Read "The Chronicles of Captain Blood" by Rafael Sabatini online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
If it was incredibly gallant, it was no less incredibly foolish of the _Atrevida_ to have meddled with the _Arabella_, considering the Spaniard's inferior armament and the orders under which she sailed.
The _Arabella_ had once been the _Cinco Llagas_ out of Cadiz, of which Peter Blood had so gallantly possessed himself. He had so re-named her in honour of a lady in Barbados, whose memory was ever to serve him as an inspiration and to set restraint upon his activities as a buccaneer. She was going westward in haste to overtake her consorts, which were a full day ahead, was looking neither to right nor to left, when somewhere about 19° of northern longitude and 66° of western latitude, the _Atrevida_ espied her, turned aside to steer across her course, and opened the attack by a shot athwart her hawse.