When Blood, torn as he was between conflicting considerations, still hesitated, they bore him almost by main force aboard the Arabella.

Within an hour, the water-casks at least replenished and stowed aboard, the Arabella and the Elizabeth put to sea upon that angry chase.

“When we were well at sea, and the Arabella’s course was laid,” writes Pitt, in his log, “I went to seek the Captain, knowing him to be in great trouble of mind over these events.  I found him sitting alone in his cabin, his head in his hands, torment in the eyes that stared straight before him, seeing nothing.”

“What now, Peter?” cried the young Somerset mariner.  “Lord, man, what is there here to fret you?  Surely ’t isn’t the thought of Rivarol!”

“No,” said Blood thickly.  And for once he was communicative.  It may well be that he must vent the thing that oppressed him or be driven mad by it.  And Pitt, after all, was his friend and loved him, and, so, a proper man for confidences.  “But if she knew!  If she knew!  O God!  I had thought to have done with piracy; thought to have done with it for ever.  Yet here have I been committed by this scoundrel to the worst piracy that ever I was guilty of.  Think of Cartagena!  Think of the hell those devils will be making of it now!  And I must have that on my soul!”

“Nay, Peter- ’t isn’t on your soul; but on Rivarol’s.  It is that dirty thief who has brought all this about.  What could you have done to prevent it?”

“I would have stayed if it could have availed.”

“It could not, and you know it.  So why repine?”

“There is more than that to it,” groaned Blood.  “What now?  What remains?  Loyal service with the English was made impossible for me.  Loyal service with France has led to this; and that is equally impossible hereafter.  What to live clean, I believe the only thing is to go and offer my sword to the King of Spain.”

But something remained — the last thing that he could have expected — something towards which they were rapidly sailing over the tropical, sunlit sea.  All this against which he now inveighed so bitterly was but a necessary stage in the shaping of his odd destiny.

Setting a course for Hispaniola, since they judged that thither must Rivarol go to refit before attempting to cross to France, the Arabella and the Elizabeth ploughed briskly northward with a moderately favourable wind for two days and nights without ever catching a glimpse of their quarry.  The third dawn brought with it a haze which circumscribed their range of vision to something between two and three miles, and deepened their growing vexation and their apprehension that M. de Rivarol might escape them altogether.

Their position then — according to Pitt’s log — was approximately 75 deg. 30’ W. Long. by 17 deg. 45’ N. Lat., so that they had Jamaica on their larboard beam some thirty miles to westward, and, indeed, away to the northwest, faintly visible as a bank of clouds, appeared the great ridge of the Blue Mountains whose peaks were thrust into the clear upper air above the low-lying haze.  The wind, to which they were sailing very close, was westerly, and it bore to their ears a booming sound which in less experienced ears might have passed for the breaking of surf upon a lee shore.