eads of Peas, and one barrel of
Gunpowder for the great guns.

"_5thly_. That I will cruise on the coast for ten days' time; and if
so that he is gone off the coast, that I cannot hear of him, I will
then, at my return, take care and set what men on shore that I have
had, and are willing to leave me or the Ship."

These records serve to show in what esteem Captain Kidd was held by the
highest officials of the Colonies. Such men as he were sailing out of
Boston, New York, and Salem to trade in uncharted seas on remote coasts
and fight their way home again with rich cargoes. They hammered out
the beginnings of a mighty commerce for the New World and created, by
the stern stress of circumstances, as fine a race of seamen as ever
filled cabin and forecastle.

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[Illustration: The Idle Apprentice goes to sea. (From Hogarth's
series, "Industry and Idleness.")]

On the shore of this reach of the Thames, at Tilbury, is shown a
gibbeted pirate hanging in chains, just as it befell Captain William
Kidd.

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In the year 1695, Captain Kidd chanced to be anchored in London port in
his brigantine _Antigoa_, busy with loading merchandise and shipping a
crew for the return voyage across the Atlantic. Now, Richard Coote,
Earl of Bellomont, an ambitious and energetic Irishman, had just then
been appointed royal governor of the Colonies of New York and
Massachusetts, and he was particularly bent on suppressing the swarm of
pirates who infested the American coast and waxed rich on the English
commerce of the Indian Ocean. Their booty was carried to Rhode Island,
New York, and Boston, even from far-away Madagascar, and many a
colonial merchant, outwardly the pattern of respectability, was
secretly trafficking in this plunder.

"I send you, my Lord, to New York," said King William III to Bellomont,
"because an honest and intrepid man is wanted to put these abuses down,
and because I believe you to be such a man."

Thereupon Bellomont asked for a frigate to send in chase of the bold
sea rogues, but the king referred him to the Lords of the Admiralty who
discovered sundry obstacles bound in red tape, the fact being that
official England was at all times singularly indifferent, or covertly
hostile, toward the maritime commerce of her American colonies. Being
denied a man-of-war, Bellomont co