Page:Cerise, a tale of the last century (IA cerisetaleoflast00whytrich).pdf/208

 of time there was but one pirate dreaded from the Cape of Good Hope to the Straits of Malacca, and his name was Kidd.

From Surat down to the mouth of the Tap-tee, Captain Kidd ruled like a petty sovereign; Bottle-Jack, if he was to be believed, like a grand vizier. Not only did they take tax and toll from every craft that swam, but they robbed, murdered, and lorded it as unmercifully on dry land. Native merchants, even men of rank and position, were put to torture, for purposes of extortion, by day; peasants burned alive in their huts to illuminate a seaman's frolic by night. Her crew behaved like devils broke loose ashore, and the 'Adventure,' notwithstanding a certain discipline exacted by her commander, was, doubtless, a hell afloat. Money, however, came in rapidly. Kidd, with all his crimes, possessed the elements of success in method, organisation, and power of command. His sailors forgot the horrors they had inflicted and their own degradation when they counted the pile of doubloons that constituted their share of plunder. Amongst the swarm of rovers who then swept the seas, Captain Kidd was considered the most successful, and even in a certain sense, notwithstanding his enormities, the most respectable of all.

Bottle-Jack did not appear to think the relation of his adventures in any way derogatory to his own credit. He concluded with the following peroration, establishing his position in the confident tone of a man who is himself convinced of its justice:—

"Wot I says, is this here. The sea was made for them as sails upon it, and you ain't a-goin' to tell me as it can be portioned out into gardens an' orchards, and tobacco plantations, like the dirt we calls land. Werry well, if the sea be free, them as sails upon it can make free with wot it offers them. If in case now, as I'm look-out man, we'll say, in the maintop, and I makes a galleon of her, for instance, deep in the water under easy sail, you're not to tell me as because she shows Spanish colours I'm not to take what I want out of her. Stow that, mates, for it's clean nonsense! The way old Kidd acted was this here—First, he got her weather-gage; then he brought her to with a gun, civil and reasonable; arter that, whether she showed fight, or whether