“Until you...”  Horror prevented Colonel Bishop from echoing the remainder of that incredible speech.

“Just so,” said Peter Blood, and he turned to the officers who had accompanied the Colonel.  “The boat is waiting, gentlemen.  You’ll have heard what I said.  Convey it with my compliments to his excellency.”

“But, sir...” one of them began.

“There is no more to be said, gentlemen.  My name is Blood — Captain Blood, if you please, of this ship the Cinco Llagas, taken as a prize of war from Don Diego de Espinosa y Valdez, who is my prisoner aboard.  You are to understand that I have turned the tables on more than the Spaniards.  There’s the ladder.  You’ll find it more convenient than being heaved over the side, which is what’ll happen if you linger.”

They went, though not without some hustling, regardless of the bellowings of Colonel Bishop, whose monstrous rage was fanned by terror at finding himself at the mercy of these men of whose cause to hate him he was very fully conscious.

A half-dozen of them, apart from Jeremy Pitt, who was utterly incapacitated for the present, possessed a superficial knowledge of seamanship.  Hagthorpe, although he had been a fighting officer, untrained in navigation, knew how to handle a ship, and under his directions they set about getting under way.

The anchor catted, and the mainsail unfurled, they stood out for the open before a gentle breeze, without interference from the fort.

As they were running close to the headland east of the bay, Peter Blood returned to the Colonel, who, under guard and panic-stricken, had dejectedly resumed his seat on the coamings of the main batch.

“Can ye swim, Colonel?”

Colonel Bishop looked up.  His great face was yellow and seemed in that moment of a preternatural flabbiness; his beady eyes were beadier than ever.

“As your doctor, now, I prescribe a swim to cool the excessive heat of your humours.”  Blood delivered the explanation pleasantly, and, receiving still no answer from the Colonel, continued:  “It’s a mercy for you I’m not by nature as bloodthirsty as some of my friends here.  And it’s the devil’s own labour I’ve had to prevail upon them not to be vindictive.  I doubt if ye’re worth the pains I’ve taken for you.”

He was lying.  He had no doubt at all.  Had he followed his own wishes and instincts, he would certainly have strung the Colonel up, and accounted it a meritorious deed.  It was the thought of Arabella Bishop that had urged him to mercy, and had led him to oppose the natural vindictiveness of his fellow-slaves until he had been in danger of precipitating a mutiny.  It was entirely to the fact that the Colonel was her uncle, although he did not even begin to suspect such a cause, that he owed such mercy as was now being shown him.

“You shall have a chance to swim for it,” Peter Blood continued.  “It’s not above a quarter of a mile to the headland yonder, and with ordinary luck ye should manage it.  Faith, you’re fat enough to float.  Come on!  Now, don’t be hesitating or it’s a long voyage ye’ll be going with us, and the devil knows what may happen to you.  You’re not loved any more than you deserve.”