The Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini. Rafael Sabatini

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ and together with these some half-dozen Spaniards in like case, the only survivors of a boarding party from the Spanish galleon that had invaded the English ship and found itself unable to retreat. These wounded men were conveyed to a long shed on the wharf, and the medical skill of Bridgetown was summoned to their aid. Peter Blood was ordered to bear a hand in this work, and partly because he spoke Castilian—and he spoke it as fluently as his own native tongue—partly because of his inferior condition as a slave, he was given the Spaniards for his patients.

      Now Blood had no cause to love Spaniards. His two years in a Spanish prison and his subsequent campaigning in the Spanish Netherlands had shown him a side of the Spanish character which he had found anything but admirable. Nevertheless he performed his doctor’s duties zealously and painstakingly, if emotionlessly, and even with a certain superficial friendliness towards each of his patients. These were so surprised at having their wounds healed instead of being summarily hanged that they manifested a docility very unusual in their kind. They were shunned, however, by all those charitably disposed inhabitants of Bridgetown who flocked to the improvised hospital with gifts of fruit and flowers and delicacies for the injured English seamen. 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.

      “What are you doing there?”

      Blood did not look up from his task. There was not the need. He knew the voice, as I have said.

      “I am setting a broken leg,” he answered, without pausing in his labours.

      “I can see that, fool.” A bulky body interposed between Peter Blood and the window. The half-naked man on the straw rolled his black eyes to stare up fearfully out of a clay-coloured face at this intruder. A knowledge of English was unnecessary to inform him that here came an enemy. The harsh, minatory note of that voice sufficiently expressed the fact. “I can see that, fool; just as I can see what the rascal is. Who gave you leave to set Spanish legs?”

      “I am a doctor, Colonel Bishop. The man is wounded. It is not for me to discriminate. I keep to my trade.”

      “Do you, by God! If you’d done that, you wouldn’t now be here.”

      “On the contrary, it is because I did it that I am here.”

      “Aye, I know that’s your lying tale.” The Colonel sneered; and then, observing Blood to continue his work unmoved, he grew really angry. “Will you cease that, and attend to me when I am speaking?”

      Peter Blood paused, but only for an instant. “The man is in pain,” he said shortly, and resumed his work.

      “In pain, is he? I hope he is, the damned piratical dog. But will you heed me, you insubordinate knave?”

      The Colonel delivered himself in a roar, infuriated by what he conceived to be defiance, and defiance expressing itself in the most unruffled disregard of himself. His long bamboo cane was raised to strike. Peter Blood’s blue eyes caught the flash of it, and he spoke quickly to arrest the blow.

      “Not insubordinate, sir, whatever I may be. I am acting upon the express orders of Governor Steed.”

      The Colonel checked, his great face empurpling. His mouth fell open.

      “Governor Steed!” he echoed. Then he lowered his cane, swung round, and without another word to Blood rolled away towards the other end of the shed where the Governor was standing at the moment.

      Peter Blood chuckled. But his triumph was dictated less by humanitarian considerations than by the reflection that he had baulked his brutal owner.

      The Spaniard, realizing that in this altercation, whatever its nature, the doctor had stood his friend, ventured in a muted voice to ask him what had happened. But the doctor shook his head in silence, and pursued his work. His ears were straining to catch the words now passing between Steed and Bishop. The Colonel was blustering and storming, the great bulk of him towering above the wizened little overdressed figure of the Governor. But the little fop was not to be browbeaten. His excellency was conscious that he had behind him the force of public opinion to support him. Some there might be, but they were not many, who held such ruthless views as Colonel Bishop. His excellency asserted his authority. It was by his orders that Blood had devoted himself to the wounded Spaniards, and his orders were to be carried out. There was no more to be said.

      Colonel Bishop was of another opinion. In his view there was a great deal to be said. He said it, with great circumstance, loudly, vehemently, obscenely—for he could be fluently obscene when moved to anger.

      “You talk like a Spaniard, Colonel,” said the Governor, and thus dealt the Colonel’s pride a wound that was to smart resentfully for many a week. At the moment it struck him silent, and sent him stamping out of the shed in a rage for which he could find no words.

      It was two days later when the ladies of Bridgetown, the wives and daughters of her planters and merchants, paid their first visit of charity to the wharf, bringing their gifts to the wounded seamen.

      Again Peter Blood was there, ministering to the sufferers in his care, moving among those unfortunate Spaniards whom no one heeded. All the charity, all the gifts were for the members of the crew of the Pride of Devon. And this Peter Blood accounted natural enough. But rising suddenly from the re-dressing of a wound, a task in which he had been absorbed for some moments, he saw to his surprise that one lady, detached from the general throng, was placing some plantains and a bundle of succulent sugar cane on the cloak that served one of his patients for a coverlet. She was elegantly dressed in lavender silk and was followed by a half-naked negro carrying a basket.

      Peter Blood, stripped of his coat, the sleeves of his coarse shirt rolled to the elbow, and holding a bloody rag in his hand, stood at gaze a moment. The lady, turning now to confront him, her lips parting in a smile of recognition, was Arabella Bishop.

      “The man’s a Spaniard,” said he, in the tone of one who corrects a misapprehension, and also tinged never so faintly by something of the derision that was in his soul.

      The smile with which she had been greeting him withered on her lips. She frowned and stared at him a moment, with increasing haughtiness.

      “So I perceive. But he’s a human being none the less,” said she.

      That answer, and its implied rebuke, took him by surprise.

      “Your uncle, the Colonel, is of a different opinion,” said he, when he had recovered. “He regards them as vermin to be left to languish and die of their festering wounds.”

      She caught the irony now more plainly in his voice. She continued to stare at him.

      “Why do you tell me this?”

      “To warn you that you may be incurring the Colonel’s displeasure. If he had had his way, I should never have been allowed to dress their wounds.”

      “And you thought, of course, that I must be of my uncle’s mind?” There was a crispness about her voice, an ominous challenging sparkle in her hazel eyes.

      “I’d not willingly be rude to a lady even in my thoughts,” said he. “But that you should bestow СКАЧАТЬ