Don Jayme de Villamarga's mouth fell open. He turned pale. «Not even that, then? The order was not intended for me? It was part of his infernal comedy?»
«You should have examined the letter more attentively.»
«It was damaged by seawater!» roared the Governor furiously.
«You should have examined your conscience then. It would have told you that you had done nothing to deserve the cross of Saint James.»
Don Jayme was too stunned to resent the gibe. Not until he was home again and in the presence of his wife did he recover himself sufficiently to hector her with the tale of how he had been bubbled. Thus he brought upon himself his worst humiliation.
«How does it come, madam,» he demanded, «that you recognized him for your cousin?»
«I did not,» she answered him, and dared at last to laugh at him, taking payment in that moment for all the browbeating she had suffered at his hands.
«You did not! You mean that you knew he was not your cousin?»
«That is what I mean.»
«And you did not tell me?» The world was rocking about him.
«You would not allow me. When I told him that I did not remember that my cousin Pedro had blue eyes, you told me that I never remembered anything, and you called me ninny. Because I did not wish to be called ninny again before a stranger, I said nothing further.»
Don Jayme mopped the sweat from his brow, and appealed in livid fury to her cousin Rodrigo, who stood by. «And ,what do you say to that?» he demanded.
«For myself, nothing. But I might remind you of Captain Blood's advice to you at parting. I think it was that in future you be more respectful to your wife.»
IV THE WAR INDEMNITY
The Arabella was that Cinco Llagas out of Cadiz of which Peter Blood had so gallantly possessed himself. He had so renamed her in honour of a lady in Barbadoes whose memory was ever to serve him as an inspiration and to set restraint upon his activities
as a buccaneer. She was going westward in haste to overtake her consorts, which were a full day ahead, and was looking neither to right nor to left when somewhere about 19 degrees of Northern latitude and 66 of Western longitude, the Atrevida espied her, turned aside to steer across her course, and opened the attack by a shot athwart her hawse.
The Spaniard's commander, Don Vicente de Casanegra, was actuated by a belief in himself that was tempered by no consciousness of his limitations.
The result was precisely what might have been expected. The Arabella went promptly about on a southern tack which presently brought her on to the Atrevida's windward quarter, thus scoring the first tactical advantage. Thence, whilst still out of range of the Spaniard's sakers, the Arabella poured in a crippling fire from her demicannons, which went far towards deciding the business. At closer quarters she followed this up with crossbar and langrel, and so cut and slashed the Atrevida's rigging that she could no longer have fled, even had Don Vicente been prudently disposed to do so. Finally within pistolrange the Arabella hammered her with a broadside that converted the trim Spanish frigate into a staggering, impotent hulk. When, after that, they grappled, the Spaniards avoided death by surrender, and it was to Captain Blood himself that the greyfaced, mortified Don Vicente delivered up his sword.
«This will teach you not to bark at me when I am passing peacefully by,» said Captain Blood. «I see that you call yourself the Atrevida. But it's more impudent than daring I'm accounting you.»
His opinion was even lower when, in the course of investigating his capture, he found among the ship's papers a letter from the Spanish Admiral, Don Miguel de Espinosa y Valdez, containing Don Vicente's sailing orders. In these he was instructed to join the Admiral's squadron with all speed at Spanish Key off Bieque, for the purpose of a raid upon the English settlement of Antigua. Don Miguel was conveniently expressive in his letter.
«Although,» he wrote, «his Catholic Majesty is at peace with England, yet England makes no endeavour to repress the damnable activities of the pirate Blood in Spanish waters. Therefore, it becomes necessary to make reprisals and obtain compensation for all that Spain has suffered at the hands of this indemoniated filibuster.»
Having stowed the disarmed Spaniards under hatches all save the rash Don Vicente, who, under parole, was taken aboard the Arabella Blood put a prize crew into the Atrevida, patched up her wounds, and set a southeasterly course for the passage between Anegada and the Virgin Islands.
He explained the changed intentions which this implied at a council held that evening in the great cabin and attended by Wolverstone, his lieutenant, Pitt, his shipmaster, Ogle, who commanded on the maindeck, and two representatives of the main body of his followers, one of whom, Albin, was a Frenchman. This because one third of the buccaneers aboard the Arabella at the time were French.
He met with some opposition when he announced the intention of making for Antigua.