When the half hour expired, Scudamore returned to Barthelemy and, pointing to the boat, said: "There are the heads of the traitors!"
Chapter III
Revenge
The time of the monsoons had come. News of shipwrecks arrived daily. The elements of the air and sea were ceaselessly contending in a strife before which the petty quarrels of men were ended. Nothing was heard at present of Barthelemy. The English and Dutch agencies were perfectly aware that his ships were anchored in the harbor of Cape Corso. Who would venture to tempt Providence by putting to sea in such weather? The heart of the boldest pirate trembles when he sees sky and water transformed into darkness, illumined only by flashes of lightning. It would be a devil and not a man who, amid this illumination, would risk a battle in the midst of peals of thunder and the howling of the gale.
Barthelemy was resting on the coast; his men were drinking, carousing and giving banquets. What else could they do in such terrible weather when, each morning, the sea flung fresh wrecks upon the strand?
Meanwhile the governments were quietly gathering their ships against the bold pirates who dared, single-handed, to assail a whole quarter of the globe; in the harbor of Mydaw alone there were eleven ships waiting only for the King Solomon with its eighty guns, and the Swallow with its hundred and ten, to set sail in pursuit of Robert Barthelemy as soon as the monsoons were over.
The tempest was raging, the sea tossed wildly, the black clouds hung so low that it seemed as if they nearly touched the waves, and the surges tossed their white foam upward toward the clouds.
The horizon was a dark violet blue, through which darted flashes of lightning. A ship was visible far away tossing on the billows, its closely furled sails and erect masts looking like black crosses.