Peter stared at him.  “If you mean what you seem to mean, you had better say it to Governor Steed.  It may amuse him.”

“You surely misapprehend me.”

“I hope so.”

“You’re so very hot, now!” The doctor linked his arm through Peter’s.  “I protest I desire to be your friend — to serve you.  Now, listen.”  Instinctively his voice grew lower.  “This slavery in which you find yourself must be singularly irksome to a man of parts such as yourself.”

“What intuitions!” cried sardonic Mr. Blood.  But the doctor took him literally.

“I am no fool, my dear doctor.  I know a man when I see one, and often I can tell his thoughts.”

“If you can tell me mine, you’ll persuade me of it,” said Mr. Blood.

Dr. Whacker drew still closer to him as they stepped along the wharf.  He lowered his voice to a still more confidential tone.  His hard blue eyes peered up into the swart, sardonic face of his companion, who was a head taller than himself.

“How often have I not seen you staring out over the sea, your soul in your eyes!  Don’t I know what you are thinking?  If you could escape from this hell of slavery, you could exercise the profession of which you are an ornament as a free man with pleasure and profit to yourself.  The world is large.  There are many nations besides England where a man of your parts would be warmly welcomed.  There are many colonies besides these English ones.”  Lower still came the voice until it was no more than a whisper.  Yet there was no one within earshot.  “It is none so far now to the Dutch settlement of Curacao.  At this time of the year the voyage may safely be undertaken in a light craft.  And Curacao need be no more than a stepping-stone to the great world, which would lie open to you once you were delivered from this bondage.”

Dr. Whacker ceased.  He was pale and a little out of breath.  But his hard eyes continued to study his impassive companion.

“Well?” he said alter a pause.  “What do you say to that?”

Yet Blood did not immediately answer.  His mind was heaving in tumult, and he was striving to calm it that he might take a proper survey of this thing flung into it to create so monstrous a disturbance.  He began where another might have ended.

“I have no money.  And for that a handsome sum would be necessary.”

“Did I not say that I desired to be your friend?”

“Why?” asked Peter Blood at point-blank range.

But he never heeded the answer.  Whilst Dr. Whacker was professing that his heart bled for a brother doctor languishing in slavery, denied the opportunity which his gifts entitled him to make for himself, Peter Blood pounced like a hawk upon the obvious truth.  Whacker and his colleague desired to be rid of one who threatened to ruin them.  Sluggishness of decision was never a fault of Blood’s.  He leapt where another crawled.  And so this thought of evasion never entertained until planted there now by Dr. Whacker sprouted into instant growth.