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.He has the gout, and his ladyhas the megrims.""Do you depend upon that?" She was frankly scornful."You have certainly never had the gout; probably not even themegrims," said he.She made a little impatient movement with her hand, and looked awayfrom him a moment, out to sea.Quite suddenly she looked at himagain; and now her brows were knit."But if you are not a rebel, how come you here?"He saw the thing she apprehended, and he laughed."Faith, now, it'sa long story," said he."And one perhaps that you would prefer not to tell?"Briefly on that he told it her."My God! What an infamy!" she cried, when he had done."Oh, it's a sweet country England under King James! There's no needto commiserate me further.All things considered I prefer Barbados.Here at least one can believe in God."He looked first to right, then to left as he spoke, from the distantshadowy bulk of Mount Hillbay to the limitless ocean ruffled by thewinds of heaven.Then, as if the fair prospect rendered himconscious of his own littleness and the insignificance of his woes,he fell thoughtful."Is that so difficult elsewhere?" she asked him, and she was verygrave."Men make it so.""I see." She laughed a little, on a note of sadness, it seemed tohim."I have never deemed Barbados the earthly mirror of heaven,"she confessed."But no doubt you know your world better than I."She touched her horse with her little silver-hilted whip."Icongratulate you on this easingof your misfortunes."He bowed, and she moved on.Her negroes sprang up,and went trotting after her.Awhile Peter Blood remained standing there, where sheleft him, conning the sunlit waters of Carlisle Bay below,and the shipping in that spacious haven about which thegulls were fluttering noisily.It was a fair enough prospect, he reflected, but it was aprison, and in announcing that he preferred it to England,he had indulged that almost laudable form of boastingwhich lies in belittling our misadventures.He turned, and resuming his way, went off in long, swinging stridestowards the little huddle of huts built of mud and wattles - aminiature village enclosed in a stockade which the plantation slavesinhabited, and where he, himself, was lodged with them.Through his mind sang the line of Lovelace:"Stone walls do not a prison make,Nor iron bars a cage."But he gave it a fresh meaning, the very converse of that which itsauthor had intended.A prison, he reflected, was a prison, thoughit had neither walls nor bars, however spacious it might be.Andas he realized it that morning so he was to realize it increasinglyas time sped on.Daily he came to think more of his clipped wings,of his exclusion from the world, and less of the fortuitous libertyhe enjoyed.Nor did the contrasting of his comparatively easy lotwith that of his unfortunate fellow-convicts bring him thesatisfaction a differently constituted mind might have derived fromit.Rather did the contemplation of their misery increase thebitterness that was gathering in his soul.Of the forty-two who had been landed with him from the JamaicaMerchant, Colonel Bishop had purchased no less than twenty-five.The remainder had gone to lesser planters, some of them toSpeightstown, and others still farther north.What may have beenthe lot of the latter he could not tell, but amongst Bishop's slavesPeter Blood came and went freely, sleeping in their quarters, andtheir lot he knew to be a brutalizing misery.They toiled in thesugar plantations from sunrise to sunset, and if their laboursflagged, there were the whips of the overseer and his men to quickenthem.They went in rags, some almost naked; they dwelt in squalor,and they were ill-nourished on salted meat and maize dumplings -=20food which to many of them was for a season at least so nauseatingthat two of them sickened and died before Bishop remembered thattheir lives had a certain value in labour to him and yielded toBlood's intercessions for a better care of such as fell ill [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]