Читать книгу Brethren of the Main - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 14

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For three days the wind held—indeed it freshened a little on the second—and yet on the evening of the third day the Cinco Llagas was plowing through a sea contained on every side by the blue bowl of heaven. Captain Blood uneasily mentioned it to Don Diego.

"It will be for tomorrow morning," he was answered with calm conviction.

"By the saints, it is always 'tomorrow morning' with you Spaniards; and tomorrow never-comes, my friend."

"But this tomorrow is coming, rest assured. However early you may be astir you shall see land ahead, Don Pedro."

Captain Blood passed orb, content, and went to visit Jerry Pitt, his patient, to whose condition Don Diego owed his chance of life. For twenty-four hours now the young navigator had been rid of fever, and so far indeed was he recovered that he complained of his confinement, of the heat in his cabin.

To indulge him Captain Blood consented that he should take the air on deck; and so as the last of the daylight was fading from the sky Jerry Pitt came forth upon the captain's arm.

Seated on the hatch-coamings, the Somerset lad gratefully filled his lungs with the cool night air, and professed himself revived thereby. Then his eye wandered to the darkling vault of heaven, spangled already with a myriad golden points of light. A while he scanned it idly, vacantly; and then his attention became sharply fixed. He looked round and up at Captain Blood, who stood beside him.

"D'ye know anything of astronomy, Peter?" quoth he.

"Astronomy, is it? Faith now, I couldn't tell the Belt of Orion from' the Girdle of Venus."

"Ah! And I suppose the rest of this lubberly crew share your ignorance."

"It would be more amiable of you to suppose that they exceed it."

Jerry pointed ahead to a spot of light in the heavens over the starboard bow.

"That is the North Star," said he.

"Is it now? Glory be, I wonder ye can pick it out from the rest."

"And the North Star ahead almost over your starboard bow means that we're steering a course north-northwest, or indeed north by west, for I doubt if we are standing more than ten degrees westward."

"And why shouldn't we?"

"Ye told me, I think, that we came west of the archipelago between Tobago and Grenada with Curaçao for our destination. If that were our present course we should have the North Star abeam, out yonder."

On the instant Captain Blood shed his laziness. He was about to answer when a shaft of light clove the gloom above their heads, coming from the round-house door which had just been opened. It closed again, and presently there was a step on the companion. Don Diego was approaching.

Captain Blood's fingers pressed Jerry's shoulder with significance. Then he called the Don, and spoke to him in English, as had become his custom when others were present.

"Will ye settle a slight dispute for us, Don Diego?" said he lightly. "We are arguing, Mr. Pitt and I, as to which is the North Star."

"Indeed!"

The Spaniard's tone was easy; there was almost a suggestion that laughter lurked behind it, and the reason for this was explained by his next sentence.

"But you tell me, Mr. Pitt he is your navigator?"

"For lack of a better," laughed the captain, good-humoredly contemptuous. "Now I am ready to wager him a. hundred-pieces of eight that that is the North Star."

And he flung out an arm toward a point of light in the heavens straight abeam. He afterward told Pitt that had Don Diego confirmed him he would have run him through upon the instant. Far from that, however, the Spaniard freely expressed his scorn.

"You have the assurance that is of the ignorance, Don Pedro; and you lose. The North Star is this one."

And he indicated it.

"You are sure?"

"But, my dear Don Pedro!"

The Spaniard's tone was one of amused protest.

"But could I be mistaken? Besides, there is the compass. Step into the steering-room and see what is our course."

His utter frankness, and the easy manner of one who has nothing to conceal resolved at once the doubt that had leaped so suddenly in the mind of Captain Blood. But Jerry Pitt was satisfied less easily.

"In that case, Don Diego, will you tell me, since Curaçao is our destination, why our course is what it is?"

Again there was no faintest hesitation on Don Diego's part.

"Well may you ask," said he, and sighed. "I had hope it would not be observed. I have been of a carelessness—oh, of a carelessness of the most culpable. I neglect observations. It is my way. I am too sure of myself. I depend too much upon dead reckoning.

"The result is that I find today when at last I take out the quadrant that we do come by a half-degree too much south, so that Curaçao is now almost due north of us. That is what cause the delay. But we will be there tomorrow."

The explanation, so completely satisfactory and so readily and candidly forthcoming, left no room for further doubt. Considering it afterward, Captain Blood confessed to Pitt that it was absurd to have suspected Don Diego. Pirate though he was, he had proved his quality when he had announced himself ready to die sooner than enter into any undertaking that could hurt his honor.

New to the sea and to the ways of adventurers who sailed it, Captain Blood still entertained illusions. But the next dawn was to shatter them rudely and forever.