Evening star., 1924-10-22
CAPTAIN BLOOD
Bu RAFAEL SABATINI
The Greatest Love Story Ever Told

and for all his wildness, he aad gone
in a certain awe of his brother, whose
worth he had the wit to recognizes;
and now it was almost If some Of
that awe was transferred to his
brothers child, who was also. in a
sense, his partner, although she took
no active part in the business of the
plantations.
Peter Blood judged her-as we are
all too prone to judge-upon insuffi-
cient knowledge.
He was very soon to have cause
to correct that Judgment.
One day toward the end of May,
when the heat was beginning to grow
oppressive, there crawled into Car
Isle Bay a wounded, battered Eng
lish ship, the Pride of Devon, her
freeboard SCARED and broken, her
coach a gaping wreck, her mizzen SO
shot away that only jagged stump
remained to tell the place where it
had stood. She had oeen in action off
Martinique with two Spanish treasure
ships, and although her captain swore
that the SpaniardS had beset him
without proVocation, it is difficult to
avoid a suspicion that the encounter
had been brought about quite other
wise. One of the Spaniards had fled
from the combat. and If the Pride
of Devon had not given chase IL was
probably because she was by then
in no case to do so. The other had
been sunk, but not before the Eng
lish ship had transferred TO her own
hold good deal of the treasure
aboard the Spauiard. 1t was. in fact,
one of those piratical affrays which
were a perpetual source of trouble
between the courts of st. James and
the Escural, complaints emanating
now from one and now from the other
side.
Steed. however. after the fashion of
most colonial governors, was willing
enough to dull his wits to the ex-
tent of accepting the English sea-
mans story, d:sregarding any evil
dence that might belle it. He shared
the hatred so richly deserved by ar
rogant, overbearing Spain that was
common to men of every other ma
ton from the Bahamas to the Main.
Therefore he gave the Pride of Devon
the shelter she sought in his har-
Dor and every facility to careen and
carry out repairs.
But before it came to this, they
fetched from her hold over a score
of English seamen as battered and
broken as the ship herself, and to-
gether with these some half-dozen
Spanards in like case, the only sur
vivors of a boarding party from the
spanish RdliGOn lhdl Hau INVADED the
English ship and found itself unable
to retreat. These wounded men were
conveyed to a long shed on the wharf
and the medical skill of Bridgetown
was summoned TO their aid Peter
Blood was ordered to bear a hand in
this work, and partly because he
spoke Castilian-and he spoke 1t as
f1uently as his own native tongue
partly because of his inferior condi-
tion as a slave. he was given the
Spaniards for his patients
Now Blood had no cause to love
Spaniards. His two years in
Spanish prison and his subsequent
campaigning in the Spanish Neither
lands had shown him a side of the
Spanish character which he had found
anything but admirable. Neverthe-
less, he performed his dictors duties
zealously and painstakingly, If emo
tionlessly, and even with certain
superficial friendliness toward each
of his patients. These were so sur
prised at having their wounds healed
instead of being summarily hanged
that they manifested a docility very
unusual in their kind. They were
stunned, however. by all those char
itably disposed inhabitants of Bridge
town who fiocked to the improvised
hospital with gifts of fruit and flow
ers and delicacies for the injured
English Seamen. Indeed, had the
wishes Of some of these inhabitants
been regarded, the Spaniards would
have been left to die like vermin, and
of this Peter Blood had an example
almost at the very outset.