Chapter ONE: Salt Water Money (1)

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.

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.