woo seductively and caressingly, or command in
such a way as to compel obedience. Indeed, the man's whole nature was in
that voice of his. For the rest of him, he was tall and spare, swarthy
of tint as a gipsy, with eyes that were startlingly blue in that dark
face and under those level black brows. In their glance those eyes,
flanking a high-bridged, intrepid nose, were of singular penetration
and of a steady haughtiness that went well with his firm lips. Though
dressed in black as became his calling, yet it was with an elegance
derived from the love of clothes that is peculiar to the adventurer he
had been, rather than to the staid medicus he now was. His coat was of
fine camlet, and it was laced with silver; there were ruffles of Mechlin
at his wrists and a Mechlin cravat encased his throat. His great black
periwig was as sedulously curled as any at Whitehall.

Seeing him thus, and perceiving his real nature, which was plain upon
him, you might have been tempted to speculate how long such a man would
be content to lie by in this little backwater of the world into which
chance had swept him some six months ago; how long he would continue to
pursue the trade for which he had qualified himself before he had begun
to live. Difficult of belief though it may be when you know his history,
previous and subsequent, yet it is possible that but for the trick
that Fate was about to play him, he might have continued this peaceful
existence, settling down completely to the life of a doctor in this
Somersetshire haven. It is possible, but not probable.

He was the son of an Irish medicus, by a Somersetshire lady in whose
veins ran the rover blood of the Frobishers, which may account for a
certain wildness that had early manifested itself in his disposition.
This wildness had profoundly alarmed his father, who for an Irishman was
of a singularly peace-loving nature. He had early resolved that the
boy should follow his own honourable profession, and Peter Blood, being
quick to learn and oddly greedy of knowledge, had satisfied his parent
by receiving at the age of twenty the degree of baccalaureus medicinae
at Trinity College, Dublin. His father survived that satisfaction by
three months only. His mother had then been dead some years already.
Thus Peter Blood came into an inheritance of some few hundred pounds,
with which he had set out to see the world and give for a season a free
rein to that restless spirit by which he was imbued.