“You’re dreaming, Peter,” said the prisoner.  “We’re not going this time.  The magistrates will confiscate the boat since the surety’s not paid, even if when they press him Nuttall does not confess the whole plan and get us all branded on the forehead.”

Mr. Blood turned away, and with agony in his eyes looked out to sea over the blue water by which he had so fondly hoped soon to be travelling back to freedom.

The great red ship had drawn considerably nearer shore by now.  Slowly, majestically, she was entering the bay.  Already one or two wherries were putting off from the wharf to board her.  From where he stood, Mr. Blood could see the glinting of the brass cannons mounted on the prow above the curving beak-head, and he could make out the figure of a seaman in the forechains on her larboard side, leaning out to heave the lead.

An angry voice aroused him from his unhappy thoughts.

“What the devil are you doing here?”

The returning Colonel Bishop came striding into the stockade, his negroes following ever.

Mr. Blood turned to face him, and over that swarthy countenance — which, indeed, by now was tanned to the golden brown of a
half-caste Indian — a mask descended.

“Doing?” said he blandly.  “Why, the duties of my office.”

The Colonel, striding furiously forward, observed two things.  The empty pannikin on the seat beside the prisoner, and the palmetto leaf protecting his back.  “Have you dared to do this?” The veins on the planter’s forehead stood out like cords.

“Of course I have.”  Mr. Blood’s tone was one of faint surprise.

“I said he was to have neither meat nor drink until I ordered it.”

“Sure, now, I never heard ye.”

“You never heard me?  How should you have heard me when you weren’t here?”

“Then how did ye expect me to know what orders ye’d given?” Mr. Blood’s tone was positively aggrieved.  “All that I knew was that one of your slaves was being murthered by the sun and the flies.  And I says to myself, this is one of the Colonel’s slaves, and I’m the Colonel’s doctor, and sure it’s my duty to be looking after the Colonel’s property.  So I just gave the fellow a spoonful of water and covered his back from the sun.  And wasn’t I right now?”

“Right?” The Colonel was almost speechless.

“Be easy, now, be easy!” Mr. Blood implored him.  “It’s an apoplexy ye’ll be contacting if ye give way to heat like this.”

The planter thrust him aside with an imprecation, and stepping forward tore the palmetto leaf from the prisoner’s back.

“In the name of humanity, now....”  Mr. Blood was beginning.

The Colonel swung upon him furiously.  “Out of this!” he commanded.  “And don’t come near him again until I send for you, unless you want to be served in the same way.”

He was terrific in his menace, in his bulk, and in the power of him.  But Mr. Blood never flinched.  It came to the Colonel, as he found himself steadily regarded by those light-blue eyes that looked so arrestingly odd in that tawny face — like pale sapphires set in copper — that this rogue had for some time now been growing presumptuous.  It was a matter that he must presently correct.  Meanwhile Mr. Blood was speaking again, his tone quietly insistent.