The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael SabatiniЧитать онлайн книгу.
all would yet be well, at the very moment when Don Miguel was stepping aboard. Lord Julian himself was none so steady, and his face was undoubtedly pale. Not that he was by any means a coward. But this cooped-up fighting on an unknown element in a thing of wood that might at any moment founder under his feet into the depths of ocean was disturbing to one who could be brave enough ashore. Fortunately Miss Bishop did not appear to be in desperate need of the poor comfort he was in case to offer. Certainly she, too, was pale, and her hazel eyes may have looked a little larger than usual. But she had herself well in hand. Half sitting, half leaning on the Captain’s table, she preserved her courage sufficiently to seek to calm the octoroon waiting-woman who was grovelling at her feet in a state of terror.
And then the cabin-door flew open, and Don Miguel himself, tall, sunburned, and aquiline of face, strode in. Lord Julian span round, to face him, and clapped a hand to his sword.
The Spaniard was brisk and to the point.
“Don’t be a fool,” he said in his own tongue, “or you’ll come by a fool’s end. Your ship is sinking.”
There were three or four men in morions behind Don Miguel, and Lord Julian realized the position. He released his hilt, and a couple of feet or so of steel slid softly back into the scabbard. But Don Miguel smiled, with a flash of white teeth behind his grizzled beard, and held out his hand.
“If you please,” he said.
Lord Julian hesitated. His eyes strayed to Miss Bishop’s. “I think you had better,” said that composed young lady, whereupon with a shrug his lordship made the required surrender.
“Come you—all of you—aboard my ship,” Don Miguel invited them, and strode out.
They went, of course. For one thing the Spaniard had force to compel them; for another a ship which he announced to be sinking offered them little inducement to remain. They stayed no longer than was necessary to enable Miss Bishop to collect some spare articles of dress and my lord to snatch up his valise.
As for the survivors in that ghastly shambles that had been the Royal Mary, they were abandoned by the Spaniards to their own resources. Let them take to the boats, and if those did not suffice them, let them swim or drown. If Lord Julian and Miss Bishop were retained, it was because Don Miguel perceived their obvious value. He received them in his cabin with great urbanity. Urbanely he desired to have the honour of being acquainted with their names.
Lord Julian, sick with horror of the spectacle he had just witnessed, commanded himself with difficulty to supply them. Then haughtily he demanded to know in his turn the name of their aggressor. He was in an exceedingly ill temper. He realized that if he had done nothing positively discreditable in the unusual and difficult position into which Fate had thrust him, at least he had done nothing creditable. This might have mattered less but that the spectator of his indifferent performance was a lady. He was determined if possible to do better now.
“I am Don Miguel de Espinosa,” he was answered. “Admiral of the Navies of the Catholic King.”
Lord Julian gasped. If Spain made such a hubbub about the depredations of a runagate adventurer like Captain Blood, what could not England answer now?
“Will you tell me, then, why you behave like a damned pirate?” he asked. And added: “I hope you realize what will be the consequences, and the strict account to which you shall be brought for this day’s work, for the blood you have murderously shed, and for your violence to this lady and to myself.”
“I offer you no violence,” said the Admiral, smiling, as only the man who holds the trumps can smile. “On the contrary, I have saved your lives....”
“Saved our lives!” Lord Julian was momentarily speechless before such callous impudence. “And what of the lives you have destroyed in wanton butchery? By God, man, they shall cost you dear.”
Don Miguel’s smile persisted. “It is possible. All things are possible. Meantime it is your own lives that will cost you dear. Colonel Bishop is a rich man; and you, milord, are no doubt also rich. I will consider and fix your ransom.”
“So that you’re just the damned murderous pirate I was supposing you,” stormed his lordship. “And you have the impudence to call yourself the Admiral of the Navies of the Catholic King? We shall see what your Catholic King will have to say to it.”
The Admiral ceased to smile. He revealed something of the rage that had eaten into his brain. “You do not understand,” he said. “It is that I treat you English heretic dogs just as you English heretic dogs have treated Spaniards upon the seas—you robbers and thieves out of hell! I have the honesty to do it in my own name—but you, you perfidious beasts, you send your Captain Bloods, your Hagthorpes, and your Morgans against us and disclaim responsibility for what they do. Like Pilate, you wash your hands.” He laughed savagely. “Let Spain play the part of Pilate. Let her disclaim responsibility for me, when your ambassador at the Escurial shall go whining to the Supreme Council of this act of piracy by Don Miguel de Espinosa.”
“Captain Blood and the rest are not admirals of England!” cried Lord Julian.
“Are they not? How do I know? How does Spain know? Are you not liars all, you English heretics?”
“Sir!” Lord Julian’s voice was harsh as a rasp, his eyes flashed. Instinctively he swung a hand to the place where his sword habitually hung. Then he shrugged and sneered: “Of course,” said he, “it sorts with all I have heard of Spanish honour and all that I have seen of yours that you should insult a man who is unarmed and your prisoner.”
The Admiral’s face flamed scarlet. He half raised his hand to strike. And then, restrained, perhaps, by the very words that had cloaked the retorting insult, he turned on his heel abruptly and went out without answering.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE MEETING
As the door slammed after the departing Admiral, Lord Julian turned to Arabella, and actually smiled. He felt that he was doing better, and gathered from it an almost childish satisfaction—childish in all the circumstances. “Decidedly I think I had the last word there,” he said, with a toss of his golden ringlets.
Miss Bishop, seated at the cabin-table, looked at him steadily, without returning his smile. “Does it matter, then, so much, having the last word? I am thinking of those poor fellows on the Royal Mary. Many of them have had their last word, indeed. And for what? A fine ship sunk, a score of lives lost, thrice that number now in jeopardy, and all for what?”
“You are overwrought, ma’am. I....”
“Overwrought!” She uttered a single sharp note of laughter. “I assure you I am calm. I am asking you a question, Lord Julian. Why has this Spaniard done all this? To what purpose?”
“You heard him.” Lord Julian shrugged angrily. “Blood-lust,” he explained shortly.
“Blood-lust?” she asked. She was amazed. “Does such a thing exist, then? It is insane, monstrous.”
“Fiendish,” his lordship agreed. “Devil’s work.”
“I don’t understand. At Bridgetown three years ago there was a Spanish raid, and things were done that should have been impossible to men, horrible, revolting things which strain belief, which seem, when I think of them now, like the illusions of some evil dream. Are men just beasts?”
“Men?” said Lord Julian, staring. “Say Spaniards, and I’ll agree.” He was an Englishman speaking of hereditary foes. And yet there was a measure of truth in what he said. “This is the Spanish way in the New World. Faith, almost it justifies such men as Blood of what they do.”
She shivered, as if cold, and setting her elbows on the table, she took her chin in her hands, and sat staring before her.
Observing