It was therefore nowise extraordinary that when, his business being transacted, he was departing on this particular evening, Mademoiselle d'Ogeron should choose to escort Captain Blood down the short avenue of her father's fragrant garden.
A palefaced, blackhaired beauty, tall and statuesque of figure, and richly gowned in the latest mode of France, Mademoiselle d'Ogeron was as romantic of appearance as of temperament. And as she stepped gracefully beside the Captain in the gathering dusk she showed her purpose to be not without a certain romantic quality also.
«Monsieur,» she said in French, hesitating a little, «I have come to implore you to be ever on your guard. You have too many enemies.»
He halted and, halfturning, hat in hand, he bowed until his long black ringlets almost met across his clearcut, gipsytinted face.
«Mademoiselle, your concern is flattering; but so flattering.» Erect again, his bold eyes, so startlingly light under their black brows and in a face so burnt and swarthy, laughed into her own. «I do not want for enemies, true. It is the penalty of greatness. Only he who is without anything is without enemies. But at least they are not in Tortuga.»
«Are you so very sure of that?»
Her tone gave him pause. He frowned, and considered her solemnly for an instant before replying.
«Mademoiselle, you speak as if from some knowledge.»
«Hardly so much. My knowledge is but the knowledge of what a slave told me today. He says that the Spanish Admiral has placed a price upon your head.»
«That is just the Spanish Admiral's notion of flattery, mademoiselle.»
«And that Cahusac has been heard to say he will make you rue the wrong you did him at Maracaybo.»
«Cahusac?»
The
name revealed to him the rashness of his assertion that he had no enemy in Tortuga. He had forgotten Cahusac; but he realized that Cahusac would not be likely to have forgotten him. Cahusac had been with him at Maracaybo, and had been trapped with him there by the arrival of Don Miguel de Espinosa's fleet. The French rover had taken fright, had charged Blood with rashness in his conduct of the enterprise, had quarrelled with him and had made terms with the Spanish Admiral for himself and his own French contingent. Granted a safeconduct by Don Miguel, he had departed emptyhanded, leaving Captain Blood to his fate. But it proved not at all as the timorous Cahusac conceived it. Captain Blood had not only broken out of the Spanish trap, but he had sorely mauled the Admiral, captured three of his ships, and returned to Tortuga laden with rich spoils of victory.
To Cahusac this was gall and wormwood. With the faculty for confusing cause and effect which is the chief disability of stupid egoists, he came to account himself cheated by Captain Blood. And he was making no secret of his unfounded resentment.
«He is saying that, is he?» said Captain Blood. «Now, that is indiscreet of him. Besides, all the world knows he was not wronged. He was allowed to depart in safety as he wished when he thought the situation grew too dangerous.»
«But by doing so he sacrificed his share of the prizes, and for that he and his companions have since been the mock of Tortuga. Can you not conceive what must be that ruffian's feelings?»
They had reached the gate.
«You will take precautions? You will guard yourself?» she begged him.
He smiled upon her friendly anxiety.
«If only so that I may live on to serve you.» With formal courtesy he bowed low over her hand and kissed it.
Seriously concerned, however, by her warning he was not. That Cahusac should be vindictive he could well believe. But that Cahusac should utter threats here in Tortuga was an indiscretion too dangerous to be credible in the case of a cur who took no risks.
He stepped out briskly through the night that was closing down, soft and warm, and came soon within sight of the lights of the Rue du Roi de France. As he reached the head of that now deserted thoroughfare a shadow detached itself from the mouth of a lane on his right to intercept him.
Even as he checked: prepared to fall on guard, he made out the figure to be a woman's, and heard his name called softly in a woman's voice.
«Captain Blood!»
As he halted she came closer, and addressed him quickly, breathlessly. «I saw you pass two hours since. But I dursn't be seen speaking to you in daylight here in the street. So I have been on the watch for your return. Don't go on, Captain. You are walking into danger; walking to your death.»
At last his puzzled mind recognized her: and before the eyes of his memory flashed a scene enacted a week ago at The King of France. Two drunken ruffians had quarrelled over a woman a fragment of the human wreckage of Europe washed up on the shores of the New World an unfortunate creature of a certain comeliness, which, however, like the castoff finery she wore, was tarnished, soiled, and crumpled. The woman, arrogating a voice in a dispute of which she was the object, was brutally struck by one of her companions, and Blood, upon an impulse of chivalrous anger, had felled her assailant and escorted her from the place.