Their merchanting was interrupted long enough to pick up a Portuguese who got in their way, and once again there was a surplus of butter aboard. At that the pick-up brought them some five hundred pounds,--not too miserable a sum in those days or, for that matter, in any day. Thus keeping an eye to business in both directions, trade and theft, they beat down to Madagascar, probably their principal market. In this place Kidd was to encounter a veritable pirate, the very chap for whom the Admiralty had commissioned him to look. The story of this contact is quaint. When the _Quedagh Merchant_ dropped anchor in the channel, a canoe was seen putting out from the shore, manned by white men. As Kidd, leaning over the side, watched this craft paddling swiftly over the blue, languid waters, he thought some of the faces in it were not altogether unfamiliar. He became certain of this when a motley gang tumbled up the rope ladder and stood on the deck before him, awkwardly twisting their hats in their hands, and saluting by a drag at their long, unkempt forelocks. Why, to be sure, they were New Yorkers, old salts known to Kidd in prior and more respectable years. Well, what did they want? “Cap’n,” began the spokesman, reluctantly stepping a little forward from his fellows, “Cap’n, how d’ye do, sir? You remember us, Cap’n, don’t ye; all good sailor-men from New York? Some of us fought the French under ye, Cap’n, sir, in the West Indies.” Kidd nodded. “Well?” There was a heavy silence. The newcomers looked around them, and somehow took a little heart from a something in the attitudes and manner of the men under their old acquaintance’s command. Things just didn’t look like a reputable king’s ship on the king’s business. “You be come to hang us all, Cap’n,” blurted the speaker. “We’ve heered you got the king’s commission to take pirates. Maybe we’ve fell into a loose step or two, but we aren’t regular robbers. Cap’n, give us a chance, and we’ll uncover a nest of the kind you’re alooking for.” He pointed a long finger toward the wooded shore. “See that ship, Cap’n? That’s the _Resolution_, Culliford, skipper, and one o’ the hardest ships in these parts.” Kidd turned and gave a long look at the rakish _Resolution_, from this distance even, a vessel evidently of speed and unlawful purpose. “I’ll go back with you,” declared Kidd, briskly. They all returned to the canoe and set off for the _Resolution_. The delegation must have been astonished at the audacity of Kidd’s returning with them to a known pirate, with a commission in his pocket to hang the crew of the _Resolution_ if necessary, and returning at that with absolutely no protection. They had always known this man for a queer one.