“Last night, seigneur, an old bear gave me a buffet—and a good round blow it was!”
Antoine looked at him hard. “Lieutenant, you had best let old bears alone!” Then he turned quickly to his nephew. “Marc, has that messenger yet started for Quebec who was to stop the French officer?”
“He left soon after daybreak this morning.”
“Ah! you were not slow in sending him.” The old man paused, and Noël, who was watching him closely, thought he saw his mouth twitch under the gray beard. “But never mind; it may be for the best. You shall be captain, my nephew, and you, Noël Duroc, shall be lieutenant, though I think you both rascals. However, no bookman could run as Marc did this morning; and so I know he is not wholly spoiled by the monks.”
“Bravo!” cried Noël Duroc, throwing up his cap. “Bravo! Here is a right good seigneur who knows what is best for his people; and a kind uncle; and—I’ll pledge my word—a great scholar and philosopher too!”
IX
CAPTAIN KIDD
An Overrated Pirate
Of all the pirates whose dreaded top-sails appeared along the coast of America in the old days of the colonies none has left a more grewsome and romantic reputation behind him than Captain William Kidd, the New York ship-master, who was born in 1650. Legends abound of his boldness, his craftiness, and his savage and blood-thirsty disposition, and stories of the immense treasure that he accumulated, the dreadful murders that he committed in its acquisition, and when and with what ghastly accompaniments he buried it are still told over the firesides of ’longshore hamlets from Maine to the Carolinas.
Fiction has not neglected to turn this pirate’s career to its own purpose, and one of Poe’s most imaginative and thrilling tales is based upon the discovery on Sullivan’s Island, in Charleston Harbor (South Carolina), of a parchment which, on being held to the fire, revealed a cryptogram of Kidd’s that led to the discovery of buried wealth amounting to millions of dollars.
It seems almost a pity to tamper with the halo of romance and mystery which posterity has drawn about this worthy’s brow, but the fact is that Kidd was an unready, unwise, and vacillating character, and that there was little truth in the romances told about him. Beside such dreadfully famous buccaneers as Blackbeard, Roberts, and Avery he appears a pygmy in his own “profession,” and his career, when contrasted with theirs, seems colorless and contemptible.