“Oh, no, my name is Blood--Captain Peter Blood. This ship, like this handsome suit of clothes, is mine by right of conquest. Just as you, Don Diego, are my prisoner.”
Startling as was the explanation, yet it proved soothing to Don Diego, being so much less startling than the things he was beginning to imagine.
“But... Are you not Spanish, then?”
“You flatter my Castilian accent. I have the honour to be Irish. You were thinking that a miracle had happened. So it has--a miracle wrought by my genius, which is considerable.”
Succinctly now Captain Blood dispelled the mystery by a relation of the facts. It was a narrative that painted red and white by turns the Spaniard's countenance. He put a hand to the back of his head, and there discovered, in confirmation of the story, a lump as large
