«Faith, Doctor,» said he, «ye were best to get back to your cupping and bleeding, and leave ships to men as can handle them.»

There was a lightning flash from those blue eyes, as vivid as it was transient. But the swarthy countenance never lost its faint air of diffidence. Meanwhile Easterling had swung to the Governor's representative, who sat on his immediate right.

«What d'ye think of that, Mossoo Joinville?»

The fair, flabby young Frenchman smiled amiably upon Blood's diffidence. «Would it not be wise and proper, sir, to hear what terms Captain Easterling now proposes?»

«I'll hear them. But …»

«Leave the buts till after, Doctor,» Easterling cut in. «The terms we'll grant are the terms I told ye. Your men share equally with mine.»

«But that means no more than a tenth for the Cinco Llagas.» And Blood, too, now appealed to Monsieur Joinville. «Do you, sir, account that fair? I have explained to Captain Easterling that for what we lack in men we more than make up in weight of metal, and our guns are handled by a gunner such as I dare swear has no compeer in the Caribbean. A fellow named Ogle — Ned Ogle. A remarkable gunner is Ned Ogle. The very devil of a gunner, as you'ld believe if you'ld seen him pick those Spanish boats off the water in Bridgetown Harbour.»

He would have continued upon the subject of Ned Ogle had not Easterling interrupted him. «Hell, man! What's a gunner more or less.»

«Oh, an ordinary gunner, maybe. But this is no ordinary gunner. An eye he has. Gunners like Ogle are like poets; they are born, so they are. He'll put you a shot between wind and water, will Ogle, as neatly as you might pick your teeth.»

Easterling banged the table. «What's all this to the point?»

«It may be something. And meanwhile it shows you the valuable ally ye're acquiring.» And he was off again on the subject of his gunner. «He was trained in the King's Navy, was Ned Ogle, and a bad day for the King's Navy it was when Ogle took to politics and followed the Protestant Champion to Sedgemoor.»

«Leave that,» growled one of the officers of the Bonaventure, a ruffian who answered to the name of Chard. «Leave it, I say, or we'll waste the day in talk.»

Easterling confirmed this with a coarse oath. Captain Blood observed that they did not mean to spare offensiveness, and his speculations on their aims starting from this took a fresh turn.

Joinville intervened. «Could you not compromise with Captain Blood? After all, there is some reason on his side. He might reasonably claim to put a hundred men aboard his ship, and in that case he would naturally take a heavier share.»

«In that case he might be worth it,» was the truculent answer.

«I am worth it as it is,» Blood insisted.

«Ah, bah!» he was answered, with a flick of finger and thumb under his very nose.

He began to suspect that Easterling sought to entice him into an act of rashness, in reply to which he and his followers would probably be butchered where they sat, and Monsieur Joinville would afterwards be constrained to bear witness to the Governor that the provocation had proceeded from the guests. He perceived at last the probable reason for the Frenchman's presence.

But at the moment Joinville was remonstrating. «Come, come, Captain Easterling! Thus you will never reach agreement. Captain Blood's ship is of advantage to you, and we have to pay for what is advantageous. Could you not offer him an eighth or even a seventh share?»

Easterling silenced the growl of disagreement from Chard, and became almost suave. «What would Captain Blood say to that?»

Captain Blood considered for a long moment. Then he shrugged. «I say what you know I must say; that I can say nothing until I have taken the wishes of my followers. We'll resume the discussion when I have done so — another day.»

«Oh, s'death!» roared Easterling. «Do you play with us? Haven't you brought your officers with you; and ain't they empowered to speak for your men same as mine? Whatever we settles here, my men abides by. That's the custom of the Brethren of the Coast. And I expect the same from you. And I've the right to expect it, as you can tell him, Mossoo Joinville.»

The Frenchman nodded gloomily, and Easterling roared on.

«We are not children, by God! And we're not here to play, but to agree terms. And, by God, we'll agree them before you leave.»

«Or not, as the case maybe,» said Blood quietly. It was to be remarked that he had lost his diffidence by now.

«Or not? What the devil do you mean with your 'or not'?» Easterling came to his feet in a vehemence that Peter Blood believed assumed, as the proper note at this stage of the comedy he was playing.

«I mean or not, quite simply.» He accounted that the time had come to compel the buccaneers to show their hand. «If we fail to agree terms, why, that's the end of the matter.»

«Oho! The end of the matter, eh? Stab me, but it may prove the beginning of it.»

Blood smiled up into his face, and cool as ice he commented: «That's what I was supposing. But the beginning of what, if you please, Captain Easterling?»

«Indeed, indeed, Captain!» cried Joinville. «What can you mean?»

«Mean?» Captain Easterling glared at the Frenchman. He appeared to be extremely angry. «Mean?» he repeated. «Look you, Mossoo, this fellow here, this Blood, this doctor, this escaped convict, made believe that he would enter into articles with us so as to get from me the secret of Morgan's treasure. Now that he's got it, he makes difficulties about the articles. He no longer wants to join us, it seems. He proposes to withdraw. It'll be plain to you why he proposes to withdraw, Mossoo Joinville; just as it'll be plain to you why I can't permit it.»

«Why, here's paltry invention!» sneered Blood. «What do I know of his secret beyond his tale of a treasure buried somewhere.»

«Not somewhere. You know where. For I've been fool enough to tell you.»

Blood actually laughed, and by his laughter scared his companions, to whom the danger of their situation was now clear enough.

«Somewhere on the Isthmus of Darien. There's precision, on my soul! With that information, I can go straight to the spot, and set my hand on it. As for the rest, Monsieur Joinville, I invite you to observe it's not myself is making difficulties about the articles. On the one–fifth share which I asked from the outset, I might have been prepared to join Captain Easterling. But now that I'm confirmed in all that I suspected of him and more, why, I wouldn't join him for a half–share in this treasure, supposing it to exist at all, which I do not.»

That brought every man of the Bonaventure to his feet as if it had been a signal, and they were clamorous too, until Easterling waved them into silence. Upon that silence cut the tenor voice of Monsieur Joinville.

«You are a singularly rash man, Captain Blood.»

«Maybe, maybe,» said Blood, light and airily. «Time will show. The last word's not yet been said.»

«Then here's to say it,» quoth Easterling, quietly sinister on a sudden. «I was about to warn you that ye'll not be allowed to leave this ship with the information ye possess until the articles is signed. But since ye so clearly show your intentions, why, things have gone beyond warnings.»

From his seat at the table, which he retained, Captain Blood looked up at the sinister bulk of the Captain of the Bonaventure, and the three men from the Cinco Llagas observed with mingled amazement and dismay that he was smiling. At first so unusually diffident and timid; now so deliberately and recklessly provoking. He was beyond understanding. It was Hagthorpe who spoke for them.

«What do you mean, Captain? What do you intend by us?»

«Why, to clap you into irons, and stow you under hatches, where you can do no harm.»

«My God, sir …» Hagthorpe was beginning, when Captain Blood's crisp, pleasant voice cut across his speech.