hearty sorrow for his manifest transgressions, especially the unhappy and sudden death of William Moore his gunner--but would not call it murder to the very last, esteeming it rather an accidental misfortune than a murder by reason that there was but one blow given and that in passion without any premeditated malice.” No reference is made in this account to Kidd’s being “inflamed with drink.” It is clear from it that whether or not he had been given a drop of whiskey on his way to execution, he was to the end in the full possession of his faculties. The only member of his crew who was hung with him was poor Darby Mullins, the remainder being at the last moment reprieved. Why Mullins, who had surrendered himself to the Governor of East Jersey along with two others, relying on the King’s proclamation, was selected as Kidd’s fellow-sufferer, is not clear. It is true that he was an Irishman, and in the opinion of the chaplain in a better frame of mind to meet his death than any of his companions: but neither of these circumstances in itself seems quite a satisfactory justification for hanging him. He had no doubt joined Culliford, unquestionably by far the most guilty of all the seamen implicated, but for whose presence at Madagascar, when the _Adventure Galley_ arrived there, Kidd in all probability would have been able to bring his prizes home before the hue and cry had been raised against him. But Culliford, though indicted for several piracies about the same time as Kidd, apparently escaped scot free, having been clever enough to save his neck by surrendering to the right persons under the King’s proclamation, and to secure the services of a counsel who did not fail to put in an appearance on his behalf, when his case came on for hearing; the result of which was that “his case” (according to a note in the State Trials) “being particular and argued by Counsel he was respited.”