Spain that was common to men of every other nation from the Bahamas
to the Main. Therefore he gave the Pride of Devon the shelter she
sought in his harbour and every facility to careen and carry out
repairs.

But before it came to this, they fetched from her hold over a score
of English seamen as battered and broken as the ship herself, and
together with these some half-dozen Spaniards in like case, the
only survivors of a boarding party from the Spanish galleon that
had invaded the English ship and found itself unable to retreat.
These wounded men were conveyed to a long shed on the wharf, and
the medical skill of Bridgetown was summoned to their aid. Peter
Blood was ordered to bear a hand in this work, and partly because
he spoke Castilian - and he spoke it as fluently as his own native
tongue - partly because of his inferior condition as a slave, he
was given the Spaniards for his patients.

Now Blood had no cause to love Spaniards. His two years in a Spanish
prison and his subsequent campaigning in the Spanish Netherlands had
shown him a side of the Spanish character which he had found anything
but admirable. Nevertheless he performed his doctor's duties
zealously and painstakingly, if emotionlessly, and even with a
certain superficial friendliness towards each of his patients.
These were so surprised at having their wounds healed instead of
being summarily hanged that they manifested a docility very unusual
in their kind. They were shunned, however, by all those charitably
disposed inhabitants of Bridgetown who flocked to the improvised
hospital with gifts of fruit and flowers and delicacies for the
injured English seamen. Indeed, had the wishes of some of these
inhabitants been regarded, the Spaniards would have been left to