y were busy at the waterside with
the quartering and salting of carcases.

While this was doing on the one hand and the ships were being refitted
for sea on the other, Captain Blood was pondering the riddle on the
solution of which his own fate depended. Indian spies whom he employed
brought him word that the Spaniards, working at low tide, had salved the
thirty guns of the Salvador, and thus had added yet another battery
to their already overwhelming strength. In the end, and hoping for
inspiration on the spot, Captain Blood made a reconnaissance in person.
At the risk of his life, accompanied by two friendly Indians, he crossed
to the island in a canoe under cover of dark. They concealed themselves
and the canoe in the short thick scrub with which that side of the
island was densely covered, and lay there until daybreak. Then Blood
went forward alone, and with infinite precaution, to make his survey. He
went to verify a suspicion that he had formed, and approached the fort
as nearly as he dared and a deal nearer than was safe.

On all fours he crawled to the summit of an eminence a mile or so away,
whence he found himself commanding a view of the interior dispositions
of the stronghold. By the aid of a telescope with which he had equipped
himself he was able to verify that, as he had suspected and hoped, the
fort's artillery was all mounted on the seaward side.

Satisfied, he returned to Maracaybo, and laid before the six who
composed his council--Pitt, Hagthorpe, Yberville, Wolverstone, Dyke, and
Ogle--a proposal to storm the fort from the landward side. Crossing
to the island under cover of night, they would take the Spaniards by
surprise and attempt to overpower them before they could shift their
guns to meet the onslaught.

With the exception of Wolverstone, who was by temperament the kind of
man who favours desperate chances, those officers received the proposal
coldly. Hagthorpe incontinently opposed it.

"It's a harebrained scheme, Peter," he said gravely, shaking his
handsome head. "Consider now that we cannot depend upon approaching
unperceived to a distance whence we might storm the fort before the
cannon could be moved. But even if we could, we can take no cannon
ourselves; we must depend entirely upon our small arms, and how shall
we, a bare three hundred" (for this was the number to which Cahusac's
defection had reduced them), "cross the open to attack more than twice
that number under cover?"

The