the poor man suspect?

Before he could even look round, and survey this guard drawn up to
receive him, a tap over the head with a capstan bar efficiently handled
by Hagthorpe put him to sleep without the least fuss.

He was carried away to his cabin, whilst the treasure-chests, handled
by the men he had left in the boat, were being hauled to the deck. That
being satisfactorily accomplished, Don Esteban and the fellows who had
manned the boat came up the ladder, one by one, to be handled with the
same quiet efficiency. Peter Blood had a genius for these things, and
almost, I suspect, an eye for the dramatic. Dramatic, certainly, was the
spectacle now offered to the survivors of the raid.

With Colonel Bishop at their head, and gout-ridden Governor Steed
sitting on the ruins of a wall beside him, they glumly watched the
departure of the eight boats containing the weary Spanish ruffians who
had glutted themselves with rapine, murder, and violences unspeakable.

They looked on, between relief at this departure of their remorseless
enemies, and despair at the wild ravages which, temporarily at least,
had wrecked the prosperity and happiness of that little colony.

The boats pulled away from the shore, with their loads of laughing,
jeering Spaniards, who were still flinging taunts across the water at
their surviving victims. They had come midway between the wharf and the
ship, when suddenly the air was shaken by the boom of a gun.

A round shot struck the water within a fathom of the foremost boat,
sending a shower of spray over its occupants. They paused at their oars,
astounded into silence for a moment. Then speech burst from them like
an explosion. Angrily voluble they anathematized this dangerous
carelessness on the part of their gunner, who should know better than
to fire a salute from a cannon loaded with shot. They were still cursing
him when a second shot, better aimed than the first, came to crumple one
of the boats into splinters, flinging its crew, dead and living, into
the water.

But if it silenced these, it gave tongue, still more angry, vehement,
and bewildered to the crews of the other seven boats. From each the
suspended oars stood out poised over the water, whilst on their feet in
the excitement the Spaniards screamed oaths at the ship, begging Heaven
and Hell to inform them what madman had been let loose among her guns.

Plump into their middle came a third shot, smashing a second boat with
fearfu