“But...  Are you not Spanish, then?”

“You flatter my Castilian accent.  I have the honour to be Irish.  You were thinking that a miracle had happened.  So it has — a miracle wrought by my genius, which is considerable.”

Succinctly now Captain Blood dispelled the mystery by a relation of the facts.  It was a narrative that painted red and white by turns the Spaniard’s countenance.  He put a hand to the back of his head, and there discovered, in confirmation of the story, a lump as large as a pigeon’s egg.  Lastly, he stared wild-eyed at the sardonic Captain Blood.

“And my son?  What of my son?” he cried out.  “He was in the boat that brought me aboard.”

“Your son is safe; he and the boat’s crew together with your gunner and his men are snugly in irons under hatches.”

Don Diego sank back on the couch, his glittering dark eyes fixed upon the tawny face above him.  He composed himself.  After all, he possessed the stoicism proper to his desperate trade.  The dice had fallen against him in this venture.  The tables had been turned upon him in the very moment of success.  He accepted the situation with the fortitude of a fatalist.

With the utmost calm he enquired: 

“And now, Senior Capitan?”

“And now,” said Captain Blood — to give him the title he had assumed - “being a humane man, I am sorry to find that ye’re not dead from the tap we gave you.  For it means that you’ll be put to the trouble of dying all over again.”

“Ah!” Don Diego drew a deep breath.  “But is that necessary?” he asked, without apparent perturbation.

Captain Blood’s blue eyes approved his bearing.  “Ask yourself,” said he.  “Tell me, as an experienced and bloody pirate, what in my place would you do, yourself?”

“Ah, but there is a difference.”  Don Diego sat up to argue the matter.  “It lies in the fact that you boast yourself a humane man.”

Captain Blood perched himself on the edge of the long oak table.  “But I am not a fool,” said he, “and I’ll not allow a natural Irish sentimentality to stand in the way of my doing what is necessary and proper.  You and your ten surviving scoundrels are a menace on this ship.  More than that, she is none so well found in water and provisions.  True, we are fortunately a small number, but you and your party inconveniently increase it.  So that on every hand, you see, prudence suggests to us that we should deny ourselves the pleasure of your company, and, steeling our soft hearts to the inevitable, invite you to be so obliging as to step over the side.”

“I see,” said the Spaniard pensively.  He swung his legs from the couch, and sat now upon the edge of it, his elbows on his knees.  He had taken the measure of his man, and met him with a mock-urbanity and a suave detachment that matched his own.  “I confess,” he admitted, “that there is much force in what you say.”