and...."

"Now don't be rash. My men are within their rights, as you are aware.
They demand to know when this sharing of the spoil is to take place, and
when they are to receive the fifth for which their articles provide."

"God give me patience! How can we share the spoil before it has been
completely gathered?"

"My men have reason to believe that it is gathered; and, anyway, they
view with mistrust that it should all be housed aboard your ships, and
remain in your possession. They say that hereafter there will be no
ascertaining what the spoil really amounts to."

"But--name of Heaven!--I have kept books. They are there for all to
see."

"They do not wish to see account-books. Few of them can read. They want
to view the treasure itself. They know--you compel me to be blunt--that
the accounts have been falsified. Your books show the spoil of Cartagena
to amount to some ten million livres. The men know--and they are very
skilled in these computations--that it exceeds the enormous total of
forty millions. They insist that the treasure itself be produced and
weighed in their presence, as is the custom among the Brethren of the
Coast."

"I know nothing of filibuster customs." The gentleman was disdainful.

"But you are learning quickly."

"What do you mean, you rogue? I am a leader of armies, not of plundering
thieves."

"Oh, but of course!" Blood's irony laughed in his eyes. "Yet, whatever
you may be, I warn you that unless you yield to a demand that I consider
just and therefore uphold, you may look for trouble, and it would not
surprise me if you never leave Cartagena at all, nor convey a single
gold piece home to France."

"Ah, pardieu! Am I to understand that you are threatening me?"

"Come, come, M. le Baron! I warn you of the trouble that a little
prudence may avert. You do not know on what a volcano you are sitting.
You do not know the ways of buccaneers. If you persist, Cartagena will
be drenched in blood, and whatever the outcome the King of France will
not have been well served."

That shifted the basis of the argument to less hostile ground. Awhile
yet it continued, to be concluded at last by an ungracious undertaking
from M. de Rivarol to submit to the demands of the buccaneers. He gave
it with an extreme ill-grace, and only because Blood made him realize at
last that to withhold it longer would be dangerous. In an engagement,
he might conceivably defeat Blood's followers. But conceivably he mi