There was no trace of humour or urbanity now in Captain Blood.  His light eyes blazed:  his face was set.

He rose, relinquishing the Spaniard to his men.  “Make him fast,” he bade them.  “Truss him, wrist and heel, but don’t hurt him — not so much as a hair of his precious head.”

The injunction was very necessary.  Frenzied by the thought that they were likely to exchange the slavery from which they had so lately escaped for a slavery still worse, they would have torn the Spaniard limb from limb upon the spot.  And if they now obeyed their Captain and refrained, it was only because the sudden steely note in his voice promised for Don Diego Valdez something far more exquisite than death.

“You scum!  You dirty pirate!  You man of honour!” Captain Blood apostrophized his prisoner.

But Don Diego looked up at him and laughed.

“You underrated me.”  He spoke English, so that all might hear.  “I tell you that I was not fear death, and I show you that I was not fear it.  You no understand.  You just an English dog.”

“Irish, if you please,” Captain Blood corrected him.  “And your parole, you tyke of Spain?”

“You think I give my parole to leave you sons of filth with this beautiful Spanish ship, to go make war upon other Spaniards!  Ha!” Don Diego laughed in his throat.  “You fool!  You can kill me.  Pish!  It is very well.  I die with my work well done.  In less than an hour you will be the prisoners of Spain, and the Cinco Llagas will go belong to Spain again.”

Captain Blood regarded him steadily out of a face which, if impassive, had paled under its deep tan.  About the prisoner, clamant, infuriated, ferocious, the rebels-convict surged, almost literally “athirst for his blood.”

“Wait,” Captain Blood imperiously commanded, and turning on his heel, he went aside to the rail.  As he stood there deep in thought, he was joined by Hagthorpe, Wolverstone, and Ogle the gunner.  In silence they stared with him across the water at that other ship.  She had veered a point away from the wind, and was running now on a line that must in the end converge with that of the Cinco Llagas.

“In less than half-an-hour,” said Blood presently, “we shall have her athwart our hawse, sweeping our decks with her guns.”

“We can fight,” said the one-eyed giant with an oath.

“Fight!” sneered Blood.  “Undermanned as we are, mustering a bare twenty men, in what case are we to fight?  No, there would be only one way.  To persuade her that all is well aboard, that we are Spaniards, so that she may leave us to continue on our course.”

“And how is that possible?” Hagthorpe asked.

“It isn’t possible,” said Blood.  “If it....”  And then he broke off, and stood musing, his eyes upon the green water.  Ogle, with a bent for sarcasm, interposed a suggestion bitterly.

“We might send Don Diego de Espinosa in a boat manned by his Spaniards to assure his brother the Admiral that we are all loyal subjects of his Catholic Majesty.”