This council was met to determine what should be done
with the Spanish prisoners. Considering that
Curacao now lay beyond their reach, as they were running
short of water and provisions, and also that Pitt
was hardly yet in case to undertake the navigation
of the vessel, it had been decided that, going east
of Hispaniola, and then sailing along its northern
coast, they should make for Tortuga, that haven of
the buccaneers, in which lawless port they had at
least no danger of recapture to apprehend. It
was now a question whether they should convey the
Spaniards thither with them, or turn them off in a
boat to make the best of their way to the coast of
Hispaniola, which was but ten miles off. This
was the course urged by Blood himself.
“There’s nothing else to be done,”
he insisted. “In Tortuga they would be
flayed alive.”
“Which is less than the swine deserve,”
growled Wolverstone.
“And you’ll remember, Peter,” put
in Hagthorpe, “that boy’s threat to you
this morning. If he escapes, and carries word
of all this to his uncle, the Admiral, the execution
of that threat will become more than possible.”
It says much for Peter Blood that the argument should
have left him unmoved. It is a little thing,
perhaps, but in a narrative in which there is so much
that tells against him, I cannot — since my story
is in the nature of a brief for the defence —
afford to slur a circumstance that is so strongly
in his favour, a circumstance revealing that the cynicism
attributed to him proceeded from his reason and from
a brooding over wrongs rather than from any natural
instincts. “I care nothing for his threats.”
“You should,” said Wolverstone.
“The wise thing’d be to hang him, along
o’ all the rest.”
“It is not human to be wise,” said Blood.
“It is much more human to err, though perhaps
exceptional to err on the side of mercy. We’ll
be exceptional. Oh, faugh! I’ve no
stomach for cold-blooded killing. At daybreak
pack the Spaniards into a boat with a keg of water
and a sack of dumplings, and let them go to the devil.”
That was his last word on the subject, and it prevailed
by virtue of the authority they had vested in him,
and of which he had taken so firm a grip. At
daybreak Don Esteban and his followers were put off
in a boat.
Two days later, the Cinco Llagas sailed into the rock-bound
bay of Cayona, which Nature seemed to have designed
for the stronghold of those who had appropriated it.
TORTUGA
It is time fully to disclose the fact that the survival
of the story of Captain Blood’s exploits is
due entirely to the industry of Jeremy Pitt, the Somersetshire
shipmaster. In addition to his ability as a
navigator, this amiable young man appears to have wielded
an indefatigable pen, and to have been inspired to
indulge its fluency by the affection he very obviously
bore to Peter Blood.
