After having systematically hunted
his enemy in vain for a year, Don Miguel chanced upon him in this
unexpected and entirely fortuitous fashion. But that is the ironic
way of Fortune. It was also the way of Fortune that Don Miguel
should thus come upon the Arabella at a time when, separated from
the rest of the fleet, she was alone and at a disadvantage. It
looked to Don Miguel as if the luck which so long had been on Blood's
side had at last veered in his own favour.
Miss Bishop, newly risen, had come out to take the air on the
quarter-deck with his lordship in attendance - as you would expect
of so gallant a gentleman - when she beheld the big red ship that
had once been the Cinco Llagas out of Cadiz. The vessel was
bearing down upon them, her mountains of snowy canvas bellying
forward, the long pennon with the cross of St. George fluttering
from her main truck in the morning breeze, the gilded portholes in
her red hull and the gilded beak-head aflash in the morning sun.
Miss Bishop was not to recognize this for that same Cinco Llagas
which she had seen once before - on a tragic day in Barbados three
years ago.
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