III

At this port of Bab’s Key, then, the Mocca Fleet was being stuffed as

the fox stole smoothly upon it from the Indian Ocean. About fourteen

ships made up the fleet, going in mass for safety, and chartered by the

usual polyglot crowd of Dutchmen, Arabians, Moors, Armenians and so on.

While the coolies sweated and strained and hauled bundles and bales

aboard, certain odd-looking strangers sauntered about the docks,

marking closely the lading of the vessels. These were Kidd’s men,

spies he had sent ashore to warn him of the sailing of the fleet.

With desiring eyes these men watched the caravans pouring in from the

interior and emptying their freights into the various holds. Rich

merchandise lay spread all about,--loot that their doughty commander

was to appropriate without a thank-you and distribute among their tarry

palms.

Not only that, but had you gone into the low, round hills that basined

the town, you would have seen lurkers there, watching keenly the work

on the fleet. More of the _Adventure’s_ men, sentineled all around by

the captain as a kind of double watch. Kidd, you notice, was a man

of method; it was not going to be any fault of his if Bellamont and

Company did not pay dividends.

Whether the presence of the spies had disturbed the skippers of the

Mocca Fleet is conjectural, but when it did put to sea at length it was

under both Dutch and English convoy. And in spite of Kidd’s keenness it

got away without notice.

Only when morning came above the swelling deep, after two or three

weeks of waiting, did the lookout cry the captain from his cabin that

the fleet was passing. True enough! There over the horizon the high

poops of the Mocca ships were awkwardly wagging away to safety.

Orders immediately showered the decks like the great drops of a

thunderstorm. The anchor chain grated sharply against the bows while

the shrouds were all at once black with racing men. A few minutes and

the _Adventure_ began to take the water slowly; sail after sail bellied

out and quickly she leaped and ducked and flung herself upon the heels

of her prey.

Fourteen ships convoyed by armed Dutch and English guards would seem

a large bone for so small a terrier as the pirate boat to grasp.

Something must take possession of the reason of English-speaking

sailormen when combat promises, for long odds challenge rather than

daunt them. Their maritime acts sparkle with just such feats as

this--absurd but in a way heroic--and had Kidd had the color of law

upon his work, the story of the Mocca Fleet would have echoed in

generations of English schoolrooms.

Kidd certainly was grown on the tree that bore Grenville, Drake,

Frobisher, Hawkins and the rest, even though it might have been

advisable to prune him out. In quite the traditional spirit Kidd hurled

his little ship at the great Mocca Fleet as casually as a boy would

fling a stone into a flock of sparrows.

It might stimulate the imagination to tell how this extraordinary

effort netted big gain, and how the _Adventure_ knocked the merchantmen

to left and right and plucked the fattest and richest of them from

their midst, from which the captain redeemed his tropical promise to

ballast his ship with gold and silver. But that would not be the fact.

The difficulties were too great. After a brief peppering on both sides

with round shot, the pirates were forced to drop back, and leave the

fleet, frightened, fluttering but safe, tumbling on for India.

Well, it was a doughty but miscalculated start. The _Adventure_ rode

high upon the waves instead of bulwark-deep with goodly gain. The good

cheer aboard must have flagged. What, they asked one another, what if

the whole commerce of this country should be organized into fleets;

what would become of poor pirates? Here they were embarked in a trade

at great spending of money and effort, come all the way from New York,

only to find a great concentration of merchants against them,--surely

a monopoly in restraint of trade. If this sort of thing kept up, there

might be nothing for them left to do but to live up to the terms of the

captain’s commission and be content to sift the loot from gentlemen

of free enterprise who had been on the ground in happier and more

prosperous days.

Grumbling doubtless began now, if not before, and was kept up until it

ended in a sad mischance to one Gunner Moore, which deplorable accident

will shortly be narrated.

Kidd now began to net the gulf for anything he could catch. They hauled

in a little Moorish ship, which was but a poor sardine for the whale

that had escaped. She was too small to put up a fight and Kidd just

bullied her down. From her they took a few bales of coffee, some opium

and twenty pieces of Arabian gold.

They also caught a “linguister.” It turns out that a “linguister”

is not an article of commerce, but nothing more nor less than an

interpreter, in this particular case a Portuguese person. Not a bad

word that,--linguister; language rather more expressive than the

scholastic interpreter.

Now you cannot ballast even a two hundred-and-seventy-ton craft

with twenty pieces of Arabian gold and, refusing to believe that so

poverty-stricken a craft could be in these rich reputed waters, Kidd

improvised an inquisition. Some of the unfortunate captives were hung

up by the wrists and beaten with naked cutlasses by way of persuading

them to reveal the real treasures of their ship. Nothing so far as the

record shows came of this strenuous examination. So the pirates turned

them loose minus their coffee and opium and the contemptible pieces of

Arabian gold.

Rough usage this, but not the ultimate of ferocity with which Kidd

has been charged. For all we know, this is as far as ever the captain

went in the treatment of captive crews. It may be said as well here

as anywhere that there is no walking the plank or other picturesque

punishments of fiction. Ships were looted and turned loose, in most

instances. Those of their crews who wished to might sign up with the

pirates; their officers, if not sent back to their ships, were carried

to the Indian coast and dumped there.

All hands were then in no very sociable mood when the incidents of this

immediate time closed with the matter of the Portuguese man-of-war.

It was on an evening soon after the taking of the Moorish ship that the

_Adventure_ saw and was seen by a cruising Portuguese war-vessel. Now

there was nothing in Kidd’s contract with Bellamont, Livingston and the

rest of them which even suggested that he should take any special risk,

and of course not a line thereof which could warrant him in lying-to

all night to risk the company’s property in a perfectly gratuitous

battle engagement with a ship of war.

This, however, is just what the _Adventure_ did. Instead of taking the

hours of darkness for a discreet and quite justified withdrawal from

an embarrassing situation, Kidd and his merry men impatiently watched

for the first break of light in the east for a go with an enemy. After

all the _Adventure_ was well and poetically named. Conduct of this

kind makes us suppose that gain was less in the eye of these folk than

rip-roaring adventuring in lawless waters.

Historically, the Portuguese opened fire first on Kidd. Evidently that

swart son of Lisbon had not heard from the Mocca Fleet that a wild

demon was loose on the sea. When you read that the Portuguese opened

first fire on Captain Kidd, you think at once of a foolish tramp

going out of his way to kick a sleeping bulldog. Mr. Portuguese got a

surprising rattle of shot on his bulwarks and sails. He had opened fire

on the one man in all the East Indies that with more exact information

he would have avoided.

Kidd closed with him zestfully and for five hours they whanged away

at each other, and at noon, all concerned having had a brisk workout,

as the athletes would say, the two ships drew apart and went their

ways, flinging shot at each other till Neptune shouldered them beyond

range. Ten men of the _Adventure_ lay about the ship with broken

bodies, waiting the perhaps more dangerous ministry of ship’s surgeon

Bradinham.

Save for the fun of fighting here were three or four weeks wasted.

A couple of these had been thrown away hanging around for the Mocca

Fleet and a couple more had brought forth only the meager pilfering

of a Moorish sloop. It is not unnatural then that when, after the

_tête-à-tête_ with the warship, the craft _Loyal Captain_ sighted and

seeming to promise worth-while gleaning, was allowed by Kidd to go by

scot-free, without a hand being raised, discontent began to threaten

discipline on board the _Adventure_.