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- Author: Rafael Sabatini
- Performer: 0142180106
Book online «Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini (best romance ebooks txt) 📖». Author Rafael Sabatini
“Is it Peter Blood?”
“Peter Blood?” she echoed. At first she did not understand the purport of his question. When understanding came, a flush suffused her face.
“I do not know,” she said, faltering a little.
This was hardly a truthful answer. For, as if an obscuring veil had suddenly been rent that morning, she was permitted at last to see Peter Blood in his true relations to other men, and that sight, vouchsafed her twenty-four hours too late, filled her with pity and regret and yearning.
Lord Julian knew enough of women to be left in no further doubt. He bowed his head so that she might not see the anger in his eyes, for as a man of honour he took shame in that anger which as a human being he could not repress.
And because Nature in him was stronger - as it is in most of us - than training, Lord Julian from that moment began, almost in spite of himself, to practise something that was akin to villainy. I regret to chronicle it of one for whom - if I have done him any sort of justice - you should have been conceiving some esteem. But the truth is that the lingering remains of the regard in which he had held Peter Blood were choked by the desire to supplant and destroy a rival. He had passed his word to Arabella that he would use his powerful influence on Blood’s behalf. I deplore to set it down that not only did he forget his pledge, but secretly set himself to aid and abet Arabella’s uncle in the plans he laid for the trapping and undoing of the buccaneer. He might reasonably have urged - had he been taxed with it - that he conducted himself precisely as his duty demanded. But to that he might have been answered that duty with him was but the slave of jealousy in this.
When the Jamaica fleet put to sea some few days later, Lord Julian sailed with Colonel Bishop in Vice-Admiral Craufurd’s flagship. Not only was there no need for either of them to go, but the Deputy-Governor’s duties actually demanded that he should remain ashore, whilst Lord Julian, as we know, was a useless man aboard a ship. Yet both set out to hunt Captain Blood, each making of his duty a pretext for the satisfaction of personal aims; and that common purpose became a link between them, binding them in a sort of friendship that must otherwise have been impossible between men so dissimilar in breeding and in aspirations.
The hunt was up. They cruised awhile off Hispaniola, watching the Windward Passage, and suffering the discomforts of the rainy season which had now set in. But they cruised in vain, and after a month of it, returned empty-handed to Port Royal, there to find awaiting them the most disquieting news from the Old World.
The megalomania of Louis XIV had set Europe in a blaze of war. The French legionaries were ravaging the Rhine provinces, and Spain had joined the nations leagued to defend themselves from the wild ambitions of the King of France. And there was worse than this: there were rumours of civil war in England, where the people had grown weary of the bigoted tyranny of King James. It was reported that William of Orange had been invited to come over.
Weeks passed, and every ship from home brought additional news. William had crossed to England, and in March of that year 1689 they learnt in Jamaica that he had accepted the crown and that James had thrown himself into the arms of France for rehabilitation.
To a kinsman of Sunderland’s this was disquieting news, indeed. It was followed by letters from King William’s Secretary of State informing Colonel Bishop that there was war with France, and that in view of its effect upon the Colonies a Governor-General was coming out to the West Indies in the person of Lord Willoughby, and that with him came a squadron under the command of Admiral van der Kuylen to reenforce the Jamaica fleet against eventualities.
Bishop realized that this must mean the end of his supreme authority, even though he should continue in Port Royal as Deputy-Governor. Lord Julian, in the lack of direct news to himself, did not know what it might mean to him. But he had been very close and confidential with Colonel Bishop regarding his hopes of Arabella, and Colonel Bishop more than ever, now that political events put him in danger of being retired, was anxious to enjoy the advantages of having a man of Lord Julian’s eminence for his relative.
They came to a complete understanding in the matter, and Lord Julian disclosed all that he knew.
“There is one obstacle in our path,” said he. “Captain Blood. The girl is in love with him.”
“Ye’re surely mad!” cried Bishop, when he had recovered speech.
“You are justified of the assumption,” said his lordship dolefully. “But I happen to be sane, and to speak with knowledge.”
“With knowledge?”
“Arabella herself has confessed it to me.”
“The brazen baggage! By God, I’ll bring her to her senses.” It was the slave-driver speaking, the man who governed with a whip.
“Don’t be a fool, Bishop.” His lordship’s contempt did more than any argument to calm the Colonel. “That’s not the way with a girl of Arabella’s spirit. Unless you want to wreck my chances for all time, you’ll hold your tongue, and not interfere at all.”
“Not interfere? My God, what, then?”
“Listen, man. She has a constant mind. I don’t think you know your niece. As long as Blood lives, she will wait for him.”
“Then with Blood dead, perhaps she will come to her silly senses.”
“Now you begin to show intelligence,” Lord Julian commended him. “That is the first essential step.”
“And here is our chance to take it.” Bishop warmed to a sort of enthusiasm. “This war with France removes all restrictions in the matter of Tortuga. We are free to invest it in the service of the Crown. A victory there and we establish ourselves in the favour of this new government.”
“Ah!” said Lord Julian, and he pulled thoughtfully at his lip.
“I see that you understand,” Bishop laughed coarsely. “Two birds with one stone, eh? We’ll hunt this rascal in his lair, right under the beard of the King of France, and we’ll take him this time, if we reduce Tortuga to a heap of ashes.”
On that expedition they sailed two days later - which would be some three months after Blood’s departure - taking every ship of the fleet, and several lesser vessels as auxiliaries. To Arabella and the world in general it was given out that they were going to raid French Hispaniola, which was really the only expedition that could have afforded Colonel Bishop any sort of justification for leaving Jamaica at all at such a time. His sense of duty, indeed, should have kept him fast in Port Royal; but his sense of duty was smothered in hatred - that most fruitless and corruptive of all the emotions. In the great cabin of Vice-Admiral Craufurd’s flagship, the Imperator, the Deputy-Governor got drunk that night to celebrate his conviction that the sands of Captain Blood’s career were running out.
Meanwhile, some three months before Colonel Bishop set out to reduce Tortuga, Captain Blood, bearing hell in his soul, had blown into its rockbound harbour ahead of the winter gales, and two days ahead of the frigate in which Wolverstone had sailed from Port Royal a day before him.
In that snug anchorage he found his fleet awaiting him - the four ships which had been separated in that gale off the Lesser Antilles, and some seven hundred men composing their crews. Because they had been beginning to grow anxious on his behalf, they gave him the greater welcome. Guns were fired in his honour and the ships made themselves gay with bunting. The town, aroused by all this noise in the harbour, emptied itself upon the jetty, and a vast crowd of men and women of all creeds and nationalities collected there to be present at the coming ashore of the great buccaneer.
Ashore he went, probably for no other reason than to obey the general expectation. His mood was taciturn; his face grim and sneering. Let Wolverstone arrive, as presently he would, and all this hero-worship would turn to execration.
His captains, Hagthorpe, Christian, and Yberville, were on the jetty to receive him, and with them were some hundreds of his buccaneers. He cut short their greetings, and when they plagued him with questions of where he had tarried, he bade them await the coming of Wolverstone, who would satisfy their curiosity to a surfeit. On that he shook them off, and shouldered his way through that heterogeneous throng that was composed of bustling traders of several nations - English, French, and Dutch - of planters and of seamen of various degrees, of buccaneers who were fruit-selling half-castes, negro slaves, some doll-tearsheets and dunghill-queans from the Old World, and all the other types of the human family that converted the quays of Cayona into a disreputable image of Babel.
Winning clear at last, and after difficulties, Captain Blood took his way alone to the fine house of M. d’Ogeron, there to pay his respects to his friends, the Governor and the Governor’s family.
At first the buccaneers jumped to the conclusion that Wolverstone was following with some rare prize of war, but gradually from the reduced crew of the Arabella a very different tale leaked out to stem their satisfaction and convert it into perplexity. Partly out of loyalty to their captain, partly because they perceived that if he was guilty of defection they were guilty with him, and partly because being simple, sturdy men of their hands, they were themselves in the main a little confused as to what really had happened, the crew of the Arabella practised reticence with their brethren in Tortuga during those two days before Wolverstone’s arrival. But they were not reticent enough to prevent the circulation of certain uneasy rumours and extravagant stories of discreditable adventures - discreditable, that is, from the buccaneering point of view - of which Captain Blood had been guilty.
But that Wolverstone came when he did, it is possible that there would have been an explosion. When, however, the Old Wolf cast anchor in the bay two days later, it was to him all turned for the explanation they were about to demand of Blood.
Now Wolverstone had only one eye; but he saw a deal more with that one eye than do most men with two; and despite his grizzled head - so picturesquely swathed in a green and scarlet turban - he had the sound heart of a boy, and in that heart much love for Peter Blood.
The sight of the Arabella at anchor in the bay had at first amazed him as he sailed round the rocky headland that bore the fort. He rubbed his single eye clear of any deceiving film and looked again. Still he could not believe what it saw. And then a voice at his elbow - the voice of Dyke, who had elected to sail with him - assured him that he was not singular in his bewilderment.
“In the name of Heaven, is that the Arabella or is it the ghost of her?”
The Old Wolf rolled his single eye over Dyke, and opened his mouth to speak. Then he closed it again without
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