Any to whom this clause in the articles was distasteful
might follow some other leader.
Towards the end of December, when the hurricane season had blown
itself out, he put to sea in his well-found, well-manned ship, and
before he returned in the following May from a protracted and
adventurous cruise, the fame of Captain Peter Blood had run like
ripples before the breeze across the face of the Caribbean Sea.
There was a fight in the Windward Passage at the outset with a
Spanish galleon, which had resulted in the gutting and finally the
sinking of the Spaniard. There was a daring raid effected by means
of several appropriated piraguas upon a Spanish pearl fleet in the
Rio de la Hacha, from which they had taken a particularly rich haul
of pearls. There was an overland expedition to the goldfields of
Santa Maria, on the Main, the full tale of which is hardly credible,
and there were lesser adventures through all of which the crew of
the Arabella came with credit and profit if not entirely unscathed.
And so it happened that before the Arabella came homing to Tortuga
in the following May to refit and repair - for she was not without
scars, as you conceive - the fame of her and of Peter Blood her
captain had swept from the Bahamas to the Windward Isles, from New
Providence to Trinidad.
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