I spare you the details of that nauseating picture. It
is, after all, with the fate of Peter Blood that we are concerned
rather than with that of the Monmouth rebels.
He survived to be included in one of those melancholy droves of
prisoners who, chained in pairs, were marched from Bridgewater to
Taunton. Those who were too sorely wounded to march were conveyed
in carts, into which they were brutally crowded, their wounds
undressed and festering. Many were fortunate enough to die upon
the way. When Blood insisted upon his right to exercise his art so
as to relieve some of this suffering, he was accounted importunate
and threatened with a flogging. If he had one regret now it was
that he had not been out with Monmouth. That, of course, was
illogical; but you can hardly expect logic from a man in his position.
His chain companion on that dreadful march was the same Jeremy Pitt
who had been the agent of his present misfortunes. The young
shipmaster had remained his close companion after their common arrest.
Hence, fortuitously, had they been chained together in the crowded
prison, where they were almost suffocated by the heat and the stench
during those days of July, August, and September.
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