PLANS OF ESCAPE

After that Arabella Bishop went daily to the shed on the wharf with
gifts of fruit, and later of money and of wearing apparel for the
Spanish prisoners. But she contrived so to time her visits that
Peter Blood never again met her there. Also his own visits were
growing shorter in a measure as his patients healed. That they all
throve and returned to health under his care, whilst fully one
third of the wounded in the care of Whacker and Bronson - the two
other surgeons - died of their wounds, served to increase the
reputation in which this rebel-convict stood in Bridgetown. It may
have been no more than the fortune of war. But the townsfolk did
not choose so to regard it. It led to a further dwindling of the
practices of his free colleagues and a further increase of his own
labours and his owner's profit. Whacker and Bronson laid their
heads together to devise a scheme by which this intolerable state
of things should be brought to an end. But that is to anticipate.

One day, whether by accident or design, Peter Blood came striding
down the wharf a full half-hour earlier than usual, and so met Miss
Bishop just issuing from the shed. He doffed his hat and stood
aside to give her passage. She took it, chin in the air, and eyes
which disdained to look anywhere where the sight of him was possible.

"Miss Arabella," said he, on a coaxing, pleading note.

She grew conscious of his presence, and looked him over with an air
that was faintly, mockingly searching.