Own Book_.)

======================================================================

As for the riches of Captain Kidd, the original documents in his case,
preserved among the state papers of the Public Record Office in London,
relate with much detail what booty he had and what he did with it.
Alas, they reveal the futility of the searches after the stout
sea-chest buried above high water mark. The only authentic Kidd
treasure was dug up and inventoried more than two hundred years ago,
nor has the slightest clue to any other been found since then.

These curious documents, faded and sometimes tattered, invite the
reader to thresh out his own conclusions as to how great a scoundrel
Kidd really was, and how far he was a scapegoat who had to be hanged to
clear the fair names of those noble lords in high places who were
partners and promoters of that most unlucky sea venture in which Kidd,
sent out to catch pirates, was said to have turned amateur pirate
himself rather than sail home empty-handed. Certain it is that these
words of the immortal ballad are cruelly, grotesquely unjust:

I made a solemn vow, when I sail'd, when I sail'd,
I made a solemn vow when I sail'd.
I made a solemn vow, to God I would not bow,
Nor myself a prayer allow, as I sail'd.

I'd a Bible in my hand, when I sail'd, when I sail'd,
I'd a Bible in my hand when I sail'd.
I'd a Bible in my hand, by my father's great command,
And I sunk it in the sand when I sail'd.

In English fiction there are three treasure stories of surpassing merit
for ingenious contrivance and convincing illusion. These are
Stevenson's "Treasure Island"; Poe's "Gold Bug"; and Washington
Irving's "Wolfert Webber." Differing widely in plot and literary
treatment, each peculiar to the genius of its author, they are blood
kin, sprung from a common ancestor, namely, the Kidd legend. Why this
half-hearted pirate who was neither red-handed nor of heroic dimensions
even in his badness, should have inspired more romantic fiction than
any other character in American history is past all explaining.

Strangely enough, no more than a generation or two after Kidd's sorry
remnants were swinging in chains for the birds to pick at, there began
to cluster around his memory the folk-lore and superstitions colored by
the supernatural which had been long current in many lands in respect
of buried treasure. It was a kind of diabolism which still survives in
many