That was the message he received from them that
same evening by the sullen mouth of Cahusac himself.
He welcomed it, and invited the Breton to sit down and join the
council which was even then deliberating upon the means to be
employed. This council occupied the spacious patio of the
Governor's house - which Captain Blood had appropriated to his
own uses - a cloistered stone quadrangle in the middle of which
a fountain played coolly under a trellis of vine. Orange-trees
grew on two sides of it, and the still, evening air was heavy
with the scent of them. It was one of those pleasant
exterior-interiors which Moorish architects had introduced to
Spain and the Spaniards had carried with them to the New World.
Here that council of war, composed of six men in all, deliberated
until late that night upon the plan of action which Captain Blood
put forward.
The great freshwater lake of Maracaybo, nourished by a score of
rivers from the snow-capped ranges that surround it on two sides,
is some hundred and twenty miles in length and almost the same
distance across at its widest.
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