Holding, or whoever the proponent of the South American cruise might have been, had without question made a close study of the methods of Captain Kidd, hanged some two years before in London. The parallel between the Kidd and Quelch piracies is so exact as to be more than coincidental. Both perverted the use of a commissioned ship; both journeyed thousands of miles to their fields of operation; both sought to make one quick, strong strike at fortune and return to respectability.
Neither Kidd nor Quelch had a notion of being conventional pirates, that is, of infesting some given locality and preying on passing traffic, spending their gains riotously and expecting not to leave the business except perhaps unluckily by way of the king’s rope. Kidd had made a fortune which was the talk of the colony; and the incident that he was hanged for it only proved his subsequent mismanagement and did not impugn his actual methods of pirating.
Again, pirates of the type of Kidd and Quelch were attracted by a combination of two favoring factors,—a good sea traffic and a weak land government. In Kidd’s case the flourishing Indian commerce was not completely protected by the decaying Mogul Government, while in Quelch’s case the merchants of the east coast of South America were considerably ahead of any authority which could guarantee them a peaceful development.
In the middle of November, or just a little more than three months after leaving Boston, the Charles, having reeled off three thousand miles of journeying, arrived in the seventh degree, south latitude, off the bold beak of Cape St. Augustine, and hungrily searched the sea for prey.
Quelch was under English colors, and at the ports hereabouts where he made his first stops he gave out that he was cruising against the French and Spanish. That kind of talk kept things clear on shore.
With Quelch was one John Twist, who was either recruited in the neighborhood of St. Augustine or came originally from Boston. John was the ship’s “linguister”, as the quaint old word was—the interpreter—and he was what army men might call the officer of liaison between the New Englanders and the Portuguese. He was also the pilot in the Brazilian waters, but died before the Charles went home, though apparently not until he had brought her to her extreme southern objective, Rio de Janeiro.
On November fifteenth, after leaving the cape and working slowly southward, a little Portuguese fishing boat was stopped by the pirates as she was slipping into port, and her cargo of fish and salt was quickly tossed over the bulwarks of the Charles. Fish and salt do not make any great treasure; in fact, this particular fish and salt were worth about three pounds to Quelch. But it was a little preliminary workout.
Three days later the brig was opposite Pernambuco, where she coolly picked up a small Portuguese vessel of fifteen tons right from under the eyes of the townsfolk. She was stuffed with sugar and molasses to the value of one hundred and fifty pounds. In the modern worth of the pound this would be about six hundred and seventy-five dollars; but it must be noted, of course, that that amount of silver would buy a great deal more in those times than in these.
John Twist persuaded two white men and one negro of the crew of five to sign up with the pirates. Quelch no doubt had the same experience that Kidd had with his original crew; there was a continual attrition by disease or desertion, and the man-power had to be kept up by recruiting so far as possible from captured ships.
Those who did not care to join up with the Charles were returned to their boats in most cases and permitted to pass on their way. It was quite unnecessary for the pirates to kill such as refused to go along with them, for by the time they got back to port and had a chase organized, the Charles would be well ahead of them to the south.