He fetched a heavy sigh. “A pity,” he said slowly. “Oh, blister me—a cursed pity!” He held out his hand, moved to it on a sudden generous impulse. “But no offence between us, Captain Blood!”
“Oh, no offence. But... I’m a thief and a pirate.” He laughed without mirth, and, disregarding the proffered hand, swung on his heel.
Lord Julian stood a moment, watching the tall figure as it moved away towards the taffrail. Then letting his arms fall helplessly to his sides in dejection, he departed.
Just within the doorway of the alley leading to the cabin, he ran into Miss Bishop. Yet she had not been coming out, for her back was towards him, and she was moving in the same direction. He followed her, his mind too full of Captain Blood to be concerned just then with her movements.
In the cabin he flung into a chair, and exploded, with a violence altogether foreign to his nature.
“Damme if ever I met a man I liked better, or even a man I liked as well. Yet there’s nothing to be done with him.”
“So I heard,” she admitted in a small voice. She was very white, and she kept her eyes upon her folded hands.
He looked up in surprise, and then sat conning her with brooding glance. “I wonder, now,” he said presently, “if the mischief is of your working. Your words have rankled with him. He threw them at me again and again. He wouldn’t take the King’s commission; he wouldn’t take my hand even. What’s to be done with a fellow like that? He’ll end on a yardarm for all his luck. And the quixotic fool is running into danger at the present moment on our behalf.”
“How?” she asked him with a sudden startled interest.
“How? Have you forgotten that he’s sailing to Jamaica, and that Jamaica is the headquarters of the English fleet? True, your uncle commands it....”
She leaned across the table to interrupt him, and he observed that her breathing had grown labored, that her eyes were dilating in alarm.
“But there is no hope for him in that!” she cried. “Oh, don’t imagine it! He has no bitterer enemy in the world! My uncle is a hard, unforgiving man. I believe that it was nothing but the hope of taking and hanging Captain Blood that made my uncle leave his Barbados plantations to accept the deputy-governorship of Jamaica. Captain Blood doesn’t know that, of course....” She paused with a little gesture of helplessness.
“I can’t think that it would make the least difference if he did,” said his lordship gravely. “A man who can forgive such an enemy as Don Miguel and take up this uncompromising attitude with me isn’t to be judged by ordinary rules. He’s chivalrous to the point of idiocy.”
“And yet he has been what he has been and done what he has done in these last three years,” said she, but she said it sorrowfully now, without any of her earlier scorn.
Lord Julian was sententious, as I gather that he often was. “Life can be infernally complex,” he sighed.
CHAPTER XXI.
THE SERVICE OF KING JAMES
Miss Arabella Bishop was aroused very early on the following morning by the brazen voice of a bugle and the insistent clanging of a bell in the ship’s belfry. As she lay awake, idly watching the rippled green water that appeared to be streaming past the heavily glazed porthole, she became gradually aware of the sounds of swift, laboured bustle—the clatter of many feet, the shouts of hoarse voices, and the persistent trundlings of heavy bodies in the ward-room immediately below the deck of the cabin. Conceiving these sounds to portend a more than normal activity, she sat up, pervaded by a vague alarm, and roused her still slumbering woman.
In his cabin on the starboard side Lord Julian, disturbed by the same sounds, was already astir and hurriedly dressing. When presently he emerged under the break of the poop, he found himself staring up into a mountain of canvas. Every foot of sail that she could carry had been crowded to the Arabella’s yards, to catch the morning breeze. Ahead and on either side stretched the limitless expanse of ocean, sparkling golden in the sun, as yet no more than a half-disc of flame upon the horizon straight ahead.
About him in the waist, where all last night had been so peaceful, there was a frenziedly active bustle of some threescore men. By the rail, immediately above and behind Lord Julian, stood Captain Blood in altercation with a one-eyed giant, whose head was swathed in a red cotton kerchief, whose blue shirt hung open at the waist. As his lordship, moving forward, revealed himself, their voices ceased, and Blood turned to greet him.
“Good-morning to you,” he said, and added “I’ve blundered badly, so I have. I should have known better than to come so close to Jamaica by night. But I was in haste to land you. Come up here. I have something to show you.”
Wondering, Lord Julian mounted the companion as he was bidden. Standing beside Captain Blood, he looked astern, following the indication of the Captain’s hand, and cried out in his amazement. There, not more than three miles away, was land—an uneven wall of vivid green that filled the western horizon. And a couple of miles this side of it, bearing after them, came speeding three great white ships.
“They fly no colours, but they’re part of the Jamaica fleet.” Blood spoke without excitement, almost with a certain listlessness. “When dawn broke we found ourselves running to meet them. We went about, and it’s been a race ever since. But the Arabella ‘s been at sea these four months, and her bottom’s too foul for the speed we’re needing.”
Wolverstone hooked his thumbs into his broad leather belt, and from his great height looked down sardonically upon Lord Julian, tall man though his lordship was. “So that you’re like to be in yet another sea-fight afore ye’ve done wi’ ships, my lord.”
“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