And that is how it came to pass that when a fortnight later that great galleon the Santa Veronica, in a bravery of flags and pennants and with guns thundering in salute, sailed into the bay of Havana there was no Captain–General to welcome the arriving Primate of New Spain. To deepen the annoyance of that short, corpulent, choleric little prelate, not only was there no proper preparation for his welcome, but the Alcalde who came aboard in an anguish of bewilderment was within an ace of treating his Eminence as an impostor.
Aboard the Arabella in those days, Yberville, divested of his scarlet splendours, which, like the monkish gowns, had been hurriedly procured in Sainte Croix, was giving himself airs and vowing that a great churchman had been lost to the world when he became a buccaneer. Captain Blood, however, would concede no more than that the kiss was that of a great comedian. And in this the bo'sun Snell, whom Nature had so suitably tonsured for the part of Frey Domingo, being a heretic, entirely concurred with Captain Blood.
Episode 6
THE ELOPING HIDALGA
I
Word was brought to Tortuga by a half–caste Indian, who had shipped as one of the hands on a French brig, of the affair in which the unfortunate James Sherarton lost his life. It was a nasty story with which we are only indirectly concerned here, so that it need be no more than briefly stated. Sherarton and the party of English pearl–fishers he directed were at work off one of the Espada Keys near the Gulf of Maracaybo. They had already garnered a considerable harvest, when a Spanish frigate came upon them, and, not content with seizing their sloop and their pearls, ruthlessly put them to the sword. And there were twelve of them, honest, decent men who were breaking no laws from any but the Spanish point of view, which would admit no right of any other nation in the waters of the New World.
Captain Blood was present in the Tavern of the King of France at Cayona when the half–caste told in nauseous detail the story of that massacre.
'Spain shall pay,' he said. And his sense of justice being poetic, he added: 'And she shall pay in pearls.'
Beyond that he gave no hint of the intention which had leapt instantly to his mind. The inspiration was as natural as it was sudden. The very mention of pearl–fisheries had been enough to call to his mind the Rio de la Hacha, that most productive of all the pearl–fisheries in the Caribbean from which such treasures were brought to the surface, to the profit of King Philip.
It was not the first time that the notion of raiding that source of Spanish wealth had occurred to him; but the difficulties and dangers with which the enterprise was fraught had led him hitherto to postpone it in favour of some easier immediate task. Never, however, had those difficulties and dangers been heavier than at this moment, when it almost seemed that the task was imposed upon him by a righteously indignant Nemesis. He was not blind to this. He knew how fiercely vigilant was the Spanish Admiral of the Ocean–Sea, the Marquis of Riconete, who was cruising with a powerful squadron off the Main. So rudely had Captain Blood handled him in that affair at San Domingo that the Admiral dared not show himself again in Spain until he had wiped out the disgrace of it. The depths of his vindictiveness might be gauged from the announcement, which he had published far and wide, that he would pay the enormous sum of fifty thousand pieces of eight for the person of Captain Blood, dead or alive, or for information that should result in his capture.