The Chronicles of Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini

Author:Rafael Sabatini
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

6. The Gold at Santa Maria

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The buccaneer fleet of five tall ships rode snugly at anchor in a sequestered creek on the western coast of the Gulf of Darien. A cable’s length away, across gently heaving, pellucid waters shot with opalescence by the morning sun, stretched a broad crescent of silver-grey sand; behind this rose the forest, vividly green from the rains now overpast, abrupt and massive as a cliff. At its foot, among the flaming rhododendrons thrusting forward like outposts of the jungle, stood the tents and rude log huts, palmetto thatched‌—‌the buccaneer encampment during that season of careening, of refitting, and of victualling with the fat turtles abounding thereabouts. The buccaneer host, some eight hundred strong, surged there like a swarming hive, a motley mob, English and French in the main, but including odd Dutchmen, and even a few West Indian half-castes. There were boucan hunters from Hispaniola, lumbermen from Campeachy, vagrant seamen, runagate convicts from the plantations, and proscribed outlaws from the Old World and the New.

Out of the jungle into their midst stepped, on that glowing April morning, three Darien Indians, the foremost of whom was of a tall, commanding presence, broad in the shoulder and long in the arm. He was clad in drawers of hairy, untanned hide, and a red blanket served him for a cloak. His naked breast was streaked in black and red; in his nose he wore a crescent-shaped plate of beaten gold that hung down to his lip, and there were massive gold rings in his ears. A tuft of eagle’s feathers sprouted from his sleek black hair, and he was armed with a javelin which he used as a stag.

He advanced calmly and without diffidence into their staring midst, and in primitive Spanish announced himself as the cacique Guanahani, called by the Spaniards Brazo Largo. He begged to be taken before their captain, to whom he referred also by his Hispanicised name of Don Pedro Sangre.

They conducted him aboard the flagship, the Arabella, and there, in the captain’s cabin, the Indian cacique was courteously made welcome by a spare gentleman of a good height, very elegant in the Spanish fashion, whose resolute face, in cast of features and deep coppery tan, might, but for the eyes of a vivid blue, have been that of a Darien Indian.

Brazo Largo came to the point with a directness and economy of words to which his limited knowledge of Spanish constrained him.

“Usted venir conmigo. Yo llevar usted mucho oro español. Caramba!” said he, in deep, guttural tones. Literally this may be rendered: “You to come with me. I take you much Spanish gold,” with the added vague expletive “Caramba!”

The blue eyes flashed with interest. And, in the fluent Spanish acquired in less unregenerate days, Captain Blood answered him with a laugh:

“You are very opportune. Caramba! Where is this Spanish gold?”

“Yonder.” The cacique pointed vaguely westward. “March ten days.”

Blood’s face grew overcast. Remembering Morgan’s exploit across the isthmus, he leapt at a conclusion.

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