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. 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. 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. These straggling, excited groups were mainly composed of men with green boughs in their hats and the most ludicrous of weapons in their hands. 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. Sternly disapproving eyes considered him from a window opposite, but went disregarded.
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. This ebook was created with StreetLib Write Sabatini’s command of language is vivid, assured and utterly convincing.UUID: 0b70d8f1-ce5f-4d0e-8ebf-69b41ec01efa Disregard the sometimes dated attitudes and simply enjoy this glorious romp through the Caribbean where villains are either cowardly, sweaty and stupid, or brutally handsome and cunning but not nearly so smart or witty as Peter Blood with his appealing Irish accent.Īn ingenious double bluff, a masterpiece of seamanship whereby he outwits the Spanish, taking his fleet out of a seemingly impregnable trap at Maracaybo, sets the tone for a magnificent series of set-piece sea engagements worthy of the greatest storytellers of the genre. Starting off in a stolen Spanish ship, within three years Captain Blood has become a terror of the seas, renowned for his unequalled seamanship, honourable dealings and courtesy to women. And this is where the story really begins. Peter Blood and selected fellow slaves, poised for a daring escape, are unexpectedly aided by a dastardly Spanish attack on Carlisle Bay. Condemned to the plantations of Barbadoes for using his medical skill in tending a wounded rebel against King James II, he is purchased by odiously sadistic slave owner Colonel Bishop at the behest of the Colonel’s niece Arabella (fair, frank and unfashionably slender). Peter Blood, tall, spare, elegant, swarthy as a gipsy, with his startlingly blue eyes, high-bridged nose and thin, firm mouth is born to be a romantic hero.
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