Ashore he went, probably for no other reason than to obey the general
expectation. His mood was taciturn; his face grim and sneering. Let
Wolverstone arrive, as presently he would, and all this hero-worship
would turn to execration.
His captains, Hagthorpe, Christian, and Yberville, were on the jetty
to receive him, and with them were some hundreds of his buccaneers.
He cut short their greetings, and when they plagued him with questions
of where he had tarried, he bade them await the coming of Wolverstone,
who would satisfy their curiosity to a surfeit. On that he shook
them off, and shouldered his way through that heterogeneous throng
that was composed of bustling traders of several nations - English,
French, and Dutch - of planters and of seamen of various degrees, of
buccaneers who were fruit-selling half-castes, negro slaves, some
doll-tearsheets and dunghill-queans from the Old World, and all the
other types of the human family that converted the quays of Cayona
into a disreputable image of Babel.
Winning clear at last, and after difficulties, Captain Blood took
his way alone to the fine house of M.
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