After that Arabella Bishop went daily to the shed on the wharf with
gifts of fruit, and later of money and of wearing apparel for the
Spanish prisoners. But she contrived so to time her visits that Peter
Blood never again met her there. Also his own visits were growing
shorter in a measure as his patients healed. That they all throve and
returned to health under his care, whilst fully one third of the wounded
in the care of Whacker and Bronson--the two other surgeons--died
of their wounds, served to increase the reputation in which this
rebel-convict stood in Bridgetown. It may have been no more than the
fortune of war. But the townsfolk did not choose so to regard it. It
led to a further dwindling of the practices of his free colleagues and a
further increase of his own labours and his owner's profit. Whacker
and Bronson laid their heads together to devise a scheme by which this
intolerable state of things should be brought to an end. But that is to
anticipate.
One day, whether by accident or design, Peter Blood came striding down
the wharf a full half-hour earlier than usual, and so met Miss Bishop
just issuing from the shed. He doffed his hat and stood aside to give
her passage. She took it, chin in the air, and eyes which disdained to
look anywhere where the sight of him was possible.
“Miss Arabella,” said he, on a coaxing, pleading note.
She grew conscious of his presence, and looked him over with an air that
was faintly, mockingly searching.
“La!” said she. “It's the delicate-minded gentleman!”
Peter groaned. “Am I so hopelessly beyond forgiveness? I ask it very
humbly.”
“What condescension!”
“It is cruel to mock me,” said he, and adopted mock-humility. “After
all, I am but a slave. And you might be ill one of these days.”
“What, then?”
“It would be humiliating to send for me if you treat me like an enemy.”
“You are not the only doctor in Bridgetown.”
“But I am the least dangerous.”
She grew suddenly suspicious of him, aware that he was permitting
himself to rally her, and in a measure she had already yielded to it.
She stiffened, and looked him over again.
“You make too free, I think,” she rebuked him.
“A doctor's privilege.”
“I am not your patient. Please to remember it in future.” And on that,
unquestionably angry, she departed.
“Now is she a vixen or am I a fool, or is it both?” he asked the blue
vault of heaven, and then went into the shed.
It was to be a morning of excitements. As he was leaving an hour or so
later, Whacker, the younger of the other two physicians, joined him--an
unprecedented condescension this, for hitherto neither of them had
addressed him beyond an occasional and surly “good-day!”
“If you are for Colonel Bishop's, I'll walk with you a little way,
Doctor Blood,” said he. He was a short, broad man of five-and-forty with
pendulous cheeks and hard blue eyes.
Peter Blood was startled. But he dissembled it.
“I am for Government House,” said he.
“Ah! To be sure! The Governor's lady.” And he laughed; or perhaps he
sneered. Peter Blood was not quite certain. “She encroaches a deal upon
your time, I hear. Youth and good looks, Doctor Blood! Youth and
good looks! They are inestimable advantages in our profession as in
others--particularly where the ladies are concerned.”
Peter stared at him. “If you mean what you seem to mean, you had better
say it to Governor Steed. It may amuse him.”
“You surely misapprehend me.”
“I hope so.”
“You're so very hot, now!” The doctor linked his arm through Peter's.
“I protest I desire to be your friend--to serve you. Now, listen.”
Instinctively his voice grew lower. “This slavery in which you find
yourself must be singularly irksome to a man of parts such as yourself.”
“What intuitions!” cried sardonic Mr. Blood. But the doctor took him
literally.
“I am no fool, my dear doctor. I know a man when I see one, and often I
can tell his thoughts.”
“If you can tell me mine, you'll persuade me of it,” said Mr. Blood.
Dr. Whacker drew still closer to him as they stepped along the wharf. He
lowered his voice to a still more confidential tone. His hard blue eyes
peered up into the swart, sardonic face of his companion, who was a head
taller than himself.
“How often have I not seen you staring out over the sea, your soul in
your eyes! Don't I know what you are thinking? If you could escape from
this hell of slavery, you could exercise the profession of which you
are an ornament as a free man with pleasure and profit to yourself. The
world is large. There are many nations besides England where a man of
your parts would be warmly welcomed. There are many colonies besides
these English ones.” Lower still came the voice until it was no more
than a whisper. Yet there was no one within earshot. “It is none so far
now to the Dutch settlement of Curacao. At this time of the year the
voyage may safely be undertaken in a light craft. And Curacao need be no
more than a stepping-stone to the great world, which would lie open to
you once you were delivered from this bondage.”
Dr. Whacker ceased. He was pale and a little out of breath. But his hard
eyes continued to study his impassive companion.
“Well?” he said alter a pause. “What do you say to that?”
Yet Blood did not immediately answer. His mind was heaving in tumult,
and he was striving to calm it that he might take a proper survey of
this thing flung into it to create so monstrous a disturbance. He began
where another might have ended.
“I have no money. And for that a handsome sum would be necessary.”
“Did I not say that I desired to be your friend?”
“Why?” asked Peter Blood at point-blank range.
But he never heeded the answer. Whilst Dr. Whacker was professing that
his heart bled for a brother doctor languishing in slavery, denied the
opportunity which his gifts entitled him to make for himself, Peter
Blood pounced like a hawk upon the obvious truth. Whacker and his
colleague desired to be rid of one who threatened to ruin them.
Sluggishness of decision was never a fault of Blood's. He leapt where
another crawled. And so this thought of evasion never entertained until
planted there now by Dr. Whacker sprouted into instant growth.
“I see, I see,” he said, whilst his companion was still talking,
explaining, and to save Dr. Whacker's face he played the hypocrite. “It
is very noble in you--very brotherly, as between men of medicine. It is
what I myself should wish to do in like case.”
The hard eyes flashed, the husky voice grew tremulous as the other asked
almost too eagerly:
“You agree, then? You agree?”
“Agree?” Blood laughed. “If I should be caught and brought back, they'd
clip my wings and brand me for life.”
“Surely the thing is worth a little risk?” More tremulous than ever was
the tempter's voice.
“Surely,” Blood agreed. “But it asks more than courage. It asks money. A
sloop might be bought for twenty pounds, perhaps.”
“It shall be forthcoming. It shall be a loan, which you shall repay
us--repay me, when you can.”
That betraying “us” so hastily retrieved completed Blood's
understanding. The other doctor was also in the business.
They were approaching the peopled part of the mole. Quickly, but
eloquently, Blood expressed his thanks, where he knew that no thanks
were due.
“We will talk of this again, sir--to-morrow,” he concluded. “You have
opened for me the gates of hope.”
In that at least he tittered no more than the bare truth, and expressed
it very baldly. It was, indeed, as if a door had been suddenly flung
open to the sunlight for escape from a dark prison in which a man had
thought to spend his life.
He was in haste now to be alone, to straighten out his agitated mind
and plan coherently what was to be done. Also he must consult another.
Already he had hit upon that other. For such a voyage a navigator would
be necessary, and a navigator was ready to his hand in Jeremy Pitt. The
first thing was to take counsel with the young shipmaster, who must be
associated with him in this business if it were to be undertaken. All
that day his mind was in turmoil with this new hope, and he was sick
with impatience for night and a chance to discuss the matter with
his chosen partner. As a result Blood was betimes that evening in the
spacious stockade that enclosed the huts of the slaves together with the
big white house of the overseer, and he found an opportunity of a few
words with Pitt, unobserved by the others.
“To-night when all are asleep, come to my cabin. I have something to say
to you.”
The young man stared at him, roused by Blood's pregnant tone out of the
mental lethargy into which he had of late been lapsing as a result of
the dehumanizing life he lived. Then he nodded understanding and assent,
and they moved apart.
The six months of plantation life in Barbados had made an almost tragic
mark upon the young seaman. His erstwhile bright alertness was
all departed. His face was growing vacuous, his eyes were dull and
lack-lustre, and he moved in a cringing, furtive manner, like an
over-beaten dog. He had survived the ill-nourishment, the excessive
work on the sugar plantation under a pitiless sun, the lashes of the
overseer's whip when his labours flagged, and the deadly, unrelieved
animal life to which he was condemned. But the price he was paying for
survival was the usual price. He was in danger of becoming no better
than an animal, of sinking to the level of the negroes who sometimes
toiled beside him. The man, however, was still there, not yet dormant,
but merely torpid from a surfeit of despair; and the man in him promptly
shook off that torpidity and awoke at the first words Blood spoke to him
that night--awoke and wept.
“Escape?” he panted. “O God!” He took his head in his hands, and fell to
sobbing like a child.
“Sh! Steady now! Steady!” Blood admonished him in a whisper, alarmed by
the lad's blubbering. He crossed to Pitt's side, and set a restraining
hand upon his shoulder. “For God's sake, command yourself. If we're
overheard we shall both be flogged for this.”
Among the privileges enjoyed by Blood was that of a hut to himself, and
they were alone in this. But, after all, it was built of wattles thinly
plastered with mud, and its door was composed of bamboos, through which
sound passed very easily. Though the stockade was locked for the night,
and all within it asleep by now--it was after midnight--yet a prowling
overseer was not impossible, and a sound of voices must lead to
discovery. Pitt realized this, and controlled his outburst of emotion.
Sitting close thereafter they talked in whispers for an hour or more,
and all the while those dulled wits of Pitt's were sharpening themselves
anew upon this precious whetstone of hope. They would need to recruit
others into their enterprise, a half-dozen at least, a half-score if
possible, but no more than that. They must pick the best out of that
score of survivors of the Monmouth men that Colonel Bishop had acquired.
Men who understood the sea were desirable. But of these there were only
two in that unfortunate gang, and their knowledge was none too full.
They were Hagthorpe, a gentleman who had served in the Royal Navy, and
Nicholas Dyke, who had been a petty officer in the late king's time, and
there was another who had been a gunner, a man named Ogle.
It was agreed before they parted that Pitt should begin with these three
and then proceed to recruit some six or eight others. He was to move
with the utmost caution, sounding his men very carefully before making
anything in the nature of a disclosure, and even then avoid rendering
that disclosure so full that its betrayal might frustrate the plans
which as yet had to be worked out in detail. Labouring with them in
the plantations, Pitt would not want for opportunities of broaching the
matter to his fellow-slaves.
“Caution above everything,” was Blood's last recommendation to him at
parting. “Who goes slowly, goes safely, as the Italians have it. And
remember that if you betray yourself, you ruin all, for you are the only
navigator amongst us, and without you there is no escaping.”
Pitt reassured him, and slunk off back to his own hut and the straw that
served him for a bed.
Coming next morning to the wharf, Blood found Dr. Whacker in a generous
mood. Having slept on the matter, he was prepared to advance the convict
any sum up to thirty pounds that would enable him to acquire a boat
capable of taking him away from the settlement. Blood expressed his
thanks becomingly, betraying no sign that he saw clearly into the true
reason of the other's munificence.
“It's not money I'll require,” said he, “but the boat itself. For
who will be selling me a boat and incurring the penalties in Governor
Steed's proclamation? Ye'll have read it, no doubt?”
Dr. Whacker's heavy face grew overcast. Thoughtfully he rubbed his chin.
“I've read it--yes. And I dare not procure the boat for you. It would be
discovered. It must be. And the penalty is a fine of two hundred pounds
besides imprisonment. It would ruin me. You'll see that?”
The high hopes in Blood's soul, began to shrink. And the shadow of his
despair overcast his face.
“But then...” he faltered. “There is nothing to be done.”
“Nay, nay: things are not so desperate.” Dr. Whacker smiled a little
with tight lips. “I've thought of it. You will see that the man who buys
the boat must be one of those who goes with you--so that he is not here
to answer questions afterwards.”
“But who is to go with me save men in my own case? What I cannot do,
they cannot.”
“There are others detained on the island besides slaves. There are
several who are here for debt, and would be glad enough to spread
their wings. There's a fellow Nuttall, now, who follows the trade of
a shipwright, whom I happen to know would welcome such a chance as you
might afford him.”
“But how should a debtor come with money to buy a boat? The question
will be asked.”
“To be sure it will. But if you contrive shrewdly, you'll all be gone
before that happens.”
Blood nodded understanding, and the doctor, setting a hand upon his
sleeve, unfolded the scheme he had conceived.
“You shall have the money from me at once. Having received it, you'll
forget that it was I who supplied it to you. You have friends in
England--relatives, perhaps--who sent it out to you through the agency
of one of your Bridgetown patients, whose name as a man of honour you
will on no account divulge lest you bring trouble upon him. That is your
tale if there are questions.”
He paused, looking hard at Blood. Blood nodded understanding and assent.
Relieved, the doctor continued:
“But there should be no questions if you go carefully to work. You
concert matters with Nuttall. You enlist him as one of your companions
and a shipwright should be a very useful member of your crew. You engage
him to discover a likely sloop whose owner is disposed to sell. Then let
your preparations all be made before the purchase is effected, so that
your escape may follow instantly upon it before the inevitable questions
come to be asked. You take me?”
So well did Blood take him that within an hour he contrived to see
Nuttall, and found the fellow as disposed to the business as Dr. Whacker
had predicted. When he left the shipwright, it was agreed that Nuttall
should seek the boat required, for which Blood would at once produce the
money.
The quest took longer than was expected by Blood, who waited impatiently
with the doctor's gold concealed about his person. But at the end of
some three weeks, Nuttall--whom he was now meeting daily--informed him
that he had found a serviceable wherry, and that its owner was disposed
to sell it for twenty-two pounds. That evening, on the beach, remote
from all eyes, Peter Blood handed that sum to his new associate, and
Nuttall went off with instructions to complete the purchase late on the
following day. He was to bring the boat to the wharf, where under cover
of night Blood and his fellow-convicts would join him and make off.
Everything was ready. In the shed, from which all the wounded men had
now been removed and which had since remained untenanted, Nuttall had
concealed the necessary stores: a hundredweight of bread, a quantity
of cheese, a cask of water and some few bottles of Canary, a compass,
quadrant, chart, half-hour glass, log and line, a tarpaulin, some
carpenter's tools, and a lantern and candles. And in the stockade, all
was likewise in readiness. Hagthorpe, Dyke, and Ogle had agreed to join
the venture, and eight others had been carefully recruited. In Pitt's
hut, which he shared with five other rebels-convict, all of whom were
to join in this bid for liberty, a ladder had been constructed in secret
during those nights of waiting. With this they were to surmount the
stockade and gain the open. The risk of detection, so that they made
little noise, was negligible. Beyond locking them all into that stockade
at night, there was no great precaution taken. Where, after all, could
any so foolish as to attempt escape hope to conceal himself in that
island? The chief risk lay in discovery by those of their companions
who were to be left behind. It was because of these that they must go
cautiously and in silence.
The day that was to have been their last in Barbados was a day of hope
and anxiety to the twelve associates in that enterprise, no less than to
Nuttall in the town below.
Towards sunset, having seen Nuttall depart to purchase and fetch
the sloop to the prearranged moorings at the wharf, Peter Blood came
sauntering towards the stockade, just as the slaves were being driven
in from the fields. He stood aside at the entrance to let them pass, and
beyond the message of hope flashed by his eyes, he held no communication
with them.
He entered the stockade in their wake, and as they broke their ranks
to seek their various respective huts, he beheld Colonel Bishop in talk
with Kent, the overseer. The pair were standing by the stocks, planted
in the middle of that green space for the punishment of offending
slaves.
As he advanced, Bishop turned to regard him, scowling. “Where have you
been this while?” he bawled, and although a minatory note was normal to
the Colonel's voice, yet Blood felt his heart tightening apprehensively.
“I've been at my work in the town,” he answered. “Mrs. Patch has a fever
and Mr. Dekker has sprained his ankle.”
“I sent for you to Dekker's, and you were not there. You are given to
idling, my fine fellow. We shall have to quicken you one of these days
unless you cease from abusing the liberty you enjoy. D'ye forget that
ye're a rebel convict?”
“I am not given the chance,” said Blood, who never could learn to curb
his tongue.
“By God! Will you be pert with me?”
Remembering all that was at stake, growing suddenly conscious that
from the huts surrounding the enclosure anxious ears were listening, he
instantly practised an unusual submission.
“Not pert, sir. I... I am sorry I should have been sought....”
“Aye, and you'll be sorrier yet. There's the Governor with an attack of
gout, screaming like a wounded horse, and you nowhere to be found. Be
off, man--away with you at speed to Government House! You're awaited,
I tell you. Best lend him a horse, Kent, or the lout'll be all night
getting there.”
They bustled him away, choking almost from a reluctance that he dared
not show. The thing was unfortunate; but after all not beyond remedy.
The escape was set for midnight, and he should easily be back by then.
He mounted the horse that Kent procured him, intending to make all
haste.
“How shall I reenter the stockade, sir?” he enquired at parting.
“You'll not reenter it,” said Bishop. “When they've done with you at
Government House, they may find a kennel for you there until morning.”
Peter Blood's heart sank like a stone through water.
“But...” he began.
“Be off, I say. Will you stand there talking until dark? His excellency
is waiting for you.” And with his cane Colonel Bishop slashed the
horse's quarters so brutally that the beast bounded forward all but
unseating her rider.
Peter Blood went off in a state of mind bordering on despair. And
there was occasion for it. A postponement of the escape at least until
to-morrow night was necessary now, and postponement must mean the
discovery of Nuttall's transaction and the asking of questions it would
be difficult to answer.
It was in his mind to slink back in the night, once his work at
Government House were done, and from the outside of the stockade make
known to Pitt and the others his presence, and so have them join him
that their project might still be carried out. But in this he reckoned
without the Governor, whom he found really in the thrall of a severe
attack of gout, and almost as severe an attack of temper nourished by
Blood's delay.
The doctor was kept in constant attendance upon him until long after
midnight, when at last he was able to ease the sufferer a little by a
bleeding. Thereupon he would have withdrawn. But Steed would not hear of
it. Blood must sleep in his own chamber to be at hand in case of need.
It was as if Fate made sport of him. For that night at least the escape
must be definitely abandoned.
Not until the early hours of the morning did Peter Blood succeed in
making a temporary escape from Government House on the ground that he
required certain medicaments which he must, himself, procure from the
apothecary.
On that pretext, he made an excursion into the awakening town, and
went straight to Nuttall, whom he found in a state of livid panic. The
unfortunate debtor, who had sat up waiting through the night, conceived
that all was discovered and that his own ruin would be involved. Peter
Blood quieted his fears.
“It will be for to-night instead,” he said, with more assurance than
he felt, “if I have to bleed the Governor to death. Be ready as last
night.”
“But if there are questions meanwhile?” bleated Nuttall. He was a thin,
pale, small-featured, man with weak eyes that now blinked desperately.
“Answer as best you can. Use your wits, man. I can stay no longer.” And
Peter went off to the apothecary for his pretexted drugs.
Within an hour of his going came an officer of the Secretary's to
Nuttall's miserable hovel. The seller of the boat had--as by law
required since the coming of the rebels-convict--duly reported the sale
at the Secretary's office, so that he might obtain the reimbursement
of the ten-pound surety into which every keeper of a small boat was
compelled to enter. The Secretary's office postponed this reimbursement
until it should have obtained confirmation of the transaction.
“We are informed that you have bought a wherry from Mr. Robert Farrell,”
said the officer.
“That is so,” said Nuttall, who conceived that for him this was the end
of the world.
“You are in no haste, it seems, to declare the same at the Secretary's
office.” The emissary had a proper bureaucratic haughtiness.
Nuttall's weak eyes blinked at a redoubled rate.
“To... to declare it?”
“Ye know it's the law.”
“I... I didn't, may it please you.”
“But it's in the proclamation published last January.”
“I... I can't read, sir. I... I didn't know.”
“Faugh!” The messenger withered him with his disdain.
“Well, now you're informed. See to it that you are at the Secretary's
office before noon with the ten pounds surety into which you are obliged
to enter.”
The pompous officer departed, leaving Nuttall in a cold perspiration
despite the heat of the morning. He was thankful that the fellow had not
asked the question he most dreaded, which was how he, a debtor, should
come by the money to buy a wherry. But this he knew was only a respite.
The question would presently be asked of a certainty, and then hell
would open for him. He cursed the hour in which he had been such a fool
as to listen to Peter Blood's chatter of escape. He thought it very
likely that the whole plot would be discovered, and that he would
probably be hanged, or at least branded and sold into slavery like
those other damned rebels-convict, with whom he had been so mad as
to associate himself. If only he had the ten pounds for this
infernal surety, which until this moment had never entered into their
calculations, it was possible that the thing might be done quickly
and questions postponed until later. As the Secretary's messenger had
overlooked the fact that he was a debtor, so might the others at the
Secretary's office, at least for a day or two; and in that time he
would, he hoped, be beyond the reach of their questions. But in the
meantime what was to be done about this money? And it was to be found
before noon!
Nuttall snatched up his hat, and went out in quest of Peter Blood.
But where look for him? Wandering aimlessly up the irregular, unpaved
street, he ventured to enquire of one or two if they had seen Dr. Blood
that morning. He affected to be feeling none so well, and indeed his
appearance bore out the deception. None could give him information; and
since Blood had never told him of Whacker's share in this business, he
walked in his unhappy ignorance past the door of the one man in Barbados
who would eagerly have saved him in this extremity.
Finally he determined to go up to Colonel Bishop's plantation. Probably
Blood would be there. If he were not, Nuttall would find Pitt, and leave
a message with him. He was acquainted with Pitt and knew of Pitt's share
in this business. His pretext for seeking Blood must still be that he
needed medical assistance.
And at the same time that he set out, insensitive in his anxiety to the
broiling heat, to climb the heights to the north of the town, Blood
was setting out from Government House at last, having so far eased the
Governor's condition as to be permitted to depart. Being mounted, he
would, but for an unexpected delay, have reached the stockade ahead of
Nuttall, in which case several unhappy events might have been averted.
The unexpected delay was occasioned by Miss Arabella Bishop.
They met at the gate of the luxuriant garden of Government House, and
Miss Bishop, herself mounted, stared to see Peter Blood on horseback.
It happened that he was in good spirits. The fact that the Governor's
condition had so far improved as to restore him his freedom of movement
had sufficed to remove the depression under which he had been labouring
for the past twelve hours and more. In its rebound the mercury of his
mood had shot higher far than present circumstances warranted. He was
disposed to be optimistic. What had failed last night would certainly
not fail again to-night. What was a day, after all? The Secretary's
office might be troublesome, but not really troublesome for another
twenty-four hours at least; and by then they would be well away.
This joyous confidence of his was his first misfortune. The next was
that his good spirits were also shared by Miss Bishop, and that she
bore no rancour. The two things conjoined to make the delay that in its
consequences was so deplorable.
“Good-morning, sir,” she hailed him pleasantly. “It's close upon a month
since last I saw you.”
“Twenty-one days to the hour,” said he. “I've counted them.”
“I vow I was beginning to believe you dead.”
“I have to thank you for the wreath.”
“The wreath?”
“To deck my grave,” he explained.
“Must you ever be rallying?” she wondered, and looked at him gravely,
remembering that it was his rallying on the last occasion had driven her
away in dudgeon.
“A man must sometimes laugh at himself or go mad,” said he. “Few realize
it. That is why there are so many madmen in the world.”
“You may laugh at yourself all you will, sir. But sometimes I think you
laugh at me, which is not civil.”
“Then, faith, you're wrong. I laugh only at the comic, and you are not
comic at all.”
“What am I, then?” she asked him, laughing.
A moment he pondered her, so fair and fresh to behold, so entirely
maidenly and yet so entirely frank and unabashed.
“You are,” he said, “the niece of the man who owns me his slave.” But he
spoke lightly. So lightly that she was encouraged to insistence.
“Nay, sir, that is an evasion. You shall answer me truthfully this
morning.”
“Truthfully? To answer you at all is a labour. But to answer truthfully!
Oh, well, now, I should say of you that he'll be lucky who counts you
his friend.” It was in his mind to add more. But he left it there.
“That's mighty civil,” said she. “You've a nice taste in compliments,
Mr. Blood. Another in your place....”
“Faith, now, don't I know what another would have said? Don't I know my
fellow-man at all?”
“Sometimes I think you do, and sometimes I think you don't. Anyway, you
don't know your fellow-woman. There was that affair of the Spaniards.”
“Will ye never forget it?”
“Never.”
“Bad cess to your memory. Is there no good in me at all that you could
be dwelling on instead?”
“Oh, several things.”
“For instance, now?” He was almost eager.
“You speak excellent Spanish.”
“Is that all?” He sank back into dismay.
“Where did you learn it? Have you been in Spain?”
“That I have. I was two years in a Spanish prison.”
“In prison?” Her tone suggested apprehensions in which he had no desire
to leave her.
“As a prisoner of war,” he explained. “I was taken fighting with the
French--in French service, that is.”
“But you're a doctor!” she cried.
“That's merely a diversion, I think. By trade I am a soldier--at least,
it's a trade I followed for ten years. It brought me no great gear,
but it served me better than medicine, which, as you may observe, has
brought me into slavery. I'm thinking it's more pleasing in the sight of
Heaven to kill men than to heal them. Sure it must be.”
“But how came you to be a soldier, and to serve the French?”
“I am Irish, you see, and I studied medicine. Therefore--since it's a
perverse nation we are--.... Oh, but it's a long story, and the Colonel
will be expecting my return.” She was not in that way to be defrauded
of her entertainment. If he would wait a moment they would ride back
together. She had but come to enquire of the Governor's health at her
uncle's request.
So he waited, and so they rode back together to Colonel Bishop's house.
They rode very slowly, at a walking pace, and some whom they passed
marvelled to see the doctor-slave on such apparently intimate terms with
his owner's niece. One or two may have promised themselves that they
would drop a hint to the Colonel. But the two rode oblivious of all
others in the world that morning. He was telling her the story of his
early turbulent days, and at the end of it he dwelt more fully than
hitherto upon the manner of his arrest and trial.
The tale was barely done when they drew up at the Colonel's door, and
dismounted, Peter Blood surrendering his nag to one of the negro grooms,
who informed them that the Colonel was from home at the moment.
Even then they lingered a moment, she detaining him.
“I am sorry, Mr. Blood, that I did not know before,” she said, and there
was a suspicion of moisture in those clear hazel eyes. With a compelling
friendliness she held out her hand to him.
“Why, what difference could it have made?” he asked.
“Some, I think. You have been very hardly used by Fate.”
“Och, now....” He paused. His keen sapphire eyes considered her steadily
a moment from under his level black brows. “It might have been worse,”
he said, with a significance which brought a tinge of colour to her
cheeks and a flutter to her eyelids.
He stooped to kiss her hand before releasing it, and she did not deny
him. Then he turned and strode off towards the stockade a half-mile
away, and a vision of her face went with him, tinted with a rising blush
and a sudden unusual shyness. He forgot in that little moment that he
was a rebel-convict with ten years of slavery before him; he forgot
that he had planned an escape, which was to be carried into effect
that night; forgot even the peril of discovery which as a result of the
Governor's gout now overhung him.