Page:Daring deeds of famous pirates; true stories of the stirring adventures, bravery and resource of pirates, filibusters & buccaneers (1917).djvu/173

 prize. It was a bare-faced quibble, and one wonders why so unprincipled a man should deem it necessary to go out of his way to make such a pretence.

So he relieved the ship of her cargo and sold it later on. Presently, as he began to suffer from qualms of conscience and declined to attack a Dutch ship with which they came up, his crew mutinied, and one day, whilst a man named Moore, his gunner, was on deck discussing the Dutch ship, Moore so far lost control of his tongue as to accuse Kidd of having ruined them all. The pirate answered this complaint by calling him a dog, taking up a bucket and breaking the man's skull therewith, so that he died the next day. Kidd now cruised about the Malabar coast, plundering craft, taking in water and supplies from the shore, and pillaging when he liked.

And now he came up with a fine 400-ton Moorish merchantman named the Queda, whose master was an Englishman named Wright, for it was by no means rare for these Eastern owners to employ English or Dutch skippers, as the latter were such good seamen and navigators. Kidd as before chased her under French colours, and having got abreast of her compelled her to hoist out her boat and send it aboard. He then informed Wright he was to consider himself a prisoner, and he learnt that there were only three Europeans on board—two Dutch and one Frenchman—the rest being either Indians or Armenians. The last mentioned were also part-owners of the cargo. Kidd set the crew of this vessel ashore at different places along the coast, and soon sold about £10,000 worth of the captured cargo, so that each man had about £200, whilst Kidd got £8000.

Putting part of his own crew into the Queda, Kidd took the Adventure and the prize southwards to Madagascar, and when he had come to anchor a ludicrous incident occurred.