Читать книгу Brethren of the Main - Рафаэль Сабатини - Страница 7

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Staring from the eminence on which they stood, not yet understanding what had taken place, they saw the British flag dip from the masthead and vanish in the rising cloud below. A moment more, and up through that cloud to replace the English ensign soared the gold and crimson banner of Castile. An then they understood.

"Pirates!" cried the colonel, and again, "Pirates!"

Fear and incredulity were blended in his rasping voice. He had paled under his tan until his face was the color of clay, and there was a wildness in his glance. His negroes looked at him, grinned idiotically; all teeth and eyeballs.

The stately ship that had been allowed to sail so leisurely into the bay under her false colors was a Spanish privateer coming to pay off some of the heavy scores piled up by such Brethren of the Main as Morgan and his successors. And no suspicion had she aroused until she saluted the slumbering fort at short range with a broadside of twenty guns.

Even as they watched, they beheld her creep forward from under the rising cloud of smoke, her mainsail now unfurled to increase her steering way, and go about close-hauled so as to bring her larboard guns to bear upon that unready fort.

With the crashing roar of the second broadside, Colonel Bishop awoke from stupefaction to a recollection of where his duty lay. In the town below drums were beating frenziedly, and a trumpet was bleating, as if the peril needed further advertising.

As commander of the Barbados Militia, Colonel Bishop's place was at the head of his scanty troops in that fort that was being pounded into rubble by the Spanish guns. Remembering it, he went off abruptly at a run despite the heat, his negroes trotting after him.

"Now that," said Mr. Blood, "is what I call a timely interruption. Though what'll come of it," he added, as an afterthought "the —— himself knows."

He picked up the palmetto leaf, and carefully replaced it on the back of his patient and fellow slave. As yet a third broadside thundered forth, there came, panting and sweating into the stockade Kent the overseer, followed by best part of a score of plantation workers, some of whom were black and all of whom were in a state of panic. Ahead of them Kent dashed into the low white house to bring them forth again almost immediately, armed now with muskets and hangers, and equipped with bandoleers.

A little knot of rebels convict that had followed hung timidly about the place questioning Mr. Blood.

As the hastily armed force hurried away Kent paused a moment to fling a word of counsel to the white slaves.

"To the woods!" he roared. "Take to the woods, and lie there quiet until we have gutted those Spanish swine."

On that he flung away after his men whom he was going to add to the force massing in the town to oppose and overwhelm the Spanish landing-parties.

The slaves would instantly have followed his advice, had not Mr. Blood detained them.

"Sure now, and where's the need for haste—and in this heat?" he asked. "Maybe there'll be no need to take to the woods at all, and anyway it'll be time enough for that when the Spaniards are masters of the town."

And so, joined now by other stragglers and numbering in all some thirty men—rebels convict all, and most of them associates of Blood and Pitt in their now shipwrecked project of escape from the island—they stayed to watch the fortunes of the furious battle that was being waged below.

The landing was contested by the militia and by every islander capable of bearing arms, with the fierce resolution of men who knew that no quarter was to be expected in defeat. But they had been taken by surprize, and their fort put out of action, when the guns of the frigate effectively covered the landing-parties that made the shore in their own boats and in several of those that had rashly gone out to the Spaniard before her identity was revealed.

By sunset two hundred and fifty Spaniards were masters of the town, the islanders were disarmed, and at Government House Governor Creed, supported by Colonel Bishop and some lesser officers, were being urbanely informed by Don Diego Valdez of the sum required in ransom. For a hundred thousand pieces of eight and fifty head of cattle, Don Diego would forbear from reducing the place to ashes.

And what time their suave commander was settling these details with the apoplectic British governor, the Spaniards were smashing and pillaging with every form of violence, feasting and making merry after the hideous manner of their kind.

When the tropical night descended there were not above ten men on guard aboard the Cinco Llagas—as their ship was named—so confident were the Spaniards of the complete subjection of the islanders. And while their fellows feasted ashore, the gunner and his crew, who had so nobly done their duty and insured the easy victory of that day, were feasting on the gun-deck upon the wine and fresh meat fetched out to them from shore by Don Diego's son and lieutenant, who had remained to join them.

Above, two sentinels kept watch at stem and stern; and an indifferent watch it must have been, for they saw nothing of the two pinnaces that under cover of the darkness came gliding from the shore with well-greased rowlocks to bring up under the frigate's quarter. From the stern gallery still hung the ladder by which Don Diego had descended to the boat that had 'taken him ashore. The sentry in the stern, coming presently round the gallery in his pacing, beheld the black figure of a man standing before him at the ladder's head.

"Who's there?" he asked, but without alarm.

"It is I," softly answered Mr. Peter Blood in Spanish.

A considerable sojourn in the Spanish Netherlands had made him fluent in the language.

The Spaniard came a step nearer. "Is it you, Pedro?"

"Peter is my name, but I doubt I'm not the Peter you're expecting."

"How?" quoth the sentry.

"This way," said Mr. Blood.

The wooden railing was a low one, and the Spaniard unsuspecting. Save for the splash he made as he struck the water below, narrowly missing one of the crowded boats, not a sound announced his misadventure. Armed as he was with corselet, cuissarts and headpiece, he sank to trouble them no more.

"Whist!" hissed Mr. Blood to his waiting companions. "Come on now, and without noise."

Within bye minutes the rebels convict were aboard, all thirty of them, overflowing from that narrow gallery about the sides of the round house, and crouching on the quarter-deck itself. Lights showed ahead. Under a lantern in the prow they saw the black= figure of the other sentry, pacing on the forecastle.

Crouching low, they glided noiselessly as shadows to the companion and slipped without sound down into the waist. A score of them were armed with muskets taken from the overseer's house and others from the secret hoard that Mr. Blood had so laboriously assembled against the day of their escape. The remainder had equipped themselves, some with cutlasses and some with pole-axes.

In the vessel's waist they hung a while, alert, until Mr. Blood had satisfied himself that no watcher showed above decks save that inconvenient fellow in the prow. Their first attention must be for him, and it was Blood himself who crept forward with two companions, leaving the others in charge of a resolute fellow named Ogle. When they returned there was no watch above the Spaniard's decks.