Don Jayme indicated the group by a wave of his hand. «There are your cursed pirates, Don Pedro, hanging together like a brood of carrion birds.»

«These?» quoth Don Pedro haughtily, and pointed with his cane. «Faith, they look their trade, the villains.»

Wolverstone glared more fiercely than ever; but was contemptuously silent. A stubborn rogue, it was plain.

Don Pedro advanced towards them, superb in his black and silver, seeming to symbolize the pride and majesty of Spain. The thick–set Governor, in pale green taffetas, kept pace with him, and presently, when they had come to a halt before the buccaneers, he addressed them.

«You begin to know, you English dogs, what it means to defy the might of Spain. And you'll know it better before all is done. I deny myself the pleasure of hanging you as I intended, so that you may go to Madrid, to feed a bonfire.»

Wolverstone leered at him. «You are noble,» he said, in execrable, but comprehensible Spanish. «Noble with the nobility of Spain. You insult the helpless.»

The Governor raged at him, calling him the unprintably foul names that come so readily to an angry Spaniard's lips. This until Don Pedro checked him with a hand upon his arm.

«Is this waste of breath worth while?» He spoke disdainfully. «It but serves to detain us in this noisome place.»

The buccaneers stared at him in a sort of wonder. Abruptly he turned on his heel.

«Come, Don Jayme.» His tone was peremptory. «Have them out of this. The San Tomas is waiting, and the tide is on the turn.»

The Governor hesitated, flung a last insult at them, then gave an order to the officer, and stalked after his guest, who was already moving away. The officer transferred the order to his men. With the butts of their pikes and many foul words, the soldiers stirred the buccaneers. They rose with clank of gyves and manacles, and went stumbling out into the clean air and the sunshine, herded by the pikemen. Hangdog, foul, and weary, they dragged themselves across the square, where the palms waved in the sea–breeze, and the islanders stood to watch them pass, and so they came to the mole, where a wherry of eight oars awaited them.

The Governor and his guest stood by whilst they were being packed into the sternsheets, whither the pikemen followed them. Then Don Pedro and Don Jayme took their places in the prow with the Negro, who carried the valise. The wherry pushed off and was rowed across the blue water to the stately ship from whose masthead floated the flag of Spain.

They came bumping along her yellow side at the foot of the entrance–ladder, to which a sailor hitched a boathook.

Don Pedro, from the prow of the wherry, called peremptorily for a file of musketeers to stand to order in the waist. A morioned head appeared over the bulwarks to answer him that it was done already. Then, with the pikemen urging them, and moving awkwardly and painfully in their irons, the buccaneer prisoners climbed the ladder, and dropped one by one over the ship's side.

Don Pedro waved his black servant after them with the valise, and finally invited Don Jayme to precede him aboard. Himself, Don Pedro followed close, and when at the ladder's head Don Jayme came to a sudden halt, it was Don Pedro's continuing ascent that thrust him forward, and this so sharply that he almost tumbled headlong into the vessel's waist. There were a dozen ready hands to steady him, and a babble of voices to give him laughing welcome. But the voices were English, and the hands belonged to men whose garments and accoutrements proclaimed them buccaneers. They swarmed in the waist, and already some of them were at work to strike the irons from Wolverstone and his teams.

Gasping, livid, bewildered, Don Jayme de Villamarga swung round to Don Pedro, who followed. That very Spanish gentleman had paused at the head of the ladder, and stood there steadying himself by a ratline, surveying the scene below him. He was calmly smiling.

«You have nothing to apprehend, Don Jayme. I give you my word for that. And my word is good. I am Captain Blood.»

He came down to the deck under the stare of the bulging eyes of the Governor, who understood nothing. Before enlightenment finally came, his dull, bewildered wits were to understand still less.

A tall, slight gentleman, very elegantly arrayed, stepped forward to meet the Captain. This, to the Governor's increasing amazement, was his wife's cousin, Don Rodrigo. Captain Blood greeted him in a friendly manner.

«I have brought your ransom, as you see, Don Rodrigo.» And he waved a hand in the direction of the group of manacled prisoners. «You are free now to depart with Don Jayme. We'll cut short our farewells, for we take up the anchor at once. Hagthorpe, give the order.»

Don Jayme thought that he began to understand. Furiously, he turned upon this cousin of his wife's.

«My God, are you in this? Have you plotted with these enemies of Spain to … ?»

A hand gripped his shoulder, and a boatswain's whistle piped somewhere forward. «We are weighing the anchor,» said Captain Blood. «You were best over the side, believe me. It has been an honour to know you. In future be more respectful to your wife. Go with God, Don Jayme.»

The Governor found himself, as in a nightmare, bustled over the side and down the ladder. Don Rodrigo followed him after taking courteous leave of Captain Blood.

Don Jayme collapsed limply in the sternsheets of the wherry as it put off. But soon he roused himself furiously to demand an explanation whilst at the same time overwhelming his companion with threats.

Don Rodrigo strove to preserve his calm. «You had better listen. I was on that ship, the San Tomas, on my way to San Domingo when Blood captured her. He put the crew ashore on one of the Virgin Islands. But me he retained for ransom because of my rank.»

«And to save your skin and your purse you made this infamous bargain with him?»

«I have said that you had better listen. It was not so at all. He treated me honourably, and we became in some sort friends. He is a man of engaging ways as you may have discovered. In the course of our talks he gleaned from me a good deal of my private life and yours, which in a way, through my cousin Hernanda, is linked with it. A week ago, after the capture of the men who had gone ashore with Wolverstone, he decided to use the knowledge he had gained; that and my papers, of which he had, of course, possessed himself. He told me what he intended to do, and promised me that if by the use of my name and the rest he succeeded in delivering those followers of his, he would require no further ransom from me.»

«And you? You agreed?

«Agreed? Sometimes, indeed often, you are fatuous. My agreement was not asked. I was merely informed. Your own foolishness and the order of Saint James of Compostella did the rest. I suppose he conferred it upon you, and so dazzled you with it that you were prepared to believe anything he told you.»

«You were bringing it to me? It was among your papers?» quoth Don Jayme, who thought he began to understand

There was a grim smile on Don Rodrigo's long, sallow face. «I was taking it to the Governor of Hispaniola, Don Jayme de Guzman, to whom the letter was addressed.»

Don Jayme de Villamarga's mouth fell open. He turned pale. «Not even that, then? The order was not intended for me? It was part of his infernal comedy?»

«You should have examined the letter more attentively.»

«It was damaged by sea–water!» roared the Governor furiously.

«You should have examined your conscience then. It would have told you that you had done nothing to deserve the cross of Saint James.»

Don Jayme was too stunned to resent the gibe. Not until he was home again and in the presence of his wife did he recover himself sufficiently to hector her with the tale of how he had been bubbled. Thus he brought upon himself his worst humiliation.