«I see that you understand.» The Commandant looked grave. «Robbery is a serious, shameful matter, Captain Blood.»
«I know it is. I've practised a good deal of it myself.»
«And I've little doubt that they will hang M. de Coulevain, poor devil.»
Captain Blood nodded. «No doubt of that. But we'll save our tears to water some nobler grave, my Colonel.»
Colonel Sancerre eyed him with cold disapproval. «This hardly comes well from you, Captain Blood. It was to save you from the English that Colonel de Coulevain paid over the money, was it not?»
«Hardly to save me from them. To buy me from them so that he might sell me again to Spain at a handsome profit. He had an eye to a profit, your Colonel de Coulevain.»
«But what do you tell me?» cried Sancerre.
«That it's entirely a poetic thing that the quittance he took on my behalf should be the means of hanging him.»
X — GALLOWS KEY
It is impossible now to determine whether Gallows Key took its name from the events I am about to relate or bore it already previously among seafaring men. Jeremy Pitt in his log gives no hint, and the miniature island is not now to be identified with precision. All that we know positively, and this from Pitt's log of the Arabella, is that it forms part of the group known as the Albuquerque Keys, lying in 12° northern latitude and 85° western longitude, some sixty miles north–west of Porto Bello.