Captain. I begin to doubt if we'll ever make San Domingo. We've a Jonah aboard.'
So far as the mischief went, Chaffinch was not mistaken. It came on to blow from the west at noon, and brought up such a storm that his lightly expressed doubt of ever making San Domingo came before midnight to be seriously entertained by every man aboard. Under a deluge of rain, to the crash of thunder, and with great seas pounding over her, the San Felipe rode out a gale that bore her s
teadily northwestwards. Not until daybreak did the last of the hurricane sweep past her, leaving her, dipping and heaving on a black sea of long smooth rollers, to cast up her damage and lick her wounds. Her poop–rail had been shorn away, and her swivel–guns had gone with it overboard. From the boom amidships one of her boats had been carried off, and some parts of the wreckage of another lay tangled in the forechains.
But of all that she had suffered above deck the most serious damage was to her mainmast. It had been sprung, and was not merely useless but a source of danger. Against all this, however, they could set it that the storm had all but swept them to their destination. Less than five miles ahead, to the north, stood El Rosarto, beyond which lay San Domingo. Into the Spanish waters of that harbour and under the guns of King Philip's fortresses, Don Ilario, for his own sake, must supply them with safe conduct.
It was still early morning, brilliant now and sparkling after the tempest, when the battered ship, with mizzen and foresails ballooning to the light airs, but not a rag on her mainmast save the banner of Castile at its summit, staggered past the natural breakwater, which the floods of the Ozama have long since eroded, and came by the narrow eastern passage that was known as the Dragon's Jaw into the harbour of San Domingo.
She found eight fathoms close alongside of a shore that was reared like a mole on a foundation of coral, forming an island less than a quarter of a mile in width by nearly a mile in length, with a shallow ridge along the middle of it crowned by some clusters of cabbage–palms. Here the San Felipe dropped anchor and fired a gun to salute the noblest city of New Spain across the spacious harbour.
White and fair that city stood in its emerald setting of wide savannahs, a place of squares and palaces and churches that might have been transported from Castile, dominated by the spire of the cathedral that held the ashes of Columbus.
There was a stir along the white mole, and soon a string of boats came speeding towards the San Felipe, led by a gilded barge of twenty oars, trailing the red–and–yellow flag of Spain. Under a red awning fringed with gold sat a portly, swarthy, blue–jowled gentleman in pale–brown taffetas and a broad plumed hat, who wheezed and sweated when presently he climbed the accommodation–ladder to the waist of the San Felipe.
There Captain Blood, in black–and–silver splendour, stood to receive him beside the day–bed on which the helpless Don Ilario had been carried from the cabin. In attendance upon him stood his three shipwrecked companions, and for background there was a file of buccaneers, tricked out in headpieces and corselets to look like Spanish infantry, standing with ordered muskets.
But Don Clemente Pedroso, the retiring Governor, whom Don Ilario came to replace, was not deceived. A year ago, off Puerto Rico, on the deck of a galleon that Captain Blood had boarded and sacked, Pedroso had stood face to face with the buccaneer, and Blood's was not a countenance that was easily forgotten. Don Clemente checked abruptly in his advance. Into his swarthy, pear–shaped face came a blend of fear and fury.
Urbanely, plumed hat in hand, the Captain bowed to him.
'Your Excellency's memory honours me, I think. But do not suppose that I fly false colours.' He pointed aloft to the flag which had earned the San Felipe the civility of this visit. 'That is due to the presence aboard of Don Ilario de Saavedra, King Philip's new Governor of Hispaniola.'
Don Clemente lowered his eyes to the pallid, proud face of the man on the day–bed, and stood speechless, breathing noisily, whilst Don Ilario in a few words explained the situation and proffered a commission still legible if sadly blurred by seawater. The three Spaniards who had been rescued with him were also presented, and there was assurance that all further confirmation would be supplied by the Marquis of Riconete, the Admiral of the Ocean–Sea, whose squadron should very soon be at San Domingo.
In a scowling silence Don Clemente listened; in scowling silence he scanned the new Governor's commission. Thereafter he strove, from prudence, to wrap in a cold dignity the rage which the situation and the sight of Captain Blood aroused in him.
But he was in obvious haste to depart. 'My barge, Don Ilario, is at your Excellency's orders. There is, I think, nothing to detain us.'
And he half turned away scorning in his tremendous dignity further to notice Captain Blood.
'Nothing,' said Don Ilario, 'beyond expressions of gratitude to my preserver and provision for his requital.'
Don Clemente, without turning, answered sourly. 'Naturally, I suppose, it becomes necessary to permit him a free withdrawal.'
'I should be shamed by so poor and stingy an acknowledgment,' said Don Ilario, 'especially in the present condition of his ship. It is a poor enough return for the great service he has rendered me to permit him to supply himself here with wood and water and fresh victuals and with boats to replace those which he has lost. He must also be accorded sanctuary at San Domingo to carry out repairs.'
Captain Blood interposed. 'For those repairs I need not be troubling San Domingo. The island here will excellently serve, and, by your leave, Don Clemente, I shall temporarily take possession of it.'
Don Clemente, who had stood fuming during Don Ilario's announcement, swung about now and exploded. 'By my leave?' His face was yellow. 'I render thanks to God and His Saints that I am relieved of that shame since Don Ilario is now the Governor.'
Saavedra frowned. He spoke with languid sternness.
'You will bear that in your memory, if you please, Don Clemente, and trim your tone to it.'
'Oh, your Excellency's servant.' The deposed Governor bowed in raging irony. 'It is, of course, yours to command how long this enemy of God and of Spain shall enjoy the hospitality and protection of His Catholic Majesty.'
'For as long as he may need so as to carry out his repairs.'
'I see. And once these are effected, he is, of course, to be free to depart, so that he may continue to harass and plunder the ships of Spain?'
Frostily Saavedra answered: 'He has my word that he shall be free to go, and that for forty–eight hours thereafter there shall be no pursuit or other measure against him.'
'And he has your word for that? By all the Hells! He has your word…'
Blandly Captain Blood cut in. 'And it occurs to me that it would be prudent to have your word as well, my friend.'
He was moved by no fear for himself, but only by generosity to Don Ilario: to link the old Governor and the new in responsibility, so that Don Clemente might not hereafter make for his successor the mischief of which Blood perceived him capable.
Don Clemente was aghast. Furiously he waved his fat hands. 'My word? My word!' He choked with rage. His countenance swelled as if it would burst. 'You think I'll pass my word to a pirate rogue? You think…'
'Oh, as you please. If you prefer it I can put you under hatches and in irons, and keep both you and Don Ilario aboard until I am ready to sail again.'
'It's an outrage.'
Captain Blood shrugged. 'You may call it that. I call it holding hostages.'
Don Clemente glared at him with increasing malice. 'I must protest. Under constraint…'
'There's no constraint at all. You'll give me your word, or I'll put you in irons. Ye've a free choice. Where's the constraint?'
Then Don Ilario cut in. 'Come, sir, come! This wrangling is monstrously ungracious. You'll pledge your word, sir, or take the consequences.'
And so, for all his bitterness, Don Clemente suffered the reluctant pledge to be wrung from him.
After that, in contrast with his furious departure was Don Ilario's gracious leave–taking when they were about to lower his day–bed in slings to the waiting barge. He and Captain Blood parted with mutual compliments and expressions of goodwill, which it was perfectly understood should nowise hinder the active hostility imposed by duty upon Don Ilario once the armistice were at an end.
Blood smiled as he watched the red barge with its trailing flag ploughing with flash of oars across the harbour towards the mole. Some of the lesser boats went with it. Others, lad
en with fruit and vegetables, fresh meat and fish, remained on the flank of the San Felipe, little caring, in their anxiety to trade their wares, that she might be a pirate.
Wolverstone, the one–eyed giant who had shared Blood's escape from Barbados and had since been one of his closest associates, leaned beside him on the bulwarks. 'Ye'll not be trusting overmuch, I hope, to the word of that flabby, blue–faced Governor?'
'It's hateful, so it is, to be by nature suspicious, Ned. Hasn't he pledged himself, and would ye do him the wrong to suspect his bona fides? I cry shame on you, Ned; but all the same we'll be removing temptation from him, so we will, by fortifying ourselves on the island here.'
II
They set about it at once, with the swift, expert activity of their kind. Gangways were constructed, connecting the ship with the island, and on that strip of sand and coral they landed the twenty–four guns of the San Felipe, and so emplaced them that they commanded the harbour. They erected a tent of sail–cloth, felling palms to supply the poles, set up a forge, and, having unstepped the damaged mast, hauled it ashore so that they might repair it there. Meanwhile the carpenters aboard went about making good the damage to the upper works, whilst parties of buccaneers in the three boats supplied to them by the orders of Don Ilario went to procure wood and water and the necessary stores, for all of which Captain Blood scrupulously paid.
For two days they laboured without disturbance or distraction. When on the morning of the third day the alarm came, it was not from the harbour or the town before them, but from the open sea at their backs.
Captain Blood was fetched ashore at sunrise, so that from the summit of the ridge he might survey the approaching peril. With him went Wolverstone and Chaffinch, Hagthorpe, the West Country gentleman who shared their fortunes, and Ogle, who once had been a gunner in the King's Navy.
Less than a mile away they beheld a squadron of five tall ships approaching in a bravery of ensigns and pennants, all canvas spread to the light but quickening morning airs. Even as they gazed, a white cloud of smoke blossomed like a cauliflower on the flank of the leading galleon, and the boom of a saluting gun came to arouse a city that as yet was barely stirring.
The Fortunes of Captain Blood cb-3 Page 1