“Ha! Is it arranged? When the Governor’s own man arranges it? There is a precious pair, the Governor and his man!” said Barbados, laughing raucously. “Pirates and rogues we may be, but we can take lessons in villainy from some of the gentry who bear the names of caballeros, but have foul blood in their veins!”
“The thing has an evil look,” Sanchez was bold enough to assert. “I like not a task too easy. By my naked blade, that which looks easy often is not! If this should prove to be a trap—”
Barbados gave a cry of rage and whirled toward him suddenly, and Sanchez retreated a single step, and his hand dropped to the naked cutlass in his belt of tanned human skin.
“Try to draw it, fool!” Barbados cried. “I’ll have you choked black in the face and hurled overboard for shark meat before your hand reaches the blade!”
“I made no move to draw,” Sanchez wailed.
“There are times when I wonder why I allow you to remain at my side,” Barbados told him, folding his gigantic arms across his hairy chest. “And there are times when I wonder whether your heart is not turning to that of a woman and your blood to water or swill. A trap, you fool! Am I the man to walk into traps? Kindly allow me to attend to the finer details of this business. And a pretty business it is!”
“The village of Reina de Los Angeles is miles in the interior,” Sanchez wailed. “I do not like to get out of sight of the sea. With the pitching planks of a deck beneath my bare feet—”
“Beware lest you have beneath your feet the plank that is walked until a man reaches its end and drops to watery death!” Barbados warned him. “Enough of this! Pick the men who are to land, and get ready the boats!”
An hour later the anchor had been dropped, and the pirate craft had swung with the tide and was tugging at her chains like a puppy at a leash. Over the sides went the boats, Barbados growling soft curses at the noise his men made.
“We have nothing to fear, fools and devils!” he said. “But there will be no surprise if some converted native sees us and carries to Reina de Los Angeles word of our arrival. There is many a hacienda in these parts where pirates are detested. Silence, rogues! You’ll have your fill of noise to-morrow night!”