IVIn a gang of men with a grievance grumbling usually becomes vocal in a sort of natural spokesman. The kind of people who manned theAdventurewere 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 theLoyal Captainget away is known only to himself. His men did not understandit. 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 theLoyal Captainand 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 (theLoyal 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 theLoyal Captainwithout risk? One may feel sorry for the gunner; he has angered the hardest man, in some respects, on or off thecoast of Malabar, in whose shelter theAdventurewas 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 thatGunner 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 fromMalabar, 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 shipAdventure.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 unsatisfactoryAdventure.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 notthe only violence of theAdventure’shours 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 andpicked 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, theAdventure’smen 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 theAdventurepulled 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 theAdventure, 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 theAdventurein 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 theAdventure’senterprise. 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 theAdventure.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 sointerested 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.
In a gang of men with a grievance grumbling usually becomes vocal in a sort of natural spokesman. The kind of people who manned theAdventurewere 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 theLoyal Captainget away is known only to himself. His men did not understandit. 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 theLoyal Captainand 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 (theLoyal 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 theLoyal Captainwithout risk? One may feel sorry for the gunner; he has angered the hardest man, in some respects, on or off thecoast of Malabar, in whose shelter theAdventurewas 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 thatGunner 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 fromMalabar, 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 shipAdventure.
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 unsatisfactoryAdventure.
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 notthe only violence of theAdventure’shours 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 andpicked 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, theAdventure’smen 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 theAdventurepulled 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 theAdventure, 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 theAdventurein 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 theAdventure’senterprise. 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 theAdventure.
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 sointerested 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.