To hug the land, and go blundering about what you so aptly call this pestilent archipelago, is for us to court disaster, as you can perhaps conceive.

And so it comes to this: We desire to make for the Dutch settlement of Curacao as straightly as possible.

Will you pledge me your honour, if I release you upon parole, that you will navigate us thither?
If so, we will release you and your surviving men upon arrival there." Don Diego bowed his head upon his breast, and strode away in thought to the stern windows.

There he stood looking out upon the sunlit sea and the dead water in the great ship's wake--his ship, which these English dogs had wrested from him; his ship, which he was asked to bring safely into a port where she would be completely lost to him and refitted perhaps to make war upon his kin.

That was in one scale; in the other were the lives of sixteen men.