Patroon van Volkenberg

by Henry Thew Stephenson

Soon after this the slaves left off rowing and we drifted with the tide. We had come to a place just opposite the fields north of the city wall.

“Show the light,” said the patroon.

A dark lantern held by the steersman was made to flash three times; it was answered close at hand. Five minutes later a boat glided up out of the darkness, from which a stranger stepped aboard us. Then we set out for home.

The stranger, so far as I could see in the dim light, was a strong-built man, not over large in stature. He wore a seaman’s great coat and carried his cutlas in his hand. He swore fearfully in his speech and the patroon was constantly warning him to lower his gruff voice.

“I tell you, William,” he said after their conversation had gone on for some time, “it will never do. I have had a change of heart. It will never do. I have surely suffered a change of heart.”

“Well,” returned the stranger with a large accompaniment of oaths, “if that’s the fact, what’s the use o' lugging Willie Kidd all the way to Hanging Rock?”

“Tut, tut, man, we shall have a glass of old Madeira and talk of bygone days.”

“Ah,” muttered Kidd, smacking his lips in anticipation, “that is another matter.”

So this was Captain William Kidd, merchant, of New York. This was the man to whom had been entrusted the King’s ship that was to prey upon the buccaneers and to put the booty into the pocket of the sovereign and his co-adventurers. This was the man about whom the patroon had got himself into disgrace with the governor’s council. I tried to make out the expression on Van Volkenberg’s face, but the night was too dark for that. I could only fancy how this appointment had been brought about. Then I remembered the seaman we had met in the city the day before, and the patroon’s parting injunction: “At midnight on the river.” He must have been Captain Kidd—at least his name was William, for I had heard my master call him so. They went on talking in low voices, although not so low but that I could catch the drift of their talk.

I soon learned that the troops had been dispatched to Albany mainly upon Kidd’s representation. He had urged Bellamont to protect the colony at all hazards against an invasion from the north; and such was the faith of Bellamont and Livingstone in the advice of the commander of the Adventure that he tipped the scale of a hesitating executive, and the troops were sent.