Adventure Magazine Cover, October 10, 1921 — page 157: what you’re looking at

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

The Hostage of mingled scorn and amazement he ex- plained himself: “You killed him on that day when ye tempted him to take a commission that made him a renegade and false to those who trusted him. “With all the sins he has committed and all those that your imagination adds to them, at least he could boast until that day that he had never broken faith with any: man. Because he saw that ye scorned him for a pirate, and because falsely ye repre- sented that in this way he might redeem himself, he succumbed. And for what? To be told now what you have just told me—that though I redeem myself in the eyes of the world and of the law, in your eyes I remain a thief and a pirate, con- temptible and to be shunned. “Was not that to practise a deceit upon me? Will ye pretend that ye lacked the wit to see that it was redemption in your eyes alone that concerned me? What is the world and the law to me? I have shown—” He broke off. “Oh, but there! I’ve said enough, and perhaps more than enough; for after all, maybe, the cursed thing ye made me do for nothing can be undone. Good day to you, ma’am.”’ He turned and putting on his hat with a certain abrupt fierceness he strode away towards the house without waiting for an answer. A negro slave conducted him to the wide piazza on the other side of the house in whose shade Colonel Bishop and my Lord Julian Wade took what little air there was. They contrasted oddly, those two: the deputy-governor elderly, big, and corpu- lent, with a coarse, mahogany-colored face; Lord Julian young, tall, and elegant, with a high-bred countenance and a slow musical voice. Colonel Bishop hailed his visitor with a series of grunts of vague but apparently ill-humored import. He did not trouble to rise, not even when his lordship, obeying the instincts of finer breeding, set him the example. From under scowling brows the wealthy Barbados planter considered this Colonel Blood who once had been his slave, whilst, hat in hand leaning lightly upon his long beribboned cane Colonel Blood waited, revealing nothing -in his countenance of the anger seething within him, which was being steadily nourished by this cavalier reception. 147 At last, with scowling brow and in self- sufficient tones, Colonel Bishop delivered himself. “T have sent for you, Colonel Blood, be- cause of certain news that has just reached me. I am informed that yesterday evening a frigate left the harbor having on board your associate Wolverstone and a hundred men of the hundred and fifty that were serving under you. His lordship and I shall be glad to have your explanation of how you came to permit that departure.” “Permit?” quoth Blood. “TI ordered it.” The answer left Bishop speechless for a moment. Then: = “You ordered it?” he said in accents of unbelief whilst Lord Julian raised his eye- brows. “’Swounds! Perhaps you’ll explain yourself. Whither has Wolverstone gone?”’ “To Tortuga. He’s gone with a message to the officers commanding the other four ships of the fleet that is awaiting me there, telling them what’s happened and why they are no longer to expect me.” Bishop’s great face seemed to swell and its high color to deepen. “You hear that, my lord?” he cried. “Deliberately he has let Wolverstone loose upon the seas again—Wolverstone, the worst of all that gang of pirates after him- self. I hope your lordship begins to per- ceive the mistake you made in granting the King’s commission to such a man as this against all my counsels. Why this thing is—it’s just mutiny—treason! By ——! It’s matter for a court-martial.” “Och, cease your blather of mutiny and treason and courts-martial.”” Blood put on his hat, and sat down unbidden. “I have sent Wolverstone to inform Hag- thorpe and Christian and Yberville and the rest of my lads that they’ve one clear month to follow my example, quit piracy and get back to their boucans or their logwood, or else clear out of Caribbean seas. That’s what I’ve done.”’ “But the men?” his lordship interposed in his level cultured voice. ‘“This hundred men ‘that Wolverstone has taken with - him?” “They are those of my crew who had no ‘taste for the King’s service and have pre- ferred to seek work of other kinds. It was in our compact, my lord, that there should be no constraining of my men.” “T don’t remember it,” said his lordship. “Perhaps it wasn’t explicity stated. But . COMmIGHOO C SS C©