figure of the Governor.  But the little fop was not to be browbeaten.  His excellency was conscious that he had behind him the force of public opinion to support him.  Some there might be, but they were not many, who held such ruthless views as Colonel Bishop.  His excellency asserted his authority.  It was by his orders that Blood had devoted himself to the wounded Spaniards, and his orders were to be carried out.  There was no more to be said.

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

“You talk like a Spaniard, Colonel,” said the Governor, and thus dealt the Colonel’s pride a wound that was to smart resentfully for many a week.  At the moment it struck him silent, and sent him stamping out of the shed in a rage for which he could find no words.

It was two days later when the ladies of Bridgetown, the wives and daughters of her planters and merchants, paid their first visit of charity 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 the charity, all the gifts were for the members of the crew of the Pride of Devon.  And this Peter Blood accounted natural enough.  But rising suddenly from the re-dressing of a wound, a task in which he had been absorbed for some moments, he saw to his surprise that one lady, detached from the general throng, was placing some plantains and a bundle of succulent sugar cane on the cloak that served one of his patients for a coverlet.  She was elegantly dressed in lavender silk and was followed by a half-naked negro carrying a basket.

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

“The man’s a Spaniard,” said he, in the tone of one who corrects a misapprehension, and also tinged never so faintly by something of the derision that was in his soul.

The smile with which she had been greeting him withered on her lips.  She frowned 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 he had recovered.  “He regards them as vermin to be left to languish and die of their festering wounds.”

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

“Why do you tell me this?”

“To warn you that you may be incurring the Colonel’s displeasure.  If he had had his way, I should never have been allowed to dress their wounds.”