I think
that in those days there was a good deal to oppress Peter Blood.
There was the thought of Arabella Bishop - and that this thought
loomed large in his mind we are not permitted to doubt. He was
maddened by the tormenting lure of the unattainable. He desired
Arabella, yet knew her beyond his reach irrevocably and for all time.
Also, whilst he may have desired to go to France or Holland, he had
no clear purpose to accomplish when he reached one or the other of
these countries. He was, when all is said, an escaped slave, an
outlaw in his own land and a homeless outcast in any other. There
remained the sea, which is free to all, and particularly alluring
to those who feel themselves at war with humanity. And so,
considering the adventurous spirit that once already had sent him
a-roving for the sheer love of it, considering that this spirit was
heightened now by a recklessness begotten of his outlawry, that his
training and skill in militant seamanship clamorously supported the
temptations that were put before him, can you wonder, or dare you
blame him, that in the end he succumbed? And remember that these
temptations proceeded not only from adventurous buccaneering
acquaintances in the taverns of that evil haven of Tortuga, but even
from M.
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