But in the long weeks of waiting for a ship to convey him to one or the other of these countries, his resources dwindled and finally vanished.

Also, his chronicler thinks that he detected signs of some secret trouble in his friend, and he attributes to this the abuses of the potent West Indian spirit of which Blood became guilty in those days of inaction, thereby sinking to the level of the wild adventurers with whom ashore he associated.
I do not think that Pitt is guilty in this merely of special pleading, that he is putting forward excuses for his hero.

I think that in those days there was a good deal to oppress Peter Blood.

There was the thought of Arabella Bishop--and that this thought loomed large in his mind we are not permitted to doubt.

He was maddened by the tormenting lure of the unattainable.