thing were not some evil game to cover nefarious ends of Captain Blood and his pirates. Blood, however, explained the delay. Not until Don Miguel had abandoned hope of being joined by Don Vicente de Casanegra with the Atrevida would he decide to sail without him.
Another four days of inactivity went by, on each of which the CaptainGeneral rode out to Willoughby's Cove to vent his suspicions in searching questions. The interviews increased daily in acrimony. Daily Blood expressed more and more plainly to the CaptainGeneral that he saw little hope for the colonial future of a country which exercised so little discrimination in the election of her overseas governors.
Don Miguel's squadron appeared off Antigua only just in time to avert an open rupture between the CaptainGeneral and his buccaneer ally.
Word being brought of this to Willoughby's Cove, early one Monday morning by one of the guards left in charge of the earthworks, Captain Blood landed a hundred of his men, and marched them across to the bluff. Wolverstone was left in command aboard. Ogle, that formidable gunner, was already quartered at the fort with a guncrew.
Six miles out at sea standing directly for the harbour of Saint John's, with a freshening breeze from the northwest to temper the increasing heat of the morning sun, came four stately ships under full spread of sail, the banner of Castile afloat from the head of each mainmast.
From the parapet of the old fort Captain Blood surveyed them through his telescope. At his elbow, with Macartney in attendance, stood the CaptainGeneral perceiving at last that the Spanish menace was a reality.
Don Miguel commanded at the time the Virgen del Pilar, the finest and most powerful vessel in which he had yet sailed since Blood had sunk the Milagrosa some months before. She was a great blackhulled galleon of forty guns, including in her armament several heavy demicannon with a range of three thousand yards. Of the other three ships, two, if inferior, were still formidable thirtygun frigates, whilst the last was really little better than a sloop of ten guns.
Blood closed his telescope and prepared for action in the old fort. The new one was for the moment left inactive.
Within a halfhour battle was joined. Don Miguel's advance had all the rashness which Blood knew of old.
He made no attempt to shorten sail until within two thousand yards. He conceived, no doubt, that he was taking the place entirely unawares, and that the antiquated guns of the fort would probably be inadequate. Nevertheless, he must dispose of them before attempting to enter the harbour. To be sure of making short work of it, he continued to advance until Blood computed him within a thousand yards.
«On my soul,» said Blood, «he'll be meaning to get within pistolrange, or else he thinks the fort of no account at all. Wake him up, Ogle. Let him have a salute.»
Ogle's crew had been carefully laying their guns, and they had followed the advance with the twelve sakers from the Atrevida. Others stood at hand with linstocks, rammers, and watertubs, to serve the gunners.
Ogle gave the word, and the twelve guns were touched off as one, with a deafening roar. Within that easy range even the fivepound shot of these comparatively small cannon did some little damage to two of the Spanish ships. The moral effect of thus surprising those who came to surprise was even greater. The Admiral instantly signalled them to go about. In doing so they poured broadside after broadside into the fort, and for some minutes the place was a volcano, smoke and dust rising in a dense column above the flying stones and crumbling masonry. Blinded by it the buccaneers had no vision of what the Spaniards might be doing. But Blood guessed it, and cleared every man from the fort into shelter behind it during the brief respite before the second broadsides came. When that was over, he drove them back again into the battered fortress, which for a while now had nothing more to fear, and the original antiquated guns of Saint John's were brought into action. The faucons were fired at random through the cloud of dust that hid them merely as a display and to let the Spaniards know that the fort was still alive. Then, as the cloud lifted, the fivepounders spoke, in twos and threes, carefully aimed at the ships which were now beating to windward. They did little damage; but this was less important than to keep the Spaniards in play.
Meanwhile, the guncrews were busy with the sakers from the Atrevida. Watertubs had been emptied over them, and now with swabs and wads and rammers at work the reloading was proceeding.
The CaptainGeneral, idle amid this terrific activity, required presently to know why powder was so ineffectively
being wasted by these popguns, when in the earthworks there were cannon of long range which might be hammering the Spaniards with twentyfour and thirtypound shot. When he was answered evasively, he passed from suggestion to command, whereupon he was invited not to interfere with carefully laid plans.