Two Commissions were granted to Kidd himself, the one, letters of marque in ordinary form, empowering him to capture French ships, and the other, a special Commission authorizing him to apprehend, seize, and take four persons designated by name as pirates, Thomas Too, John Ireland, Thomas Wake, and William Maze _alias_ Mace (none of whom were found by him in the course of his wanderings), and also any other pirates, freebooters, and sea rovers, whom he might be fortunate enough to catch, together with their ships, merchandise, goods, and wares. How he was to satisfy himself that any persons whom he might come across were pirates, unless he caught them in the act of piracy, and what the consequences to himself would be, if he had the misfortune by mistake to kill persons whom he suspected to be pirates, but of whose piracy he had no legal proof, or if by any equally likely mischance he neglected to seize persons who were pirates, but whom he could not prove to be such, does not appear from any of the verbose legal documents drawn up on this occasion. What is clear from them[2] amongst other things is this, that they imposed on his men conditions which were likely to be and in the event proved to be very unpalatable to them. The most important of these was that if they took no prizes, the crew were to have no pay. Another condition was that if the prize moneys were insufficient to meet the full amount advanced by the four great men, the deficiency was to be made good by Kidd and Livingstone, both of whom were substantial men. In the event of the prize moneys amounting to one hundred thousand pounds, the _Adventure Galley_, which turned out to be a leaky old vessel, was to become the property of Kidd. The great men therefore ran very little pecuniary risk, and obviously hoped to make enormous gains from the enterprise. But for this expectation it is highly improbable that any of them would have embarked in the adventure. It is, of course, very difficult at this distance of time to determine with any certainty what amount of blame attaches to the several personages concerned in this unfortunate business. Very grave suspicion attaches to some of them. One thing, however, is reasonably certain, that no candid person who will now take the trouble to look into the case carefully, can come to any other conclusion than that the balance of evidence is distinctly in favour of poor Kidd; and that he was fully justified in the reply which he made to Lord Chief Baron Ward, when called upon to say why sentence of death should not be pronounced upon him. “My lord, it is a very hard sentence. For my part, I am the innocentest person of them all.” CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER II THE VOYAGE OF THE “ADVENTURE GALLEY”[3]