Captain Blood (Penguin Classics)

by Rafael Sabatini

  “And he has seen much foreign service on sea and land. Cahusac said—though this I hardly credit—that he had fought under de Ruyter.”

  “That also is true,” said she. She sighed heavily. “Your Cahusac seems to have been accurate enough. Alas!”

  “You are sorry, then?”

  She looked at him. She was very pale, he noticed.

  “As we are sorry to hear of the death of one we have esteemed. Once I held him in regard for an unfortunate but worthy gentleman. Now . . .”

  She checked, and smiled a little crooked smile. “Such a man is best forgotten.”

  And upon that she passed at once to speak of other things.

  The friendship, which it was her great gift to command in all she met, grew steadily between those two in the little time remaining, until the event befell that marred what was promising to be the pleasantest stage of his lordship’s voyage.

  The marplot was the mad-dog Spanish Admiral, whom they encountered on the second day out, when halfway across the Gulf of Gonaves. The Captain of the Royal Mary was not disposed to be intimidated even when Don Miguel opened fire on him. Observing the Spaniard’s plentiful seaboard towering high above the water and offering him so splendid a mark, the Englishman was moved to scorn. If this Don who flew the banner of Castile wanted a fight, the Royal Mary was just the ship to oblige him. It may be that he was justified of his gallant confidence, and that he would that day have put an end to the wild career of Don Miguel de Espinosa, but that a lucky shot from the Milagrosa got among some powder stored in his forecastle, and blew up half his ship almost before the fight had started. How the powder came there will never now be known, and the gallant Captain himself did not survive to enquire into it.

  Before the men of the Royal Mary had recovered from their consternation, their captain killed and a third of their number destroyed with him, the ship yawing and rocking helplessly in a crippled state, the Spaniards boarded her.

  In the Captain’s cabin under the poop, to which Miss Bishop had been conducted for safety, Lord Julian was seeking to comfort and encourage her, with assurances that all would yet be well, at the very moment when Don Miguel was stepping aboard. Lord Julian himself was none so steady, and his face was undoubtedly pale. Not that he was by any means a coward. But this cooped-up fighting on an unknown element in a thing of wood that might at any moment founder under his feet into the depths of ocean was disturbing to one who could be brave enough ashore. Fortunately Miss Bishop did not appear to be in desperate need of the poor comfort he was in case to offer. Certainly she, too, was pale, and her hazel eyes may have looked a little larger than usual. But she had herself well in hand. Half sitting, half leaning on the Captain’s table, she preserved her courage sufficiently to seek to calm the octoroon waiting-woman who was groveling at her feet in a state of terror.

  And then the cabin-door flew open, and Don Miguel himself, tall, sunburned, and aquiline of face, strode in. Lord Julian spun round, to face him, and clapped a hand to his sword.

  The Spaniard was brisk and to the point.

  “Don’t be a fool,” he said in his own tongue, “or you’ll come by a fool’s end. Your ship is sinking.”

  There were three or four men in morions behind Don Miguel, and Lord Julian realized the position. He released his hilt, and a couple of feet or so of steel slid softly back into the scabbard. But Don Miguel smiled, with a flash of white teeth behind his grizzled beard, and held out his hand.

  “If you please,” he said.

  Lord Julian hesitated. His eyes strayed to Miss Bishop’s.

  “I think you had better,” said that composed young lady, whereupon with a shrug his lordship made the required surrender.

  “Come you—all of you—aboard my ship,” Don Miguel invited them, and strode out.

  They went, of course. For one thing the Spaniard had force to compel them; for another a ship which he announced to be sinking offered them little inducement to remain. They stayed no longer than was necessary to enable Miss Bishop to collect some spare articles of dress and my lord to snatch up his valise.

  As for the survivors in that ghastly shambles that had been the Royal Mary, they were abandoned by the Spaniards to their own resources. Let them take to the boats, and if those did not suffice them, let them swim or drown. If Lord Julian and Miss Bishop were retained, it was because Don Miguel perceived their obvious value. He received them in his cabin with great urbanity. Urbanely he desired to have the honor of being acquainted with their names.

  Lord Julian, sick with horror of the spectacle he had just witnessed, commanded himself with difficulty to supply them. Then haughtily he demanded to know in his turn the name of their aggressor. He was in an exceedingly ill-temper. He realized that if he had done nothing positively discreditable in the unusual and difficult position into which Fate had thrust him, at least he had done nothing creditable. This might have mattered less but that the spectator of his indifferent performance was a lady. He was determined if possible to do better now.

  “I am Don Miguel de Espinosa,” he was answered. “Admiral of the Navies of the Catholic King.”

  Lord Julian gasped. If Spain made such a hubbub about the depredations of a runagate adventurer like Captain Blood, what could not England answer now?

  “Will you tell me, then, why you behave like a damned pirate?” he asked. And added: “I hope you realize what will be the consequences, and the strict account to which you shall be brought for this day’s work, for the blood you have murderously shed, and for your violence to this lady and to myself.”

  “I offer you no violence,” said the Admiral, smiling, as only the man who holds the trumps can smile. “On the contrary, I have saved your lives . . .”

  “Saved our lives!” Lord Julian was momentarily speechless before such callous impudence. “And what of the lives you have destroyed in wanton butchery? By God, man, they shall cost you dear.”

  Don Miguel’s smile persisted. “It is possible. All things are possible. Meantime it is your own lives that will cost you dear. Colonel Bishop is a rich man; and you, milord, are no doubt also rich. I will consider and fix your ransom.”

  “So that you’re just the damned murderous pirate I was supposing you,” stormed his lordship. “And you have the impudence to call yourself the Admiral of the Navies of the Catholic King? We shall see what your Catholic King will have to say to it.”

  The Admiral ceased to smile. He revealed something of the rage that had eaten into his brain. “You do not understand,” he said. “It is that I treat you English heretic dogs just as you English heretic dogs have treated Spaniards upon the seas—you robbers and thieves out of hell! I have the honesty to do it in my own name—but you, you perfidious beasts, you send your Captain Bloods, your Hagthorpes, and your Morgans against us and disclaim responsibility for what they do. Like Pilate, you wash your hands.” He laughed savagely. “Let Spain play the part of Pilate. Let her disclaim responsibility for me, when your ambassador at the Escurial shall go whining to the Supreme Council of this act of piracy by Don Miguel de Espinosa.”

  “Captain Blood and the rest are not admirals of England!” cried Lord Julian.

  “Are they not? How do I know? How does Spain know? Are you not liars all, you English heretics?”

  “Sir!” Lord Julian’s voice was harsh as a rasp, his eyes flashed. Instinctively he swung a hand to the place where his sword habitually hung. Then he shrugged and sneered: “Of course,” said he, “it sorts with all I have heard of Spanish honor and all that I have seen of yours that you should insult a man who is unarmed and your prisoner.”

  The Admiral’s face flamed scarlet. He half raised his hand to strike. And then, restrained, perhaps, by the very words that had cloaked the retorting insult, he turned on his heel abruptly and went out without answering.

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE MEETING

  As the door slammed after the departing Admiral, Lord Julian turned to Arabella, and actually smiled. He
felt that he was doing better, and gathered from it an almost childish satisfaction—childish in all the circumstances. “Decidedly I think I had the last word there,” he said, with a toss of his golden ringlets.

  Miss Bishop, seated at the cabin-table, looked at him steadily, without returning his smile. “Does it matter, then, so much, having the last word? I am thinking of those poor fellows on the Royal Mary. Many of them have had their last word, indeed. And for what? A fine ship sunk, a score of lives lost, thrice that number now in jeopardy, and all for what?”

  “You are overwrought, ma’am. I . . .”

  “Overwrought!” She uttered a single sharp note of laughter. “I assure you I am calm. I am asking you a question, Lord Julian. Why has this Spaniard done all this? To what purpose?”

  “You heard him.” Lord Julian shrugged angrily. “Blood-lust,” he explained shortly.

  “Blood-lust?” she asked. She was amazed. “Does such a thing exist, then? It is insane, monstrous.”

  “Fiendish,” his lordship agreed. “Devil’s work.”

  “I don’t understand. At Bridgetown three years ago there was a Spanish raid, and things were done that should have been impossible to men, horrible, revolting things which strain belief, which seem, when I think of them now, like the illusions of some evil dream. Are men just beasts?”

  “Men?” said Lord Julian, staring. “Say Spaniards, and I’ll agree.” He was an Englishman speaking of hereditary foes. And yet there was a measure of truth in what he said. “This is the Spanish way in the New World. Faith, almost it justifies such men as Blood of what they do.”

  She shivered, as if cold, and setting her elbows on the table, she took her chin in her hands, and sat staring before her.

  Observing her, his lordship noticed how drawn and white her face had grown. There was reason enough for that, and for worse. Not any other woman of his acquaintance would have preserved her self-control in such an ordeal; and of fear, at least, at no time had Miss Bishop shown any sign. It is impossible that he did not find her admirable.

  A Spanish steward entered bearing a silver chocolate service and a box of Peruvian candies, which he placed on the table before the lady.

  “With the Admiral’s homage,” he said, then bowed, and withdrew.

  Miss Bishop took no heed of him or his offering, but continued to stare before her, lost in thought. Lord Julian took a turn in the long low cabin, which was lighted by a skylight above and great square windows astern. It was luxuriously appointed: there were rich Eastern rugs on the floor, well-filled bookcases stood against the bulkheads, and there was a carved walnut sideboard laden with silverware. On a long, low chest standing under the middle stern port lay a guitar that was gay with ribbons. Lord Julian picked it up, twanged the strings once as if moved by nervous irritation, and put it down.

  He turned again to face Miss Bishop.

  “I came out here,” he said, “to put down piracy. But—blister me!—I begin to think that the French are right in desiring piracy to continue as a curb upon these Spanish scoundrels.”

  He was to be strongly confirmed in that opinion before many hours were past. Meanwhile their treatment at the hands of Don Miguel was considerate and courteous. It confirmed the opinion, contemptuously expressed to his lordship by Miss Bishop, that since they were to be held to ransom they need not fear any violence or hurt. A cabin was placed at the disposal of the lady and her terrified woman, and another at Lord Julian’s. They were given the freedom of the ship, and bidden to dine at the Admiral’s table; nor were his further intentions regarding them mentioned, nor yet his immediate destination.

  The Milagrosa, with her consort the Hidalga rolling after her, steered a south by westerly course, then veered to the southeast round Cape Tiburon, and thereafter, standing well out to sea, with the land no more than a cloudy outline to larboard, she headed directly east, and so ran straight into the arms of Captain Blood, who was making for the Windward Passage, as we know. That happened early on the following morning. After having systematically hunted his enemy in vain for a year, Don Miguel chanced upon him in this unexpected and entirely fortuitous fashion. But that is the ironic way of Fortune. It was also the way of Fortune that Don Miguel should thus come upon the Arabella at a time when, separated from the rest of the fleet, she was alone and at a disadvantage. It looked to Don Miguel as if the luck which so long had been on Blood’s side had at last veered in his own favor.

  Miss Bishop, newly risen, had come out to take the air on the quarter-deck with his lordship in attendance—as you would expect of so gallant a gentleman—when she beheld the big red ship that had once been the Cinco Llagas out of Cadiz. The vessel was bearing down upon them, her mountains of snowy canvas bellying forward, the long pennon with the cross of St. George fluttering from her main truck in the morning breeze, the gilded portholes in her red hull, and the gilded beak-head aflash in the morning sun.

  Miss Bishop was not to recognize this for that same Cinco Llagas which she had seen once before—on a tragic day in Barbados three years ago. To her it was just a great ship that was heading resolutely, majestically, towards them, and an Englishman to judge by the pennon she was flying. The sight thrilled her curiously; it awoke in her an uplifting sense of pride that took no account of the danger to herself in the encounter that must now be inevitable.

  Beside her on the poop, whither they had climbed to obtain a better view, and equally arrested and at gaze, stood Lord Julian. But he shared none of her exultation. He had been in his first sea-fight yesterday, and he felt that the experience would suffice him for a very considerable time. This, I insist, is no reflection upon his courage.

  “Look,” said Miss Bishop, pointing; and to his infinite amazement he observed that her eyes were sparkling. Did she realize, he wondered, what was afoot? Her next sentence resolved his doubt. “She is English, and she comes resolutely on. She means to fight.”

  “God help her, then,” said his lordship gloomily. “Her captain must be mad. What can he hope to do against two such heavy hulks as these? If they could so easily blow the Royal Mary out of the water, what will they do to this vessel? Look at that devil Don Miguel. He’s utterly disgusting in his glee.”

  From the quarter-deck, where he moved amid the frenzy of preparation, the Admiral had turned to flash a backward glance at his prisoners. His eyes were alight, his face transfigured. He flung out an arm to point to the advancing ship, and bawled something in Spanish that was lost to them in the noise of the laboring crew.

  They advanced to the poop-rail, and watched the bustle. Telescope in hand on the quarter-deck, Don Miguel was issuing his orders. Already the gunners were kindling their matches; sailors were aloft, taking in sail; others were spreading a stout rope net above the waist, as a protection against falling spars. And meanwhile Don Miguel had been signaling to his consort, in response to which the Hidalga had drawn steadily forward until she was now abeam of the Milagrosa, half a cable’s length to starboard, and from the height of the tall poop my lord and Miss Bishop could see her own bustle of preparation. And they could discern signs of it now aboard the advancing English ship as well. She was furling tops and mainsail, stripping in fact to mizzen and sprit for the coming action. Thus, almost silently without challenge or exchange of signals, had action been mutually determined.

  Of necessity now, under diminished sail, the advance of the Arabella was slower; but it was none the less steady. She was already within saker shot, and they could make out the figures stirring on her forecastle and the brass guns gleaming on her prow. The gunners of the Milagrosa raised their linstocks and blew upon their smoldering matches, looking up impatiently at the Admiral.

  But the Admiral solemnly shook his head.

  “Patience,” he exhorted them. “Save your fire until we have him. He is coming straight to his doom—straight to the yardarm and the rope that have been so long waiting for him.”

  “Stab me!” said his lordship. “This Englishman may be gallant enough
to accept battle against such odds. But there are times when discretion is a better quality than gallantry in a commander.”

  “Gallantry will often win through, even against overwhelming strength,” said Miss Bishop. He looked at her, and noted in her bearing only excitement. Of fear he could still discern no trace. His lordship was past amazement. She was not by any means the kind of woman to which life had accustomed him.

  “Presently,” he said, “you will suffer me to place you under cover.”

  “I can see best from here,” she answered him. And added quietly: “I am praying for this Englishman. He must be very brave.”

  Under his breath Lord Julian damned the fellow’s bravery.

  The Arabella was advancing now along a course which, if continued, must carry her straight between the two Spanish ships. My lord pointed it out. “He’s crazy surely!” he cried. “He’s driving straight into a death-trap. He’ll be crushed to splinters between the two. No wonder that black-faced Don is holding his fire. In his place, I should do the same.”

  But even at that moment the Admiral raised his hand; in the waist, below him, a trumpet blared, and immediately the gunner on the prow touched off his guns. As the thunder of them rolled out, his lordship saw ahead beyond the English ship and to larboard of her two heavy splashes. Almost at once two successive spurts of flame leapt from the brass cannon on the Arabella ’s beak-head, and scarcely had the watchers on the poop seen the shower of spray, where one of the shots struck the water near them, than with a rending crash and a shiver that shook the Milagrosa from stem to stern, the other came to lodge in her forecastle. To avenge that blow, the Hidalga blazed at the Englishman with both her forward guns. But even at that short range—between two and three hundred yards—neither shot took effect.

  At a hundred yards the Arabella’s forward guns, which had meanwhile been reloaded, fired again at the Milagrosa, and this time smashed her bowsprit into splinters; so that for a moment she yawed wildly to port. Don Miguel swore profanely, and then, as the helm was put over to swing her back to her course, his own prow replied. But the aim was too high, and whilst one of the shots tore through the Arabella’s shrouds and scarred her mainmast, the other again went wide. And when the smoke of that discharge had lifted, the English ship was found almost between the Spaniards, her bows in line with theirs and coming steadily on into what his lordship deemed a death-trap.