The Chronicles of Captain Blood cb-2, Page 3

  Amongst them they crowded the narrow confines of the cabin, and Easterling's fellows were so placed along the two sides of the table that no two of the men from the Cinco Llagas sat together. Blood and the Captain of the Bonaventure immediately faced each other across the board.

  Business was left until dinner was over and the Negro who waited on them had withdrawn. Until then the men of the Bonaventure kept things gay with the heavily salted talk that passed for wit amongst them. At last, the table cleared of all save bottles, and pens and ink being furnished together with a sheet of paper each to Easterling and Blood, the Captain of the Bonaventure opened the matter of the terms, and Peter Blood heard himself for the first time addressed as Captain. Easterling's first words were to inform him shortly that the one–fifth share he had demanded was by the men of the Bonaventure accounted excessive.

  Momentarily Peter Blood's hopes rose.

  «Shall we deal in plain terms now, Captain? Do you mean that they'll not be consenting to them?»

  «What else should I mean?»

  «In that case, Captain, it only remains for us to take our leave, in your debt for this liberal entertainment and the richer for the improvement in our acquaintance.»

  The elaborate courtesy of those grossly inaccurate terms did not seem to touch the ponderous Easterling. His bold, craftily set eyes stared blankly from his great red face. He mopped the sweat from his brow before replying.

  «You'll take your leave?» There was a sneering undertone to his guttural voice. «I'll trouble you in turn to be plain with me. I likes plain men, and plain words. D'ye mean that ye'll quit from the business?»

  Two or three of his followers made a rumbling challenging echo to his question.

  Captain Blood — to give him now the title Easterling had bestowed upon him — had the air of being intimidated. He hesitated, looking as if for guidance to his companions, who returned him only uneasy glances.

  «If,» he said at length, «you find our terms unreasonable, I must assume ye'll not be wishing to go further, and it only remains for us to withdraw.»

  He spoke with a diffidence which amazed his own followers, who had never known him other than bold in the face of any odds. It provoked a sneer from Easterling, who found no more than he had been expecting from a leech turned adventurer by circumstances.

  «Faith, Doctor,» said he, «ye were best to get back to your cupping and bleeding, and leave ships to men as can handle them.»

  There was a lightning flash from those blue eyes, as vivid as it was transient. But the swarthy countenance never lost its faint air of diffidence. Meanwhile Easterling had swung to the Governor's representative, who sat on his immediate right.

  «What d'ye think of that, Mossoo Joinville?»

  The fair, flabby young Frenchman smiled amiably upon Blood's diffidence. «Would it not be wise and proper, sir, to hear what terms Captain Easterling now proposes?»

  «I'll hear them. But …»

  «Leave the buts till after, Doctor,» Easterling cut in. «The terms we'll grant are the terms I told ye. Your men share equally with mine.»

  «But that means no more than a tenth for the Cinco Llagas.» And Blood, too, now appealed to Monsieur Joinville. «Do you, sir, account that fair? I have explained to Captain Easterling that for what we lack in men we more than make up in weight of metal, and our guns are handled by a gunner such as I dare swear has no compeer in the Caribbean. A fellow named Ogle — Ned Ogle. A remarkable gunner is Ned Ogle. The very devil of a gunner, as you'ld believe if you'ld seen him pick those Spanish boats off the water in Bridgetown Harbour.»

  He would have continued upon the subject of Ned Ogle had not Easterling interrupted him. «Hell, man! What's a gunner more or less.»

  «Oh, an ordinary gunner, maybe. But this is no ordinary gunner. An eye he has. Gunners like Ogle are like poets; they are born, so they are. He'll put you a shot between wind and water, will Ogle, as neatly as you might pick your teeth.»

  Easterling banged the table. «What's all this to the point?»

  «It may be something. And meanwhile it shows you the valuable ally ye're acquiring.» And he was off again on the subject of his gunner. «He was trained in the King's Navy, was Ned Ogle, and a bad day for the King's Navy it was when Ogle took to politics and followed the Protestant Champion to Sedgemoor.»

  «Leave that,» growled one of the officers of the Bonaventure, a ruffian who answered to the name of Chard. «Leave it, I say, or we'll waste the day in talk.»

  Easterling confirmed this with a coarse oath. Captain Blood observed that they did not mean to spare offensiveness, and his speculations on their aims starting from this took a fresh turn.

  Joinville intervened. «Could you not compromise with Captain Blood? After all, there is some reason on his side. He might reasonably claim to put a hundred men aboard his ship, and in that case he would naturally take a heavier share.»

  «In that case he might be worth it,» was the truculent answer.

  «I am worth it as it is,» Blood insisted.

  «Ah, bah!» he was answered, with a flick of finger and thumb under his very nose.

  He began to suspect that Easterling sought to entice him into an act of rashness, in reply to which he and his followers would probably be butchered where they sat, and Monsieur Joinville would afterwards be constrained to bear witness to the Governor that the provocation had proceeded from the guests. He perceived at last the probable reason for the Frenchman's presence.

  But at the moment Joinville was remonstrating. «Come, come, Captain Easterling! Thus you will never reach agreement. Captain Blood's ship is of advantage to you, and we have to pay for what is advantageous. Could you not offer him an eighth or even a seventh share?»

  Easterling silenced the growl of disagreement from Chard, and became almost suave. «What would Captain Blood say to that?»

  Captain Blood considered for a long moment. Then he shrugged. «I say what you know I must say; that I can say nothing until I have taken the wishes of my followers. We'll resume the discussion when I have done so — another day.»

  «Oh, s'death!» roared Easterling. «Do you play with us? Haven't you brought your officers with you; and ain't they empowered to speak for your men same as mine? Whatever we settles here, my men abides by. That's the custom of the Brethren of the Coast. And I expect the same from you. And I've the right to expect it, as you can tell him, Mossoo Joinville.»

  The Frenchman nodded gloomily, and Easterling roared on.

  «We are not children, by God! And we're not here to play, but to agree terms. And, by God, we'll agree them before you leave.»

  «Or not, as the case maybe,» said Blood quietly. It was to be remarked that he had lost his diffidence by now.

  «Or not? What the devil do you mean with your 'or not'?» Easterling came to his feet in a vehemence that Peter Blood believed assumed, as the proper note at this stage of the comedy he was playing.

  «I mean or not, quite simply.» He accounted that the time had come to compel the buccaneers to show their hand. «If we fail to agree terms, why, that's the end of the matter.»

  «Oho! The end of the matter, eh? Stab me, but it may prove the beginning of it.»

  Blood smiled up into his face, and cool as ice he commented: «That's what I was supposing. But the beginning of what, if you please, Captain Easterling?»

  «Indeed, indeed, Captain!» cried Joinville. «What can you mean?»

  «Mean?» Captain Easterling glared at the Frenchman. He appeared to be extremely angry. «Mean?» he repeated. «Look you, Mossoo, this fellow here, this Blood, this doctor, this escaped convict, made believe that he would enter into articles with us so as to get from me the secret of Morgan's treasure. Now that he's got it, he makes difficulties about the articles. He no longer wants to join us, it seems. He proposes to withdraw. It'll be plain to you why he proposes to withdraw, Mossoo Joinville; just as it'll be plain to you why I can't permit it.»

  «Why, here's paltry invention!»
sneered Blood. «What do I know of his secret beyond his tale of a treasure buried somewhere.»

  «Not somewhere. You know where. For I've been fool enough to tell you.»

  Blood actually laughed, and by his laughter scared his companions, to whom the danger of their situation was now clear enough.

  «Somewhere on the Isthmus of Darien. There's precision, on my soul! With that information, I can go straight to the spot, and set my hand on it. As for the rest, Monsieur Joinville, I invite you to observe it's not myself is making difficulties about the articles. On the one–fifth share which I asked from the outset, I might have been prepared to join Captain Easterling. But now that I'm confirmed in all that I suspected of him and more, why, I wouldn't join him for a half–share in this treasure, supposing it to exist at all, which I do not.»

  That brought every man of the Bonaventure to his feet as if it had been a signal, and they were clamorous too, until Easterling waved them into silence. Upon that silence cut the tenor voice of Monsieur Joinville.

  «You are a singularly rash man, Captain Blood.»

  «Maybe, maybe,» said Blood, light and airily. «Time will show. The last word's not yet been said.»

  «Then here's to say it,» quoth Easterling, quietly sinister on a sudden. «I was about to warn you that ye'll not be allowed to leave this ship with the information ye possess until the articles is signed. But since ye so clearly show your intentions, why, things have gone beyond warnings.»

  From his seat at the table, which he retained, Captain Blood looked up at the sinister bulk of the Captain of the Bonaventure, and the three men from the Cinco Llagas observed with mingled amazement and dismay that he was smiling. At first so unusually diffident and timid; now so deliberately and recklessly provoking. He was beyond understanding. It was Hagthorpe who spoke for them.

  «What do you mean, Captain? What do you intend by us?»

  «Why, to clap you into irons, and stow you under hatches, where you can do no harm.»

  «My God, sir …» Hagthorpe was beginning, when Captain Blood's crisp, pleasant voice cut across his speech.

  «And you, Monsieur Joinville, will permit this without protest?»

  Joinville spread his hands, thrust out a nether lip, and shrugged. «You have brought it on yourself, Captain Blood.»

  «So that is what you are here to report to Monsieur d'Ogeron! Well, well!» He laughed with a touch of bitterness.

  And then, abruptly, on the noontide stillness outside came the thunder of a gun to shake them all. Followed the screaming of startled gulls, a pause in which men eyed one another, and then, a shade uneasily, came the question from Easterling, addressed to no one in particular:

  «What the devil's that?»

  It was Blood who answered him pleasantly. «Now, don't let it alarm ye, Captain, darling. It's just a salute fired in your honour by Ogle, the gunner the highly skilful gunner — of the Cinco Llagas. Have I told you about him yet?» His eyes embraced the company in the question.

  «A salute?» quoth Easterling. «By Hell, what do you mean? A salute?»

  «Why, just a courtesy, as a reminder to us and a warning to you. It's a reminder to us that we've taken up an hour of your time, and that we must put no further strain upon your hospitality.» He got to his feet, and stood, easy and elegant in his Spanish suit of black and silver. «It's a very good day we'll be wishing you, Captain.»

  Inflamed of countenance, Easterling plucked a pistol from his belt. «You play–acting buffoon! Ye don't leave this ship.»

  But Captain Blood continued to smile. «Faith, that will be very bad for the ship, and for all aboard her, including this ingenuous Monsieur Joinville, who really believes you'll pay him the promised share of your phantom treasure for bearing false witness against me, so as to justify you in the eyes of the Governor for seizing the Cinco Llagas. Ye see, I am under no delusions, concerning you, my dear captain. For a rogue ye're a thought too transparent.»

  Easterling loosed a volley of minatory obscenity, waving his pistol. He was restrained from using it only by an indefinable uneasiness aroused by his guest's bantering manner.

  «We are wasting time,» Blood interrupted him, «and the moments, believe me, are growing singularly precious. You'ld best know where you stand. My orders to Ogle were that if within ten minutes of his firing that salute I and my friends here were not over the side of the Bonaventure, he was to put a round shot into your forecastle along the water–line, and as many more after that as may be necessary to sink you by the head. I do not think that many will be necessary. Ogle is a singularly skilful marksman. He served with distinction as a gunner in the King's Navy. I think I've told you about him.»

  It was Joinville who broke the moment's silence that followed. «God of my life!» he bleated, bounding to his feet. «Let me out of this.»

  «Oh, stow your squealing, you French rat,» snarled the infuriated Easterling. Then he turned his fury upon Blood, balancing the pistol ominously. «You sneaking leech, you college offal! You'ld ha' done better to ha' stuck to your cuppings and bleedings, as I told you.»

  His murderous intention was plain. But Blood was too swift for him. Before any could so much as guess his purpose, he had snatched up by its neck the flagon of Canary that stood before him, and crashed it across Captain Easterling's left temple.

  As the captain of the Bonaventure reeled back against the cabin bulkhead, Peter Blood bowed slightly to him.

  «I regret,» said he, «that I have no cup; but, as you see, I can practise phlebotomy with a bottle.»

  Easterling sagged down in a limp, unconscious mass at the foot of the bulkhead. The spectacle stirred his officers. There was a movement towards Captain Blood, and a din of raucous voices, and someone laid hands upon him. But above the uproar rang his vibrant voice.

  «Be warned! The moments are speeding. The ten minutes have all but fled, and either I and my friends depart, or we all sink together in this bottom.»

  «In God's name, bethink you of it!» cried Joinville, and started for the door.

  A buccaneer, who did bethink him of it and who was of a practical turn of mind, seized him about the body, and flung him back.

  «You there!» he shouted to Captain Blood. «You and your men go first. And bestir yourselves! We've no mind to drown like rats.»

  They went as they were bidden, curses pursuing them and threats of a reckoning to follow.

  Either the ruffians aswarm on the deck above were not in the secret of Easterling's intentions, or else a voice of authority forbade them to hinder the departure of Captain Blood and his companions.

  In the cock–boat, midway between the two vessels, Hagthorpe found his voice at last.

  «On my soul's salvation, Peter, there was a moment when I thought our sands were run.»

  «Ay, ay,» said Pitt, with fervour. «And even as it was they might have been.» He swung to Peter Blood, where he sat in the sternsheets. «Suppose that for one reason or another we had not got out in those ten minutes, and Ogle had opened fire in earnest? What, then?»

  «Ah!» said Blood. «Our real danger lay in that he wasn't like to do it.»

  «But if you so ordered him?»

  «Nay, that's just what I forgot to do. All I told him was to loose a blank shot when we had been gone an hour. I thought that however things went it might prove useful. And on my soul, I believe it did. Lord!» He took off his hat, and mopped his brow under the staring eyes of his companions.

  «I wonder now if it's the heat that's making me sweat like this.»

  II — THE TREASURE SHIP

  IT was a saying of Captain Blood's that the worth of a man manifests itself not so much in the ability to plan great undertakings as in the vision which perceives opportunity and the address which knows how to seize it.

  He had certainly displayed these qualities in possessing himself of that fine Spanish ship the Cinco Llagas and he had displayed them again in foiling the designs of that rascally buccaneer Captain Easterling to rob him of that nob
le vessel.

  Meanwhile, his own and his ship's near escape made it clear to all who followed him that there was little safety for them in Tortuga waters, and little trust to be placed in buccaneers. At a general council held that same afternoon in the ship's waist, Blood propounded the simple philosophy that when a man is attacked he must either fight or run.

  «And since we are in no case to fight when attacked, as no doubt we shall be, it but remains to play the coward's part if only so that we may survive to prove ourselves brave men some other day.»

  They agreed with him. But whilst the decision to run was taken, it was left to be determined later whither they should repair. At the moment all that mattered was to get away from Tortuga and the further probable attentions of Captain Easterling.

  Thus it fell out that, in the dead of the following night, which if clear was moonless, the great frigate, which once had been the pride of the Cadiz shipyards, weighed anchor as quietly as such an operation might be performed. With canvas spread to the faint favouring breeze from the shore and with the ebb tide to help the manoeuvre, the Cinco Llagas stood out to sea. If groan of windlass, rattle of chain, and creak of blocks had betrayed the action to Easterling aboard the Bonaventure, a cable's length away, it was not in Easterling's power to thwart Blood's intention. At least three quarters of his rascally crew were in the taverns ashore, and Easterling was not disposed to attempt boarding operations with the remnant of his men, even though that remnant outnumbered by two to one the hands of the Cinco Llagas. Moreover, even had his full complement of two hundred been aboard, Easterling would still have offered no opposition to that departure. Whilst in Tortuga waters he might have attempted to get possession of the Cinco Llagas quietly and by strategy, not even his recklessness could consider seizing her violently by force in such a sanctuary, especially as the French Governor, Monsieur d'Ogeron, appeared to be friendly disposed towards Blood and his fellow fugitives.