Captain Blood

Peter Blood, a medical doctor among other things, smoked a pipe and watered geraniums in his window box above the waterway in Bridgewater, County Somerset.
His thoughts were divided between his work and the crowds in the narrow street below. This excited crowd consisted mostly of men with green branches in their hats and the most absurd weapons in their hands. Some, it is true, carried firearms and swords, but most were armed with clubs and garden knives. They were weavers, carpenters, masons, shoemakers, and representatives of many other trades. Bridgewater, like the Somerset capital of Taunton, had come out in full support of the Duke of Monmouth, who was claiming the English throne and rebelling against King James II. But Peter Blood, trained and skilled as a soldier, and certainly no coward, watered his geraniums and smoked his pipe on that warm July evening as if there were no such thing as a rebellion. To him, these rebels were fools, madly rushing toward their own destruction.