, from Jamaica." He pushed bottle and glass
towards Wolverstone.

Wolverstone disregarded them.

"I'm asking you what ails you?" he bawled.

"Rum," said Captain Blood again, and smiled. "Jus' rum. I answer all
your queshons. Why donjerr answer mine? Whatcher gonerdo wi' me?"

"I've done it," said Wolverstone. "Thank God, ye had the sense to hold
your tongue till I came. Are ye sober enough to understand me?"

"Drunk or sober, allus 'derstand you."

"Then listen." And out came the tale that Wolverstone had told. The
Captain steadied himself to grasp it.

"It'll do as well asertruth," said he when Wolverstone had finished.
"And... oh, no marrer! Much obliged to ye, Old Wolf--faithful Old Wolf!
But was it worthertrouble? I'm norrer pirate now; never a pirate again.
'S finished'" He banged the table, his eyes suddenly fierce.

"I'll come and talk to you again when there's less rum in your wits,"
said Wolverstone, rising. "Meanwhile ye'll please to remember the tale
I've told, and say nothing that'll make me out a liar. They all believes
me, even the men as sailed wi' me from Port Royal. I've made 'em. If
they thought as how you'd taken the King's commission in earnest, and
for the purpose o' doing as Morgan did, ye guess what would follow."

"Hell would follow," said the Captain. "An' tha's all I'm fit for."

"Ye're maudlin," Wolverstone growled. "We'll talk again to-morrow."

They did; but to little purpose, either that day or on any day
thereafter while the rains--which set in that night--endured. Soon the
shrewd Wolverstone discovered that rum was not what ailed Blood. Rum
was in itself an effect, and not by any means the cause of the Captain's
listless apathy. There was a canker eating at his heart, and the Old
Wolf knew enough to make a shrewd guess of its nature. He cursed all
things that daggled petticoats, and, knowing his world, waited for the
sickness to pass.

But it did not pass. When Blood was not dicing or drinking in the
taverns of Tortuga, keeping company that in his saner days he had
loathed, he was shut up in his cabin aboard the Arabella, alone and
uncommunicative. His friends at Government House, bewildered at
this change in him, sought to reclaim him. Mademoiselle d'Ogeron,
particularly distressed, sent him almost daily invitations, to few of
which he responded.

Later, as the rainy season approached its end, he was sought by his
captains with proposals of remunerative raids on Spanish se