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The Sea Wraith, an ancient ship, gray and patched of sail, battered and worn with a name for all disaster, sailed the Spanish seas as though she bore a charmed life—­and her crew that was the refuse of land and sea, used to license, to whom mutiny was no uglier a word than another, kept the terms of an iron discipline—­and her Captain waked and slept as one aware of when to wake and when to sleep.

There was fever between the decks; there was fever in black hearts; of dark nights a corposant burned now at this masthead, now at that.  Mariner and soldier knew the story of the shadowy figure keeping company with the stars there above them on the poop-royal.  Did he keep company only with the stars and with the boy, his familiar?  The sick, tossing from side to side, raved out curses, and the well saw many omens.  Dissatisfaction, never far from their unstayed minds, crept at times very near, and superstition sat always amongst them.  But they reckoned with a Captain stronger for this voyage than had been Francis Drake or John Hawkins, and stranger than any under whom they had ever sailed.  He was so still a man that they knew not how to take him, but beneath his eyes vain imaginings and half-formed conspiracies withered like burnt paper.  He called upon neither God nor devil, but his voice blew like an icy wind upon the heat of disloyal intents, and like the white fire that touched now stem, now stern, so his will held the ship, driving it like a leaf towards the mainland and the fortress of Nueva Cordoba.

The ship that seemed so aged and disgraced yet had a strength of sinew which made her formidable.  All things had been patiently cared for by the man who, selling his patrimony, had labored against wind and tide to the end that he might carry forth with him such an armament as scarce had been the Cygnet’s own.  Tier on tier rose the Sea Wraith’s ordnance; she carried warlike stores of all sorts that might serve for battle by sea or land.  If his money could not buy such men as stood ready to ship with Drake and Hawkins, yet in his wild, sin-stained crew he had purchased experience, the maddest bravery, and a lust of Spanish gold that might not be easily sated.  The qualities of a captain over men he himself supplied.

In his confidence neither before nor after their sailing, yet the two hundred men of the Sea Wraith guessed well his destination, but for themselves preferred the island towns—­Santiago and Santo Domingo in Hispaniola.  There were wealth and wine and women, there the fringing islets where booty might be hidden, and there the deep caves where foregathered many small craft misnamed piratical.  “Lord! the Sea Wraith would soon make herself Admiral of that brood, leading them forth from those hidden places to pounce upon Santo Domingo, that was the seat of government and as wealthy a place as any in the Indies!—­the Sea Wraith and her Captain, that was a good Captain and a tall!—­ay, ay, that would they maintain despite all land talk—­a good Captain and a tall, ’spite of Dick Carpenter’s dream—­”