The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
that he had studiously cultivated. He was a young man of perhaps eight-and-twenty, well above the middle height in stature and appearing taller by virtue of his exceeding leanness. He had a thin, pale, rather pleasing hatchet-face, framed in the curls of a golden periwig, a sensitive mouth and pale blue eyes that lent his countenance a dreamy expression, a rather melancholy pensiveness. But they were alert, observant eyes notwithstanding, although they failed on this occasion to observe the slight change of colour which his question had brought to Miss Bishop’s cheeks or the suspiciously excessive composure of her answer.
“Ye don’t say!” he repeated, and came to lean beside her. “And what manner of man did you find him?”
“In those days I esteemed him for an unfortunate gentleman.”
“You were acquainted with his story?”
“He told it me. That is why I esteemed him—for the calm fortitude with which he bore adversity. Since then, considering what he has done, I have almost come to doubt if what he told me of himself was true.”
“If you mean of the wrongs he suffered at the hands of the Royal Commission that tried the Monmouth rebels, there’s little doubt that it would be true enough. He was never out with Monmouth; that is certain. He was convicted on a point of law of which he may well have been ignorant when he committed what was construed into treason. But, faith, he’s had his revenge, after a fashion.”
“That,” she said in a small voice, “is the unforgivable thing. It has destroyed him—deservedly.”
“Destroyed him?” His lordship laughed a little. “Be none so sure of that. He has grown rich, I hear. He has translated, so it is said, his Spanish spoils into French gold, which is being treasured up for him in France. His future father-in-law, M. d’Ogeron, has seen to that.”
“His future father-in-law?” said she, and stared at him round-eyed, with parted lips. Then added: “M. d’Ogeron? The Governor of Tortuga?”
“The same. You see the fellow’s well protected. It’s a piece of news I gathered in St. Nicholas. I am not sure that I welcome it, for I am not sure that it makes any easier a task upon which my kinsman, Lord Sunderland, has sent me hither. But there it is. You didn’t know?”
She shook her head without replying. She had averted her face, and her eyes were staring down at the gently heaving water. After a moment she spoke, her voice steady and perfectly controlled.
“But surely, if this were true, there would have been an end to his piracy by now. If he... if he loved a woman and was betrothed, and was also rich as you say, surely he would have abandoned this desperate life, and...”
“Why, so I thought,” his lordship interrupted, “until I had the explanation. D’Ogeron is avaricious for himself and for his child. And as for the girl, I’m told she’s a wild piece, fit mate for such a man as Blood. Almost I marvel that he doesn’t marry her and take her a-roving with him. It would be no new experience for her. And I marvel, too, at Blood’s patience. He killed a man to win her.”
“He killed a man for her, do you say?” There was horror now in her voice.
“Yes—a French buccaneer named Levasseur. He was the girl’s lover and Blood’s associate on a venture. Blood coveted the girl, and killed Levasseur to win her. Pah! It’s an unsavoury tale, I own. But men live by different codes out in these parts....”
She had turned to face him. She was pale to the lips, and her hazel eyes were blazing, as she cut into his apologies for Blood.
“They must, indeed, if his other associates allowed him to live after that.”
“Oh, the thing was done in fair fight, I am told.”
“Who told you?”
“A man who sailed with them, a Frenchman named Cahusac, whom I found in a waterside tavern in St. Nicholas. He was Levasseur’s lieutenant, and he was present on the island where the thing happened, and when Levasseur was killed.”
“And the girl? Did he say the girl was present, too?”
“Yes. She was a witness of the encounter. Blood carried her off when he had disposed of his brother-buccaneer.”
“And the dead man’s followers allowed it?” He caught the note of incredulity in her voice, but missed the note of relief with which it was blent. “Oh, I don’t believe the tale. I won’t believe it!”
“I honour you for that, Miss Bishop. It strained my own belief that men should be so callous, until this Cahusac afforded me the explanation.”
“What?” She checked her unbelief, an unbelief that had uplifted her from an inexplicable dismay. Clutching the rail, she swung round to face his lordship with that question. Later he was to remember and perceive in her present behaviour a certain oddness which went disregarded now.
“Blood purchased their consent, and his right to carry the girl off. He paid them in pearls that were worth more than twenty thousand pieces of eight.” His lordship laughed again with a touch of contempt. “A handsome price! Faith, they’re scoundrels all—just thieving, venal curs. And faith, it’s a pretty tale this for a lady’s ear.”
She looked away from him again, and found that her sight was blurred. After a moment in a voice less steady than before she asked him:
“Why should this Frenchman have told you such a tale? Did he hate this Captain Blood?”
“I did not gather that,” said his lordship slowly. “He related it... oh, just as a commonplace, an instance of buccaneering ways.
“A commonplace!” said she. “My God! A commonplace!”
“I dare say that we are all savages under the cloak that civilization fashions for us,” said his lordship. “But this Blood, now, was a man of considerable parts, from what else this Cahusac told me. He was a bachelor of medicine.”
“That is true, to my own knowledge.”
“And he has seen much foreign service on sea and land. Cahusac said—though this I hardly credit—that he had fought under de Ruyter.”
“That also is true,” said she. She sighed heavily. “Your Cahusac seems to have been accurate enough. Alas!”
“You are sorry, then?”
She looked at him. She was very pale, he noticed.
“As we are sorry to hear of the death of one we have esteemed. Once I held him in regard for an unfortunate but worthy gentleman. Now....”
She checked, and smiled a little crooked smile. “Such a man is best forgotten.”
And upon that she passed at once to speak of other things. The friendship, which it was her great gift to command in all she met, grew steadily between those two in the little time remaining, until the event befell that marred what was promising to be the pleasantest stage of his lordship’s voyage.
The marplot was the mad-dog Spanish Admiral, whom they encountered on the second day out, when halfway across the Gulf of Gonaves. The Captain of the Royal Mary was not disposed to be intimidated even when Don Miguel opened fire on him. Observing the Spaniard’s plentiful seaboard towering high above the water and offering him so splendid a mark, the Englishman was moved to scorn. If this Don who flew the banner of Castile wanted a fight, the Royal Mary was just the ship to oblige him. It may be that he was justified of his gallant confidence, and that he would that day have put an end to the wild career of Don Miguel de Espinosa, but that a lucky shot from the Milagrosa got among some powder stored in his forecastle, and blew up half his ship almost before the fight had started. How the powder came there will never now be known, and the gallant Captain himself did not survive to enquire into it.
Before the men of the Royal Mary had recovered from their consternation, their captain killed and a third of their number destroyed with him, the ship yawing and rocking helplessly in a crippled state, the Spaniards boarded her.
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