Then, as if the fair prospect rendered him conscious of his own littleness and the insignificance of his woes, he fell thoughtful.
"Is that so difficult elsewhere ?" she asked him, and she was very grave.
"Men make it so." "I see." She laughed a little, on a note of sadness, it seemed to him.

"I have never deemed Barbados the earthly mirror of heaven," she confessed.

"But no doubt you know your world better than I." She touched her horse with her little silver-hilted whip.

"I congratulate you on this easing of your misfortunes." He bowed, and she moved on.

Her negroes sprang up, and went trotting after her.
Awhile Peter Blood remained standing there, where she left him, conning the sunlit waters of Carlisle Bay below, and the shipping in that spacious haven about which the gulls were fluttering noisily.
It was a fair enough prospect, he reflected, but it was a prison, and in announcing that he preferred it to England, he had indulged that almost laudable form of boasting which lies in belittling our misadventures.
He turned, and resuming his way, went off in long, swinging strides towards the little huddle of huts built of mud and wattles--a miniature village enclosed in a stockade which the plantation slaves inhabited, and where he, himself, was lodged with them.
Through his mind sang the line of Lovelace: "Stone walls do not a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage." But he gave it a fresh meaning, the very converse of that which its author had intended.