nto the rock-bound bay of
Cayona, which Nature seemed to have designed for the stronghold of those
who had appropriated it.

CHAPTER XIII. TORTUGA

It is time fully to disclose the fact that the survival of the story of
Captain Blood's exploits is due entirely to the industry of Jeremy Pitt,
the Somersetshire shipmaster. In addition to his ability as a navigator,
this amiable young man appears to have wielded an indefatigable pen, and
to have been inspired to indulge its fluency by the affection he very
obviously bore to Peter Blood.

He kept the log of the forty-gun frigate Arabella, on which he served as
master, or, as we should say to-day, navigating officer, as no log
that I have seen was ever kept. It runs into some twenty-odd volumes of
assorted sizes, some of which are missing altogether and others of which
are so sadly depleted of leaves as to be of little use. But if at times
in the laborious perusal of them--they are preserved in the library of
Mr. James Speke of Comerton--I have inveighed against these lacunae, at
others I have been equally troubled by the excessive prolixity of what
remains and the difficulty of disintegrating from the confused whole the
really essential parts.

I have a suspicion that Esquemeling--though how or where I can make no
surmise--must have obtained access to these records, and that he plucked
from them the brilliant feathers of several exploits to stick them into
the tail of his own hero, Captain Morgan. But that is by the way. I
mention it chiefly as a warning, for when presently I come to relate the
affair of Maracaybo, those of you who have read Esquemeling may be in
danger of supposing that Henry Morgan really performed those things
which here are veraciously attributed to Peter Blood. I think, however,
that when you come to weigh the motives actuating both Blood and the
Spanish Admiral, in that affair, and when you consider how integrally
the event is a part of Blood's history--whilst merely a detached
incident in Morgan's--you will reach my own conclusion as to which is
the real plagiarist.

The first of these logs of Pitt's is taken up almost entirely with a
retrospective narrative of the events up to the time of Blood's first
coming to Tortuga. This and the Tannatt Collection of State Trials are
the chief--though not the only--sources of my history so far.

Pitt lays great stress upon the fact that it was the circumstances upon
which I have dwelt, and these al