«Mademoiselle, your concern is flattering; but so flattering.» Erect again, his bold eyes, so startlingly light under their black brows and in a face so burnt and swarthy, laughed into her own. «I do not want for enemies, true. It is the penalty of greatness. Only he who is without anything is without enemies. But at least they are not in Tortuga.»
«Are you so very sure of that?»
Her tone gave him pause. He frowned, and considered her solemnly for an instant before replying.
«Mademoiselle, you speak as if from some knowledge.»
«Hardly so much. My knowledge is but the knowledge of what a slave told me to–day. He says that the Spanish Admiral has placed a price upon your head.»
«That is just the Spanish Admiral's notion of flattery, mademoiselle.»
«And that Cahusac has been heard to say he will make you rue the wrong you did him at Maracaybo.»
«Cahusac?»
The name revealed to him the rashness of his assertion that he had no enemy in Tortuga. He had forgotten Cahusac; but he realized that Cahusac would not be likely to have forgotten him. Cahusac had been with him at Maracaybo, and had been trapped with him there by the arrival of Don Miguel de Espinosa's fleet. The French rover had taken fright, had charged Blood with rashness in his conduct of the enterprise, had quarrelled with him and had made terms with the Spanish Admiral for himself and his own French contingent. Granted a safe–conduct by Don Miguel, he had departed empty–handed, leaving Captain Blood to his fate. But it proved not at all as the timorous Cahusac conceived it. Captain Blood had not only broken out of the Spanish trap, but he had sorely mauled the Admiral, captured three of his ships, and returned to Tortuga laden with rich spoils of victory.
To Cahusac this was gall and wormwood. With the faculty for confusing cause and effect which is the chief disability of stupid egoists, he came to account himself cheated by Captain Blood. And he was making no secret of his unfounded resentment.