Amongst them they crowded the narrow confines of the cabin, and Easterling's fellows were so placed along the two sides of the table that no two of the men from the Cinco Llagas sat together. Blood and the Captain of the Bonaventure immediately faced each other across the board.
Business was left until dinner was over and the Negro who waited on them had withdrawn. Until then the men of the Bonaventure kept things gay with the heavily salted talk that passed for wit amongst them. At last, the table cleared of all save bottles, and
pens and ink being furnished together with a sheet of paper each to Easterling and Blood, the Captain of the Bonaventure opened the matter of the terms, and Peter Blood heard himself for the first time addressed as Captain. Easterling's first words were to inform him shortly that the onefifth share he had demanded was by the men of the Bonaventure accounted excessive.
Momentarily Peter Blood's hopes rose.
«Shall we deal in plain terms now, Captain? Do you mean that they'll not be consenting to them?»
«What else should I mean?»
«In that case, Captain, it only remains for us to take our leave, in your debt for this liberal entertainment and the richer for the improvement in our acquaintance.»
The elaborate courtesy of those grossly inaccurate terms did not seem to touch the ponderous Easterling. His bold, craftily set eyes stared blankly from his great red face. He mopped the sweat from his brow before replying.
«You'll take your leave?» There was a sneering undertone to his guttural voice. «I'll trouble you in turn to be plain with me. I likes plain men, and plain words. D'ye mean that ye'll quit from the business?»
Two or three of his followers made a rumbling challenging echo to his question.
Captain Blood to give him now the title Easterling had bestowed upon him had the air of being intimidated. He hesitated, looking as if for guidance to his companions, who returned him only uneasy glances.
«If,» he said at length, «you find our terms unreasonable, I must assume ye'll not be wishing to go further, and it only remains for us to withdraw.»
He spoke with a diffidence which amazed his own followers, who had never known him other than bold in the face of any odds. It provoked a sneer from Easterling, who found no more than he had been expecting from a leech turned adventurer by circumstances.
«Faith, Doctor,» said he, «ye were best to get back to your cupping and bleeding, and leave ships to men as can handle them.»
There was a lightning flash from those blue eyes, as vivid as it was transient. But the swarthy countenance never lost its faint air of diffidence. Meanwhile Easterling had swung to the Governor's representative, who sat on his immediate right.
«What d'ye think of that, Mossoo Joinville?»
The fair, flabby young Frenchman smiled amiably upon Blood's diffidence. «Would it not be wise and proper, sir, to hear what terms Captain Easterling now proposes?»
«I'll hear them. But »
«Leave the buts till after, Doctor,» Easterling cut in. «The terms we'll grant are the terms I told ye. Your men share equally with mine.»
«But that means no more than a tenth for the Cinco Llagas.» And Blood, too, now appealed to Monsieur Joinville. «Do you, sir, account that fair? I have explained to Captain Easterling that for what we lack in men we more than make up in weight of metal, and our guns are handled by a gunner such as I dare swear has no compeer in the Caribbean. A fellow named Ogle Ned Ogle. A remarkable gunner is Ned Ogle. The very devil of a gunner, as you'ld believe if you'ld seen him pick those Spanish boats off the water in Bridgetown Harbour.»
He would have continued upon the subject of Ned Ogle had not Easterling interrupted him. «Hell, man! What's a gunner more or less.»
«Oh, an ordinary gunner, maybe. But this is no ordinary gunner. An eye he has. Gunners like Ogle are like poets; they are born, so they are. He'll put you a shot between wind and water, will Ogle, as neatly as you might pick your teeth.»
Easterling banged the table. «What's all this to the point?»
«It may be something. And meanwhile it shows you the valuable ally ye're acquiring.» And he was off again on the subject of his gunner. «He was trained in the King's Navy, was Ned Ogle, and a bad day for the King's Navy it was when Ogle took to politics and followed the Protestant Champion to Sedgemoor.»
«Leave that,» growled one of the officers of the Bonaventure, a ruffian who answered to the name of Chard. «Leave it, I say, or we'll waste the day in talk.»
Easterling confirmed this with a coarse oath. Captain Blood observed that they did not mean to spare offensiveness, and his speculations on their aims starting from this took a fresh turn.
Joinville intervened. «Could you not compromise with Captain Blood? After all, there is some reason on his side. He might reasonably claim to put a hundred men aboard his ship, and in that case he would naturally take a heavier share.»
«In that case he might be worth it,» was the truculent answer.