The ship the _Adventure_ galley was bought and fitted up, and Kidd sailed away in her to suppress piracy, particularly on the coast of America. Nothing was heard of him till August, 1698, when ugly rumours began to get about of piracies committed by Kidd in the Indian Ocean. In December of the same year a general pardon was offered to all pirates who should surrender themselves, with two exceptions--namely, Captain Avery and Captain Kidd. In May, 1699, Kidd suddenly appeared in a small vessel at New York, with rich booty. His chief patron, Lord Bellomont, was now Governor, and was placed in the most awkward position of having to carry out his orders and arrest Kidd for piracy and send him in chains to England in H.M.S. _Advice_, which ship had been sent specially to New York to carry back Kidd, Bradish, and other pirates to England. The trial of Kidd proved a scandal, for someone had to suffer as scapegoat for the aristocratic company privateers, and the lot fell to the luckless Kidd. Kidd was charged with piracy and with murder. The first charge of seizing two ships of the Great Mogul could have been met by the production of two documents which Kidd had taken out of these ships, and which, he claimed, proved that the ships were sailing under commissions issued by the French East India Company, and made them perfectly lawful prizes. These commissions Kidd had most foolishly handed over to Lord Bellomont, and they could not be produced at the trial, although they had been exhibited before the House of Commons a little while previously. It is an extraordinary and tragic fact that these two documents, so vital to Kidd, were discovered only lately in the Public Records Office--too late, by some 200 years, to save an innocent man's life. As it happened, the charge of which Kidd was hanged for was murder, and ran thus: "Being moved and seduced by the instigations of the Devil he did make an assault in and upon William Moore upon the high seas with a certain wooden bucket, bound with iron hoops, of the value of eight pence, giving the said William Moore one mortal bruise of which the aforesaid William Moore did languish and die." This aforesaid William Moore was gunner in the _Adventure_ galley, and was mutinous, and Kidd, as captain, was perfectly justified in knocking him down and even of killing him; but as the court meant Kidd to "swing," this was quite good enough for finding him guilty. The unfortunate prisoner was executed at Wapping on May 23rd, 1701, and his body afterwards hanged in chains at Tilbury. [Illustration: A PIRATE BEING HANGED AT EXECUTION DOCK, WAPPING. To face p. 182.] A popular ballad was sung to commemorate the life and death of Kidd, who, for some reason, was always called Robert Kidd by the populace. It consists of no less than twenty-four verses, and we here give fifteen of them: THE BALLAD OF CAPTAIN KIDD