“You white-livered coward!” bellowed Williams, “Run away from a frog-eater!” 303 CHAPTER ONE SALT WATER MONEY Captain Kidd I Sometime in the autumn of the year 1695, Captain William Kidd, of New York, arrived in the city of London. He came as master of a trading sloop; he left in the following spring a commissioned officer of his most gracious Majesty, King William III, on the quarter-deck of what was really a man-of-war. This was not the first time, however, that Captain Kidd had been in the public service. Said to be the son of a Scottish minister, he became first definitely noticeable in the province of New York, where, sometime before 1695, the grateful council of New York had voted him a gratuity of one hundred and fifty pounds for valuable efforts in suppressing local disturbances, ensuing the revolution of 1688. Not only that, but during England’s interminable argument with France, he had locked shrouds with the Frenchmen off the West Indies, thus acquiring the repute of a “mighty man” against them. In fact, Captain Kidd when he thus stepped on to the docks of old London was a substantial colonial, a householder and taxpayer of the town of New York, where, we must suppose, his wife and daughter moved in those delectable geometrical figures, the best circles. The royal commission of 1696, though, was a novel one in the captain’s experience. It is important to notice the exact wording of this commission: