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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. His father survived that satisfaction by three months only.
His mother had then been dead some years already. Thus Peter Blood
came into an inheritance of some few hundred pounds, with which he
had set out to see the world and give for a season a free rein to
that restless spirit by which he was imbued. A set of curious
chances led him to take service with the Dutch, then at war with
France; and a predilection for the sea made him elect that this
service should be upon that element. He had the advantage of a
commission under the famous de Ruyter, and fought in the
Mediterranean engagement in which that great Dutch admiral lost
his life.
After 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.


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