The protagonist is the sharp-witted Dr. Peter Blood, a fictional Irish physician who had had a wide-ranging career as a soldier and sailor (including a commission as a captain under the Dutch admiral
Michiel de Ruyter) before settling down to practice medicine in the town of
Bridgwater,
Somerset. The story is told from the perspective of an omniscient narrator, who enables the reader to see the thoughts and views of many different characters. The narrator—perhaps meant to be Sabatini himself—claims to have acquired the story from the ship's logs of Blood's longtime companion Jeremy Pitt. The book opens with Blood attending to his
geraniums while the town prepares to fight for
James Scott, 1st Duke of Monmouth. He wants no part in the
Monmouth Rebellion, but while attending to some of the rebels wounded at the
Battle of Sedgemoor, Peter is arrested. During the
Bloody Assizes, he is convicted by the infamous
Judge Jeffreys of treason on the grounds that "if any person be in actual rebellion against the King, and another person—who really and actually was not in rebellion—does knowingly receive, harbour, comfort, or succour him, such a person is as much a traitor as he who indeed bore arms." The sentence for treason is death by hanging, but
King James II, for purely financial reasons, has the sentence for Blood and other convicted rebels commuted to transportation to penal servitude in the
Caribbean. Upon arrival on the island of
Barbados, Blood is bought by Colonel William Bishop, initially for forced work in the Colonel's prison farms but later hired out by Bishop when Blood's skills as a physician prove superior to those of the local doctors. During his period of servitude, Blood wins the pity and sympathy of Arabella, Colonel Bishop's niece. When a Spanish force attacks and raids
Bridgetown, Blood escapes with a number of other convicts (including former shipmaster Jeremy Pitt, the one-eyed giant Edward Wolverstone, former gentleman Nathaniel Hagthorpe and two
Royal Navy veterans, former
petty officer Nicholas Dyke and former
master gunner Ned Ogle). The escapees capture the Spaniards' ship and sail away to become some of the most successful pirates in the
Caribbean, hated and feared by the Spanish but always sparing English ships. Colonel Bishop, humiliated by Blood's superior abilities and daring escape, devotes himself to capturing and executing Blood. After the
Glorious Revolution, Blood is pardoned. As a reward for saving the colony of Jamaica from a French assault, he is appointed its governor in place of Colonel Bishop, who had abandoned his post to hunt for Blood, and the novel ends with the implication that Blood will not only marry Arabella but will also generously forgive Bishop. ==Influence==