Peter Blood

“ For, as if an obscuring veil had suddenly been rent that morning, she was permitted at last to see Peter Blood in his true relations to other men, and that sight, vouchsafed her twenty-four hours too late, filled her with pity and regret and yearning.
Lord Julian knew enough of women to be left in no further doubt. He bowed his head so that she might not see the anger in his eyes, for as a man of honour he took shame in that anger which as a human being he could not repress. ”

“ Peter Blood was not quite certain. "She encroaches a deal upon your time, I hear. Youth and good looks, Doctor Blood! Youth and good looks! They are inestimable advantages in our profession as in others—particularly where the ladies are concerned." ”

“ He was right in his indifferently expressed thought that a man whose mien and words could daunt such a lord of terror as Jeffreys, should by the dominance of his nature be able to fashion himself a considerable destiny. He was wrong—though justifiably so—in his assumption that Peter Blood must hang. ”

“ All the blood left Peter's face as he replied: "So, it is you, Master Guardian? Well, what has been done cannot be undone, and it was bound to happen thus. But I hope you won't accuse me before the justices as a murderer."
"Wretch!" answered the Glassmanikin. "What profit could it be to me to bring your mortal body to the gallows? It is no earthly judge that you have to fear, but another and sterner Judge; for you have sold your soul to the Evil One."
"And if I have sold my heart," shrieked Peter, "then nobody is to blame but yourself and your illusory gifts. ”

“ Indeed, had the wishes of some of these inhabitants been regarded, the Spaniards would have been left to die like vermin, and of this Peter Blood had an example almost at the very outset.
With the assistance of one of the negroes sent to the shed for the purpose, he was in the act of setting a broken leg, when a deep, gruff voice, that he had come to know and dislike as he had never disliked the voice of living man, abruptly challenged him. ”

“ Peter Blood had no illusions. He was not, and never would be, the complete pirate. There was not another buccaneer in all the Caribbean who would have denied himself the pleasure of stringing Colonel Bishop from the yardarm, and by thus finally stifling the vindictive planter's hatred have increased his own security. But Blood was not of these. Moreover, in the case of Colonel Bishop there was a particular reason for restraint. Because he was Arabella Bishop's uncle, his life must remain sacred to Captain Blood. ”

“ It is time fully to disclose the fact that the survival of the story of Captain Blood's exploits is due entirely to the industry of Jeremy Pitt, the Somersetshire shipmaster. In addition to his ability as a navigator, this amiable young man appears to have wielded an indefatigable pen, and to have been inspired to indulge its fluency by the affection he very obviously bore to Peter Blood.
He kept the log of the forty-gun frigate Arabella, on which he served as master, or, as we should say to-day, navigating officer, as no log that I have seen was ever kept. ”

“ Blood must sleep in his own chamber to be at hand in case of need. It was as if Fate made sport of him. For that night at least the escape must be definitely abandoned.
Not until the early hours of the morning did Peter Blood succeed in making a temporary escape from Government House on the ground that he required certain medicaments which he must, himself, procure from the apothecary.
On that pretext, he made an excursion into the awakening town, and went straight to Nuttall, whom he found in a state of livid panic. ”

“ Small wonder that the ingenious Colonel Bishop, who so well understood the art of loosening stubborn tongues, had not deemed it necessary to have recourse to other means of torture. Not all his fiendish cruelty could devise a torment more cruel, more unendurable than the torments Nature would here procure a man in Pitt's condition.
The slave writhed in his stocks until he was in danger of breaking his limbs, and writhing, screamed in agony.
Thus was he found by Peter Blood, who seemed to his troubled vision to materialize suddenly before him. Mr. Blood carried a large palmetto leaf. ”

“ Peter Blood, bachelor of medicine and several other things besides, smoked a pipe and tended the geraniums boxed on the sill of his window above Water Lane in the town of Bridgewater.
Sternly disapproving eyes considered him from a window opposite, but went disregarded. Mr. Blood's attention was divided between his task and the stream of humanity in the narrow street below; a stream which poured for the second time that day towards Castle Field, where earlier in the afternoon Ferguson, the Duke's chaplain, had preached a sermon containing more treason than divinity. ”

“ Captain Blood admonished him.
“Steady, yourself, Peter. Ye've gone mad! Will ye doom us all to hell out of tenderness for that cold slip of a girl?”
“Stop!” cried Blood in sudden fury.
But Wolverstone would not stop. “It's the truth, you fool. It's that cursed petticoat's making a coward of you. It's for her that ye're afeard—and she, Colonel Bishop's niece! My God, man, ye'll have a mutiny aboard, and I'll lead it myself sooner than surrender to be hanged in Port Royal.” ”

“ He was the son of an Irish medicus, by a Somersetshire lady in whose veins ran the rover blood of the Frobishers, which may account for a certain wildness that had early manifested itself in his disposition. This wildness had profoundly alarmed his father, who for an Irishman was of a singularly peace-loving nature. He had early resolved that the boy should follow his own honourable profession, and Peter Blood, being quick to learn and oddly greedy of knowledge, had satisfied his parent by receiving at the age of twenty the degree of baccalaureus medicinae at Trinity College, Dublin. ”

“ Peter Blood found himself staring into a pair of beady brown eyes sunk into a yellow, fleshly face like currants into a dumpling. He felt the colour creeping into his face under the insult of that contemptuous inspection. “Bah! A bag of bones. What should I do with him?”
He was turning away when Gardner interposed.
“He maybe lean, but he's tough; tough and healthy. When half of them was sick and the other half sickening, this rogue kept his legs and doctored his fellows. But for him there'd ha' been more deaths than there was. Say fifteen pounds for him, Colonel. That's cheap enough. ”

“ It was the clear impression of the palm of a man's hand heavily pressed into the earth of a herbaceous border, the fingers pointing towards the house. On the path the gravel had been scraped up in two long furrows. There was blood on the grass border between the path and the bed, and the edge of the grass was broken and trampled.
"I don't like that," said Lord Peter.
"Ugly, isn't it?" agreed Parker.
"Poor devil!" said Peter. "He made a determined effort to hang on here. That explains the blood by the conservatory door. But what kind of a devil drags a corpse that isn't quite dead?" ”

“ The mortality might have been higher than it was but for Peter Blood. At first the master of the Jamaica Merchant had answered with oaths and threats the doctor's expostulations against permitting men to perish in this fashion, and his insistence that he should be made free of the medicine chest and given leave to minister to the sick. But presently Captain Gardner came to see that he might be brought to task for these too heavy losses of human merchandise and because of this he was belatedly glad to avail himself of the skill of Peter Blood. ”

“ My God, Wimsey, yes, you're right—round corpuscles, diameter 1/3621—mammalian blood—probably human——"
"Her blood," said Wimsey.
"It was very clever, Bunter," said Lord Peter, as the taxi trundled along on the way to his flat in Piccadilly. "If that fowl had gone on roasting a bit longer the blood-corpuscles might easily have been destroyed beyond all hope of recognition. It all goes to show that the unpremeditated crime is usually the safest."
"And what does your lordship take the man's motive to have been?" ”

“ Peter go to mountain, find plenty water, plenty white fellow, plenty gun, knife. Kill white man, kill bad fellow Wilkins."
"She's reet! I'll uphold her," said Wilkins. "Depend on 't Peter's heared of some bush-rangers out ower yonder, and he'll want to join 'em. We'se have to keep clear of their track, master. Just look round ye, what chance should we have again a lot of them desp'rate rogues, wi' guns in their hands, and blood in their hearts; and when they're fairly set on, them blacks is as bad; they reckon nought of a dozen lives to get haud on a gun." ”

“ He was only a novice, and had not yet learned that there are seventy-seven devils in the body, and that the body receives as many blows as there are devils. He had learned that we must regard the nail-studded belt and the hooked lash as our benefactors, and that to scourge the body at night until the blood flowed was an equivalent for a day of prayer. But to beat howling students was still a horror to him. Soon he will become accustomed to that too. At this moment was heard in the hall the voice of the Prior. "Petre ad me tendas." ("Peter, come to me.") ”

“ Peter Blood judged her—as we are all too prone to judge—upon insufficient knowledge. ”

“ What dost thou do? what dost thou think, my soul? my tongue, why art thou silent? O sweet Saviour, when I open mine eyes and behold this sorrowful spectacle, my heart is rent with grief. What, Lord, were not thy former torments, imminent death, and abundance of thy blood already shed, sufficient for the redemption of mankind? but thou must yet be crowned with sharp thorns? ”

“ He had watched the Austrian machines pouring steel upon the Russians also. There had been emotion; he had felt the shame of it powerfully on this very morning; but now he reflected, with a touch of levity, that his pity had not been adequate. At the present juncture he belonged to the sacrifice. The process was reversed; the globe of his experience shortly to be made complete. He would have the effects of light and darkness from the vantage of the preying and the preyed upon.
Peter had never been actually down among men before. ”

“ The patter of the pistol bullets against the wall, like so many crackers, the faces felt rather than seen in the dark, the clamour which to me was pure gibberish, had all the madness of a nightmare. Only Peter, cursing steadily in Dutch by my side, was real. And then the light came, and made the scene more eerie!
It came from one or two torches carried by wild fellows with long staves who drove their way into the heart of the mob. The flickering glare ran up the steep walls and made monstrous shadows. The wind swung the flame into long streamers, dying away in a fan of sparks. ”

“ There were a great many of the ancient nobles thus condemned, a great many ladies of high rank, and large numbers of priests. These persons were all executed, or rather massacred, in the most reckless and merciless manner. Some were beheaded; some were broken on the wheel, and then left to die in horrible agonies. Many were buried alive, their heads only being left above the ground. It is said that Peter took such a savage delight in these punishments, that he executed many of the victims with his own hands. ”

“ In passing me the thing had knocked the match from my hand, plunging the room once more into total darkness. I was paralyzed, unable to move or think. I sat on the edge of my bunk, deathly sick, and my heart seemed to come up in my throat. The small room careened drunkenly. I finally became conscious of two dark objects struggling on the floor. I heard a gulping and a low moaning, and then the still night was rent with Peter's forced screams of horror. "Oh Lord, where are the rest?"
He shrieked and shrieked, and between the screams he vomited a torrent of jumbled words. "Green—eyes! Ugh! ”

“ THE EVIL ONE TAKES A HAND Peter rushed to the door and stood, staring.
Balls of red fire were shooting out into the air from the opened casement of the room in the loft, flooding the place with light as they burst with terrific explosions. In the light Peter could see his men standing horror-struck, four below him at the bottom of the stairs, and four on guard at the door. Those who had been clinging to Stas on the landing had recoiled in fright before the fiery balls, and the half-wit had seized the opportunity to slink stealthily away through their legs, and make for the lower steps. ”

“ The lance of yellow-red flame had occasioned no disturbance other than a slight smack, comparable with the sharp clapping of a man's hands.
In the second leaping flame Peter was far more interested. Having delivered himself of one shot, the assassin could be depended upon to make casual inquiries, and to drop at least one more bullet into the darkness between the upper and lower berths, to make a clean job of it. ”

“ There are many ugly stories about the way that Peter behaved in regard to his enemies, although it is true that they had given him ample provocation, and it is said that when he was under the influence of drink he put to death a number of conspirators with his own hand. ”

“ Tiny red flames spurted out on either side of the cylinder and smeared in a smoky circle where the muzzle was momentarily buried in the tangled black coat. And Emiguel Borria seemed to sink into the great room and entirely out of Peter's sight.
Romola leaned far into the darkness.
"Run! Run! For your life!"
And as Peter started to run, out of the compound for the dubious safety of the cloistered road, other men of the Gray Dragon, posted for such a contingency, let loose a shower of bullets from adjoining windows. ”

“ The old woman only repeated, with a ghastly look: "There is blood on your hand, and it is English blood. The blood of the Gael is richer and redder. Let us see—let us——"
Ere Robin Oig could prevent her, which, indeed, could only have been by positive violence, so hasty and peremptory were her proceedings, she had drawn from his side the dirk which lodged in the folds of his plaid, and held it up, exclaiming, although the weapon gleamed clear and bright in the sun: "Blood, blood—Saxon blood again. ”