Even then the labours of Blood’s men were not at an end.  The Elizabeth and the Medusa were tight-locked, and Hagthorpe’s followers were being driven back aboard their own ship for the second time.  Prompt measures were demanded.  Whilst Pitt and his seamen bore their part with the sails, and Ogle went below with a gun-crew, Blood ordered the grapnels to be loosed at once.  Lord Willoughby and the Admiral were already aboard the Victorieuse.  As they swung off to the rescue of Hagthorpe, Blood, from the quarter-deck of the conquered vessel, looked his last upon the ship that had served him so well, the ship that had become to him almost as a part of himself.  A moment she rocked after her release, then slowly and gradually settled down, the water gurgling and eddying about her topmasts, all that remained visible to mark the spot where she had met her death.

As he stood there, above the ghastly shambles in the waist of the Victorieuse, some one spoke behind him.  “I think, Captain Blood, that it is necessary I should beg your pardon for the second time.  Never before have I seen the impossible made possible by resource and valour, or victory so gallantly snatched from defeat.”

He turned, and presented to Lord Willoughby a formidable front.  His head-piece was gone, his breastplate dinted, his right sleeve a rag hanging from his shoulder about a naked arm.  He was splashed from head to foot with blood, and there was blood from a scalp-wound that he had taken matting his hair and mixing with the grime of powder on his face to render him unrecognizable.

But from that horrible mask two vivid eyes looked out preternaturally bright, and from those eyes two tears had ploughed each a furrow through the filth of his cheeks.

CHAPTER XXXI

HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR

When the cost of that victory came to be counted, it was found that of three hundred and twenty buccaneers who had left Cartagena with Captain Blood, a bare hundred remained sound and whole.  The Elizabeth had suffered so seriously that it was doubtful if she could ever again be rendered seaworthy, and Hagthorpe, who had so gallantly commanded her in that last action, was dead.  Against this, on the other side of the account, stood the facts that, with a far inferior force and by sheer skill and desperate valour, Blood’s buccaneers had saved Jamaica from bombardment and pillage, and they had captured the fleet of M. de Rivarol, and seized for the benefit of King William the splendid treasure which she carried.

It was not until the evening of the following day that van der Kuylen’s truant fleet of nine ships came to anchor in the harbour of Port Royal, and its officers, Dutch and English, were made acquainted with their Admiral’s true opinion of their worth.

Six ships of that fleet were instantly refitted for sea.  There were other West Indian settlements demanding the visit of inspection of the new Governor-General, and Lord Willoughby was in haste to sail for the Antilles.