in behind to extort it whilst
fitting their ships for sea. Let Blood and Hagthorpe and those who
sailed with them do as they pleased.

Then only did Blood realize the rashness of his proposal, and in
attempting to draw back he almost precipitated a battle between the two
parties into which that same proposal had now divided the buccaneers.
And meanwhile those French sails on the horizon were growing less and
less. Blood was reduced to despair. If he went off now, Heaven knew what
would happen to the town, the temper of those whom he was leaving being
what it was. Yet if he remained, it would simply mean that his own
and Hagthorpe's crews would join in the saturnalia and increase the
hideousness of events now inevitable. Unable to reach a decision, his
own men and Hagthorpe's took the matter off his hands, eager to give
chase to Rivarol. Not only was a dastardly cheat to be punished but
an enormous treasure to be won by treating as an enemy this French
commander who, himself, had so villainously broken the alliance.

When Blood, torn as he was between conflicting considerations, still
hesitated, they bore him almost by main force aboard the Arabella.

Within an hour, the water-casks at least replenished and stowed aboard,
the Arabella and the Elizabeth put to sea upon that angry chase.

"When we were well at sea, and the Arabella's course was laid," writes
Pitt, in his log, "I went to seek the Captain, knowing him to be in
great trouble of mind over these events. I found him sitting alone
in his cabin, his head in his hands, torment in the eyes that stared
straight before him, seeing nothing."

"What now, Peter?" cried the young Somerset mariner. "Lord, man, what is
there here to fret you? Surely 't isn't the thought of Rivarol!"

"No," said Blood thickly. And for once he was communicative. It may well
be that he must vent the thing that oppressed him or be driven mad by
it. And Pitt, after all, was his friend and loved him, and, so, a proper
man for confidences. "But if she knew! If she knew! O God! I had thought
to have done with piracy; thought to have done with it for ever. Yet
here have I been committed by this scoundrel to the worst piracy that
ever I was guilty of. Think of Cartagena! Think of the hell those devils
will be making of it now! And I must have that on my soul!"

"Nay, Peter--'t isn't on your soul; but on Rivarol's. It is that dirty
thief who has brought all this about. What could you have done t