The Buccaneer Chief: A Romance of the Spanish Main

The Duke, doubtless warned of his visit, received him with a smile on his lips, and with a most affectionate air.

Emboldened by this reception, the Count, overcoming his timidity, requested leave to marry Doña Clara.

The Duke received it favourably; said that he had expected this request, and that it satisfied all his wishes, since it caused the happiness of a daughter he loved.

"Still," he remarked to the Count, "although there was a truce between the two countries, a peace was not yet signed. Though, according to all appearance it would be soon carried out, for all that, he feared lest the news of this marriage might injure the Count's future, by rendering the Cardinal ill disposed toward him."

This reflection had several times offered itself to the young officer's mind; hence he hung his head, not daring to reply, because, unluckily, he had no valid reason to offer, that would remove the Duke's objections.

The latter came to his assistance by saying that there was a very simple way of arranging matters to the general satisfaction, and removing this apparently insurmountable difficulty.

The Count quivering with fear and pleasure, asked what this method was.

The Duke then explained to him that he meant a secret marriage. As long as the war lasted, silence would be maintained, but once peace was concluded and an ambassador sent to Paris, the marriage should be publicly announced to the Cardinal, who then would probably not feel offended by the union.

The young man had been too near seeing his dream of bliss eternally destroyed to raise the slightest objection to this proposition; secret or not, the marriage would not be the less valid and he cared little for the rest. Hence he consented to all the conditions imposed on him by the Duke, who insisted that the marriage might be effected in such a way as to keep him in ignorance of it, so that in the event of his Eminence attempting to turn the King against him, he might employ this pretended ignorance in foiling the ill will of those who might attempt to ruin him.

The Count did not exactly understand what the King of Spain had to do with his marriage; but as the Duke spoke with an air of conviction, and seemed to be greatly alarmed about the King's displeasure, he consented to everything.

Two days later at nightfall, the young couple were married at the Church of la Merced, by a priest, who consented for a heavy sum to lend his ministration to this illegal act.

Michael the Basque and Bowline served as witnesses of the captain, who, on the pressing recommendation of the Duke, was unwilling to let any of his officers into his secrets, while he was sure of the silence of the two sailors.

Immediately after the ceremony, the new bride was taken off on one side by her witnesses, while her husband withdrew greatly annoyed on the other, and went aboard the frigate.

When the Count on the next morning presented himself at the Duke's palace, the latter informed him that, in order to remove any pretext for malevolence, he had thought it advisable to send away his daughter for a while, and she had gone to stay with a relation residing at Grenada.

The Count did not allow his disappointment to be seen; he withdrew, pretending to accept as gospel the somewhat specious reasoning of the Duke.

Still, he was beginning to find the Duke's conduct towards him very extraordinary, and he resolved to clear up the doubts that arose in his mind.

Michael and Bowline were sent into the country to reconnoitre.

The Count learned from them, not without surprise, at the end of two days' researches that Doña Clara was not at Grenada, but merely at Puerto Santa Maria, a charming little town facing Cadiz on the opposite side of the road.

The Captain, so soon as he possessed the information for the success of the plan he meditated, managed by the intervention of Michael, who spoke Spanish like an Andalusian, to send a note to Doña Clara, and at nightfall, followed by his two faithful sailors, he landed at Santa Maria.

The house inhabited by the young lady was rather isolated; he set the two sailors on sentry to watch over her safety, and walked straight up to the house.

Doña Clara herself opened the door for him. The joy of the couple was immense, and the Count retired shortly before sunrise; at about ten o'clock, he went as usual to pay a visit to his father-in-law, in whose presence he continued to feign the most complete ignorance as to Doña Clara's abode, and was most kindly welcomed.

This state of things went on for nearly a month. One day the Count suddenly received information of the resumption of the hostilities between Spain and France; he was himself forced to quit Cadiz, but wished to have a final interview with the Duke, in order to ask him for a frank explanation of his conduct; in the event of this explanation not satisfying him, he was resolved to carry his wife off.

When he arrived at the Duke's palace, a confidential servant informed him that his master, suddenly summoned by the king, had started an hour previously to Madrid, without, to his great regret, having had time to take leave of him.

On hearing this, the Count had a presentiment of evil; he turned pale, but succeeded in overcoming his emotion, and calmly asked the valet whether his master had not left a letter for him; the servant answered in the affirmative and handed him a sealed note.

The Count broke the seal with a trembling hand and ran through the letter, but his emotion was so great on perusing the contents that he tottered, and had not the valet sprang forward to support him, he would have fallen to the ground.

"Ah!" he muttered, "Michael was right," and he crumpled the paper savagely.

But suddenly recovering himself, he overcame his grief and, after giving the valet several louis, hurried away.

"Poor young man!" the valet muttered with a sorrowful shake of the head and re-entered the palace, the gates of which he closed after him.

CHAPTER VII

DESPAIR

A few yards from the palace the Count met Michael, who was coming towards him.

"A boat, quick, quick, my good Michael," he shouted, "'tis a matter of life and death."

The sailor, terrified at the condition in which he saw his commandant, wished to ask him what the matter was, but the Count roughly imposed silence on him by repeating his order to procure a boat at once.

Michael bowed his head.

"Woe is me. I foresaw this," he muttered, with mingled grief and anger, and he ran off towards the port.

It is not a difficult task to find a boat at Cadiz, and Michael had only to choose; comprehending that the Count was in a hurry, he selected one pulled by ten oars.

The Count arrived at the same moment.

"Twenty louis for you and your crew if you are at Puerto in twenty minutes," he shouted, as he leaped into the boat, which was almost capsized by the violence of the shock.

The boat started, the sailors bent over their oars, and made her fly through the water.

The captain with his eyes obstinately fixed on Santa Maria, and striking his clenched fist on the boat's gunwale, in spite of the excessive speed at which it was going, incessantly repeated in a choking voice —

"Quicker, quicker, muchachos."

He passed like an arrow across the bows of the frigate, whose crew were preparing to weigh anchor. At length they reached Puerto.

"No one is to follow me," the captain cried, as he leaped ashore.

But Michael did not heed this order, and at the risk of what might happen to him, he set out in pursuit of the Count, whom he would not abandon in his present frightful condition.

It was fortunate he did so, for when he reached the house Doña Clara had inhabited, he saw the young man lying senseless on the ground.

The house was deserted, and Doña Clara had disappeared.

The sailor took his captain on his shoulders and conveyed him to the boat, where he laid him as comfortably as he could in the stem sheets.

"Where are we going?" the master asked.

"To the French frigate; and make haste," Michael replied.

When the boat was alongside the frigate, Michael paid the master the promised reward, and then aided by several of the crew, conveyed the captain to his cabin. As it was eminently necessary to keep the Count's secret, and avoid arousing suspicions, the sailor in his report to the first commandant, ascribed to a violent fall from a horse, the condition in which the captain was; then, after making a signal to Bowline to follow him, he returned to the cabin.