disposed to sell. Then let your preparations all be made before the
purchase is effected, so that your escape may follow instantly
upon it before the inevitable questions come to be asked. You take
me?"

So well did Blood take him that within an hour he contrived to see
Nuttall, and found the fellow as disposed to the business as Dr.
Whacker had predicted. When he left the shipwright, it was agreed
that Nuttall should seek the boat required, for which Blood would
at once produce the money.

The quest took longer than was expected by Blood, who waited
impatiently with the doctor's gold concealed about his person. But
at the end of some three weeks, Nuttall - whom he was now meeting
daily - informed him that he had found a serviceable wherry, and
that its owner was disposed to sell it for twenty-two pounds. That
evening, on the beach, remote from all eyes, Peter Blood handed that
sum to his new associate, and Nuttall went off with instructions to
complete the purchase late on the following day. He was to bring
the boat to the wharf, where under cover of night Blood and his
fellow-convicts would join him and make off.

Everything was ready. In the shed, from which all the wounded men
had now been removed and which had since remained untenanted,
Nuttall had concealed the necessary stores: a hundredweight of
bread, a quantity of cheese, a cask of water and some few bottles
of Canary, a compass, quadrant, chart, half-hour glass, log and
line, a tarpaulin, some carpenter's tools, and a lantern and candles.
And in the stockade, all was likewise in readiness. Hagthorpe, Dyke,
and Ogle had agreed to join the venture, and eight others had been