Rafael Sabatini: The Fortunes of Captain Blood

Wolverstone, the one–eyed giant who had shared Blood's escape from Barbados and had since been one of his closest associates, leaned beside him on the bulwarks. 'Ye'll not be trusting overmuch, I hope, to the word of that flabby, blue–faced Governor?'

'It's hateful, so it is, to be by nature suspicious, Ned. Hasn't he pledged himself, and would ye do him the wrong to suspect his bona fides? I cry shame on you, Ned; but all the same we'll be removing temptation from him, so we will, by fortifying ourselves on the island here.'

They set about it at once, with the swift, expert activity of their kind. Gangways were constructed, connecting the ship with the island, and on that strip of sand and coral they landed the twenty–four guns of the San Felipe, and so emplaced them that they commanded the harbour. They erected a tent of sail–cloth, felling palms to supply the poles, set up a forge, and, having unstepped the damaged mast, hauled it ashore so that they might repair it there. Meanwhile the carpenters aboard went about making good the damage to the upper works, whilst parties of buccaneers in the three boats supplied to them by the orders of Don Ilario went to procure wood and water and the necessary stores, for all of which Captain Blood scrupulously paid.

For two days they laboured without disturbance or distraction. When on the morning of the third day the alarm came, it was not from the harbour or the town before them, but from the open sea at their backs.

Captain Blood was fetched ashore at sunrise, so that from the summit of the ridge he might survey the approaching peril. With him went Wolverstone and Chaffinch, Hagthorpe, the West Country gentleman who shared their fortunes, and Ogle, who once had been a gunner in the King's Navy.

Less than a mile away they beheld a squadron of five tall ships approaching in a bravery of ensigns and pennants, all canvas spread to the light but quickening morning airs. Even as they gazed, a white cloud of smoke blossomed like a cauliflower on the flank of the leading galleon, and the boom of a saluting gun came to arouse a city that as yet was barely stirring.

'A lovely sight,' said Chaffinch.

'For a poet or a shipmaster,' said Blood. 'But I'm neither of those this morning. I'm thinking this will be King Philip's Admiral of the Ocean–Sea, the Marquis of Riconete.'

'And he's pledged no word not to molest us,' was Wolverstone's grim and unnecessary reminder.

'But I'll see to it that he does before ever we let him through the Dragon's Jaw.' Blood turned on his heel, and, making a trumpet of his hands, sounded his orders sharp and clearly to some two or three score buccaneers who stood also at gaze, some way behind them, by the guns.

Instantly those hands were seething to obey, and for the next five minutes all was a bustle of heaving and hauling to drag the San Felipe's two stern chasers to the summit of the ridge. They were demi–cannon, with a range of fully a mile and a half, and they were no sooner in position than Ogle was laying one of them. At a word from Blood he touched off the gun, and sent a thirty–pound shot athwart the bows of the advancing Admiral, three–quarters of a mile away.

There is no signal to lie hove to that will command a more prompt compliance. Whatever the Marquis of Riconete's astonishment at this thunderbolt from a clear sky, it brought him up with a round turn. The helm was put over hard, and the Admiral swung to larboard with idly flapping sails. Faintly over the sunlit waters came the sound of a trumpet, and the four ships that followed executed the same manoeuvre. Then from the Admiral a boat was lowered, and came speeding towards the reef to investigate this portent.

Peter Blood, with Chaffinch and a half–score men, was at the water's edge when the boat grounded. Wolverstone and Hagthorpe had taken station on the other side of the island, so as to watch the harbour and the mole, which was now all agog.

An elegant young officer stepped ashore to request on the Admiral's behalf an explanation of the sinister greeting he had received. It was supplied.

'I am here refitting my ship by permission of Don Ilario de Saavedra, in return for some small service I had the honour to do him when he was lately shipwrecked. Before I can suffer the Admiral of the Ocean–Sea to enter this harbour I must possess his confirmation of Don Ilario's sanction and his pledge that he will leave me in peace to complete my repairs.'

The young officer stiffened with indignation. 'These are extraordinary words, sir. Who are you?'

'My name is Blood. Captain Blood, at your service.'

'Captain … Captain Blood!' The young man's eyes were round. 'You are Captain Blood?' Suddenly he laughed. 'You have the effrontery to suppose…'

He was interrupted. 'I do not like "effrontery". And as for what I suppose, be good enough to come with me. It will save argument.' He led the way to the summit of the ridge, the Spaniard sullenly following. There he paused. 'You were about to tell me, of course, that I had better be making my soul, because the guns of your squadron will blow me off this island. Be pleased to observe.'

He pointed with his long ebony cane to the activity below, where a motley buccaneer host was swarming about the landed cannon. Six of the guns were being hauled into a new position so as completely to command at point–blank range the narrow channel of the Dragon's Jaw. On the seaward side, whence it might be assailed, this battery was fully protected by the ridge.

'You will understand the purpose of these measures,' said Captain Blood. 'And you may have heard that my gunnery is of exceptional excellence. Even if it were not, I might without boasting assert — and you, I am sure, are of intelligence to perceive — that the first ship to thrust her bowsprit across that line will be sunk before she can bring a gun to bear.' He leaned upon his tall cane, the embodiment of suavity. 'Inform your Admiral, with my service, of what you have seen, and assure him from me that he may enter the harbour of San Domingo the moment he has given me the pledge I ask; but not a moment sooner.' He waved a hand in dismissal. 'God be with you, sir. Chaffinch, escort the gentleman to his boat.'

In his anger the Spaniard failed to do justice to so courteous an occasion. He muttered some Spanish mixture of theology and bawdiness, and flung away in a pet, without farewells. Back to the Admiral he was rowed. But either he did not report accurately or else the Admiral was of those who will not be convinced. For an hour later the ridge was being ploughed by round–shot, and the morning air shaken by the thunder of the squadron's guns. It distressed the gulls and set them circling and screaming overhead. But it distressed the buccaneers not at all, sheltered behind the natural bastion of the ridge from that storm of iron.

During a slackening of the fire, Ogle wriggled snakewise up to the demi–cannons which had been so emplaced that they thrust their muzzles and no more above the ridge. He laid one of them with slow care. The Spaniards, formed in line ahead for the purposes of their bombardment, three–quarters of a mile away, offered a target that could hardly be missed. Ogle touched off the unsuspected gun, and a thirty–pound shot crashed amidships into the bulwarks of the middle galleon. It went to warn the Marquis that he was not to be allowed to practise his gunnery with impunity.

There was a blare of trumpets and a hasty going about of the entire squadron to beat up against the freshening wind. To speed them, Ogle fired the second gun, and although lethally the shot was harmless, morally it could scarcely fail of its alarming purpose. Then he whistled up his gun–crew to re–load at leisure in that moment of the enemy's fleeing panic.

All day the Spaniards remained hove to a mile and a half away, where they accounted themselves out of range. Blood took advantage of this to order six more guns to be hauled to the ridge, and so as to form a breastwork half the palms on the island were felled. Whilst the main body of the buccaneers, clothed only in loose leather breeches, made short work of this, the remainder under the orders of the carpenter calmly pursued the labours of refitting. The fire glowed in the forge, and the anvils pealed bell–like under the hammers.