care, moving among those unfortunate Spaniards whom no one heeded.
All the charity, all the gifts were for the members of the crew of
the Pride of Devon. And this Peter Blood accounted natural enough.
But rising suddenly from the re-dressing of a wound, a task in
which he had been absorbed for some moments, he saw to his surprise
that one lady, detached from the general throng, was placing some
plantains and a bundle of succulent sugar cane on the cloak that
served one of his patients for a coverlet. She was elegantly
dressed in lavender silk and was followed by a half-naked negro
carrying a basket.

Peter Blood, stripped of his coat, the sleeves of his coarse shirt
rolled to the elbow, and holding a bloody rag in his hand, stood at
gaze a moment. The lady, turning now to confront him, her lips
parting in a smile of recognition, was Arabella Bishop.

"The man's a Spaniard," said he, in the tone of one who corrects a
misapprehension, and also tinged never so faintly by something of
the derision that was in his soul.

The smile with which she had been greeting him withered on her lips.
She frowned and stared at him a moment, with increasing haughtiness.

"So I perceive. But he's a human being none the less," said she.

That answer, and its implied rebuke, took him by surprise.

"Your uncle, the Colonel, is of a different opinion," said he, when
he had recovered. "He regards them as vermin to be left to languish
and die of their festering wounds."