WILLIAM THE TIIIRD.

19

tuguese. The Adventure Galley took such quantities ofcotton and silk, sugar and coffee, cinnamon and pepper,'that the very foremast men received from a hundred to twohundred pounds each, and that the captain’s share of thespoil would have enabled him to live at home as an opulentgentleman. With the rapacity Kidd had the cruelty of hisodious calling. He burned houses; he massacred pea-santry. His prisoners were tied up and beaten with nakedcutlasses in order to extort information about their con-cealed hoards. One of his crew, whom he had called adog, was provoked into exclaiming, in an agony of remorse,“Yes, I am a dog; but it is you that have made me so.”Kidd, in a fury, struck the man dead.

News then travelled very slowly from the eastern seasto England. But, in August 1698, it was known in Londonthat the Adventure Galley from which so much had beenhoped was the terror of the merchants of Surat, and of thevillagers of the coast of Malabar. It was thought probablethat Kidd would carry his booty to some colony. Orderswere therefore sent from Whitehall to the governors of thetransmarine possessions of the Crown, directing them to beon the watch for him. He meanwhile, having burned hisship and dismissed most of his men, who easily foundberths in the sloops of other pirates, returned to New Yorkwith the means, as he flattered himself, of making his peaceand of living in splendour. He had fabricated a longromance to which Bellamont, naturally unwilling to be-lieve that he had been duped and had been the means of

2 *

CHAP

XXV.

i69a.