Captain Blood | Page 6

the Peace of Nimeguen his movements are obscure. But we know
that he spent two years in a Spanish prison, though we do not know
how he contrived to get there. It may be due to this that upon his
release he took his sword to France, and saw service with the French in

their warring upon the Spanish Netherlands. Having reached, at last, the
age of thirty-two, his appetite for adventure surfeited, his health having
grown indifferent as the result of a neglected wound, he was suddenly
overwhelmed by homesickness. He took ship from Nantes with intent
to cross to Ireland. But the vessel being driven by stress of weather into
Bridgewater Bay, and Blood's health having grown worse during the
voyage, he decided to go ashore there, additionally urged to it by the
fact that it was his mother's native soil.
Thus in January of that year 1685 he had come to Bridgewater,
possessor of a fortune that was approximately the same as that with
which he had originally set out from Dublin eleven years ago.
Because he liked the place, in which his health was rapidly restored to
him, and because he conceived that he had passed through adventures
enough for a man's lifetime, he determined to settle there, and take up
at last the profession of medicine from which he had, with so little
profit, broken away.
That is all his story, or so much of it as matters up to that night, six
months later, when the battle of Sedgemoor was fought.
Deeming the impending action no affair of his, as indeed it was not,
and indifferent to the activity with which Bridgewater was that night
agog, Mr. Blood closed his ears to the sounds of it, and went early to
bed. He was peacefully asleep long before eleven o'clock, at which
hour, as you know, Monmouth rode but with his rebel host along the
Bristol Road, circuitously to avoid the marshland that lay directly
between himself and the Royal Army. You also know that his
numerical advantage - possibly counter-balanced by the greater
steadiness of the regular troops on the other side - and the advantages
he derived from falling by surprise upon an army that was more or less
asleep, were all lost to him by blundering and bad leadership before
ever he was at grips with Feversham.
The armies came into collision in the neighbourhood of two o'clock in
the morning. Mr. Blood slept undisturbed through the distant boom of
cannon. Not until four o'clock, when the sun was rising to dispel the

last wisps of mist over that stricken field of battle, did he awaken from
his tranquil slumbers.
He sat up in bed, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and collected himself.
Blows were thundering upon the door of his house, and a voice was
calling incoherently. This was the noise that had aroused him.
Conceiving that he had to do with some urgent obstetrical case, he
reached for bedgown and slippers, to go below. On the landing he
almost collided with Mrs. Barlow, new-risen and unsightly, in a state of
panic. He quieted her cluckings with a word of reassurance, and went
himself to open.
There in slanting golden light of the new-risen sun stood a breathless,
wild-eyed man and a steaming horse. Smothered in dust and grime, his
clothes in disarray, the left sleeve of his doublet hanging in rags, this
young man opened his lips to speak, yet for a long moment remained
speechless.
In that moment Mr. Blood recognized him for the young shipmaster,
Jeremiah Pitt, the nephew of the maiden ladies opposite, one who had
been drawn by the general enthusiasm into the vortex of that rebellion.
The street was rousing, awakened by the sailor's noisy advent; doors
were opening, and lattices were being unlatched for the protrusion of
anxious, inquisitive heads.
"Take your time, now," said Mr. Blood. "I never knew speed made by
overhaste."
But the wild-eyed lad paid no heed to the admonition. He plunged,
headlong, into speech, gasping, breathless.
"It is Lord Gildoy," he panted. "He is sore wounded ... at Oglethorpe's
Farm by the river. I bore him thither ... and ... and he sent me for you.
Come away! Come away!"
He would have clutched the doctor, and haled him forth by force in
bedgown and slippers as he was. But the doctor eluded that too eager
hand.

"To be sure, I'll come," said he. He was distressed. Gildoy had been a
very friendly, generous patron to him since his settling in these parts.
And Mr. Blood was eager enough to do what he now could to discharge
the debt, grieved that the occasion should have arisen, and in such a
manner - for he knew quite well that the rash young