They
Secreted Their Money And Jewels In Lonely Out-Of-The-Way Places; Buried
Them About The Wild Shores Of The Rivers And Sea-Coast, And Dispersed
Themselves Over The Face Of The Country.
Among the agents employed to hunt them by sea was the renowned Captain
Kidd.
He had long been a hardy adventurer, a kind of equivocal
borderer, half trader, half smuggler, with a tolerable dash of the
pickaroon. He had traded for some time among the pirates, lurking about
the seas in a little rakish, musquito-built vessel, prying into all
kinds of odd places, as busy as a Mother Carey's chicken in a gale of
wind.
This nondescript personage was pitched upon by government as the very
man to command a vessel fitted out to cruise against the pirates, since
he knew all their haunts and lurking-places: acting upon the shrewd old
maxim of "setting a rogue to catch a rogue." Kidd accordingly sailed
from New York in the Adventure galley, gallantly armed and duly
commissioned, and steered his course to the Madeiras, to Bonavista, to
Madagascar, and cruised at the entrance of the Red Sea. Instead,
however, of making war upon the pirates, he turned pirate himself:
captured friend or foe; enriched himself with the spoils of a wealthy
Indiaman, manned by Moors, though commanded by an Englishman, and
having disposed of his prize, had the hardihood to return to Boston,
laden with wealth, with a crew of his comrades at his heels.
His fame had preceded him.
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