"Well," resumed the mate, "in 1695 Kidd sailed down Channel in the Adventure galley, of forty-four guns, with a royal pennant flying, duly commissioned by King William to fight all buccaneers, and his crew were all selected by himself. But Master Kidd was barely off the Lizard when he hauled down the King's pennant, hoisted the skull and crossbones, and bore away for the East Indies. He burned two towns in Madeira, and after plundering and sinking every craft he could overmatch, reached the entrance of the Red Sea, where he captured a Queda merchantman, the cargo of which lined the pockets of himself and his followers to their complete satisfaction.
"Queda is a town of Asia, situated on the western coast of the peninsula of Malacca; and so Kidd was cunning enough to attempt passing-off this capture as a crusade against the enemies of Christianity; but, unfortunately for him, the ship was commanded by a Scotchman, and people did not believe in crusaders under Orange William.
"A year or two after this, he was cruising off the American coast, and in dread of the King's ships, which were all on the look-out for him, he ran north as far as Newfoundland, and was alleged to have buried on its coast all the treasure amassed on his long and rambling voyage; but where, no one could exactly say, until the old barrel head, marked Adventure, and bearing the King's broad arrow, found in yonder cavern, seemed to indicate Baccalao as being the place. Moreover, he is known to have run up Conception Bay in quest of the gold and silver rocks which Frobisher and Sir Humphrey Gilbert averred were to be seen there."
"Rocks of gold and silver!" said I, incredulously.
"They are only the fire-stones of the Red Indians, and emit sparks when struck together," said Hartly.[*]
[*] They were the solid iron pyrites which deceived the early navigators who visited these barren shores. In the "List of H.M. Royal Navy for 1701," we find among the "fifth-rates, the Adventure, 120 men, 44 guns."
"His treasure," continued the mate, "if he had any, was never found; though he was, for Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamont, and Governor of New England, caught him one day in 1701, when swaggering about the streets of Boston, and sent him home to King William, who lost no time in hanging him. But he died as hard as he had lived, for the rope broke with his weight in Execution Dock, so he was reeved up again with a new one.
"He was hung in chains on the banks of the Thames, but his body disappeared in the night, and the sailors in London declared that he could neither be hanged nor chained, as he had a charmed life, having sold his poor soul to the devil. Be that as it may, on the same night, in 1701, my Lord Bellamont was found dead in his bed at Boston, and many affirmed that this event had some connexion with Kidd's mysterious disappearance from the gallows, as he was said to have been seen by some of his old shipmates near the dead Governor's house.
"Fishermen when jigging or trawling off Baccalao in the clear moonlight nights, often saw a solitary man sitting on the rocks at the mouth of yonder cavern, but his figure always seemed to melt away into the moonshine when any one approached; so a story went abroad that the island was haunted by the ghost of a drowned man. However, a stout fellow, named Tom Spiller, who was rather bolder than the rest, and who lived alone at Breakheart Point, where he had a little hut and stage for drying the fish he caught, went off to the island one night, when there was little cloud and a bright moon. The sea was calm, for there was but a puff of wind off the land from time to time.
"Tom Spiller was a brave and devil-may-care kind of fellow, whom I knew well, for he was an old man when I went to sea with him first as a boy, so I have often heard him tell the story without variation or leeway, or shaking out a new reef by way of a change.