«Not sell? A God's name what use is the ship to those poor ragamuffins?»
«I mention only a possibility,» said Monsieur d'Ogeron. «Come to me again this evening, and you shall have your answer.»
When Easterling returned as bidden, Monsieur d'Ogeron was not alone. As the Governor rose to receive his visitor, there rose with him a tall, spare man in the early thirties from whose shaven face, swarthy as a gipsy's, a pair of eyes looked out that were startlingly blue, level, and penetrating. If Monsieur d'Ogeron in dress and air suggested Versailles, his companion as markedly suggested the Alameda. He was very richly dressed in black in the Spanish fashion, with an abundance of silver lace and a foam of fine point at throat and wrists, and he wore a heavy black periwig whose curls descended to his shoulders.
Monsieur d'Ogeron presented him: «Here, Captain, is Mr. Peter Blood to answer you in person.»
Easterling was almost disconcerted, so different was the man's appearance from anything that he could have imagined. And now this singular escaped convict was bowing with the grace of a courtier, and the buccaneer was reflecting that these fine Spanish clothes would have been filched from the locker of the commander of the Cinco Llagas. He remembered something else.
«Ah, yes. To be sure. The physician,» he said, and laughed for no apparent reason.
Mr. Blood began to speak. He had a pleasant voice whose metallic quality was softened by a drawling Irish accent. But what he said made Captain Easterling impatient. It was not his intention to sell the Cinco Llagas.
Aggressively before the elegant Mr. Blood stood now the buccaneer, a huge, hairy, dangerous–looking man, in coarse shirt and leather breeches, his cropped head swathed in a red–and–yellow kerchief. Aggressively he demanded Blood's reasons for retaining a ship that could be of no use to him and his fellow convicts.
Blood's voice was softly courteous in reply, which but increased Easterling's contempt of him. Captain Easterling heard himself assured that he was mistaken in his assumptions. It was probable that the fugitives from Barbadoes would employ the vessel to return to Europe, so as to make their way to France or Holland.
«Maybe we're not quite as ye're supposing us, Captain. One of my companions is a shipmaster, and three others have served in various ways, in the King's Navy.»