The Greatest Historical Novels. Rafael Sabatini
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.
“I see, I see,” he said, whilst his companion was still talking, explaining, and to save Dr. Whacker’s face he played the hypocrite. “It is very noble in you—very brotherly, as between men of medicine. It is what I myself should wish to do in like case.”
The hard eyes flashed, the husky voice grew tremulous as the other asked almost too eagerly:
“You agree, then? You agree?”
“Agree?” Blood laughed. “If I should be caught and brought back, they’d clip my wings and brand me for life.”
“Surely the thing is worth a little risk?” More tremulous than ever was the tempter’s voice.
“Surely,” Blood agreed. “But it asks more than courage. It asks money. A sloop might be bought for twenty pounds, perhaps.”
“It shall be forthcoming. It shall be a loan, which you shall repay us—repay me, when you can.”
That betraying “us” so hastily retrieved completed Blood’s understanding. The other doctor was also in the business.
They were approaching the peopled part of the mole. Quickly, but eloquently, Blood expressed his thanks, where he knew that no thanks were due.
“We will talk of this again, sir—to-morrow,” he concluded. “You have opened for me the gates of hope.”
In that at least he tittered no more than the bare truth, and expressed it very baldly. It was, indeed, as if a door had been suddenly flung open to the sunlight for escape from a dark prison in which a man had thought to spend his life.
He was in haste now to be alone, to straighten out his agitated mind and plan coherently what was to be done. Also he must consult another. Already he had hit upon that other. For such a voyage a navigator would be necessary, and a navigator was ready to his hand in Jeremy Pitt. The first thing was to take counsel with the young shipmaster, who must be associated with him in this business if it were to be undertaken. All that day his mind was in turmoil with this new hope, and he was sick with impatience for night and a chance to discuss the matter with his chosen partner. As a result Blood was betimes that evening in the spacious stockade that enclosed the huts of the slaves together with the big white house of the overseer, and he found an opportunity of a few words with Pitt, unobserved by the others.
“To-night when all are asleep, come to my cabin. I have something to say to you.”
The young man stared at him, roused by Blood’s pregnant tone out of the mental lethargy into which he had of late been lapsing as a result of the dehumanizing life he lived. Then he nodded understanding and assent, and they moved apart.
The six months of plantation life in Barbados had made an almost tragic mark upon the young seaman. His erstwhile bright alertness was all departed. His face was growing vacuous, his eyes were dull and lack-lustre, and he moved in a cringing, furtive manner, like an over-beaten dog. He had survived the ill-nourishment, the excessive work on the sugar plantation under a pitiless sun, the lashes of the overseer’s whip when his labours flagged, and the deadly, unrelieved animal life to which he was condemned. But the price he was paying for survival was the usual price. He was in danger of becoming no better than an animal, of sinking to the level of the negroes who sometimes toiled beside him. The man, however, was still there, not yet dormant, but merely torpid from a surfeit of despair; and the man in him promptly shook off that torpidity and awoke at the first words Blood spoke to him that night—awoke and wept.
“Escape?” he panted. “O God!” He took his head in his hands, and fell to sobbing like a child.
“Sh! Steady now! Steady!” Blood admonished him in a whisper, alarmed by the lad’s blubbering. He crossed to Pitt’s side, and set a restraining hand upon his shoulder. “For God’s sake, command yourself. If we’re overheard we shall both be flogged for this.”
Among the privileges enjoyed by Blood was that of a hut to himself, and they were alone in this. But, after all, it was built of wattles thinly plastered with mud, and its door was composed of bamboos, through which sound passed very easily. Though the stockade was locked for the night, and all within it asleep by now—it was after midnight—yet a prowling overseer was not impossible, and a sound of voices must lead to discovery. Pitt realized this, and controlled his outburst of emotion.
Sitting close thereafter they talked in whispers for an hour or more, and all the while those dulled wits of Pitt’s were sharpening themselves anew upon this precious whetstone of hope. They would need to recruit others into their enterprise, a half-dozen at least, a half-score if possible, but no more than that. They must pick the best out of that score of survivors of the Monmouth men that Colonel Bishop had acquired. Men who understood the sea were desirable. But of these there were only two in that unfortunate gang, and their knowledge was none too full. They were Hagthorpe, a gentleman who had served in the Royal Navy, and Nicholas Dyke, who had been a petty officer in the late king’s time, and there was another who had been a gunner, a man named Ogle.
It was agreed before they parted that Pitt should begin with these three and then proceed to recruit some six or eight others. He was to move with the utmost caution, sounding his men very carefully before making anything in the nature of a disclosure, and even then avoid rendering that disclosure so full that its betrayal might frustrate the plans which as yet had to be worked out in detail. Labouring with them in the plantations, Pitt would not want for opportunities of broaching the matter to his fellow-slaves.
“Caution above everything,” was Blood’s last recommendation to him at parting. “Who goes slowly, goes safely, as the Italians have it. And remember that if you betray yourself, you ruin all, for you are the only navigator amongst us, and without you there is no escaping.”
Pitt reassured him, and slunk off back to his own hut and the straw that served him for a bed.
Coming next morning to the wharf, Blood found Dr. Whacker in a generous mood. Having slept on the matter, he was prepared to advance the convict any sum up to thirty pounds that would enable him to acquire a boat capable of taking him away from the settlement. Blood expressed his thanks becomingly, betraying no sign that he saw clearly into the true reason of the other’s munificence.
“It’s not money I’ll require,” said he, “but the boat itself. For who will be selling me a boat and incurring the penalties in Governor Steed’s proclamation? Ye’ll have read it, no doubt?”
Dr. Whacker’s heavy face grew overcast. Thoughtfully he rubbed his chin. “I’ve read it—yes. And I dare not procure the boat for you. It would be discovered. It must be. And the penalty is a fine of two hundred pounds besides imprisonment. It would ruin me. You’ll see that?”
The high hopes in Blood’s soul, began to shrink. And the shadow of his despair overcast his face.
“But then...” he faltered. “There is nothing