s expostulations against permitting men to perish
in this fashion, and his insistence that he should be made free of the
medicine chest and given leave to minister to the sick. But presently
Captain Gardner came to see that he might be brought to task for
these too heavy losses of human merchandise and because of this he was
belatedly glad to avail himself of the skill of Peter Blood. The doctor
went to work zealously and zestfully, and wrought so ably that, by his
ministrations and by improving the condition of his fellow-captives, he
checked the spread of the disease.

Towards the middle of December the Jamaica Merchant dropped anchor in
Carlisle Bay, and put ashore the forty-two surviving rebels-convict.

If these unfortunates had imagined--as many of them appear to have
done--that they were coming into some wild, savage country, the
prospect, of which they had a glimpse before they were hustled over
the ship's side into the waiting boats, was enough to correct the
impression. They beheld a town of sufficiently imposing proportions
composed of houses built upon European notions of architecture, but
without any of the huddle usual in European cities. The spire of a
church rose dominantly above the red roofs, a fort guarded the entrance
of the wide harbour, with guns thrusting their muzzles between the
crenels, and the wide facade of Government House revealed itself
dominantly placed on a gentle hill above the town. This hill was vividly
green as is an English hill in April, and the day was such a day as
April gives to England, the season of heavy rains being newly ended.

On a wide cobbled space on the sea front they found a guard of
red-coated militia drawn up to receive them, and a crowd--attracted by
their arrival--which in dress and manner differed little from a crowd in
a seaport at home save that it contained fewer women and a great number
of negroes.

To inspect them, drawn up there on the mole, came Governor Steed,
a short, stout, red-faced gentleman, in blue taffetas burdened by a
prodigious amount of gold lace, who limped a little and leaned heavily
upon a stout ebony cane. After him, in the uniform of a colonel of the
Barbados Militia, rolled a tall, corpulent man who towered head and
shoulders above the Governor, with malevolence plainly written on his
enormous yellowish countenance. At his side, and contrasting oddly with
his grossness, moving with an easy stripling grace, came a slight young
lady in