Captain William Kidd and Others of the Buccaneers. Abbott John Stevens Cabot
own ship, after such long voyaging, was leaky and much in want of repairs. The Quedagh Merchant was far superior to the Adventure. He therefore transferred all his stores to his prize. The torch was applied to the Adventure, and the ill-fated ship soon disappeared in a cloud of smoke and flame. Kidd, now a confirmed pirate, directed his course toward the great rendezvous of the pirates at Madagascar. Here the prize was valued at sixty-four thousand pounds, or about three hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
Still this strange man assumed that he was acting under the royal commission, in behalf of the London company; and these treasures were the legitimate plunder of a piratic ship. He therefore reserved forty shares for himself and the company. There were about one hundred and fifty men composing this piratic crew. Each man received about two thousand dollars. Kidd’s portion amounted to nearly eighty thousand dollars.
In the pirates’ harbor at Madagascar, Kidd found a large ship, the Resolution, belonging to the East India Company, which the captain, a man by the name of Culliford, with the crew, had seized and turned into a pirate. It was clearly Kidd’s duty, under his commission, at once to attack and capture this piratic ship. When Captain Culliford saw him entering the harbor with his powerful and well-armed ship, he was terrified. The pirates had heard of Captain Kidd’s commission, and had not yet learned that he had turned pirate himself. Captain Culliford, with the gallows in vision before him, and trembling in every nerve, for there was no possibility of escape, sent some officers, in a boat, on board the Quedagh Merchant, to ascertain Captain Kidd’s intention.
It was testified at the subsequent trial of Kidd, that he stood upon his deck and received with open arms the piratic officers as they came up over the ship’s side, that he invited them to his cabin, where they had a great carouse in drinking and smoking; and that in the frenzy of drink he offered for a toast:
“May damnation seize my soul if I harm a hair of the head of any one on board the Culliford.”
It was declared that he received large presents of bales of silk from the piratic captain, and sold him some heavy ordnance, with suitable ammunition, for two thousand dollars; and that he was on the most friendly terms with Culliford, exchanging frequent visits with him.
On the other hand, Kidd emphatically denied all these charges. He said, “I never stepped foot on board Captain Culliford’s ship. When I entered the harbor and ascertained the character of the craft, I ordered my men to prepare for action. But the mutinous crew, who had already compelled me to resort to measures against which my soul revolted, peremptorily refused, saying that they would rather fire two shots into my vessel than one into that of Captain Culliford. The mutiny became so menacing that my life was in danger. The turbulent crew rifled my chest, stole my journal, took possession of the ammunition. I was compelled to barricade myself in the cabin. The mutineers held the ship, and being beyond all control, acted according to their own good pleasure. I was in no degree responsible for their conduct.”
The captain’s statement was not credited by the court. At the same time it was quite evident that he had lost the control of his crew. His testimony was, however, in some degree borne out by the fact that ninety-five of his men in a body deserted him, and joined the piratic crew of Captain Culliford. This would seem to prove conclusively that Captain Kidd was not sufficiently piratical in his measures to satisfy the demands of the mutineers.
For several weeks these guilty and wretched men remained in the “own place” of the pirates, indulging in every species of bacchanal wassail and sensual vice, amidst their palaces and in their harems. Their revelry could not have been exceeded by any scenes ever witnessed in Sodom or Gomorrah. There were between five and six hundred upon the island. They were continually coming and going. Some of them were so rich that they remained at home cultivating quite large plantations by slave labor. They amused themselves by hunting, and in the wide meadows and forests found abundant game. The arrival of a ship in the harbor was the signal for an universal carouse. They endeavored to magnify the charms of their women by dressing them gorgeously in silks and satins, with glittering jewelry.
Often a pipe of wine would be placed upon the shore, the head taken out, and the community would drink of it as they pleased, as freely as if it were water. Drunken pirates reeled through the streets. Oaths filled the air. Knives gleamed, and pistols were discharged, and there were wounds and death. In the midst of all their revelry and wantonness and brawls, it is evident from the record we have of those days, that a more unhappy, wretched set of beings could scarcely be found this side of the world of woe. There was not a joy to be found there. There were no peaceful homes; no loving husbands and wives; no happy children climbing the parental knee and enfolded in parental arms; and in death nothing but a “fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation.”
These wretched pirates were hateful and hating. Satiated with vice, they knew not where to turn for a single joy. Their shouts of laughter fell discordantly upon the ear like the revelry of demons. Satan never allows his votaries any happiness either in this world or in that which is to come. Wisdom’s ways only are ways of pleasantness, and her paths alone are those of peace.
How far Captain Kidd entered into these godless carousals is not known. But it is not probable that he was then able to throw off all restraint, and become hail-fellow with these vulgar, degraded, profane wretches, whom in heart he must have despised. Neither is it probable that one accustomed to the society in which an honored New-York merchant would move, could so soon have formed a taste for the drunken revelry of the lowest and vilest creatures on earth.
It is evident that these men had occasionally reproaches of conscience, and some faint sense of their terrible responsibility at God’s bar. Four of them decided one day to make a little artificial hell for themselves, that they might see who could stand its pains the longest.
A cloudless tropical sun blistered the deck with its blazing rays. The cabin was heated like an oven. In addition to this, they built a fire in the stove, till the iron plates were red hot. They then with blaspheming oaths entered this furnace, and sprinkled brimstone upon the fire till the room was filled with its suffocating fumes. One of these wretches, apparently as fiend-like as a man could be, bore the pains of this little artificial hell for five minutes. None of the others could endure them so long. The victor came out very exultant. One would have thought that the idea would have occurred to their minds that there was some considerable difference between five minutes and eternity.
We do not learn that any of these men were made better by the brief endurance of their self-inflicted tortures. The mind is appalled by the thought that these same men, when transferred to the spirit land, may be as persistent in their hostility to all God’s laws as they were here.
Captain Kidd found himself abandoned by nearly all his crew. He remained in port only long enough to recruit sufficient men to navigate his ship, and then, spreading the sails of his stolen vessel, the Quedagh Merchant, he set out for the West Indies, with his ill-gotten treasure of eighty thousand dollars. The news of Kidd’s piratic acts had been reported to the home government by the East India Company. Orders had accordingly been issued to all the governors of the American colonies to arrest him wherever he should appear.
The voyage from Madagascar to the West Indies was long and tempestuous. Not a single sail appeared in sight. Day after day the ocean was spread out in all its solitary grandeur before these guilty, discontented men. At length, in a very destitute condition, the ship reached Anguilla, or Snake Island, so called from its tortuous figure. This is the most northerly of the Caribbee Islands, and there was a small English colony here.
As Kidd dropped anchor in the little harbor he was greeted by the intelligence that he had been officially, in England, proclaimed a pirate; that his conduct had been discussed in Parliament; that a committee had been appointed to inquire into the character of the company which had commissioned him, and into the nature of the commission he had received; that a British man-of-war, the Queensborough, had been dispatched in pursuit of him, and that a royal proclamation had been issued, offering pardon to all who had been guilty of piracy, eastward of the Cape of Good Hope, before the last day of April, 1699, excepting William Kidd, and another notorious buccaneer by the name of Avery.
This Avery had obtained great renown, and the most extravagant stories were reported and universally believed in reference to his achievements. It was said that this pirate had