The Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini. Rafael Sabatini

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СКАЧАТЬ to you again when there’s less rum in your wits,” said Wolverstone, rising. “Meanwhile ye’ll please to remember the tale I’ve told, and say nothing that’ll make me out a liar. They all believes me, even the men as sailed wi’ me from Port Royal. I’ve made ‘em. If they thought as how you’d taken the King’s commission in earnest, and for the purpose o’ doing as Morgan did, ye guess what would follow.”

      “Hell would follow,” said the Captain. “An’ tha’s all I’m fit for.”

      “Ye’re maudlin,” Wolverstone growled. “We’ll talk again to-morrow.”

      They did; but to little purpose, either that day or on any day thereafter while the rains—which set in that night—endured. Soon the shrewd Wolverstone discovered that rum was not what ailed Blood. Rum was in itself an effect, and not by any means the cause of the Captain’s listless apathy. There was a canker eating at his heart, and the Old Wolf knew enough to make a shrewd guess of its nature. He cursed all things that daggled petticoats, and, knowing his world, waited for the sickness to pass.

      But it did not pass. When Blood was not dicing or drinking in the taverns of Tortuga, keeping company that in his saner days he had loathed, he was shut up in his cabin aboard the Arabella, alone and uncommunicative. His friends at Government House, bewildered at this change in him, sought to reclaim him. Mademoiselle d’Ogeron, particularly distressed, sent him almost daily invitations, to few of which he responded.

      Later, as the rainy season approached its end, he was sought by his captains with proposals of remunerative raids on Spanish settlements. But to all he manifested an indifference which, as the weeks passed and the weather became settled, begot first impatience and then exasperation.

      Christian, who commanded the Clotho, came storming to him one day, upbraiding him for his inaction, and demanding that he should take order about what was to do.

      “Go to the devil!” Blood said, when he had heard him out. Christian departed fuming, and on the morrow the Clotho weighed anchor and sailed away, setting an example of desertion from which the loyalty of Blood’s other captains would soon be unable to restrain their men.

      Sometimes Blood asked himself why had he come back to Tortuga at all. Held fast in bondage by the thought of Arabella and her scorn of him for a thief and a pirate, he had sworn that he had done with buccaneering. Why, then, was he here? That question he would answer with another: Where else was he to go? Neither backward nor forward could he move, it seemed.

      He was degenerating visibly, under the eyes of all. He had entirely lost the almost foppish concern for his appearance, and was grown careless and slovenly in his dress. He allowed a black beard to grow on cheeks that had ever been so carefully shaven; and the long, thick black hair, once so sedulously curled, hung now in a lank, untidy mane about a face that was changing from its vigorous swarthiness to an unhealthy sallow, whilst the blue eyes, that had been so vivid and compelling, were now dull and lacklustre.

      Wolverstone, the only one who held the clue to this degeneration, ventured once—and once only—to beard him frankly about it.

      “Lord, Peter! Is there never to be no end to this?” the giant had growled. “Will you spend your days moping and swilling ‘cause a white-faced ninny in Port Royal’ll have none o’ ye? ‘Sblood and ‘ounds! If ye wants the wench, why the plague doesn’t ye go and fetch her?”

      The blue eyes glared at him from under the jet-black eyebrows, and something of their old fire began to kindle in them. But Wolverstone went on heedlessly.

      “I’ll be nice wi’ a wench as long as niceness be the key to her favour. But sink me now if I’d rot myself in rum on account of anything that wears a petticoat. That’s not the Old Wolf’s way. If there’s no other expedition’ll tempt you, why not Port Royal? What a plague do it matter if it is an English settlement? It’s commanded by Colonel Bishop, and there’s no lack of rascals in your company’d follow you to hell if it meant getting Colonel Bishop by the throat. It could be done, I tell you. We’ve but to spy the chance when the Jamaica fleet is away. There’s enough plunder in the town to tempt the lads, and there’s the wench for you. Shall I sound them on ‘t?”

      Blood was on his feet, his eyes blazing, his livid face distorted. “Ye’ll leave my cabin this minute, so ye will, or, by Heaven, it’s your corpse’ll be carried out of it. Ye mangy hound, d’ye dare come to me with such proposals?”

      He fell to cursing his faithful officer with a virulence the like of which he had never yet been known to use. And Wolverstone, in terror before that fury, went out without another word. The subject was not raised again, and Captain Blood was left to his idle abstraction.

      But at last, as his buccaneers were growing desperate, something happened, brought about by the Captain’s friend M. d’Ogeron. One sunny morning the Governor of Tortuga came aboard the Arabella, accompanied by a chubby little gentleman, amiable of countenance, amiable and self-sufficient of manner.

      “My Captain,” M. d’Ogeron delivered himself, “I bring you M. de Cussy, the Governor of French Hispaniola, who desires a word with you.”

      Out of consideration for his friend, Captain Blood pulled the pipe from his mouth, shook some of the rum out of his wits, and rose and made a leg to M. de Cussy.

      “Serviteur!” said he.

      M. de Cussy returned the bow and accepted a seat on the locker under the stem windows.

      “You have a good force here under your command, my Captain,” said he.

      “Some eight hundred men.”

      “And I understand they grow restive in idleness.”

      “They may go to the devil when they please.”

      M. de Cussy took snuff delicately. “I have something better than that to propose,” said he.

      “Propose it, then,” said Blood, without interest.

      M. de Cussy looked at M. d’Ogeron, and raised his eyebrows a little. He did not find Captain Blood encouraging. But M. d’Ogeron nodded vigorously with pursed lips, and the Governor of Hispaniola propounded his business.

      “News has reached us from France that there is war with Spain.”

      “That is news, is it?” growled Blood.

      “I am speaking officially, my Captain. I am not alluding to unofficial skirmishes, and unofficial predatory measures which we have condoned out here. There is war—formally war—between France and Spain in Europe. It is the intention of France that this war shall be carried into the New World. A fleet is coming out from Brest under the command of M. le Baron de Rivarol for that purpose. I have letters from him desiring me to equip a supplementary squadron and raise a body of not less than a thousand men to reenforce him on his arrival. What I have come to propose to you, my Captain, at the suggestion of our good friend M. d’Ogeron, is, in brief, that you enroll your ships and your force under M. de Rivarol’s flag.”

      Blood looked at him with a faint kindling of interest. “You are offering to take us into the French service?” he asked. “On what terms, monsieur?”

      “With the rank of Capitaine de Vaisseau for yourself, and suitable ranks for the officers serving under you. You will enjoy the pay of that rank, and you will be entitled, together with your men, to one-tenth share in all prizes taken.”

      “My СКАЧАТЬ