CHAPTER X. DON DIEGO
Don Diego de Espinosa y Valdez awoke, and with languid eyes in achinghead, he looked round the cabin, which was flooded with sunlight fromthe square windows astern. Then he uttered a moan, and closed his eyesagain, impelled to this by the monstrous ache in his head. Lying thus,he attempted to think, to locate himself in time and space. But betweenthe pain in his head and the confusion in his mind, he found coherentthought impossible.
An indefinite sense of alarm drove him to open his eyes again, and oncemore to consider his surroundings.
There could be no doubt that he lay in the great cabin of his ownship, the Cinco Llagas, so that his vague disquiet must be, surely,ill-founded. And yet, stirrings of memory coming now to the assistanceof reflection, compelled him uneasily to insist that here something wasnot as it should be. The low position of the sun, flooding the cabinwith golden light from those square ports astern, suggested to him atfirst that it was early morning, on the assumption that the vessel washeaded westward. Then the alternative occurred to him. They might besailing eastward, in which case the time of day would be late afternoon.That they were sailing he could feel from the gentle forward heave ofthe vessel under him. But how did they come to be sailing, and he, themaster, not to know whether their course lay east or west, not to beable to recollect whither they were bound?
His mind went back over the adventure of yesterday, if of yesterday itwas. He was clear on the matter of the easily successful raid upon theIsland of Barbados; every detail stood vividly in his memory up to themoment at which, returning aboard, he had stepped on to his own deckagain. There memory abruptly and inexplicably ceased.
He was beginning to torture his mind with conjecture, when the dooropened, and to Don Diego's increasing mystification he beheld his bestsuit of clothes step into the cabin. It was a singularly elegant andcharacteristically Spanish suit of black taffetas with silver lace thathad been made for him a year ago in Cadiz, and he knew each detail of itso well that it was impossible he could now be mistaken.
The suit paused to close the door, then advanced towards the couch onwhich Don Diego was extended, and inside the suit came a tall, slendergentleman of about Don Diego's own height and shape. Seeing the wide,startled eyes of the Spaniard upon him, the gentleman lengthened hisstride.
"Awake, eh?" said he in Spanish.
The recumbent man looked up bewildered into a pair of light-blue eyesthat regarded him out of a tawny, sardonic face set in a cluster ofblack ringlets. But he was too bewildered to make any answer.
The stranger's fingers touched the top of Don Diego's head, whereuponDon Diego winced and cried out in pain.
"Tender, eh?" said the stranger. He took Don Diego's wrist between thumband second finger. And then, at last, the intrigued Spaniard spoke.
"Are you a doctor?"
"Among other things." The swarthy gentleman continued his study of thepatient's pulse. "Firm and regular," he announced at last, and droppedthe wrist. "You've taken no great harm."
Don Diego struggled up into a sitting position on the red velvet couch.
"Who the devil are you?" he asked. "And what the devil are you doing inmy clothes and aboard my ship?"
The level black eyebrows went up, a faint smile curled the lips of thelong mouth.
"You are still delirious, I fear. This is not your ship. This is myship, and these are my clothes."
"Your ship?" quoth the other, aghast, and still more aghast he added:"Your clothes? But... then...." Wildly his eyes looked about him. Theyscanned the cabin once again, scrutinizing each familiar object. "Am Imad?" he asked at last. "Surely this ship is the Cinco Llagas?"
"The Cinco Llagas it is."
"Then...." The Spaniard broke off. His glance grew still more troubled."Valga me Dios!" he cried out, like a man in anguish. "Will you tell mealso that you are Don Diego de Espinosa?"
"Oh, no, my name is Blood--Captain Peter Blood. This ship, like thishandsome suit of clothes, is mine by right of conquest. Just as you, DonDiego, are my prisoner."
Startling as was the explanation, yet it proved soothing to Don Diego,being so much less startling than the things he was beginning toimagine.
"But... Are you not Spanish, then?"
"You flatter my Castilian accent. I have the honour to be Irish. Youwere thinking that a miracle had happened. So it has--a miracle wroughtby my genius, which is considerable."
Succinctly now Captain Blood dispelled the mystery by a relation ofthe facts. It was a narrative that painted red and white by turns theSpaniard's countenance. He put a hand to the back of his head, and therediscovered, in confirmation of the story, a lump as large as a pigeon'segg. Lastly, he stared wild-eyed at the sardonic Captain Blood.
"And my son? What of my son?" he cried out. "He was in the boat thatbrought me aboard."
"Your son is safe; he and the boat's crew together with your gunner andhis men are snugly in irons under hatches."
Don Diego sank back on the couch, his glittering dark eyes fixed uponthe tawny face above him. He composed himself. After all, he possessedthe stoicism proper to his desperate trade. The dice had fallen againsthim in this venture. The tables had been turned upon him in the verymoment of success. He accepted the situation with the fortitude of afatalist.
With the utmost calm he enquired:
"And now, Senior Capitan?"
"And now," said Captain Blood--to give him the title he hadassumed--"being a humane man, I am sorry to find that ye're not deadfrom the tap we gave you. For it means that you'll be put to the troubleof dying all over again."
"Ah!" Don Diego drew a deep breath. "But is that necessary?" he asked,without apparent perturbation.
Captain Blood's blue eyes approved his bearing. "Ask yourself," said he."Tell me, as an experienced and bloody pirate, what in my place wouldyou do, yourself?"
"Ah, but there is a difference." Don Diego sat up to argue the matter."It lies in the fact that you boast yourself a humane man."
Captain Blood perched himself on the edge of the long oak table. "ButI am not a fool," said he, "and I'll not allow a natural Irishsentimentality to stand in the way of my doing what is necessary andproper. You and your ten surviving scoundrels are a menace on this ship.More than that, she is none so well found in water and provisions. True,we are fortunately a small number, but you and your party inconvenientlyincrease it. So that on every hand, you see, prudence suggests tous that we should deny ourselves the pleasure of your company, and,steeling our soft hearts to the inevitable, invite you to be so obligingas to step over the side."
"I see," said the Spaniard pensively. He swung his legs from the couch,and sat now upon the edge of it, his elbows on his knees. He had takenthe measure of his man, and met him with a mock-urbanity and a suavedetachment that matched his own. "I confess," he admitted, "that thereis much force in what you say."
"You take a load from my mind," said Captain Blood. "I would not appearunnecessarily harsh, especially since I and my friends owe you so verymuch. For, whatever it may have been to others, to us your raid uponBarbados was most opportune. I am glad, therefore, that you agree the Ihave no choice."
"But, my friend, I did not agree so much."
"If there is any alternative that you can suggest, I shall be most happyto consider it."
Don Diego stroked his pointed black beard.
"Can you give me until morning for reflection? My head aches so damnablythat I am incapable of thought. And this, you will admit, is a matterthat asks serious thought."
Captain Blood stood up. From a shelf he took a half-hour glass, reversedit so that the bulb containing the red sand was uppermost, and stood iton the table.
"I am sorry to press you in such a matter, Don Diego, but one glass isall that I can give you. If by the time those sands have run out you canpropose no acceptable alternative, I shall most reluctantly be driven toask you to go over the side with your friends."
Captain Blood bowed, went out, and locked the door. Elbows on his kne
esand face in his hands, Don Diego sat watching the rusty sands as theyfiltered from the upper to the lower bulb. And what time he watched, thelines in his lean brown face grew deeper. Punctually as the last grainsran out, the door reopened.
The Spaniard sighed, and sat upright to face the returning Captain Bloodwith the answer for which he came.
"I have thought of an alternative, sir captain; but it depends uponyour charity. It is that you put us ashore on one of the islands of thispestilent archipelago, and leave us to shift for ourselves."
Captain Blood pursed his lips. "It has its difficulties," said heslowly.
"I feared it would be so." Don Diego sighed again, and stood up. "Let ussay no more."
The light-blue eyes played over him like points of steel.
"You are not afraid to die, Don Diego?"
The Spaniard threw back his head, a frown between his eyes.
"The question is offensive, sir."
"Then let me put it in another way--perhaps more happily: You do notdesire to live?"
"Ah, that I can answer. I do desire to live; and even more do I desirethat my son may live. But the desire shall not make a coward of me foryour amusement, master mocker." It was the first sign he had shown ofthe least heat or resentment.
Captain Blood did not directly answer. As before he perched himself onthe corner of the table.
"Would you be willing, sir, to earn life and liberty--for yourself, yourson, and the other Spaniards who are on board?"
"To earn it?" said Don Diego, and the watchful blue eyes did not missthe quiver that ran through him. "To earn it, do you say? Why, if theservice you would propose is one that cannot hurt my honour...."
"Could I be guilty of that?" protested the Captain. "I realize that evena pirate has his honour." And forthwith he propounded his offer. "If youwill look from those windows, Don Diego, you will see what appears to bea cloud on the horizon. That is the island of Barbados well astern. Allday we have been sailing east before the wind with but one intent--toset as great a distance between Barbados and ourselves as possible. Butnow, almost out of sight of land, we are in a difficulty. The only manamong us schooled in the art of navigation is fevered, delirious, infact, as a result of certain ill-treatment he received ashore before wecarried him away with us. I can handle a ship in action, and there areone or two men aboard who can assist me; but of the higher mysteries ofseamanship and of the art of finding a way over the trackless wastes ofocean, we know nothing. To hug the land, and go blundering aboutwhat you so aptly call this pestilent archipelago, is for us to courtdisaster, as you can perhaps conceive. And so it comes to this: Wedesire to make for the Dutch settlement of Curacao as straightly aspossible. Will you pledge me your honour, if I release you upon parole,that you will navigate us thither? If so, we will release you and yoursurviving men upon arrival there."
Don Diego bowed his head upon his breast, and strode away in thought tothe stern windows. There he stood looking out upon the sunlit sea andthe dead water in the great ship's wake--his ship, which these Englishdogs had wrested from him; his ship, which he was asked to bring safelyinto a port where she would be completely lost to him and refittedperhaps to make war upon his kin. That was in one scale; in the otherwere the lives of sixteen men. Fourteen of them mattered little to him,but the remaining two were his own and his son's.
He turned at length, and his back being to the light, the Captain couldnot see how pale his face had grown.
"I accept," he said.
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