Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini (paper ebook reader txt) 📕

soothing to Don Diego, being so much less startling than the things he was beginning to imagine.

“But⁠ ⁠… Are you not Spanish, then?”

“You flatter my Castilian accent. I have the honour to be Irish. You were thinking that a miracle had happened. So it has⁠—a miracle wrought by my genius, which is considerable.”

Succinctly now Captain Blood dispelled the mystery by a relation of the facts. It was a narrative that painted red and white by turns the Spaniard’s countenance. He put a hand to the back of his head, and there discovered, in confirmation of the story, a lump as large as a pigeon’s egg. Lastly, he stared wild-eyed at the sardonic Captain Blood.

“And my son? What of my son?” he cried out. “He was in the boat that brought me aboard.”

“Your son is safe; he and the boat’s crew together with your gunner and his men are snugly in irons under hatches.”

Don Diego sank back on the couch, his glittering dark eyes fixed upon the tawny face above him. He composed himself. After all, he possessed the stoicism proper to his desperate trade. The dice had fallen against him in this venture. The tables had been turned upon him in the very moment of success. He accepted the situation with the fortitude of a fatalist.

With the utmost calm he enquired:

“And now, Senior Capitan?”

“And now,” said Captain Blood⁠—to give him the title he had assumed⁠—“being a humane man, I am sorry to find that ye’re not dead from the tap we gave you. For it means that you’ll be put to the trouble of dying all over again.”

“Ah!” Don Diego drew a deep breath. “But is that necessary?” he asked, without apparent perturbation.

Captain Blood’s blue eyes approved his bearing. “Ask yourself,” said he. “Tell me, as an experienced and bloody pirate, what in my place would you do, yourself?”

“Ah, but there is a difference.” Don Diego sat up to argue the matter. “It lies in the fact that you boast yourself a humane man.”

Captain Blood perched himself on the edge of the long oak table. “But I am not a fool,” said he, “and I’ll not allow a natural Irish sentimentality to stand in the way of my doing what is necessary and proper. You and your ten surviving scoundrels are a menace on this ship. More than that, she is none so well found in water and provisions. True, we are fortunately a small number, but you and your party inconveniently increase it. So that on every hand, you see, prudence suggests to us that we should deny ourselves the pleasure of your company, and, steeling our soft hearts to the inevitable, invite you to be so obliging as to step over the side.”

“I see,” said the Spaniard pensively. He swung his legs from the couch, and sat now upon the edge of it, his elbows on his knees. He had taken the measure of his man, and met him with a mock-urbanity and a suave detachment that matched his own. “I confess,” he admitted, “that there is much force in what you say.”

“You take a load from my mind,” said Captain Blood. “I would not appear unnecessarily harsh, especially since I and my friends owe you so very much. For, whatever it may have been to others, to us your raid upon Barbados was most opportune. I am glad, therefore, that you agree that I have no choice.”

“But, my friend, I did not agree so much.”

“If there is any alternative that you can suggest, I shall be most happy to consider it.”

Don Diego stroked his pointed black beard.

“Can you give me until morning for reflection? My head aches so damnably that I am incapable of thought. And this, you will admit, is a matter that asks serious thought.”

Captain Blood stood up. From a shelf he took a half-hour glass, reversed it so that the bulb containing the red sand was uppermost, and stood it on the table.

“I am sorry to press you in such a matter, Don Diego, but one glass is all that I can give you. If by the time those sands have run out you can propose no acceptable alternative, I shall most reluctantly be driven to ask you to go over the side with your friends.”

Captain Blood bowed, went out, and locked the door. Elbows on his knees and face in his hands, Don Diego sat watching the rusty sands as they filtered from the upper to the lower bulb. And what time he watched, the lines in his lean brown face grew deeper. Punctually as the last grains ran out, the door reopened.

The Spaniard sighed, and sat upright to face the returning Captain Blood with the answer for which he came.

“I have thought of an alternative, sir captain; but it depends upon your charity. It is that you put us ashore on one of the islands of this pestilent archipelago, and leave us to shift for ourselves.”

Captain Blood pursed his lips. “It has its difficulties,” said he slowly.

“I feared it would be so.” Don Diego sighed again, and stood up. “Let us say no more.”

The light-blue eyes played over him like points of steel.

“You are not afraid to die, Don Diego?”

The Spaniard threw back his head, a frown between his eyes.

“The question is offensive, sir.”

“Then let me put it in another way⁠—perhaps more happily: You do not desire to live?”

“Ah, that I can answer. I do desire to live; and even more do I desire that my son may live. But the desire shall not make a coward of me for your amusement, master mocker.” It was the first sign he had shown of the least heat or resentment.

Captain Blood did not directly answer. As before he perched himself on the corner of the table.

“Would you be willing, sir, to earn life and liberty⁠—for yourself, your son, and the other Spaniards who are on board?”

“To earn it?” said Don Diego, and the watchful blue eyes did not miss the quiver that ran through him.