Again there was no faintest hesitation on Don Diego’s part.  “You have reason to ask,” said he, and sighed.  “I had hope’ it would not be observe’.  I have been careless — oh, of a carelessness very culpable.  I neglect observation.  Always it is my way.  I make too sure.  I count too much on dead reckoning.  And so to-day I find when at last I take out the quadrant that we do come by a half-degree too much south, so that Curacao is now almost due north.  That is what cause the delay.  But we will be there to-morrow.”

The explanation, so completely satisfactory, and so readily and candidly forthcoming, left no room for further doubt that Don Diego should have been false to his parole.  And when presently Don Diego had withdrawn again, Captain Blood confessed to Pitt that it was absurd to have suspected him.  Whatever his antecedents, he had proved his quality when he announced himself ready to die sooner than enter into any undertaking that could hurt his honour or his country.

New to the seas of the Spanish Main and to the ways of the adventurers who sailed it, Captain Blood still entertained illusions.  But the next dawn was to shatter them rudely and for ever.

Coming on deck before the sun was up, he saw land ahead, as the Spaniard had promised them last night.  Some ten miles ahead it lay, a long coast-line filling the horizon east and west, with a massive headland jutting forward straight before them.  Staring at it, he frowned.  He had not conceived that Curacao was of such considerable dimensions.  Indeed, this looked less like an island than the main itself.

Beating out aweather, against the gentle landward breeze he beheld a great ship on their starboard bow, that he conceived to be some three or four miles off, and — as well as he could judge her at that distance — of a tonnage equal if not superior to their own.  Even as he watched her she altered her course, and going about came heading towards them, close-hauled.

A dozen of his fellows were astir on the forecastle, looking eagerly ahead, and the sound of their voices and laughter reached him across the length of the stately Cinco Llagas.

“There,” said a soft voice behind him in liquid Spanish, “is the Promised Land, Don Pedro.”

It was something in that voice, a muffled note of exultation, that awoke suspicion in him, and made whole the half-doubt he had been entertaining.  He turned sharply to face Don Diego, so sharply that the sly smile was not effaced from the Spaniard’s countenance before Captain Blood’s eyes had flashed upon it.

“You find an odd satisfaction in the sight of it — all things considered,” said Mr. Blood.

“Of course.”  The Spaniard rubbed his hands, and Mr. Blood observed that they were unsteady.  “The satisfaction of a mariner.”

“Or of a traitor — which?” Blood asked him quietly.  And as the Spaniard fell back before him with suddenly altered countenance that confirmed his every suspicion, he flung an arm out in the direction of the distant shore.  “What land is that?” he demanded.  “Will you have the effrontery to tell me that is the coast of Curacao?”