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CAPTAIN BLOOD
By Rafael Sabatini
CAPTAIN BLOOD His Odyssey
CONTENTS
I. THE MESSENGER
II. KIRKE'S DRAGOONS
III. THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE
IV. HUMAN MERCHANDISE
V. ARABELLA BISHOP
VI. PLANS OF ESCAPE
VII. PIRATES
VIII. SPANIARDS
IX. THE REBELS-CONVICT
X. DON DIEGO
XI. FILIAL PIETY
XII. DON PEDRO SANGRE
XIII. TORTUGA
XIV. LEVASSEUR'S HEROICS
XV. THE RANSOM
XVI. THE TRAP
XVII. THE DUPES
XVIII. THE MILAGROSA
XIX. THE MEETING
XX. THIEF AND PIRATE
XXI. THE SERVICE OF KING JAMES
XXII. HOSTILITIES
XXIII. HOSTAGES
XXIV. WAR
XXV. THE SERVICE OF KING LOUIS
XXVI. M. DE RIVAROL
XXVII. CARTAGENA
XXVIII. THE HONOUR OF M. DE RIVAROL
XXIX. THE SERVICE OF KING WILLIAM
XXX. THE LAST FIGHT OF THE ARABELLA
XXXI. HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR
CHAPTER I. THE MESSENGER
Peter Blood, bachelor of medicine and several other things besides,
smoked a pipe and tended the geraniums boxed on the sill of his window
above Water Lane in the town of Bridgewater.
Sternly disapproving eyes considered him from a window opposite, but
went disregarded. Mr. Blood's attention was divided between his task and
the stream of humanity in the narrow street below; a stream which poured
for the second time that day towards Castle Field, where earlier in
the afternoon Ferguson, the Duke's chaplain, had preached a sermon
containing more treason than divinity.
These straggling, excited groups were mainly composed of men with green
boughs in their hats and the most ludicrous of weapons in their hands.
Some, it is true, shouldered fowling pieces, and here and there a sword
was brandished; but more of them were armed with clubs, and most of them
trailed the mammoth pikes fashioned out of scythes, as formidable to
the eye as they were clumsy to the hand. There were weavers, brewers,
carpenters, smiths, masons, bricklayers, cobblers, and representatives
of every other of the trades of peace among these improvised men of war.
Bridgewater, like Taunton, had yielded so generously of its manhood to
the service of the bastard Duke that for any to abstain whose age and
strength admitted of his bearing arms was to brand himself a coward or a
papist.
Yet Peter Blood, who was not only able to bear arms, but trained and
skilled in their use, who was certainly no coward, and a papist only
when it suited him, tended his geraniums and smoked his pipe on that
warm July evening as indifferently as if nothing were afoot. One other
thing he did. He flung after those war-fevered enthusiasts a line of
Horace--a poet for whose work he had early conceived an inordinate
affection:
“Quo, quo, scelesti, ruitis?”
And now perhaps you guess why the hot, intrepid blood inherited from the
roving sires of his Somersetshire mother remained cool amidst all this
frenzied fanatical heat of rebellion; why the turbulent spirit which had
forced him once from the sedate academical bonds his father would
have imposed upon him, should now remain quiet in the very midst of
turbulence. You realize how he regarded these men who were rallying to
the banners of liberty--the banners woven by the virgins of Taunton, the
girls from the seminaries of Miss Blake and Mrs. Musgrove, who--as the
ballad runs--had ripped open their silk petticoats to make colours for
King Monmouth's army. That Latin line, contemptuously flung after them
as they clattered down the cobbled street, reveals his mind. To him they
were fools rushing in wicked frenzy upon their ruin.
You see, he knew too much about this fellow Monmouth and the pretty
brown slut who had borne him, to be deceived by the legend of
legitimacy, on the strength of which this standard of rebellion had
been raised. He had read the absurd proclamation posted at the Cross
at Bridgewater--as it had been posted also at Taunton and
elsewhere--setting forth that “upon the decease of our Sovereign Lord
Charles the Second, the right of succession to the Crown of England,
Scotland, France, and Ireland, with the dominions and territories
thereunto belonging, did legally descend and devolve upon the most
illustrious and high-born Prince James, Duke of Monmouth, son and heir
apparent to the said King Charles the Second.”
It had moved him to laughter, as had the further announcement that
“James Duke of York did first cause the said late King to be poysoned,
and immediately thereupon did usurp and invade the Crown.”
He knew not which was the greater lie. For Mr. Blood had spent a third
of his life in the Netherlands, where this same James Scott--who now
proclaimed himself James the Second, by the grace of God, King, et
cetera--first saw the light some six-and-thirty years ago, and he was
acquainted with the story current there of the fellow's real paternity.
Far from being legitimate--by virtue of a pretended secret marriage
between Charles Stuart and Lucy Walter--it was possible that this
Monmouth who now proclaimed himself King of England was not even the
illegitimate child of the late sovereign. What but ruin and disaster
could be the end of this grotesque pretension? How could it be hoped
that England would ever swallow such a Perkin? And it was on his behalf,
to uphold his fantastic claim, that these West Country clods, led by a
few armigerous Whigs, had been seduced into rebellion!
“Quo, quo, scelesti, ruitis?”
He laughed and sighed in one; but the laugh dominated the sigh, for Mr.
Blood was unsympathetic, as are most self-sufficient men; and he
was very self-sufficient; adversity had taught him so to be. A more
tender-hearted man, possessing his vision and his knowledge, might have
found cause for tears in the contemplation of these ardent, simple,
Nonconformist sheep going forth to the shambles--escorted to the
rallying ground on Castle Field by wives and daughters, sweethearts and
mothers, sustained by the delusion that they were to take the field
in defence of Right, of Liberty, and of Religion. For he knew, as
all Bridgewater knew and had known now for some hours, that it was
Monmouth's intention to deliver battle that same night. The Duke was to
lead a surprise attack upon the Royalist army under Feversham that was
now encamped on Sedgemoor. Mr. Blood assumed that Lord Feversham would
be equally well-informed, and if in this assumption he was wrong,
at least he was justified of it. He was not to suppose the Royalist
commander so indifferently skilled in the trade he followed.
Mr. Blood knocked the ashes from his pipe, and drew back to close his
window. As he did so, his glance travelling straight across the street
met at last the glance of those hostile eyes that watched him. There
were two pairs, and they belonged to the Misses Pitt, two amiable,
sentimental maiden ladies who yielded to none in Bridgewater in their
worship of the handsome Monmouth.
Mr. Blood smiled and inclined his head, for he was on friendly terms
with these ladies, one of whom, indeed, had been for a little while his
patient. But there was no response to his greeting. Instead, the eyes
gave him back a stare of cold disdain. The smile on his thin lips grew a
little broader, a little less pleasant. He understood the reason of that
hostility, which had been daily growing in this past week since Monmouth
had come to turn the brains of women of all ages. The Misses Pitt,
he apprehended, contemned him that he, a young and vigorous man, of a
military training which might now be valuable to the Cause, should stand
aloof; that he should placidly smoke his pipe and tend his geraniums on
this evening of all evenings, when men of spirit were rallying to the
Protestant Champion, offering their blood to place him on the throne
where he belonged.
If Mr. Blood had condescended to debate the matter with these ladies, he
might have urged that having had his fill of wandering and adventuring,
he was now embarked upon the career for which he had been originally
intended and for which his studies had equipped him; that he was a man
of medicine and not of war; a healer, not a slayer. But they would have
answered him, he knew, that in such a cause it behoved every man who
deemed himself a man to take up arms. They would have pointed out that
their own nephew Jeremiah, who was by trade a sailor, the master of a
ship--which by an ill-chance for that young man had come to anchor at
this season in Bridgewater Bay--had quitted the helm to snatch up a
musket in defence of Right. But Mr. Blood was not of those who argue. As
I have said, he was a self-sufficient man.
He closed the window, drew the curtains, and turned to the pleasant,
candle-lighted room, and the table on which Mrs. Barlow, his
housekeeper, was in the very act of spreading supper. To her, however,
he spoke aloud his thought.
“It's out of favour I am with the vinegary virgins over the way.”
He had a pleasant, vibrant voice, whose metallic ring was softened and
muted by the Irish accent which in all his wanderings he had never lost.
It was a voice that could woo seductively and caressingly, or command in
such a way as to compel obedience. Indeed, the man's whole nature was in
that voice of his. For the rest of him, he was tall and spare, swarthy
of tint as a gipsy, with eyes that were startlingly blue in that dark
face and under those level black brows. In their glance those eyes,
flanking a high-bridged, intrepid nose, were of singular penetration
and of a steady haughtiness that went well with his firm lips. Though
dressed in black as became his calling, yet it was with an elegance
derived from the love of clothes that is peculiar to the adventurer he
had been, rather than to the staid medicus he now was. His coat was of
fine camlet, and it was laced with silver; there were ruffles of Mechlin
at his wrists and a Mechlin cravat encased his throat. His great black
periwig was as sedulously curled as any at Whitehall.
Seeing him thus, and perceiving his real nature, which was plain upon
him, you might have been tempted to speculate how long such a man would
be content to lie by in this little backwater of the world into which
chance had swept him some six months ago; how long he would continue to
pursue the trade for which he had qualified himself before he had begun
to live. Difficult of belief though it may be when you know his history,
previous and subsequent, yet it is possible that but for the trick
that Fate was about to play him, he might have continued this peaceful
existence, settling down completely to the life of a doctor in this
Somersetshire haven. It is possible, but not probable.
He was the son of an Irish medicus, by a Somersetshire lady in whose
veins ran the rover blood of the Frobishers, which may account for a
certain wildness that had early manifested itself in his disposition.
This wildness had profoundly alarmed his father, who for an Irishman was
of a singularly peace-loving nature. He had early resolved that the
boy should follow his own honourable profession, and Peter Blood, being
quick to learn and oddly greedy of knowledge, had satisfied his parent
by receiving at the age of twenty the degree of baccalaureus medicinae
at Trinity College, Dublin. His father survived that satisfaction by
three months only. His mother had then been dead some years already.
Thus Peter Blood came into an inheritance of some few hundred pounds,
with which he had set out to see the world and give for a season a free
rein to that restless spirit by which he was imbued. A set of curious
chances led him to take service with the Dutch, then at war with France;
and a predilection for the sea made him elect that this service should
be upon that element. He had the advantage of a commission under the
famous de Ruyter, and fought in the Mediterranean engagement in which
that great Dutch admiral lost his life.
After the Peace of Nimeguen his movements are obscure. But we know that
he spent two years in a Spanish prison, though we do not know how he
contrived to get there. It may be due to this that upon his release
he took his sword to France, and saw service with the French in their
warring upon the Spanish Netherlands. Having reached, at last, the age
of thirty-two, his appetite for adventure surfeited, his health having
grown indifferent as the result of a neglected wound, he was suddenly
overwhelmed by homesickness. He took ship from Nantes with intent to
cross to Ireland. But the vessel being driven by stress of weather
into Bridgewater Bay, and Blood's health having grown worse during the
voyage, he decided to go ashore there, additionally urged to it by the
fact that it was his mother's native soil.
Thus in January of that year 1685 he had come to Bridgewater, possessor
of a fortune that was approximately the same as that with which he had
originally set out from Dublin eleven years ago.
Because he liked the place, in which his health was rapidly restored
to him, and because he conceived that he had passed through adventures
enough for a man's lifetime, he determined to settle there, and take
up at last the profession of medicine from which he had, with so little
profit, broken away.
That is all his story, or so much of it as matters up to that night, six
months later, when the battle of Sedgemoor was fought.
Deeming the impending action no affair of his, as indeed it was not, and
indifferent to the activity with which Bridgewater was that night agog,
Mr. Blood closed his ears to the sounds of it, and went early to bed. He
was peacefully asleep long before eleven o'clock, at which hour, as
you know, Monmouth rode but with his rebel host along the Bristol Road,
circuitously to avoid the marshland that lay directly between himself
and the Royal Army. You also know that his numerical advantage--possibly
counter-balanced by the greater steadiness of the regular troops on the
other side--and the advantages he derived from falling by surprise upon
an army that was more or less asleep, were all lost to him by blundering
and bad leadership before ever he was at grips with Feversham.
The armies came into collision in the neighbourhood of two o'clock in
the morning. Mr. Blood slept undisturbed through the distant boom of
cannon. Not until four o'clock, when the sun was rising to dispel the
last wisps of mist over that stricken field of battle, did he awaken
from his tranquil slumbers.
He sat up in bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and collected himself.
Blows were thundering upon the door of his house, and a voice was
calling incoherently. This was the noise that had aroused him.
Conceiving that he had to do with some urgent obstetrical case, he
reached for bedgown and slippers, to go below. On the landing he almost
collided with Mrs. Barlow, new-risen and unsightly, in a state of panic.
He quieted her cluckings with a word of reassurance, and went himself to
open.
There in slanting golden light of the new-risen sun stood a breathless,
wild-eyed man and a steaming horse. Smothered in dust and grime, his
clothes in disarray, the left sleeve of his doublet hanging in rags,
this young man opened his lips to speak, yet for a long moment remained
speechless.
In that moment Mr. Blood recognized him for the young shipmaster,
Jeremiah Pitt, the nephew of the maiden ladies opposite, one who had
been drawn by the general enthusiasm into the vortex of that rebellion.
The street was rousing, awakened by the sailor's noisy advent; doors
were opening, and lattices were being unlatched for the protrusion of
anxious, inquisitive heads.
“Take your time, now,” said Mr. Blood. “I never knew speed made by
overhaste.”
But the wild-eyed lad paid no heed to the admonition. He plunged,
headlong, into speech, gasping, breathless.
“It is Lord Gildoy,” he panted. “He is sore wounded... at Oglethorpe's
Farm by the river. I bore him thither... and... and he sent me for you.
Come away! Come away!”
He would have clutched the doctor, and haled him forth by force in
bedgown and slippers as he was. But the doctor eluded that too eager
hand.
“To be sure, I'll come,” said he. He was distressed. Gildoy had been a
very friendly, generous patron to him since his settling in these parts.
And Mr. Blood was eager enough to do what he now could to discharge
the debt, grieved that the occasion should have arisen, and in such a
manner--for he knew quite well that the rash young nobleman had been an
active agent of the Duke's. “To be sure, I'll come. But first give me
leave to get some clothes and other things that I may need.”
“There's no time to lose.”
“Be easy now. I'll lose none. I tell ye again, ye'll go quickest by
going leisurely. Come in... take a chair...” He threw open the door of a
parlour.
Young Pitt waved aside the invitation.
“I'll wait here. Make haste, in God's name.” Mr. Blood went off to dress
and to fetch a case of instruments.
Questions concerning the precise nature of Lord Gildoy's hurt could wait
until they were on their way. Whilst he pulled on his boots, he gave
Mrs. Barlow instructions for the day, which included the matter of a
dinner he was not destined to eat.
When at last he went forth again, Mrs. Barlow clucking after him like
a disgruntled fowl, he found young Pitt smothered in a crowd of scared,
half-dressed townsfolk--mostly women--who had come hastening for news
of how the battle had sped. The news he gave them was to be read in the
lamentations with which they disturbed the morning air.
At sight of the doctor, dressed and booted, the case of instruments
tucked under his arm, the messenger disengaged himself from those who
pressed about, shook off his weariness and the two tearful aunts that
clung most closely, and seizing the bridle of his horse, he climbed to
the saddle.
“Come along, sir,” he cried. “Mount behind me.”
Mr. Blood, without wasting words, did as he was bidden. Pitt touched
the horse with his spur. The little crowd gave way, and thus, upon
the crupper of that doubly-laden horse, clinging to the belt of his
companion, Peter Blood set out upon his Odyssey. For this Pitt, in whom
he beheld no more than the messenger of a wounded rebel gentleman, was
indeed the very messenger of Fate.