t, which you may deem invincible,
as I have dealt already with your fleet, which you deemed invincible, I
make you, purely out of humanitarian considerations, this last offer of
terms. I will spare this city of Maracaybo and forthwith evacuate it,
leaving behind me the forty prisoners I have taken, in consideration of
your paying me the sum of fifty thousand pieces of eight and one hundred
head of cattle as a ransom, thereafter granting me unmolested passage of
the bar. My prisoners, most of whom are persons of consideration, I will
retain as hostages until after my departure, sending them back in the
canoes which we shall take with us for that purpose. If your excellency
should be so ill-advised as to refuse these terms, and thereby impose
upon me the necessity of reducing your fort at the cost of some lives, I
warn you that you may expect no quarter from us, and that I shall begin
by leaving a heap of ashes where this pleasant city of Maracaybo now
stands."

The letter written, he bade them bring him from among the prisoners
the Deputy-Governor of Maracaybo, who had been taken at Gibraltar.
Disclosing its contents to him, he despatched him with it to Don Miguel.

His choice of a messenger was shrewd. The Deputy-Governor was of all men
the most anxious for the deliverance of his city, the one man who on his
own account would plead most fervently for its preservation at all costs
from the fate with which Captain Blood was threatening it. And as he
reckoned so it befell. The Deputy-Governor added his own passionate
pleading to the proposals of the letter.

But Don Miguel was of stouter heart. True, his fleet had been partly
destroyed and partly captured. But then, he argued, he had been taken
utterly by surprise. That should not happen again. There should be no
surprising the fort. Let Captain Blood do his worst at Maracaybo, there
should be a bitter reckoning for him when eventually he decided--as,
sooner or later, decide he must--to come forth. The Deputy-Governor was
flung into panic. He lost his temper, and said some hard things to the
Admiral. But they were not as hard as the thing the Admiral said to him
in answer.

"Had you been as loyal to your King in hindering the entrance of these
cursed pirates as I shall be in hindering their going forth again, we
should not now find ourselves in our present straits. So weary me no
more with your coward counsels. I make no terms with Captain Blood. I
know my duty to my K