She grew conscious of his presence, and looked him over with an air that was faintly, mockingly searching.
“La!” said she. “It’s the delicate-minded gentleman!”
Peter groaned. “Am I so hopelessly beyond forgiveness? I ask it very humbly.”
“What condescension!”
“It is cruel to mock me,” said he, and adopted mock-humility. “After all, I am but a slave. And you might be ill one of these days.”
“What, then?”
“It would be humiliating to send for me if you treat me like an enemy.”
“You are not the only doctor in Bridgetown.”
“But I am the least dangerous.”
She grew suddenly suspicious of him, aware that he was permitting himself to rally her, and in a measure she had already yielded to it. She stiffened, and looked him over again.
“You make too free, I think,” she rebuked him.
“A doctor’s privilege.”
“I am not your patient. Please to remember it in future.” And on that, unquestionably angry, she departed.
“Now is she a vixen or am I a fool, or is it both?” he asked the blue vault of heaven, and then went into the shed.
It was to be a morning of excitements. As he was leaving an hour or so later, Whacker, the younger of the other two physicians, joined him – an unprecedented condescension this, for hitherto neither of them had addressed him beyond an occasional and surly “good-day!”
“If you are for Colonel Bishop’s, I’ll walk with you a little way, Doctor Blood,” said he. He was a short, broad man of five-and-forty with pendulous cheeks and hard blue eyes.
Peter Blood was startled. But he dissembled it.
“I am for Government House,” said he.
“Ah! To be sure! The Governor’s lady.” And he laughed; or perhaps he sneered. Peter Blood was not quite certain. “She encroaches a deal upon your time, I hear. Youth and good looks, Doctor Blood! Youth and good looks! They are inestimable advantages in our profession as in others – particularly where the ladies are concerned.”
Peter stared at him.”If you mean what you seem to mean, you had better say it to Governor Steed. It may amuse him.”
“You surely misapprehend me.”
“I hope so.”
“You’re so very hot, now!” The doctor linked his arm through Peter’s. “I protest I desire to be your friend – to serve you. Now, listen.” Instinctively his voice grew lower. “This slavery in which you find yourself must be singularly irksome to a man of parts such as yourself.”
“What intuitions!” cried sardonic Mr. Blood. But the doctor took him literally.
“I am no fool, my dear doctor. I know a man when I see one, and often I can tell his thoughts.”
“If you can tell me mine, you’ll persuade me of it,” said Mr. Blood.
Dr. Whacker drew still closer to him as they stepped along the wharf. He lowered his voice to a still more confidential tone. His hard blue eyes peered up into the swart, sardonic face of his companion, who was a head taller than himself.
“How often have I not seen you staring out over the sea, your soul in your eyes! Don’t I know what you are thinking? If you could escape from this hell of slavery, you could exercise the profession of which you are an ornament as a free man with pleasure and profit to yourself. The world is large. There are many nations besides England where a man of your parts would be warmly welcomed. There are many colonies besides these English ones.” Lower still came the voice until it was no more than a whisper. Yet there was no one within earshot. “It is none so far now to the Dutch settlement of Curacao. At this time of the year the voyage may safely be undertaken in a light craft. And Curacao need be no more than a stepping-stone to the great world, which would lie open to you once you were delivered from this bondage.”
Dr. Whacker ceased. He was pale and a little out of breath. But his hard eyes continued to study his impassive companion.
“Well?” he said alter a pause. “What do you say to that?”
Yet Blood did not immediately answer. His mind was heaving in tumult, and he was striving to calm it that he might take a proper survey of this thing flung into it to create so monstrous a disturbance. He began where another might have ended.
“I have no money. And for that a handsome sum would be necessary.”
“Did I not say that I desired to be your friend?”
“Why?” asked Peter Blood at point-blank range.
But he never heeded the answer. Whilst Dr. Whacker was professing that his heart bled for a brother doctor languishing in slavery, denied the opportunity which his gifts entitled him to make for himself, Peter Blood pounced like a hawk upon the obvious truth. Whacker and his colleague desired to be rid of one who threatened to ruin them. Sluggishness of decision was never a fault of Blood’s. He leapt where another crawled. And so this thought of evasion never entertained until planted there now by Dr. Whacker sprouted into instant growth.
“I see, I see,” he said, whilst his companion was still talking, explaining, and to save Dr. Whacker’s face he played the hypocrite. “It is very noble in you – very brotherly, as between men of medicine. It is what I myself should wish to do in like case.”
The hard eyes flashed, the husky voice grew tremulous as the other asked almost too eagerly:
“You agree, then? You agree?”
“Agree?” Blood laughed. “If I should be caught and brought back, they’d clip my wings and brand me for life.”
“Surely the thing is worth a little risk?” More tremulous than ever was the tempter’s voice.
“Surely,” Blood agreed. “But it asks more than courage. It asks money. A sloop might be bought for twenty pounds, perhaps.”
“It shall be forthcoming. It shall be a loan, which you shall repay us – repay me, when you can.”
That betraying “us” so hastily retrieved completed Blood’s understanding. The other doctor was also in the business.
They were approaching the peopled part of the mole. Quickly, but eloquently, Blood expressed his thanks, where he knew that no thanks were due.
“We will talk of this again, sir – to-morrow,” he concluded. “You have opened for me the gates of hope.”
In that at least he tittered no more than the bare truth, and expressed it very baldly. It was, indeed, as if a door had been suddenly flung open to the sunlight for escape from a dark prison in which a man had thought to spend his life.
He was in haste now to be alone, to straighten out his agitated mind and plan coherently what was to be done. Also he must consult another. Already he had hit upon that other. For such a voyage a navigator would be necessary, and a navigator was ready to his hand in Jeremy Pitt. The first thing was to take counsel with the young shipmaster, who must be associated with him in this business if it were to be undertaken. All that day his mind was in turmoil with this new hope, and he was sick with impatience for night and a chance to discuss the matter with his chosen partner. As a result Blood was betimes that evening in the spacious stockade that enclosed the huts of the slaves together with the big white house of the overseer, and he found an opportunity of a few words with Pitt, unobserved by the others.
“To-night when all are asleep, come to my cabin. I have something to say to you.”
The young man stared at him, roused by Blood’s pregnant tone out of the mental lethargy into which he had of late been lapsing as a result of the dehumanizing life he lived. Then he nodded understanding and assent, and they moved apart.
The six months of plantation life in Barbados had made an almost tragic mark upon the young seaman. His erstwhile bright alertness was all departed. His face was growing vacuous, his eyes were dull and lack-lustre, and he moved in a cringing, furtive manner, like an over-beaten dog. He had survived the ill-nourishment, the excessive work on the sugar plantation under a pitiless sun, the lashes of the overseer’s whip when his labours flagged, and the deadly, unrelieved animal life to which he was condemned. But the price he was paying for survival was the usual price. He was in danger of becoming no better than an animal, of sinking to the level of the negroes who sometimes toiled beside him. The man, however, was still there, not yet dormant, but merely torpid from a surfeit of despair; and the man in him promptly shook off that torpidity and awoke at the first words Blood spoke to him that night – awoke and wept.
“Escape?” he panted. “0 God!” He took his head in his hands, and fell to sobbing like a child.