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| Captain Kidd Illustration by George Barbier |
CAPTAIN KIDD
by Marcel Schwob
How this pirate came by the name of Kidd is not altogether clear. The act through which William the Third of Eng¬ land granted him his commission of the Adventure in 1695 began with these words: “To our faithful and well loved captain, William Kidd, commander . . . greetings.” Certainly from that time on it was a name of war. In battle or maneuver some say he always had the elegant habit of wearing delicate kid gloves with revers of Flanders lace. Others declare he would cry out during his worst butcheries: “Me?—why, I’m as meek and mild as a new-born kid!” Still others there are who say he stored his treasure in sacks made from the skins of young goats, the custom dating from the time he pillaged a ship laden with quicksilver, emptying a thousand bags of this metal which remain buried even now on the slopes of a little hill in the Barbadoes. It is enough to know that his black silk flag was blazoned with a death’s head and the head of a goat, and his seal graven with the same emblems. Some who have hunted the numerous treasures Kidd buried in Asia and America have driven a little goat before them, thinking it would bleat if it crossed the Captain’s path, but no one has ever found his hidden gold. Guided by Gabriel Loff, one of Kidd’s old sailors, Blackbeard himself searched the dunes where Fort Providence now stands, finding no more than a few traces of quick silver oozing up through the sand. All this digging has been useless, for Kidd himself told how his secrets would remain eternally undiscovered because of the “man with the bloody bucket.” He was haunted by this man all his life, and his treasures have been haunted and defended by him ever since.
Irritated by the enormous amount of piracy in the West Indies, Lord Bellamont, governor of the Barbadoes, fitted out the galley Adventure, obtaining a commander’s commission for Captain Kidd. Long envious of the famous pirate, Ireland, Kidd promised Lord Bellamont he would capture Ireland’s sloop-o’-war together with the person of its master and all his crew, and bring them back for execution. The Adventure carried thirty guns and one hundred and fifty men. Kidd first put in at Madeira to take on wine; he then touched at Buena Vista for a supply of salt, and at last reached Santiago where he provisioned his ship completely. From that point he set sail for the mouth of the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf and a little island called the Key of Bab.
It was there he raised the skull and crossbones and reorganized his crew. Assembled on the ship’s hatch, he swore them all to absolute obedience of the rules of piracy. Each man had a right to vote and a right to equal shares of fresh provisions and strong liquors. Cards and dice were forbidden. All lights out by eight at night; if a man would drink later he must drink on deck under the open sky. The company received neither woman nor boy. Should they be found in disguise death was the penalty. Guns, pistols and cutlasses always to be held in readiness. Quarrels to be settled on land with saber or pistol. Two parts of the spoils were for captain and quartermaster, one and a half parts for mate, bos’un and gunner, one part and a quarter for other officers. Rest for the musicians on the Sabbath Day.
The first ship encountered was Dutch, commanded by Skipper Mitchel. Kidd broke out the French flag and gave chase. The other vessel raised the same colors, at which Kidd hailed her in French, and when the pirate boarded the Dutch ship with his crew, Skipper Mitchel called out a Frenchman from among his own men to act as interpreter. Kidd asked him if he had a passport, and to his affirmative, replied: “Well, by God, if you’ve got a passport I’ll make you captain of this ship.” Then he had him hanged from the yard-arm, afterwards bringing the Dutchmen up one by one, questioning them, pretending not to hear their Flemish names and condemning them with these words: “French?. . . the plank J” A plank was swung over the side. All the Dutchmen walked it naked, stepping into the sea at the point of the bos’un’s cutlass.
Moore was Kidd’s gunner. Moore was drunk. Raising his voice he asked: “Captain, why are you killing these men?” Kidd picked up a heavy bucket and went for him, and Moore fell with his brains spilling out of a skull split wide. There were matted hairs glued to the bucket in a curd of blood, so Kidd ordered it washed, but none of the crew would ever use it again. They left it hanging in the rigging.
A voice unheard by any save himself cried out behind Kidd’s shoulder: “Fill a bucket!” He whirled on it but his cutlass slashed only empty air, and he wiped a fleck of foam from his lips. Then he hanged some Armenians. When Kidd attacked the Lark he slept stretched out on his bunk after the division of the loot. Waking in a heavy sweat he called for water to bathe himself. A sailor brought it in a pewter basin. Staring at that common receptacle Kidd exclaimed: “Is that what you bring a gentleman of fortune ... a bucket of blood?” The sailor fled; later Kidd drove him from the ship, marooning him on a remote rock with a rifle, a powder horn and a flask of water. When Captain Kidd buried his famous treasures in so many lonely places he had no other reason but the persuasion that his murdered gunner came every night with his bloody bucket to dig up the gold and hurl it into the sea.
Captured at last in New York, Kidd was sent by Lord Bellamont to London where he was tried and hanged on Execution Dock in his red cloak and his gloves. When the hangman placed the black Milan cap over his eyes, Kidd cried out: “Great God! he’s putting his bucket over my head!” The blackened corpse hung in chains for more than twenty years.
Imaginary Lives
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