And meanwhile the young man at his elbow, whom he could gladly have strangled with his hands, was calling down the whole heavenly hierarchy to witness his disappointment at being absent from that Hell.
It was evening when the raiders returned, coming, as they had gone, by the road which led to the now silent fort, and there taking boat to cross a hundred yards of jade–green water to the anchored ship. They sang as they came, boisterous and hilarious, a few of them with bandaged wounds, many of them flushed with wine and rum, and all of them laden with spoils. They made vile jests of the desolation they had left behind and viler boasts of the abominations they had practised. No buccaneers in the world, thought Blood, could ever have excelled them in brutality. The raid had been entirely successful and they had lost not more than a half–dozen men whose deaths had been terribly avenged.
And then in the last boat came Don Juan. Ahead of him up the accommodation ladder went two of his men bearing a heaving bundle, which Blood presently made out to be a woman whose head and shoulders were muffled in a cloak. Below the black folds of this he beheld a petticoat of flowered silk and caught a glimpse of agitated legs in silken hose and dainty high–heeled shoes. In mounting horror he judged from this that the woman was a person of quality.
Don Juan, with face and hands begrimed with sweat and powder, followed closely. From the head of the ladder he uttered a command: «To my cabin.»
Blood saw her borne across the deck, through the ranks of men who jeered their ribaldries, and then she vanished in the arms of her captors down the gangway.
Now whatever he may have been towards men, towards women Blood had never been other than chivalrous. This, perhaps, for the sake of that sweet lady in Barbadoes to whom he accounted himself nothing, but who was to him an inspiration to more honour than would be thought possible in a buccaneer. That chivalry arose in him now full–armed. Had he yielded to it completely and blindly he would there and then have fallen upon Don Juan, and thus wrecked at once all possibility of being of service to his unfortunate captive. Her presence here could be no mystery to any. She was the particular prize that the profligate Spanish commander reserved to himself, and Blood felt his flesh go crisp and cold at the thought.
Yet when presently he came down the companion and crossed the deck to the gangway he was calm and smiling. In that narrow passage he joined Don Juan's officers, the three who had been ashore with him as well as Veraguas. They were all talking at once and laughing boisterously, and the subject of their approving mirth was their captain's vileness.
Together they burst into the cabin, Blood coming last. The negro servant had laid the table for supper with the usual six places, and had just lighted the great silver lamp, for with sunset the daylight faded almost instantly.
Don Juan was emerging at that moment from one of the larboard cabins. He closed the door, and stood for a dozen heart–beats with his back to it, surveying that invasion almost mistrustfully. It determined him to turn the key in the lock, draw it out and put it in his pocket. From that lesser cabin, in which clearly the lady had been bestowed, there came no sound.
«She's quiet at last, God be praised,» laughed one of the officers.
«Worn out with screeching,» explained another. «Lord! Was there ever such a wild–cat? A woman of spirit that, from the way she fought; a little devil worth the taming. It's a task I envy you, Juan.»
Veraguas hailed the prize as well–deserved by such brilliant leadership, and then whilst questionable quips and jests were still being bandied, Don Juan, smiling grimly, introspectively, ordered them to table.
«We'll sup briefly, if you please,» he announced, as he unbuckled his harness, and by the remark produced a fresh storm of hilarity on the subject of his haste and at the expense of the poor victim beyond that door.
When at last they sat down Captain Blood thrust himself upon Don Juan's notice with a question: «And Colonel de Coulevain?»
The handsome face darkened. «A malediction on him! He was away from Basseterre, organizing defences at Les Carmes.»
Blood raised his brows, adopted a tone of faint concern. «Then the account remains unsettled in spite of all your brave efforts.»
«Not quite. Not quite.»
«By Heaven, no!» said another with a laugh. «Madame de Coulevain should give an ample quittance.»
«Madame de Coulevain?» said Blood, although the question was unnecessary as were the glances that travelled towards the locked cabin door to answer him. He laughed. «Now that…» He paused. «That is an artistic vengeance, Don Juan, whatever the offence.» And, with Hell in his soul, he laughed again, softly, in admiring approval.
Don Juan shrugged and sighed. «Yet I would I had found him and made him pay in full.»
But Captain Blood would not leave it there. «If you really hate the man, think of the torment to which you have doomed him, always assuming that he loves his wife. Surely by comparison with that the peace of death would be no punishment at all.»
«Maybe, maybe.» Don Juan was short. Disappointment seemed to have spoiled his temper, or perhaps impatience fretted him. «Give me wine, Absolom. God of my life! How I thirst!»
The negro poured for them. Don Juan drained his bumper at a draught. Blood did the same, and the goblets were replenished.
Blood toasted the Spanish commander in voluble terms. He was no great judge, he declared, of an action afloat; but he could not conceive that the one he had witnessed that day could have been better fought by any commander living.
Don Juan smiled his gratification; the toast was drunk with relish, and the cups were filled again. Then others talked, and Blood lapsed into thought.
He reflected that soon now, supper being done, Don Juan would drive them all to their quarters. Captain Blood's own were on the starboard side of the great cabin. But would he be suffered to remain there now, so near at hand? If so, he might yet avail that unhappy lady, and already he knew precisely how. The danger lay in that he might be sent elsewhere to–night.
He roused himself and broke in upon the talk, called noisily for more wine, and after that for yet more, in which the others who had sweated profusely in that day's action kept him company gladly enough. He broke into renewed eulogies of Don Juan's skill and valour, and it was presently observed that his speech was slurred and indistinct, and that he hiccoughed and repeated himself foolishly.
Thus he provoked ridicule, and when it was forthcoming he displayed annoyance, and appealed to Don Juan to inform these merry and befuddled gentlemen that he at least was sober; but his speech grew thicker even whilst he was protesting.
When Veraguas taxed him with being drunk he grew almost violent, spoke of his Dutch origin to remind them that he came of a nation of great drinkers, and offered to drink any man in the Caribbean under the table. Boastfully, to prove his words, he called for more wine, and having drunk it lapsed gradually into silence. His eyelids dropped heavily, his body sagged, and presently, to the hilarity of all who beheld here a boaster confounded, he slid from his chair and came to rest upon the cabin floor, nor attempted to rise again.
Veraguas stirred him contemptuously and ungently with his foot. He gave no sign of life. He lay inert as a log, breathing stertorously.
Don Juan got up abruptly. «Put the fool to bed. And get you gone too; all of you.»
Don Pedro was borne, insensible, amid laughter and some rude handling, to his cabin. His neckcloth was loosed, and so they left him, closing the door upon him.
Then, in compliance with Don Juan's renewed command, they all departed noisily, and the commander locked the door of the now empty great cabin.
Alone, he came slowly back to the table, and stood a moment listening to the uncertain steps and the merry voices retreating down the gangway. His goblet stood half–full. He picked it up and drank. Then, setting it down, and proceeding without haste, he drew from his pocket the key of the cabin in which Madame de Coulevain had been bestowed. He crossed the floor, thrust the key into the lock and tu
rned it. But before he could throw open the door a sound behind him made him turn again.
His drunken guest was leaning against the bulkhead beside the open door of his stateroom. His clothes were in disorder, his face vacuous, and he stood so precariously that it was a wonder the gentle heave of the ship did not pitch him off his balance. He moved his lips like a man nauseated, and parted them with a dry click.
«Wha's o'clock?» was his foolish question.
Don Juan relaxed his stare to smile, although a thought impatiently.
The drunkard babbled on: «I…I don't…remember…» He broke off. He lurched forward. «Thousand devils! I…I thirst!»
«To bed with you! To bed!» cried Don Juan. «To bed? Of…of course to bed. Whither…else? Eh? But first…a cup.»
He reached the table. He lurched round it, a man carried forward by his own impetus, and came to rest opposite the Spaniard, whose velvet eyes watched him with angry contempt. He found a goblet and a jug, a heavy, encrusted silver jug, shaped like an amphora with a handle on either side of its long neck. He poured himself wine, drank, and set down the cup; then he stood swaying slightly, and put forth his right hand as if to steady himself. It came to rest on the neck of the silver jug.
Don Juan, watching him ever with impatient scorn, may have seen for the fraction of a second the vacuity leave that countenance, and the vivid blue eyes under their black brows grow cold and hard as sapphires. But before the second was spent, before the brain could register what the eyes beheld, the body of that silver jug had crashed into his brow, and the commander of the Estremadura knew nothing more.
Captain Blood, without a trace now of drunkenness in face or gait, stepped quickly round the table, and went down on one knee beside the man he had felled. Don Juan lay quite still on the gay Eastern carpet, his handsome face clay–coloured with a trickle of blood across it from the wound between the half–closed eyes. Captain Blood contemplated his work without pity or compunction. If there was cowardice in the blow which had taken the Spaniard unawares from a hand which he supposed friendly, that cowardice was born of no fear for himself, but for the helpless lady in that larboard cabin. On her account he could take no risk of Don Juan's being able to give the alarm; and, anyway, this cruel, soulless profligate deserved no honourable consideration.
He stood up briskly, then stooped and placed his hand under the inert Spaniard's armpits. Raising the limp body, he dragged it with trailing heels to the stern window, which stood open to the soft, purple, tropical night. He took Don Juan in his arms, and, laden with him, mounted the day–bed. A moment he steadied his heavy burden upon the sill; then he thrust it forth, and, supporting himself by his grip of a stanchion, leaned far out to observe the Spaniard's fall.
The splash he made in the phosphorescent wake of the gently moving ship was merged into the gurgle of water about the vessel. For an instant as it took the sea the body glowed, sharply defined in an incandescence that was as suddenly extinguished. Phosphorescent bubbles arose and broke in the luminous line astern; then all was as it had been.
Captain Blood was still leaning far out, still peering down, when a voice in the cabin behind him came to startle him. It brought him instantly erect, alert; but he did not yet turn round. Indeed, he checked himself in the very act, and remained stiffly poised, his left hand supporting him still upon the stanchion, his back turned squarely upon the speaker.
For the voice was the voice of a woman. Its tone was tender, gentle, inviting. The words it had uttered in French were:
«Juan! Juan! Why do you stay? What do you there? I have been waiting. Juan!»
Speculation treading close upon amazement, he continued to stand there, waiting for more that should help him to understand. The voice came again, more insistently now.
«Juan! Don't you hear me? Juan!»
He swung round at last, and beheld her near the open door of her cabin, from which she had emerged: a tall, handsome woman, in the middle twenties, partly dressed, with a mantle of unbound golden tresses about her white shoulders. He had imagined this lady cowering, terror–stricken, helpless, probably pinioned, in the cabin to which the Spanish ravisher had consigned her. Because of that mental picture, intolerable to his chivalrous nature, he had done what he had done. Yet there she stood, not merely free, nor merely having come forth of her own free will, but summoning Don Juan in accents that are used to a lover.
Horror stunned him: horror of himself and of the dreadful murderous blunder he had committed in his haste to play at knight–errantry: to usurp the place of Providence.
And then another deeper horror welled up to submerge the first: horror of this woman as she stood suddenly revealed to him. That dreadful raid on Basseterre had been no more than a pretext to cloak her elopement, and must have been undertaken at her invitation. The rest, her forcible conveyance aboard, her bestowal in the cabin, had all been part of a loathly comedy she had played — a comedy set against a background of fire and rape and murder, by all of which she remained so soullessly unperturbed that she could come forth to coo her lover's name on that seductive note.
It was for this harpy, who waded complacently through blood and the wreckage of a hundred lives to the fulfilment of her desires, that he had soiled his hands. The situation seemed to transmute his chivalrously–inspired deed into a foulness.
He shivered as he regarded her, and she, confronted by that stern aquiline face and those ice–cold blue eyes, that were certainly not Don Juan's, gasped, recoiled, and clutched her flimsy silken body–garment chosen to her generous breast.
«Who are you?» she demanded. «Where is Don Juan de la Fuente?»
He stepped down from the day–bed, and something bodeful in his countenance changed her surprise to incipient alarm.
«You are Madame de Coulevain?» he asked, using her own language. He must make no mistake.
She nodded. «Yes, yes.» Her tone was impatient, but the fear abode in her eyes. «Who are you? Why do you question me?» She stamped her foot. «Where is Don Juan?»
He knew that truth is commonly the shortest road, and he took it. He jerked a thumb backwards over his shoulder. «I've just thrown him through the window.»
She stared and stared at this cold, calm man about whom she perceived something so remorseless and terrifying that she could not doubt his incredible words.
Suddenly she loosed a scream. It did not disconcert or even move him. He began to speak again, and, dominated by those brilliant intolerable eyes which were like points of steel, she controlled herself to listen.
«You are supposing me one of Don Juan's companions; perhaps even that, covetous of the noble prize he took to–day at Basseterre I have murdered him to possess it. That far indeed from the truth. Deceived like the rest by the comedy of your being brought forcibly aboard, imagining you the unhappy victim of a man I knew for a profligate voluptuary, I was moved to unutterable compassion on your behalf, and to save you from the horror I foresaw for you I killed him. And now,» he added with a bitter smile, «it seems that you were in no need of saving, that I have thwarted you no less than I have thwarted him. This comes of playing Providence.»
«You killed him!» she said. She staggered where she stood, and, ashen–faced, looked as if she would swoon. «You killed him! Killed him! Oh, my God! My God! You've killed my Juan.» Thus far she had spoken dully, as if she were repeating something so that she might force it upon her own understanding. But now she wrought herself to frenzy. «You beast! You assassin!» she screamed. «You shall pay! I'll rouse the ship! You shall answer, as God's in Heaven!»
She was already across the cabin hammering on the door; already her hand was upon the key when he came up with her. She struggled like a wild–cat in his grip, screaming the while for help. At last he wrenched her away, swung her round and hurled her from him. Then he withdrew, and pocketed the key.
She lay on the floor, by the table, where he had flung her, and sent scream after scream to alarm the ship.
Captain Bl
ood surveyed her coldly. «Aye, aye, breathe your lungs, my child,» he bade her. «It will do you good and me no harm.»
He sat down to await the exhaustion of her paroxysm. But his words had already quieted her. Her round eyes asked a question. He smiled sourly as he answered it.
«No man aboard this ship will stir a foot for all your cries, or even heed them, unless it be as a matter for amusement. That is the kind of men they are who follow Don Juan de la Fuente.»
He saw by her stricken expression how well she understood. He nodded with that faint sardonic smile which she found hateful. «Aye, madame. That's the situation. You were best bring yourself to a calm contemplation of it.»
She got to her feet, and stood leaning heavily against the table, surveying him with rage and loathing. «If they do not come to–night, they will come to–morrow. Some time they must come. And when they come it will be very ill for you, whoever you may be.»
«Will it not also be very ill for you?» quoth Blood.
«For me? I did not murder him.»
«You'll not be accused of it. But in him you've lost your only protector aboard this ship. What will betide you, do you suppose, when you are alone and helpless in their power, a prisoner of war, the captive of a raid, in the hands of these merry gentlemen of Spain?»
«God of Heaven!» She clutched her breast in terror.
«Quiet you,» he bade her, almost contemptuously. «I did not rescue you, as I supposed, from one wolf, merely to fling you to the pack. That will not happen — unless you yourself prefer it to returning to your husband.»
She grew hysterical.
«To my husband? Ah, that, no! Never that! Never that!»
«It is that or…» — he pointed to the door — «…The pack. I perceive no choice for you save between those alternatives.»
The Chronicles of Captain Blood cb-2 Page 18
