«No need for fear, madame. She is not Spanish.»

«Fear?» She glared at him, blear–eyed from sleeplessness and weeping. She was a handsome woman, golden–headed and built on the generous lines of Hebe. Her full lips writhed into bitterness. «What have I to fear more than the fate you thrust upon me?»

«I, madame? I thrust no fate upon you. You are overtaken by the fate your own actions have invited.»

Fiercely she interrupted him. «Have I invited this? That I should return to my husband?»

Captain Blood sighed in weariness. «Are we to have the argument all over again? Must I remind you that yourself you refused the only alternative, which was to remain at the mercy of those Spanish gallants on that Spanish ship? For the rest, your husband shall be left to suppose that you were carried off against your will.»

«It if had not been for you, you assassin…»

«If it had not been for me, madame, your fate would have been even worse than you tell me that it is going to be.»

«Nothing could be worse! Nothing! This man who has brought me out to these savage lands because, discredited and debt–ridden as he is, there was no longer a place for him at home, is…Oh, but why do I talk to you? Why do I try to explain to one who obstinately refuses to understand, to one who desires only to blame?»

«Madame, I do not desire to blame. I desire that you should blame yourself, for the horror you brought upon Basseterre. If you will accept whatever comes as an expiation, you may find some peace of mind.»

«Peace of mind! Peace of mind!» Her scorn was fulminating.

He became sententious. «Expiation cleanses conscience. And when that has happened calm will return to your spirit.»

«You preach to me! You! A filibuster, a sea–robber! And you preach of things you do not understand. I owe no expiation. I have done no wrong. I was a desperate woman, hard–driven by a man who is a beast, a cruel drunken beast, a broken gamester without honour; not even honest. I took my only chance to save my soul. Was I to know that Don Juan was what you say he is? Do I know it even now?»

«Do you not?» he asked her. «Did you see the ruin and desolation wantonly wrought in Basseterre, the horrors that he loosed his men to perpetrate, and do you still doubt his nature? And can you contemplate that havoc wrought so as to give you to your lover's arms, and still protest that you did no wrong? That, madame, is the offence that calls for expiation; not anything that may lie between yourself and your husband, or yourself and Don Juan.»

Her mind refused admission to a conviction which it dared not harbour. Therefore she ranted on. Blood ceased to listen. He gave his attention to the sail; hauled it a little closer, so that the craft heeled over and headed straight for the bay.

It was an hour later when they brought up at the mole. A longboat was alongside, manned by English sailors from the frigate which in the meantime had come to anchor in the roadstead.

Odd groups of men and women, white and black, idling, cowed, at the waterside, with the horror of yesterday's events still heavy upon them, stared round–eyed at Madame de Coulevain as she was handed from the boat by her stalwart, grim–faced escort, in his crumpled coat of silver–laced grey camlett and black periwig that was rather out of curl.

The little mob moved forward in wonder, slowly at first, then with quickening steps, to crowd about the unsuspected author of their woes with questions of welcome and thanksgiving for this miracle of her return, of her deliverance, as they accounted it.

Blood waited, grim and silent, his eyes upon the sparse town which showed yesterday's ugly wounds as yet unscarred. Houses displayed shattered doors and broken windows, whilst here and there a heap of ashes smouldered where a house had stood. Pieces of broken furniture lay about in the open. From the belfry of the little church standing amid the acacias in the open square came the mournful note of a passing–bell. Within the walled enclosure about it there was an ominous activity, and negroes could be seen at work there with pick and shovel.

Captain Blood's cold blue eyes played swiftly over all this and more. Then, almost roughly, he extricated the lady from that little mob of stricken questioning sympathisers who little guessed to what extent she was the author of their woes. At once conducted and conducting, he made his way up the gently rising ground. They passed a party of British sailors filling water–casks at a fountain which had been contrived by the damming of a brook. They passed the church with its busy graveyard. They passed a company of militia at drill; men in blue coats with red facings who had been hurriedly brought over by Colonel de Coulevain from Les Carmes after the harm was done.

Delayed on the way by others whom they met and who must stop to cry out in wonder at sight of Madame de Coulevain, accompanied by this tall, stern stranger, they came at last by a wide gateway into a luxuriant garden, and by an avenue of palms to a long, low house of stone and timber.

There were no signs of damage here. The Spaniards who had yesterday invaded the place, if, indeed, they had invaded it, had wrought no other mischief than to carry off the Governor's lady. The elderly negro who admitted them broke into shrill cries upon beholding his dishevelled mistress in her crumpled gown of flowered silk. He laughed and wept at once. He uttered scraps of prayer. He capered like a dog. He caught her hand and slobbered kisses on it.

«You appear to be loved, madame,» said Captain Blood when at last they stood alone in the long dining–room.

«Of course that must surprise you,» she sneered, with that twist of her full lips which he had come to know.

The door of a connecting–room was abruptly flung open, and a tall, heavily–built man with prominent features and sallow, deeply–lined cheeks stood at gaze. His militia coat, of blue with red facings, was stiff with tarnished gold lace. His dark bloodshot eyes opened wide at sight of her. He turned pale under his tan.

«Antoinette!» he ejaculated. He came forward unsteadily and took her by the shoulders. «Is it really you? They told me…But where have you been since yesterday?»

«Where they told you I was, no doubt.» There was little in her tone besides weariness. «Fortunately, or unfortunately, this gentleman delivered me, and he has brought me safely back.»

«Fortunately or unfortunately?» he echoed, and scowled. His lip curled. The dislike of her in his eyes was not to be mistaken. He took his hands from her shoulders, and half turned to consider her companion. «This gentleman?» Then his glance darkened further. «A Spaniard?»

Captain Blood met the frown with a smile. «A Dutchman, sir,» he lied. But the rest of his tale was true. «By great good fortune I was aboard that Spanish ship, the Estremadura. I had been picked up by her at sea a few days before. I had access to the great cabin in which the Spanish commander had locked himself with Madame your wife. I interrupted his amorous intentions. In fact, I killed him with my hands.» And he added a brief account of how, thereafter, he had conveyed her from the galleon.

Monsieur de Coulevain swore profoundly to express his wonder; stood silently pondering the thing he had been told; then swore again. Blood accounted him a dull, brutish fellow whom any woman would be justified in leaving. If the Colonel felt any tenderness towards his wife, or thankfulness for her delivery from the dreadful fate to which he must suppose her to have been exposed, he kept the emotions to himself. He showed presently, however, that he could be emotional enough over the memory of yesterday's catastrophe. This Blood accounted reasonable until he came to perceive that the man's real concern was less with the sufferings of the people of Basseterre than with the possible consequences to himself when an account of his stewardship should come to be asked of him by the French Government.