“Then let me put it in another way—perhaps more happily: You do not desire to live?”
“Ah, that I can answer. I do desire to live; and even more do I desire that my son may live. But the desire shall not make a coward of me for your amusement, master mocker.” It was the first sign he had shown of the least heat or resentment.
Captain Blood did not directly answer. As before he perched himself on the corner of the table.
“Would you be willing, sir, to earn life and liberty—for yourself, your son, and the other Spaniards who are on board?”
“To earn it?” said Don Diego, and the watchful blue eyes did not miss the quiver that ran through him. “To earn it, do you say? Why, if the service you would propose is one that cannot hurt my honour....”
“Could I be guilty of that?” protested the Captain. “I realize that even a pirate has his honour.” And forthwith he propounded his offer. “If you will look from those windows, Don Diego, you will see what appears to be a cloud on the horizon. That is the island of Barbados well astern. All day we have been sailing east before the wind with but one intent—to set as great a distance between Barbados and ourselves as possible. But now, almost out of sight of land, we are in a difficulty. The only man among us schooled in the art of navigation is fevered, delirious, in fact, as a result of certain ill-treatment he received ashore before we carried him away with us. I can handle a ship in action, and there are one or two men aboard who can assist me; but of the higher mysteries of seamanship and of the art of finding a way over the trackless wastes of ocean, we know nothing. To hug the land, and go blundering about what you so aptly call this pestilent archipelago, is for us to court disaster, as you can perhaps conceive. And so it comes to this: We desire to make for the Dutch settlement of Curacao as straightly as possible. Will you pledge me your honour, if I release you upon parole, that you will navigate us thither? If so, we will release you and your surviving men upon arrival there.”
Don Diego bowed his head upon his breast, and strode away in thought to the stern windows. There he stood looking out upon the sunlit sea and the dead water in the great ship's wake—his ship, which these English dogs had wrested from him; his ship, which he was asked to bring safely into a port where she would be completely lost to him and refitted perhaps to make war upon his kin. That was in one scale; in the other were the lives of sixteen men. Fourteen of them mattered little to him, but the remaining two were his own and his son's.
He turned at length, and his back being to the light, the Captain could not see how pale his face had grown.
“I accept,” he said.