Yet not all the lawless ones grinned and went on plundering. It would seem that the jolly Culliford, he of the _Resolution_ and the artful mixer of Bomboo, saw his chance to mend his ways and put himself in the hands of the commissioners. By a sort of coincidence he who had lain at Madagascar with Kidd, with Kidd later groaned in the cells of Newgate, though he probably effected his discharge by virtue of the proclamation. Just where and when the proclamation came to the notice of Kidd’s company is uncertain; that it did, however, will shortly appear. VIII Pardon or no pardon, proclamation or no proclamation, Captain Kidd was bound to go home. He had finished with piracy, at least in the East Indies. His active operations had barely filled out six months. His bold attack on the Mocca Fleet befell on the 14th of August, 1697; in January, 1698, he grabbed the _Quedagh Merchant_, loitered down the coast in her, trading here and there, and about the opening of May of the same year came to Madagascar, having picked up a wandering Portuguese on the way. August, then, to January, really saw Kidd’s work, and it was in that comparatively short time that he acquired an extraordinary and permanent notoriety. Yet with the exception of the slaying of Gunner Moore he had committed no act which to-day would be a capital offense; the matter of the ship’s cooper and the native is all too modern in tone. Undoubtedly, the notice which Kidd attracted was because of the connection of Bellamont and certain other nobles with the inception of the enterprise, their political enemies now making gain of their predicament and flooding the town with pamphlets wherein, as part of the game, Kidd took on the lineaments of a sea-monster. Beyond an uncommon boldness, there was nothing in the crimes he committed to foundation such a popular clamor as rose about his name in England. Those few months of effort, however, had been very profitable. Contemporaries put the extreme value on the _Quedagh Merchant’s_ cargo at twelve thousand pounds,--an exaggeration, the probable figure being about nine thousand. Of this, on the forty-share basis together with all he could deduct as charges for supplies and ammunition, Kidd must have obtained some thirty per cent. Not only that, but it appears from the remarks of one of his crew on the trial that the captain by some device or other took back this man’s share, and if this man’s probably others. There was a fat three thousand pounds out of this venture; in addition there must be remembered the value of the smaller pick-ups he had made, so that one way and other, with goods and money the captain must have concluded his enterprise with a good five thousand pounds,--about twenty thousand dollars, and in the values of the present day a very decent fortune indeed. On top of all that he had the ship herself, which was then valued at four hundred pounds, or two thousand dollars.