The captain called one Col.  Hewson to his reputation, who gave him an extraordinary character, and declared to the court, that he had served under his command, and been in two engagements with him against the French, in which he fought as well as any man he ever saw; that there were only Kidd’s ship and his own against Monsieur du Cass, who commanded a squadron of six sail, and they got the better of him.  But this being several years before the facts mentioned in the indictment were committed, proved of no manner of service to the prisoner on his trial.

[Illustration:  Captain Kidd hanging in chains.]

As to the friendship shown to Culliford, a notorious pirate, Kidd denied, and said, he intended to have taken him, but his men being a parcel of rogues and villains refused to stand by him, and several of them ran away from his ship to the said pirate.  But the evidence being full and particular against him, he was found guilty as before mentioned.

When Kidd was asked what he had to say why sentence should not pass against him, he answered, that he had nothing to say, but that he had been sworn against by perjured and 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.

Wherefore about a week after, Capt.  Kidd, Nicholas Churchill, James How, Gabriel Loff, Hugh Parrot, Abel Owen, and Darby Mullins, were executed at Execution Dock, and afterwards hung up in chains, at some distance from each other, down the river, where their bodies hung exposed for many years.

Kidd died hard, for the rope with which he was first tied up broke with his weight and he tumbled to the ground.  He was tied up a second time, and more effectually.  Hence came the story of Kidd’s being twice hung.

Such is Captain Kidd’s true history; but it has given birth to an innumerable progeny of traditions.  The report of his having buried great treasures of gold and silver which he actually did before his arrest, set the brains of all the good people along the coast in a ferment.  There were rumors on rumors of great sums of money found here and there, sometimes in one part of the country sometimes in another; of coins with Moorish inscriptions, doubtless the spoils of his eastern prizes.

Some reported the treasure to have been buried in solitary, unsettled places about Plymouth and Cape Cod; but by degrees, various other parts, not only on the eastern coast but along the shores of the Sound, and even Manhattan and Long Island were gilded by these rumors.  In fact the vigorous measures of Lord Bellamont had spread sudden consternation among the pirates in every part of the provinces; they had secreted their money and jewels in lonely out-of-the-way places, about the wild shores of the sea coast, and dispersed themselves over the country.  The hand