“It is the end,” he told Captain Blood.  “This time we are checkmated.”

“I’ll take the liberty of reminding you that you said the same before,” Captain Blood answered him as patiently as he could.  “Yet you’ve seen what you’ve seen, and you’ll not deny that in ships and guns we are returning stronger than we went.  Look at our present fleet, man.”

“I am looking at it,” said Cahusac.

“Pish!  Ye’re a white-livered cur when all is said.”

“You call me a coward?”

“I’ll take that liberty.”

The Breton glared at him, breathing hard.  But he had no mind to ask satisfaction for the insult.  He knew too well the kind of satisfaction that Captain Blood was likely to afford him.  He remembered the fate of Levasseur.  So he confined himself to words.

“It is too much!  You go too far!” he complained bitterly.

“Look you, Cahusac:  it’s sick and tired I am of your perpetual whining and complaining when things are not as smooth as a convent dining-table.  If ye wanted things smooth and easy, ye shouldn’t have taken to the sea, and ye should never ha’ sailed with me, for with me things are never smooth and easy.  And that, I think, is all I have to say to you this morning.”

Cahusac flung away cursing, and went to take the feeling of his men.

Captain Blood went off to give his surgeon’s skill to the wounded, among whom he remained engaged until late afternoon.  Then, at last, he went ashore, his mind made up, and returned to the house of the Governor, to indite a truculent but very scholarly letter in purest Castilian to Don Miguel.

“I have shown your excellency this morning of what I am capable,” he wrote.  “Although outnumbered by more than two to one in men, in ships, and in guns, I have sunk or captured the vessels of the great fleet with which you were to come to Maracaybo to destroy us.  So that you are no longer in case to carry out your boast, even when your reenforcements on the Santo Nino, reach you from La Guayra.  From what has occurred, you may judge of what must occur.  I should not trouble your excellency with this letter but that I am a humane man, abhorring bloodshed.  Therefore before proceeding to deal with your fort, which you may deem invincible, as I have dealt already with your fleet, which you deemed invincible, I make you, purely out of humanitarian considerations, this last offer of terms.  I will spare this city of Maracaybo and forthwith evacuate it, leaving behind me the forty prisoners I have taken, in consideration of your paying me the sum of fifty thousand pieces of eight and one hundred head of cattle as a ransom, thereafter granting me unmolested passage of the bar.  My prisoners, most of whom are persons of consideration, I will retain as hostages until after my departure, sending them back in the canoes which we shall take with us for that purpose.  If your excellency should be so ill-advised as to refuse these terms, and thereby impose upon me the necessity of reducing your fort at the cost of some lives, I warn you that you may expect no quarter from us, and that I shall begin by leaving a heap of ashes where this pleasant city of Maracaybo now stands.”