And so it happened that before the Arabella came homing to Tortuga in the following May to refit and repair — for she was not without scars, as you conceive — the fame of her and of Peter Blood her captain had swept from the Bahamas to the Windward Isles, from New Providence to Trinidad.

An echo of it had reached Europe, and at the Court of St. James’s angry representations were made by the Ambassador of Spain, to whom it was answered that it must not be supposed that this Captain Blood held any commission from the King of England; that he was, in fact, a proscribed rebel, an escaped slave, and that any measures against him by His Catholic Majesty would receive the cordial approbation of King James II.

Don Miguel de Espinosa, the Admiral of Spain in the West Indies, and his nephew Don Esteban who sailed with him, did not lack the will to bring the adventurer to the yardarm.  With them this business of capturing Blood, which was now an international affair, was also a family matter.

Spain, through the mouth of Don Miguel, did not spare her threats.  The report of them reached Tortuga, and with it the assurance that Don Miguel had behind him not only the authority of his own nation, but that of the English King as well.

It was a brutum fulmen that inspired no terrors in Captain Blood.  Nor was he likely, on account of it, to allow himself to run to rust in the security of Tortuga.  For what he had suffered at the hands of Man he had chosen to make Spain the scapegoat.  Thus he accounted that he served a twofold purpose:  he took compensation and at the same time served, not indeed the Stuart King, whom he despised, but England and, for that matter, all the rest of civilized mankind which cruel, treacherous, greedy, bigoted Castile sought to exclude from intercourse with the New World.

One day as he sat with Hagthorpe and Wolverstone over a pipe and a bottle of rum in the stifling reek of tar and stale tobacco of a waterside tavern, he was accosted by a splendid ruffian in a gold-laced coat of dark-blue satin with a crimson sash, a foot wide, about the waist.

“C’est vous qu’on appelle Le Sang?” the fellow hailed him.

Captain Blood looked up to consider the questioner before replying.  The man was tall and built on lines of agile strength, with a swarthy, aquiline face that was brutally handsome.  A diamond of great price flamed on the indifferently clean hand resting on the pummel of his long rapier, and there were gold rings in his ears, half-concealed by long ringlets of oily chestnut hair.

Captain Blood took the pipe-stem from between his lips.

“My name,” he said, “is Peter Blood.  The Spaniards know me for Don Pedro Sangre and a Frenchman may call me Le Sang if he pleases.”

“Good,” said the gaudy adventurer in English, and without further invitation he drew up a stool and sat down at that greasy table.  “My name,” he informed the three men, two of whom at least were eyeing him askance, “it is Levasseur.  You may have heard of me.”