encountered and had been sunk three days ago by the
Santo Nino, and Cahusac had narrowly escaped hanging merely that for
some time he might be a mock among the Brethren of the Coast.

For many a month thereafter he was to hear in Tortuga the jeering taunt:

"Where do you spend the gold that you brought back from Maracaybo?"

CHAPTER XVIII. THE MILAGROSA

The affair at Maracaybo is to be considered as Captain Blood's
buccaneering masterpiece. Although there is scarcely one of the many
actions that he fought--recorded in such particular detail by Jeremy
Pitt--which does not afford some instance of his genius for naval
tactics, yet in none is this more shiningly displayed than in those two
engagements by which he won out of the trap which Don Miguel de Espinosa
had sprung upon him.

The fame which he had enjoyed before this, great as it already was, is
dwarfed into insignificance by the fame that followed. It was a fame
such as no buccaneer--not even Morgan--has ever boasted, before or
since.

In Tortuga, during the months he spent there refitting the three ships
he had captured from the fleet that had gone out to destroy him, he
found himself almost an object of worship in the eyes of the wild
Brethren of the Coast, all of whom now clamoured for the honour of
serving under him. It placed him in the rare position of being able
to pick and choose the crews for his augmented fleet, and he chose
fastidiously. When next he sailed away it was with a fleet of five fine
ships in which went something over a thousand men. Thus you behold him
not merely famous, but really formidable. The three captured Spanish
vessels he had renamed with a certain scholarly humour the Clotho,
Lachesis, and Atropos, a grimly jocular manner of conveying to the world
that he made them the arbiters of the fate of any Spaniards he should
henceforth encounter upon the seas.

In Europe the news of this fleet, following upon the news of the Spanish
Admiral's defeat at Maracaybo, produced something of a sensation. Spain
and England were variously and unpleasantly exercised, and if you care
to turn up the diplomatic correspondence exchanged on the subject, you
will find that it is considerable and not always amiable.

And meanwhile in the Caribbean, the Spanish Admiral Don Miguel de
Espinosa might be said--to use a term not yet invented in his day--to
have run amok. The disgrace into which he had fallen as a result of the
disasters suffered at