The Fortunes of Captain Blood cb-3, Page 2

  'A lovely sight,' said Chaffinch.

  'For a poet or a shipmaster,' said Blood. 'But I'm neither of those this morning. I'm thinking this will be King Philip's Admiral of the Ocean–Sea, the Marquis of Riconete.'

  'And he's pledged no word not to molest us,' was Wolverstone's grim and unnecessary reminder.

  'But I'll see to it that he does before ever we let him through the Dragon's Jaw.' Blood turned on his heel, and, making a trumpet of his hands, sounded his orders sharp and clearly to some two or three score buccaneers who stood also at gaze, some way behind them, by the guns.

  Instantly those hands were seething to obey, and for the next five minutes all was a bustle of heaving and hauling to drag the San Felipe's two stern chasers to the summit of the ridge. They were demi–cannon, with a range of fully a mile and a half, and they were no sooner in position than Ogle was laying one of them. At a word from Blood he touched off the gun, and sent a thirty–pound shot athwart the bows of the advancing Admiral, three–quarters of a mile away.

  There is no signal to lie hove to that will command a more prompt compliance. Whatever the Marquis of Riconete's astonishment at this thunderbolt from a clear sky, it brought him up with a round turn. The helm was put over hard, and the Admiral swung to larboard with idly flapping sails. Faintly over the sunlit waters came the sound of a trumpet, and the four ships that followed executed the same manoeuvre. Then from the Admiral a boat was lowered, and came speeding towards the reef to investigate this portent.

  Peter Blood, with Chaffinch and a half–score men, was at the water's edge when the boat grounded. Wolverstone and Hagthorpe had taken station on the other side of the island, so as to watch the harbour and the mole, which was now all agog.

  An elegant young officer stepped ashore to request on the Admiral's behalf an explanation of the sinister greeting he had received. It was supplied.

  'I am here refitting my ship by permission of Don Ilario de Saavedra, in return for some small service I had the honour to do him when he was lately shipwrecked. Before I can suffer the Admiral of the Ocean–Sea to enter this harbour I must possess his confirmation of Don Ilario's sanction and his pledge that he will leave me in peace to complete my repairs.'

  The young officer stiffened with indignation. 'These are extraordinary words, sir. Who are you?'

  'My name is Blood. Captain Blood, at your service.'

  'Captain … Captain Blood!' The young man's eyes were round. 'You are Captain Blood?' Suddenly he laughed. 'You have the effrontery to suppose…'

  He was interrupted. 'I do not like "effrontery". And as for what I suppose, be good enough to come with me. It will save argument.' He led the way to the summit of the ridge, the Spaniard sullenly following. There he paused. 'You were about to tell me, of course, that I had better be making my soul, because the guns of your squadron will blow me off this island. Be pleased to observe.'

  He pointed with his long ebony cane to the activity below, where a motley buccaneer host was swarming about the landed cannon. Six of the guns were being hauled into a new position so as completely to command at point–blank range the narrow channel of the Dragon's Jaw. On the seaward side, whence it might be assailed, this battery was fully protected by the ridge.

  'You will understand the purpose of these measures,' said Captain Blood. 'And you may have heard that my gunnery is of exceptional excellence. Even if it were not, I might without boasting assert — and you, I am sure, are of intelligence to perceive — that the first ship to thrust her bowsprit across that line will be sunk before she can bring a gun to bear.' He leaned upon his tall cane, the embodiment of suavity. 'Inform your Admiral, with my service, of what you have seen, and assure him from me that he may enter the harbour of San Domingo the moment he has given me the pledge I ask; but not a moment sooner.' He waved a hand in dismissal. 'God be with you, sir. Chaffinch, escort the gentleman to his boat.'

  In his anger the Spaniard failed to do justice to so courteous an occasion. He muttered some Spanish mixture of theology and bawdiness, and flung away in a pet, without farewells. Back to the Admiral he was rowed. But either he did not report accurately or else the Admiral was of those who will not be convinced. For an hour later the ridge was being ploughed by round–shot, and the morning air shaken by the thunder of the squadron's guns. It distressed the gulls and set them circling and screaming overhead. But it distressed the buccaneers not at all, sheltered behind the natural bastion of the ridge from that storm of iron.

  During a slackening of the fire, Ogle wriggled snakewise up to the demi–cannons which had been so emplaced that they thrust their muzzles and no more above the ridge. He laid one of them with slow care. The Spaniards, formed in line ahead for the purposes of their bombardment, three–quarters of a mile away, offered a target that could hardly be missed. Ogle touched off the unsuspected gun, and a thirty–pound shot crashed amidships into the bulwarks of the middle galleon. It went to warn the Marquis that he was not to be allowed to practise his gunnery with impunity.

  There was a blare of trumpets and a hasty going about of the entire squadron to beat up against the freshening wind. To speed them, Ogle fired the second gun, and although lethally the shot was harmless, morally it could scarcely fail of its alarming purpose. Then he whistled up his gun–crew to re–load at leisure in that moment of the enemy's fleeing panic.

  All day the Spaniards remained hove to a mile and a half away, where they accounted themselves out of range. Blood took advantage of this to order six more guns to be hauled to the ridge, and so as to form a breastwork half the palms on the island were felled. Whilst the main body of the buccaneers, clothed only in loose leather breeches, made short work of this, the remainder under the orders of the carpenter calmly pursued the labours of refitting. The fire glowed in the forge, and the anvils pealed bell–like under the hammers.

  Across the harbour and into this scene of heroic activity came towards evening Don Clemente Pedroso, greatly daring and more yellow–faced than ever. Conducted to the ridge, where Captain Blood with the help of Ogle was still directing the construction of the breastwork, his Excellency demanded furiously to know what the buccaneers supposed must be the end of this farce.

  'If you think you're propounding a problem,' said Captain Blood, 'ye're mistook. It'll end when the Admiral gives me the pledge I've asked that he'll not molest me.'

  Don Clemente's black eyes were malevolent, and malevolent was the crease at the base of his beaky nose. 'You do not know the Marquis of Riconete.'

  'What's more to the matter is that the Marquis does not know me. But I think we shall soon be better acquainted.'

  'You deceive yourself. The Admiral is bound by no promise made you by Don Ilario. He will never make terms with you.'

  Captain Blood laughed in his face. 'In that case, faith, he can stay where he is until he reaches the bottom of his water–casks. Then he can either die of thirst or sail away to find water. Indeed, we may not have to wait so long. You've not observed perhaps that the wind is freshening from the south. If it should come to blow in earnest, your Marquis may be in some discomfort off this coast.'

  Don Clemente wasted some energy in vague blasphemies. Captain Blood was amused. 'I know how you suffer. You were already counting upon seeing me hanged.'

  'Few things in this life would bring me greater satisfaction.'

  'Alas! I must hope to disappoint your Excellency. You'll stay to sup aboard with me?'

  'Sir, I do not sup with pirates.'

  'Then you may go sup with the devil,' said Captain Blood. And on his short fat legs Don Clemente stalked in dudgeon back to his barge.

  Wolverstone watched his departure with a brooding eye.

  'Odslife, Peter, you'ld be wise to hold that Spanish gentleman. His pledge binds him no more than would a cobweb. The treacherous dog will spare nothing to do us a mischief, pledge or no pledge.'

  'You're forgetting Don Ilario.'

  'I'm thinking Don Clemente may forget him, too.'

/>   'We'll be vigilant,' Blood promised confidently

  That night the buccaneers slept as usual in their quarters aboard, but they left a gun–crew ashore and set a watch in a boat anchored in the Dragon's Jaw, lest the Admiral of Ocean–Sea should attempt to creep in. But although the night was clear, other risks apart, the Spaniards would not attempt the hazardous channel in the dark.

  Throughout the next day, which was Sunday, the condition of stalemate continued. But on Monday morning the exasperated Admiral once more plastered the island with shot, and then stood boldly in to force a passage.

  Ogle's battery had suffered no damage because the Admiral knew neither its position nor extent. Nor did Ogle now disclose it until the enemy was within a half–mile. Then four of his guns blazed at the leading ship. Two shots went wide, a third smashed into her tall forecastle, and the fourth caught her between wind and water and opened a breach through which the sea poured into her. The other three Spaniards veered in haste to starboard, and went off on an easterly tack. The crippled listed galleon went staggering after them, jettisoning in desperate haste her guns, and what other heavy gear she could spare, so as to bring the wound in her flank above the water–level.

  Thus ended that attempt to force a way in, and by noon the Spaniards had gone about again and were back in their old position a mile and a half away. They were still there twenty–four hours later when a boat went out from San Domingo with a letter from Don Ilario in which the new Governor required the Marquis of Riconete to accord Captain Blood the terms he demanded. The boat had to struggle against a rising sea, for it was coming on to blow again, and from the south dark, ominous banks of cloud were rolling up. Apprehensions on the score of the weather may well have combined with Don Ilario's letter in persuading the Marquis to yield where obstinacy seemed to promise only humiliation.

  So the officer by whom Captain Blood had already been visited came again to the island at the harbour's mouth, bringing him the required letter of undertaking from the Admiral, as a result of which the Spanish ships were that evening allowed to come into shelter from the rising storm. Unmolested they sailed through the Dragon's Jaw, and went to drop anchor across the harbour, by the town.

  III

  The wounds in the pride of the Marquis of Riconete were raw, and at the Governor's Palace that night there was a discussion of some heat. It beat to and fro between the dangerous doctrine expounded by the Admiral and supported by Don Clemente that an undertaking obtained by threats was not in honour binding, and the firm insistence of the chivalrous Don Ilario that the terms must be kept.

  Wolverstone's mistrust of the operation of the Spanish conscience continued unabated, and nourished his contempt of Blood's faith in the word that had been pledged. Nor would he account sufficient the measures taken in emplacing the guns anew, so that all but six still left to command the Dragon's Jaw were now trained upon the harbour. His single eye remained apprehensively watchful in the three or four peaceful days that followed, but it was not until the morning of Friday, by when, the mast repaired, they were almost ready to put to sea, that he observed anything that he could account significant. What he observed then led him to call Captain Blood to the poop of the San Felipe.

  'There's a queer coming and going of boats over yonder, between the Spanish squadron and the mole. Ye can see it for yourself. And it's been going on this half–hour and more. The boats go fully laden to the mole, and come back empty to the ships. Maybe ye'll guess the meaning of it.'

  'The meaning's plain enough,' said Blood. 'The crews are being put ashore.'

  'It's what I was supposing,' said Wolverstone. 'But will you tell me what sense or purpose there can be in that? Where there's no sense there's usually mischief. There'ld be no harm in having the men stand to their arms on the island tonight.'

  The cloud on Blood's brow showed that his lieutenant had succeeded in stirring his suspicions. 'It's plaguily odd, so it is. And yet… Faith, I'll not believe Don Ilario would play me false.'

  'I'm not thinking of Don Ilario, but of that bile–laden curmudgeon Don Clemente. That's not the man to let a pledged word thwart his spite. And if this Riconete is such another, as well he may be…'

  'Don Ilario is the man in authority now.'

  'Maybe. But he's crippled by a broken leg, and those other two might easily overbear him, knowing that King Philip himself would condone it.'

  'But if they mean mischief, why should they be putting the crews ashore?'

  'That's what I hoped you might guess, Peter.'

  'Since I can't, I'd better go and find out.' A fruit–barge had just come alongside. Captain Blood leaned over the rail. 'Hey, you!' he hailed the owner. 'Bring me your yams aboard.'

  He turned to beckon some of the hands in the waist and issued orders briefly whilst the fruit–seller was climbing the accommodation–ladder with a basket of yams balanced on his head. He was invited aft to the Captain's cabin, and, unsuspecting, went, after which he was seen no more that day. His half–caste mate, who had remained in the barge, was similarly lured aboard, and went to join his master under hatches. Then an unclean, bare–legged, sunburned fellow in the greasy shirt, loose calico breeches and swathed head of a waterside hawker went over the side of the San Felipe, climbed down into the barge, and pulled away across the harbour towards the Spanish ships, followed by anxious eyes from the bulwarks of the buccaneer vessel.

  Bumping alongside of the Admiral, the hawker bawled his wares for some time in vain. The utter silence within those wooden walls was significant. After a while steps rang out on the deck. A sentry in a headpiece looked over the rail to bid him take his fruit to the devil, adding the indiscreet but already superfluous information that if he were not a fool he would know that there was no one aboard.

  Bawling ribaldries in return, the hawker pulled away for the mole, climbed out of the barge, and went to refresh himself at a wayside tavern that was thronged with Spaniards from the ships. Over a pot of wine he insinuated himself into a group of these seamen, with an odd tale of wrongs suffered at the hands of pirates and a fiercely rancorous criticism of the Admiral for suffering the buccaneers to remain on the island at the harbour's mouth instead of blowing them to perdition.

  His fluent Spanish admitted of no suspicion. His truculence and obvious hatred of pirates won him sympathy.

  'It's not the Admiral,' a petty officer assured him. 'He'ld never have parleyed with these dogs. It's this weak–kneed new Governor of Hispaniola who's to blame. It's he who has given them leave to repair their ship.'

  'If I were an Admiral of Castile,' said the hawker, 'I vow to the Virgin I'd take matters into my own hands.'

  There was a general laugh, and a corpulent Spaniard clapped him on the back. 'The Admiral's of the same mind, my lad.'

  'In spite of his flabbiness the Governor,' said a second.

  'That's why we're all ashore,' nodded a third.

  And now in scraps which the hawker was left to piece together forth came the tale of mischief that was preparing for the buccaneers.

  So much to his liking did the hawker find the Spaniards, and so much to their liking did they find him, that the afternoon was well advanced before he rolled out of the tavern to find his barge and resume his trade. The pursuit of it took him back across the harbour, and when at last he came alongside the San Felipe he was seen to have a second and very roomy barge in tow. Making fast at the foot of the accommodation–ladder, he climbed to the ship's waist, where Wolverstone received him with relief and not without wrath.

  'Ye said naught of going ashore, Peter. Where the plague was the need o' that? You'll be thrusting your head into a noose once too often.'

  Captain Blood laughed. 'I've thrust my head into no noose at all. And if I had the result would have been worth the risk. I'm justified of my faith in Don Ilario. It's only because he's a man of his word that we may all avoid having our throats cut this night. For if he had given his consent to employ the men of the garrison, as Don Clemente wished, we sh
ould never have known anything about it until too late. Because he refused, Don Clemente has made alliance with that other forswarn scoundrel, the Admiral. Between them they've concocted a sweet plan behind Don Ilario's back. And that's why the Marquis has taken his crews ashore, so as to hold them in readiness for the job.

  'They're to slip out to sea in boatloads at midnight by the shallow western passage, land on the unguarded southwest side of the island, and then, having entered by the back door as it were, creep across to surprise us on board the San Felipe and cut our throats whilst we sleep. There'll be some four hundred of them at the least. Practically every mother's son from the squadron. The Marquis of Riconete means to make sure that the odds are in his favour.'

  'And we with eighty men in all!' Wolverstone rolled his single eye. 'But we're forewarned. We can shift the guns so as to smash them as they land.'

  Blood shook his head. 'It can't be done without being noticed. If they saw us move the guns they must suppose we've got wind of what's coming. They'd change their plans, and that wouldn't suit me at all.'

  'Wouldn't suit you! Does this camisado suit you?'

  'Let me see the trap that's set for me, and it's odd if I can't turn it against the trapper. Did ye notice that I brought a second barge back with me? Forty men can pack into those two bottoms, the remainder can go in the four boats we have.'

  'Go? Go where? D'ye mean to run, Peter?'

  'To be sure I do. But no farther than will suit my purpose.'

  He cut things fine. It wanted only an hour to midnight when he embarked his men. And even then he was in no haste to set out. He waited until the silence of the night was disturbed by a distant creak of rowlocks, which warned him that the Spaniards were well upon their way to the shallow passage on the western side of the island. Then, at last, he gave the word to push off, and the San Felipe was abandoned to the enemy stealing upon her through the night.