“And for what, if you please, have you said twenty thousand pieces of eight?”

In execrable French, but in a voice that was crisp and pleasant, seeming to echo some of the mockery that had invested Levasseur’s, that question floated over their heads.

Startled, Levasseur and his officers looked up and round.  On the crest of the dunes behind them, in sharp silhouette against the deep cobalt of the sky, they beheld a tall, lean figure scrupulously dressed in black with silver lace, a crimson ostrich plume curled about the broad brim of his hat affording the only touch of colour.  Under that hat was the tawny face of Captain Blood.

Levasseur gathered himself up with an oath of amazement.  He had conceived Captain Blood by now well below the horizon, on his way to Tortuga, assuming him to have been so fortunate as to have weathered last night’s storm.

Launching himself upon the yielding sand, into which he sank to the level of the calves of his fine boots of Spanish leather, Captain Blood came sliding erect to the beach.  He was followed by Wolverstone, and a dozen others.  As he came to a standstill, he doffed his hat, with a flourish, to the lady.  Then he turned to Levasseur.

“Good-morning, my Captain,” said he, and proceeded to explain his presence.  “It was last night’s hurricane compelled our return.  We had no choice but to ride before it with stripped poles, and it drove us back the way we had gone.  Moreover — as the devil would have it! — the Santiago sprang her mainmast; and so I was glad to put into a cove on the west of the island a couple of miles away, and we’ve walked across to stretch our legs, and to give you good-day.  But who are these?” And he designated the man and the woman.

Cahusac shrugged his shoulders, and tossed his long arms to heaven.

“Voila!” said he, pregnantly, to the firmament.

Levasseur gnawed his lip, and changed colour.  But he controlled himself to answer civilly: 

“As you see, two prisoners.”

“Ah!  Washed ashore in last night’s gale, eh?”

“Not so.”  Levasseur contained himself with difficulty before that irony.  “They were in the Dutch brig.”

“I don’t remember that you mentioned them before.”

“I did not.  They are prisoners of my own — a personal matter.  They are French.”

“French!” Captain Blood’s light eyes stabbed at Levasseur, then at the prisoners.

M. d’Ogeron stood tense and braced as before, but the grey horror had left his face.  Hope had leapt within him at this interruption, obviously as little expected by his tormentor as by himself.  His sister, moved by a similar intuition, was leaning forward with parted lips and gaping eyes.

Captain Blood fingered his lip, and frowned thoughtfully upon Levasseur.

“Yesterday you surprised me by making war upon the friendly Dutch.  But now it seems that not even your own countrymen are safe from you.”