The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
down the companion to give the order for the cock-boat.
“If anything should happen to you, Peter,” he said, as Blood was going over the side, “Colonel Bishop had better look to himself. These fifty lads may be lukewarm at present, as you say, but—sink me!—they’ll be anything but lukewarm if there’s a breach of faith.”
“And what should be happening to me, Jeremy? Sure, now, I’ll be back for dinner, so I will.”
Blood climbed down into the waiting boat. But laugh though he might, he knew as well as Pitt that in going ashore that morning he carried his life in his hands. Because of this, it may have been that when he stepped on to the narrow mole, in the shadow of the shallow outer wall of the fort through whose crenels were thrust the black noses of its heavy guns, he gave order that the boat should stay for him at that spot. He realized that he might have to retreat in a hurry.
Walking leisurely, he skirted the embattled wall, and passed through the great gates into the courtyard. Half-a-dozen soldiers lounged there, and in the shadow cast by the wall, Major Mallard, the Commandant, was slowly pacing. He stopped short at sight of Captain Blood, and saluted him, as was his due, but the smile that lifted the officer’s stiff mostachios was grimly sardonic. Peter Blood’s attention, however, was elsewhere.
On his right stretched a spacious garden, beyond which rose the white house that was the residence of the Deputy-Governor. In that garden’s main avenue, that was fringed with palm and sandalwood, he had caught sight of Miss Bishop alone. He crossed the courtyard with suddenly lengthened stride.
“Good-morning to ye, ma’am,” was his greeting as he overtook her; and hat in hand now, he added on a note of protest: “Sure, it’s nothing less than uncharitable to make me run in this heat.”
“Why do you run, then?” she asked him coolly, standing slim and straight before him, all in white and very maidenly save in her unnatural composure. “I am pressed,” she informed him. “So you will forgive me if I do not stay.”
“You were none so pressed until I came,” he protested, and if his thin lips smiled, his blue eyes were oddly hard.
“Since you perceive it, sir, I wonder that you trouble to be so insistent.”
That crossed the swords between them, and it was against Blood’s instincts to avoid an engagement.
“Faith, you explain yourself after a fashion,” said he. “But since it was more or less in your service that I donned the King’s coat, you should suffer it to cover the thief and pirate.”
She shrugged and turned aside, in some resentment and some regret. Fearing to betray the latter, she took refuge in the former. “I do my best,” said she.
“So that ye can be charitable in some ways!” He laughed softly. “Glory be, now, I should be thankful for so much. Maybe I’m presumptuous. But I can’t forget that when I was no better than a slave in your uncle’s household in Barbados, ye used me with a certain kindness.”
“Why not? In those days you had some claim upon my kindness. You were just an unfortunate gentleman then.”
“And what else would you be calling me now?”
“Hardly unfortunate. We have heard of your good fortune on the seas—how your luck has passed into a byword. And we have heard other things: of your good fortune in other directions.”
She spoke hastily, the thought of Mademoiselle d’Ogeron in her mind. And instantly would have recalled the words had she been able. But Peter Blood swept them lightly aside, reading into them none of her meaning, as she feared he would.
“Aye—a deal of lies, devil a doubt, as I could prove to you.”
“I cannot think why you should trouble to put yourself on your defence,” she discouraged him.
“So that ye may think less badly of me than you do.”
“What I think of you can be a very little matter to you, sir.”
This was a disarming stroke. He abandoned combat for expostulation.
“Can ye say that now? Can ye say that, beholding me in this livery of a service I despise? Didn’t ye tell me that I might redeem the past? It’s little enough I am concerned to redeem the past save only in your eyes. In my own I’ve done nothing at all that I am ashamed of, considering the provocation I received.”
Her glance faltered, and fell away before his own that was so intent.
“I... I can’t think why you should speak to me like this,” she said, with less than her earlier assurance.
“Ah, now, can’t ye, indeed?” he cried. “Sure, then, I’ll be telling ye.”
“Oh, please.” There was real alarm in her voice. “I realize fully what you did, and I realize that partly, at least, you may have been urged by consideration for myself. Believe me, I am very grateful. I shall always be grateful.”
“But if it’s also your intention always to think of me as a thief and a pirate, faith, ye may keep your gratitude for all the good it’s like to do me.”
A livelier colour crept into her cheeks. There was a perceptible heave of the slight breast that faintly swelled the flimsy bodice of white silk. But if she resented his tone and his words, she stifled her resentment. She realized that perhaps she had, herself, provoked his anger. She honestly desired to make amends.
“You are mistaken,” she began. “It isn’t that.”
But they were fated to misunderstand each other.
Jealousy, that troubler of reason, had been over-busy with his wits as it had with hers.
“What is it, then?” quoth he, and added the question: “Lord Julian?”
She started, and stared at him blankly indignant now.
“Och, be frank with me,” he urged her, unpardonably. “‘Twill be a kindness, so it will.”
For a moment she stood before him with quickened breathing, the colour ebbing and flowing in her cheeks. Then she looked past him, and tilted her chin forward.
“You... you are quite insufferable,” she said. “I beg that you will let me pass.”
He stepped aside, and with the broad feathered hat which he still held in his hand, he waved her on towards the house.
“I’ll not be detaining you any longer, ma’am. After all, the cursed thing I did for nothing can be undone. Ye’ll remember afterwards that it was your hardness drove me.”
She moved to depart, then checked, and faced him again. It was she now who was on her defence, her voice quivering with indignation.
“You take that tone! You dare to take that tone!” she cried, astounding him by her sudden vehemence. “You have the effrontery to upbraid me because I will not take your hands when I know how they are stained; when I know you for a murderer and worse?”
He stared at her open-mouthed.
“A murderer—I?” he said at last.
“Must I name your victims? Did you not murder Levasseur?”
“Levasseur?” He smiled a little. “So they’ve told you about that!”
“Do you deny it?”
“I killed him, it is true. I can remember killing another man in circumstances that were very similar. That was in Bridgetown on the night of the Spanish raid. Mary Traill would tell you of it. She was present.”
He clapped his hat on his head with a certain abrupt fierceness, and strode angrily away, before she could answer or even grasp the full significance of what he had said.
CHAPTER XXIII.
HOSTAGES