Читать книгу Brethren of the Main - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 16

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He rose, relinquishing the Spaniard to his men.

"Make him fast," he bade them. "Truss him, wrist and heel, but don't hurt him—not so much as a hair of his precious head."

The injunction was very necessary. Frenzied by the thought that they were likely to exchange the slavery from which they had so lately escaped for a slavery still worse, they would have torn the Spaniard limb from limb upon the spot. And if they now obeyed their captain and refrained, it was only because the sudden steely note in his voice promised for Don Diego Valdez something far more exquisite than death.

"You scum! You dirty pirate! You 'man of Honor!'" Captain Blood apostrophized his prisoner.

But Don Diego looked up at him and laughed.

"You underrated me."

He spoke English so that all might hear.

"I tell you that I was not fear death, and I show you that I was not fear it. You no understand. You just an English dog."

"Irish, if you please."

Captain Blood insisted upon that even at such a moment.

"And your parole, you gentleman of Spain?"

"You think I give my parole to leave such filth as you in possession of this my so beautiful ship, to go and make war upon other Spaniards! Ha!"

Don Diego laughed in his throat.

"You fool! You can kill me. Pish! What is it to die? I die with my work well done. In less than an hour you will be the prisoners of Spain, and the Cinco Llagas will fly the flag of Spain again."

White-faced, Captain Blood continued to regard him, fury blunting his wits and choking his power of thought.

"Wait," he bade his men at last; and, turning on his heel, he went aside to the rail.

There he was joined by Hagthorpe, Wolverstone and Ogle, the gunner. In silence they stared with him across the water at that other ship. She had veered a point, away from the wind, and was running now on a line that must in the end converge, with that of the Cinco Llagas.

"In less than half an hour," said the captain presently, "we shall have her across our hawse, sweeping our decks with ibex guns."

"We can fight," said the one-eyed giant, Wolverstone, with an oath.

"Fight!" sneered Blood. "Undermanned as we are, mustering a bare thirty men, in what case are we to fight? It's just suicide, so it is. Our only chance would be to persuade her that we are Spaniards so that she may leave us to go our ways."

"And how is that possible?" quoth Ogle.

"It isn't possible," said Blood. "If it were—"

And then he broke off and stood musing, his eyes upon the green water. Ogle, with a bent for sarcasm, interposed a suggestion bitterly.

"We, might send Don Diego Valdez in a boat manned by his Spaniards to assure her that we are all loyal subjects of his Catholic Majesty."

The Captain looked as if he would have struck him. Then another light, the light of inspiration, flashed in his glance.

"Bedad, ye've pointed the way!" said he. He swung on his heel abruptly and strode back to the knot of men about Don Diego.

"Below, and fetch pp the Spanish prisoners," he commanded. "And you, Hagthorpe, set the flag of Spain aloft, where they can see it."

When presently the ten sullen, manacled Spaniards were paraded before him on the quarter-deck Captain Blood briefly and coldly recited to them the treachery of which Don Diego had been guilty and the peril in which they consequently stood:

"This peril," he announced to them, "you share with us. For if we must perish you shall perish with us. But there is one chance—one slender chance—of life for us and for you if you will agree to do as I shall bid you."

Behind him Don Diego laughed aloud, the exaltation of martyrdom on his white face.

"There is no way," he cried in a vibrant voice. "Provide none for him. Let us die rather, and long live Spain!"

Captain Blood did not heed him; his attention was entirely given to those ten prisoners, and on the sullen faces of those hinds he saw the light of no such exaltation as their captain sought to kindle in them. He turned to those who guarded Don Diego.

"Lash him across the mouth of that cannon," he commanded, pointing to the nearest stern-chaser.