The state could have conceded his claim that the ships he took were under French commissions, and they had French passes which were then in the possession of Earl Bellamont in New York. It might even have granted that under the compulsion of his crew he was prevented from bringing them in for condemnation, as required by his commission. Still, the significant thing would remain that he made no attempt to account for his share of the cargoes, which he did not unequivocally deny receiving. His commission to take pirates required a careful and exact account of every ship captured, her cargo, its value and all other details, to say nothing of French ships, whose condemnation was lifted entirely out of his hands. He did not attempt to explain all these irregularities. We are considering strictly the matter adduced on his trial. When we go beyond the record of that, and see, as we have, his conduct on his return home, it is clear as daylight that he was exercising over the property taken from the alleged French ships a private ownership entirely incompatible with this defense. If the _Quedagh Merchant_ was under a French pass, as he asserted, then that portion of her cargo which he brought to Oyster Bay in the _St. Antonio_ was neither his nor Bellamont’s, nor Livingston’s, but the Government’s. No, the thing doesn’t seem to hold water; nobody concerned in the whole affair seems to have been straightforward. And so, within a week of his conviction, Captain William Kidd was hanged at Execution Dock, on the margin of the Thames, where sailors setting out for the far places of the earth thus received England’s farewell admonition that honesty is the best policy. CHAPTER TWO BLACK FLAG FROM BOSTON John Quelch I Captain Plowman, of the brig _Charles_, was looking for men, not just for beef at the end of a rope nor a stevedore’s back; for sailors, certainly, but something more than sailors--sea-fighters. For a fact, this sort of thing was a little outside the usual jobs of both Captain Plowman and his smart little brig. The brig and her master worked in coastwise trading with an occasional venture to the markets of London. But a civic emergency occasioned by the depredations of French and Spanish war vessels and privateers, long vexing the New England provinces, put a commission instead of a charter party into the hands of Captain Plowman and cutlasses, cannon and round shot in place of goods, wares and merchandise into the hold and on the decks of the _Charles_.