Chapter 1 The Pretender — The Fortunes of Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
Mobility, as everyone knows, is a quality that has been in all times a conspicuous factor of success with most great commanders by land and sea. So, too, with Captain Blood. There were occasions when his onslaught was sudden as the stoop of a hawk. And there was a time, coinciding with his attainment of the summit of his fame, when this mobility assumed proportions conveying such an impression of ubiquity that it led the Spaniards to believe and assert that only a compact with Satan could enable a man so miraculously to annihilate space.
Not content to be mildly amused by the echoes that reached him from time to time of the supernatural powers with which Spanish superstition endowed him, Captain Blood was diligent to profit where possible by the additional terror in which his name came thus to be held. But when shortly after his capture at San Domingo of the Maria Gloriosa, the powerful, richly laden flagship of the Spanish Admiral of the Ocean-Sea, the Marquis of Riconete, he heard it positively and circumstantially reported that on the very morrow of his sailing from San Domingo he had been raiding Cartagena, two hundred miles away, it occurred to him that one or two other fantastic tales of his doings that had lately reached his ears might possess a foundation less vague than was supplied by mere superstitious imaginings.
It was in a water-side tavern at Christianstadt on the island of Sainte Croix, where the Maria Gloriosa (impudently re-named the Andalusian Lass, and as impudently flying the flag of the Union) had put in for wood and water, that he overheard an account of horrors practised by himself and his buccaneers at Cartagena in the course of that same raid.
He had sought the tavern in accordance with his usual custom when roving at a venture, without definite object. These resorts of seafaring men were of all places the likeliest in which to pick up scraps of information that might be turned to account. Nor was this the first time that the information he picked up concerned himself, though never yet had it been of quite so surprising a nature.
The narrator was a big Dutchman, red of hair and face, named Claus, master of a merchant ship from the Scheldt, and he was entertaining with his lurid tale of pillage, rape and murder two traders of the town, members of the French West India Company.
Uninvited, Blood thrust himself into this group with the object of learning more, and the intrusion was not merely accepted with the tolerance that prevailed in such resorts, but welcomed by virtue of the elegance of this stranger's appointments and the quiet authority of his manner.
'My greetings, messieurs.' If his French had not the native fluency of his Spanish, acquired during two years at Seville in a prison of the Holy Office, yet it was serviceably smooth. He drew up a stool, sat down without ceremony, and rapped with his knuckles on the stained deal table to summon the taverner. 'When do you say that this occurred?'
'Ten days ago it was,' the Dutchman answered him.
'Impossible.' Blood shook his periwigged head. 'To my certain knowledge, Captain Blood ten days ago was at San Domingo. Besides, his ways are hardly as villainous as those you describe.'
Claus, that rough man, of a temper to match his fiery complexion, displayed impatience of the contradiction. 'Pirates are pirates, and all are foul.' He spat ostentatiously upon the sanded floor, as if to mark his nausea.
'Faith, I'll not argue with you on that. But since I know that ten days ago Captain Blood was at San Domingo, it follows that he could not at the same time have been at Cartagena.'
'Cock-sure, are you not?' the Dutchman sneered. 'Then let me tell you, sir, that I had the tale two days since at San Juan de Puerto Rico from the captain of one of two battered Spanish plate-ships that had been beset in Cartagena by the raiders. You'll not pretend to know better than he. Those two galleons ran into San Juan for shelter. They had been hunted across the Caribbean by that damned buccaneer, and they would never have escaped him but that a lucky shot of theirs damaged his foremast and compelled him to shorten sail.'
But Blood was not impressed by this citation of an eyewitness. 'Bah!' said he. 'The Spaniards were in a mistake. That's all.'
The traders looked uneasily at the dark face of this newcomer, whose eyes, so vividly blue under their black eyebrows, were coldly contemptuous. The timely arrival of the taverner brought a pause to the discussion, and Blood softened the mounting irritation of the Dutchman by inviting these habitual rum-drinkers to share with him a bottle of more elegant Canary Sack.
'My good sir,' Claus insisted, 'there could be no mistake. Blood's big red ship, the Arabella, is not to be mistaken.'
'If they say that the Arabella chased them, they make it the more certain that they lied. For, again to my certain knowledge, the Arabella is at Tortuga, careened for graving and refitting.'
'You know a deal,' said the Dutchman, with his heavy sarcasm.
'I keep myself informed,' was the plausible answer, civilly delivered. 'It's prudent.'
'Ay, provided that you inform yourself correctly. This time you're sorely at fault. Believe me, sir, at present Captain Blood is somewhere hereabouts.'
Captain Blood smiled. 'That I can well believe. What I don't perceive is why you should suppose it.'
The Dutchman thumped the table with his great fist. 'Didn't I tell you that somewhere off Puerto Rico his foremast was strained, in action with these Spaniards? What better reason than that? He'll have run to one of these islands for repairs. That's certain.'
'What's much more certain is that your Spaniards, in panic of Captain Blood, see an Arabella in every ship they sight.'
Only the coming of the Sack made the Dutchman tolerant of such obstinacy in error. When they had drunk, he confined his talk to the plate-ships. Not only were they at Puerto Rico for repairs, but after their late experience, and because they were very richly laden, they would not again put to sea until they could be convoyed.
Now here, at last, was matter of such interest to Captain Blood that he was not concerned to dispute further about the horrors imputed to him at Cartagena and the other falsehood of his engagement with those same plate-ships.
That evening in the cabin of the Andalusian Lass, in whose splendid equipment of damasks and velvets, of carved and gilded bulkheads, of crystal and silver, was reflected the opulence of the Spanish Admiral to whom she had so lately belonged, Captain Blood summoned a council of war. It was composed of the one-eyed giant Wolverstone, of Nathaniel Hagthorpe, that pleasant mannered West Country gentleman, and of Chaffinch, the little sailing master, all of them men who had been transported with Blood for their share in the Monmouth rising. As a result of their deliberations, the Andalusian Lass weighed anchor that same night, and slipped away from Sainte Croix, to appear two days later off San Juan de Puerto Rico.
Flying now the red and gold of Spain at her maintruck, she hove to in the roads, fired a gun in salute, and lowered a boat.
Through his telescope, Blood scanned the harbour for confirmation of the Dutchman's tale. There he made out quite clearly among the lesser shipping two tall yellow galleons, vessels of thirty guns, whose upper works bore signs of extensive damage, now in course of repair. So far, then, it seemed, Mynheer Claus had told the truth. And this was all that mattered.
It was necessary to proceed with caution. Not only was the harbour protected by a considerable fort, with a garrison which no doubt would be kept more than usually alert in view of the presence of the treasure-ships, but Blood disposed of no more than eighty hands aboard the Andalusian Lass, so that he was not in sufficient strength to effect a landing, even if his gunnery should have the good fortune to subdue the fortress. He must trust to guile rather than to strength, and in the lowered cock-boat Captain Blood went audaciously ashore upon a reconnaissance.