He had come back to the big red–hulled ship at anchor in the roadstead, with the flag of Spain impudently flaunted from her maintruck, with news that seemed to him to indicate a likely enterprise. He had learnt that Don Ignacio de la Fuente, sometime Grand Inquisitor of Castile, and now appointed Cardinal–Archbishop of New Spain, was on his way to Mexico on the eighty–gun galleon the Santa Veronica, and in passing was visiting the bishoprics of his province. His Eminence had been at San Salvador, and he was now reported on his way to San Juan de Puerto Rico, after which he was expected at San Domingo, perhaps at Santiago de Cuba, and certainly at Havana, before finally crossing to the Main.
Unblushingly Yberville disclosed the profit which his rascally mind conceived might be extracted from these circumstances.
'Next to King Philip himself,' he opined, 'or, at least, next to the Grand inquisitor, the Cardinal–Archbishop of Seville, there is no Spaniard living who would command a higher ransom than this Primate of New Spain.'
Blood checked in his stride. The two were pacing the high poop of the Arabella in the bright November sunshine of that region of perpetual summer. Yberville's tall vigour was still set off by the finery of lilac satin in which he had gone ashore, a purple love–knot in his long brown curls. Forward at the capstan and at the braces was the bustle of preparation to get the great ship under way; and in the forechains, Snell, the bo'sun, his bald pate gleaming in a circlet of untidy grey curls, was ordering in obscene and fragmentary Castilian some bumboats to stand off.
Blood's vivid eyes flashed disapproval upon the jovial countenance of his companion. 'What then?' he asked.
'Why, just that. The Santa Veronica carries a sacerdotal cargo as rich as the plate in any ship that ever came out of Mexico.' And he laughed.
But Blood did not laugh with him. 'I see. And it's your blackguardly notion that we should lay her board and board, and seize the Archbishop?'
'Just that, my faith! The place to lie in wait for the Santa Veronica would be the straits north of Saona. There we should catch his Eminence on his way to San Domingo. It should offer little difficulty.'
Under the shade of his broad hat Blood's countenance had become forbidding. He shook his head. 'That is not for us.'
'Not for us? Why not? Are you deterred by her eighty guns?'