Chapter XXII: Hostilities

In the great harbour of Port Royal, spacious enough to have given moorings to all the ships of all the navies of the world, the Arabella rode at anchor. Almost she had the air of a prisoner, for a quarter of a mile ahead, to starboard, rose the lofty, massive single round tower of the fort, whilst a couple of cables’-length astern, and to larboard, rode the six men-of-war that composed the Jamaica squadron.

Abeam with the Arabella, across the harbour, were the flat-fronted white buildings of that imposing city that came down to the very water’s edge. Behind these the red roofs rose like terraces, marking the gentle slope upon which the city was built, dominated here by a turret, there by a spire, and behind these again a range of green hills with for ultimate background a sky that was like a dome of polished steel.

On a cane day-bed that had been set for him on the quarter-deck, sheltered from the dazzling, blistering sunshine by an improvised awning of brown sailcloth, lounged Peter Blood, a calf-bound, well-thumbed copy of Horace’s Odes neglected in his hands.

From immediately below him came the swish of mops and the gurgle of water in the scuppers, for it was still early morning, and under the directions of Hayton, the bo’sun, the swabbers were at work in the waist and forecastle. Despite the heat and the stagnant air, one of the toilers found breath to croak a ribald buccaneering ditty:

“For we laid her board and board,

And we put her to the sword,

And we sank her in the deep blue sea.

So It’s heigh-ho, and heave-a-ho!

Who’ll sail for the Main with me?”

Blood fetched a sigh, and the ghost of a smile played over his lean, sun-tanned face. Then the black brows came together above the vivid blue eyes, and thought swiftly closed the door upon his immediate surroundings.

Things had not sped at all well with him in the past fortnight since his acceptance of the King’s commission. There had been trouble with Bishop from the moment of landing. As Blood and Lord Julian had stepped ashore together, they had been met by a man who took no pains to dissemble his chagrin at the turn of events and his determination to change it. He awaited them on the mole, supported by a group of officers.

“You are Lord Julian Wade, I understand,” was his truculent greeting. For Blood at the moment he had nothing beyond a malignant glance.

Lord Julian bowed. “I take it I have the honour to address Colonel Bishop, Deputy-Governor of Jamaica.” It was almost as if his lordship were giving the Colonel a lesson in deportment. The Colonel accepted it, and belatedly bowed, removing his broad hat. Then he plunged on.

“You have granted, I am told, the King’s commission to this man.” His very tone betrayed the bitterness of his rancour. “Your motives were no doubt worthy ... your gratitude to him for delivering you from the Spaniards. But the thing itself is unthinkable, my lord. The commission must be cancelled.”

“I don’t think I understand,” said Lord Julian distantly.

“To be sure you don’t, or you’d never ha’ done it. The fellow’s bubbled you. Why, he’s first a rebel, then an escaped slave, and lastly a bloody pirate. I’ve been hunting him this year past.”

“I assure you, sir, that I was fully informed of all. I do not grant the King’s commission lightly.”

“Don’t you, by God! And what else do you call this? But as His Majesty’s Deputy-Governor of Jamaica, I’ll take leave to correct your mistake in my own way.”

“Ah! And what way may that be?”

“There’s a gallows waiting for this rascal in Port Royal.”

Blood would have intervened at that, but Lord Julian forestalled him.

“I see, sir, that you do not yet quite apprehend the circumstances. If it is a mistake to grant Captain Blood a commission, the mistake is not mine. I am acting upon the instructions of my Lord Sunderland; and with a full knowledge of all the facts, his lordship expressly designated Captain Blood for this commission if Captain Blood could be persuaded to accept it.”

Colonel Bishop’s mouth fell open in surprise and dismay.

“Lord Sunderland designated him?” he asked, amazed.

“Expressly.”

His lordship waited a moment for a reply. None coming from the speechless Deputy-Governor, he asked a question: “Would you still venture to describe the matter as a mistake, sir? And dare you take the risk of correcting it?”

“I ... I had not dreamed...”

“I understand, sir. Let me present Captain Blood.”

Perforce Bishop must put on the best face he could command. But that it was no more than a mask for his fury and his venom was plain to all.

From that unpromising beginning matters had not improved; rather had they grown worse.

Blood’s thoughts were upon this and other things as he lounged there on the day-bed. He had been a fortnight in Port Royal, his ship virtually a unit now in the Jamaica squadron. And when the news of it reached Tortuga and the buccaneers who awaited his return, the name of Captain Blood, which had stood so high among the Brethren of the Coast, would become a byword, a thing of execration, and before all was done his life might pay forfeit for what would be accounted a treacherous defection. And for what had he placed himself in this position? For the sake of a girl who avoided him so persistently and intentionally that he must assume that she still regarded him with aversion. He had scarcely been vouchsafed a glimpse of her in all this fortnight, although with that in view for his main object he had daily haunted her uncle’s residence, and daily braved the unmasked hostility and baffled rancour in which Colonel Bishop held him. Nor was that the worst of it. He was allowed plainly to perceive that it was the graceful, elegant young trifler from St. James’s, Lord Julian Wade, to whom her every moment was devoted. And what chance had he, a desperate adventurer with a record of outlawry, against such a rival as that, a man of parts, moreover, as he was bound to admit?

You conceive the bitterness of his soul. He beheld himself to be as the dog in the fable that had dropped the substance to snatch at a delusive shadow.

He sought comfort in a line on the open page before him:

“levius fit patientia quicquid corrigere est nefas.”

Sought it, but hardly found it.

A boat that had approached unnoticed from the shore came scraping and bumping against the great red hull of the Arabella, and a raucous voice sent up a hailing shout. From the ship’s belfry two silvery notes rang clear and sharp, and a moment or two later the bo’sun’s whistle shrilled a long wail.

The sounds disturbed Captain Blood from his disgruntled musings. He rose, tall, active, and arrestingly elegant in a scarlet, gold-laced coat that advertised his new position, and slipping the slender volume into his pocket, advanced to the carved rail of the quarter-deck, just as Jeremy Pitt was setting foot upon the companion.

“A note for you from the Deputy-Governor,” said the master shortly, as he proffered a folded sheet.

Blood broke the seal, and read. Pitt, loosely clad in shirt and breeches, leaned against the rail the while and watched him, unmistakable concern imprinted on his fair, frank countenance.

Blood uttered a short laugh, and curled his lip. “It is a very peremptory summons,” he said, and passed the note to his friend.

The young master’s grey eyes skimmed it. Thoughtfully he stroked his golden beard.

“You’ll not go?” he said, between question and assertion.

“Why not? Haven’t I been a daily visitor at the fort... ?”

“But it’ll be about the Old Wolf that he wants to see you. It gives him a grievance at last. You know, Peter, that it is Lord Julian alone has stood between Bishop and his hate of you. If now he can show that...”

“What if he can?” Blood interrupted carelessly. “Shall I be in greater danger ashore than aboard, now that we’ve but fifty men left, and they lukewarm rogues who would as soon serve the King as me? Jeremy, dear lad, the Arabella’s a prisoner here, bedad, ‘twixt the fort there and the fleet yonder. Don’t be forgetting that.”