Free The Seven Serpents Trilogy by Scott O’Dell Page A

T DAWN, AMID A VIOLENT STORM OF WIND AND RAIN, B ARRIOS SEIZED the
Santa Margarita.
Captain Roa was bound hand and foot and put away in a cubbyhole below deck next to the stable. Unbound, I was allowed the freedom of Don Luis’s cabin, but a sentry armed with a saber stood outside my door.
    The storm lasted two days and two nights. On the morning of the third day, under blue skies, the crew set off for the lagoon. Barrios had decided to transport the remaining two loads of gold to the beach by muleback and there put it on the
lancha
for the short trips to the caravel, thus saving valuable time. And time was valu able to Barrios, for Don Luis and Guzmán could be ex pected at any hour, as could the owner of the island, the gentleman from Hispaniola, Señor Olivares.
    During the two days of the storm I hadn’t lacked for comforts. I ate what the crew ate, but from time to time Barrios brought me extra viands that he had set aside for himself, including a slice of goat cheese, slightly overripe, five sea biscuits, which officially we’d run out of weeks before, and a small pot of excellent orange conserve he had brought along from Seville, made, he said, by the girl from Cádiz.
    I felt somewhat like a pig being fattened for slaugh ter, though I knew that the small gifts were meant to curry favor. Even if I chose, there was little I could do to interfere with the mutiny, but Barrios liked me and wanted to feel that what he was doing I understood and sympathized with.
    Besides, more than likely he was looking ahead to a dire possibility that someday he might be haled before a court and asked to explain how he had come into pos session of a caravel loaded with gold. A young witness of good reputation, willing to testify in his behalf, could save his treasure as well as his neck.
    And should that happen, if before a court in Hispaniola or in Spain I was called upon for testimony in his behalf, I would give it. Neither the gold nor the caravel belonged to him. He had stolen both. He was a thief.
    And yet my horror at what Don Luis had done was so overpowering that I could almost see myself standing before a court, swearing to tell the truth and then not telling it.
    For an hour after dawn there was no movement aboard the
Santa Margarita.
Occasionally I heard my guard, a sailor named Luna, mumble a word or two. Now and then he walked away, I presumed to take a closer look at the bay and the sea.
    The caravel herself swung at anchor, quietly turning her stern toward the shore as the tide ran in.
    I had a good view of the bay. For the first hour after Barrios and the crew went off, there was movement neither on the beach nor along the fringe of the jungle. Then, as the tide ebbed, and there was no sound except the crying of the gulls, I heard a single cannon shot. It was followed shortly by a volley of musket fire. Then it was quiet again.
    I called through the door and asked Luna if he saw anything.
    â€œNothing,” he replied. “
Nada
.”
    â€œThere’s a fight somewhere,” I said.
    â€œThe noise comes from the lagoon.”
    â€œThe muskets and cannon both?”
    â€œBoth.”
    â€œI have only a view of the bay,” I said. “What do you find otherwise?”
    â€œOtherwise nothing. I can see far out. It is very clear on the ocean.”
    â€œNo sails? A caravel is expected.”
    â€œNo sails. No caravel.
Nada
.”
    As I peered through the window, I pictured in my mind a scene at the lagoon. Barrios and the crew were in the act of loading the last of the gold on the mules, making ready to start off for the beach, when Don Luis and Guzmán with their men came out of the jungle. I decided that they had failed to find the Indians and were in an angry mood. Barrios would explain that he and the crew had already moved a boatload of gold to the
Santa Margarita
and would have moved all of it except for the storm. No further explanation would be needed until Don Luis