The Fortunes of Captain Blood cb-3

by Rafael Sabatini

  There was no need now for haste. It took the buccaneer some time to clear the wreckage of her bowsprit, and it was quite an hour before she was beating back, close–hauled against the breeze, to take her revenge.

  In that most valuable respite, Araña had got the guns into the cover of the grove a quarter of a mile away. Thither Blood might have retreated to join him. But, greatly daring, he stayed, first to repeat his earlier tactics. This time, however, his fire went wide, and the full force of the red ship's broadside came smashing into the fort to open another wound in its crumbling flank. Then, infuriated perhaps by the mishap suffered, and judging, no doubt, from the fort's previous volley that only a few of its guns remained effective and that these would now be empty the buccaneer ran in close, and, going about, delivered her second broadside at point–blank range.

  The result was an explosion that shook the buildings in San Juan, a mile away.

  Blood felt as if giant hands had seized him, lifted him and cast him violently from them upon the subsiding ground. He lay winded and half stunned, while rubble came spattering down in a titanic hailstorm; and to the roar as of a continuous cataract, the walls of the fort slid down as if suddenly turned liquid, and came to rest in a shapeless heap of ruin.

  An unlucky shot had found the powder–magazine. It was the end of the fort.

  The cheer that came over the water from the buccaneer ship was like an echo of the explosion.

  Blood roused himself, shook himself free of the mortar and rubble in which he was half buried, coughed the dust from his throat, and made a mental examination of his condition. His hip was hurt, but the gradually subsiding pain assured him that there was no permanent damage. He got slowly to his knees, still half dazed, then, at last, to his feet. Badly shaken, his hands cut and bleeding, smothered in dust and grime, he was, at least, whole. He had broken nothing. But of the twelve who had been with him he found only five as sound as they had been before the explosion; a sixth lay groaning with a broken thigh, a seventh sat nursing a dislocated shoulder. The other five were gone, buried in that heaped–up mound.

  He collected wits that had been badly scattered, straightened his dusty periwig, and decided that there could be no purpose in lingering on this rubbish–heap that lately had been a fort. To the five survivors he ordered the care of their two crippled fellows, saw these borne away towards the pimento grove, and went staggering after them.

  By the time he reached the shelter of that belt of perfumed trees, the buccaneers were disposing for the tactics that logically followed upon the destruction of the fort. Their preparations for landing were clearly discernible to Blood as he paused on the edge of the grove to observe them, shading his eyes from the glare of the sun. He saw that five boats had been lowered, and that, manned to over–crowding, these were pulling away for the beach, whilst the red ship rode now at anchor to cover the landing.

  There was no time to lose. Blood entered the cool green shade of the plantation, where Araña and his men awaited him. He approved the emplacement there of the guns unsuspected by the buccaneers, and charged with canister as he had directed. Carefully judging the spot, less than a mile away, where the enemy should come ashore, he ordered and himself supervised the training of the guns upon it. He took for mark a fishing–boat that stood upside down upon the beach, half a cable's length from the water's creamy edge.

  'We'll wait,' he explained to Araña, 'until those sons of dogs are in line with it, and then we'll give them a passport into Hell.' From that, so as to beguile the waiting moments, he went on to lecture the Spanish captain upon the finer details of the art of war.

  'You begin to perceive the advantages that may lie in departing from school–room rules and preconceptions, and in abandoning a fort that can't be held, so as to improvise another one that can be. By these tactics we hold those ruffians at our mercy. In a moment you'll see them swept to perdition, and victory plucked from the appearance of defeat.'

  No doubt it is what would have happened but for the supervention of the unexpected. As a matter of fact, Captain Araña was having an even more instructive morning than Captain Blood intended. He was now to receive a demonstration of the futility of divided command.

  IV

  The trouble came from Don Sebastian, who, meanwhile, had unfortunately not been idle. As Captain–General of Puerto Rico he conceived it to be his duty to arm every man of the town who was able to lift a weapon. Without taking the precaution of consulting Don Pedro, or even of informing him of what he proposed, he had brought the improvised army, some five or six score strong, under cover of the white buildings, to within a hundred yards of the water. There he held them in ambush, to launch them in a charge against the landing buccaneers at the very last moment. In this way he calculated to make it impossible for the ship's artillery to play upon his force, and he was exultantly proud of his tactical conception.

  In themselves these tactics were as sound as they were obvious; but they suffered from the unsuspected disadvantage that in serving to baulk the buccaneer gunners on the ship, they no less baulked the Spanish battery in the grove. Before Blood could deliver the fire he was holding, he beheld to his dismay the yelling improvised army of Puerto Rican townsfolk go charging down the beach upon the invader, so that in a moment all was a heaving, writhing, battling, screaming press, in which friend and foe were inextricably mixed.

  In this confusion that fighting mob surged up the beach slowly at first, but steadily gathering impetus in a measure as Don Sebastian's forces gave way before the fury of little more than half their number of buccaneers. Firing, and shouting, they all vanished together into the town, leaving some bodies behind them on the sands.

  Whilst Captain Blood was cursing Don Sebastian's untimely interference, Captain Araña was urging a rescue. He received yet another lesson.

  'Battles are not won by heroics, my friend, but by calculation. The ruffians aboard will number at least twice those that have been landed; and these are by now masters of the situation, thanks to the heroics of Don Sebastian. If we march in now, we shall be taken in the rear by the next landing–party and thus find ourselves caught between two fires. So we'll wait, if you please, for the second landing–party, and when we've destroyed that, we'll deal with the blackguards who are by now in possession of the town. Thus we make sure.'

  The time of waiting, however, was considerable. In each of the boats only two men had been left to pull back to the ship, and their progress was slow. Slow, too, was the second loading and return. So that close upon two hours had passed since the first landing before the second party leapt ashore.

  It may have appeared to this second party that there was no need for haste, since all the signs went clearly to show that the feeble opposition offered by San Juan had already been fully overcome.

  Therefore no haste they made even when their keels grated on the beach. In leisurely fashion they climbed out of the boats, a motley crowd, like that which had composed the first landing–party: some in hats, some few in morions, others with heads swathed in dirty, gaudy scarves, and offering the same variety in the remainder of their dress. It was representative of every class, from the frank buccaneer in cotton shirt and raw–hide breeches to the hidalgo in a laced coat, whilst here and there a back–and–breast supplied a more military equipment. They were uniform at least in that everybody was scarved by a bandoleer, every shoulder bore a musket, and from every belt hung a sword of some description.

  They numbered perhaps fifty, and one who seemed set in authority, and wore a gaudy scarlet coat with tarnished lace, marshalled them at the water's edge into a parody of military formation, then, placing himself at their head, waved his sword and gave the word to march.

  They marched, breaking into song, so as to supply a rhythm. Raucously bawling their lewd ditty, they advanced in close order, whilst in the pimento grove the gunners blew on their matches, their eyes on Captain Blood, who watched and waited, his right arm raised. At last the raiders were in line with the bo
at which had served the Spaniards for a mark. Blood's arm fell, and five guns were touched off as one.

  That hail of canister swept away the head of the column together with the sword–waving leader in his fine red coat. The unexpectedness of the blow struck the remainder with a sudden palsy, from which few recovered in time. For twice more did Blood's arm rise and fall, and twice more did the charge of five guns mow through those too serried ranks, until almost all that remained of them were heaped about the beach below, some writhing and some still. A few, a half–dozen perhaps, escaped miraculously whole and unscathed, and these, not daring to return to the boats which stood unmanned and empty where they had been drawn up, were making for the shelter of the town, and wriggling on their stomachs lest yet another murderous blast should sweep death across that beach. Captain Blood smiled terribly into the startled eyes of Captain Araña. He resumed the military education of that worthy Spanish officer.

  'We may advance now with confidence, Captain, since we have made our rear secure from attack. You may have observed that with deplorable rashness the pirates have employed all their boats in their landings. What men remain aboard that ship are safely marooned in her.'

  'But they have guns,' objected Araña. 'What if in vindictiveness they open fire upon the town?'

  'Whilst their captain and his first landing–party are in it? Not likely. Still, so as to make sure, we'll leave a dozen men here to serve these guns. If those on board should turn desperate and lose their heads, a volley or two will drive them out of range.'

  Dispositions made, an orderly company of fifty Spanish musketeers, unsuspected by the buccaneers to have survived the demolition of the fort, were advancing from the pimento grove at the double upon the town.

  V

  The pirate captain — whose name has not survived — was set down by Blood as a lubberly idiot, who, like all idiots, took too much for granted, otherwise he would have been at pains to make sure that the force which had opposed his landing comprised the full strength of San Juan.

  Ludicrous, too, was the grasping covetousness which had inspired that landing. In this Captain Blood accounted him just a cheap thief, who stayed to rake up crumbs where a feast was spread. With the great prize for which the scoundrel played, the two treasure–ships which he had chased across the Caribbean from Cartagena now lying all but at his mercy, it was a stupid rashness not to have devoted all his energy to making himself master of them at once. From the circumstance that those ships had never fired a gun, he must have inferred — if he was capable of inferences — that the crews were ashore; and if he was not capable of inferences, his telescope — and Captain Blood supposed that the fellow would at least possess a telescope — should have enabled him to ascertain the fact by observation.

  But here Blood's reasoning is possibly at fault. For it may well have been the actual perception that the ships were unmanned, and easily to be reduced into possession, which induced the captain to let them wait until his excessive greed should have been satisfied by the plunder of the town. After all, he will have remembered, there was often great store of wealth in these cities of New Spain, and there would be a royal treasury in the keeping of the governor. It would be just such a temptation as this which had led him to plunder the city of Cartagena whilst those treasure–ships were putting to sea. Evidently not even this had sufficed to teach him that who seeks to grasp too much ends by holding nothing; and here he was in San Juan pursuing the same inexpert methods, and pursuing them in the same disgusting manner as that in which at Cartagena he had dishonoured — as Captain Blood was now fully persuaded — the name of the great buccaneer leader which he had assumed.

  I will not say that in what he had done Captain Blood was not actuated by the determination that no interloper should come and snatch from him the prize for which he had laboured and the capture of which his dispositions had rendered easy, but I account it beyond doubt that his manner of doing it gathered an unusual ferocity because of his deep resentment of that foul impersonation at Cartagena and the horrors perpetrated there in his name. The sins of a career which harsh fortune had imposed upon him were heavy enough already. He could not patiently suffer that still worse offences should be attributed to him as a result of the unrestrained methods of this low pretender and his crew of ruthless blackguards.

  So it was a grimly resolute, not to say a vindictive, Captain Blood who marched that little column of Spanish musketeers to clean up a place which his impersonator would now be defiling. As they approached the town gate the sounds that met them abundantly justified his assumptions of the nature of the raider's activities.

  The buccaneer captain had swept invincibly through a place whose resistance had been crushed at the outset. Finding it at his mercy, he had delivered it to his men for pillage. Let them make holiday here awhile in their brutal fashion before settling down to the main business of the raid and possessing themselves of the plate–ships in the harbour. And so that evil crew, composed of the scourings of the gaols of every land, had broken up into groups which had scattered through the town on a voluptuous course of outrage, smashing, burning, pillaging and murdering in sheer lust of destruction.

  For himself the leader marked down what should prove the richest prize in San Juan. With a half–dozen followers he broke into the house of the Captain–General, where Don Sebastian had shut himself up after the rout of his inopportunely improvised force.

  Having laid violent hands upon Don Sebastian and his comely, panic–stricken little lady, the captain delivered over the main plunder of the house to the men who were with him. Two of these, however, he retained, to assist him in the particular kind of robbery upon which he was intent, whilst the other four were left remorselessly to pillage the Spaniard's property and guzzle the fine wines that he had brought from Spain.

  A tall, swarthy raffish fellow of not more than thirty, who had announced himself as Captain Blood, and who flaunted the black and silver that was notoriously Blood's common wear, the pirate sprawled at his ease in Don Sebastian's dining–room. He sat at the head of the long table of dark oak, one leg hooked over the arm of his chair, his plumed hat cocked over one eye, and a leer on his thick, shaven lips.

  Opposite to him, at the table's foot, between two of the captain's ruffians, stood Don Sebastian in shirt and breeches, without his wig, his hands pinioned behind him, his face the colour of lead, yet with defiance in his dark eyes.

  Midway between them, but away from the table, in a tall chair, with her back to one of the open windows, sat Doña Leocadia in a state of terror that brought her to the verge of physical sickness but otherwise robbed her of movement.

  The captain's fingers were busy with a length of whipcord, making knots in it. In slow, mocking tones and in clumsy, scarcely intelligible Spanish, he addressed his victim.

  'So you won't talk, eh? You'ld put me to the trouble of pulling down this damned hovel of yours stone by stone so as to find what I want. Your error, my hidalgo. You'll not only talk, you'll be singing presently. Here's to provide the music.'

  He flung the knotted whipcord up the table, signing to one of his men to take and use it. In a moment it was tightly encircling the Captain–General's brow, and the grinning ape whose dirty fingers had bound it there took up a silver spoon from the Spaniard's sideboard, and passed the handle of it between the cord and the flesh.

  'Hold there,' his captain bade him. 'Now Don Gubernador, you know what's coming if you don't loose your obstinate tongue and tell me where you hide your pieces of eight.' He paused, watching the Spaniard from under lowered eyelids, a curl of contemptuous amusement on his lip. 'If you prefer it, we can give you a lighted match between the fingers, or a hot iron to the soles of your feet. We've all manner of ingenious miracles for restoring speech to the dumb. It's as you please, my friend. But you'll gain nothing by being mute. Come now. These doubloons. Where do you hide them?'

  But the Spaniard, his head high, his lips tight, glared at him in silent detestation.

&n
bsp; The pirate's smile broadened in deepening, contemptuous menace. He sighed. 'Well, well! I'm a patient man. You shall have a minute to think it over. One minute.' He held up a dirty forefinger. 'Time for me to drink this.' He poured himself a bumper of dark, syrupy Malaga from a silver jug, and quaffed it at a draught. He set down the lovely glass so violently that the stem snapped. He used it as an illustration. 'And that's how I'll serve your ugly neck in the end, you Spanish pimp, if you play the mule with me. Now then: these doubloons. Vamos, maldito! Soy Don Pedro Sangre, yo! Haven't you heard that you can't trifle with Captain Blood.'

  Hate continued to glare at him from Don Sebastian's eyes. 'I've heard nothing of you that's as obscene as the reality, you foul pirate dog. I tell you nothing.'

  The lady stirred, and made a whimpering, incoherent sound, that presently resolved itself into speech. 'For pity's sake, Sebastian! In God's name, tell him. Tell him. Let him take all we have. What does it matter?'

  'What, indeed, if ye've no life with which to enjoy it?' the captain mocked him. 'Give heed to your pullet's better sense. No?' He banged the table in anger. 'So be it! Squeeze it out of his cuckoldy head, my lads.' And he settled himself more comfortably in his chair, in expectation of entertainment.

  One of the brigands laid hands upon the spoon he had thrust between cord and brow. But before he had begun to twist it the captain checked him again.

  'Wait. There's perhaps a surer way.' The cruel coarse mouth broadened in a smile. He unhooked his leg from the chair–arm, and sat up. 'These dons be mighty proud o' their women.' He turned, and beckoned Doña Leocadia. 'Aqui, muger! Aqui!' he commanded.

  'Don't heed him, Leocadia,' cried her husband. 'Don't move.'

  'He … he can always fetch me,' she answered, pathetically practical in her disobedience.

  'You hear, fool? It's a pity you've none of her good sense. Come along, madam.'