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

“Ah! The Old Wolf!” said he. “Got here at last, eh? And whatcher gonnerdo wi’ me, eh?” He hiccuped resoundingly, and sagged back loosely in his chair.

Old Wolverstone stared at him in sombre silence. He had looked with untroubled eye upon many a hell of devilment in his time, but the sight of Captain Blood in this condition filled him with sudden grief. To express it he loosed an oath. It was his only expression for emotion of all kinds. Then he rolled forward, and dropped into a chair at the table, facing the Captain.

“My God, Peter, what’s this?”

“Rum,” said Peter. “Rum, from Jamaica.” He pushed bottle and glass towards Wolverstone.

Wolverstone disregarded them.

“I’m asking you what ails you?” he bawled.

“Rum,” said Captain Blood again, and smiled. “Jus’ rum. I answer all your queshons. Why donjerr answer mine? Whatcher gonerdo wi’ me?”

“I’ve done it,” said Wolverstone. “Thank God, ye had the sense to hold your tongue till I came. Are ye sober enough to understand me?”

“Drunk or sober, allus ’derstand you.”

“Then listen.” And out came the tale that Wolverstone had told. The Captain steadied himself to grasp it.

“It’ll do as well asertruth,” said he when Wolverstone had finished. “And⁠ ⁠… oh, no marrer! Much obliged to ye, Old Wolf⁠—faithful Old Wolf! But was it worthertrouble? I’m norrer pirate now; never a pirate again. ’S finished’ ” He banged the table, his eyes suddenly fierce.

“I’ll come and talk to you again when there’s less rum in your wits,” said Wolverstone, rising. “Meanwhile ye’ll please to remember the tale I’ve told, and say nothing that’ll make me out a liar. They all believes me, even the men as sailed wi’ me from Port Royal. I’ve made ’em. If they thought as how you’d taken the King’s commission in earnest, and for the purpose o’ doing as Morgan did, ye guess what would follow.”

“Hell would follow,” said the Captain. “An’ tha’s all I’m fit for.”

“Ye’re maudlin,” Wolverstone growled. “We’ll talk again tomorrow.”

They did; but to little purpose, either that day or on any day thereafter while the rains⁠—which set in that night⁠—endured. Soon the shrewd Wolverstone discovered that rum was not what ailed Blood. Rum was in itself an effect, and not by any means the cause of the Captain’s listless apathy. There was a canker eating at his heart, and the Old Wolf knew enough to make a shrewd guess of its nature. He cursed all things that daggled petticoats, and, knowing his world, waited for the sickness to pass.

But it did not pass. When Blood was not dicing or drinking in the taverns of Tortuga, keeping company that in his saner days he had loathed, he was shut up in his cabin aboard the Arabella, alone and uncommunicative. His friends at Government House, bewildered at this change in him, sought to reclaim him. Mademoiselle d’Ogeron, particularly distressed, sent him almost daily invitations, to few of which he responded.

Later, as the rainy season approached its end, he was sought by his captains with proposals of remunerative raids on Spanish settlements. But to all he manifested an indifference which, as the weeks passed and the weather became settled, begot first impatience and then exasperation.

Christian, who commanded the Clotho, came storming to him one day, upbraiding him for his inaction, and demanding that he should take order about what was to do.

“Go to the devil!” Blood said, when he had heard him out. Christian departed fuming, and on the morrow the Clotho weighed anchor and sailed away, setting an example of desertion from which the loyalty of Blood’s other captains would soon be unable to restrain their men.

Sometimes Blood asked himself why had he come back to Tortuga at all. Held fast in bondage by the thought of Arabella and her scorn of him for a thief and a pirate, he had sworn that he had done with buccaneering. Why, then, was he here? That question he would answer with another: Where else was he to go? Neither backward nor forward could he move, it seemed.

He was degenerating visibly, under the eyes of all. He had entirely lost the almost foppish concern for his appearance, and was grown careless and slovenly in his dress. He allowed a black beard to grow on cheeks that had ever been so carefully shaven; and the long, thick black hair, once so sedulously curled, hung now in a lank, untidy mane about a face that was changing from its vigorous swarthiness to an unhealthy sallow, whilst the blue eyes, that had been so vivid and compelling, were now dull and lacklustre.

Wolverstone, the only one who held the clue to this degeneration, ventured once⁠—and once only⁠—to beard him frankly about it.

“Lord, Peter! Is there never to be no end to this?” the giant had growled. “Will you spend your days moping and swilling ’cause a white-faced ninny in Port Royal’ll have none o’ ye? ’Sblood and ’ounds! If ye wants the wench, why the plague doesn’t ye go and fetch her?”

The blue eyes glared at him from under the jet-black eyebrows, and something of their old fire began to kindle in them. But Wolverstone went on heedlessly.

“I’ll be nice wi’ a wench as long as niceness be the key to her favour. But sink me now if I’d rot myself in rum on account of anything that wears a petticoat. That’s not the Old Wolf’s way. If there’s no other expedition’ll tempt you, why not Port Royal? What a plague do it matter if it is an English settlement? It’s commanded by Colonel Bishop, and there’s no lack of rascals in your company’d follow you to hell if it meant getting Colonel Bishop by the throat. It could be done, I tell you. We’ve but to spy the chance when the Jamaica fleet is away. There’s enough plunder in the town to tempt the lads, and there’s the wench for you. Shall I sound them on ’t?”

Blood was on his feet, his eyes blazing, his livid face