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 for ever.
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 Curacao 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, close-hauled.
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 Curacao?”
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 ingles! 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 humour 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 honour!” Captain Blood apostrophized his prisoner.
But Don Diego looked up at him and laughed.
“You underrated 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....” 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!