Chapter ONE: Salt Water Money (2)

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.