Colonel Bishop started up.  He was pervaded by the first pang of uneasiness.  It occurred to him that all here might not be as friendly as appeared.

“And there’s another matter,” Mr. Blood resumed.  “There’s a matter of a flogging that’s due to me.  Ye’re a man of your word in such matters, Colonel — if not perhaps in others — and ye said, I think, that ye’d not leave a square inch of skin on my back.”

The planter waved the matter aside.  Almost it seemed to offend him.

“Tush!  Tush!  After this splendid deed of yours, do you suppose I can be thinking of such things?”

“I’m glad ye feel like that about it.  But I’m thinking it’s mighty lucky for me the Spaniards didn’t come to-day instead of yesterday, or it’s in the same plight as Jeremy Pitt I’d be this minute.  And in that case where was the genius that would have turned the tables on these rascally Spaniards?”

“Why speak of it now?”

Mr. Blood resumed:  “ye’ll please to understand that I must, Colonel, darling.  Ye’ve worked a deal of wickedness and cruelty in your time, and I want this to be a lesson to you, a lesson that ye’ll remember - for the sake of others who may come after us.  There’s Jeremy up there in the round-house with a back that’s every colour of the rainbow; and the poor lad’ll not be himself again for a month.  And if it hadn’t been for the Spaniards maybe it’s dead he’d be by now, and maybe myself with him.”

Hagthorpe lounged forward.  He was a fairly tall, vigorous man with a clear-cut, attractive face which in itself announced his breeding.

“Why will you be wasting words on the hog?” wondered that sometime officer in the Royal Navy.  “Fling him overboard and have done with him.”

The Colonel’s eyes bulged in his head.  “What the devil do you mean?” he blustered.

“It’s the lucky man ye are entirely, Colonel, though ye don’t guess the source of your good fortune.”

And now another intervened — the brawny, one-eyed Wolverstone, less mercifully disposed than his more gentlemanly fellow-convict.

“String him up from the yardarm,” he cried, his deep voice harsh and angry, and more than one of the slaves standing to their arms made echo.

Colonel Bishop trembled.  Mr. Blood turned.  He was quite calm.

“If you please, Wolverstone,” said he, “I conduct affairs in my own way.  That is the pact.  You’ll please to remember it.”  His eyes looked along the ranks, making it plain that he addressed them all.  “I desire that Colonel Bishop should have his life.  One reason is that I require him as a hostage.  If ye insist on hanging him, ye’ll have to hang me with him, or in the alternative I’ll go ashore.”

He paused.  There was no answer.  But they stood hang-dog and half-mutinous before him, save Hagthorpe, who shrugged and smiled wearily.

Mr. Blood resumed:  “Ye’ll please to understand that aboard a ship there is one captain.  So.”  He swung again to the startled Colonel.  “Though I promise you your life, I must — as you’ve heard — keep you aboard as a hostage for the good behaviour of Governor Steed and what’s left of the fort until we put to sea.”