When her hatches were removed, a human cargo
was disclosed in her hold.
"Slaves," said Wolverstone, and persisted in that belief cursing
Spanish devilry until Cahusac crawled up out of the dark bowels of
the ship, and stood blinking in the sunlight.
There was more than sunlight to make the Breton pirate blink. And
those that crawled out after him - the remnants of his crew - cursed
him horribly for the pusillanimity which had brought them into the
ignominy of owing their deliverance to those whom they had deserted
as lost beyond hope.
Their sloop had encountered and had been sunk three days ago by the
Santo Nino, and Cahusac had narrowly escaped hanging merely that
for some time he might be a mock among the Brethren of the Coast.
For many a month thereafter he was to hear in Tortuga the jeering
taunt:
"Where do you spend the gold that you brought back from Maracaybo?"
CHAPTER XVIII
THE MILAGROSA
The affair at Maracaybo is to be considered as Captain Blood's
buccaneering masterpiece. Although there is scarcely one of the
many actions that he fought - recorded in such particular detail by
Jeremy Pitt - which does not afford some instance of his genius for
naval tactics, yet in none is this more shiningly displayed than
in those two engagements by which he won out of the trap which Don
Miguel de Espinosa had sprung upon him.
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