Principe in charge of the terrifying Bolidar. One of the seamen of the Exertion, Francis de Suze, a Portuguese, now decided to join the outlaws, explaining to his captain, with tears in his eyes:

"I shall do nothing but what I am compelled to do, and will not aid in the least to hurt you or your vessel. I am very sorry to leave you."

The boat carried to Principe letters to a merchant by the name of Dominico who acted as the commercial agent of the industrious pirates and sold their plunder for them. A representative of his was kept on board of the wicked schooner and went to sea with her, presumably to make sure of honest dealings, a sensible precaution in the case of such slippery gentry. The whole arrangement was most reprehensible, of course, but it had flourished on a much larger scale in the godly ports of Boston and New York in an earlier era. It was to put a stop to such flagrant traffic that Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamont, had been sent out by King William III as royal governor of the colonies of New York and Massachusetts in 1695. Colonial merchants, outwardly the pattern of respectability, were in secret partnership with the swarm of pirates that infested the American coast and waxed rich on the English commerce of the Indian Ocean.

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

A

As a result of these instructions, Captain William Kidd was employed to hunt the pirates down by sea. He was a merchant shipmaster of brave and honorable repute, who had a comfortable home in Liberty Street, New York, was married to a widow of good family, and was highly esteemed by the Dutch and English merchants of the town. shrewd trader who made money for his owners, he was also a fighting seaman of such proved mettle that he was given command of privateers which cruised. along the coasts of the colonies and harried the French in the West Indies. His excellent reputation and character are attested by official documents. How

William Kidd, sent out to catch pirates, was convicted of turning pirate himself rather than sail home empty-handed is another story. Fate has played strange tricks with the memory of this seventeenth-century seafarer who never cut a throat or scuttled a ship, and who was hanged at Execution Dock for the excessively unromantic crime of cracking the skull of his mutinous gunner with a wooden bucket.

Poor Captain Lincoln of Boston, having lost his schooner Exertion and his cargo, was righteously indignant at discovering how the infamous business was carried on. Said he:

I was informed by a line from Nickola that the pirates had a man on board, a native of Principe, who, in the garb of a sailor, was a partner with Dominico, but I could not get sight of him. This lets us a little into the plan by which this atrocious system has been conducted. Merchants having partners on board of these pirates! Thus pirates

at sea and robbers on land are associated to destroy the peaceful trader.

The diary of this distressed shipmaster contained the entry, under date of Sunday, December 30:

The beginning of trouble! This day, which particularly reminds Christians of the high duties of compassion and benevolence, was never observed by these pirates. This, of course, we might expect, as they did not often know when Sunday came, and if they knew, it was spent in gambling. Early this morning the merchant, as they called him, came with a large boat for the cargo. I was ordered into a boat with my crew, without any breakfast, and carried about three miles to a small island out of sight of the Exertion, and left there by the side of a pond of thick muddy water with nothing to eat but a few biscuits. One of the boat's crew told us that the merchant was afraid of being recognized, and when he had gone the boat would return for us, but we passed the day in the greatest anxiety. At night, however, the boat came and took us again on board the Exertion where to our surprise and grief we found they had broken open the trunks and chests and taken all our wearing apparel, not leaving me even a shirt or pair of pantaloons, nor sparing a small miniature of my wife which was in the trunk.

Nickola, that sentimental Scotch pirate, was a friend so loyal that the Spanish pirate of the crew now concluded to tie him up to a tree and shoot him, and had gone so far as to cast lots to pick the man who should fire the musket; but two Frenchmen and an Italian among these assorted scoundrels came to the rescue, organized a party, and swore to do some shooting on their own account unless Nickola was let alone. This did not appear to daunt him, and he remained true to Captain Lincoln, even sending a letter from Principe to tell him about the disposition of the stolen cargo and what prices it was fetching. He also revealed the fact that his true name was Jamieson, but continued to sign his alias, and wound up his letter with this romantic flight:

Perhaps in your old age, when you recline with ease in a corner of your cottage, you will have the goodness to drop a tear of pleasure to the memory of him, whose highest ambition should have been to subscribe himself, though devoted to the gallows, your friend,

NICKOLA MONACRE.

The pirate schooner was employed a few days later to fill her hold with the cargo of the Exertion and hoist sail for Principe. They lifted the stuff out with "Yo! ho! ho!" which made Captain Lincoln so unhappy that he pensively wrote:

How different was this sound from what it would have been, had I been permitted to pass unmolested by these lawless plunderers, and been favored with a safe arrival at the port of my destination, where my cargo would have found an excellent sale. Then would the "yo, ho, ho" on its discharging, have been a delightful sound to me.

As a final touch to afflict the skipper, the pirates fished out the consignment of furniture and, for lack of space below, sailed off with chairs lashed to the rail in rows and tables hung in the rigging.

There now appears the pirate captain himself, for Bolidar was second in command. To the New England skipper came Bolidar with five men, his own personal armament consisting of a blunderbuss, a cutlass, a long knife, and a pair of pistols. This fearsome lieuten

ant took Captain Lincoln by the arm, led him away, and imparted:

"My capitan sends me for your wash." Properly resentful, the master of the Exertion replied:

"Damn your eyes! I have no clothes, nor any soap to wash with. You have taken them all."

"Ah, ha, but I will have your wash, pronto," cried Bolidar, waving the blunderbuss. "What you call him that make tick-tock, same as the clock?"

Disgustedly, Captain Lincoln extracted his watch from the place where he had hidden it. The cloud had a silver lining, for Bolidar graciously handed over a small bundle at parting.

It contained a pair of linen drawers, sent me by Nickola, and also the Rev. Mr. Brooks' Family Prayer Book. This gave me great satisfaction. Soon after, Bolidar returned with his captain, who had one arm slung up, yet with as many implements of war as his diminutive self could conveniently carry. He told me (through an interpreter who was his prisoner) that on his last cruise he had fallen in with two Spanish privateers and beat them off, but had fourteen of his men killed and was himself wounded in the arm. Bolidar turned to me and said, "It is a d-n lie" which words proved to be correct, for his arm was not wounded and when I saw him again he had forgotten to sling it up.

Having disposed of the cargo, it transpired that the prisoners were to be marooned and left to perish. After all, the traditions of piracy had not been wholly lost. With an inkling of this fate, Mr. Joshua Brackett, the mate of the Exertion, was heard to say, "I cannot tell you what awaits us, but it appears to me that the worst is to come."

The pirate captain and his officers held a whispered conference, and then spent the last night ashore in gambling, the diminutive chieftain "in hopes of getting back some of the five hundred dollars he had lost a few nights before; which had made him unusually fractious." At sunset of the next day the crew of the Exertion, with several Spanish prisoners taken out of a merchant prize, were put into a boat. At this lamentable moment Nickola stepped to the front again and told Captain Lincoln:

"My friend, I will give you your book," being Mr. Colman's sermons. "It is the only thing of yours that is in my possession. I dare not attempt anything more. Never mind, I may see you again before I die."

There were eleven prisoners in all, without arms, and to sustain life only a ten-gallon keg of water, part of a barrel of flour, one ham, and some salt fish, not forgetting the precious volume of Mr. Colman's sermons. They were carried to a tiny bit of an islet, no more than a shoal of white sand an acre in extent and barely lifted above high tide, at a distance of many miles from the nearest Cuban coast. No wonder that Captain Lincoln was moved to ejaculate:

Look at us now, my friends, left benighted on a little spot of sand in the midst of the ocean, far from the usual track of vessels, and every appearance of a violent thunder tempest and a boisterous night. Judge of my feelings, and the circumstances which our band of sufferers now witnessed. Perhaps you can and have pitied us. I assure you we were very wretched; and to paint the scene is not within my power.

They found a fragment of a thatched hut built by turtle fishermen, but now whipped to pieces by the wind, and it served as a slight shelter from the burning sun. Fire they kindled by means of a piece of cotton-wick yarn and a flint and steel. They dug holes for fresh water, but it was almost too salt to drink. At bedtime the captain read aloud selections from the Rev. Mr. Brooks's "Family Prayer-Book," and they slept in the sand when the scorpions, centipedes, lizards, and mosquitos would permit. Of driftwood, palmetto logs, and pieces of board they fashioned a little raft, and so explored the key nearest them. There they discovered some shooks, planks, and pieces of spar that had been in the Exertion's deck-load and were thrown overboard when she grounded on the bar. the amazing handiness of good seamen, they proceeded to build a boat of this pitiful material. The captain declared:

With

Some of the Spaniards had secreted their long knives in their trouser-legs, which proved very useful in fitting timbers, and a gimblet of mine enabled us to use wooden

pins. And now our spirits began to revive, although water, water was continually in our minds. Our labor was extremely burdensome, and the Spaniards considerably peevish, but they would often say to me, -"Never mind, Captain, by and by Americans or Spanish catch 'em and we go see 'em hung."

David Warren, the cook of the Exertion, had been ailing, and the cruel ordeal of being marooned was too much for him. The captain perceived that he was soon to slip his moorings and suggested as they sat by the fire:

"I think it most likely that we shall die here soon, but as some one of us may survive to carry the tidings to our friends, if you have anything to say respecting your family, now is the time."

The young sailor-he was only twentysix-replied to this:

"I have a mother in Saco where I belong-she is a second time a widowto-morrow if you can spare a scrap of paper and a pencil I will write something."

No to-morrow came to him. He passed out in the night, and the skipper thought of his own wife and children. They dug a grave in the sand, made a coffin of shooks, and stood with bare heads while Captain Lincoln read the funeral prayer from the consolatory compilation of the Rev. Mr. Brooks. One of the Spanish prisoners, an old man named Manuel, made a cross, and with great pains carved upon it the words, "Jesus Christ Hath Him Now," and placed it at the head of the grave. There was the old Puritan strain in Captain Lincoln, who observed, "Although I did not believe in the mysterious influence of the cross, yet I was perfectly willing it should stand there."

Enfeebled and lacking food and water, they stubbornly toiled at building a boat, which was shaped like a flat-iron. When at length they launched the wretched little craft, it leaked like a sieve and, to their dismay, would hold no more than six of them and stay afloat, four to row, one to steer, and one to bail. Three Spaniards and a Frenchman argued that they should go in search of help because they were acquainted with the lay of the coast and

could talk to the people. Mr. Brackett, the mate, was also selected, because the captain considered it his duty to stay with his men. The sixth man was Joseph Baxter, and there is no other mention of him in the narrative. He was one of the prisoners who had been brought along with the Spaniards. They were given a keg of water "the least salty," a few pancakes and salt fish, and embarked with the best wishes and prayers of the other survivors.

On the tiny key waited the captain, old Manuel, Thomas Goodall, and George Reed, while the torrid days and the anxious nights dragged past until almost a week had gone. The flourbarrel was empty, and they were trying to survive on prickly pears and shellfish, while the tortures of thirst were agonizing. At last they sighted a boat drifting by about a mile distant, and hope flickered anew. The raft was shoved off, and two of them overhauled the empty boat, which seemed to offer a way of escape. Imagine their feelings at discovering that it was the same boat in which Mr. Brackett and the five men had sailed away to find rescue in the last extremity! It was full of water and without oars or paddles. No wonder that Captain Lincoln wrote in his diary next day: