Like Moreau in Rafael Sabatini's Scaramouche (1921), Peter Blood is a man of intellect who is torn from his contemplative life and thrust into a life of bold action. Also like Moreau, Blood seeks only to be left alone to pursue his quiet life, to detach himself from the insanity of war. Against his will he must confront injustice. Blood has the characteristic of being "an exceptional judge of men." He is self-sufficient, noble, and ruthless. For all his selfsufficiency, though, Captain Blood is a tormented man, and he gains our sympathy in a way that Moreau does not.

While Sabatini paints his chief characters in broad and bold swaths of white and black, he peoples the novel with fine minor characters. Lord Jeffreys, the Lord Chief Justice who sentences Blood to a lifetime of misery, has "an oval face that was delicately beautiful." The "fine sensitiveness of those...