The Chronicles of Captain Blood cb-2, Page 2

  Monsieur d'Ogeron presented him: «Here, Captain, is Mr. Peter Blood to answer you in person.»

  Easterling was almost disconcerted, so different was the man's appearance from anything that he could have imagined. And now this singular escaped convict was bowing with the grace of a courtier, and the buccaneer was reflecting that these fine Spanish clothes would have been filched from the locker of the commander of the Cinco Llagas. He remembered something else.

  «Ah, yes. To be sure. The physician,» he said, and laughed for no apparent reason.

  Mr. Blood began to speak. He had a pleasant voice whose metallic quality was softened by a drawling Irish accent. But what he said made Captain Easterling impatient. It was not his intention to sell the Cinco Llagas.

  Aggressively before the elegant Mr. Blood stood now the buccaneer, a huge, hairy, dangerous–looking man, in coarse shirt and leather breeches, his cropped head swathed in a red–and–yellow kerchief. Aggressively he demanded Blood's reasons for retaining a ship that could be of no use to him and his fellow convicts.

  Blood's voice was softly courteous in reply, which but increased Easterling's contempt of him. Captain Easterling heard himself assured that he was mistaken in his assumptions. It was probable that the fugitives from Barbadoes would employ the vessel to return to Europe, so as to make their way to France or Holland.

  «Maybe we're not quite as ye're supposing us, Captain. One of my companions is a shipmaster, and three others have served in various ways, in the King's Navy.»

  «Bah!» Easterling's contempt exploded loudly. «The notion's crazy. What of the perils of the sea, man? Perils of capture? How will ye face those with your paltry crew? Have ye considered that?»

  Still Captain Blood preserved his pleasant temper. «What we lack in men we make up in weight of metal. Whilst I may not be able to navigate a ship across the ocean, I certainly know how to fight a ship at need. I learnt it under de Ruyter.»

  The famous name gave pause to Easterling's scorn. «Under de Ruyter?»

  «I held a commission with him some years ago.»

  Easterling was plainly dumbfounded. «I thought it's a doctor ye was.»

  «I am that, too,» said the Irishman simply.

  The buccaneer expressed disgusted amazement in a speech liberally festooned with oaths. And then Monsieur d'Ogeron made an end of the interview. «So that you see, Captain Easterling, there is no more to be said in the matter.»

  Since, apparently, there was not, Captain Easterling sourly took his leave. But on his disgruntled way back to the mole he thought that, although there was no more to be said, there was a good deal to be done. Having already looked upon the majestic Cinco Llagas as his own, he was by no means disposed to forgo the prospect of possession.

  Monsieur d'Ogeron also appeared to think that there was still at least a word to be added, and he added it after Easterling's departure. «That,» he said quietly, «is a nasty and a dangerous man. You will do well to bear it in mind, Monsieur Blood.»

  Blood treated the matter lightly. «The warning was hardly necessary. The fellow's person would have announced the blackguard to me even if I had not known him for a pirate.»

  A shadow that was almost suggestive of annoyance flitted across the delicate features of the Governor of Tortuga.

  «Oh, but a filibuster is not of necessity a blackguard, nor is the career of a filibuster one for your contempt, Monsieur Blood. There are those among the buccaneers who do good service to your country and to mine by setting a restraint upon the rapacity of Spain, a rapacity which is responsible for their existence. But for the buccaneers, in these waters where neither France nor England can maintain a fleet, the Spanish dominion would be as absolute as it is inhuman. You will remember that your country honoured Henry Morgan with a knighthood and the deputy–governorship of Jamaica. And he was an even worse pirate, if it is possible, than your Sir Francis Drake, or Hawkins or Frobisher, or several others I could name, whose memory your country also honours.»

  Followed upon this from Monsieur d'Ogeron, who derived considerable revenues from the percentages he levied by way of harbour dues on all prizes brought into Tortuga, solemn counsels that Mr. Blood should follow in the footsteps of those heroes. Being outlawed as he was, in possession of a fine ship and the nucleus of an able following, and being, as he had proved, a man of unusual resource, Monsieur d'Ogeron did not doubt that he would prosper finely as a filibuster.

  Mr. Blood didn't doubt it himself. He never doubted himself. But he did not on that account incline to the notion. Nor, probably, but for that which ensued, would he ever have so inclined, however much the majority of his followers might have sought to persuade him.»

  Among these, Hagthorpe, Pitt, and the giant Wolverstone, who had lost an eye at Sedgemoor, were perhaps the most persistent. It was all very well for Blood, they told him, to plan a return to Europe. He was master of a peaceful art in the pursuit of which he might earn a livelihood in France or Flanders. But they were men of the sea, and knew no other trade. Dyke, who had been a petty officer in the Navy before he embarked on politics and rebellion, held similar views, and Ogle, the gunner, demanded to know of Heaven and Hell and Mr. Blood what guns they thought the British Admiralty would entrust to a man who had been out with Monmouth.

  Things were reaching a stage in which Peter Blood could see no alternative to that of parting from these men whom a common misfortune had endeared to him. It was in this pass that Fate employed the tool she had forged in Captain Easterling.

  One morning, three days after his interview with Mr. Blood at the Governor's house, the Captain came alongside the Cinco Llagas in the cockboat from his sloop. As he heaved his massive bulk into the waist of the ship, his bold dark eyes were everywhere at once. The Cinco Llagas was not only well–found, but irreproachably kept. Her decks were scoured, her cordage stowed, and everything in place. The muskets were ranged in the rack about the mainmast, and the brasswork on the scuttle–butts shone like gold, in the bright sunshine. Not such lubberly fellows, after all, these escaped rebels–convict who composed Mr. Blood's crew.

  And there was Mr. Blood himself in his black and silver, looking like a Grande of Spain, doffing a black hat with a sweep of claret ostrich plume about it, and bowing until the wings of his periwig met across his face like the pendulous ears of a spaniel. With him stood Nathaniel Hagthorpe, a pleasant gentleman of Mr. Blood's own age, whose steady eye and clear–cut face announced the man of breeding; Jeremy Pitt, the flaxen–haired young Somerset shipmaster; the short, sturdy Nicholas Dyke who had been a petty officer and had served under King James when he was Duke of York. There was nothing of the ragamuffin about these, as Easterling had so readily imagined. Even the burly, rough–voiced Wolverstone had crowded his muscular bulk into Spanish fripperies for the occasion.

  Having presented them, Mr. Blood invited the captain of the Bonaventure to the great cabin in the stern, which for spaciousness and richness of furniture surpassed any cabin Captain Easterling had ever entered.

  A Negro servant in a white jacket — a lad hired here in Tortuga — brought, besides the usual rum and sugar and fresh limes, a bottle of golden Canary which had been in the ship's original equipment and which Mr. Blood recommended with solicitude to his unbidden guest.

  Remembering Monsieur d'Ogeron's warning that Captain Easterling was dangerous, Mr. Blood deemed it wise to use him with all civility, if only so that being at his ease he should disclose in what he might be dangerous now.

  They occupied the elegantly cushioned seats about the table of black oak, and Captain Easterling praised the Canary liberally so as to justify the liberality with which he consumed it. Thereafter he came to business by asking if Mr. Blood, upon reflection, had not perhaps changed his mind about selling the ship.

  «If so be that you have,» he added, with a glance at Blood's four companions, «considering among how many the purchase money will be divided, you'll find me generous.»

  If by this he had hoped to make
an impression upon those four, their stolid countenances disappointed him.

  Mr. Blood shook his head. «It's wasting your time, ye are, Captain. Whatever else we decide, we keep the Cinco Llagas.»

  «Whatever you decide?» The great black brows went up on that shallow brow. «Ye're none so decided then as ye was, about this voyage to Europe? Why, then, I'll come at once to the business I'ld propose if ye wouldn't sell. It is that with this ship ye join the Bonaventure in a venture — a bonaventure.» And he laughed noisily at his own jest with a flash of white teeth behind the great black beard.

  «You honour us. But we haven't a mind to piracy.»

  Easterling gave no sign of offence. He waved a great ham of a hand as if to dismiss the notion.

  «It ain't piracy I'm proposing.»

  «What, then?»

  «I can trust you?» Easterling asked, and his eyes included the four of them.

  «Ye're not obliged to. And it's odds ye'll waste your time in any case.»

  It was not encouraging. Nevertheless, Easterling proceeded. It might be known to them that he had sailed with Morgan. He had been with Morgan in the great march across the Isthmus of Panama. Now it was notorious that when the spoil came to be divided after the sack of that Spanish city, it was found to be far below the reasonable expectations of the buccaneers. There were murmurs that Morgan had not dealt fairly with his men; that he had abstracted before the division a substantial portion of the treasure taken. Those murmurs, Easterling could tell them, were well–founded. There were pearls and jewels from San Felipe of fabulous value, which Morgan had secretly appropriated for himself. But as the rumours grew and reached his ears, he became afraid of a search that should convict him. And so, midway on the journey across the Isthmus, he one night buried the treasure he had filched.

  «Only one man knew this,» said Captain Easterling to his attentive listeners — for the tale was of a quality that at all times commands attention. «The man who helped him in a labour he couldn't ha' done alone. I be that man.»

  He paused a moment to let the impressive fact sink home, and then resumed.

  The business he proposed was that the fugitives on the Cinco Llagas should join him in an expedition to Darien to recover the treasure, sharing equally in it with his own men and on the scale usual among the Brethren of the Coast.

  «If I put the value of what Morgan buried at five hundred thousand pieces of eight, I am being modest.»

  It was a sum to set his audience staring. Even Blood stared, but not quite with the expression of the others.

  «Sure, now, it's very odd,» said he thoughtfully.

  «What is odd, Mr. Blood?»

  Mr. Blood's answer took the form of another question. «How many do you number aboard the Bonaventure?»

  «Something less than two hundred men.»

  «And the twenty men who are with me make such a difference that you deem it worth while to bring us this proposal?»

  Easterling laughed outright, a deep, guttural laugh. «I see that ye don't understand at all.» His voice bore a familiar echo of Mr. Blood's Irish intonation. «It's not the men I lack so much as a stout ship in which to guard the treasure when we have it. In a bottom such as this we'ld be as snug as in a fort, and I'ld snap my fingers at any Spanish galleon that attempted to molest me.»

  «Faith, now I understand,» said Wolverstone, and Pitt and Dyke and Hagthorpe nodded with him. But the glittering blue eye of Peter Blood continued to stare unwinkingly upon the bulky pirate.

  «As Wolverstone says, it's understandable. But a tenth of the prize which, by heads, is all that would come to the Cinco Llagas, is far from adequate in the circumstances.»

  Easterling blew out his cheeks and waved his great hand in a gesture of bonhomie. «What share would you propose?»

  «That's to be considered. But it would not be less than one fifth.»

  The buccaneer's face remained impassive. He bowed his gaudily swathed head. «Bring these friends of yours to dine to–morrow aboard the Bonaventure, and we'll draw up the articles.»

  For a moment Blood seemed to hesitate. Then in courteous terms he accepted the invitation.

  But when the buccaneer had departed, he checked the satisfaction of his followers.

  «I was warned that Captain Easterling is a dangerous man. That's to flatter him. For to be dangerous a man must be clever, and Captain Easterling is not clever.»

  «What maggot's burrowing under your periwig, Peter?» wondered Wolverstone.

  «I'm thinking of the reason he gave for desiring our association. It was the best he could do when bluntly asked the question.»

  «It could not have been more reasonable,» said Hagthorpe emphatically. He was finding Blood unnecessarily difficult.

  «Reasonable!» Blood laughed. «Specious, if you will. Specious until you come to examine it. Faith, now, it glitters, to be sure. But it isn't gold. A ship as strong as a fort in which to stow a half–million pieces of eight, and this fortress ship in the hands of ourselves. A trusting fellow this Easterling for a scoundrel.»

  They thought it out, and their eyes grew round. Pitt, however, was not yet persuaded. «In his need he'll trust our honour.»

  Blood looked at him with scorn. «I never knew a man with eyes like Easterling's to trust to anything but possession. If he means to stow that treasure aboard this ship, and I could well believe that part of it, it is because he means to be in possession of this ship by the time he does so. Honour! Bah! Could such a man believe that honour would prevent us from giving him the slip one night once we had the treasure aboard, or even of bringing our weight of metal to bear upon his sloop and sinking her? It's fatuous you are, Jeremy, with your talk of honour.»

  Still the thing was not quite clear to Hagthorpe. «What, then, do you suppose to be his reason for inviting us to join him?»

  «The reason that he gave. He wants our ship, be it for the conveyance of his treasure, if it exists, be it for other reasons. Didn't he first seek to buy the Cinco Llagas? Oh, he wants her, naturally enough; but he wants not us, nor would he keep us long, be sure of that.»

  And yet, perhaps because the prospect of a share in Morgan's treasure was, as Blood said, a glittering one, his associates were reluctant to abandon it. To gain alluring objects men are always ready to take chances, ready to believe what they hope. So now Hagthorpe, Pitt, and Dyke. They came to the opinion that Blood was leaping to conclusions from a prejudice sown in him by Monsieur d'Ogeron, who may have had reasons of his own to serve. Let them at least dine tomorrow with Easterling, and hear what articles he proposed.

  «Can you be sure that we shall not be poisoned?» wondered Blood.

  But this was pushing prejudice too far. They mocked him freely. How could they be poisoned by meat and drink that Easterling must share with them? And what end would thus be served? How would that give Easterling possession of the Cinco Llagas?

  «By swarming aboard her with a couple of score of his ruffians and taking the men here unawares at a time when there would be none to lead them.»

  «What?» cried Hagthorpe. «Here in Tortuga? In this haven of the buccaneers? Come, come, Peter! I must suppose there is some honour among thieves.»

  «You may suppose it. I prefer to suppose nothing of the kind. I hope no man will call me timorous; and yet I'ld as soon be called that as rash.»

  The weight of opinion, however, was against him. Every man of the rebels–convict crew was as eager for the enterprise when it came to be disclosed as were the three leaders.

  And so, despite himself, at eight bells on the morrow, Captain Blood went over with Hagthorpe, Pitt, and Dyke, to dine aboard the Bonaventure. Wolverstone was left behind in charge of the Cinco Llagas.

  Easterling welcomed them boisterously, supported by his entire crew of ruffians. Some eight score of them swarmed in the waist, on the forecastle, and even on the poop, and all were armed. It was not necessary that Mr. Blood should point out to his companions how odd it was that all these fellows should h
ave been summoned for the occasion from the taverns ashore which they usually frequented. Their presence and the leering mockery stamped upon their villainous countenances made Blood's three followers ask themselves at last if Blood had not been justified of his misgivings, and made them suspect with him that they had walked into a trap.

  It was too late to retreat. By the break of the poop, at the entrance of the gangway leading to the cabin, stood Captain Easterling waiting to conduct them.

  Blood paused there a moment to look up into the pellucid sky above the rigging about which the gulls were circling. He glanced round and up at the grey fort perched on its rocky eminence, all bathed in ardent sunshine. He looked towards the mole, forsaken now in the noontide heat, and then across the crystalline sparkling waters towards the great red Cinco Llagas where she rode in majesty and strength. To his uneasy companions it seemed as if he were wondering from what quarter help might come if it were needed. Then, responding to Easterling's inviting gesture, he passed into the gloom of the gangway, followed by the others.

  Like the rest of the ship, which the first glance had revealed for dishevelled and unclean, the cabin was in no way comparable with that of the stately Cinco Llagas. It was so low that there was barely headroom for tall men like Blood and Hagthorpe. It was ill–furnished, containing little more than the cushioned lockers set about a deal table that was stained and hacked. Also, for all that the horn windows astern were open, the atmosphere of the place was heavy with an acrid blend of vile smells in which spun–yarn and bilge predominated.

  The dinner proved to be much as the surroundings promised. The fresh pork and fresh vegetables had been befouled in cooking, so that, in forcing himself to eat, the fastidious stomach of Mr. Blood was almost turned.

  The company provided by Easterling matched the rest. A half–dozen of his fellows served him as a guard of honour. They had been elected, he announced, by the men, so that they might agree the articles on behalf of all. To these had been added a young Frenchman named Joinville, who was secretary to Monsieur d'Ogeron and stood there to represent the Governor and to lend, as it were, a legal sanction to what was to be done. If the presence of this rather vacuous, pale–eyed gentleman served to reassure Mr. Blood a little, it served to intrigue him more.