How Captain Kidd, sent out to catch pirates, was convicted of turning pirate himself rather than sail home empty-handed is another story. Fate has played strange tricks with the memory of this seventeenth-century seafarer who never cut a throat or scuttled a ship, and who was hanged at Execution Dock for the excessively unromantic crime of cracking the skull of his mutinous gunner with a wooden bucket.
Poor Captain Barnabas Lincoln of Boston, having lost his schooner and cargo, was righteously indignant at discovering how the infamous business was carried on. Said he:
I was informed by a line from Nikola that the pirates had a man on board, a native of Principe, who in the garb of a sailor was a partner with Dominico, but I could not get sight of him. This lets us a little into the plan by which this atrocious system has been conducted. Merchants having partners on board of these pirates! Thus pirates at sea and robbers on land are associated to destroy the peaceful trader.
Nikola remained true to Captain Lincoln, even sending him a letter from Principe to tell him about the disposition of the stolen cargo and what prices it was fetching. In this letter he revealed the fact that his true name was Jamieson and concluded with this romantic flight:
Perhaps in your old age, when you recline with ease in a corner of your cottage, you will have the goodness to drop a tear of pleasure to the memory of him whose highest ambition should have been to subscribe himself, though devoted to the gallows, your friend,
Nikola Monacre.
Another streak of sentiment was discovered in one of the Exertion’s sailors, Francis De Suze, a Portuguese, who finally weakened and decided to join the outlaws. He was won over by the artful persuasions of his fellow-countryman, Lieutenant Bolidar of the ferocious mien and lion-like voice. To Captain Lincoln he explained, with tears in his eyes:
“I shall do nothing but what I am compelled to do and will not aid in the least to hurt you or your vessel. I am very sorry to leave you.”
The pious master of the Exertion bore up under his troubles with a spirit truly admirable, but it was one thing after another, and under date of Sunday, December 30, he wrote in his diary:
This day, which particularly reminds Christians of the high duties of compassion and benevolence, is never observed by these pirates. This, of course, we might expect, as they do not often know when Sunday comes and if they do, it is spent in gambling. Early this morning, the merchant, as they call him, came with a large boat for more cargo. I was ordered into a boat with my crew, without any breakfast, and carried about three miles to a small island out of sight of the Exertion and left there by the side of a pond of thick, muddy water with nothing to eat but a few biscuits. One of the boat’s crew told us that the merchant was afraid of being recognized, and when he had gone the boat would return for us, but we passed the day in the greatest anxiety. At night, however, the boat came and took us again on board the Exertion where to our surprise and grief we found they had broken open the trunks and chests and taken all our wearing apparel, not leaving me even a shirt or a pair of pantaloons, nor sparing a small miniature of my wife which was in the trunk.