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My name is Blood Captain Peter Blood, and this is my ship the Arabella, all very much at your service. "Blood!" shrilled the little man. "O 'Sblood! A pirate!" He swung to the Colossus who followed him "A damned pirate, van der Kuylen. Rend my vitals, but we're come from Scylla to Charybdis." "So?" said the other gutturally, and again, "So?" Then the humour of it took him, and he yielded to it.
Do you permit yourself to be ironical?" he disapproved him, and possibly with a view to correcting any such tendency, proceeded to introduce himself. "I am Lord Willoughby, King William's Governor-General of the West Indies, and this is Admiral van der Kuylen, commander of His Majesty's West Indian fleet, at present mislaid somewhere in this damned Caribbean Sea."
Admiral van der Kuylen nudged his lordship, a humourous twinkle in his blue eyes. "His bolitics are fery sound, I dink," he growled. His lordship's smile brought lines like gashes into his leathery cheeks. "'Slife! hadn't you heard? Where the devil have you been at all?" "Out of touch with the world for the last three months," said Blood. "Stab me! You must have been.
That long, inactive waiting was straining the nerves of both Lord Willoughby and van der Kuylen. "You said you vould show us zome vine dings. Vhere are dese vine dings?" Blood faced them, smiling confidently. He was arrayed for battle, in back-and-breast of black steel. "I'll not be trying your patience much longer. Indeed, I notice already a slackening in the fire.
It was followed by letters from King William's Secretary of State informing Colonel Bishop that there was war with France, and that in view of its effect upon the Colonies a Governor-General was coming out to the West Indies in the person of Lord Willoughby, and that with him came a squadron under the command of Admiral van der Kuylen to reenforce the Jamaica fleet against eventualities.
"But the odds!" his lordship insisted. "Id is imbossible," said van der Kuylen, shaking his great head. "Seamanship is imbordand. Bud guns is guns." "If I can't defeat him, I can sink my own ships in the channel, and block him in until Bishop gets back from his wild-goose chase with his squadron, or until your own fleet turns up." "And what good will that be, pray?" demanded Willoughby.
The Victorieuse and the Medusa appeared to have taken no more than a few scars; but the third ship, the Baleine, listing heavily to larboard so as to keep the great gash in her starboard well above water, was out of account. "You see!" he cried to van der Kuylen, and without waiting for the Dutchman's approving grunt, he shouted an order: "Helm, hard-a-port!"
Willoughby and van der Kuylen on the poop had watched in breathless amazement the speed and precision with which Blood and his desperate crew had gone to work.
There were other West Indian settlements demanding the visit of inspection of the new Governor-General, and Lord Willoughby was in haste to sail for the Antilles. "And meanwhile," he complained to his Admiral, "I am detained here by the absence of this fool of a Deputy-Governor." "So?" said van der Kuylen. "But vhy should dad dedam you?"
"Captain Blood, I discover greatness in you," said he. "Sure it's your lordship has the fine sight to perceive it," laughed the Captain. "Yes, yes! Bud how vill you do id?" growled van der Kuylen. "Come on deck, and it's a demonstration I'll be giving you before the day's much older." "VHY do you vait, my friend?" growled van der Kuylen. "Aye in God's name!" snapped Willoughby.
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