Before going to Boston to see Bellamont, Kidd did that which has somehow so caught the imagination of artists and fictionists; he ran the sloop over to Gardiner’s Island, at the east end of Long Island Sound and there buried a considerable portion of his money and finer articles of plunder. Hence arose the great yarn of the pirate’s buried treasure. Like all the rest of Kidd’s doings this is wildly exaggerated. What was there was all practically recovered by the colonial authorities. Yet the myth persisted for centuries. A writer who considered himself conservative speaks of Kidd bringing home twelve thousand pounds. This is a modern computation, but it does not agree with our figures. With all his scheming the captain’s subordinates got more than half of the takings, and if Kidd got twelve thousand pounds it would mean that in all thirty or forty thousand pounds were gained by those few months’ work in the Indian seas. It is all way beyond the facts. Admittedly, the _Quedagh Merchant_ was the one considerable haul and according to the valuation of the government at that time, ship and cargo all told were not worth more than five thousand pounds. A recent writer even represents the _Quedagh Merchant_ alone as being of the value of thirty thousand pounds! In the indictment upon which Kidd was tried, that ship is said to be worth four hundred pounds, which is more like it. The captain did very well, as we have said, if he came home with a good five thousand pounds. As well as communicating with Bellamont, Kidd put himself in touch with his other partner, Colonel Livingston, and the colonel became very much excited over the prospect of cutting a pretty fine little melon. If the _Quedagh Merchant_, a respectable and capacious cargo vessel, cost four hundred pounds, the _Adventure_, a “crazy and leaky” craft, really not fit for the patrol work intended for her, could not have run her owners more than three hundred pounds. Arms and victuals dug deeply into the original capital, but with it all, the enterprise had doubtless earned several hundred per cent. And if, instead of four or five men sitting in at the division, two or three, or better one or two shared the pot, why so much the better for the lucky one or two. That notion occurred to Livingston, to Bellamont and to Kidd. So the captain went on to Boston and some of his men with him. Bellamont, in the meantime, had been obliged to call the council together to discuss the fact that a lawbreaker was at large and unaccounted for. It was a formality the earl had to observe to preserve the pure bloom of his own official reputation. With the power that was then vested in governors, the council meeting need have been no great difficulty in the way of an arrangement between friends.