The skipper and the ship conjointly provided him with all the means to
realize that dream he had dreamt. There was none to oppose his will, no
reason not to indulge his cruel fancy. Perhaps, too, he might see
Rosamund again, might compel her to hear the truth from him. And there
was Sir John Killigrew. He had never been able to determine whether Sir
John had been his friend or his foe in the past; but since it was Sir
John who had been instrumental in setting up Lionel in Sir Oliver's
place--by inducing the courts to presume Sir Oliver's death on the score
that being a renegade he must be accounted dead at law--and since it was
Sir John who was contriving this wedding between Lionel and Rosamund,
why, Sir John, too, should be paid a visit and should be informed of the
precise nature of the thing he did.
With the forces at his disposal in those days of his absolute lordship
of life and death along the African littoral, to conceive was with
Oliver-Reis no more than the prelude to execution. The habit of swift
realization of his every wish had grown with him, and that habit guided
now his course.
He made his preparations quickly, and on the morrow the Spanish carack--
lately labelled Nuestra Senora de las Llagas, but with that label
carefully effaced from her quarter--trimmed her sails and stood out for
the open Atlantic, navigated by Captain Jasper Leigh. The three galleys
under the command of Biskaine-el-Borak crept slowly eastward and
homeward to Algiers, hugging the coast, as was the corsair habit.
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