“That’s a point we were just arguing,” said Blood. “For I hold that we’re in no case to fight against such odds.”
“The odds be damned!” Wolverstone thrust out his heavy jowl. “We’re used to odds. The odds was heavier at Maracaybo; yet we won out, and took three ships. They was heavier yesterday when we engaged Don Miguel.”
“Aye – but those were Spaniards.”
“And what better are these? – Are ye afeard of a lubberly Barbados planter? Whatever ails you, Peter? I’ve never known ye scared afore.”
A gun boomed out behind them.
“That’ll be the signal to lie to,” said Blood, in the same listless voice; and he fetched a sigh.
Wolverstone squared himself defiantly before his captain
“I’ll see Colonel Bishop in hell or ever I lies to for him.” And he spat, presumably for purposes of emphasis.
His lordship intervened.
“Oh, but – by your leave – surely there is nothing to be apprehended from Colonel Bishop. Considering the service you have rendered to his niece and to me….”
Wolverstone’s horse-laugh interrupted him. “Hark to the gentleman!” he mocked. “Ye don’t know Colonel Bishop, that’s clear. Not for his niece, not for his daughter, not for his own mother, would he forgo the blood what he thinks due to him. A drinker of blood, he is. A nasty beast. We knows, the Cap’n and me. We been his slaves.”
“But there is myself,” said Lord Julian, with great dignity.
Wolverstone laughed again, whereat his lordship flushed. He was moved to raise his voice above its usual languid level.
“I assure you that my word counts for something in England.”
“Oh, aye – in England. But this ain’t England, damme.”
Came the roar of a second gun, and a round shot splashed the water less than half a cable’s-length astern. Blood leaned over the rail to speak to the fair young man immediately below him by the helmsman at the whipstaff.
“Bid them take in sail, Jeremy,” he said quietly. “We lie to.”
But Wolverstone interposed again.
“Hold there a moment, Jeremy!” he roared. “Wait!” He swung back to face the Captain, who had placed a hand on is shoulder and was smiling, a trifle wistfully.
“Steady, Old Wolf! Steady!” Captain Blood admonished him.
“Steady, yourself, Peter. Ye’ve gone mad! Will ye doom us all to hell out of tenderness for that cold slip of a girl?”
“Stop!” cried Blood in sudden fury.
But Wolverstone would not stop. “It’s the truth, you fool. It’s that cursed petticoat’s making a coward of you. It’s for her that ye’re afeard – and she, Colonel Bishop’s niece! My God, man, ye’ll have a mutiny aboard, and I’ll lead it myself sooner than surrender to be hanged in Port Royal.”
Their glances met, sullen defiance braving dull anger, surprise, and pain.
“There is no question,” said Blood, “of surrender for any man aboard save only myself. If Bishop can report to England that I am taken and hanged, he will magnify himself and at the same time gratify his personal rancour against me. That should satisfy him. I’ll send him a message offering to surrender aboard his ship, taking Miss Bishop and Lord Julian with me, but only on condition that the Arabella is allowed to proceed unharmed. It’s a bargain that he’ll accept, if I know him at all.”
“It’s a bargain he’ll never be offered,” retorted Wolverstone, and his earlier vehemence was as nothing to his vehemence now. “Ye’re surely daft even to think of it, Peter!”
“Not so daft as you when you talk of fighting that.” He flung out an arm as he spoke to indicate the pursuing ships, which were slowly but surely creeping nearer. “Before we’ve run another half-mile we shall be within range.”
Wolverstone swore elaborately, then suddenly checked. Out of the tail of his single eye he had espied a trim figure in grey silk that was ascending the companion. So engrossed had they been that they had not seen Miss Bishop come from the door of the passage leading to the cabin. And there was something else that those three men on the poop, and Pitt immediately below them, had failed to observe. Some moments ago Ogle, followed by the main body of his gun-deck crew, had emerged from the booby hatch, to fall into muttered, angrily vehement talk with those who, abandoning the gun-tackles upon which they were labouring, had come to crowd about him.
Even now Blood had no eyes for that. He turned to look at Miss Bishop, marvelling a little, after the manner in which yesterday she had avoided him, that she should now venture upon the quarter-deck. Her presence at this moment, and considering the nature of his altercation with Wolverstone, was embarrassing.
Very sweet and dainty she stood before him in her gown of shimmering grey, a faint excitement tinting her fair cheeks and sparkling in her clear, hazel eyes, that looked so frank and honest. She wore no hat, and the ringlets of her gold-brown hair fluttered distractingly in the morning breeze.
Captain Blood bared his head and bowed silently in a greeting which she returned composedly and formally.
“What is happening, Lord Julian?” she enquired.
As if to answer her a third gun spoke from the ships towards which she was looking intent and wonderingly. A frown rumpled her brow. She looked from one to the other of the men who stood there so glum and obviously ill at ease.
“They are ships of the Jamaica fleet,” his lordship answered her.
It should in any case have been a sufficient explanation. But before more could be added, their attention was drawn at last to Ogle, who came bounding up the broad ladder, and to the men lounging aft in his wake, in all of which, instinctively, they apprehended a vague menace.
At the head of the companion, Ogle found his progress barred by Blood, who confronted him, a sudden sternness in his face and in every line of him.
“What’s this?” the Captain demanded sharply. “Your station is on the gun-deck. Why have you left it?”
Thus challenged, the obvious truculence faded out of Ogle’s bearing, quenched by the old habit of obedience and the natural dominance that was the secret of the Captain’s rule over his wild followers. But it gave no pause to the gunner’s intention. If anything it increased his excitement.
“Captain,” he said, and as he spoke he pointed to the pursuing ships, “Colonel Bishop holds us. We’re in no case either to run or fight.”
Blood’s height seemed to increase, as did his sternness.
“Ogle,” said he, in a voice cold and sharp as steel, “your station is on the gun-deck. You’ll return to it at once, and take your crew with you, or else….”
But Ogle, violent of mien and gesture, interrupted him.
“Threats will not serve, Captain.”
“Will they not?”
It was the first time in his buccaneering career that an order of his had been disregarded, or that a man had failed in the obedience to which he pledged all those who joined him. That this insubordination should proceed from one of those whom he most trusted, one of his old Barbados associates, was in itself a bitterness, and made him reluctant to that which instinct told him must be done. His hand closed over the butt of one of the pistols slung before him.
“Nor will that serve you,” Ogle warned him, still more fiercely. “The men are of my thinking, and they’ll have their way.”
“And what way may that be?”
“The way to make us safe. We’ll neither sink nor hang whiles we can help it.”
From the three or four score men massed below in the waist came a rumble of approval. Captain Blood’s glance raked the ranks of those resolute, fierce-eyed fellows, then it came to rest again on Ogle. There was here quite plainly a vague threat, a mutinous spirit he could not understand. “You come to give advice, then, do you?” quoth he, relenting nothing of his sternness.
“That’s it, Captain; advice. That girl, there.” He flung out a bare arm to point to her. “Bishop’s girl; the Governor of Jamaica’s niece…. We want her as a hostage for our safety.”
“Aye!” roared in chorus the buccaneers below, and one or two of them elaborated that affirmation.
In a flash Captain Blood saw what was in their minds. And for all that he lost nothing of his outward stern composure, fear invaded his heart.
“And how,” he asked, “do you imagine that Miss Bishop will prove such a hostage?”
“It’s a providence having her aboard; a providence. Heave to, Captain, and signal them to send a boat, and assure themselves that Miss is here. Then let them know that if they attempt to hinder our sailing hence, we’ll hang the doxy first and fight for it after. That’ll cool Colonel Bishop’s heat, maybe.”
“And maybe it won’t.” Slow and mocking came Wolverstone’s voice to answer the other’s confident excitement, and as he spoke he advanced to Blood’s side, an unexpected ally. “Some o’ them dawcocks may believe that tale.” He jerked a contemptuous thumb towards the men in the waist, whose ranks were steadily being increased by the advent of others from the forecastle. “Although even some o’ they should know better, for there’s still a few was on Barbados with us, and are acquainted like me and you with Colonel Bishop. If ye’re counting on pulling Bishop’s heartstrings, ye’re a bigger fool, Ogle, than I’ve always thought you was with anything but guns. There’s no heaving to for such a matter as that unless you wants to make quite sure of our being sunk. Though we had a cargo of Bishop’s nieces it wouldn’t make him hold his hand. Why, as I was just telling his lordship here, who thought like you that having Miss Bishop aboard would make us safe, not for his mother would that filthy slaver forgo what’s due to him. And if ye’ weren’t a fool, Ogle, you wouldn’t need me to tell you this. We’ve got to fight, my lads….”