It was now a question whether they should convey the Spaniards thither with them, or turn them off in a boat to make the best of their way to the coast of Hispaniola, which was but ten miles off.

This was the course urged by Blood himself.
"There's nothing else to be done," he insisted.

"In Tortuga they would be flayed alive." "Which is less than the swine deserve," growled Wolverstone.
"And you'll remember, Peter," put in Hagthorpe, "that boy's threat to you this morning.

If he escapes, and carries word of all this to his uncle, the Admiral, the execution of that threat will become more than possible." It says much for Peter Blood that the argument should have left him unmoved.

It is a little thing, perhaps, but in a narrative in which there is so much that tells against him, I cannot--since my story is in the nature of a brief for the defence--afford to slur a circumstance that is so strongly in his favour, a circumstance revealing that the cynicism attributed to him proceeded from his reason and from a brooding over wrongs rather than from any natural instincts.