Having stowed the disarmed Spaniards under hatches — all save the rash Don Vicente, who, under parole, was taken aboard the Arabella — Blood put a prize crew into the Atrevida, patched up her wounds, and set a south–easterly course for the passage between Anegada and the Virgin Islands.
He explained the changed intentions which this implied at a council held that evening in the great cabin and attended by Wolverstone, his lieutenant, Pitt, his shipmaster, Ogle, who commanded on the main–deck, and two representatives of the main body of his followers, one of whom, Albin, was a Frenchman. This because one third of the buccaneers aboard the Arabella at the time were French.
He met with some opposition when he announced the intention of making for Antigua.
This opposition was epitomized by Wolverstone, who banged the table with a fist that was like a ham, before delivering himself. «To hell with King James and all who serve him! It's enough that we never make war upon English ships or English settlements. But I'll be damned if I account it our duty to protect folk whose hands are against us.»
Captain Blood explained. «The impending Spanish raid is in the nature of reprisals for damage suffered by Spaniards at our hands. This seems to me to impose a duty upon us. We may not be patriots, as ye say, Wolverstone and we may not be altruists. If we go to warn and remain to assist, we do so as mercenaries, whose services are to be paid for by a garrison which should be very glad to hire them. Thus we reconcile duty with profit.»
By these arguments he prevailed.
At dawn, having negotiated the passage, they hove to with the southernmost point of the Virgen Gorda on their starboard quarter, some four miles away. The sea being calm, Captain Blood ordered the boats of the Atrevida to be launched, and her Spanish crew to depart in them, whereafter the two ships proceeded on their way to the Leeward Islands.
Going south of Saba with gentle breezes, they were off the west coast of Antigua on the morning of the next day, and with the Union Jack flying from the maintruck they came to cast anchor in ten fathoms on the north side of the shoal that divides the entrance to Fort Bay.
A few minutes after noon, just as Colonel Courtney, the Captain–General of the Leeward Islands, whose seat of government was in Antigua, was sitting down to dinner with Mrs. Courtney and Captain Macartney, he was astounded by the announcement that Captain Blood had landed at Saint John's, and desired to wait upon him.
Colonel Courtney, a tall, dried–up man of forty–five, sandy and freckled, stared with pale, red–rimmed eyes at Mr. Ives, his young secretary, who had brought the message. «Captain Blood, did you say? Captain Blood? What Captain Blood? Surely not the damned pirate of that name, the gallows–bird from Barbadoes?»