Gloomily the Alcalde shook his head. 'It's a terrible price to pay God of my life! A hundred thousand pieces!'
'There's no help for that.' Almost Don Ruiz implied by his manner that he accounted cheap at the price the destruction of a man who had brought him to such humiliation that he, the Captain–General of Havana, lord of life and death in those parts, had been made to look no better than a schoolboy standing to be birched. 'Nor is it so exorbitant. The Admiral of the Ocean–Sea is willing to pay fifty thousand pieces for the head of Captain Blood. I but double it — out of the royal Treasury.'
'But what the Marquis of Riconete pays would not be lost. Whilst this will be sunk with that scoundrel.'
'But perhaps not beyond recovery. It depends upon where we sink him. Where he's anchored now there's not above four fathoms, and it's all shallow on that side as far as the bar. But that's no matter. What matters is to get the Cardinal–Archbishop out of that ship, so as to put an end to this cursed dog's immunity.'
'Are you so sure that it will end then? That sly devil will demand pledges, oaths.'
Don Ruiz laughed savagely from livid lips. 'He shall have them. All the pledges, all the oaths that he requires. An oath sworn under constraint has never been accounted binding on any man.'
But the Alcalde's gloom was not relieved. 'That will not be his Eminence's view.'
'His Eminence?'
'Can you doubt that this damned pirate will ask a pledge from him — a pledge of safe–conduct for himself? You've seen the man this Cardinal is: a narrow, bigoted zealot, a slave to the letter of a contract. It's an ill thing to set up priests as judges. They're so unfitted for the office. There's no humanity in them, no breadth of understanding. What this prelate swears, that he will do; no matter where or how the oath may have been exacted.'
For a moment dismay darkened still further the Captain–General's soul. A little thought, however, and his tortuous mind had found a way. He laughed again.