His friends at Government House, bewildered at this change in him, sought to reclaim him.

Mademoiselle d'Ogeron, particularly distressed, sent him almost daily invitations, to few of which he responded.
Later, as the rainy season approached its end, he was sought by his captains with proposals of remunerative raids on Spanish settlements.
But to all he manifested an indifference which, as the weeks passed and the weather became settled, begot first impatience and then exasperation.
Christian, who commanded the Clotho, came storming to him one day, upbraiding him for his inaction, and demanding that he should take order about what was to do.
"Go to the devil!" Blood said, when he had heard him out.

Christian departed fuming, and on the morrow the Clotho weighed anchor and sailed away, setting an example of desertion from which the loyalty of Blood's other captains would soon be unable to restrain their men.
Sometimes Blood asked himself why had he come back to Tortuga at all.
Held fast in bondage by the thought of Arabella and her scorn of him for a thief and a pirate, he had sworn that he had done with buccaneering.
Why, then, was he here?
That question he would answer with another: Where else was he to go?
Neither backward nor forward could he move, it seemed.
He was degenerating visibly, under the eyes of all.

He had entirely lost the almost foppish concern for his appearance, and was grown careless and slovenly in his dress.

He allowed a black beard to grow on cheeks that had ever been so carefully shaven; and the long, thick black hair, once so sedulously curled, hung now in a lank, untidy mane about a face that was changing from its vigorous swarthiness to an unhealthy sallow, whilst the blue eyes, that had been so vivid and compelling, were now dull and lacklustre.
Wolverstone, the only one who held the clue to this degeneration, ventured once--and once only--to beard him frankly about it.
"Lord, Peter! Is there never to be no end to this ?" the giant had growled.