Adventure Magazine Cover — page 163: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Santa Maria guard it. That is how my garrison comes to be depleted, and that is why I have not hesitated to surrender.” He laughed again, observing Blood’s rue- ful face. A gust of rage swept through the ranks of the buccaneers pressing behind their leader. The news had run through the {ranks as swiftly as flame over gunpowder and with similar effect in the explosion it produced. With yells of execration and sinister baring of weapons, they would have flung them- selves upon the Spanish commander, who— in their view—had cheated them, and torn him there and then to pieces, had not Blood swung round and made of his own body a shield for Don Domingo. “Hold!” he commanded in a voice that blared like a trumpet. “Don Domingo is my prisoner, and I have pledged my word that he shall suffer no violence.” Yberville it was who fiercely voieed the common thought. “Will you keep faith with a Spanish dog who has cheated us? Let him be hanged.” “Tt was his duty, and [ll have no man hanged for doing no more than that.” For a moment his voice was drowned in uproar. But he stood his ground impas- sively, his light eyes stern, his hand upheld, imposing some measure of restraint upon them. “Silence, there, and listen!’’ he shouted. “You are wasting time. The harm is far from being beyond repair. The gold has but a few hours start. You, Yberville, and you, Christian, reembark your companies at once, and follow. You should come up with them before they reach the gulf, but even if you don’t it is still a far cry to Panama and you’ll overtake them long be- fore they’re in sight of it. . Away with you. Wolverstone’s company will await your re- turn here with me.”’ It was the only thing that could have stayed their fury and prevented a massacre of the unarmed Spaniards. They did not wait to be told a second time, but poured out of the fort and out of the town faster than they had poured into it. The only grumblers were the sixscore men of Wolver- stone’s company who were bidden to remain behind. They locked up the Spaniards, all together, in one of the long pent-houses that made up the interior of the fort. Then they scattered about the litle town in quest of victuals and such loot as there might be. 157 BLOOD turned his attention to the wounded. These, both his own Sete 1 men and the Spaniards, had been carried into another of the pent-houses, where beds of hay and dried leaves had been improvised for them. There were between forty and fifty of them in all, of which num- ber one quarter were buccaneers. In killed and wounded the Spanish loss had been up- ward of a hundred men, that of the buc- caneers between thirty and forty. With half a dozen assistants, of whom one was a Spaniard who had some knowledge of medicine, Blood went briskly to work, to set limbs and patch up wounds. Absorbed in his task, he paid no heed to the sounds from outside, where the Indians, who had gone to earth during the fighting, were now en- camped, until suddenly a piercing scream disturbed him, Before he could move or speak, the door of the hut was wrenched open, and a woman, hugging an infant to her breast, reeled in, calling him wildly by his Hispanicized name: “Don Pedro! Don Pedro Sangre!” Then as he stepped forward, frowning, she gasped for breath, clutched} her throat, and fell on her knees before him, crying agon- izedly in Spanish: ‘Save him! They are murdering him— murdering him!’ She was a lithe young thing that had scarcely yet crossed the threshold of woman- hood, whom at a casual glance one might, from her apparel and general appearance, have supposed a Spaniard of the peasant class. Her blue-black hair and liquid black eyes were such as you might see on many an Andalusian, nor was her skin much swarth- ier. Only the high cheek-bones and pecu- liar dusky lips proclaimed upon a closer in- spection her real race. “What is it?” said Blood. they murdering?”’ A shadow darkened the sunlit doorway before she could answer, and Brazo Largo entered, dignified and grimly purposeful. Overmastering terror of the advancing In- dian froze the crouching woman’s tongue. Now he was standing over her. He stooped and set his hand upon her shrinking shoul- der. He spoke to her swiftly in the guttural tongue of Darien, and though Blood under- stood no word of it, yet he could not mistake the note of stern command. Wildly, a mad thing, she looked = at Captain Blood. “Whom are COMIC NOONKS (Oo)