Episode 3

THE DEMONSTRATION

I

'Fortune,' Captain Blood was wont to say, 'detests a niggard. Her favours are reserved for the man who knows how to spend nobly and to stake boldly.'

Whether you hold him right or wrong in this opinion, it is at least beyond question that he never shrank from acting upon it. Instances of his prodigality are abundant in that record of his fortunes and hazards which Jeremy Pitt has left us, but none is more recklessly splendid than that supplied by his measures to defeat the West Indian policy of Monsieur de Louvois when it was threatening the great buccaneering brotherhood with extinction.

The Marquis de Louvois, who succeeded the great Colbert in the service of Louis XIV, was universally hated whilst he lived, and as universally lamented when he died. Than this conjunction of estimates there can be, I take it, no higher testimonial to the worth of a minister of State. Nothing was either too great or too small for Monsieur de Louvois' attention. Once he had set the machinery of State moving smoothly at home, he turned in his reorganizing lust to survey the French possessions in the Caribbean, where the activities of the buccaneers distressed his sense of orderliness.

Thither, in the King's twenty–four–gun ship the Béarnais, he dispatched the Chevalier de Saintonges, an able, personable gentleman in the early thirties, who had earned a confidence which Monsieur de Louvois did not lightly bestow, and who bore now clear instructions upon how to proceed so as to put an end to the evil, as Monsieur de Louvois accounted it.

To Monsieur de Saintonges, whose circumstances in life were by no means opulent, this was to prove an unsuspected and Heaven–sent chance of fortune; for in the course of serving his King to the best of his ability he found occasion, with an ability even greater, very abundantly to serve himself. During his sojourn in Martinique, which the events induced him to protract far beyond what was strictly necessary, he met, wooed at tropical speed, and married, Madame de Veynac. This young and magnificently handsome widow of Hommaire de Veynac had inherited from her late husband those vast West Indian possessions which comprised nearly a third of the island of Martinique, with plantations of sugar, spices, and tobacco producing annual revenues that were nothing short of royal. Thus richly endowed, she came to the arms of the stately but rather impecunious Chevalier de Saintonges.

The Chevalier was too conscientious a man and too profoundly imbued with the sense of the importance of his mission to permit this marriage to be more than a splendid interlude in the diligent performance of the duties which had brought him to the New World. The nuptials having been celebrated in Saint Pierre with all the pomp and luxury proper to the lady's importance, Monsieur de Saintonges resumed his task with the increased consequence which he derived from the happy change in his circumstances. He took his bride aboard the Béarnais, and sailed away from Saint Pierre to complete his tour of inspection before setting a course for France and the full enjoyment of the fabulous wealth that was now his.

Dominica, Guadeloupe, and the Grenadines he had already visited, as well as Sainte Croix, which properly speaking was the property not of the French Crown but of the French West India Company. The most important part of his mission, however, remained yet to be accomplished at Tortuga, that other property of the French West India Company, which had become the stronghold of those buccaneers, English, French and Dutch, for whose extermination it was the Chevalier's duty to take order.

His confidence in his ability to succeed in this difficult matter had been materially augmented by the report that Peter Blood, the most dangerous and enterprising of all these filibusters, had lately been caught by the Spaniards and hanged at San Juan de Puerto Rico.

In calm but torrid August weather the Béarnais made a good passage and came to drop anchor in the Bay of Cayona, that rockbound harbour which Nature might have designed expressly to be a pirates' lair.

The Chevalier took his bride ashore with him, bestowing her in a chair expressly procured, for which his seamen opened a way through the heterogeneous crowd of Europeans, Negroes, Maroons, and Mulattos of both sexes who swarmed to view this great lady from the French ship. Two half–caste porters, all but naked, bore the chair with its precious cargo, whilst the rather pompous Monsieur de Saintonges, clad in the lightest of blue taffetas, cane in one hand and the hat with which he fanned himself in the other, stalked beside it, damning the heat, the flies, and the smells. A tall, florid man, already inclining slightly at this early age to embonpoint, he perspired profusely, and his head ran wet under his elaborate golden periwig.

Up the gentle acclivity of the main unpaved street of Cayona with its fierce white glare of coral dust and its fringe of languid palms, he toiled to the blessed fragrant shade of the Governor's garden and eventually to the cool twilight of chambers from which the sun's ardour was excluded by green, slatted blinds. Here cool drinks, in which rum and limes and sugar–cane were skilfully compounded, accompanied the cordial welcome extended by the Governor and his two handsome daughters to these distinguished visitors.

But the heat in which Monsieur de Saintonges arrived was destined to be only temporarily allayed. Soon after Madame de Saintonges had been carried off by the Governor's daughters, a discussion ensued which reopened all the Chevalier's pores.

Monsieur d'Ogeron, who governed Tortuga on behalf of the French West India Company, had listened with a gravity increasing to gloom to the forcible expositions made by his visitor in the name of Monsieur de Louvois.

A slight, short, elegant man was this Monsieur d'Ogeron, who retained in this outlandish island of his rule something of the courtly airs of the great world from which he came, just as he surrounded himself in his house and its equipment with the elegancies proper to a French gentleman of birth. Only breeding and good manners enabled him now to dissemble his impatience. At the end of the Chevalier's blunt and pompous peroration, he fetched a sigh in which there was some weariness.

'I suspect,' he ventured, 'that Monsieur de Louvois is indifferently informed upon West Indian conditions.'

Monsieur de Saintonges was aghast at this hint of opposition. His sense of the importance and omniscience of Monsieur de Louvois was almost as high as his sense of his own possession of these qualities.

'I doubt, sir, if there are any conditions in the world upon which Monsieur le Marquis is not fully informed.'

Monsieur d'Ogeron's smile was gentle and courteous. 'All the world is of course aware of Monsieur de Louvois' high worth. But his Excellency does not possess my own experience of these remotenesses, and this, I venture to think, lends some value to my opinion.'

By an impatient gesture the Chevalier waved aside the matter of Monsieur d'Ogeron's opinions. 'We lose sight of the point, I think. Suffer me to be quite blunt, sir. Tortuga is under the flag of France. Monsieur de Louvois takes the view, in which I venture to concur, that it is in the last degree improper… In short, that it is not to the honour of the flag of France that it should protect a horde of brigands.'

Monsieur d'Ogeron's gentle smile was still all deprecation. 'Sir, sir, it is not the flag of France that protects the filibusters, but the filibusters that protect the flag of France.'

The tall, blond, rather imposing representative of the Crown came to his feet, as if to mark his indignation. 'Monsieur, that is an outrageous statement.'

The Governor's urbanity remained unimpaired. 'It is the fact that is outrageous, not the statement. Permit me to observe to you, monsieur, that a hundred and fifty years ago, His Holiness the Pope bestowed upon Spain the New World of Columbus' discovery. Since then other nations, the French, the English, the Dutch, have paid less heed to that papal bull than Spain considers proper. They have attempted, themselves, to settle some of these lands — lands of which the Spaniards have never taken actual possession. Because Spain insists upon regarding this as a violation of her rights, the Caribbean for years has been a cockpit.

'These buccaneers themselves, whom you regard with such contempt, were originally peaceful hunters, cultivators, and traders. The Spaniards chased them out of Hispaniola, drove them, English and French, from St Christopher and the Dutch from Sainte Croix, by ruthless massacres which did not spare even their women and children. In self–defence these men forsook their peaceful boucans, took arms, banded themselves together into a brotherhood, and hunted the Spaniard in their turn. That the Virgin Islands today belong to the English Crown is due to these Brethren of the Coast, as they call themselves, these buccaneers who took possession of those lands in the name of England. This very island of Tortuga, like the island of Sainte Croix, came to belong to the French West India Company, and so to France, in the same way.

'You spoke, sir, of the protection of the French flag enjoyed by these buccaneers. There is here a confusion of ideas. If there were no buccaneers to hold the rapacity of Spain in check, I ask myself, Monsieur de Saintonges, if this voyage of yours would ever have been undertaken, for I doubt if there would have been any French possessions in the Caribbean to be visited.' He paused to smile upon the blank amazement of his guest. 'I hope, monsieur, that I have said enough to justify the opinion, which I take the liberty of holding in opposition to that of Monsieur de Louvois, that the suppression of the buccaneers might easily result in disaster to the French West Indian colonies.'

At this point Monsieur de Saintonges exploded. As so commonly happens, it was actually a sense of the truth underlying the Governor's argument that produced his exasperation. The reckless terms of his rejoinder lead us to doubt the wisdom of Monsieur de Louvois in choosing him for an ambassador.

'You have said enough, monsieur … more than enough to persuade me that a reluctance to forgo the profits accruing to your Company and to yourself personally from the plunder marketed in Tortuga, is rendering you negligent of the honour of France, upon which this traffic is a stain.'

Monsieur d'Ogeron smiled no longer. Stricken in his turn by the amount of truth in the Chevalier's accusation; he came to his feet suddenly, white with anger. But, a masterful, self–contained little man, he was without any of the bluster of his tall visitor. His voice was as cold as ice and very level.

'Such an assertion, monsieur, can be made to me only sword in hand.'

Saintonges strode about the long room, and waved his arms.

'That is of a piece with the rest! Preposterous! If that's your humour, you had better send your cartel to Monsieur de Louvois. I am but his mouthpiece. I have said what I was charged to say, and what I would not have said if I had found you reasonable. You are to understand, monsieur, that I have not come all the way from France to fight duels on behalf of the Crown, but to explain the Crown's views and issue the Crown's orders. If they appear distasteful to you, that is not my affair. The orders I have for you are that Tortuga must cease to be a haven for buccaneers. And that is all that needs to be said.'

'God give me patience, sir,' cried Monsieur d'Ogeron in his distress. 'Will you be good enough to tell me at the same time how I am to enforce these orders?'

'Where is the difficulty? Close the market in which you receive the plunder. If you make an end of the traffic, the buccaneers will make an end of themselves.'

'How simple! But how very simple! And what if the buccaneers make an end of me and of this possession of the West India Company? What if they seize the island of Tortuga for themselves, which is no doubt what would happen? What then, if you please, Monsieur de Saintonges?'

'The might of France will know how to enforce her rights.'

'Much obliged. Does the might of France realize how mighty it will have to be? Has Monsieur de Louvois any conception of the strength and organization of these buccaneers? Have you never, for instance, heard in France of Morgan's march on Panama? Is it realized that there are in all some five or six thousand of these men afloat, the most formidable sea–fighters the world has ever seen? If they were banded together by such a menace of extinction, they could assemble a navy of forty or fifty ships that would sweep the Caribbean from end to end.'

At last the Governor had succeeded in putting Monsieur de Saintonges out of countenance by these realities. For a moment the Chevalier stared chapfallen at his host. Then he rallied obstinately. 'Surely, sir, surely you exaggerate.'

'I exaggerate nothing. I desire you to understand that I am actuated by something more than the self–interest you so offensively attribute to me.'

'Monsieur de Louvois will regret, I am sure, the injustice of that assumption when I report to him fully, making clear what you have told me. For the rest, sir, however, you have your orders.'

'But surely, sir, you have been granted some discretion in the fulfilment of your mission. Finding things as you do, as I have explained them, it seems to me that you would do no disservice to the Crown in recommending to Monsieur de Louvois that until France is in a position to place a navy in the Caribbean so as to protect her possessions, she would be well–advised not to disturb the existing state of things.'

The Chevalier merely stiffened further. 'That, monsieur, is not a recommendation that would become me. You have the orders of Monsieur de Louvois, which are that this mart for the plunder of the seas must at once be closed. I trust that you will enable me to assure Monsieur de Louvois of your immediate compliance.'

Monsieur d'Ogeron was in despair before the stupidity of this official intransigence. 'I must still protest, monsieur, that your description is not a just one. No plunder comes here but the plunder of Spain to compensate us for all the plunder we have suffered and shall continue to suffer at the hands of the gentlemen of Castile.'

'That, sir, is fantastic. There is peace between Spain and France.'

'In the Caribbean, Monsieur de Saintonges, there is never peace. If we abolish the buccaneers, we lay down our arms and offer our throats to the knife. That is all.'

There were, however, no arguments that could move Monsieur de Saintonges from the position he had taken up. 'I must regard that as a personal opinion, more or less coloured — suffer me to say it without offence — by the interests of your Company and yourself. Anyway, the orders are clear. You realize that you will neglect them at your peril.'

'And also that I shall fulfil them at my peril,' said the Governor, with a twist of the lips. He shrugged and sighed. 'You place me, sir, between the sword and the wall.'

'Do me the justice to understand that I discharge my duty,' said the lofty Chevalier de Saintonges, and the concession of those words was the only concession Monsieur d'Ogeron could wring from his obstinate self–sufficiency.

II

Monsieur de Saintonges sailed away with his wife that same evening from Tortuga, setting a course for Port au Prince, where he desired to pay a call before finally steering for France and the opulent ease which he could now command there. Admiring himself for the firmness with which he had resisted all the Governor of Tortuga's special pleading, he took Madame de Saintonges into his confidence in the matter, so that she too might admire him.

'That little trafficker in brigandage might have persuaded me from my duty if I had been less alert,' he laughed. 'But I am not easily deceived. That is why Monsieur de Louvois chose me for a mission of this importance. He knew the difficulties I should meet, and knew that I should not be duped by misrepresentations however specious.'

She was a tall, handsome, languorous lady, sloe–eyed, black–haired, with a skin like ivory and a bosom of Hebe. Her languishing eyes considered in awe and reverence this husband from the great world, who was to open for her social gates in France that would have been closed against the wife of a mere planter, however rich. Yet for all her admiring confidence in his acumen, she ventured to wonder was he correct in regarding as purely self–interested the arguments which Monsieur d'Ogeron had presented. She had not spent her life in the West Indies without learning something of the predatoriness of Spain, although perhaps she had never until now suspected the extent to which the activities of the buccaneers might be keeping that predatoriness in check. Spain maintained a considerable fleet in the Caribbean, mainly for the purpose of guarding her settlements from filibustering raids. The suppression of the filibusters would render that fleet comparatively idle, and in idleness there is no knowing to what devilry men may turn, especially if they be Spaniards.

Thus, meekly, Madame de Saintonges to her adored husband. But the adored husband, with the high spirit that rendered him so adorable, refused to be shaken.

'In such an event, be sure that the King of France, my master, will take order.'

Nevertheless, his mind was no longer quite at rest. His wife's very submissive and tentative support of Monsieur d'Ogeron's argument had unsettled him. It was easy to gird at the self–interest of the Governor of Tortuga, and to assign to it his dread of Spain. Monsieur de Saintonges, because, himself, he had acquired a sudden and enormous interest in French West Indian possessions, began to ask himself whether, after all, he might not have been too ready to believe that Monsieur d'Ogeron had exaggerated.

And the Governor of Tortuga had not exaggerated. However much his interests may have jumped with his arguments, there can be no doubt whatever that these were well founded. Because of this he could perceive ahead of him no other course but to resign his office and return at once to France, leaving Monsieur de Louvois to work out the destinies of the French West Indies and of Tortuga in his own fashion. It would be a desertion of the interests of the West India Company. But if the new minister's will prevailed, very soon the West India Company would have no interests to protect.

The little Governor spent a disturbed night, and slept late on the following morning, to be eventually aroused by gunfire.

The boom of cannon and the rattle of musketry were so continuous that it took him some time to realize that the din did not betoken an attack upon the harbour, but a feu–de–joie such as the rocks of Cayona had never yet echoed. The reason for it, when he discovered it, served to dispel some part of his dejection. The report that Peter Blood had been taken and hanged at San Juan de Puerto Rico was being proven false by the arrival in Cayona of Peter Blood himself. He had sailed into the harbour aboard a captured Spanish vessel, the sometime Maria Gloriosa, lately the flagship of the Marquis of Riconete, the Admiral of the Ocean–Sea, trailing in her wake the two richly laden Spanish galleons, the plate–ships taken at Puerto Rico.

The guns that thundered their salutes were the guns of Blood's own fleet of three ships, which had been refitting at Tortuga in his absence and aboard which during the past week all had been mourning and disorientation.

Rejoicing as fully as any of those jubilant buccaneers in this return from the dead of a man whom he too had mourned — for a real friendship existed between the Governor of Tortuga and the great Captain — Monsieur d'Ogeron and his daughters prepared for Peter Blood a feast of welcome, to which the Governor brought some of those bottles 'from behind the faggots', as he described the choice wines that he received from France.

The Captain came in great good humour to the feast, and entertained them at table with an account of the queer adventure in Puerto Rico, which had ended in the hanging of a poor scoundrelly pretender to the name and fame of Captain Blood, and had enabled him to sail away unchallenged with the two plate–ships that were now anchored in the harbour of Tortuga.

'I never made a richer haul, and I doubt if many richer have ever been made. Of the gold alone my own share must be a matter of twenty–five thousand pieces of eight, which I'll be depositing with you against bills of exchange on France. Then the peppers and spices in one of the galleons should be worth over a hundred thousand pieces to the West India Company. It awaits your valuation, my friend.'

But an announcement which should have increased the Governor's good humour merely served to precipitate him visibly into the depths of gloom by reminding him of how the circumstances had altered. Sorrowfully he looked across the table at his guest, and sorrowfully he shook his head.

'All that is finished, my friend. I am under a cursed interdict.' And forth in fullest detail came the tale of the visit of the Chevalier de Saintonges with its curtailment of Monsieur d'Ogeron's activities. 'So you see, my dear Captain, the markets of the West India Company are now closed to you.'

The keen, shaven, suntanned face in its frame of black curls showed an angry consternation.

'Name of God! But didn't you tell this lackey from Court that — '

'There was nothing I did not tell him to which a man of sense should have listened, no argument that I did not present. To all that I had to say he wearied me with insistence that he doubted if there were any conditions in the world upon which Monsieur de Louvois is not informed. To the Chevalier de Saintonges there is no god but Louvois, and Saintonges is his prophet. So much was plain. A consequential gentleman this Monsieur de Saintonge, like all these Court minions. Lately in Martinique he married the widow of Hommaire de Veynac. That will make him one of the richest men in France. You know the effect of great possessions on a self–sufficient man.' Monsieur d'Ogeron spread his hands. 'It is finished, my friend.'

But with this Captain Blood could not agree. 'That is to bend your head to the axe. Oh no, no. Defeat is not to be accepted so easily by men of our strength.'

'For you, who dwell outside the law, all things are possible. But for me… Here in Tortuga I represent the law of France. I must serve and uphold it. And the law has pronounced.'

'Had I arrived a day sooner the law might have been made to pronounce differently.'

D'Ogeron was wistfully sardonic. 'You imagine, in spite of all that I have said, that you could have persuaded this coxcomb of his folly?'

'There is nothing of which a man cannot be persuaded if the proper arguments are put before him in the proper manner.'

'I tell you that I put before him all the arguments that exist.'

'No, no. You presented only those that occurred to you.'

'If you mean that I should have put a pistol to the head of this insufferable puppy…'

'Oh, my friend! That is not an argument. It is a constraint. We are all of us self–interested, and none are more so than those who, like this Chevalier de Saintonges, are ready to accuse others of that fault. An appeal to his interests might have been persuasive.'

'Perhaps. But what do I know of his interests?'

'What do you know of them? Oh, but think. Have you not, yourself, just told me that he lately married the widow of Hommaire de Veynac? That gives him great West Indian interests. You spoke vaguely and generally of Spanish raids upon the settlements of other nations. You should have been more particular. You should have dwelt upon the possibility of a raid upon wealthy Martinique. That would have given him to think. And now he's gone, and the chance is lost.'

But d'Ogeron would see no reason for sharing any regrets of that lost opportunity.

'His obstinacy would have prevented him from taking fright. He would not have listened. The last thing he said to me before he sailed for Port au Prince…'

'For Port au Prince!' ejaculated Captain Blood, to interrupt him, 'He's gone to Port au Prince?'

'That was his destination when he departed yesterday. It's his last port of call before he sails for France.'

'So, so!' The Captain was thoughtful. 'That means, then, that he will be returning by way of the Tortuga Channel?'

'Of course, since in the alternative he would have to sail round Hispaniola.'

'Now, glory be, I may not be too late, after all. Couldn't I intercept him as he returns, and try my persuasive arts on him?'

'You'd waste your time, Captain.'

'You make too sure. It's the great gift of persuasion I have. Sustain your hopes awhile, my friend, until I put Monsieur de Saintonges to the test.'

But to raise from their nadir the hopes of Monsieur d'Ogeron something more was necessary than mere light–hearted assurances. It was with the sigh of an abiding despondency that he bade farewell that day to Captain Blood, and without confidence that he wished him luck in whatever he might adventure.

What form the adventure might take, Captain Blood, himself, did not yet know when he quitted the Governor's house and went aboard his own splendid forty–gun ship the Arabella, which, ready for sea, fitted, armed and victualled, had been standing idle during his late absence. But the thought he gave the matter was to such good purpose that late that same afternoon, with a definite plan conceived, he held a council of war in the great cabin, and assigned particular duties to his leading associates.

Hagthorpe and Dyke were to remain in Tortuga in charge of the treasure–ships. Wolverstone was given command of the Spanish Admiral's captured flagship, the Maria Gloriosa, and was required to sail at once, with very special and detailed instructions. To Yberville, the French buccaneer who was associated with him, Blood entrusted the Elizabeth, with orders to make ready to put to sea.

That same evening, at sunset, the Arabella was warped out of the swarm of lesser shipping that had collected about her anchorage. With Blood, himself, in command, with Pitt for sailing master and Ogle for master gunner, she set sail from Cayona, followed closely by the Elizabeth. The Maria Gloriosa was already hull down on the horizon.

Beating up against gentle easterly breezes, the two buccaneer ships, the Arabella and her consort, were off Point Palmish on the northern coast of Hispaniola by the following evening. Hereabouts, where the Tortuga Channel narrows to a mere five miles between Palmish and Portugal Point, Captain Blood decided to take up his station for what was to be done.

III

At about the time that the Arabella and the Elizabeth were casting anchor in that lonely cove on the northern coast of Hispaniola, the Béarnais was weighing at Port au Prince. The smells of the place offended the delicate nostrils of Madame de Saintonges, and on this account — since wives so well endowed are to be pampered — the Chevalier cut short his visit even at the cost of scamping the King's business. Glad to have set a term to this at last, with the serene conviction of having discharged his mission in a manner that must deserve the praise of Monsieur de Louvois, the Chevalier now turned his face towards France and his thoughts to lighter and more personal matters.

With a light wind abeam, the progress of the Béarnais was so slow that it took her twenty–four hours to round Cape St Nicholas at the Western end of the Tortuga Channel; so that it was somewhere about sunset on the day following that of her departure from Port au Prince when she entered that narrow passage.

Monsieur de Saintonges at the time was lounging elegantly on the poop, beside a day–bed set under an awning of brown sailcloth. On this day–bed reclined his handsome Creole wife. There was about this superbly proportioned lady, from the deep mellowness of her voice to the great pearls entwined in her glossy black hair, nothing that did not announce her opulence. It was enhanced at present by profound contentment in this marriage in which each party so perfectly complemented the other. She seemed to glow and swell with it as she lay there luxuriously, faintly waving her jewelled fan, her rich laugh so ready to pay homage to the wit with which her bridegroom sought to dazzle her.

Into this idyll stepped, more or less abruptly, and certainly intrusively, Monsieur Luzan, the Captain of the Béarnais, a lean, brown, hook–nosed man something above the middle height, whose air and carriage were those of a soldier rather than a seaman. As he approached, he took the telescope from under his arm and pointed aft with it.

'Yonder is something that is odd,' he said. And he held out the glass. 'Take a look, Chevalier.'

Monsieur de Saintonges rose slowly, and his eyes followed the indication. Some three miles to westward a sail was visible.

'A ship,' he said, and languidly accepted the proffered telescope. He stepped aside, to the rail, whence the view was clearer and where he could find a support on which to steady his elbow.

Through the glass he beheld a big white vessel very high in the poop. She was veering northward, on a starboard tack against the easterly breeze, and so displayed a noble flank pierced for twenty–four guns, the ports gleaming gold against the white. From her maintopmast, above a mountain of snowy canvas, floated the red–and–gold banner of Castile, and above this a crucifix was mounted.

The Chevalier lowered the glass. 'A Spaniard,' was his casual comment. 'What oddness do you discover in her, Captain?'

'Oh, a Spaniard manifestly. But she was steering south when first we sighted her. A little later she veered into our wake and crowded sail. That is what is odd. For the inference is that she decided to follow us.'

'What then?'

'Just so. What then?' He paused as if for a reply, then resumed. 'From the position of her flag she is an admiral's ship. You will have observed that she is of a heavy armament. She carries forty–eight guns besides stern and forechasers.' Again he paused, finally to add with some force: 'When I am followed by a ship like that I like to know the reason.'

Madame stirred languidly on her day–bed to an accompaniment of deep, rich laughter. 'Are you a man to start at shadows, Captain?'

'Invariably, when cast by a Spaniard, Madame.' Luzan's tone was sharp. He was of a peppery temper, and this was stirred by the reflection upon his courage which he found implied in Madame's question.

The Chevalier, disliking the tone, permitted himself some sarcasms where he would have been better employed in inquiring into the reasons for the Captain's misgivings. Luzan departed in annoyance.

That night the wind dropped to the merest breath, and so slow was their progress that by the following dawn they were still some five or six miles to the west of Portugal Point and the exit of the straits. And daylight showed them the big Spanish ship ever at about the same distance astern. Uneasily and at length Captain Luzan scanned her once more, then passed his glass to his lieutenant.

'See what she can tell you.'

The lieutenant looked long, and whilst he looked he saw her making the addition of stunsails to the mountain of canvas that she already carried. This he announced to the Captain at his elbow, and then, having scanned the pennant on her foretopmast, he was able to add the information that she was the flagship of the Spanish Admiral of the Ocean–Sea, the Marquis of Riconete.

That she should put out stunsails so as to catch the last possible ounce of the light airs increased the Captain's suspicion that her aim was to overhaul him, and being imbued, as became an experienced seaman, whilst in these waters with a healthy mistrust of the intentions of all Spaniards, he took his decision. Crowding all possible sail, and as close–hauled as he dared run, he headed south for the shelter of one of the harbours of the northern coast of French Hispaniola. Thither this Spaniard, if she was indeed in pursuit, would hardly dare to follow him. If she did, she would scarcely venture to display hostility. The manoeuvre would also serve to apply a final test to her intentions.

The result supplied Luzan with almost immediate certainty. At once the great galleon was seen to veer in the same direction, actually thrusting her nose yet a point nearer to such wind as there was. It became as clear that she was in pursuit of the Béarnais as that the Béarnais would be cut off before ever she could reach the green coast that was now almost ahead of her, but still some four miles distant.

Madame de Saintonges, greatly incommoded in her cabin by the apparently quite unnecessary list to starboard, demanded impatiently to be informed by Heaven or Hell what might be amiss that morning with the fool who commanded the Béarnais. The uxorious Chevalier, in bed–gown and slippers, and with a hurriedly donned periwig, the curls of which hung like a row of tallow candles about his flushed countenance, made haste to go and ascertain.

He reeled along the almost perpendicular deck of the gangway to the ship's waist, and stood there bawling angrily for Luzan.

The Captain appeared at the poop–rail to answer him with a curt account of his apprehensions.

'Are you still under that absurd persuasion?' quoth Monsieur de Saintonges. 'Absurd! Why should a Spaniard be in pursuit of us?'

'It will be better to continue to ask ourselves that question than to wait to discover the answer,' snapped Luzan, thus, by his lack of deference, increasing the Chevalier's annoyance.

'But it is imbecile, this!' raved Saintonges. 'To run away from nothing. And it is infamous to discompose Madame de Saintonges by fears so infantile.'

Luzan's patience completely left him. 'She'll be infinitely more discomposed,' he sneered, 'if these infantile fears are realized.' And he added bluntly: 'Madame de Saintonges is a handsome woman, and Spaniards are Spaniards.'

A shrill exclamation was his answer, to announce that Madame herself had now emerged from the companionway. She was in a state of undress that barely preserved the decencies; for without waiting to cast more than a wrap over her night–rail, and with a mane of lustrous black hair like a cloak about her splendid shoulders, she had come to ascertain for herself what might be happening.

Luzan's remark, overheard as she was stepping into the ship's waist, brought upon him now a torrent of shrill abuse, in the course of which he heard himself described as a paltry coward and a low, coarse wretch. And before she had done, the Chevalier was adding his voice to hers.

'You are mad, sir. Mad! What can we possibly have to fear from a Spanish ship, a King's ship, you tell me, an Admiral? We fly the flag of France, and Spain is not at war with France.'

Luzan controlled himself to answer as quietly as he might. 'In these waters, sir, it is impossible to say with whom Spain may be at war. Spain is persuaded that God created the Americas especially for her delight. I have been telling you this ever since we entered the Caribbean.'

The Chevalier remembered not only this, but also that from someone else he had lately heard expressions very similar. Madame, however, was distracting his attention. 'The fellow's wits are turned by panic,' she railed in furious contempt. 'It is terrible that such a man should be entrusted with a ship. He would be better fitted to command a kitchen battery.'

Heaven alone knows what might have been the answer to that insult and what the consequences of it if at that very moment the boom of a gun had not come to save Luzan the trouble of a reply, and abruptly to change the scene and the tempers of the actors.

'Righteous Heaven!' screamed Madame, and 'Ventredieu!' swore her husband.

The lady clutched her bosom. The Chevalier, with a face of chalk, put an arm protectingly about her. From the poop the Captain whom they had so freely accused of cowardice laughed outright with a well–savoured malice.

'You are answered, Madame. And you, sir. Another time perhaps you will reflect before you call my fears infantile and my conduct imbecile.'

With that he turned his back upon them, so that he might speak to the lieutenant who had hastened to his elbow. He bawled an order. It was instantly followed by the whistle of the boatswain's pipe, and in the waist about Saintonges and his bride there was a sudden jostling stir as the hands came pouring from their quarters to be marshalled for whatever the Captain might require of them. Aloft there was another kind of activity. Men were swarming the ratlines and spreading nets whose purpose was to catch any spars that might be brought down in the course of action.

A second gun boomed from the Spaniard and then a third; after that there was a pause, and then they were saluted by what sounded like the thunder of a whole broadside.

The Chevalier lowered his white and shaking wife, whose knees had suddenly turned to water, to a seat on the hatch–coaming. He was futilely profane in his distress.

From the rail Luzan, taking pity on them, and entirely unruffled, uttered what he believed to be reassurance.

'At present she is burning powder to no purpose. Mere Spanish bombast. She'll come within range before I fire a shot. My gunners have their orders.'

But, far from reassuring them, this was merely to increase the Chevalier's fury and distress.

'God of my life! Return her fire? You mustn't think of it. You can't deliver battle.'

'Can't I? You shall see.'

'But you cannot go into action with Madame de Saintonges on board.'

'You want to laugh,' said Luzan. 'If I had the Queen of France on board I must still fight my ship. And I have no choice, pray observe. We are being overhauled too fast to make harbour in time. And how do I know that we should be safe even then?'

The Chevalier stamped in rage.

'But they are brigands, then, these Spaniards?'

There was another roar of artillery at closer quarters now which if still not close enough for damage was close enough to increase the panic of Monsieur and Madame de Saintonges.

The Captain was no longer heeding them. His lieutenant had clutched his arm, and was pointing westward. Luzan with the telescope to his eye was following that indication.

A mile or so off on their starboard beam, midway between the Béarnais and the Spanish Admiral, a big red forty–gun ship under full sail was creeping into view round a headland of the Hispaniola coast. Close in her wake came a second ship of an armament only a little less powerful. They flew no flag, and it was in increasing apprehension that Luzan watched their movements, wondering were they fresh assailants. To his almost incredulous relief, he saw them veer to larboard, heading in the direction of the Spaniard half hidden still in the smoke of her last cannonade, which that morning's gentle airs were slow to disperse.

Light though the wind might be, the newcomers had the advantage of it, and with the weather–gauge of the Spaniard they advanced upon him, like hawks stooping to a heron, opening fire with their forechasers as they went.

Through a veil of rising smoke the Spaniard could be discerned easing up to receive them; then a half–dozen guns volleyed from her flank, and she was again lost to view in the billowing white clouds they had belched. But she seemed to have fired wildly in her excessive haste, for the red ship and her consort held steadily for some moments on their course, evidently unimpaired, then swung to starboard, and delivered each an answering broadside at the Spaniard.

By now, under Luzan's directions, and despite the protests of Monsieur de Saintonges, the Béarnais too had eased up, until she stood with idly flapping sails, suddenly changed from actor to spectator in this drama of the seas.

'Why do you pause, sir?' cried Saintonges. 'Keep to your course. Take advantage of this check to make that harbour.'

'Whilst others fight my battles for me?'

'You have a lady on board,' Saintonges raged at him. 'Madame de Saintonges must be placed in safety.'

'She is in no danger at present. And we may be needed. A while ago you accused me of cowardice. Now you would persuade me to become a coward. For the sake of Madame de Saintonges I will not go into battle save in the last extremity. But for that last extremity I must stand prepared.'

He was so grimly firm that Saintonges dared insist no further. Instead, setting his hopes upon those Heaven–sent rescuers, he stood on the hatch–coaming, and from that elevation sought to follow the fortunes of the battle which was roaring away to westward. But there was nothing to be seen now save a great curtain of smoke, like a vast spreading, deepening cloud that hung low over the sea and extended for perhaps two miles in the sluggish air. From somewhere within the heart of it they continued for awhile to hear the thunder of the guns. Then came a spell of silence, and after a while on the southern edge of the cloud two ships appeared that were at first as the wraiths of ships. Gradually rigging and hulls assumed definition as the smoke rolled away from them, and at about the same time the heart of the cloud began to assume a rosy tint, deepening swiftly to orange, until through the thinning smoke it was seen to proceed from the flames of a ship on fire.

From the poop–rail, Luzan's announcement brought relief at last to the Chevalier. 'The Spanish Admiral is burning. It is the end of her.'

IV

One of the two ships responsible for the destruction of the Spanish galleon remained hove to on the scene of action, her boats lowered and ranging the waters in her neighbourhood. This Luzan made out through his telescope. The other and larger vessel, emerging from that brief decisive engagement without visible scars, headed eastward, and came beating up against the wind towards the Béarnais, her red hull and gilded beakhead aglow in the morning sunshine. Still she displayed no flag, and this circumstance renewed in Monsieur de Saintonges the apprehensions which the issue of the battle had allayed.

With his lady still in half–clad condition, he was now on the poop at Luzan's side, and to the Captain he put the question was it prudent to remain hove to whilst this ship of undeclared nationality advanced upon them.

'But hasn't she proved a friend? A friend in need?' said the Captain.

Madame de Saintonges had not yet forgiven Luzan his plain speaking. Out of her hostility she answered him. 'You assume too much. All that we really know is that she proved an enemy to that Spanish ship. How do you know that these are not pirates to whom every ship is a prey? How do we know that since fire has robbed them of their Spanish prize they may not be intent now upon compensating themselves at our expense?'

Luzan looked at her without affection. 'There is one thing I know,' said he tartly. 'Her sailing powers are as much in excess of our own as her armament. It would avail us little to turn a craven tail if she means to overtake us. And there is another thing. If they meant us mischief one of those ships would not have remained behind. The two of them would be heading for us. So we need not fear to do what courtesy dictates.'

This argument was reassuring, and so the Béarnais waited whilst in the breeze that was freshening now the stranger came rippling forward over the sunlit water. At a distance of less than a quarter of a mile she hove to. A boat was lowered to the calm sea and came speeding with flash of yellow oars towards the Béarnais. Out of her a tall man climbed the Jacob's ladder of the French vessel, and stood at last upon the poop in an elegance of black and silver, from which you might suppose him to come straight from Versailles or the Alameda rather than from the deck of a ship in action.

To the group that received him there — Monsieur de Saintonges and his wife in their disarray, with Luzan and his lieutenant — this stately gentleman bowed until the curls of his periwig met across his square chin, whilst the claret feather in his doffed hat swept the deck.

'I come,' he announced in fairly fluent French, 'to bear and receive felicitations, and to assure myself before sailing away that you are in no need of further assistance and that you suffered no damage before we had the honour to intervene and dispose of that Spanish brigand who was troubling you.'

Such gallant courtesy completely won them, especially the lady. They reassured him on their own score and were solicitous as to what hurts he might have taken in the fight, for all that none were manifest.

Of these he made light. He had suffered some damage on the larboard quarter, which they could not see, but so slight as not to be worth remarking, whilst his men had taken scarcely a scratch. The fight, he explained, had been as brief as, in one sense, it was regrettable. He had hoped to make a prize of that fine galleon. But before he could close with her, a shot had found and fired her powder–magazine, and so the little affair ended almost before it was well begun. He had picked up most of her crew, and his consort was still at that work of rescue.

'As for the flagship of the Admiral of the Ocean–Sea, you see what's left of her, and very soon you will not see even that.'

They carried off this airy, elegant preserver to the great cabin, and in the wine of France they pledged his opportuneness and the victory which had rescued them from ills unnamable. Yet throughout there was from black–and–silver no hint of his identity or nationality, although this they guessed from his accent to be English. Saintonges, at last, approached the matter obliquely.

'You fly no flag, sir,' he said, when they had drunk.

The swarthy gentleman laughed. He conveyed the impression that laughter came to him readily. 'Sir, to be frank with you, I am of those who fly any flag that the occasion may demand. It might have been reassuring if I had approached you under French colours. But in the stress of the hour I gave no thought to it. You could hardly mistake me for a foe.'

'Of those that fly no flag?' the Chevalier echoed, staring bewilderment.

'Just so.' And airily he continued: 'At present I am on my way to Tortuga, and in haste. I am to assemble men and ships for an expedition to Martinique.'

It was the lady's turn to grow round–eyed. 'To Martinique?' She seemed suddenly a little out of breath. 'An expedition to Martinique? An expedition? But to what end?'

Her intervention had the apparent effect of taking him by surprise. He looked up, raising his brows. He smiled a little, and his answer had the tone of humouring her.

'There is a possibility — I will put it no higher — that Spain may be fitting out a squadron for a raid upon Saint Pierre. The loss of the Admiral which I have left in flames out yonder may delay their preparations, and so give us more time. It is what I hope.'

Rounder still grew her dark eyes, paler her cheeks. Her deep bosom was heaving now in tumult.

'Do you say that Spaniards propose a raid upon Martinique? Upon Martinique?'

And the Chevalier in an excitement scarcely less marked than his wife's added at once: 'Impossible, sir. Your information must be at fault. God of my life! That would be an act of war. And France and Spain are at peace.'

The dark brows of their preserver were raised again as if in amusement at their simplicity. 'An act of war. Perhaps. But was it not an act of war for that Spanish ship to fire upon the French flag this morning? Would the peace that prevails in Europe have availed you in the West Indies if you had been sunk?'

'An account — a strict account — would have been asked of Spain.'

'And it would have been rendered, not a doubt. With apologies of the fullest and some lying tales of a misunderstanding. But would that have set your ship afloat again if she had been sunk this morning, or restored you to life so that you might expose the lies by which Spanish men of State would cover the misdeed? Has this not happened, too, and often, when Spain has raided the settlements of other nations?'

'But not of late, sir,' Saintonges retorted.

Black–and–silver shrugged. 'Perhaps that is just the reason why the Spaniards in the Caribbean grow restive.'

And by that answer Monsieur de Saintonges was silenced, bewildered.

'But Martinique!' wailed the lady.

Black–and–silver shrugged expressively. 'The Spaniards call it Martinico, Madame. You are to remember that Spain believes that God created the New World especially for her profit, and that the Divine Will approves her resentment of all interlopers.'

'Isn't that just what I told you, Chevalier?' said Luzan. 'Almost my own words to you this morning when you would not believe there could be danger from a Spanish ship.'

There was an approving gleam from the bright blue eyes of the swarthy stranger as they rested on the French captain.

'So, so. Yes. It is hard to believe. But you have now the proof of it, I think, that in these waters, as in the islands of the Caribbean Sea, Spain respects no flag but her own unless force is present to compel respect. The settlers of every other nation have experienced in turn the Spaniards' resentment of their presence here. It expresses itself in devastating raids, in rapine, and in massacre. I need not enumerate instances. They will be present in your mind. If today it should happen, indeed, to be the turn of Martinico, we can but wonder that it should not have come before. For that is an island worth plundering and possessing, and France maintains no force in the West Indies that is adequate to restrain these conquistadores. Fortunately we still exist. If it were not for us…'

'For you?' Saintonges interrupted him, his voice suddenly sharp. 'You exist, you say. Of whom do you speak, sir? Who are you?'

The question seemed to take the stranger by surprise.

He stared, expressionless, for a moment; then his answer, for all that it confirmed the suspicions of the Chevalier and the convictions of Luzan, was nevertheless as a thunderbolt to Saintonges.

'I speak of the Brethren of the Coast, of course. The buccaneers, sir.' And he added, almost it seemed with a sort of pride: 'I am Captain Blood.'

Blankly, his jaw fallen, Saintonges looked across the table into that dark, smiling face of the redoubtable filibuster who had been reported dead.

To be faithful to his mission he should place this man in irons and carry him a prisoner to France. But not only would that in the circumstances of the moment be an act of blackest ingratitude, it would be rendered impossible by the presence at hand of two heavily armed buccaneer ships. Moreover, in the light so suddenly vouchsafed to him, Monsieur de Saintonges perceived that it would be an act of grossest folly. He considered what had happened that morning: the direct and very disturbing evidence of Spain's indiscriminate predatoriness; the evidence of a buccaneer activity which he could not now regard as other than salutary, supplied by that burning ship a couple of miles away; the further evidence of one and the other contained in this news of an impending Spanish raid on Martinique and the intended buccaneer intervention to save it where France had not the means at hand.

Considering all this — and the Martinique business touched him so closely and personally that from being perhaps the richest man in France he might find himself as a result of it no better than he had been before this voyage — it leapt to the eye that for once, at least, the omniscient Monsieur de Louvois had been at fault. So clear was it, and so demonstrable, that Saintonges began to conceive it his duty to shoulder the burden of that demonstration.

Something of all these considerations and emotions quivered in the hoarse voice in which, still staring blankly at Captain Blood, he ejaculated: 'You are that brigand of the sea!'

Blood displayed no resentment. He smiled. 'Oh, but a benevolent brigand, as you perceive. Benevolent, that is, to all but Spain.'

Madame de Saintonges swung in a breathless excitement to her husband, clutching his arm. In the movement the wrap slipped from her shoulders, so that still more of her opulent charms became revealed. But this went unheeded by her. In such an hour of crisis modesty became a negligible matter.

'Charles, what will you do?'

'Do?' said he dully.

'The orders you left in Tortuga may mean ruin to me, and…'

He raised a hand to stem this betrayal of self–interest. In whatever might have to be done, of course, no interest but the interest of his master the King of France must be permitted to sway him.

'I see, my dear. I see. Duty becomes plain. We have received a valuable lesson this morning. Fortunately before it is too late.'

She drew a deep breath of relief, and swung excitedly, anxiously to Captain Blood, 'You have no doubt in your mind, sir, that your buccaneers can ensure the safety of Martinique?'

'None, Madame.' His voice was of a hard confidence. 'The Bay of Saint Pierre will prove a mousetrap for the Spaniards if they are so rash as to sail into it. I shall know what is to do. And the plunder of their ships alone will richly defray the costs of the expedition.'

And then Saintonges laughed.

'Ah, yes,' said he. 'The plunder, to be sure. I understand. The ships of Spain are a rich prey, when all is said. Oh, I do not sneer, sir. I hope I am not so ungenerous.'

'I could not suppose it, sir,' said Captain Blood. He pushed back his chair, and rose. 'I will be taking my leave. The breeze is freshening and I should seize the advantage. If it holds I shall be in Tortuga this evening.'

He stood, inclined a little, before Madame de Saintonges, awaiting the proffer of her hand, when the Chevalier took him by the shoulder.

'A moment yet, sir. Keep Madame company whilst I write a letter which you shall carry for me to the Governor of Tortuga.'

'A letter!' Captain Blood assumed astonishment. 'To commend this poor exploit of ours? Sir, sir, never be at so much trouble.'

Monsieur de Saintonges was for a moment ill at ease. 'It … it has a further purpose,' he said at last.

'Ah! If it is to serve some purpose of your own, that is another matter. Pray command me.'

V

In the faithful discharge of that courier's office Captain Blood laid the letter from the Chevalier de Saintonges on the evening of that same day before the Governor of Tortuga, without any word of explanation.

'From the Chevalier de Saintonges, you say?' Monsieur d'Ogeron was frowning thoughtfully. 'To what purpose?'

'I could guess,' said Captain Blood. 'But why should I, when the letter is in your hands? Read it, and we shall know.'

'In what circumstances did you obtain this letter?'

'Read it. It may tell you, and so save my breath.'

D'Ogeron broke the seal and spread the sheet. With knitted brows he read the formal retraction by the representative of the Crown of France of the orders left with the Governor of Tortuga for the cessation of all traffic with the buccaneers. Monsieur d'Ogeron was required to continue relations with them as heretofore pending fresh instructions from France. And the Chevalier added the conviction that these instructions when and if they came would nowise change the existing order of things. He was confident that when he had fully laid before the Marquis de Louvois the demonstration he had received of the conditions prevailing in the West Indies, his Excellency would be persuaded of the inexpediency at present of enforcing his decrees against the buccaneers.

Monsieur d'Ogeron blew out his cheeks. 'But will you tell me, then, how you worked this miracle with that obstinate numskull?'

'Every argument depends, as I said to you, upon the manner of its presentation. You and I both said the same thing to the Chevalier de Saintonges. But you said it in words. I said it chiefly in action. Knowing that fools learn only by experience, I supplied experience for him. It was thus.' And he rendered a full account of that early morning sea–fight off the northern coast of Hispaniola.

The Governor listened, stroking his chin. 'Yes,' he said slowly, when the tale was done. 'Yes. That would be persuasive. And to scare him with this bogey of a raid on Martinque and the probable loss of his new–found wealth was well conceived. But don't you flatter yourself a little, my friend, on the score of your shrewdness? Are you not forgetting how amazingly fortunate it was for you that in such a place and at such a time a Spanish galleon should have had the temerity to attack the Béarnais? Amazingly fortunate! It fits your astounding luck most oddly!'

'Most oddly, as you say,' Blood solemnly agreed.

'What ship was this you burnt and sank? And what fool commanded her? Do you know?'

'Oh yes. The Maria Gloriosa, the flagship of the Marquis of Riconete, the Spanish Admiral of the Ocean–Sea.'

D'Ogeron looked up sharply. 'The Maria Gloriosa? What are you telling me? Why, you captured her yourself at San Domingo, and came back here in her when you brought the treasure–ships.'

'Just so. And therefore I had her in hand for this little demonstration of Spanish turpitude and buccaneer prowess. She sailed with Wolverstone in command and just enough hands to work her and to man the half–dozen guns I spared her for the sacrifice.'

'God save us! Do you tell me, then, that it was all a comedy?'

'Mostly played behind a curtain of the smoke of battle. It was a very dense curtain. We supplied an abundance of smoke from guns loaded with powder only, and the light airs assisted us. Wolverstone set fire to the ship at the height of the supposed battle, and under cover of that friendly smoke came aboard the Arabella with his crew.'

The Governor continued to glare amazement. 'And you tell me that this was convincing?'

'That it was convincing, no. That it convinced.'

'And you deliberately — deliberately burnt that splendid Spanish ship.'

'That is what convinced. Merely to have driven her off might not have done it.'

'But the waste! Oh my heavens, the waste!'

'Do you complain? Will you be cheese–paring? Do you think that it is by economies that great enterprises are carried through? Look at the letter in your hand again. It amounts to a Government charter for a traffic against which there was a Government decree. Do you think such things can be obtained by fine phrases? You tried them, and you know what came of it.' He slapped the little Governor on the shoulder. 'Let's come to business. For now I shall be able to sell you my spices, and I warn you that I shall expect a good price for them: the price of three Spanish ships at least.'