Captain Blood

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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
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 bad 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=20steady 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 ... =20
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.
=20
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.

CHAPTER TWO

KIRKE'S DRAGOONS

Oglethorpe's farm stood a mile or so to the south of Bridgewater on
the right bank of the river. It was a straggling Tudor building
showing grey above the ivy that clothed its lower parts. Approaching
it now, through the fragrant orchards amid which it seemed to drowse
in Arcadian peace beside the waters of the Parrett, sparkling in
the morning sunlight, Mr. Blood might have had a difficulty in
believing it part of a world tormented by strife and bloodshed.

On the bridge, as they had been riding out of Bridgewater, they had
met a vanguard of fugitives from the field of battle, weary, broken
men, many of them wounded, all of them terror-stricken, staggering
in speedless haste with the last remnants of their strength into the
shelter which it was their vain illusion the town would afford them.
Eyes glazed with lassitude and fear looked up piteously out of haggard
faces at Mr. Blood and his companion as they rode forth; hoarse
voices cried a warning that merciless pursuit was not far behind.
Undeterred, however, young Pitt rode amain along the dusty road by
which these poor fugitives from that swift rout on Sedgemoor came
flocking in ever-increasing numbers. Presently he swung aside,
and quitting the road took to a pathway that crossed the dewy
meadowlands. Even here they met odd groups of these human derelicts,
who were scattering in all directions, looking fearfully behind them
as they came through the long grass, expecting at every moment to
see the red coats of the dragoons.

But as Pitt's direction was a southward one, bringing them ever
nearer to Feversham's headquarters, they were presently clear of
that human flotsam and jetsam of the battle, and riding through
the peaceful orchards heavy with the ripening fruit that was soon
to make its annual yield of cider.

At last they alighted on the kidney stones of the courtyard, and
Baynes, the master, of the homestead, grave of countenance and
flustered of manner, gave them welcome.

In the spacious, stone-flagged hail, the doctor found Lord Gildoy
- a very tall and dark young gentleman, prominent of chin and nose
- stretched on a cane day-bed under one of the tall mullioned
windows, in the care of Mrs. Baynes and her comely daughter. His
cheeks were leaden-hued, his eyes closed, and from his blue lips
came with each laboured breath a faint, moaning noise.

Mr. Blood stood for a moment silently considering his patient. He
deplored that a youth with such bright hopes in life as Lord Gildoy's
should have risked all, perhaps existence itself, to forward the
ambition of a worthless adventurer. Because he had liked and
honoured this brave lad he paid his case the tribute of a sigh.
Then he knelt to his task, ripped away doublet and underwear to
lay bare his lordship's mangled side, and called for water and linen
and what else he needed for his work.

He was still intent upon it a half-hour later when the dragoons
invaded the homestead. The clatter of hooves and hoarse shouts
that heralded their approach disturbed him not at all. For one
thing, he was not easily disturbed; for another, his task absorbed
him. But his lordship, who had now recovered consciousness,
showed considerable alarm, and the battle-stained Jeremy Pitt sped
to cover in a clothes-press. Baynes was uneasy, and his wife and
daughter trembled. Mr. Blood reassured them.

"Why, what's to fear?" he said. "It's a Christian country, this, and
Christian men do not make war upon the wounded, nor upon those who
harbour them." He still had, you see, illusions about Christians.
He held a glass of cordial, prepared under his directions, to his
lordship's lips. "Give your mind peace, my lord. The worst is done."

And then they came rattling and clanking into the stone-flagged hall
- a round dozen jack-booted, lobster-coated troopers of the Tangiers
Regiment, led by a sturdy, black-browed fellow with a deal of gold
lace about the breast of his coat.

Baynes stood his ground, his attitude half-defiant, whilst his wife
and daughter shrank away in renewed fear. Mr. Blood, at the head
of the day-bed, looked over his shoulder to take stock of the
invaders.

The officer barked an order, which brought his men to an attentive
halt, then swaggered forward, his gloved hand bearing down the
pummel of his sword, his spurs jingling musically as he moved. He
announced his authority to the yeoman.

"I am Captain Hobart, of Colonel Kirke's dragoons. What rebels do
you harbour?"

The yeoman took alarm at that ferocious truculence. It expressed
itself in his trembling voice.

"I ... I am no harbourer of rebels, sir. This wounded gentleman ..."

"I can see for myself." The Captain stamped forward to the day-bed,
and scowled down upon the grey-faced sufferer.

"No need to ask how he came in this state and by his wounds. A
damned rebel, and that's enough for me." He flung a command at his
dragoons. "Out with him, my lads."

Mr. Blood got between the day-bed and the troopers.

"In the name of humanity, sir!" said he, on a note of anger. "This
is England, not Tangiers. The gentleman is in sore case. He may
not be moved without peril to his life."

Captain Hobart was amused.

"Oh, I am to be tender of the lives of these rebels! Odds blood!
Do you think it's to benefit his health we're taking him? There's
gallows being planted along the road from Weston to Bridgewater,
and he'll serve for one of them as well as another. Colonel Kirke'll
learn these nonconforming oafs something they'll not forget in
generations."

"You're hanging men without trial? Faith, then, it's mistaken I am.
We're in Tangiers, after all, it seems, where your regiment belongs."

The Captain considered him with a kindling eye. He looked him over
from the soles of his riding-boots to the crown of his periwig. He
noted the spare, active frame, the arrogant poise of the head, the
air of authority that invested Mr. Blood, and soldier recognized
soldier. The Captain's eyes narrowed. Recognition went further.

"Who the hell may you be?" he exploded."

"My name is Blood, sir - Peter Blood, at your service."

"Aye - aye! Codso! That's the name. You were in French service
once, were you not?"

If Mr. Blood was surprised, he did not betray it.

"I was."

"Then I remember you - five years ago, or more, you were in Tangiers,"

"That is so. I knew your colonel."

"Faith, you may be renewing the acquaintance." The Captain laughed
unpleasantly. "What brings you here, sir?"

"This wounded gentleman. I was fetched to attend him. I am a
medicus."

"A doctor - you?" Scorn of that lie - as he conceived it - rang in
the heavy, hectoring voice.

"Medicinae baccalaureus, " said Mr. Blood.

"Don't fling your French at me, man," snapped Hobart. "Speak
English!"

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