The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
you? Stab me! I shouldn’t boast of it. It argues either extreme youth or extreme foolishness.” His lordship, you see, belonged to my Lord Sunderland’s school of philosophy. He added after a moment: “So does the display of ingratitude.”
A faint colour stirred in her cheeks. “Your lordship is evidently aggrieved with me. I am disconsolate. I hope your lordship’s grievance is sounder than your views of life. It is news to me that ingratitude is a fault only to be found in the young and the foolish.”
“I didn’t say so, ma’am.” There was a tartness in his tone evoked by the tartness she had used. “If you would do me the honour to listen, you would not misapprehend me. For if unlike you I do not always say precisely what I think, at least I say precisely what I wish to convey. To be ungrateful may be human; but to display it is childish.”
“I... I don’t think I understand.” Her brows were knit. “How have I been ungrateful and to whom?”
“To whom? To Captain Blood. Didn’t he come to our rescue?”
“Did he?” Her manner was frigid. “I wasn’t aware that he knew of our presence aboard the Milagrosa.”
His lordship permitted himself the slightest gesture of impatience.
“You are probably aware that he delivered us,” said he. “And living as you have done in these savage places of the world, you can hardly fail to be aware of what is known even in England: that this fellow Blood strictly confines himself to making war upon the Spaniards. So that to call him thief and pirate as you did was to overstate the case against him at a time when it would have been more prudent to have understated it.”
“Prudence?” Her voice was scornful. “What have I to do with prudence?”
“Nothing—as I perceive. But, at least, study generosity. I tell you frankly, ma’am, that in Blood’s place I should never have been so nice. Sink me! When you consider what he has suffered at the hands of his fellow-countrymen, you may marvel with me that he should trouble to discriminate between Spanish and English. To be sold into slavery! Ugh!” His lordship shuddered. “And to a damned colonial planter!” He checked abruptly. “I beg your pardon, Miss Bishop. For the moment....”
“You were carried away by your heat in defence of this... sea-robber.” Miss Bishop’s scorn was almost fierce.
His lordship stared at her again. Then he half-closed his large, pale eyes, and tilted his head a little. “I wonder why you hate him so,” he said softly.
He saw the sudden scarlet flame upon her cheeks, the heavy frown that descended upon her brow. He had made her very angry, he judged. But there was no explosion. She recovered.
“Hate him? Lord! What a thought! I don’t regard the fellow at all.”
“Then ye should, ma’am.” His lordship spoke his thought frankly. “He’s worth regarding. He’d be an acquisition to the King’s navy—a man that can do the things he did this morning. His service under de Ruyter wasn’t wasted on him. That was a great seaman, and—blister me!—the pupil’s worthy the master if I am a judge of anything. I doubt if the Royal Navy can show his equal. To thrust himself deliberately between those two, at point-blank range, and so turn the tables on them! It asks courage, resource, and invention. And we land-lubbers were not the only ones he tricked by his manoeuvre. That Spanish Admiral never guessed the intent until it was too late and Blood held him in check. A great man, Miss Bishop. A man worth regarding.”
Miss Bishop was moved to sarcasm.
“You should use your influence with my Lord Sunderland to have the King offer him a commission.”
His lordship laughed softly. “Faith, it’s done already. I have his commission in my pocket.” And he increased her amazement by a brief exposition of the circumstances. In that amazement he left her, and went in quest of Blood. But he was still intrigued. If she were a little less uncompromising in her attitude towards Blood, his lordship would have been happier.
He found the Captain pacing the quarter-deck, a man mentally exhausted from wrestling with the Devil, although of this particular occupation his lordship could have no possible suspicion. With the amiable familiarity he used, Lord Julian slipped an arm through one of the Captain’s, and fell into step beside him.
“What’s this?” snapped Blood, whose mood was fierce and raw. His lordship was not disturbed.
“I desire, sir, that we be friends,” said he suavely.
“That’s mighty condescending of you!”
Lord Julian ignored the obvious sarcasm.
“It’s an odd coincidence that we should have been brought together in this fashion, considering that I came out to the Indies especially to seek you.”
“Ye’re not by any means the first to do that,” the other scoffed. “But they’ve mainly been Spaniards, and they hadn’t your luck.”
“You misapprehend me completely,” said Lord Julian. And on that he proceeded to explain himself and his mission.
When he had done, Captain Blood, who until that moment had stood still under the spell of his astonishment, disengaged his arm from his lordship’s, and stood squarely before him.
“Ye’re my guest aboard this ship,” said he, “and I still have some notion of decent behaviour left me from other days, thief and pirate though I may be. So I’ll not be telling you what I think of you for daring to bring me this offer, or of my Lord Sunderland—since he’s your kinsman for having the impudence to send it. But it does not surprise me at all that one who is a minister of James Stuart’s should conceive that every man is to be seduced by bribes into betraying those who trust him.” He flung out an arm in the direction of the waist, whence came the half-melancholy chant of the lounging buccaneers.
“Again you misapprehend me,” cried Lord Julian, between concern and indignation. “That is not intended. Your followers will be included in your commission.”
“And d’ ye think they’ll go with me to hunt their brethren—the Brethren of the Coast? On my soul, Lord Julian, it is yourself does the misapprehending. Are there not even notions of honour left in England? Oh, and there’s more to it than that, even. D’ye think I could take a commission of King James’s? I tell you I wouldn’t be soiling my hands with it—thief and pirate’s hands though they be. Thief and pirate is what you heard Miss Bishop call me to-day—a thing of scorn, an outcast. And who made me that? Who made me thief and pirate?”
“If you were a rebel...?” his lordship was beginning.
“Ye must know that I was no such thing—no rebel at all. It wasn’t even pretended. If it were, I could forgive them. But not even that cloak could they cast upon their foulness. Oh, no; there was no mistake. I was convicted for what I did, neither more nor less. That bloody vampire Jeffreys—bad cess to him!—sentenced me to death, and his worthy master James Stuart afterwards sent me into slavery, because I had performed an act of mercy; because compassionately and without thought for creed or politics I had sought to relieve the sufferings of a fellow-creature; because I had dressed the wounds of a man who was convicted of treason. That was all my offence. You’ll find it in the records. And for that I was sold into slavery: because by the law of England, as administered by James Stuart in violation of the laws of God, who harbours or comforts a rebel is himself adjudged guilty of rebellion. D’ye dream man, what it is to be a slave?”
He checked suddenly at the very height of his passion. A moment he paused, then cast it from him as if it had been a cloak. His voice sank again. He uttered a little laugh of weariness and contempt.
“But there! I grow hot for nothing at all. I explain myself, I think, and God knows, it is not my custom. I am grateful to you, Lord Julian, for your kindly intentions. I am so. But ye’ll understand, perhaps. Ye look as if ye might.”
Lord Julian stood still. He was deeply stricken by the other’s words, the passionate, eloquent outburst that