"We knowed that was what would happen," chuckled the bo'sun, who still stood at the open door, his fierce face lit up with a huge grin of approval. "Go on, young sir. Tell us the tale."
And, scarce heeding him, the youth, who had recovered his breath, went on:
"They obeyed him--they fled. Into the water, up the rocks, off inland they went. They never cast a thought to us, to Padre Jaime and myself, the only two passengers in the ship. Not they--they cared no jot whether we were blown up, or shot, or sunk, no more than they thought of their ingots in the hold. Their wretched lives were all in all to them now."
"Therefore they fled and left you here!"
"They fled and left us here, setting fire first to the ship, and caring nothing if we were burnt in it or not. Though that could scarce have happened, I think, since it would have been easy enough for us to plunge into the water and get ashore. Also the reverend father above bade me take heart--though I needed no such counsel, having never lost mine--averred that your side had won, that the next thing would be the arrival of your boats to secure the plunder--which has fallen out as he said--and that then both he and I would be safe. Which also has come to pass," he concluded.
"The reverend father appears to be well versed in the arts of war, captures and so forth," I remarked, as now we made our way together to the waist of the ship, followed by the bo'sun. "A strange knowledge for one of his trade!"
"Por Diôs!" the young fellow said, "'tis not so strange, neither, as you will say if ever you get him to speak about the strange places in which he has pursued his ministrations. Why, sir, he has assisted at the death of many a dying sinner of the kind we have in our parts, held cups of water to their burning lips, wiped the sweat of death from off their brows. Oh!" he said, stopping by one of the galleon's great quarter deck ports, in which the cowards who fled from the heavily armed ship had left a huge loaded brass cannon run out, which they had not had the spirit to fire; stopping there and laying a long, slim hand upon my arm--while I noticed that the nails were most beautifully shaped--"Oh! he has been in some strange places; seen strange things, the siege and plunder of Maracaibo, to wit, and many other places; seen blood run like water."
"The siege and plunder of Maracaibo!" I found myself repeating as we drew near the fore-hatches, which were now open. "The siege and plunder of Maracaibo!" Where had I heard such words as these before, or words like them? Where? where? On whose lips had I last heard the name of Maracaibo?
And, suddenly, I remembered that that wicked old ruffian, who had been fellow-passenger with me in La Mouche Noire had mentioned that place to the filthy black who was his servant--or his friend.
And--for what reason I know not, for there was no sequence whatsoever in such thoughts and recollections--I recalled his drunken and frenzied shouts to some man whom he called Grandmont; his questions about some youth nineteen years old, who was like to be by now grown up to be a devil like that dead Grandmont to whom he imagined he was speaking.