He touched at Amboyan, and there learned that the news of his conduct had reached England and that he was outlawed. Indeed, the reports of his misdeeds were so exaggerated that the English merchants became greatly alarmed, and had Kidd, with one Captain Avery, excepted in a general pardon of freebooters which had just been promulgated. Kidd knew nothing of this, but relying on some French passes which he had found on one or two of his prizes, and deeming his brazen assurance enough to carry him through any peril from the law, he made for New York. Here, by the orders of Lord Bellamont, he was promptly seized, with all of his effects, and was sent to England to be tried. Here his conduct was such as to destroy the last shreds of respect that one might have had for his character. Instead of meeting his fate like a man, he begged and implored and whined and promised, but all to no avail. He insisted much upon his own innocence and the villainy of his men. He went out upon a laudable employment, he said, and had no occasion to go pirating, but the men mutinied against him and did as they pleased. As to the friendship shown to that notorious villain Culliford, Kidd denied it, and said that he would have taken him, but his own men, being a parcel of rogues, refused to stand by him, and several of them even ran from his ship to join the wicked pirate. But the evidence was too strong against him, and he was condemned. When asked what he had to say why sentence should not be pronounced upon him, he replied that he had nothing to say except that he had been sworn against by wicked people; and when sentence was pronounced he said: “My lord, it is a very hard sentence. For my part, I am the most innocent person of them all, only I have been sworn against by perjured persons.” And so, in 1701, whining and protesting miserably, he was led away to the scaffold, and there paid the penalty of his crimes. X HOWARD THE BUCCANEER A Captain of Many Ships In the days when high-sterned galleons sailed the Spanish Main, keelless and lofty, and helpless in the wind’s eye; when all the sailors wore their tarry queues and ear-rings; when “Down along the coast of the high Barbaree” there was no law but that of the Moorish buccaneer, a young man in the peaceful British hamlet of Barwich reached the age of twenty-one. Thomas Howard was a youth of promise and capacity. He was handsome, burly, popular, and generous, and always ready for any adventure. His father, a gentleman of rank and estate, was dead, but his doting mother lavished upon him an affection as blind as it was deep, supplied him with an excess of pocket-money, and left no wish of his ungratified. The result is readily imagined. His old amiability deserted him, and he sank into a savage discontent that found expression in numerous acts of roguery and violence.