«Captain Blood?» Easterling spoke through his teeth, his great face purple. «You'll go whining to Captain Blood, will you? Go whine in Hell, then.»
And on the word, at point–blank range, he shot Pike through the head.
The buccaneers standing about them recoiled in momentary horror as the man's body went backwards across the hatch coaming. Easterling jeered coarsely at their squeamishness. Galloway looked on, his little eyes glittering, his face inscrutable.
«Take up that carrion.» Easterling pointed with his still smoking pistol. «Hang it from the yard–arm. Let it serve as a warning to those swine on the Valiant of what happens to them as gets pert with Captain Easterling.»
A long–drawn cry, in which anger, fear and pity were all blended, went up from the deck of Pike's ship when her crew, crowding the larboard bulwarks, perceived through the rigging of the Hermes, the limp body of their captain swinging from the yardarm of the Avenger. So intent were these men that they paid no heed to the two long Indian canoes that came alongside to starboard, or even to the tall gentleman in black and silver who stepped from the accommodation ladder to the deck behind them. Not until his crisp dry voice rang out were they aware of him.
«I arrive a trifle late, it seems.»
They turned and beheld him on the hatch–coaming, his left hand on the pummel of his rapier, his face in the shadow of his broad plumed hat, his eyes hard and cold with anger. Asking themselves how he came there, they stared at him as if he were an apparition, mystified, incredulous, doubting their vision.
At last young Trenam sprang towards him, his eyes blazing with excitement in his grey face. «Captain Blood! Is it indeed you? But how — ?»
Captain Blood quieted him by a wave of the long supple hand emerging from the foam of lace at his wrist. «I've never been far from you ever since you landed on Darien. I know your case, and this is no more than I foresaw. But I had hoped to avert it.»
«You'll call a reckoning from that treacherous dog?»