“Could I be guilty of that?” protested
the Captain. “I realize that even a pirate
has his honour.” And forthwith he propounded
his offer. “If you will look from those
windows, Don Diego, you will see what appears to be
a cloud on the horizon. That is the island of
Barbados well astern. All day we have been sailing
east before the wind with but one intent — to
set as great a distance between Barbados and ourselves
as possible. But now, almost out of sight of
land, we are in a difficulty. The only man among
us schooled in the art of navigation is fevered, delirious,
in fact, as a result of certain ill-treatment he received
ashore before we carried him away with us. I
can handle a ship in action, and there are one or
two men aboard who can assist me; but of the higher
mysteries of seamanship and of the art of finding
a way over the trackless wastes of ocean, we know
nothing. To hug the land, and go blundering about
what you so aptly call this pestilent archipelago,
is for us to court disaster, as you can perhaps conceive.
And so it comes to this: We desire to make
for the Dutch settlement of Curacao as straightly as
possible. Will you pledge me your honour, if
I release you upon parole, that you will navigate
us thither? If so, we will release you and your
surviving men upon arrival there.”
Don Diego bowed his head upon his breast, and strode
away in thought to the stern windows. There
he stood looking out upon the sunlit sea and the dead
water in the great ship’s wake — his ship,
which these English dogs had wrested from him; his
ship, which he was asked to bring safely into a port
where she would be completely lost to him and refitted
perhaps to make war upon his kin. That was in
one scale; in the other were the lives of sixteen
men. Fourteen of them mattered little to him,
but the remaining two were his own and his son’s.
He turned at length, and his back being to the light,
the Captain could not see how pale his face had grown.
“I accept,” he said.
CHAPTER XI
FILIAL PIETY
By virtue of the pledge he had given, Don Diego de
Espinosa enjoyed the freedom of the ship that had
been his, and the navigation which he had undertaken
was left entirely in his hands. And because those
who manned her were new to the seas of the Spanish
Main, and because even the things that had happened
in Bridgetown were not enough to teach them to regard
every Spaniard as a treacherous, cruel dog to be slain
at sight, they used him with the civility which his
own suave urbanity invited. He took his meals
in the great cabin with Blood and the three officers
elected to support him: Hagthorpe, Wolverstone,
and Dyke.
They found Don Diego an agreeable, even an amusing
companion, and their friendly feeling towards him
was fostered by his fortitude and brave equanimity
in this adversity.
