[Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini]@TWC D-Link book
Captain Blood

CHAPTER XXIV
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He inclined his head in silence to the Captain, and went blundering and stumbling in his haste down that ladder to the sloop and its waiting negro crew.
They pushed off the craft from the red hull of the Arabella, bent to their sweeps, then, hoisting sail, headed back for Port Royal, intent upon reaching it before darkness should come down upon them.

And Bishop, the great bulk of him huddled in the stem sheets, sat silent, his black brows knitted, his coarse lips pursed, malevolence and vindictiveness so whelming now his recent panic that he forgot his near escape of the yardarm and the running noose.
On the mole at Port Royal, under the low, embattled wall of the fort, Major Mallard and Lord Julian waited to receive him, and it was with infinite relief that they assisted him from the sloop.
Major Mallard was disposed to be apologetic.
"Glad to see you safe, sir," said he.

"I'd have sunk Blood's ship in spite of your excellency's being aboard but for your own orders by Lord Julian, and his lordship's assurance that he had Blood's word for it that no harm should come to you so that no harm came to him.

I'll confess I thought it rash of his lordship to accept the word of a damned pirate...." "I have found it as good as another's," said his lordship, cropping the Major's too eager eloquence.

He spoke with an unusual degree of that frosty dignity he could assume upon occasion.


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