"
He turned, and presented to Lord Willoughby a formidable front.
His head-piece was gone, his breastplate dinted, his right sleeve
a rag hanging from his shoulder about a naked arm. He was splashed
from head to foot with blood, and there was blood from a scalp-wound
that he had taken matting his hair and mixing with the grime of
powder on his face to render him unrecognizable.
But from that horrible mask two vivid eyes looked out preternaturally
bright, and from those eyes two tears had ploughed each a furrow
through the filth of his cheeks.
CHAPTER XXXI
HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR
When the cost of that victory came to be counted, it was found that
of three hundred and twenty buccaneers who had left Cartagena with
Captain Blood, a bare hundred remained sound and whole. The
Elizabeth had suffered so seriously that it was doubtful if she
could ever again be rendered seaworthy, and Hagthorpe, who had so
gallantly commanded her in that last action, was dead. Against this,
on the other side of the account, stood the facts that, with a far
inferior force and by sheer skill and desperate valour, Blood's
buccaneers had saved Jamaica from bombardment and pillage, and they
had captured the fleet of M.
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