T.," that all might know him for a
fugitive traitor as long as he lived. Fortunately for him the poor
fellow died as a consequence of the flogging.
After that a dull, spiritless resignation settled down upon the
remainder. The most mutinous were quelled, and accepted their
unspeakable lot with the tragic fortitude of despair.
Peter Blood alone, escaping these excessive sufferings, remained
outwardly unchanged, whilst inwardly the only change in him was a
daily deeper hatred of his kind, a daily deeper longing to escape
from this place where man defiled so foully the lovely work of his
Creator. It was a longing too vague to amount to a hope. Hope
here was inadmissible. And yet he did not yield to despair. He
set a mask of laughter on his saturnine countenance and went his
way, treating the sick to the profit of Colonel Bishop, and
encroaching further and further upon the preserves of the two
other men of medicine in Bridgetown.
Immune from the degrading punishments and privations of his
fellow-convicts, he was enabled to keep his self-respect, and was
treated without harshness even by the soulless planter to whom he
had been sold.
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