"Good!" grunted Cahusac. "On that understanding all arranges itself."

"You think so?" said Captain Blood. "But if M. d'Ogeron should refuse to
pay the ransom? What then?" He laughed, and got lazily to his feet. "No,
no. If Captain Levasseur is meanwhile to keep the girl, as he proposes,
then let him pay this ransom, and be his the risk if it should
afterwards not be forthcoming."

"That's it!" cried one of Levasseur's officers. And Cahusac added: "It's
reasonable, that! Captain Blood is right. It is in the articles."

"What is in the articles, you fools?" Levasseur was in danger of losing
his head. "Sacre Dieu! Where do you suppose that I have twenty thousand
pieces? My whole share of the prizes of this cruise does not come to
half that sum. I'll be your debtor until I've earned it. Will that
content you?"

All things considered, there is not a doubt that it would have done so
had not Captain Blood intended otherwise.

"And if you should die before you have earned it? Ours is a calling
fraught with risks, my Captain."

"Damn you!" Levasseur flung upon him livid with fury. "Will nothing
satisfy you?"

"Oh, but yes. Twenty thousand pieces of eight for immediate division."

"I haven't got it."

"Then let some one buy the prisoners who has."

"And who do you suppose has it if I have not?"

"I have," said Captain Blood.

"You have!" Levasseur's mouth fell open. "You... you want the girl?"

"Why not? And I exceed you in gallantry in that I will make sacrifices
to obtain her, and in honesty in that I am ready to pay for what I
want."

Levasseur stared at him foolishly agape. Behind him pressed his
officers, gaping also.

Captain Blood sat down again on the cask, and drew from an inner pocket
of his doublet a little leather bag. "I am glad to be able to resolve a
difficulty that at one moment seemed insoluble." And under the bulging
eyes of Levasseur and his officers, he untied the mouth of the bag and
rolled into his left palm four or five pearls each of the size of a
sparrow's egg. There were twenty such in the bag, the very pick of
those taken in that raid upon the pearl fleet. "You boast a knowledge of
pearls, Cahusac. At what do you value this?"

The Breton took between coarse finger and thumb the proffered lustrous,
delicately iridescent sphere, his shrewd eyes appraising it.

"A thousand pieces," he answered shortly.

"It will fetch rather more in Tortuga or Jamaica," said Captain Blood,
"and tw