Captain Blood

by Rafael Sabatini

  CHAPTER V. ARABELLA BISHOP

  One sunny morning in January, about a month after the arrival of theJamaica Merchant at Bridgetown, Miss Arabella Bishop rode out from heruncle's fine house on the heights to the northwest of the city. She wasattended by two negroes who trotted after her at a respectful distance,and her destination was Government House, whither she went to visit theGovernor's lady, who had lately been ailing. Reaching the summit ofa gentle, grassy slope, she met a tall, lean man dressed in a sober,gentlemanly fashion, who was walking in the opposite direction. He wasa stranger to her, and strangers were rare enough in the island. And yetin some vague way he did not seem quite a stranger.

  Miss Arabella drew rein, affecting to pause that she might admire theprospect, which was fair enough to warrant it. Yet out of the cornerof those hazel eyes she scanned this fellow very attentively as he camenearer. She corrected her first impression of his dress. It wassober enough, but hardly gentlemanly. Coat and breeches were of plainhomespun; and if the former sat so well upon him it was more by virtueof his natural grace than by that of tailoring. His stockings were ofcotton, harsh and plain, and the broad castor, which he respectfullydoffed as he came up with her, was an old one unadorned by band orfeather. What had seemed to be a periwig at a little distance was nowrevealed for the man's own lustrous coiling black hair.

  Out of a brown, shaven, saturnine face two eyes that were startlinglyblue considered her gravely. The man would have passed on but that shedetained him.

  "I think I know you, sir," said she.

  Her voice was crisp and boyish, and there was something of boyishnessin her manner--if one can apply the term to so dainty a lady. It aroseperhaps from an ease, a directness, which disdained the artifices of hersex, and set her on good terms with all the world. To this it may bedue that Miss Arabella had reached the age of five and twenty not merelyunmarried but unwooed. She used with all men a sisterly frankness whichin itself contains a quality of aloofness, rendering it difficult forany man to become her lover.

  Her negroes had halted at some distance in the rear, and they squattednow upon the short grass until it should be her pleasure to proceed uponher way.

  The stranger came to a standstill upon being addressed.

  "A lady should know her own property," said he.

  "My property?"

  "Your uncle's, leastways. Let me present myself. I am called PeterBlood, and I am worth precisely ten pounds. I know it because thatis the sum your uncle paid for me. It is not every man has the sameopportunities of ascertaining his real value."

  She recognized him then. She had not seen him since that day upon themole a month ago, and that she should not instantly have known himagain despite the interest he had then aroused in her is not surprising,considering the change he had wrought in his appearance, which now washardly that of a slave.

  "My God!" said she. "And you can laugh!"

  "It's an achievement," he admitted. "But then, I have not fared as illas I might."

  "I have heard of that," said she.

  What she had heard was that this rebel-convict had been discovered tobe a physician. The thing had come to the ears of Governor Steed, whosuffered damnably from the gout, and Governor Steed had borrowed thefellow from his purchaser. Whether by skill or good fortune, Peter Bloodhad afforded the Governor that relief which his excellency had failed toobtain from the ministrations of either of the two physicians practisingin Bridgetown. Then the Governor's lady had desired him to attend herfor the megrims. Mr. Blood had found her suffering from nothing worsethan peevishness--the result of a natural petulance aggravated by thedulness of life in Barbados to a lady of her social aspirations. But hehad prescribed for her none the less, and she had conceived herself thebetter for his prescription. After that the fame of him had gone throughBridgetown, and Colonel Bishop had found that there was more profit tobe made out of this new slave by leaving him to pursue his professionthan by setting him to work on the plantations, for which purpose he hadbeen originally acquired.

  "It is yourself, madam, I have to thank for my comparatively easyand clean condition," said Mr. Blood, "and I am glad to take thisopportunity of doing so."

  The gratitude was in his words rather than in his tone. Was he mocking,she wondered, and looked at him with the searching frankness thatanother might have found disconcerting. He took the glance for aquestion, and answered it.

  "If some other planter had bought me," he explained, "it is odds thatthe facts of my shining abilities might never have been brought tolight, and I should be hewing and hoeing at this moment like the poorwretches who were landed with me."

  "And why do you thank me for that? It was my uncle who bought you."

  "But he would not have done so had you not urged him. I perceived yourinterest. At the time I resented it."

  "You resented it?" There was a challenge in her boyish voice.

  "I have had no lack of experiences of this mortal life; but to bebought and sold was a new one, and I was hardly in the mood to love mypurchaser."

  "If I urged you upon my uncle, sir, it was that I commiserated you."There was a slight severity in her tone, as if to reprove the mixture ofmockery and flippancy in which he seemed to be speaking.

  She proceeded to explain herself. "My uncle may appear to you a hardman. No doubt he is. They are all hard men, these planters. It is thelife, I suppose. But there are others here who are worse. There is Mr.Crabston, for instance, up at Speightstown. He was there on the mole,waiting to buy my uncle's leavings, and if you had fallen into hishands... A dreadful man. That is why."

  He was a little bewildered.

  "This interest in a stranger..." he began. Then changed the direction ofhis probe. "But there were others as deserving of commiseration."

  "You did not seem quite like the others."

  "I am not," said he.

  "Oh!" She stared at him, bridling a little. "You have a good opinion ofyourself."

  "On the contrary. The others are all worthy rebels. I am not. Thatis the difference. I was one who had not the wit to see that Englandrequires purifying. I was content to pursue a doctor's trade inBridgewater whilst my betters were shedding their blood to drive out anunclean tyrant and his rascally crew."

  "Sir!" she checked him. "I think you are talking treason."

  "I hope I am not obscure," said he.

  "There are those here who would have you flogged if they heard you."

  "The Governor would never allow it. He has the gout, and his lady hasthe megrims."

  "Do you depend upon that?" She was frankly scornful.

  "You have certainly never had the gout; probably not even the megrims,"said he.

  She made a little impatient movement with her hand, and looked away fromhim a moment, out to sea. Quite suddenly she looked at him again; andnow her brows were knit.

  "But if you are not a rebel, how come you here?"

  He saw the thing she apprehended, and he laughed. "Faith, now, it's along story," said he.

  "And one perhaps that you would prefer not to tell?"

  Briefly on that he told it her.

  "My God! What an infamy!" she cried, when he had done.

  "Oh, it's a sweet country England under King James! There's no need tocommiserate me further. All things considered I prefer Barbados. Here atleast one can believe in God."

  He looked first to right, then to left as he spoke, from the distantshadowy bulk of Mount Hillbay to the limitless ocean ruffled by thewinds of heaven. Then, as if the fair prospect rendered him consciousof his own littleness and the insignificance of his woes, he fellthoughtful.

  "Is that so difficult elsewhere?" she asked him, and she was very grave.

  "Men make it so."

  "I see." She laughed a little, on a note of sadness, it seemed tohim. "I have never deemed Barbados the earthly mirror of heaven," sheconfessed. "But no doubt you know your world better than I." She touchedher horse with her little silver-hilted whip. "I congratulate you onthis easing of your misfortun
es."

  He bowed, and she moved on. Her negroes sprang up, and went trottingafter her.

  Awhile Peter Blood remained standing there, where she left him, conningthe sunlit waters of Carlisle Bay below, and the shipping in thatspacious haven about which the gulls were fluttering noisily.

  It was a fair enough prospect, he reflected, but it was a prison, and inannouncing that he preferred it to England, he had indulged that almostlaudable form of boasting which lies in belittling our misadventures.

  He turned, and resuming his way, went off in long, swinging stridestowards the little huddle of huts built of mud and wattles--a miniaturevillage enclosed in a stockade which the plantation slaves inhabited,and where he, himself, was lodged with them.

  Through his mind sang the line of Lovelace:

  "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage."

  But he gave it a fresh meaning, the very converse of that which itsauthor had intended. A prison, he reflected, was a prison, though it hadneither walls nor bars, however spacious it might be. And as he realizedit that morning so he was to realize it increasingly as time sped on.Daily he came to think more of his clipped wings, of his exclusion fromthe world, and less of the fortuitous liberty he enjoyed. Nor did thecontrasting of his comparatively easy lot with that of his unfortunatefellow-convicts bring him the satisfaction a differently constitutedmind might have derived from it. Rather did the contemplation of theirmisery increase the bitterness that was gathering in his soul.

  Of the forty-two who had been landed with him from the Jamaica Merchant,Colonel Bishop had purchased no less than twenty-five. The remainder hadgone to lesser planters, some of them to Speightstown, and others stillfarther north. What may have been the lot of the latter he could nottell, but amongst Bishop's slaves Peter Blood came and went freely,sleeping in their quarters, and their lot he knew to be a brutalizingmisery. They toiled in the sugar plantations from sunrise to sunset, andif their labours flagged, there were the whips of the overseer and hismen to quicken them. They went in rags, some almost naked; they dweltin squalor, and they were ill-nourished on salted meat and maizedumplings--food which to many of them was for a season at least sonauseating that two of them sickened and died before Bishop rememberedthat their lives had a certain value in labour to him and yielded toBlood's intercessions for a better care of such as fell ill. To curbinsubordination, one of them who had rebelled against Kent, the brutaloverseer, was lashed to death by negroes under his comrades' eyes, andanother who had been so misguided as to run away into the woods wastracked, brought back, flogged, and then branded on the forehead withthe letters "F. T.," that all might know him for a fugitive traitoras long as he lived. Fortunately for him the poor fellow died as aconsequence of the flogging.

  After that a dull, spiritless resignation settled down upon theremainder. The most mutinous were quelled, and accepted theirunspeakable lot with the tragic fortitude of despair.

  Peter Blood alone, escaping these excessive sufferings, remainedoutwardly unchanged, whilst inwardly the only change in him was a dailydeeper hatred of his kind, a daily deeper longing to escape from thisplace where man defiled so foully the lovely work of his Creator. It wasa longing too vague to amount to a hope. Hope here was inadmissible.And yet he did not yield to despair. He set a mask of laughter on hissaturnine countenance and went his way, treating the sick to theprofit of Colonel Bishop, and encroaching further and further upon thepreserves of the two other men of medicine in Bridgetown.

  Immune from the degrading punishments and privations of hisfellow-convicts, he was enabled to keep his self-respect, and wastreated without harshness even by the soulless planter to whom he hadbeen sold. He owed it all to gout and megrims. He had won the esteem ofGovernor Steed, and--what is even more important--of Governor Steed'slady, whom he shamelessly and cynically flattered and humoured.

  Occasionally he saw Miss Bishop, and they seldom met but that she pausedto hold him in conversation for some moments, evincing her interestin him. Himself, he was never disposed to linger. He was not, he toldhimself, to be deceived by her delicate exterior, her sapling grace, hereasy, boyish ways and pleasant, boyish voice. In all his life--and ithad been very varied--he had never met a man whom he accounted morebeastly than her uncle, and he could not dissociate her from the man.She was his niece, of his own blood, and some of the vices of it, someof the remorseless cruelty of the wealthy planter must, he argued,inhabit that pleasant body of hers. He argued this very often tohimself, as if answering and convincing some instinct that pleadedotherwise, and arguing it he avoided her when it was possible, and wasfrigidly civil when it was not.

  Justifiable as his reasoning was, plausible as it may seem, yet he wouldhave done better to have trusted the instinct that was in conflictwith it. Though the same blood ran in her veins as in those of ColonelBishop, yet hers was free of the vices that tainted her uncle's, forthese vices were not natural to that blood; they were, in hiscase, acquired. Her father, Tom Bishop--that same Colonel Bishop'sbrother--had been a kindly, chivalrous, gentle soul, who, broken-heartedby the early death of a young wife, had abandoned the Old World andsought an anodyne for his grief in the New. He had come out to theAntilles, bringing with him his little daughter, then five years of age,and had given himself up to the life of a planter. He had prosperedfrom the first, as men sometimes will who care nothing for prosperity.Prospering, he had bethought him of his younger brother, a soldier athome reputed somewhat wild. He had advised him to come out to Barbados;and the advice, which at another season William Bishop might havescorned, reached him at a moment when his wildness was beginning to bearsuch fruit that a change of climate was desirable. William came, andwas admitted by his generous brother to a partnership in the prosperousplantation. Some six years later, when Arabella was fifteen, her fatherdied, leaving her in her uncle's guardianship. It was perhaps his onemistake. But the goodness of his own nature coloured his views of othermen; moreover, himself, he had conducted the education of his daughter,giving her an independence of character upon which perhaps he countedunduly. As things were, there was little love between uncle and niece.But she was dutiful to him, and he was circumspect in his behaviourbefore her. All his life, and for all his wildness, he had gone in acertain awe of his brother, whose worth he had the wit to recognize;and now it was almost as if some of that awe was transferred to hisbrother's child, who was also, in a sense, his partner, although shetook no active part in the business of the plantations.

  Peter Blood judged her--as we are all too prone to judge--uponinsufficient knowledge.

  He was very soon to have cause to correct that judgment. One day towardsthe end of May, when the heat was beginning to grow oppressive, therecrawled into Carlisle Bay a wounded, battered English ship, the Pride ofDevon, her freeboard scarred and broken, her coach a gaping wreck, hermizzen so shot away that only a jagged stump remained to tell the placewhere it had stood. She had been in action off Martinique with twoSpanish treasure ships, and although her captain swore that theSpaniards had beset him without provocation, it is difficult to avoid asuspicion that the encounter had been brought about quite otherwise. Oneof the Spaniards had fled from the combat, and if the Pride of Devon hadnot given chase it was probably because she was by then in no case todo so. The other had been sunk, but not before the English ship hadtransferred to her own hold a good deal of the treasure aboard theSpaniard. It was, in fact, one of those piratical affrays which were aperpetual source of trouble between the courts of St. James's and theEscurial, complaints emanating now from one and now from the other side.

  Steed, however, after the fashion of most Colonial governors, waswilling enough to dull his wits to the extent of accepting the Englishseaman's story, disregarding any evidence that might belie it. He sharedthe hatred so richly deserved by arrogant, overbearing Spain thatwas common to men of every other nation from the Bahamas to the Main.Therefore he gave the Pride of Devon the shelter she sought in hisharbour and every facility to careen and carry out repairs. />
  But before it came to this, they fetched from her hold over a score ofEnglish seamen as battered and broken as the ship herself, and togetherwith these some half-dozen Spaniards in like case, the only survivors ofa boarding party from the Spanish galleon that had invaded the Englishship and found itself unable to retreat. These wounded men were conveyedto a long shed on the wharf, and the medical skill of Bridgetown wassummoned to their aid. Peter Blood was ordered to bear a hand in thiswork, and partly because he spoke Castilian--and he spoke it as fluentlyas his own native tongue--partly because of his inferior condition as aslave, he was given the Spaniards for his patients.

  Now Blood had no cause to love Spaniards. His two years in a Spanishprison and his subsequent campaigning in the Spanish Netherlands hadshown him a side of the Spanish character which he had found anythingbut admirable. Nevertheless he performed his doctor's duties zealouslyand painstakingly, if emotionlessly, and even with a certain superficialfriendliness towards each of his patients. These were so surprised athaving their wounds healed instead of being summarily hanged that theymanifested a docility very unusual in their kind. They were shunned,however, by all those charitably disposed inhabitants of Bridgetown whoflocked to the improvised hospital with gifts of fruit and flowers anddelicacies for the injured English seamen. Indeed, had the wishes ofsome of these inhabitants been regarded, the Spaniards would have beenleft to die like vermin, and of this Peter Blood had an example almostat the very outset.

  With the assistance of one of the negroes sent to the shed for thepurpose, he was in the act of setting a broken leg, when a deep, gruffvoice, that he had come to know and dislike as he had never disliked thevoice of living man, abruptly challenged him.

  "What are you doing there?"

  Blood did not look up from his task. There was not the need. He knew thevoice, as I have said.

  "I am setting a broken leg," he answered, without pausing in hislabours.

  "I can see that, fool." A bulky body interposed between Peter Blood andthe window. The half-naked man on the straw rolled his black eyes tostare up fearfully out of a clay-coloured face at this intruder. Aknowledge of English was unnecessary to inform him that here came anenemy. The harsh, minatory note of that voice sufficiently expressed thefact. "I can see that, fool; just as I can see what the rascal is. Whogave you leave to set Spanish legs?"

  "I am a doctor, Colonel Bishop. The man is wounded. It is not for me todiscriminate. I keep to my trade."

  "Do you, by God! If you'd done that, you wouldn't now be here."

  "On the contrary, it is because I did it that I am here."

  "Aye, I know that's your lying tale." The Colonel sneered; and then,observing Blood to continue his work unmoved, he grew really angry."Will you cease that, and attend to me when I am speaking?"

  Peter Blood paused, but only for an instant. "The man is in pain," hesaid shortly, and resumed his work.

  "In pain, is he? I hope he is, the damned piratical dog. But will youheed me, you insubordinate knave?"

  The Colonel delivered himself in a roar, infuriated by what he conceivedto be defiance, and defiance expressing itself in the most unruffleddisregard of himself. His long bamboo cane was raised to strike. PeterBlood's blue eyes caught the flash of it, and he spoke quickly to arrestthe blow.

  "Not insubordinate, sir, whatever I may be. I am acting upon the expressorders of Governor Steed."

  The Colonel checked, his great face empurpling. His mouth fell open.

  "Governor Steed!" he echoed. Then he lowered his cane, swung round, andwithout another word to Blood rolled away towards the other end of theshed where the Governor was standing at the moment.

  Peter Blood chuckled. But his triumph was dictated less by humanitarianconsiderations than by the reflection that he had baulked his brutalowner.

  The Spaniard, realizing that in this altercation, whatever its nature,the doctor had stood his friend, ventured in a muted voice to ask himwhat had happened. But the doctor shook his head in silence, and pursuedhis work. His ears were straining to catch the words now passing betweenSteed and Bishop. The Colonel was blustering and storming, the greatbulk of him towering above the wizened little overdressed figure of theGovernor. But the little fop was not to be browbeaten. His excellencywas conscious that he had behind him the force of public opinion tosupport him. Some there might be, but they were not many, who held suchruthless views as Colonel Bishop. His excellency asserted his authority.It was by his orders that Blood had devoted himself to the woundedSpaniards, and his orders were to be carried out. There was no more tobe said.

  Colonel Bishop was of another opinion. In his view there was agreat deal to be said. He said it, with great circumstance, loudly,vehemently, obscenely--for he could be fluently obscene when moved toanger.

  "You talk like a Spaniard, Colonel," said the Governor, and thus dealtthe Colonel's pride a wound that was to smart resentfully for many aweek. At the moment it struck him silent, and sent him stamping out ofthe shed in a rage for which he could find no words.

  It was two days later when the ladies of Bridgetown, the wives anddaughters of her planters and merchants, paid their first visit ofcharity to the wharf, bringing their gifts to the wounded seamen.

  Again Peter Blood was there, ministering to the sufferers in his care,moving among those unfortunate Spaniards whom no one heeded. All thecharity, all the gifts were for the members of the crew of the Prideof Devon. And this Peter Blood accounted natural enough. But risingsuddenly from the re-dressing of a wound, a task in which he hadbeen absorbed for some moments, he saw to his surprise that one lady,detached from the general throng, was placing some plantains and abundle of succulent sugar cane on the cloak that served one of hispatients for a coverlet. She was elegantly dressed in lavender silk andwas followed by a half-naked negro carrying a basket.

  Peter Blood, stripped of his coat, the sleeves of his coarse shirtrolled to the elbow, and holding a bloody rag in his hand, stood at gazea moment. The lady, turning now to confront him, her lips parting in asmile of recognition, was Arabella Bishop.

  "The man's a Spaniard," said he, in the tone of one who corrects amisapprehension, and also tinged never so faintly by something of thederision that was in his soul.

  The smile with which she had been greeting him withered on her lips. Shefrowned and stared at him a moment, with increasing haughtiness.

  "So I perceive. But he's a human being none the less," said she.

  That answer, and its implied rebuke, took him by surprise.

  "Your uncle, the Colonel, is of a different opinion," said he, when hehad recovered. "He regards them as vermin to be left to languish and dieof their festering wounds."

  She caught the irony now more plainly in his voice. She continued tostare at him.

  "Why do you tell me this?"

  "To warn you that you may be incurring the Colonel's displeasure. Ifhe had had his way, I should never have been allowed to dress theirwounds."

  "And you thought, of course, that I must be of my uncle's mind?" Therewas a crispness about her voice, an ominous challenging sparkle in herhazel eyes.

  "I'd not willingly be rude to a lady even in my thoughts," said he. "Butthat you should bestow gifts on them, considering that if your unclecame to hear of it...." He paused, leaving the sentence unfinished. "Ah,well--there it is!" he concluded.

  But the lady was not satisfied at all.

  "First you impute to me inhumanity, and then cowardice. Faith! For aman who would not willingly be rude to a lady even in his thoughts, it'snone so bad." Her boyish laugh trilled out, but the note of it jarredhis ears this time.

  He saw her now, it seemed to him, for the first time, and saw how he hadmisjudged her.

  "Sure, now, how was I to guess that... that Colonel Bishop could havean angel for his niece?" said he recklessly, for he was reckless as menoften are in sudden penitence.

  "You wouldn't, of course. I shouldn't think you often guess aright."Having withered him with that and her glance, she tu
rned to her negroand the basket that he carried. From this she lifted now the fruits anddelicacies with which it was laden, and piled them in such heaps uponthe beds of the six Spaniards that by the time she had so served thelast of them her basket was empty, and there was nothing left for herown fellow-countrymen. These, indeed, stood in no need of her bounty--asshe no doubt observed--since they were being plentifully supplied byothers.

  Having thus emptied her basket, she called her negro, and withoutanother word or so much as another glance at Peter Blood, swept out ofthe place with her head high and chin thrust forward.

  Peter watched her departure. Then he fetched a sigh.

  It startled him to discover that the thought that he had incurred heranger gave him concern. It could not have been so yesterday. It becameso only since he had been vouchsafed this revelation of her true nature."Bad cess to it now, it serves me right. It seems I know nothing at allof human nature. But how the devil was I to guess that a family that canbreed a devil like Colonel Bishop should also breed a saint like this?"