Adventure · Pirates
Captain Blood
A peaceful doctor, wrongly sold into slavery, escapes to become the most daring pirate in the Caribbean.
Five levels, about 80 languages
- A2ElementaryShort sentences and everyday words.
- B1IntermediateYou follow clear stories about familiar things.
- B2Upper intermediateLonger sentences, richer vocabulary.
- C1AdvancedClose to the original, lightly condensed.
- C2ProficientThe complete novel.
One purchase is one book, in one language, at one level: $4.99. Another level of a book you own is $1.99. Editions nobody has asked for yet are written on request: chapter 1 in a few minutes, the rest while you read. How the levels work.
About the book
From physician to pirate
In 1685 Peter Blood, an Irish doctor who has seen enough adventure for one life, is practicing medicine quietly in an English town. Then he treats a wounded man after the failed Monmouth Rebellion, and that act of mercy is enough to have him convicted of treason by the notorious Judge Jeffreys. He is shipped to Barbados and sold to a brutal plantation owner. His wit and his skill as a doctor keep him alive; his escape makes him the most famous captain in the Caribbean. Rafael Sabatini published the novel in 1922, and it remains one of the great swashbucklers.
Why it works for learners
Sabatini’s hero talks his way through as many fights as he wins with a sword, and the dialogue is witty, ironic and clear. The plot is a straight run of reversals, each easy to follow: a trial, a sale, an escape, a sea battle, a bargain. The vocabulary mixes the everyday and the adventurous: medicine, law, ships, ports, money, honor. Blood’s irony is part of the fun, and a good test of your progress: when you start catching his jokes, you’ll know your level has moved.
Which level to start at
B1 for the story; B2 if you want Blood’s irony intact. Sabatini’s style is elegant but not difficult, so C1 comes within reach sooner than with many older classics. Any ship’s term is a tap away, with its meaning in that sentence rather than a list of dictionary senses.
Read next
- Treasure Island, the pirate story everyone borrows from
- The Count of Monte Cristo, another innocent man condemned, and what he does next
- The Three Musketeers, swordplay and wit in seventeenth-century France