Surprised, Blood looked, first with his naked eye, then through his telescope. He beheld a bareheaded gentleman in corselet and thigh–boots, who clearly was no buccaneer of the kind that sailed with Easterling, and who stood on the poop frantically waving a scarf. Blood was quick to guess his identity.
«It'll be one of the Spaniards who were aboard when Easterling took the ship and whose throat he forgot to cut.»
He ordered a boat to be launched and sent six men with Dyke, who had some knowledge of Spanish, to bring the Spaniard off:
Don Ildefonso, who, callously left to drown in the doomed ship, had worked himself free of the thong that bound his wrists, stood in the forechains to await the coming of that boat. He was quivering with excitement at this deliverance of himself and the vessel in his charge with her precious freight; a deliverance which he regarded as little short of miraculous. For like the guarda–costa, Don Ildefonso, even if he had not recognized the Spanish lines of this great ship which had come so unexpectedly to the rescue, must have been relieved of all doubt by the flag of Spain which had been allowed to remain floating at the masthead of the Cinco Llagas.
So with speech bubbling eagerly out of him in that joyous excitement of his, the Spanish commander poured into the ears of Dyke, when the boat brought up alongside, the tale of what had happened to them and what they carried. Because of this, it was necessary that they should lend him a dozen men so that with the six now under hatches on the Santa Barbara he might bring his precious cargo safely into San Domingo.
To Dyke this was an amazing and exciting narrative. But he did not on that account lose grip of his self–possession. Lest too much Spanish should betray him to Don Ildefonso, he took refuge in curtness.
«Bueno,» said he. «I'll inform my captain.» Under his breath he ordered his men to push off and head back for the Cinco Llagas.
When Blood heard the tale and had digested his amazement, he laughed.
«So this is what that rogue would have told me if ever we met again. «Faith, it's a satisfaction to be denied him.»
Ten minutes later the Cinco Llagas lay board and board with the Santa Barbara.