“Could I be guilty of that?” protested the Captain.  “I realize that even a pirate has his honour.”  And forthwith he propounded his offer.  “If you will look from those windows, Don Diego, you will see what appears to be a cloud on the horizon.  That is the island of Barbados well astern.  All day we have been sailing east before the wind with but one intent — to set as great a distance between Barbados and ourselves as possible.  But now, almost out of sight of land, we are in a difficulty.  The only man among us schooled in the art of navigation is fevered, delirious, in fact, as a result of certain ill-treatment he received ashore before we carried him away with us.  I can handle a ship in action, and there are one or two men aboard who can assist me; but of the higher mysteries of seamanship and of the art of finding a way over the trackless wastes of ocean, we know nothing.  To hug the land, and go blundering about what you so aptly call this pestilent archipelago, is for us to court disaster, as you can perhaps conceive.  And so it comes to this:  We desire to make for the Dutch settlement of Curacao as straightly as possible.  Will you pledge me your honour, if I release you upon parole, that you will navigate us thither?  If so, we will release you and your surviving men upon arrival there.”

Don Diego bowed his head upon his breast, and strode away in thought to the stern windows.  There he stood looking out upon the sunlit sea and the dead water in the great ship’s wake — his ship, which these English dogs had wrested from him; his ship, which he was asked to bring safely into a port where she would be completely lost to him and refitted perhaps to make war upon his kin.  That was in one scale; in the other were the lives of sixteen men.  Fourteen of them mattered little to him, but the remaining two were his own and his son’s.

He turned at length, and his back being to the light, the Captain could not see how pale his face had grown.

“I accept,” he said.

CHAPTER XI

FILIAL PIETY

By virtue of the pledge he had given, Don Diego de Espinosa enjoyed the freedom of the ship that had been his, and the navigation which he had undertaken was left entirely in his hands.  And because those who manned her were new to the seas of the Spanish Main, and because even the things that had happened in Bridgetown were not enough to teach them to regard every Spaniard as a treacherous, cruel dog to be slain at sight, they used him with the civility which his own suave urbanity invited.  He took his meals in the great cabin with Blood and the three officers elected to support him:  Hagthorpe, Wolverstone, and Dyke.

They found Don Diego an agreeable, even an amusing companion, and their friendly feeling towards him was fostered by his fortitude and brave equanimity in this adversity.