ars to be
a cloud on the horizon. That is the island of Barbados well astern. All
day we have been sailing east before the wind with but one intent--to
set as great a distance between Barbados and ourselves as possible. But
now, almost out of sight of land, we are in a difficulty. The only man
among us schooled in the art of navigation is fevered, delirious, in
fact, as a result of certain ill-treatment he received ashore before we
carried him away with us. I can handle a ship in action, and there are
one or two men aboard who can assist me; but of the higher mysteries of
seamanship and of the art of finding a way over the trackless wastes of
ocean, we know nothing. To hug the land, and go blundering about
what you so aptly call this pestilent archipelago, is for us to court
disaster, as you can perhaps conceive. And so it comes to this: We
desire to make for the Dutch settlement of Curacao as straightly as
possible. Will you pledge me your honour, if I release you upon parole,
that you will navigate us thither? If so, we will release you and your
surviving men upon arrival there."

Don Diego bowed his head upon his breast, and strode away in thought to
the stern windows. There he stood looking out upon the sunlit sea and
the dead water in the great ship's wake--his ship, which these English
dogs had wrested from him; his ship, which he was asked to bring safely
into a port where she would be completely lost to him and refitted
perhaps to make war upon his kin. That was in one scale; in the other
were the lives of sixteen men. Fourteen of them mattered little to him,
but the remaining two were his own and his son's.

He turned at length, and his back being to the light, the Captain could
not see how pale his face had grown.

"I accept," he said.

CHAPTER XI. FILIAL PIETY

By virtue of the pledge he had given, Don Diego de Espinosa enjoyed the
freedom of the ship that had been his, and the navigation which he had
undertaken was left entirely in his hands. And because those who manned
her were new to the seas of the Spanish Main, and because even the
things that had happened in Bridgetown were not enough to teach them to
regard every Spaniard as a treacherous, cruel dog to be slain at sight,
they used him with the civility which his own suave urbanity invited.
He took his meals in the great cabin with Blood and the three officers
elected to support him: Hagthorpe, Wolverstone, and Dyke.

They found Don Diego