It may be that Kidd here was acting according to a policy to which the logic of circumstances had compelled him. As soon as the canoe from the _Resolution_ came to him, he discovered that his arrival had been a considerable shock to the sailing community of Madagascar. Gossip flies about a port as quickly as about a street. Two things, therefore, presented themselves for his choice; he must either engage the pirates in action or reassure them by companioning with them. Madagascar was to be the last big chance to clean up the balance of the _Quedagh Merchant’s_ cargo, the final market. As a king’s man he could not remain there indefinitely without expecting to be attacked by a combination of lawless men, who saw in him only the king’s authority and punitive power. Whether this thought particularly directed him or not, his visit to Culliford, one of the leading pirate commanders there, was undoubtedly in the way of appeasement, and not the mere fraternizing of colleagues. This situation being smoothed out, Kidd went seriously to work to sell his wares. According to the chronology of the record, this could not have taken a very great while. And now the day for which they all had longed came. Outside of the cabin which Kidd, commander-like, always reserved to himself, a long queue was formed that ended in a jostling knot beneath the poop. Pay day had come, and mirth bubbled without restraint. On the cabin table were piled over one hundred heaps of coin. Stowed away in a locker were the forty shares for the ship. Kidd stood at the table, a great pistol lying suggestively at hand in case of too much excitement, and by the door his personal servant, Richard Barlicorn, kept a kind of order. One by one the crew came in and each swept into his hat the share allotted him, and with a grin and a duck of the head hastened out to the sunshine, to watch with gleaming eyes the enchanting sparkle of the greatest fortune that had ever come to him in the hard and sorrowful farming of the sea. Everything was square and above board. Kidd had kept his florid promise to ballast the ship with gold and silver, and the workman had received his agreed hire. It must have been a great day for Bomboo. VII While Kidd was fraternizing with pirates and turning the _Quedagh Merchant’s_ cargo into gold at Madagascar, the solemn and serious gentlemen of the British Admiralty heard with pained disappointment how their trusty and well-beloved mariner was behaving himself in the distant seas. They saw gloomily that another experiment in the suppression of piracy had fizzled out, and that the private ship of war was not an approved instrument of police work. That method having been quite the opposite of successful, they ponderously planned another which, in the event--though we will not be concerned to follow it--was to prove if anything still less effective.