“I have seen,” said Blood. “He died before I left the Cinco Llagas. He was hanging dead in his bonds when I spoke to him before leaving.”
“What are you saying?” cried Esteban.
Blood looked at him gravely. Yet for all his gravity he seemed almost to smile, though without mirth.
“If you had known that, eh?” he asked at last. For a moment Don Esteban stared at him wide-eyed, incredulous. “I don't believe you,” he said at last.
“Yet you may. I am a doctor, and I know death when I see it.”
Again there came a pause, whilst conviction sank into the lad's mind.
“If I had known that,” he said at last in a thick voice, “you would be hanging from the yardarm of the Encarnacion at this moment.”
“I know,” said Blood. “I am considering it—the profit that a man may find in the ignorance of others.”
“But you'll hang there yet,” the boy raved.
Captain Blood shrugged, and turned on his heel. But he did not on that account disregard the words, nor did Hagthorpe, nor yet the others who overheard them, as they showed at a council held that night in the cabin.