54 pages • 1 hour read
Rafael SabatiniCaptain Blood: His Odyssey
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1922A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary: “The Meeting”
Arabella encounters Milagrosa the next day. Blood’s ship takes position between Milagrosa and another Spanish vessel, Hidalgo. It looks as if the larger Spanish ships will triumph, but Blood’s machinations catch them off guard. By sailing between the enemy ships, he makes it impossible for them to fire cannons because they would hit each other. Blood’s crew fires at the Spanish ships on either side, and the damage is extensive. Blood’s men board Milagrosa and subdue the Spaniards. Blood confronts Don Miguel and humbles him, but lets him live, warning him not to hunt Arabella again. Don Miguel departs with his men on a spare boat.
Blood sees Arabella Bishop, but before he can speak to her, Lord Julian berates him for allowing Don Miguel to go free. The captain brushes him off and addresses Arabella, who states, “I do not number thieves and pirates among my acquaintance, Captain Blood” (206-07). Lord Julian again chastises him for releasing Don Miguel. Blood calls it a courtesy, one pirate to another.
Chapter 20 Summary: “Thief and Pirate”
Arabella’s rejection of Blood for being a thief and a pirate causes him intense pain. His love for her shaped his values as a humane leader of buccaneers. He cannot understand Arabella’s attitude; his despair nearly spurs him into treating her as a regular pirate would. Blood cringes at his brief mental descent into immorality. Blood nonetheless agrees to bring them to their destination in Jamaica. Lord Julian also contemplates Arabella’s behavior while he, Arabella, Wolverstone, and Pitt share a meal in the great cabin. Arabella asks Pitt about the Levasseur incident, and the way in which he answers confirms the story Lord Julian told her.
After their dinner companions leave, Lord Julian scolds Arabella for offending Blood when she should show gratitude for rescuing them. Lord Julian reveals Bood’s commission from the king. When he then tells Blood, Blood sarcastically wonders why the secretary of state wants to commission “a thief and pirate,” a phrase he repeats many times. He refuses to serve King James, since the unjust monarch caused his suffering. Arabella overhears the conversation, which she later discusses with Lord Julian. He thinks Arabella’s insult is making Blood act recklessly, for without the protection of the commission, Blood risks capture and execution when they reach Jamaica. Lord Julian marvels at the contradiction Blood presents as a chivalrous pirate.
Chapter 21 Summary: “The Service of King James”
As Arabella nears Jamaica, Blood sights the English fleet. Fearing for the safety of his men, he reluctantly takes the commission to serve King James. Arabella commends Blood’s decision, and he says he hopes it improves her opinion of him. A captain named from one of the English ships arrives and threatens Blood, but his manner alters when Lord Julian informs him of Blood’s new position and explains how he and Arabella came to be on Blood’s ship.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Hostilities”
Two weeks later, Captain Blood relaxes on the deck of Arabella anchored in Port Royal’s harbor. Colonel Bishop assumes Lord Julian gave Blood the commission out of gratitude for saving him from Don Miguel; he says it was a mistake, and he intends to take Blood to the gallows. Lord Julian corrects Bishop, but the facts don’t end the Colonel’s disrespectful treatment of the person he’d formally enslaved. Blood considers that his commission will destroy his reputation with other buccaneers, yet he gains nothing from it. He is serving the king to win Arabella’s approval, but she avoids his company and prefers Lord Julian. Blood receives a summons from Bishop, who is furious that Blood let some of his previous pirate comrades depart Jamaica without consequence.
Blood encounters Arabella at the fort. He presses her to think better of him, then verbally spars with her when she responds coolly. She says that she can’t forgive him, no matter what he does for her, because she knows he murdered Levasseur over a woman. Blood admits he killed Levasseur, and then he pointedly adds he remembers killing another man for a similar reason in Barbados, to which Mary Traill can testify. He leaves Arabella before she fully interprets his meaning.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Hostages”
Captain Blood arrives at Colonel Bishop’s house, where Bishop and Lord Julian receive him. They ask Blood why he allowed Wolverstone and 100 buccaneers free passage from Jamaica. He says he had the authority to do so under his agreement with Lord Julian. Bishop accuses Blood of abusing his position. Blood draws a pistol on Bishop and takes him to his ship as a hostage.
Arabella waits for Blood, hoping to apologize, but she sees him leaving arm-in-arm with her uncle and decides to wait. The men board Blood’s ship, and Blood makes Bishop write a note ordering his troops not to fire on Arabella or Blood will kill him. Lord Julian boards to negotiate Bishop’s release. Blood compels Lord Julian to deliver the message by threatening to take him hostage as well. Blood hands him the note and the commission. Lord Julian asks Blood why he is letting him go. Blood confesses his feelings for Arabella and refuses to harm people close to her—she seems to love Lord Julian and, by sparing him, Blood hopes to improve her opinion of him. Lord Julian delivers the note, and Arabella leaves the harbor unharmed.
Chapter 24 Summary: “War”
Captain Blood releases Colonel Bishop in a boat once the ship is safely out of the harbor. He knows Bishop will continue to hunt him, but he doesn’t want to harm Arabella’s uncle. The next morning, Lord Julian tells Arabella Blood’s motives for returning to piracy and refusing to take him hostage. He relates Blood’s belief that Arabella made the better choice for her future partner, the nobleman rather than the “thief and pirate.” Arabella regrets her accusations and assumptions upon hearing this.
From her response, Lord Julian gathers that Arabella loves Blood. His respect for the pirate quickly changes into jealousy and hatred. He joins forces with Bishop to destroy his rival and gain Arabella. Lord Julian and Bishop hunt for Blood without success. They then receive news that civil war is brewing in England, giving them only a small window of opportunity to further abuse the power bestowed upon them by King James. They decide to attack Tortuga and claim the island’s wealth while capturing Captain Blood. They sail with the entire fleet, leaving Port Royal defenseless.
Chapters 19-24 Analysis
The theme Fate Begins the Journey, Love Decides the Destination is prevalent in this section. Blood and Lord Julian each believe Arabella loves the other, but Blood’s actions show that he cares for her happiness, while Lord Julian wants her for selfish reasons. Don Miguel is the instrument of fate in this portion of Captain Blood, since he takes Arabella and Lord Julian hostage, which leads to the reunion of Arabella and Blood. When Blood tricks his foe yet again and takes Milagrosa, he practices humane piracy by showing mercy to Don Miguel.
His humanity is tested when Arabella—the object of his courtly love—coldly informs him that she doesn’t count “thieves and pirates” like him among her acquaintances. Blood’s distress causes him to believe that “[s]he had no charity for him, no mercy. She had summed him up, convicted him and sentenced him in that one phrase” (210). This belief causes him to briefly question his gentlemanly code. Arabella condemns him as a “thief and pirate”:
He would cast out the maudlin ideals by which he had sought to steer a course; put an end to this idiotic struggle to make the best of two worlds. She had shown him clearly to which world he belonged. Let him now justify her. She was aboard his ship, in his power, and he desired her (210).
At that moment, Blood truly is a pirate. The degradation stops, however, when he hears himself laugh—the sound’s “evil note” shocks him, and he regains his self-control. He is hurt by Arabella’s condemnation, but he won’t stoop to the level of Captain Hobart and Levasseur.
Arabella’s happiness and safety matter more than his own, which he proves through chivalrous acts. The first is his acceptance of the commission he originally rejected. He changes his mind to ensure everyone’s safety, especially Arabella’s, even though he believes he cannot compete for her affection with a man like Lord Julian. Moreover, Arabella thinks Blood murdered Levasseur, which she deplores, and he committed the murder over a woman, which makes her jealous. When Blood confronts her about her opinion of him, neither of them is able to understand the other: “Jealousy, that troubler of reason, had been over-busy with his wits as it had with hers” (241). In a second chivalrous act, Blood doesn’t take Lord Julian hostage for Arabella’s sake. Blood says to him:
I tell you […] so that ye may tell her; so that she may be made to realize that there’s something of the unfortunate gentleman left under the thief and pirate she accounts me, and that her own good is my supreme desire. Knowing that […] she may remember me more kindly—if it’s only in her prayers (254-55).
Lord Julian, however, doesn’t react well to the revelation of Arabella’s feelings. He hadn’t considered her a romantic prospect until Blood confessed his love for her and expressed his belief that she cared for Lord Julian. When Lord Julian sees her again, he “marveled at himself that it should have taken him so long fully to realize her slim, unusual grace, and to find her, as he now did, so entirely desirable, a woman whose charm must irradiate all the life of a man, and touch its commonplaces into magic” (260). After he shares what Blood told him and promises to do what he can to rescue Blood from persecution, Lord Julian asks her if Blood was right about her affections. Her answers lead him to deduce correctly that Blood was wrong.
Lord Julian’s jealousy overwhelms him so thoroughly that he immediately wishes to destroy Blood. The narrator laments how jealousy causes him to forget his promise to Arabella and instead “secretly set himself to aid and abet Arabella’s uncle in the plans he laid for the trapping and undoing of the buccaneer” (266). Lord Julian conveys his reasoning to Colonel Bishop: “Listen, man. She [Arabella] has a constant mind. I don’t think you know your niece. As long as Blood lives, she will wait for him” (268). Rather than consider Arabella’s happiness, Lord Julian focuses on abusing his power to get what he wants, which reinforces the theme of Gentlemen Pirates and Pirate Gentlemen, particularly from the perspective of social class—the chivalrous pirate is the gentleman, and the nobleman who abuses his power is the pirate.
