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Ernest Bramah - "The Mirror of Kong Ho"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre Buch 8"

Edith Wharton - "The Reef"

Sax Rohmer - "Fire Tongue"

Captain Blood

R >> Rafael Sabatini >> Captain Blood




Mr. Blood's smile annoyed him.

"I am a physician practising my calling in the town of Bridgewater."

The Captain sneered. "Which you reached by way of Lyme Regis in
the following of your bastard Duke."

It was Mr. Blood's turn to sneer. "If your wit were as big as your
voice, my dear, it's the great man you'd be by this."

For a moment the dragoon was speechless, The colour deepened in his
face.

"You may find me great enough to hang you."

"Faith, yes. Ye've the look and the manners of a hangman. But if
you practise your trade on my patient here, you may be putting a
rope round your own neck. He's not the kind you may string up and
no questions asked. He has the right to trial, and the right to
trial by his peers."

"By his peers?"

The Captain was taken aback by these three words, which Mr. Blood
had stressed.

"Sure, now, any but a fool or a savage would have asked his name
before ordering him to the gallows. The gentleman is my Lord Gildoy."

And then his lordship spoke for himself, in a weak voice.

"I make no concealment of my association with the Duke of Monmouth.
I'll take the consequenqes. But, if you please, I'll take them after
trial - by: my peers, as the doctor has said."

The feeble voice ceased, and was followed by a moment's silence. As
is common in many blustering men, there was a deal of timidity deep
down in Hobart. The announcement of his lordship's rank had touched
those depths. A servile upstart, he stood in awe of titles. And he
stood in awe of his colonel. Percy Kirke was not lenient with
blunderers.

By a gesture he checked his men. He must consider. Mr. Blood,
observing his pause, added further matter for his consideration.

"Ye'll be remembering, Captain, that Lord Gildoy will have friends
and relatives on the Tory side, who'll have something to say to
Colonel Kirke if his lordship should be handled like a common felon.
You'll go warily, Captain, or, as I've said, it's a halter for your
neck ye'll be weaving this morning."

Captain Hobart swept the warning aside with a bluster of contempt,
but he acted upon it none the less. "Take up the day-bed," said he,
"and convey him on that to Bridgewater. Lodge him in the gaol until
I take order about him."

"He may not survive the journey," Blood remonstrated. "He's in no
case to be moved."

"So much the worse for him. My affair is to round up rebels." He
confirmed his order by a gesture. Two of his men took up the day-bed,
and swung to depart with it.

Gildoy made a feeble effort to put forth a hand towards Mr. Blood.
"Sir," he said, "you leave me in your debt. If I live I shall study
how to discharge it."

Mr. Blood bowed for answer; then to the men: "Bear him steadily,"
he commanded. "His life depends on it."

As his lordship was carried out, the Captain became brisk. He turned
upon the yeoman.

"What other cursed rebels do you harbour?"

"None other, sir. His lordship ..."

"We've dealt with his lordship for the present. We 'll deal with
you in a moment when we've searched your house. And, by God, if
you've lied to me ..." He broke off, snarling, to give an order.
Four of his dragoons went out. In a moment they were heard moving
noisily in the adjacent room. Meanwhile, the Captain was questing
about the hall, sounding the wainscoting with the butt of a pistol.

Mr. Blood saw no profit to himself in lingering.

"By your leave, it's a very good day I'll be wishing you," said he.

"By my leave, you'll remain awhile," the Captain ordered him.

Mr. Blood shrugged, and sat down."You're tiresome," he said." I
wonder your colonel hasn't discovered it yet."

But the Captain did not heed him. He was stooping to pick up a
soiled and dusty hat in which there was pinned a little bunch of
oak leaves. It had been lying near the clothes-press in which the
unfortunate Pitt had taken refuge. The Captain smiled malevolently.
His eyes raked the room, resting first sardonically on the yeoman,
then on the two women in the background, and finally on Mr. Blood,
who sat with one leg thrown over the other in an attitude of
indifference that was far from reflecting his mind.

Then the Captain stepped to the press, and pulled open one of the
wings of its massive oaken door. He took the huddled inmate by
the collar of his doublet, and lugged him out into the open.

"And who the devil's this?" quoth he."Another nobleman?"

Mr. Blood had a vision of those gallows of which Captain Hobart had
spoken, and of this unfortunate young shipmaster going to adorn one
of them, strung up without trial, in the place of the other victim
of whom the Captain had been cheated. On the spot he invented not
only a title but a whole family for the young rebel.

"Faith, ye've said it, Captain. This is Viscount Pitt, first cousin
to Sir Thomas Vernon, who's married to that slut Moll Kirke, sister
to your own colonel, and sometime lady in waiting upon King James's
queen."

Both the Captain and his prisoner gasped. But whereas thereafter
young Pitt discreetly held his peace, the Captain rapped out a nasty
oath. He considered his prisoner again.

"He's lying, is he not?" he demanded, seizing the lad by the shoulder,
and glaring into his face. "He's rallying rue, by God!"

"If ye believe that," said Blood, "hang him, and see what happens to
you."

The dragoon glared at the doctor and then at his prisoner. "Pah!"
He thrust the lad into the hands of his men. "Fetch him along to
Bridgewater. And make fast that fellow also," he pointed to Baynes.
"We'll show him what it means to harbour and comfort rebels."

There was a moment of confusion. Baynes struggled in the grip of
the troopers, protesting vehemently. The terrified women screamed
until silenced by a greater terror. The Captain strode across to
them. He took the girl by the shoulders. She was a pretty,
golden-headed creature, with soft blue eyes that looked up
entreatingly, piteously into the fade of the dragoon. He leered
upon her, his eyes aglow, took her chin in his hand, and set her
shuddering by his brutal kiss.

"It's an earnest," he said, smiling grimly."Let that quiet you,
little rebel, till I've done with these rogues."

And he swung away again, leaving her faint and trembling in the
arms of her anguished mother. His men stood, grinning, awaiting
orders, the two prisoners now fast pinioned.

"Take them away. Let Cornet Drake have charge of them." His
smouldering eye again sought the cowering girl. "I'll stay awhile
- to search out this place. There may be other rebels hidden here."
As an afterthought, he added: "And take this fellow with you." He
pointed to Mr. Blood. "Bestir!"

Mr. Blood started out of his musings. He had been considering that
in his case of instruments there was a lancet with which he might
perform on Captain Hobart a beneficial operation. Beneficial, that
is, to humanity. In any case, the dragoon was obviously plethoric
and would be the better for a blood-letting. The difficulty lay in
making the opportunity. He was beginning to wonder if he could
lure the Captain aside with some tale of hidden treasure, when this
untimely interruption set a term to that interesting speculation.

He sought to temporize.

"Faith it will suit me very well," said he. "For Bridgewater is my
destination, and but that ye detained me I'd have been on my way
thither now."

"Your destination there will he the gaol."

"Ah, bah! Ye're surely joking!"

"There's a gallows for you if you prefer it. It's merely a question
of now or later."

Rude hands seized Mr. Blood, and that precious lancet was in the
case on the table out of reach. He twisted out of the grip of the
dragoons, for he was strong and agile, but they dosed with him again
immediately, and bore him down. Pinning him to the round, they tied
his wrists behind his back, then roughly pulled him to his feet
again.

"Take him away," said Hobart shortly, and turned to issue his orders
to the other waiting troopers. "Go search the house, from attic to
cellar; then report to me here."

The soldiers trailed out by the door leading to the interior. Mr.
Blood was thrust by his guards into the courtyard, where Pitt and
Baynes already waited. From the threshold of the hall, he looked
back at Captain Hobart, and his sapphire eyes were blazing. On his
lips trembled a threat of what he would do to Hobart if he should
happen to survive this business. Betimes he remembered that to
utter it were probably to extinguish his chance of living to execute
it. For to-day the King's men were masters in the West, and the
West was regarded as enemy country, to be subjected to the worst
horror of war by the victorious side. Here a captain of horse was
for the moment lord of life and death.

Under the apple-trees in the orchard Mr. Blood and his companions
in misfortune were made fast each to a trooper's stirrup leather.
Then at the sharp order of the cornet, the little troop started
for Bridgewater. As they set out there was the fullest confirmation
of Mr. Blood's hideous assumption that to the dragoons this was a
conquered enemy country. There were sounds of rending timbers,
of furniture smashed and overthrown, the shouts and laughter of
brutal men, to announce that this hunt for rebels was no more than
a pretext for pillage and destruction. Finally above all other
sounds came the piercing screams of a woman in acutest agony.

Baynes checked in his stride, and swung round writhing, his face
ashen. As a consequence he was jerked from his feet by the rope
that attached him to the stirrup leather, and he was dragged
helplessly a yard or two before the trooper reined in, cursing him
foully, and striking him with the flat of his sword.

It came to Mr. Blood, as he trudged forward under the laden
apple-trees on that fragrant, delicious July morning, that man - as
he had long suspected - was the vilest work of God, and that only
a fool would set himself up as a healer of a species that was best
exterminated.



CHAPTER III

THE LORD CHIEF JUSTICE


It was not until two months later - on the 19th of September, if
you must have the actual date - that Peter Blood was brought to
trial, upon a charge of high treason. We know that he was not
guilty of this; but we need not doubt that he was quite capable of
it by the time he was indicted. Those two months of inhuman,
unspeakable imprisonment had moved his mind to a cold and deadly
hatred of King James and his representatives. It says something
for his fortitude that in all the circumstances he should still
have had a mind at all. Yet, terrible as was the position of this
entirely innocent man, he had cause for thankfulness on two counts.
The first of these was that he should have been brought to trial at
all; the second, that his trial took place on the date named, and
not a day earlier. In the very delay which exacerbated him lay -=20
although he did not realize it - his only chance of avoiding the
gallows.

Easily, but for the favour of Fortune, he might have been one of
those haled, on the morrow of the battle, more or less haphazard
from the overflowing gaol at Bridgewater to be summarily hanged in
the market-place by the bloodthirsty Colonel Kirke. There was about
the Colonel of the Tangiers Regiment a deadly despatch which might
have disposed in like fashion of all those prisoners, numerous as
they were, but for the vigorous intervention of Bishop Mews, which
put an end to the drumhead courts-martial.

Even so, in that first week after Sedgemoor, Kirke and Feversham
contrived between them to put to death over a hundred men after a
trial so summary as to be no trial at all. They required human
freights for the gibbets with which they were planting the
countryside, and they little cared how they procured them or what
innocent lives they took. What, after all, was the life of a clod?
The executioners were kept busy with rope and chopper and cauldrons
of pitch. I spare you the details of that nauseating picture. It
is, after all, with the fate of Peter Blood that we are concerned
rather than with that of the Monmouth rebels.

He survived to be included in one of those melancholy droves of
prisoners who, chained in pairs, were marched from Bridgewater to
Taunton. Those who were too sorely wounded to march were conveyed
in carts, into which they were brutally crowded, their wounds
undressed and festering. Many were fortunate enough to die upon
the way. When Blood insisted upon his right to exercise his art so
as to relieve some of this suffering, he was accounted importunate
and threatened with a flogging. If he had one regret now it was
that he had not been out with Monmouth. That, of course, was
illogical; but you can hardly expect logic from a man in his position.

His chain companion on that dreadful march was the same Jeremy Pitt
who had been the agent of his present misfortunes. The young
shipmaster had remained his close companion after their common arrest.
Hence, fortuitously, had they been chained together in the crowded
prison, where they were almost suffocated by the heat and the stench
during those days of July, August, and September.

Scraps of news filtered into the gaol from the outside world. Some
may have been deliberately allowed to penetrate. Of these was the
tale of Monmouth's execution. It created profoundest dismay amongst
those men who were suffering for the Duke and for the religious cause
he had professed to champion. Many refused utterly to believe it.
A wild story began to circulate that a man resembling Monmouth had
offered himself up in the Duke's stead, and that Monmouth survived
to come again in glory to deliver Zion and make war upon Babylon.

Mr. Blood heard that tale with the same indifference with which he
had received the news of Monmouth's death. But one shameful thing
he heard in connection with this which left him not quite so unmoved,
and served to nourish the contempt he was forming for King James.=20
His Majesty had consented to see Monmouth. To have done so unless
he intended to pardon him was a thing execrable and damnable beyond
belief; for the only other object in granting that interview could
be the evilly mean satisfaction of spurning the abject penitence of
his unfortunate nephew.

Later they heard that Lord Grey, who after the Duke - indeed,
perhaps, before him - was the main leader of the rebellion, had
purchased his own pardon for forty thousand pounds. Peter Blood
found this of a piece with the rest. His contempt for King James
blazed out at last.

"Why, here's a filthy mean creature to sit on a throne. If I had
known as much of him before as I know to-day, I don't doubt I should
have given cause to be where I am now." And then on a sudden thought:
"And where will Lord Gildoy be, do you suppose?" he asked.

Young Pitt, whom he addressed, turned towards him a face from which
the ruddy tan of the sea had faded almost completely during those
months of captivity. His grey eyes were round and questioning.
Blood answered him.

"Sure, now, we've never seen his lordship since that day at
Oglethorpe's. And where are the other gentry that were taken? -=20
the real leaders of this plaguey rebellion. Grey's case explains
their absence, I think. They are wealthy men that can ransom
themselves. Here awaiting the gallows are none but the unfortunates
who followed; those who had the honour to lead them go free. It's
a curious and instructive reversal of the usual way of these things.
Faith, it's an uncertain world entirely!"

He laughed, and settled down into that spirit of scorn, wrapped in
which he stepped later into the great hall of Taunton Castle to take
his trial. With him went Pitt and the yeoman Baynes. The three of
them were to be tried together, and their case was to open the
proceedings of that ghastly day.

The hall, even to the galleries - thronged with spectators, most of
whom were ladies - was hung in scarlet; a pleasant conceit, this, of
the Lord Chief Justice's, who naturally enough preferred the colour
that should reflect his own bloody mind.

At the upper end, on a raised dais, sat the Lords Commissioners, the
five judges in their scarlet robes and heavy dark periwigs, Baron
Jeffreys of Wem enthroned in the middle place.

The prisoners filed in under guard. The crier called for silence
under pain of imprisonment, and as the hum of voices gradually became
hushed, Mr. Blood considered with interest the twelve good men and
true that composed the jury. Neither good nor true did they look.
They were scared, uneasy, and hangdog as any set of thieves caught
with their hands in the pockets of their neighbours. They were
twelve shaken men, each of whom stood between the sword of the Lord
Chief Justice's recent bloodthirsty charge and the wall of his own
conscience.

>From them Mr. Blood's calm, deliberate glance passed on to consider
the Lords Commissioners, and particularly the presiding Judge, that
Lord Jeffreys, whose terrible fame had come ahead of him from
Dorchester.

He beheld a tall, slight man on the young side of forty, with an
oval face that was delicately beautiful. There were dark stains of
suffering or sleeplessness under the low-lidded eyes, heightening
their brilliance and their gentle melancholy. The face was very
pale, save for the vivid colour of the full lips and the hectic
flush on the rather high but inconspicuous cheek-bones. It was
something in those lips that marred the perfection of that
countenance; a fault, elusive but undeniable, lurked there to belie
the fine sensitiveness of those nostrils, the tenderness of those
dark, liquid eyes and the noble calm of that pale brow.

The physician in Mr. Blood regarded the man with peculiar interest
knowing as he did the agonizing malady from which his lordship
suffered, and the amazingly irregular, debauched life that he led
in spite of it - perhaps because of it.

"Peter Blood, hold up your hand!"

Abruptly he was recalled to his position by the harsh voice of the
clerk of arraigns. His obedience was mechanical, and the clerk
droned out the wordy indictment which pronounced Peter Blood a
false traitor against the Most Illustrious and Most Excellent Prince,
James the Second, by the grace of God, of England, Scotland, France,
and Ireland King, his supreme and natural lord. It informed him
that, having no fear of God in his heart, but being moved and
seduced by the instigation of the Devil, he had failed in the love
and true and due natural obedience towards his said lord the King,
and had moved to disturb the peace and tranquillity of the kingdom
and to stir up war and rebellion to depose his said lord the King
from the title, honour, and the regal name of the imperial crown -=20
and much more of the same kind, at the end of all of which he was
invited to say whether he was guilty or not guilty. He answered
more than was asked.

"It's entirely innocent I am."

A small, sharp-faced man at a table before and to the right of him
bounced up. It was Mr. Pollexfen, the Judge-Advocate.

"Are you guilty or not guilty?" snapped this peppery gentleman.
"You must take the words."

"Words, is it?" said Peter Blood. "Oh - not guilty." And he went
on, addressing himself to the bench. "On this same subject of words,
may it please your lordships, I am guilty of nothing to justify any
of those words I have heard used to describe me, unless it be of a
want of patience at having been closely confined for two months and
longer in a foetid gaol with great peril to my health and even life."

Being started, he would have added a deal more; but at this point
the Lord Chief Justice interposed in a gentle, rather plaintive
voice.

"Look you, sir: because we must observe the common and usual methods
of trial, I must interrupt you now. You are no doubt ignorant of
the forms of law?"

"Not only ignorant, my lord, but hitherto most happy in that
ignorance. I could gladly have forgone this acquaintance with them."

A pale smile momentarily lightened the wistful countenance.

"I believe you. You shall be fully heard when you come to your
defence. But anything you say now is altogether irregular and
improper."

Enheartened by that apparent sympathy and consideration, Mr. Blood
answered thereafter, as was required of him, that he would be tried
by God and his country. Whereupon, having prayed to God to send him
a good deliverance, the clerk called upon Andrew Baynes to hold up
his hand and plead.

>From Baynes, who pleaded not guilty, the clerk passed on to Pitt,
who boldly owned his guilt. The Lord Chief Justice stirred at that.

"Come; that's better," quoth he, and his four scarlet brethren
nodded. "If all were as obstinate as his two fellow-rebels, there
would never be an end."

After that ominous interpolation, delivered with an inhuman iciness
that sent a shiver through the court, Mr. Pollexfen got to his feet.
With great prolixity he stated the general case against the three
men, and the particular case against Peter Blood, whose indictment
was to be taken first.

The only witness called for the King was Captain Hobart. He
testified briskly to the manner in which he had found and taken the
three prisoners, together with Lord Gildoy. Upon the orders of his
colonel he would have hanged Pitt out of hand, but was restrained
by the lies of the prisoner Blood, who led him to believe that Pitt
was a peer of the realm and a person of consideration.

As the Captain's evidence concluded, Lord Jeffreys looked across at
Peter Blood.

"Will the prisoner Blood ask the witness any questions?"

"None, my lord. He has correctly related what occurred."

"I am glad to have your admission of that without any of the
prevarications that are usual in your kind. And I will say this,
that here prevarication would avail you little. For we always have
the truth in the end. Be sure of that."

Baynes and Pitt similarly admitted the accuracy of the Captain's
evidence, whereupon the scarlet figure of the Lord Chief Justice
heaved a sigh of relief.

"This being so, let us get on, in God's name; for we have much to
do." There was now no trace of gentleness in his voice. It was
brisk and rasping, and the lips through which it passed were curved
in scorn. "I take it, Mr. Pollexfen, that the wicked treason of
these three rogues being established - indeed, admitted by them
- there is no more to be said."

Peter Blood's voice rang out crisply, on a note that almost seemed
to contain laughter.

"May it please your lordship, but there's a deal more to be said."

His lordship looked at him, first in blank amazement at his audacity,
then gradually with an expression of dull anger. The scarlet lips
fell into unpleasant, cruel lines that transfigured the whole
countenance.

"How now, rogue? Would you waste our time with idle subterfuge?"

"I would have your lordship and the gentlemen of the jury hear me
on my defence, as your lordship promised that I should be heard."

"Why, so you shall, villain; so you shall." His lordship's voice
was harsh as a file. He writhed as he spoke, and for an instant
his features were distorted. A delicate dead-white hand, on which
the veins showed blue, brought forth a handkerchief with which he
dabbed his lips and then his brow. Observing him with his
physician's eye, Peter Blood judged him a prey to the pain of the
disease that was destroying him. "So you shall. But after the
admission made, what defence remains?"

"You shall judge, my lord."=20

"That is the purpose for which I sit here."

"And so shall you, gentlemen." Blood looked from judge to jury.
The latter shifted uncomfortably under the confident flash of his
blue eyes. Lord Jeffreys's bullying charge had whipped the spirit
out of them. Had they, themselves, been prisoners accused of
treason, he could not have arraigned them more ferociously.

Peter Blood stood boldly forward, erect, self-possessed, and
saturnine. He was freshly shaven, and his periwig, if out of curl,
was at least carefully combed and dressed.

"Captain Hobart has testified to what he knows - that he found me
at Oglethorpe's Farm on the Monday morning after the battle at
Weston. But he has not told you what I did there."

Again the Judge broke in. "Why, what should you have been doing
there in the company of rebels, two of whom - Lord Gildoy and your
fellow there - have already admitted their guilt?"

"That is what I beg leave to tell your lordship."

"I pray you do, and in God's name be brief, man. For if I am to be
troubled with the say of all you traitor dogs, I may sit here until
the Spring Assizes."

"I was there, my lord, in my quality as a physician, to dress Lord
Gildoy's wounds."

"What's this? Do you tell us that you are a physician?"

"A graduate of Trinity College, Dublin."

"Good God!" cried Lord Jeffreys, his voice suddenly swelling, his
eyes upon the jury. "What an impudent rogue is this! You heard the
witness say that he had known him in Tangiers some years ago, and
that he was then an officer in the French service. You heard the
prisoner admit that the witness had spoken the truth?"

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