Wildly, a mad thing, she looked up at Captain Blood.
«He bids me go to see them roasting him alive! Mercy, Don Pedro! Save him!»
«Save whom?» barked the Captain, almost in exasperation.
Brazo Largo answered him, explaining:
«She to be my daughter — this. Captain Domingo, he come village, one year now, and carry her away with him. Caramba! Now I roast him, and take her home.» He turned to the girl. «Vamos,» he commanded, continuing to use his primitive Spanish, «you to come with me. You see him roast, then you come back village.»
Captain Blood found the explanation ample. In a flash he recalled Guanahani's excessive eagerness to conduct him to the Spanish gold at Santa Maria, and how that eagerness had momentarily awakened suspicion in him. Now he understood. In urging this raid on Santa Maria, Brazo Largo had used him and his buccaneers to exploit a private vengeance and to recover an abducted daughter from Domingo Fuentes. But however deserving of punishment that abduction might appear, it was also revealed that, whether the girl had gone off willingly or not with the Spanish captain, his subsequent treatment of her had been such that she now desired to stay with him, and was concerned to the point of madness for his life and safety.
«Is it true what he says — that Don Domingo is your lover?» the Captain asked her.
«He is my husband, my married husband, and my love,» she answered, a passion of entreaty in her liquid eyes. «This is our little baby. Do not let them kill him, Don Pedro! Oh, if they do,» she moaned, «I shall kill myself!»
Captain Blood looked across at the grim–faced Indian.
«You hear? The Spaniard has been good to her. She desires his life. And his offence being as you say, it is her will that decked his fate. What have you done with him?»