«They're lying in wait for you down yonder,» she was saying, «and they mean to kill you.»
«Who does?» he asked her, Mademoiselle d'Ogeron's words of warning sharply recalled.
«There's a score of them. And if they was to know if they was to see me here awarning you my own throat would be cut before morning.»
She peered fearfully about her through the gloom as she spoke, and fear quivered in her voice. Then she cried out huskily, as if with mounting terror.
«Oh, don't let us stand here! Come with me; I'll make you safe until daylight. Then you can go back to your ship, and if you're wise you'll stay on board after this, or else come ashore in company. Come!» she ended, and caught him by the sleeve.
«Whisht now! Whisht!» said he, resisting the pressure on his arm. «Whither will you be taking me!»
«Oh, what odds, so long as I make you safe?» She was dragging on him with all her weight. «You was kind to me, and I can't leave you to be killed. And we'll both be murdered unless you come.»
Yielding at last, as much for her sake as his own, he allowed her to lead him from the wide street into the byway from which she had issued to intercept him. It was a narrow lane with little onestoried houses that were mostly timber standing at wide intervals along one side of it. Along the other ran a palisade enclosing a plantation.
At the second house she
stopped. The little door stood open, and the interior was dimly lighted by the naked flame of a brass oil lamp set upon a table.
«Go in,» she bade him in a shuddering whisper.
Two steps led down to the floor of the house, which was below the level of the street. Down these went Captain Blood, and on into the room, whose air was rank with the reek of stale tobacco and the sickly odour of the little oil lamp. The woman followed, and closed the door. And then, before Captain Blood could turn to inspect his surroundings in that dim light, he was struck over the head from behind with something heavy and harddriven, which, if it did not stun him outright, at least stretched him sick and faint upon the grimy naked earth of the unpaved floor.
At the same moment a woman's scream, that ended abruptly in a stifled gurgle, cut sharply upon the silence.
In an instant, before Captain Blood could move to help himself, before he could even recover from his bewildered surprise, swift, sinewy, skilful hands had done their work upon him. Thongs of hide lashed his ankles and his wrists, which' had been dragged behind him. Then he was rolled over on to his back, lifted, forced into a chair, and lashed by the waist to that.
A man of low stature and powerful, apelike build, long in the body and short in the legs, was leaning over him. The sleeves of his blue shirt were rolled to the elbows of his prodigious, long, muscular and hairy arms. Little black eyes twinkled wickedly in a broad face that was almost as flat and sallow as a mulatto's. A red and blue scarf swathed his head, completely concealing his hair; heavy gold rings hung in the lobes of the great ears.
Captain Blood considered him for a long moment, setting a curb upon the violent rage that rose in him in a measure as his senses cleared. Instinctively he realized that violence and passion would help him not at all, and that at all costs they must be suppressed. And he suppressed them.
«Cahusac!» he said slowly. And then added: «This is an unexpected pleasure entirely!»
«Ye've dropped anchor at last, Captain,» said Cahusac, and he laughed softly with infinite malice.
Blood looked beyond him towards the door, where the woman was writhing in the grasp of Cahusac's companion.
«Will you be quiet, you slut, or must I quiet you?» the ruffian was threatening.
«What are you going to do with him, Sam?» she whimpered.
«No business of yours, my girl.»
«Oh yes, it is! You told me he was in danger, and I believed you, you lying tyke!»
«Well, so he was. But he's safe and snug now. You go in there, Molly.» He pointed across the room to the black entrance of an alcove.
«I'll not » she was beginning angrily.
«Go on,» he snarled, «or it'll be the worse for you!»
He seized her roughly again at neck and waist and thrust her, still resisting, across the room and into the alcove. He closed the door and bolted it.
«Stay you there, you slut, and keep quiet, or I'll quiet you once for all.»
From behind the door he was answered by a moan. Then there was the creak of a bed as the woman flung herself violently upon it, and thereafter silence.
Captain Blood accounted her part in this business explained, and more or less ended. He looked up into the face of his sometime associate, and his lips smiled to simulate a calm he was far from feeling.
«Would it be an impertinence to inquire what ye're intending, Cahusac?» said he.
Cahusac's companion laughed, and lounged across the table, a tall, looselimbed fellow, with a long face of an almost Indian cast of features. His dress implied the hunter. He answered for Cahusac, who glowered, morosely silent.
«We intend to hand you over to Don Miguel de Espinosa.»