The Essential Rafael Sabatini Collection. Rafael Sabatini

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СКАЧАТЬ forced to accept. Set a course for the Virgen Magra. We'll go ashore, and settle things from there. And tell them to fetch that milksop Ogeron to the cabin."

      Levasseur went back to the adoring lady.

      Thither, too, the lady's brother was presently conducted. The Captain rose to receive him, bending his stalwart height to avoid striking the cabin roof with his head. Mademoiselle rose too.

      "Why this?" she asked Levasseur, pointing to her brother's pinioned wrists--the remains of Cahusac's precautions.

      "I deplore it," said he. "I desire it to end. Let M. d'Ogeron give me his parole...."

      "I give you nothing," flashed the white-faced youth, who did not lack for spirit.

      "You see." Levasseur shrugged his deep regret, and mademoiselle turned protesting to her brother.

      "Henri, this is foolish! You are not behaving as my friend. You...."

      "Little fool," her brother answered her--and the "little" was out of place; she was the taller of the twain. "Little fool, do you think I should be acting as your friend to make terms with this blackguard pirate?"

      "Steady, my young cockerel!" Levasseur laughed. But his laugh was not nice.

      "Don't you perceive your wicked folly in the harm it has brought already? Lives have been lost--men have died--that this monster might overtake you. And don't you yet realize where you stand--in the power of this beast, of this cur born in a kennel and bred in thieving and murder?"

      He might have said more but that Levasseur struck him across the mouth. Levasseur, you see, cared as little as another to hear the truth about himself.

      Mademoiselle suppressed a scream, as the youth staggered back under the blow. He came to rest against a bulkhead, and leaned there with bleeding lips. But his spirit was unquenched, and there was a ghastly smile on his white face as his eyes sought his sister's.

      "You see," he said simply. "He strikes a man whose hands are bound."

      The simple words, and, more than the words, their tone of ineffable disdain, aroused the passion that never slumbered deeply in Levasseur.

      "And what should you do, puppy, if your hands were unbound?" He took his prisoner by the breast of his doublet and shook him. "Answer me! What should you do? Tchah! You empty windbag! You...." And then came a torrent of words unknown to mademoiselle, yet of whose foulness her intuitions made her conscious.

      With blanched cheeks she stood by the cabin table, and cried out to Levasseur to stop. To obey her, he opened the door, and flung her brother through it.

      "Put that rubbish under hatches until I call for it again," he roared, and shut the door.

      Composing himself, he turned to the girl again with a deprecatory smile. But no smile answered him from her set face. She had seen her beloved hero's nature in curl-papers, as it were, and she found the spectacle disgusting and terrifying. It recalled the brutal slaughter of the Dutch captain, and suddenly she realized that what her brother had just said of this man was no more than true. Fear growing to panic was written on her face, as she stood there leaning for support against the table.

      "Why, sweetheart, what is this?" Levasseur moved towards her. She recoiled before him. There was a smile on his face, a glitter in his eyes that fetched her heart into her throat.

      He caught her, as she reached the uttermost limits of the cabin, seized her in his long arms and pulled her to him.

      "No, no!" she panted.

      "Yes, yes," he mocked her, and his mockery was the most terrible thing of all. He crushed her to him brutally, deliberately hurtful because she resisted, and kissed her whilst she writhed in his embrace. Then, his passion mounting, he grew angry and stripped off the last rag of hero's mask that still may have hung upon his face. "Little fool, did you not hear your brother say that you are in my power? Remember it, and remember that of your own free will you came. I am not the man with whom a woman can play fast and loose. So get sense, my girl, and accept what you have invited." He kissed her again, almost contemptuously, and flung her off. "No more scowls," he said. "You'll be sorry else."

      Some one knocked. Cursing the interruption, Levasseur strode off to open. Cahusac stood before him. The Breton's face was grave. He came to report that they had sprung a leak between wind and water, the consequence of damage sustained from one of the Dutchman's shots. In alarm Levasseur went off with him. The leakage was not serious so long as the weather kept fine; but should a storm overtake them it might speedily become so. A man was slung overboard to make a partial stoppage with a sail-cloth, and the pumps were got to work.

      Ahead of them a low cloud showed on the horizon, which Cahusac pronounced one of the northernmost of the Virgin Islands.

      "We must run for shelter there, and careen her," said Levasseur. "I do not trust this oppressive heat. A storm may catch us before we make land."

      "A storm or something else," said Cahusac grimly. "Have you noticed that?" He pointed away to starboard.

      Levasseur looked, and caught his breath. Two ships that at the distance seemed of considerable burden were heading towards them some five miles away.

      "If they follow us what is to happen?" demanded Cahusac.

      "We'll fight whether we're in case to do so or not," swore Levasseur.

      "Counsels of despair." Cahusac was contemptuous. To mark it he spat upon the deck. "This comes of going to sea with a lovesick madman. Now, keep your temper, Captain, for the hands will be at the end of theirs if we have trouble as a result of this Dutchman business."

      For the remainder of that day Levasseur's thoughts were of anything but love. He remained on deck, his eyes now upon the land, now upon those two slowly gaining ships. To run for the open could avail him nothing, and in his leaky condition would provide an additional danger. He must stand at bay and fight. And then, towards evening, when within three miles of shore and when he was about to give the order to strip for battle, he almost fainted from relief to hear a voice from the crow's-nest above announce that the larger of the two ships was the Arabella. Her companion was presumably a prize.

      But the pessimism of Cahusac abated nothing.

      "That is but the lesser evil," he growled. "What will Blood say about this Dutchman?"

      "Let him say what he pleases." Levasseur laughed in the immensity of his relief.

      "And what about the children of the Governor of Tortuga?"

      "He must not know."

      "He'll come to know in the end."

      "Aye, but by then, morbleu, the matter will be settled. I shall have made my peace with the Governor. I tell you I know the way to compel Ogeron to come to terms."

      Presently the four vessels lay to off the northern coast of La Virgen Magra, a narrow little island arid and treeless, some twelve miles by three, uninhabited save by birds and turtles and unproductive of anything but salt, of which there СКАЧАТЬ