Their sloop had encountered and had been sunk three
days ago by the Santo Nino, and Cahusac had narrowly
escaped hanging merely that for some time he might
be a mock among the Brethren of the Coast.
For many a month thereafter he was to hear in Tortuga
the jeering taunt:
“Where do you spend the gold that you brought
back from Maracaybo?”
THE MILAGROSA
The affair at Maracaybo is to be considered as Captain
Blood’s buccaneering masterpiece. Although
there is scarcely one of the many actions that he
fought — recorded in such particular detail by
Jeremy Pitt — which does not afford some instance
of his genius for naval tactics, yet in none is this
more shiningly displayed than in those two engagements
by which he won out of the trap which Don Miguel de
Espinosa had sprung upon him.
The fame which he had enjoyed before this, great as
it already was, is dwarfed into insignificance by
the fame that followed. It was a fame such as
no buccaneer — not even Morgan — has ever
boasted, before or since.
In Tortuga, during the months he spent there refitting
the three ships he had captured from the fleet that
had gone out to destroy him, he found himself almost
an object of worship in the eyes of the wild Brethren
of the Coast, all of whom now clamoured for the honour
of serving under him. It placed him in the rare
position of being able to pick and choose the crews
for his augmented fleet, and he chose fastidiously.
When next he sailed away it was with a fleet of five
fine ships in which went something over a thousand
men. Thus you behold him not merely famous, but
really formidable. The three captured Spanish
vessels he had renamed with a certain scholarly humour
the Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, a grimly jocular
manner of conveying to the world that he made them
the arbiters of the fate of any Spaniards he should
henceforth encounter upon the seas.
In Europe the news of this fleet, following upon the
news of the Spanish Admiral’s defeat at Maracaybo,
produced something of a sensation. Spain and
England were variously and unpleasantly exercised,
and if you care to turn up the diplomatic correspondence
exchanged on the subject, you will find that it is
considerable and not always amiable.
And meanwhile in the Caribbean, the Spanish Admiral
Don Miguel de Espinosa might be said — to use
a term not yet invented in his day — to have
run amok. The disgrace into which he had fallen
as a result of the disasters suffered at the hands
of Captain Blood had driven the Admiral all but mad.
It is impossible, if we impose our minds impartially,
to withhold a certain sympathy from Don Miguel.
Hate was now this unfortunate man’s daily bread,
and the hope of vengeance an obsession to his mind.
As a madman he went raging up and down the Caribbean
seeking his enemy, and in the meantime, as an hors
d’oeuvre to his vindictive appetite, he fell
upon any ship of England or of France that loomed above
his horizon.
