Captain Blood - Rafael Sabatini (7 ebook reader txt) 📗

more than a murmur of approval from his three captains.

Rivarol glared at them, checkmated.

“In effect…” M. de Cussy was beginning timidly.

“In effect, monsieur, this is your doing,” the Baron flashed on him, glad to have some one upon whom he could fasten the sharp fangs of his irritation. “You should be broke for it. You bring the King’s service into disrepute; you force me, His Majesty’s representative, into an impossible position.”

“Is it impossible to award us the one-fifth share?” quoth Captain Blood silkily. “In that case, there is no need for beat or for injuries to M. de Cussy. M. de Cussy knows that we would not have come for less. We depart again upon your assurance that you cannot award us more. And things are as they would have been if M. de Cussy had adhered rigidly to his instructions. I have proved, I hope, to your satisfaction, M. le Baron, that if you repudiate the articles you can neither claim our services nor hinder our departure - not in honour.”

“Not in honour, sir? To the devil with your insolence! Do you imply that any course that were not in honour would be possible to me?”

“I do not imply it, because it would not be possible,” said Captain Blood. “We should see to that. It is, my General, for you to say whether the articles are repudiated.”

The Baron sat down. “I will consider the matter,” he said sullenly. “You shall be advised of my resolve.”

Captain Blood rose, his officers rose with him. Captain Blood bowed.

“M. le Baron!” said he.

Then he and his buccaneers removed themselves from the August and irate presence of the General of the King’s Armies by Land and Sea in America.

You conceive that there followed for M. de Cussy an extremely bad quarter of an hour. M. de Cussy, in fact, deserves your sympathy. His self-sufficiency was blown from him by the haughty M. de Rivarol, as down from a thistle by the winds of autumn. The General of the King’s Armies abused him - this man who was Governor of Hispaniola - as if he were a lackey. M. de Cussy defended himself by urging the thing that Captain Blood had so admirably urged already on his behalf - that if the terms he had made with the buccaneers were not confirmed there was no harm done. M. de Rivarol bullied and browbeat him into silence.

Having exhausted abuse, the Baron proceeded to indignities. Since he accounted that M. de Cussy had proved himself unworthy of the post he held, M. de Rivarol took over the responsibilities of that post for as long as he might remain in Hispaniola, and to give effect to this he began by bringing soldiers from his ships, and setting his own guard in M. de Cussy’s castle.

Out of this, trouble followed quickly. Wolverstone coming ashore next morning in the picturesque garb that he affected, his head swathed in a coloured handkerchief, was jeered at by an officer of the newly landed French troops. Not accustomed to derision, Wolverstone replied in kind and with interest. The officer passed to insult, and Wolverstone struck him a blow that felled him, and left him only the half of his poor senses. Within the hour the matter was reported to M. de Rivarol, and before noon, by M. de Rivarol’s orders, Wolverstone was under arrest in the castle.

The Baron had just sat down to dinner with M. de Cussy when the negro who waited on them announced Captain Blood. Peevishly M. de Rivarol bade him be admitted, and there entered now into his presence a spruce and modish gentleman, dressed with care and sombre richness in black and silver, his swarthy, clear-cut face scrupulously shaven, his long black hair in ringlets that fell to a collar of fine point. In his right hand the gentleman carried a broad black hat with a scarlet ostrich-plume, in his left hand an ebony cane. His stockings were of silk, a bunch of ribbons masked his garters, and the black rosettes on his shoes were finely edged with gold.

For a moment M. de Rivarol did not recognize him. For Blood looked younger by ten years than yesterday. But the vivid blue eyes under their level black brows were not to be forgotten, and they proclaimed him for the man announced even before he had spoken. His resurrected pride had demanded that he should put himself on an equality with the baron and advertise that equality by his exterior.

“I come inopportunely,” he courteously excused himself. “My apologies. My business could not wait. It concerns, M. de Cussy, Captain Wolverstone of the Lachesis, whom you have placed under arrest.”

“It was I who placed him under arrest,” said M. de Rivarol.

“Indeed! But I thought that M. de Cussy was Governor of Hispaniola.”

“Whilst I am here, monsieur, I am the supreme authority. It is as well that you should understand it.”

“Perfectly. But it is not possible that you are aware of the mistake that has been made.”

“Mistake, do you say?”

“I say mistake. On the whole, it is polite of me to use that word. Also it is expedient. It will save discussions. Your people have arrested the wrong man, M. de Rivarol. Instead of the French officer, who used the grossest provocation, they have arrested Captain Wolverstone. It is a matter which I beg you to reverse without delay.”

M. de Rivarol’s hawk-face flamed scarlet. His dark eyes bulged.

“Sir, you… you are insolent! But of an insolence that is intolerable!” Normally a man of the utmost self-possession he was so rudely shaken now that he actually stammered.

“M. le Baron, you waste words. This is the New World. It is not merely new; it is novel to one reared amid the superstitions of the Old. That novelty you have not yet had time, perhaps, to realize; therefore I overlook the offensive epithet you have used. But justice is justice in the New World as in the Old, and injustice as intolerable here as there. Now justice demands the enlargement of my officer and the arrest and punishment of yours. That justice I invite you, with submission, to administer.”

“With submission?” snorted the Baron in furious scorn.

“With the utmost submission, monsieur. But at the same time I will remind M. le Baron that my buccaneers number eight hundred; your troops five hundred; and M. de Cussy will inform you of the interesting fact that any one buccaneer is equal in action to at least three soldiers of the line. I am perfectly frank with you, monsieur, to save time and hard words. Either Captain Wolverstone is instantly set at liberty, or we must take measures to set him at liberty ourselves. The consequences may be appalling. But it is as you please, M. le Baron. You are the supreme authority. It is for you to say.”

M. de Rivarol was white to the lips. In all his life he had never been so bearded and defied. But he controlled himself.

“You will do me the favour to wait in the ante-room, M. le Capitaine. I desire a word with M. de Cussy. You shall presently be informed of my decision.”

When the door had closed, the baron loosed his fury upon the head of M. de Cussy.

“So, these are the men you have enlisted in the King’s service, the men who are to serve under me - men who do not serve, but dictate, and this before the enterprise that has brought me from France is even under way! What explanations do you offer me, M. de Cussy? I warn you that I am not pleased with you. I am, in fact, as you may perceive, exceedingly angry.”

The Governor seemed to shed his chubbiness. He drew himself stiffly erect.

“Your rank, monsieur, does not give you the right to rebuke me; nor do the facts. I have enlisted for you the men that you desired me to enlist. It is not my fault if you do not know how to handle them better. As Captain Blood has told you, this is the New World.”

“So, so!” M. de Rivarol smiled malignantly. “Not only do you offer no explanation, but you venture to put me in the wrong. Almost I admire your temerity. But there!” he waved the matter aside. He was supremely sardonic. “It is, you tell me, the New World, and - new worlds, new manners, I suppose. In time I may conform my ideas to this new world, or I may conform this new world to my ideas.” He was menacing on that. “For the moment I must accept what I find. It remains for you, monsieur, who have experience of these savage by-ways, to advise me out of that experience how to act.”

“M. le Baron, it was a folly to have arrested the buccaneer captain. It would be madness to persist. We have not the forces to meet force.”

“In that case, monsieur, perhaps you will tell me what we are to do with regard to the future. Am I to submit at every turn to the dictates of this man Blood? Is the enterprise upon which we are embarked to be conducted as he decrees? Am I, in short, the King’s representative in America, to be at the mercy of these rascals?”

“Oh, by no means. I am enrolling volunteers here in Hispaniola, and I am raising a corps of negroes. I compute that when this is done we shall have a force of a thousand men, the buccaneers apart.”

“But in that case why not dispense with them?”

“Because they will always remain the sharp edge of any weapon that we forge. In the class of warfare that lies before us they are so skilled that what Captain Blood has just said is not an overstatement. A buccaneer is equal to three soldiers of the line. At the same time we shall have a sufficient force to keep them in control. For the rest, monsieur, they have certain notions of honour. They will stand by their articles, and so that we deal justly with them, they will deal justly with us, and give no trouble. I have experience of them, and I pledge you my word for that.”

M. de Rivarol condescended to be mollified. It was necessary that he should save his face, and in a degree the Governor afforded him the means to do so, as well as a certain guarantee for the future in the further force he was raising.

“Very well,” he said. “Be so good as to recall this Captain Blood.”

The Captain came in, assured and very dignified. M. de Rivarol found him detestable; but dissembled it.

“M. le Capitaine, I have taken counsel with M. le Gouverneur. From what he tells me, it is possible that a mistake has been committed. Justice, you may be sure, shall be done. To ensure it, I shall myself preside over a council to be composed of two of my senior officers, yourself and an officer of yours. This council shall hold at once an impartial investigation into the affair, and the offender, the man guilty of having given provocation, shall be punished.”

Captain Blood bowed. It was not his wish to be extreme. “Perfectly, M. le Baron. And now, sir, you have had the night for reflection in this matter of the articles. Am I to understand that you confirm or that you repudiate them?”

M. de Rivarol’s eyes narrowed. His mind was full of what M. de Cussy had said - that these buccaneers must prove the sharp edge of any weapon he might forge. He could not dispense with them. He perceived that he had blundered tactically in attempting to reduce the agreed share. Withdrawal from a position of that kind is ever fraught with