Aboard the Cinco Llagas some one — it proved afterwards to be Hagthorpe — had the wit to reply in the same fashion.  The comedy was ended.  Yet there was something else to follow as an epilogue, a thing that added a grim ironic flavour to the whole.

As they stepped into the waist of the Cinco Llagas, Hagthorpe advanced to receive them.  Blood observed the set, almost scared expression on his face.

“I see that you’ve found it,” he said quietly.

Hagthorpe’s eyes looked a question.  But his mind dismissed whatever thought it held.

“Don Diego...” he was beginning, and then stopped, and looked curiously at Blood.

Noting the pause and the look, Esteban bounded forward, his face livid.

“Have you broken faith, you curs?  Has he come to harm?” he cried — and the six Spaniards behind him grew clamorous with furious questionings.

“We do not break faith,” said Hagthorpe firmly, so firmly that he quieted them.  “And in this case there was not the need.  Don Diego died in his bonds before ever you reached the Encarnacion.”

Peter Blood said nothing.

“Died?” screamed Esteban.  “You killed him, you mean.  Of what did he die?”

Hagthorpe looked at the boy.  “If I am a judge,” he said, “Don Diego died of fear.”

Don Esteban struck Hagthorpe across the face at that, and Hagthorpe would have struck back, but that Blood got between, whilst his followers seized the lad.

“Let be,” said Blood.  “You provoked the boy by your insult to his father.”

“I was not concerned to insult,” said Hagthorpe, nursing his cheek.  “It is what has happened.  Come and look.”

“I have seen,” said Blood.  “He died before I left the Cinco Llagas.  He was hanging dead in his bonds when I spoke to him before leaving.”

“What are you saying?” cried Esteban.

Blood looked at him gravely.  Yet for all his gravity he seemed almost to smile, though without mirth.

“If you had known that, eh?” he asked at last.  For a moment Don Esteban stared at him wide-eyed, incredulous.  “I don’t believe you,” he said at last.

“Yet you may.  I am a doctor, and I know death when I see it.”

Again there came a pause, whilst conviction sank into the lad’s mind.

“If I had known that,” he said at last in a thick voice, “you would be hanging from the yardarm of the Encarnacion at this moment.”

“I know,” said Blood.  “I am considering it — the profit that a man may find in the ignorance of others.”

“But you’ll hang there yet,” the boy raved.

Captain Blood shrugged, and turned on his heel.  But he did not on that account disregard the words, nor did Hagthorpe, nor yet the others who overheard them, as they showed at a council held that night in the cabin.