“Is it that I have not warned you from the beginning that all was too easy?” he demanded between plaintiveness and fury.  “I am no fool, my friends.  I have eyes, me.  And I see.  I see an abandoned fort at the entrance of the lake, and nobody there to fire a gun at us when we came in.  Then I suspect the trap.  Who would not that had eyes and brain?  Bah! we come on.  What do we find?  A city, abandoned like the fort; a city out of which the people have taken all things of value.  Again I warn Captain Blood.  It is a trap, I say.  We are to come on; always to come on, without opposition, until we find that it is too late to go to sea again, that we cannot go back at all.  But no one will listen to me.  You all know so much more.  Name of God!  Captain Blood, he will go on, and we go on.  We go to Gibraltar.  True that at last, after long time, we catch the Deputy-Governor; true, we make him pay big ransom for Gibraltar; true between that ransom and the loot we return here with some two thousand pieces of eight.  But what is it, in reality, will you tell me?  Or shall I tell you?  It is a piece of cheese — a piece of cheese in a mousetrap, and we are the little mice.  Goddam!  And the cats — oh, the cats they wait for us!  The cats are those four Spanish ships of war that have come meantime.  And they wait for us outside the bottle-neck of this lagoon.  Mort de Dieu!  That is what comes of the damned obstinacy of your fine Captain Blood.”

Wolverstone laughed.  Cahusac exploded in fury.

“Ah, sangdieu!  Tu ris, animal?  You laugh!  Tell me this:  How do we get out again unless we accept the terms of Monsieur the Admiral of Spain?”

From the buccaneers at the foot of the steps came an angry rumble of approval.  The single eye of the gigantic Wolverstone rolled terribly, and he clenched his great fists as if to strike the Frenchman, who was exposing them to mutiny.  But Cahusac was not daunted.  The mood of the men enheartened him.

“You think, perhaps, this your Captain Blood is the good God.  That he can make miracles, eh?  He is ridiculous, you know, this Captain Blood; with his grand air and his....”

He checked.  Out of the church at that moment, grand air and all, sauntered Peter Blood.  With him came a tough, long-legged French sea-wolf named Yberville, who, though still young, had already won fame as a privateer commander before the loss of his own ship had driven him to take service under Blood.  The Captain advanced towards that disputing group, leaning lightly upon his long ebony cane, his face shaded by a broad-plumed hat.  There was in his appearance nothing of the buccaneer.  He had much more the air of a lounger in the Mall or the Alameda — the latter rather, since his elegant suit of violet taffetas with gold-embroidered button-holes was in the Spanish fashion.  But the long, stout, serviceable rapier, thrust up behind by the left hand resting lightly on the pummel, corrected the impression.  That and those steely eyes of his announced the adventurer.