He had been a fortnight in Port Royal, his ship virtually a unit now in the Jamaica squadron.

And when the news of it reached Tortuga and the buccaneers who awaited his return, the name of Captain Blood, which had stood so high among the Brethren of the Coast, would become a byword, a thing of execration, and before all was done his life might pay forfeit for what would be accounted a treacherous defection.
And for what had he placed himself in this position?
For the sake of a girl who avoided him so persistently and intentionally that he must assume that she still regarded him with aversion.

He had scarcely been vouchsafed a glimpse of her in all this fortnight, although with that in view for his main object he had daily haunted her uncle's residence, and daily braved the unmasked hostility and baffled rancour in which Colonel Bishop held him.

Nor was that the worst of it.

He was allowed plainly to perceive that it was the graceful, elegant young trifler from St.
James's, Lord Julian Wade, to whom her every moment was devoted.