Mr. Dutchman was rowed ashore and left with a gun, some powder and shot. FRONTISPIECE. [See page 97.]

PIRATE TALES
FROM THE LAW

BY
ARTHUR M. HARRIS

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
GEORGE AVISON

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
1923

Copyright, 1922, 1923,
By Arthur M. Harris.

All rights reserved

Published August, 1923

Printed in the United States of America

SHIP AHOY!

Heave to, Shipmate!

Here’s a book,—a book about pirates, the grim old fellows of the eighteenth century, who used to surge over the bulwarks of honest merchantmen in a wave of cutlasses, pistols and general deviltry.

Not all of them, Shipmate. Not Lewis, Rackham, Davis, Low and others, but of those who were caught, or some of whose subordinate rascals were caught, by the fierce messengers of His Most Gracious Majesty the King, or taken in combat—dreadful combat—by the oaken-hearted stalwarts of Authority, and brought to Justice and hanged up at old Execution Dock, hard by Thames River, as it swirls muddily from London Bridge.

That’s the point about this book, Shipmate. It’s the story of the Old Game, the Grand Account, as those ruffians termed their wicked trade, stripped of legend, excised of exaggeration and presented to you as it was adduced in the courts of law by the sworn witnesses, the probing counsel, the directing judges and the juries who cast their capital verdicts. History, in other words; veritable history, but recounted—well, as you shall see for yourself.

Good luck, Shipmate!

Arthur M. Harris.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER ONE

SALT WATER MONEY

Captain Kidd

I

Sometime in the autumn of the year 1695, Captain William Kidd, of New York, arrived in the city of London. He came as master of a trading sloop; he left in the following spring a commissioned officer of his most gracious Majesty, King William III, on the quarter-deck of what was really a man-of-war.

This was not the first time, however, that Captain Kidd had been in the public service. Said to be the son of a Scottish minister, he became first definitely noticeable in the province of New York, where, sometime before 1695, the grateful council of New York had voted him a gratuity of one hundred and fifty pounds for valuable efforts in suppressing local disturbances, ensuing the revolution of 1688. Not only that, but during England’s interminable argument with France, he had locked shrouds with the Frenchmen off the West Indies, thus acquiring the repute of a “mighty man” against them.

In fact, Captain Kidd when he thus stepped on to the docks of old London was a substantial colonial, a householder and taxpayer of the town of New York, where, we must suppose, his wife and daughter moved in those delectable geometrical figures, the best circles.

The royal commission of 1696, though, was a novel one in the captain’s experience.

It is important to notice the exact wording of this commission:

“William III. By the grace of God, king of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, defender of the faith, etc. To our trusty and well-beloved captain William Kidd, commander of the ship Adventure-galley, or to any other the commander for the time being. Whereas we are informed That captain Thomas Too, John Ireland, captain Thomas Wake, and Captain William Maze, or Mace, and other our subjects, natives or inhabitants of New England, New York and elsewhere in our plantations in America, have associated themselves with divers other wicked and ill-disposed persons, and do, against the law of nations, daily commit many and great piracies, robberies, and depredations in the parts of America, and in other parts, to the grave hindrance and discouragement of trade and navigation, and to the danger and hurt of our loving subjects, our allies, and all others navigating the seas upon their lawful occasions; Now know ye, That we being desirous to prevent the aforesaid mischiefs, and, as far as in us lies, to bring the said pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers to justice, have thought fit, and do hereby give and grant unto you the said William Kidd (to whom our commissioners for exercising the office of our Lord High Admiral of England, have granted a commission as a private man of war, bearing date the 11th day of December, 1695,) and unto the commander of the said ship for the time being, and unto the officers mariners and others, who shall be under your command, full power and authority to apprehend, seize, and take into your custody, as well the said Thomas Too, John Ireland, captain Thomas Wake, and Captain William Maze or Mace, as all such pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers, being our own subjects, or of any other nation associated with them, which you shall meet upon the coast or seas of America, or in any other seas or ports, with their ships and vessels, and also such merchandizes, money, goods and wares, as shall be found on board, or with them, in case they shall willingly yield themselves; but if they will not submit without fighting, then you are by force to compel them to yield. And we do also require you to bring, or cause to be brought, such pirates, free-booters and sea-rovers as you shall seize, to a legal trial; to the end that they may be proceeded against according to law in such cases. And we do hereby charge and command all our officers, ministers, and other our loving subjects whatsoever, to be aiding and assisting you in the premises. And we do hereby enjoin you to keep an exact journal of your proceeding in the execution of the premises, and therein to set down the names of such pirates and their officers and company, and the names of such ships and vessels as you shall by virtue of these presents seize and take, and the quantities of arms, ammunition, provision and loading of such ships, and the true value of the same, as near as you can judge.... In witness whereof we have caused the great seal of England to be affixed to these presents. Given at our court at Kensington, the 26th. day of January, 1695, and in the 7th. year of our reign.”

Of all of which the sum is that Commander Kidd, in his private man-of-war, is to catch Tom Too and the rest of them wherever he could find them, bring them to justice and render a careful account of their ships and cargoes. The ostensible aim is to protect the American colonies; actually it is to exterminate piracy wherever discovered.

English-speaking folk have been as much a part of the sea as the white spume of the waves. Like their element, too, they have made for good and ill. The by-product of England’s maritime effort was the sea-rover, a creature often as skilled, unfearing and enterprising as his brother who went up and down the highways of the ocean on more lawful occasions.

Seventeenth-and eighteenth-century piracy gave to the world that villainous, but picturesque, aggregation of maritime felons which has so much fascination for people who never grow too old to enjoy vicarious adventure: Too, Ireland, Wake, Low, Davis, Lewis, England, Blackbeard, Avery, Gow, Quelch and other bold quarter-deck—usually the other fellow’s quarter-deck—strutters, including, notably, the subject of our present observations.

These ungentlemen gleaned in three principal regions: Africa, the East and West Indies, with an occasional flyer down Brazil way. Under the black flag, we shall presently see something of all these places; just now we are engaged with the East Indies. Coming and going, and sometimes lingering, they bothered the “plantations” all the way from Charleston to Boston, so that the total scope of piracy was sweeping and widely embracing.

India was pouring out richly its products of field and loom, plantation and cottage, and was drawing hungrily in from Arabia, Europe, Africa, everywhere, the things nature or economic circumstance denied her. The carriers of this mighty movement of materials were usually rather insignificant craft called grabs, pinks, galiots, sloops and what-not; affairs of one mast, a couple of men, a boy and about sixteen ounces of cargo. These were coasters; a larger vessel plied to the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea under charter of Moors, Armenians and other swart merchants.

Bumping these lesser fry out of the way, however, were the comparatively impressive ships of the expanding European trading companies—Dutch, Swedish, Austrian and so on—and preeminently the English East India Company, destined to grow great enough eventually to swallow India herself,—old John Company.

The English company—taking it as illustrative—lined the Indian coast with its forts or factories, and built its own vessels, the noted “Indiamen”, at its home docks at Deptford; fought its rivals, fought the natives, carried on perpetual war under the banner of trade. Protected to the point of complete monopoly by royal and parliamentary charters, it became practically a State itself, with the power of minting money, maintaining forts and armies, negotiating treaties, declaring war or making peace, and authorized to send its ships out beneath the royal ensign, commanded by captains every one of whom was the king’s commissioned officer.

Although ships of many flags plied in the commerce of the East Indies, if you were aboard a larger Moorish, Arabian or Armenian vessel, you would often have heard the working of it directed by the bellowings of a Devonian, a Londoner, or a burr-tongued Yorkshireman. And if from the lookout there came the cry of “Pirate!” you could be just as sure that that swiftly oncoming menace was driven by a man who called in English to a crew which needed no interpreter.

This varied coast and trans-oceanic sea traffic was almost without police protection. At their settlement up Calicut way, the Portuguese had a few ineffective tubs they called a navy. In India itself the one-time vigorous rule of the Moguls was collapsing and anarchy was slipping from beneath the lid. Yet even as government caved in, commerce hardily struggled on, in spite of the fact that its voyages began in fear and ended by good fortune, and its ships too often became fat, unshepherded sheep for lean and unlawful shearers.

And the shearers—Tom Too et al.—came; came in hordes; came from anywhere and everywhere, chiefly from across the Atlantic, New York, New England and their historic nest, the West Indies.

The lay of the land as well as of the water made against the merchant and for the brigand. Once in the neighborhood, a thieving craft could steal up a river and wait its opportunity, comfortably provided with wood and water. Madagascar was the despair of the English Admiralty and the bitter wail of merchants great and small. It was the prime way station for pirates on their way to and from the Indies; it was a land without law, governed by warring native chieftains, and with the Comoro Islands close by, made one of the finest strategic bases imaginable for piratical operations. There the pirates swarmed, careened their ships, salted their provisions, established regular colonies, and exchanged from one ship to another, leaving or signing-up quite after the manner of legitimate ports. It was the West Indies of the Indian Ocean.

To strike piracy down in Madagascar and India was to weaken its blow both at the American colonies and the Spanish Main. To India Kidd knew he must resort to enforce the terms of his commission.

Richard Coote, the Irish earl Bellamont and a gentleman to whom the historian Macaulay gives a very good character, was at that time governor of the Province of New York. According to some accounts, he was in London when Kidd arrived there in the autumn of 1695 and was introduced to the sailor by a Colonel Livingston, one of New York’s prominent citizens, then in England. Macaulay, however, says that Bellamont was already in America when the acuteness of the problem of piracy stirred him to action, and that there he was recommended to William Kidd as a man competent on the sea and entirely familiar with the practices of pirates. Bellamont’s appeals to the home government for action being fruitless, he and Kidd evolved the notion of outfitting a private man-of-war, Kidd to command, and sending it forth to meet the situation in whatever stronghold piracy might then be found. The venture would doubtless be profitable as well as patriotic.

Bellamont promoted the scheme with eloquent letters to England and was so persuasive that statesmen like Shrewsbury and Romney, Orford, First Lord of the Admiralty, and John Somers between them subscribed several thousand pounds, and obtained the commission, under the Great Seal, which we have seen created Kidd in effect the sheriff of the far-off Orient seas.

With these funds a galley—not, however, the kind formerly propelled by oars, but a sailing ship—called the Adventure was purchased. Her measurement was two hundred and seventy tons. You can see from that what an imposing ship she must have been, especially when, in imagination, placed beside a modern transatlantic liner, for which she might possibly be big enough for a lifeboat. In those times the last thought of a sailor seems to have been for the size of his ship. Perhaps he was afraid a large ship would break in two. At any rate, he threw himself in the most matter-of-fact way at the highest waves in the world with what we would consider merely exaggerated rowboats.

Kidd bristled the Adventure with thirty cannon. They understood the economy of space in those days, you may well imagine. Kidd must have been a natural-born packer. Not only thirty guns did he get on board, not only provisions for months, with small arms and ammunition as well, but when he left New York on the first run of the cruise proper, he was bedding and boarding some one hundred and sixty men! Whatever else he may have been, the captain was a man who knew his business as a tailor knows his needle.

In order that he might be a stone for two birds, another commission was laid upon Kidd to take and condemn French ships, as by law made and provided, France and England being at war as usual. The thought was that any leisure hour that could be spared from taking pirates might be usefully employed in catching Frenchmen. The British Admiralty was always a great hand at putting people to work.

Of course, if he got a Frenchman, he was not entitled to the captive’s goods, wares and merchandise. Enemy ships were to be brought into the nearest British port and by the proper authorities condemned. He had a blank check signed only on the sea-robbers’ banks.

These things arranged, the trusty and well-beloved William Kidd, twice commissioned, competed with the active press-gangs for eighty good and faithful seamen among the taverns of Wapping and the wet alleys of Blackwall.

II

Spring’s early smile was broadening to a merry laugh amid the bushes and hedgerows of old England when the Adventure drew out of Plymouth for the East Indies, by way of New York. Past the fishing boats, the west coasters and an anchored man-of-war she slipped, on one of the most unusual errands that had ever engaged a ship clearing from that ancient port. It was probably a great morning on which to begin a voyage, with a sparkle on the waters and an edge to the sea air that must have sent the chanty rolling up from hardy throats and put a snappiness in strong muscles that labored zestfully at rope and windlass.

Putting out to sea on a fine morning is one of the peculiar delights of healthy folk. At such a time one does not reckon on never returning—that might be the fate of the other man, not ours—yet of the eighty men obeying Kidd as captain that morning many had set their last foot on the soil of home.

Like the new broom of adage, the Adventure bowled across the Atlantic to the western colony in seaman fashion in the quite creditable time of a month. She was not, in fact, a sound ship. Long before the Indian seas had been harvested her crew were calling her names, such as “Leaky and crazy” and what not. It turned out that she had the qualities of a good sponge, being absorbent at almost every seam and requiring constantly to be squeezed dry with the pumps.

So it was something to reach New York without misadventure. Off the Banks they took in a small French fisherman unlucky enough to get in their way. She was sent into New York for condemnation. This appears to have been the first and last time that Kidd lawfully employed himself under his two commissions. A trifling take it was, to be sure, but it gave Kidd’s arrival in New York quite the air of officialism.

Kidd purposed to recruit eighty more men at New York; evidently he esteemed the colonial sailorman as much as him of the mother country. To do this he caused to be printed and set up in various gossip spots about town enticing handbills inviting adventurers. The meat of the call was that there was plunder a-plenty to be taken from the East Indian pirates, and lots of fun for a stalwart man in the taking.

Men accepted would be placed upon a fair share basis, after deducting twenty-five per cent of the profits for the ship. He had no trouble attracting a crew. In fact so hearty was the response that there were fears in the colony that its man power would be depleted. Strong arms were needed against the Frenchman, Indians and whatever other perils might befall an isolated community far from the protection of the mother country in times such as those were.

Contemporaries do not speak squeamishly about an element of Kidd’s crew. Well, the captain asked no disingenuous questions and for more than one fellow in a tight pinch it was a lucky way of escape. Many others were no doubt decent, respectable men intrigued by the prospect of vividly imagined gains. The less definite the harvest of a speculation the more it seems will men greedily pursue it. So Kidd finally herded some one hundred and sixty men all told on the deck for watch divisions when the Adventure was geared for sea.

This outfit was rather more than merely master and men; they were co-partners. Forty shares were to go to the ship and the remainder was to be parceled out in lumps of average weight according to a scale agreed upon by all. Bellamont and Company supplied arms and equipment at a charge.

The late winter ice still cluttered the Hudson River when the Adventure at length turned its prow toward the Indies, Madagascar and Fortune. Kidd, according to the proprieties of the sea, kept himself a cabin, the rest of them shifted in forecastle and hold as well as a hundred and sixty men in a small ship might. With the best they could do conditions of life must have become very serious and in a way invited the heavy sickness that fell upon them when the hot regions of the East were reached.

At the Madeiras the voyage was broken briefly, then off again to India. Summer was torrid on land and sea when the company finally “watered and victualled” at Madagascar. And now for some months Kidd cruised up and down the coast without any overt act under his commissions, cruised, that is, with a ghastly plague aboard which tumbled four or five men a day over the bulwarks and into the oily, turgid deep. When one conjectures the sanitation of the Adventure it is marvelous that any one escaped the calamity.

What could the captain have been thinking of as he loafed aimlessly up and down the Indian coast? He did business with neither pirate nor merchantman, just seems to have gone here and there as the wind blew him. He may have been acquainting himself with the nature of the commerce of those parts; it may have been a period of debate with him as to whether to persist as a law officer or strike out in the new line of law breaker. It is hard to think that Kidd arrived at Madagascar with a formed pirate purpose; perhaps they may be right who say that after carefully appraising the situation as a whole he chose the plundering line. However that may have been, Kidd’s first major operation in those parts was not against pirates, according to his commission, nor the French, but against merchantmen in their peaceful pursuits.

At this point let us get the lay of the land, or sea, as it may happen. The captain leaving New York shot across the Atlantic to Madeira Islands, from which he right-angled down to the Cape of Good Hope. Swinging around this broad pedestal of Table Mountain, he ran up the coast of Africa, probably by way of the Mozambique Channel to Madagascar. He stopped here long enough to refresh his stores, then beat up toward India.

Roughly, Madagascar, for Kidd’s purposes, may be thought of as the apex of a sort of isosceles triangle, with the Red Sea for one angle and Bombay for the other. Within these boundaries the captain had the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean to navigate, with Madagascar to run back to from time to time.

Sea traffic, such as it was, around the cape was not attractive to the pirates, at least so much as that which passed more quickly from India through the Indian Ocean to the Red Sea and gulf countries. Compared with Africa, India, of course, had an old and rich civilization and it was for the products of that country that the mouths of pirates watered; the costly silks, linens, spices and gold and silver treasures which had become the traditions of sailors’ dockhead stories.

As it happened, however, it was not a cargo going from India which first enticed Captain Kidd, but cargoes going thence from the gulf region, more particularly the fat freight of what was known as the Mocca Fleet.

“Men,” said Kidd, as he swung the Adventure’s nose suddenly about at the end of his dallying days in the Indian Ocean, “we are off to Bab’s Key and the Mocca Fleet. We will ballast our good ship with gold and silver from this Mocca Fleet.”

Thus did Kidd treat his commission as a scrap of paper, to be quite modern, and thus, with a roaring cheer, another terror was added to the troubles of honest commerce.

III

At this port of Bab’s Key, then, the Mocca Fleet was being stuffed as the fox stole smoothly upon it from the Indian Ocean. About fourteen ships made up the fleet, going in mass for safety, and chartered by the usual polyglot crowd of Dutchmen, Arabians, Moors, Armenians and so on.

While the coolies sweated and strained and hauled bundles and bales aboard, certain odd-looking strangers sauntered about the docks, marking closely the lading of the vessels. These were Kidd’s men, spies he had sent ashore to warn him of the sailing of the fleet. With desiring eyes these men watched the caravans pouring in from the interior and emptying their freights into the various holds. Rich merchandise lay spread all about,—loot that their doughty commander was to appropriate without a thank-you and distribute among their tarry palms.

Not only that, but had you gone into the low, round hills that basined the town, you would have seen lurkers there, watching keenly the work on the fleet. More of the Adventure’s men, sentineled all around by the captain as a kind of double watch. Kidd, you notice, was a man of method; it was not going to be any fault of his if Bellamont and Company did not pay dividends.

Whether the presence of the spies had disturbed the skippers of the Mocca Fleet is conjectural, but when it did put to sea at length it was under both Dutch and English convoy. And in spite of Kidd’s keenness it got away without notice.

Only when morning came above the swelling deep, after two or three weeks of waiting, did the lookout cry the captain from his cabin that the fleet was passing. True enough! There over the horizon the high poops of the Mocca ships were awkwardly wagging away to safety.

Orders immediately showered the decks like the great drops of a thunderstorm. The anchor chain grated sharply against the bows while the shrouds were all at once black with racing men. A few minutes and the Adventure began to take the water slowly; sail after sail bellied out and quickly she leaped and ducked and flung herself upon the heels of her prey.

Fourteen ships convoyed by armed Dutch and English guards would seem a large bone for so small a terrier as the pirate boat to grasp. Something must take possession of the reason of English-speaking sailormen when combat promises, for long odds challenge rather than daunt them. Their maritime acts sparkle with just such feats as this—absurd but in a way heroic—and had Kidd had the color of law upon his work, the story of the Mocca Fleet would have echoed in generations of English schoolrooms.

Kidd certainly was grown on the tree that bore Grenville, Drake, Frobisher, Hawkins and the rest, even though it might have been advisable to prune him out. In quite the traditional spirit Kidd hurled his little ship at the great Mocca Fleet as casually as a boy would fling a stone into a flock of sparrows.

It might stimulate the imagination to tell how this extraordinary effort netted big gain, and how the Adventure knocked the merchantmen to left and right and plucked the fattest and richest of them from their midst, from which the captain redeemed his tropical promise to ballast his ship with gold and silver. But that would not be the fact. The difficulties were too great. After a brief peppering on both sides with round shot, the pirates were forced to drop back, and leave the fleet, frightened, fluttering but safe, tumbling on for India.

Well, it was a doughty but miscalculated start. The Adventure rode high upon the waves instead of bulwark-deep with goodly gain. The good cheer aboard must have flagged. What, they asked one another, what if the whole commerce of this country should be organized into fleets; what would become of poor pirates? Here they were embarked in a trade at great spending of money and effort, come all the way from New York, only to find a great concentration of merchants against them,—surely a monopoly in restraint of trade. If this sort of thing kept up, there might be nothing for them left to do but to live up to the terms of the captain’s commission and be content to sift the loot from gentlemen of free enterprise who had been on the ground in happier and more prosperous days.

Grumbling doubtless began now, if not before, and was kept up until it ended in a sad mischance to one Gunner Moore, which deplorable accident will shortly be narrated.

Kidd now began to net the gulf for anything he could catch. They hauled in a little Moorish ship, which was but a poor sardine for the whale that had escaped. She was too small to put up a fight and Kidd just bullied her down. From her they took a few bales of coffee, some opium and twenty pieces of Arabian gold.

They also caught a “linguister.” It turns out that a “linguister” is not an article of commerce, but nothing more nor less than an interpreter, in this particular case a Portuguese person. Not a bad word that,—linguister; language rather more expressive than the scholastic interpreter.

Now you cannot ballast even a two hundred-and-seventy-ton craft with twenty pieces of Arabian gold and, refusing to believe that so poverty-stricken a craft could be in these rich reputed waters, Kidd improvised an inquisition. Some of the unfortunate captives were hung up by the wrists and beaten with naked cutlasses by way of persuading them to reveal the real treasures of their ship. Nothing so far as the record shows came of this strenuous examination. So the pirates turned them loose minus their coffee and opium and the contemptible pieces of Arabian gold.

Rough usage this, but not the ultimate of ferocity with which Kidd has been charged. For all we know, this is as far as ever the captain went in the treatment of captive crews. It may be said as well here as anywhere that there is no walking the plank or other picturesque punishments of fiction. Ships were looted and turned loose, in most instances. Those of their crews who wished to might sign up with the pirates; their officers, if not sent back to their ships, were carried to the Indian coast and dumped there.

All hands were then in no very sociable mood when the incidents of this immediate time closed with the matter of the Portuguese man-of-war.

It was on an evening soon after the taking of the Moorish ship that the Adventure saw and was seen by a cruising Portuguese war-vessel. Now there was nothing in Kidd’s contract with Bellamont, Livingston and the rest of them which even suggested that he should take any special risk, and of course not a line thereof which could warrant him in lying-to all night to risk the company’s property in a perfectly gratuitous battle engagement with a ship of war.

This, however, is just what the Adventure did. Instead of taking the hours of darkness for a discreet and quite justified withdrawal from an embarrassing situation, Kidd and his merry men impatiently watched for the first break of light in the east for a go with an enemy. After all the Adventure was well and poetically named. Conduct of this kind makes us suppose that gain was less in the eye of these folk than rip-roaring adventuring in lawless waters.

Historically, the Portuguese opened fire first on Kidd. Evidently that swart son of Lisbon had not heard from the Mocca Fleet that a wild demon was loose on the sea. When you read that the Portuguese opened first fire on Captain Kidd, you think at once of a foolish tramp going out of his way to kick a sleeping bulldog. Mr. Portuguese got a surprising rattle of shot on his bulwarks and sails. He had opened fire on the one man in all the East Indies that with more exact information he would have avoided.

Kidd closed with him zestfully and for five hours they whanged away at each other, and at noon, all concerned having had a brisk workout, as the athletes would say, the two ships drew apart and went their ways, flinging shot at each other till Neptune shouldered them beyond range. Ten men of the Adventure lay about the ship with broken bodies, waiting the perhaps more dangerous ministry of ship’s surgeon Bradinham.

Save for the fun of fighting here were three or four weeks wasted. A couple of these had been thrown away hanging around for the Mocca Fleet and a couple more had brought forth only the meager pilfering of a Moorish sloop. It is not unnatural then that when, after the tête-à-tête with the warship, the craft Loyal Captain sighted and seeming to promise worth-while gleaning, was allowed by Kidd to go by scot-free, without a hand being raised, discontent began to threaten discipline on board the Adventure.

IV

In a gang of men with a grievance grumbling usually becomes vocal in a sort of natural spokesman. The kind of people who manned the Adventure were probably hard to manage, especially after all hands had committed themselves as lawbreakers. They were taking so many risks that unless profit came in to justify them their complaints would sharply flare up.

They were in front of danger from disease, a demoralizing illustration of which they had but recently seen in their own ship; the robbery of ships was also dangerous, while most vivid of all, though farthest removed geographically, was the picture of outraged authority waiting them at home with the grim paraphernalia of Execution Dock.

Such things make men peevish and if all be endured or braved it must not be for a mere trifle. And, beyond the game with the Portuguese, which all would admit was the one bright spot of the month, nothing by way of a share had been passed around, for the quite apparent reason that nothing had been taken to share.

Why Kidd let the Loyal Captain get away is known only to himself. His men did not understand it. They knew he was not afraid; they never doubted in that sort of thing. But there she went,—a good-sized merchant ship, the very thing they were all out here risking their necks for.

Gunner Moore gave tongue to their troubles; Gunner Moore was not afraid, not he; out with it and speak up like men. Why he himself could have shown Captain Kidd a way to take the Loyal Captain and that without any risk. There is always a Gunner Moore. Always in all undertakings, lawful as well as unlawful, there is an ever-ready subordinate with better plans and methods than his superior’s. Such men always talk and almost always fatally. Gunner Moore did.

You notice the sting in the gunner’s phrase—“without risk.” That was the heel by which to prick the demon up in the captain. The imputation of fear so plainly false,—no wonder as Gunner Moore was grinding a chisel on the deck, the hoarse voice of his commander growled in his ear—

“Which way could you have put me in a way to take this ship (the Loyal Captain) and been clear?”

It was a hot minute for Gunner Moore. Now Mr. Moore, you who are so smart, how would you have taken the Loyal Captain without risk? One may feel sorry for the gunner; he has angered the hardest man, in some respects, on or off the coast of Malabar, in whose shelter the Adventure was then riding.

The gunner did what almost everybody would have done in the same stress; he tried to put out to sea in a lie.

“Sir,” said he, “I never spoke such a word, nor ever thought such a thing.”

Gunner Moore was not naturally adapted for the piratical life. With Kidd in that mood and menace before him there was no refuge for him in words. The captain must have surmised that the gunner had been audible to the crew as well as himself, and his particular game made an example imperative. It was really all up with the gunner before a word was said.

Everybody on board was looking on. The sail maker sat cross-legged with his needle poised; men dozing on the blistering decks awoke to stare; over the yardarms aloft the heads of the sailors working gazed fixedly below them; it was that intense moment before tragedy.

Captain Kidd pronounced sentence in a voice that everybody could hear:

“You lousy dog!”

Kidd was never short of picture words. He used few abstractions; everything and everybody he painted in quick, certain colors.

Perhaps, after all, there was a chance for the gunner. If he had meekly bowed assent and driven along with his chisel-grinding it might have been well for him. But it is to be taken that Gunner Moore had passed himself for a man of some character among his fellows. He was a sort of gang leader, apparently; had he not spoken up, had not his attitude been, “Who’s afraid of Kidd?” He was, really, but had not imagination enough to know it. And now he was tumbled low before all men with these rough words. To swallow them was to creep about the ship forever humble. He rallied, did the gunner, but instead of rallying with words he should have resorted to the chisel in his hand or a marlin-spike. No, he did not understand the piratical trade. He mistook it as a calling in which one could still talk.

“If I am a lousy dog,” he cried desperately, “you have made me so; you have brought me to ruin and many more.”

“And many more.” Notice that! It is an appeal to that gaping sailmaker, those wide-eyed sleepers, those staring men in the rigging. Here am I, it says, your spokesman, telling the captain now just what we have all been saying about him and the way we all feel; stick by me; somebody up there in the yards please drop a block on his head.

Gangs, being untrained and undirected, are necessarily uncertain and do not engage their opportunity. A brisk demonstration of sympathy might have saved the gunner; the captain was only one man.

The ship rocked, the wind blew sluggish from Malabar, a cord smacked thinly against the spars and the moment passed.

“Have I ruined you, ye dog?” replied his formidable opponent. “Take that!”

Kidd grabbed a heavy wooden bucket, bound with iron hoops, probably the one holding the water with which the gunner wet his stone, and smote Moore upon the head.

Sails sank his needle back in the canvas, the sleepers turned over on their sides, the men aloft looked a moment solemnly at each other, and the wooden bucket, bound with iron hoops, rolled redly to the scuppers.

There was an opening for a gunner aboard the ship Adventure.

Malabar, that beautiful and fertile strip of the Indian coast which fronts the Arabian Sea for some hundred and fifty miles, was a sort of way station for Kidd as he worked the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean. He ran in and out of this region according to his need of victualing or repairing the now unsatisfactory Adventure.

He was not what one would call exactly welcome there. His coming meant a disturbance in the local villages and the liberation upon them of an undisciplined and roguish company. His crew and the natives not occasionally fell out. Very likely the sailors were the beginners of the trouble,—so their general make-up of character would suggest. Gunner Moore’s death was not the only violence of the Adventure’s hours at Malabar.

There was, for instance, the matter of the ship’s cooper. That artisan got among the natives and never came back to the ship. It was on him the townsfolk avenged themselves in an undetermined quarrel with the pirates of which the cooper’s death was an episode. Knowing Kidd as we do, it is not astonishing that he visited his wrath upon the natives in vindicating the life even of a ship’s cooper. He swarmed his men ashore, burned down the dwellings of the people and, catching one of the inhabitants, ordered him, with crude formality, shot.

It is a wonder that he did not exterminate the town. Mere ruthlessness, however, would not seem a part of his disposition. In this matter of the cooper there cannot be much question that the final responsibility must fall upon the captain, whose failure to keep order among his men made their acts of provocation possible.

With these two incidents of the gunner and the cooper to lend action to his sojourn, Kidd lay about Malabar until November, 1697, was advanced. He then pulled up his anchor and breezed out to the Arabian Sea seeking what or whom he might devour. The lot fell on a Moorish ship, out from Surat, under the command of a Dutch skipper.

On sighting her, Kidd went to the flag locker where he had a bundle of symbolic aliases and picked out the flag of France, and flung it brightly from his topmast. The Moor was wallowing along without any insignia of nationality, but before very long, the Adventure’s men saw her shake out the French flag. Whereupon everybody laughed in deep chests and kept smoothly to the pursuit.

After some hours of comfortable sailing the Adventure pulled alongside the Moor, and confronting her with a row of gleaming cannon bade her stop. No doubt the agitated Dutchman in command supposed that he had been intercepted by a French ship of war, and so, stowing certain ship’s papers, doubtless prepared for just such earnest moments, in his pocket he obeyed Kidd’s hoarse bellow to come aboard. While his boat was coming over to the Adventure, Kidd was arranging a reception for him of an artful kind.

He called one of the crew, a Frenchman, aft and bade him represent himself to be the captain of the Adventure in the pending interview with the Dutchman. Just why would soon be shown.

Over the side came the Dutch skipper with a puffed, perturbed face. The Frenchman met him and demanded his papers. With something of relief the skipper must have pulled out the French passes, or clearance papers, he had taken the precaution to bring on the voyage with him. He was relieved because he found himself on an undoubted French ship and happily with French shipping papers; he felt among friends.

No sooner was the French pass spread out than Kidd, standing close by, toying with the handle of his cutlass, roared out in frightening English:

“Ah ha, I have catched you, have I. You are a free prize to England.”

This action shows that Kidd was not ready to avow himself a pirate. As such, there would have been no need for the subterfuge of French colors and a French captain; he had force enough to accomplish his intent as it was. The truth of the thing most likely was that Kidd coolly calculated that he could take ships under color of being Frenchmen, or some other excuse, and that even the despoiled vessels would not necessarily know his real status. He seems always to have had an eye to an early return to his accustomed social position. This, if anything, distinguishes Kidd from the typical pirate and so far denies the traditional picture of fiction.

Out of this small Moorish ship the haul was meager. Two horses, some quilts and odds and ends of cargo. He kept the ship with him until his next trip to Madagascar; probably, according to his custom, putting the officers ashore at Malabar, and recruiting his forces with any of the captives who wished to go along with him.

December soon marked a change in the very ordinary luck which had so far attended the Adventure’s enterprise. A Moorish ketch in this month fell to them, and, rather unusually, after a fight in which one of the pirates was wounded. An inconsequential affair it was at that, her capture being effected by a handful of men from the ship’s boat. The captors ran her ashore and emptied out of her thirty tubs of butter as the principal gain. The ketch was then turned adrift.

All hands no doubt wished each other a happy and prosperous New Year as 1698 came over the horizon of time. But January was to step along quite a little before even a trifle was scavenged from the sea. This was a Portuguese, out from Bengal, and laden with butter, wax and East Indian goods. She was taken in without any trouble, and a prize crew put on her to keep her in company with the Adventure.

And now a disturbing matter arose for the captain. He was pursued by seven or eight Dutch ships, until he was obliged to call off his prize crew and abandon the Portuguese ship. It was disturbing, not because the captain was afraid of the seven or eight Dutch sail, but it must have indicated to him that his unlawful operations had not been disguised as well as he had wished. He saw then that word had got about the Indian ports that he was a pirate. His suspicions were correct; not only was the truth penetrating to India; it was also on its way to England, where a great shock was to befall all those concerned with King William’s trusty and well-beloved mariner. Not the least so interested was to be that genteel nobleman, Earl Bellamont, Governor of the Province of New York, whose political enemies, airing the arrangement with Kidd, began to accuse him openly of having a good big finger in the piratical pie.

Thus far off all sorts of trouble were brewing for Captain Kidd as he beat about the spicy coast of India.

V

But a most momentous turn of fortune was impending. And it was high time. The pirates were thoroughly fed with butter; out of almost every capture they had taken butter, until it was butter, butter and nothing but butter. The Adventure promised to become a sort of floating grocery store, specializing on butter, with coffee a strong second, while, for those with a fancy for dreams, liberal quantities of opium could be passed over the counter.

Bellamont and Company had not gone to considerable expense just to corner the butter market of the East Indies, nor to interfere seriously with the dairy and grocery businesses of those regions. Had they been in receipt of monthly reports from their peculiar partner away out there, they would have been both surprised and disappointed and very properly grieved.

The butter era was about to end sharply. The Quedagh Merchant did that.

A comparatively large ship she must have been when Kidd first saw her lumbering along, loaded down to capacity. As soon as he spotted her, out from the locker came the French flag again, and as a French ship he drew quickly alongside. Probably the usual round shot across the bows brought her up. If so that was the only demonstration of violence which marked the taking of one of the richest ships that ever a pirate gloated over.

As soon as the Merchant braced back, Kidd sent a boat from his ship to her with orders to bring the captain to him. The boat came back with an old Frenchman grumbling and puzzled in the stern. The skipper of the Merchant naturally thought a Frenchman should represent them to a French ship of unknown but threatening attitude. This old man, however, had not been long in talk with the pirate chief before he confessed that he was not the master of the Quedagh Merchant, but her gunner. Whereupon Kidd sent the boat off again for the real commander.

One begins to see the value of the ruse of sailing under French colors. Many of the ships on that particular beat evidently had French clearance papers. British trade was probably almost entirely through traffic around the Cape to England; the coastwise business was Moorish, by which was generally meant Arabian, Dutch, French and Armenian. Hence to approach the ordinary coaster, the French colors at his mast, avoided the delay and difficulty of a protracted pursuit, as well as served to disarm them when overtaken.

Whenever they had French passes, instead of showing force to a seemingly French ship, the easiest and most natural thing for them to do was to expose their papers, and so proceed peacefully on their way. Such a ship as this which Kidd was now taking could no doubt have put up some measure of resistance had she been forewarned. Still again, Kidd artfully induced them to show a French pass and then revealed himself as an Englishman commissioned to take just that sort of craft, and thus despoil many victims without discovering his real traffic.

The French pass idea struck Kidd as so good that he worked it not only in the waters of the Indies but in the courts of his outraged Majesty, King William, as he entered the valley of death’s shadow.

This time the boat came back carrying a swearing Englishman, one Wright, indubitable skipper of the Quedagh Merchant. When he set foot on the pirate’s deck Kidd brusquely informed him he was a prisoner being off a French ship, as witness the embassage of the old French gunner. While Wright, who had formerly been a tavern keeper at Surat, bleated about the decks, Kidd sent a crew over to take possession of the Quedagh Merchant.

Here they found a couple of Dutchmen, probably the ship’s mates, a Frenchman—the old gunner—and a crew of Moors. Another group of considerable importance to the story was that of the charterers of the ship—certain Armenians under the headship of one Cogi Baba. In a little while Kidd joined his merry men.

Here occurred a curious little comedy. So soon as Kidd came up the side, the Armenians rushed toward him and with loud cries and prayers besought him to return them their ship. They thrust at him the respectable ransom of twenty thousand rupees. Kidd waved their offer away, remarking that it was a very small parcel of money. He then called his men and instructed them to go off on the forecastle and hold a mimic conference together, wherein they were to pretend to vote upon the fate of the captured craft. With solemn stupid faces they grouped off by themselves, the while the plaints of the distracted Armenians assailed their hairy ears.

Then owlishly they returned to the quarterdeck where, with great seriousness, they informed their commander that they had voted to retain the Quedagh Merchant. Thereupon Kidd turned to the Armenians with a shrug of the shoulder as much as to say, what would you; what can you do with a crowd like that?

Kidd was still playing his strange double game. He was acting the part of an English officer taking in a suspect enemy ship. The farce of the crew’s conference was a by-play to divert the Armenians’ clamor from one to many heads, and perhaps to show the incorruptibility of these patriotic British seamen.

That done, they appraised their garnerings and shouted with joy when it was discovered that they had found nearly ten thousand pounds’ worth of valuables. In our money it is difficult to estimate just what the amount would be now, but certainly an extraordinary fortune.

Not only that but here was a good seaworthy, commodious ship of very great value herself. All hands were called from the old Adventure; pitch barrels were staved in and kicked about her decks, and she went up to the coppery Indian sky in great festoons of smoke.

She went up to the coppery Indian sky in great festoons of smoke.

The Quedagh Merchant swung around, her decks now congested with the whole crew of the destroyed Adventure and into her compass box peering the firm hard face of William Kidd, mariner, of London, trusty and well-beloved.

VI

Now, the big question before the house was to dispose of the cargo of the Quedagh Merchant to the best profit. To get the officers of the ship and the clamant Armenians out of the way Kidd put them ashore, supposing that that was the last he would see of them. In this he was mistaken.

He stood away in the general direction of Madagascar. But on the way there he touched at one port and another where he entered into vigorous bargaining. He had in view the turning of the Quedagh Merchant’s cargo into coin, and seems to have managed this quite adroitly. There being no telegraphs or cables the outraged charterers could not, of course, catch up with him. Probably he was suspected but nobody cared very much; there the goods were and sellers who were sharp but not too close.

Their merchanting was interrupted long enough to pick up a Portuguese who got in their way, and once again there was a surplus of butter aboard. At that the pick-up brought them some five hundred pounds,—not too miserable a sum in those days or, for that matter, in any day.

Thus keeping an eye to business in both directions, trade and theft, they beat down to Madagascar, probably their principal market.

In this place Kidd was to encounter a veritable pirate, the very chap for whom the Admiralty had commissioned him to look. The story of this contact is quaint.

When the Quedagh Merchant dropped anchor in the channel, a canoe was seen putting out from the shore, manned by white men. As Kidd, leaning over the side, watched this craft paddling swiftly over the blue, languid waters, he thought some of the faces in it were not altogether unfamiliar. He became certain of this when a motley gang tumbled up the rope ladder and stood on the deck before him, awkwardly twisting their hats in their hands, and saluting by a drag at their long, unkempt forelocks. Why, to be sure, they were New Yorkers, old salts known to Kidd in prior and more respectable years. Well, what did they want?

“Cap’n,” began the spokesman, reluctantly stepping a little forward from his fellows, “Cap’n, how d’ye do, sir? You remember us, Cap’n, don’t ye; all good sailor-men from New York? Some of us fought the French under ye, Cap’n, sir, in the West Indies.”

Kidd nodded.

“Well?”

There was a heavy silence. The newcomers looked around them, and somehow took a little heart from a something in the attitudes and manner of the men under their old acquaintance’s command. Things just didn’t look like a reputable king’s ship on the king’s business.

“You be come to hang us all, Cap’n,” blurted the speaker. “We’ve heered you got the king’s commission to take pirates. Maybe we’ve fell into a loose step or two, but we aren’t regular robbers. Cap’n, give us a chance, and we’ll uncover a nest of the kind you’re alooking for.”

He pointed a long finger toward the wooded shore.

“See that ship, Cap’n? That’s the Resolution, Culliford, skipper, and one o’ the hardest ships in these parts.”

Kidd turned and gave a long look at the rakish Resolution, from this distance even, a vessel evidently of speed and unlawful purpose.

“I’ll go back with you,” declared Kidd, briskly.

They all returned to the canoe and set off for the Resolution. The delegation must have been astonished at the audacity of Kidd’s returning with them to a known pirate, with a commission in his pocket to hang the crew of the Resolution if necessary, and returning at that with absolutely no protection. They had always known this man for a queer one.

Just as coolly as if he were mounting his own proper ship, Kidd stepped on to the decks of the Resolution. The rowers joined their mates in the waist of the vessel and pointed with thick thumbs as Kidd ascended to the quarter-deck, where Captain Culliford, as much puzzled as any one, shuffled forward in his slippers to do the honors. All about went the whisper that the king’s man, with power of death, had come amid them.

Kidd and Culliford shook hands and presently sat down together under a sail stretched as an awning against the beating sun. All hands breathed just a wee bit easier. Pretty soon they heard Culliford crying to his negro servant for the materials of “Bomboo.” The strain slackened noticeably. Their captain was a match for the king’s man. If they had got to “Bomboo” things might yet be well.

Taking the sugar and limes and dark thick bottle the servant had brought to him, Culliford himself, as a gracious host, prepared the drinks. The crew from the forecastle and waist watched until both the august noses were buried in the mugs and then knew that all would be well.

All was, indeed, very well. Up there on the quarter-deck the two skippers were laughing loudly. Said Kidd, as the Bomboo moved within him:

“Harm you, Culliford! Why, man, I’d see my soul fry in —— before I’d harm you.”

We have said the captain was a great hand at picture words—he could use them even in a sociable way. One thing led to another, the cordiality increased, and when at length Kidd walked a little jiggingly to the canoe he was laden with a very considerable gift of silks from the treasure chest of the Resolution. He sent back the canoe with an equal present of shirting stuff, and more, much more than that in view of his commission, the next day he supplied Culliford with two guns.

Now, that was the extreme of disloyalty. Not only not to apprehend the piratical Culliford—that was inexcusable—but actually to make him more efficient in his plundering work was simply intolerable. If by some clairvoyance, his Britannic Majesty’s Admiralty could have seen this horrid transaction, the very building itself must have tremored.

It may be that Kidd here was acting according to a policy to which the logic of circumstances had compelled him. As soon as the canoe from the Resolution came to him, he discovered that his arrival had been a considerable shock to the sailing community of Madagascar. Gossip flies about a port as quickly as about a street. Two things, therefore, presented themselves for his choice; he must either engage the pirates in action or reassure them by companioning with them. Madagascar was to be the last big chance to clean up the balance of the Quedagh Merchant’s cargo, the final market. As a king’s man he could not remain there indefinitely without expecting to be attacked by a combination of lawless men, who saw in him only the king’s authority and punitive power. Whether this thought particularly directed him or not, his visit to Culliford, one of the leading pirate commanders there, was undoubtedly in the way of appeasement, and not the mere fraternizing of colleagues.

This situation being smoothed out, Kidd went seriously to work to sell his wares. According to the chronology of the record, this could not have taken a very great while.

And now the day for which they all had longed came. Outside of the cabin which Kidd, commander-like, always reserved to himself, a long queue was formed that ended in a jostling knot beneath the poop. Pay day had come, and mirth bubbled without restraint.

On the cabin table were piled over one hundred heaps of coin. Stowed away in a locker were the forty shares for the ship. Kidd stood at the table, a great pistol lying suggestively at hand in case of too much excitement, and by the door his personal servant, Richard Barlicorn, kept a kind of order.

One by one the crew came in and each swept into his hat the share allotted him, and with a grin and a duck of the head hastened out to the sunshine, to watch with gleaming eyes the enchanting sparkle of the greatest fortune that had ever come to him in the hard and sorrowful farming of the sea.

Everything was square and above board. Kidd had kept his florid promise to ballast the ship with gold and silver, and the workman had received his agreed hire.

It must have been a great day for Bomboo.

VII

While Kidd was fraternizing with pirates and turning the Quedagh Merchant’s cargo into gold at Madagascar, the solemn and serious gentlemen of the British Admiralty heard with pained disappointment how their trusty and well-beloved mariner was behaving himself in the distant seas. They saw gloomily that another experiment in the suppression of piracy had fizzled out, and that the private ship of war was not an approved instrument of police work. That method having been quite the opposite of successful, they ponderously planned another which, in the event—though we will not be concerned to follow it—was to prove if anything still less effective.

Their plan might as well be set in their own peculiar language, and showing that oddity of punctuation which made a state paper of this sort three enormous, mountainous sentences:

“By the king, a proclamation.

William R.

Whereas we being informed, by the frequent complaints of our good subjects trading to the East Indies, of several wicked practises committed on those seas, as well upon our own subjects as those of our allies, have therefore thought fit (for the security of the trade of those countries, by an utter extirpation of the pirates in all parts eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, as well beyond Cape Comorin as on this side of it, unless they shall forthwith surrender themselves, as in hereinafter directed) to send out a squadron of men-of-war, under the command of Captain Thomas Warren.

Now we, to the intent that such who have been guilty of any acts of piracy in those seas, may have notice of our most gracious intention, of extending our royal mercy to such of them as shall surrender themselves, and to cause the severest punishment according to law to be inflicted upon those who shall continue obstinate, have thought fit, by the advice of our privy council, to issue this proclamation; hereby requiring and commanding all persons who have been guilty of any act of piracy, or any ways aiding or assisting therein, in any place eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, to surrender themselves within the several respective times hereinafter limited, unto the said Captain Thomas Warren, and the commander-in-chief of the squadron for the time being, and to Israel Hayes, Peter Dellanoye, and Christopher Pollard, esquires, commissioners appointed by us for the said expedition, or to any three of them, or, in case of death, to the major part of the survivors of them.

And we do hereby declare, that we have been graciously pleased to impower the said Captain Thomas Warren, and the commander-in-chief of the said squadron for the time being, Israel Hayes, Peter Dellanoye, and Christopher Pollard, esquires, commissioners aforesaid, or any three of them, or in case of death, to the major part of the survivors of them, to give assurance of our most gracious pardon unto all such pirates in the East Indies, viz., all eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, who shall surrender themselves for piracies or robberies committed by them upon sea or land; except, nevertheless, such as they shall commit in any place whatsoever after notice of our grace and favor hereby declared; and also excepting all such piracies and robberies as shall be committed from the Cape of Good Hope eastward, to the longitude or meridian of Socatora, after the last day of April, 1699, and in any place from the longitude or meridian of Socatora eastward, to the longitude or meridian of Cape Comorin, after the last day of June, 1699, and in any place whatsoever eastward of Cape Comorin after the last day of July, 1699; and also excepting Henry Every, alias Bridgman, and William Kidd.

Given at our court at Kensington, the 8th day of December, 1698, in the 10th year of our reign. God save the King.”

Such was the confession of the impotency of the British authority to clear the seas of the East Indies.

William Kidd, it is to be noticed, is no longer the trusty and well-beloved; he is quite in the outermost dark, coupled with Henry Avery, or Every, for whom no royal mercy was to exert its gentle and benign qualities. It would seem fair enough considering the well-beloved’s flippant attitude toward the king’s commission.

The proclamation is an exact document of specific effect. There is nothing ambiguous in its terms. This definiteness became extremely important to some of Kidd’s crew when they stood in the somber shadow of the gallows.

The meat of the matter was that all East Indian pirates who before April, June or July, 1699, according to certain geographical boundaries, should give themselves up to four particular persons, Warren, Hayes, Dellanoye and Pollard, were to be admonished and forgiven,—all, that is, except Avery and Kidd.

With a bale of printed proclamations Captain Warren and the three gentlemen commissioners departed for the Indies. It does look rather an absurd mission from our point of view. Authority thus said in effect to the outlaw folk: We can’t catch you so we will forgive you. Laughter loud and long rose from piraty throats from Madagascar to the Gulf of Aden when Captain Warren passed hither and thither, tacking up the pretty sheets of paper. It was the ultimate good joke on government.

Yet not all the lawless ones grinned and went on plundering. It would seem that the jolly Culliford, he of the Resolution and the artful mixer of Bomboo, saw his chance to mend his ways and put himself in the hands of the commissioners. By a sort of coincidence he who had lain at Madagascar with Kidd, with Kidd later groaned in the cells of Newgate, though he probably effected his discharge by virtue of the proclamation.

Just where and when the proclamation came to the notice of Kidd’s company is uncertain; that it did, however, will shortly appear.

VIII

Pardon or no pardon, proclamation or no proclamation, Captain Kidd was bound to go home. He had finished with piracy, at least in the East Indies.

His active operations had barely filled out six months. His bold attack on the Mocca Fleet befell on the 14th of August, 1697; in January, 1698, he grabbed the Quedagh Merchant, loitered down the coast in her, trading here and there, and about the opening of May of the same year came to Madagascar, having picked up a wandering Portuguese on the way. August, then, to January, really saw Kidd’s work, and it was in that comparatively short time that he acquired an extraordinary and permanent notoriety.

Yet with the exception of the slaying of Gunner Moore he had committed no act which to-day would be a capital offense; the matter of the ship’s cooper and the native is all too modern in tone. Undoubtedly, the notice which Kidd attracted was because of the connection of Bellamont and certain other nobles with the inception of the enterprise, their political enemies now making gain of their predicament and flooding the town with pamphlets wherein, as part of the game, Kidd took on the lineaments of a sea-monster. Beyond an uncommon boldness, there was nothing in the crimes he committed to foundation such a popular clamor as rose about his name in England.

Those few months of effort, however, had been very profitable. Contemporaries put the extreme value on the Quedagh Merchant’s cargo at twelve thousand pounds,—an exaggeration, the probable figure being about nine thousand. Of this, on the forty-share basis together with all he could deduct as charges for supplies and ammunition, Kidd must have obtained some thirty per cent. Not only that, but it appears from the remarks of one of his crew on the trial that the captain by some device or other took back this man’s share, and if this man’s probably others.

There was a fat three thousand pounds out of this venture; in addition there must be remembered the value of the smaller pick-ups he had made, so that one way and other, with goods and money the captain must have concluded his enterprise with a good five thousand pounds,—about twenty thousand dollars, and in the values of the present day a very decent fortune indeed. On top of all that he had the ship herself, which was then valued at four hundred pounds, or two thousand dollars.

To-day one could hardly get a good halibut boat for two thousand dollars, so you can get an inkling of what the sum of his gains would have meant in these times. On the other hand, some of the articles are cheaper now than they were then, as for instance calico, of which he made a good haul. This money is what makes up the bulk of the so-called Captain Kidd’s treasure, which fancy has so vividly exaggerated.

Robbing merchant ships as he was, all he obtained was mostly merchandise, largely perishable and hence to be disposed of quickly. To imagine these vessels as carrying unique articles of gold and silverware or pearls and jewels of great price is to be away off the road of historic fact.

For instance, here is a general list of the property that fell into his hands: Opium, sugar, raw silk, calico, muslin, rice, beeswax, butter, iron, horses, quilts, sugar-candy, tobacco, and similar sundries. Eatables such as butter and sugar and so on were shared among the ship’s messes; the rest were sold wherever a buyer could be found.

Fighting and taking ships were really incidental labors for these pirates. There was a great amount of hard, plain stevedore work to be done, shifting these cargoes from ship to ship and from ship to shore. From August onward there was little loafing indulged in. What with working the ship, sometimes two of them, sorting and arranging cargoes, the sailors were at it constantly, while we must imagine the captain enmeshed in the ardor of close bookkeeping long after the lantern had been set up in the stern.

In all of the record of the proceedings in the Old Bailey there is nothing said of any one being killed in combat, either with the capture of ships or the engagement with the Portuguese man-of-war, on either side.

And now the captain was content. Save for the complaint of Darby Mullins that the captain took his share away from him, the crew also seem to have been satisfied. After the division Kidd let it become known that he was leaving the way of the law-breaker, and, according to his own account, ninety-five men thereupon left him, almost in a body. Incidental attrition later on took more of them, and when at last he turned the nose of the Quedagh Merchant homeward barely enough men remained with him to work the ship.

IX

Although Kidd arrived at Madagascar in May of 1698 it was not until the turn of the next year, and probably well into that year before he set sail on his stolen ship for home. It must have taken him quite a time to be rid of his merchandise and to pay off his men. After that, short-handed as he was, he seems to have attempted no recorded piracy.

It is quite possible that while he still lay in the Mozambique Channel, Warren and the three benign peace-bearing commissioners came around the Cape and up the coast, and that before he left those waters he was acquainted with the character of the royal proclamation. Or it may have been that it was after his return to New York that Kidd first learned that he was a marked man.

In June of 1699, after an absence of a little more than two years, Captain Kidd arrived in Delaware Bay. But not in the Adventure and not in the Quedagh Merchant. He came in a little sloop, with a crew of about thirty-five men on her articles, named the St. Antonio. What had become of the Quedagh Merchant?

That ill-fortuned ship was snugly stowed and secreted away in a solitary creek of the West Indies. There he had hidden her until such time as he could return and bring her out; that means, until the storm of which he must have felt the first blowings at the West Indies, if not at Madagascar, had passed over. He brought back with him of the old Adventure’s personnel barely one-fourth, probably not more than twenty-five or thirty men. One man, Hugh Parrot, who came in the St. Antonio we know from his own account was recruited in Madagascar and replaced an original adventurer. So it must have been with others.

Hugh Parrot’s brief autobiography as he gave it to the court may be glanced here as typical of the sea folk who homed in Madagascar. He said he “sailed out of Plymouth in the year 1695 in a merchantman, bound for Cork, in Ireland, there to take in provisions; thence to the Island of Barbados; and in sight of the island of Barbados I was taken by a French privateer, and carried to Martinico; and thence coming in a transport ship I was brought to Barbados; there I shipped myself in a vessel bound for Newfoundland, and thence to Madeiras; and then I went to Madagascar, and there I staid some short time after, and came in company with Captain Kidd; and then the commander and I had a falling out, and so I went ashore at that island. And understanding that Captain Kidd had a commission from the king, I came aboard Captain Kidd’s ship.”

Romantic words—“I came aboard Captain Kidd’s ship.” How they quicken the pulse of old, sober-sided fellows such as we are. Suppose we had sauntered about old New York and had read his appeal for men to go off to the Indies? Or been in Madagascar and had a “falling-out” with some blockhead of an old merchant skipper, and seen Kidd and his bully boys swagger by? Eh?

Delaware Bay did not detain Kidd long. He slipped the little St. Antonio out of there and put in at Oyster Bay, from which he now began the most difficult job of his life,—to rehabilitate himself and yet come out of it all a rich man.

He and the remnant of his crew flocked openly about the old town. Governor Bellamont was off in Boston. And now Kidd began to get the full blast of his unsought notoriety. He was told that the mother country and the colonies, yea, even the seven seas were vibrant with the name of Kidd; that, in the language of that day, he was everywhere “published a pirate”, for whom there was no day of grace or pardon.

Quite in the spirit of New York pirates, ancient and modern, he sought out an adroit lawyer, one Emmott, a man then at the head of his profession, as the saying is, though that did not mean, any more than it does now, that he shone by the purity of his principles, the breadth of his learning, or the transparent propriety of his manners. Pirates can’t use that kind of lawyer. Seriously, we do not reflect on Mr. Emmott individually; we know nothing of his morals, and he was indisputably a leader of his bar, appearing in the most important litigation of his time. Whatever his character, he engaged himself to assist the projects of Captain Kidd.

X

Boston was having a hot summer. The noble governor was taking the air, such as there was, with his wig laid off for coolness, and his decorated coat carelessly open. No doubt he gazed at the dusty road, the blistered frame buildings and longed for the temperate downs of Ireland and the fresh, green lawns of his ancestral mansion. How afflicting that a noble earl should be subjected to heat and cold just like a wretched porter!

The entrance of a negro servitor to announce a visitor did not refresh the excellency. Just then the last man he wanted to see was he whose name had been brought in. The governor and lawyer Emmott did not get along together very well. It is not hard to understand the tribulation of a ruler whose technical knowledge of the art of government was probably weak, at the hands of a turbulent, sharp and well-informed colonial attorney,—the intelligent, persistent and irritating mouthpiece of the perpetual discontent of the colony.

Whether he would or no, it was Emmott who was without, soliciting audience. He was ordered admitted. One simply can not turn the Emmotts away, especially when one is a governor; somehow such fellows seem to have an impish art of getting the gubernatorial attention whenever their cheekiness suggests it to them.

Imagination may perhaps reconstruct the interesting interview.

Enters Lawyer Emmott, his bright eye appraising at once the mood of the man in the seat of authority. But Emmott is not half-saucy now; in this matter he is not backed by the sturdy burghers and supported by a law whose exact application he thoroughly knows, while as thoroughly knowing the glazed ignorance of his opponent. He is now after a private fee in the service of a private client. His tune, therefore, is somewhat different.

With a bow and a most respectful attitude the lawyer carefully unwraps a package which he has brought with him. From this he seems to take a ball of snow, which, with a most insinuating smile, he shakes with a twist of his hand and which before the astonished Bellamont, cascades over the back of a chair as a shawl of the rarest workmanship and material.

“A present for Lady Bellamont,” says Emmott, with another obeisance.

What can be the fellow’s game now? Bellamont rose and walking across the room, allowed the shimmering texture to ripple through his fingers.

“A present for Lady Bellamont—” It is a wonderful thing; Bellamont can see that.

Emmott steps up as close as politeness permits and glancing about, artfully whispers, “From Captain Kidd,” and throws his head back with a wide smile like a doting parent playing the rôle of Santa Claus.

“Kidd!” cries the earl. “Kidd!”

Yes, the old partner of Bellamont, Livingston and Company had turned up. All sorts of notions chase themselves through the governor’s brain like hare and hounds, and chiefly he is afraid; he fears this notorious colleague of his has shown up to be the ruin of them all. Why on earth didn’t the fellow stay out in the East Indies. To Emmott this is as plain as the ripple on a smooth pool of water.

He rubs his hands one over the knuckles of the other and looks all sorts of meanings.

“An incredibly prosperous voyage,” he murmurs, “incredibly. A mere trifle—the captain wishes to send Lady Bellamont something really worth while.”

He almost sneers at the magnificent shawl.

The governor sits down and gazes out over the harbor. Now, it is probable that if the notorious partner had shown up with nothing but a story of hard luck, the governor would not have sat down in just the way he does; but a partner coming back, even with a sooty reputation, but stuffed with treasure, well, one must think the matter out. There was one’s original investment in the old Adventure to be protected, one must remember.

Emmott continues:

“The captain feels deeply chagrined to find this unjust hue and cry made about him. It is a great mistake. He can explain all; and he suggests that the governor see that this irritating matter of the piracy charge is disposed of so that they can proceed to an accounting as all good partners should. Really, he has been absurdly fortunate in his East Indian enterprise.”

They talk the thing over indecisively and without committal on either side, and the outcome of it is that the governor decides that he will see his errant and erstwhile partner in person. With this decision Lawyer Emmott backs out of the room and hies back to New York. So far so good.

XI

Before going to Boston to see Bellamont, Kidd did that which has somehow so caught the imagination of artists and fictionists; he ran the sloop over to Gardiner’s Island, at the east end of Long Island Sound and there buried a considerable portion of his money and finer articles of plunder. Hence arose the great yarn of the pirate’s buried treasure. Like all the rest of Kidd’s doings this is wildly exaggerated. What was there was all practically recovered by the colonial authorities. Yet the myth persisted for centuries.

A writer who considered himself conservative speaks of Kidd bringing home twelve thousand pounds. This is a modern computation, but it does not agree with our figures. With all his scheming the captain’s subordinates got more than half of the takings, and if Kidd got twelve thousand pounds it would mean that in all thirty or forty thousand pounds were gained by those few months’ work in the Indian seas.

It is all way beyond the facts. Admittedly, the Quedagh Merchant was the one considerable haul and according to the valuation of the government at that time, ship and cargo all told were not worth more than five thousand pounds. A recent writer even represents the Quedagh Merchant alone as being of the value of thirty thousand pounds! In the indictment upon which Kidd was tried, that ship is said to be worth four hundred pounds, which is more like it. The captain did very well, as we have said, if he came home with a good five thousand pounds.

As well as communicating with Bellamont, Kidd put himself in touch with his other partner, Colonel Livingston, and the colonel became very much excited over the prospect of cutting a pretty fine little melon. If the Quedagh Merchant, a respectable and capacious cargo vessel, cost four hundred pounds, the Adventure, a “crazy and leaky” craft, really not fit for the patrol work intended for her, could not have run her owners more than three hundred pounds. Arms and victuals dug deeply into the original capital, but with it all, the enterprise had doubtless earned several hundred per cent.

And if, instead of four or five men sitting in at the division, two or three, or better one or two shared the pot, why so much the better for the lucky one or two. That notion occurred to Livingston, to Bellamont and to Kidd.

So the captain went on to Boston and some of his men with him.

Bellamont, in the meantime, had been obliged to call the council together to discuss the fact that a lawbreaker was at large and unaccounted for. It was a formality the earl had to observe to preserve the pure bloom of his own official reputation. With the power that was then vested in governors, the council meeting need have been no great difficulty in the way of an arrangement between friends.

Just what happened in the interview between Kidd and Bellamont is not recorded, but they began to dicker. All the pirates were quite at liberty, making themselves thoroughly at home and with all the air of honest sailors returned to spend their money and take a respite from the arduous sea.

Suddenly the wind changed. Why it so did we can only conjecture. But a letter from Bellamont is preserved in which he remarks that at about this time Livingston and Kidd were acting very “impertinently” about the money and valuables that Kidd had brought home.

Does “impertinently” mean that Bellamont suspected that his two partners were conspiring to deprive him of his share? That might well be. However, it is not fair to insinuate the governor was remiss in discharging his duties as a magistrate on the skimpy chronicle which has come down to us. We can say, however, that, so far as we can make out, he did not act with that decision which the crimes charged against Kidd would seem to require. This dallying about and questioning, privately and before the council, permit implications that the governor may or may not be actually responsible for. The whole affair does not look regular.

Then, again, Bellamont, who was sharp enough for most general affairs, could plan something like this: throw Kidd into jail, thus clearing himself of the talk of complicity which had been gathering since his connection with the pirate had become known, send him home to England for trial, and with him out of the way, attend to the matter of the loot, against which he could make a claim by virtue of the original commission to Kidd, supported by the political strength which he and his noble friends at home could exert.

Whatever might be the fact, the governor’s equivocal conduct stopped with the discovery of Livingston and Kidd’s “impertinence” in the affair of the spoils, and Kidd, with all of his crew who could be grabbed, were stowed away in Boston jail. Before that happened a number of his men had slipped across to the Province of Jersey and surrendered to Colonel Bass, the governor, in the spirit of the king’s proclamation, within the time therein provided, but to none of the persons therein particularly named as empowered to receive such surrenders.

In December, 1699, the pirates were sent to England in the frigate Advice, and on May 9, 1701, just about five years after leaving Plymouth, they went to trial for their lives in the historic Old Bailey.

XII

Captain Kidd and nine of his men arrived in Newgate gaol from the colony in February of 1700, and lay there for over a year until their trial. These nine men were those who surrendered to Colonel Bass, governor of what is now New Jersey. What disposition was made of the rest of those who came in on the St. Antonio does not appear.

Kidd’s arrival brought to a focus a sharp and unsparing struggle between the two great political factions of the day, and the Government was rocked in its seat by the exposures which were made of Bellamont and other friends of the administration’s connection with the pirate who was talked of from Land’s End to John O’Groat’s. During 1700 Kidd appeared several times before the House of Commons, and a contest was waged in that forum over his reputed treasure. A measure was introduced by the opposition providing that the commission to Kidd to take pirates and keep their effects and plunder should be illegal as void, and was lost by only a thin majority.

From this it may be supposed that Bellamont and the partners got hold of the swag. Not that it did the noble earl much good, for he died at about this time. However, the commissioning of the Adventure did not prove such a gain to the opposition as it hoped, and the matter was allowed to slide when the House recommended Kidd for common criminal trial.

Under modern circumstances, this trial would have been a very close, keen struggle. The accused would have been able to engage the most expert counsel, who might be expected to make the prosecution exert itself in the matter of proving its charges; not an easy thing to do from some angles.

There were five trials upon six indictments,—one for the murder of Gunner Moore and five for acts of piracy. Kidd was alone, of course, in the trial for murder; on the charges of piracy, he was in the dock with his nine seamen.

The murder trial should be carefully noticed, in view of the modern vogue for exonerating Kidd of all guilty acts in the Indies. Those who attempt to show that Kidd was “judicially murdered,” as the result of a political plot carried on by factions opposed to the noble gentlemen who backed the Kidd enterprise, must prove this murder trial to have been unfair, for if it were not, then Kidd was liable to the death penalty regardless of the crimes of piracy.

To clear himself, Kidd called three of his own men in an effort to show that he slew Moore as Moore was in the act of leading a mutiny; in other words, what we would call justifiable homicide. But his own witnesses proved that the mutiny concerning the Loyal Captain occurred from two to four weeks before the death of the gunner—a fact which in modern law would have sufficed to convict Kidd—there being no “immediate” emergency, as our statutes would say. No modern court would upset the verdict of the jury who tried Kidd for murder, on the ground that it was not supported by the evidence.

With the bewhiskered seafarers in the dock before him, the clerk of arraignments of the Old Bailey arose and hurled eighty clauses at the accused, eighty or more clauses, with no longer pause between them than a semicolon. It may be submitted that this is no fair way to come at a man whose method of combat is entirely different; who thrusts, for instance, with a cutlass instead of a verb; hurls round-shot in place of mere nouns, with a wooden bucket, say, for purposes of punctuation. A fine fellow this clerk of arraignments with his wig and gown and fat, subservient bailiffs about him! But put him on the tipsy decks of the Adventure, and, mark’ee, that would be another story. So, perhaps, the captain thought, as he stood up before this broadside of words.

If English justice is swift in these days, it must have been greased lightning in the days of William III. Half an hour after the grand jury met and returned the indictments, Kidd went to trial before the petit jury, and three days sufficed for all five indictments.

A battery of prosecutors shelled the accused. The crown was represented by Mr. Knapp, Dr. Newton, Advocate of the Admiralty; Sir John Hawles, Sir Salathiel Lovell, Recorder; the Solicitor General and the Attorney General. On the bench, sometimes ably assisting the prosecution, were Baron Gould, Baron Hatsell; Justice Turton, Justice Powel and Chief Baron Ward, who divided the job of presiding in groups of judges.

Now, in those days one accused of crime was not allowed the assistance of counsel on matters of fact. On a pure question of law he was permitted to consult a lawyer. This was just the opposite of what, according to a more enlightened jurisprudence, it should have been. Perhaps the extraordinary importance of the real science of evidence had not occurred to our forefathers. Great injustice was the result of thus handicapping a defendant. Kidd and his nine colleagues had to carry the big job of defense unadvised.

The state used just two witnesses, Palmer and Bradinham, both old Kidd men who were turned king’s evidence. Palmer had been a common seaman on the Adventure and was called by Kidd a “loggerhead”; Bradinham had been surgeon aboard, and was accused by Kidd of being a lazy, thieving, perjured rascal. Every man was running for his own neck then, and no one could afford to be too particular as to how he saved it.

All of the piracies we have set down, as well as the murder of Moore, came from the evidence of Palmer and Bradinham, somewhat corroborated by the expressions of the nine sailors who were not delicate to save their commander in this pinch.

No time was lost in getting a jury. When Kidd objected to being tried by those who had convicted him of the murder of William Moore, on his other trials for piracy, they were cleared out of the box and another jury promptly put in. It all went at a gallop. The jury in the murder case brought in their verdict while the first trial for piracy was in process; it took half an hour each for the jury to render their verdict on the piracy indictments. The lengthy speeches of the learned gentlemen for the Crown took up as much time as anything, with the summing-up by the judges a good second.

It must have been a great day for Cogi Baba, the Armenian, and one of the owners of the Quedagh Merchant, who appeared in London at this time to push the punishment of his despoiler. Yet he was not used at the trials,—a noteworthy omission.

Palmer and Bradinham were subjected to no cross-examination save that of Kidd. They were somewhat mixed up on their dates and the captain made the most of this, but on the whole his questioning must be regarded as quibbling.

Things looked dark for Kidd and his defense did not cast very much light upon the situation.

XIII

Kidd’s defense may be pieced together from his own words as they appeared, not as an orderly presentation of his position, but as comments upon the answers of the witnesses and interjected explanations during the proceedings. It was not without ingenuity.

“I had a commission,” he said in effect, “to take the French and pirates; and in order to do that I came up with two ships that had French passes both of them. I called all the men a-deck to consult, and a great many went aboard the Quedagh Merchant. I would have given that ship to Cogi Baba again, but the men would not; they all voted against it. They said, we will make a prize of her; we will carry her to Madagascar. Palmer and Bradinham have heard me speak of the French passes taken from the ships. The Quedagh Merchant was under a French commission. Her master was a tavern-keeper at Surat. I was not at the sharing of the goods taken from her; I know nothing of it.

“I did not take Culliford because a great many of my men went ashore; the statement that I gave him guns and presents is only what these witnesses say. I was not aboard Culliford’s ship. I have some papers, but my lord Bellamont keeps them from me; that I can not bring them before the court. I never designed to keep more company with Captain Culliford than with Captain Warren. I have many papers for my defense if I could have had them; my French passes which my lord Bellamont has. I could not condemn the ships according to law because of the mutiny in my ship. Bradinham is a rogue; he shared in the goods and robbed the surgeon’s chest. He knows nothing of these things; he used to sleep five or six months together in the hold.

“The men took the goods of all the ships taken, and did what they pleased with them. I was never near them. They lay in wait for me to kill me. They took away what they pleased and went to the island; and I, with about forty men, was left in the ship and we might go whither we pleased. I will not ask the witness any more questions; so long as he swears it our words or oaths can not be taken. Palmer is a loggerhead. Ninety-five men deserted my ship, and went a-roguing afterwards.

“I was threatened to be shot in the cabin if I would not go along with the villains. This was the reason I could not come home. They tried to burn my ship. When they deserted, I was forced to stay by myself and pick up here a man and there a man to carry her home. Mr. Bradinham is promised his life to take away mine. It is hard that a couple of rascals should take away the king’s subjects’ lives; they are a couple of rogues and rascals. It signifies nothing for me to ask them anything. They have perjured themselves in many things; about the guns given to Culliford, that is one thing; he swore I gave them four guns yesterday, now he says but two. Then he says the ship went from Plymouth the beginning of May and before he said it was in April. I have been sworn against by perjured and wicked people.”

By way of defense to the murder charge, he alleged that there was a mutiny on board, of which Moore was a leader, and the trouble ensued from that fact. He is borne out in this to some extent by Hugh Parrot, not a friendly witness, who averred that the seamen had taken up arms against their captain in the Loyal Captain crisis.

He called a couple of old salts as character witnesses who had fought by his side against the French and who testified that he had been a doughty man.

As for the nine common seamen, their geese were more quickly cooked. They only defended by pleading that they had surrendered under the king’s proclamation, to which the judges replied that inasmuch as they had not given themselves up to Captain Warren, or any of the three special commissioners, they were not within the terms of the instrument, and could only hope their surrender might at this time provoke the king’s clemency. Which was but dubious cheer. Three of them showed they were on board as servants of particular persons and not as sailors working the ship, and these were cleared.

After very short absences the juries at each trial returned verdicts of guilty as charged against all except the three servants.

Thus the Captain Kidd of fiction disappears, but not so completely as those who would have us believe that he was not guilty of piracy at all. His defense suggests a state of things on board his ships which is probably true, but the advantage he might have gained from such a showing is weakened by several circumstances.

The state could have conceded his claim that the ships he took were under French commissions, and they had French passes which were then in the possession of Earl Bellamont in New York. It might even have granted that under the compulsion of his crew he was prevented from bringing them in for condemnation, as required by his commission. Still, the significant thing would remain that he made no attempt to account for his share of the cargoes, which he did not unequivocally deny receiving.

His commission to take pirates required a careful and exact account of every ship captured, her cargo, its value and all other details, to say nothing of French ships, whose condemnation was lifted entirely out of his hands. He did not attempt to explain all these irregularities. We are considering strictly the matter adduced on his trial. When we go beyond the record of that, and see, as we have, his conduct on his return home, it is clear as daylight that he was exercising over the property taken from the alleged French ships a private ownership entirely incompatible with this defense.

If the Quedagh Merchant was under a French pass, as he asserted, then that portion of her cargo which he brought to Oyster Bay in the St. Antonio was neither his nor Bellamont’s, nor Livingston’s, but the Government’s. No, the thing doesn’t seem to hold water; nobody concerned in the whole affair seems to have been straightforward.

And so, within a week of his conviction, Captain William Kidd was hanged at Execution Dock, on the margin of the Thames, where sailors setting out for the far places of the earth thus received England’s farewell admonition that honesty is the best policy.

CHAPTER TWO

BLACK FLAG FROM BOSTON

John Quelch

I

Captain Plowman, of the brig Charles, was looking for men, not just for beef at the end of a rope nor a stevedore’s back; for sailors, certainly, but something more than sailors—sea-fighters. For a fact, this sort of thing was a little outside the usual jobs of both Captain Plowman and his smart little brig. The brig and her master worked in coastwise trading with an occasional venture to the markets of London. But a civic emergency occasioned by the depredations of French and Spanish war vessels and privateers, long vexing the New England provinces, put a commission instead of a charter party into the hands of Captain Plowman and cutlasses, cannon and round shot in place of goods, wares and merchandise into the hold and on the decks of the Charles.

For certain worthy merchants of Boston, indignant at the reprehensible Frenchman and his obnoxious ally and impatient with the slow incompetence of the Government, clubbed together and bought the Charles to refit her as a privateer to go against the enemy. It was a recognized method of taking the law into one’s own hands. It must not be thought that this was altogether a sacrifice, motived by the pure principles of patriotism. There was a working chance of shaking something worth while out of a captured Frenchman from which at least current expenses might be paid; but in the main it was a public-spirited thought and should properly have resulted in much happier and more useful action than the peculiar and unforeseeable circumstances which were to allow.

Having the ship, the merchants then procured from Joseph Dudley, her majesty’s captain general, governor and commander-in-chief of the province, a lawful commission for Captain Plowman, under and by virtue of which, as the saying was, he set about the business of recruiting the crew. But Plowman was getting along in years and was at that time a pretty sick man. So the business of beating up the sea birds was for the most part done by the mates, or “lieutenants”, as they were called, taking a sort of man-of-war nomenclature, namely John Quelch and Anthony Holding.

John Quelch was an eager, vigorous, adventurous and able young colonial mariner with not a few of the superb qualities of those who were the proper pride of a maritime province. Like the men of his type and condition, he was quite unafraid of anything that could present itself to one’s five senses. When at a later time he said he was not afraid to die and feared only a great God and the hereafter, he was doubtless telling the truth. What spoiled the life of John Quelch was that he did not take these two factors of admitted fear into reckoning until the evil was past mending.

However that may be, the immediate weakness of Quelch was that his mind was a rudder that any hand might steer. Anthony Holding, quite evil, sly and contemptible, designed to be the helmsman who should drive John Quelch on to the rocks of ruin.

Holding and Quelch in due time gathered as ferocious and villainous-looking a gang of ruffians as ever stood on the docks of old Boston. Their subsequent conduct indicates that they must have been about the toughest, hardest crew that an honest master ever piped together for division into watches. If Plowman, gazing from the quarter-deck upon that rabble, felt a premonition of trouble, the event was to justify him.

But those were not days in which the master of a privateer could be squeamish about such matters and get his ship manned. The Charles would have rotted at her moorings while she waited for good burghers or the sons of good burghers to come and take her to sea. Mostly the driftwood of society, which instinctively dams up along a waterfront, could be loaded on to such ships in such times. Anthony Holding, at any rate, pulled at his long mustache and appraised the crowd with satisfaction.