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Pulp Fiction, 1922 · page 170 of 196

Adventure Magazine Cover — page 170: what you’re looking at

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Adventure Magazine Cover — page 170: Pulp Fiction, 1922

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Oe eS — sore = RSS Sea ee ina ~~ _- fi Sn ino >? 7? sf a Sema - 4 ' Sa * : . oS y gies < - . : + ~~ me! ind oe @ SS we hl ne ete es weet. his eee. = pez) - z: -> Saas? Pe aaa oa eee , Pee Path, Sar; 7 — oe Phe - da = ri 2 + oo ee Best — i4ar ry wh ane j oS ea TE Oat . % f 4 oy’ J a Se rhs ay ’ Y Vas i oe 21 IT AR , , , — J RIO RPTL Ae >, fy weal i ct j ri et) va yy ¥ eet pi!) ¥ > ay “ Waite Aros natinka ee i oe 3 7 Seal ; ¥ bP rs Alt geese ce pea, We ae win ee While aoe f UDA RY We, :. , - - longitude or meridian of Cape Comorin, after the last day of June, 1699, and in any _ place whatsoever eastward of Cape Gemorin after the last day of July, 1699; and also excepting Henry Every, alias Bridgman, and William Kidd. Given at our court at Kensington, the _ 8th day of December, 1698, in the roth year of our reign. God save the King.” Such was the confession of the impotency of the British authority to clear the seas of the East Indies. © William Kidd, it is to be noticed, is no longer the trusty and well-beloved—he is quite in the outermost dark, coupled with Henry Avery, or Every, for whom no royal mercy was to exert its gentle and benign qualities. It would seem fair enough con- sidering the well-beloved’s flippant attitude toward the king’s commission. The proclamation is an exact document of specific effect. There is nothing ambigu- ous in its terms. This definiteness became - extremely important to some of Kidd’s crew when they stood in the somber shadow of the gallows. The meat of the matter was that all East Indian pirates who after April, June and -July, 1699, according to certain geographi- _ cal boundaries, should give themselves up - to four particular persons, Warren, Hayes Dellanoye and Pollard were to be admon- dished and forgiven—all, that is, except Avery and Kidd. : With a bale of printed proclamations Captain Warren and the three gentlemen commissioners departed for the Indies. It does look rather an absurd mission from our point of view. Authority thus said in effect to the outlaw folk, we can’t catch you so we will forgive you. Laughter loud and long rose from piraty throats from Madagascar to the Gulf of Aden when Captain Warren passed hither and thither tacking up the pretty sheetsof paper, It was the ultimate good joke on government. _ Yet not all the lawless ones grinned aie went on plundering. It would seem that the jolly Culliford, he of the Resolution and _ the artful mixer of Bomboo, saw his chance to mend his ways and put himself in the hands of the commissioners. By a sort of Adventure — Just where and when the proclamation came to the notice of Kidd’s company is uncertain, that it did, however, will shortly appear. VIII > PARDON or no pardon, proclama- 4 tionor no proclamation, Captain Kidd was bound to go home. He had finished with piracy, at least in the East Indies. His active operations had Gately filled out six months. His bold attack on the Mocca Fleet befell on the 14th of August, 1697; in January, 1698, he grabbed the Quedagh Merchant, loitered down the coast ~ in her, trading here and there, and about the opening of May of the same year came to Madagascar, having picked up a wander- ing Portuguese on the way. August, then, to January, really saw Kidd’s work, and it was in that comparatively short time that he acquired 4h extraordinary and perma- nent notoriety. Yet with the exception of the slaying of Gunner Moore he had committed no act which today would be a capital offense— the matter of the ship’s cooper and the na- tive is all too modern in tone. Undoubt- edly, the notice which Kidd attracted was because of the connection of Bellamont and certain other nobles with the inception of the enterprise, their political enemies now making gain of their predicament and flooding the town with pamphlets wherein, as part of the game, Kidd took on the linea- ments of a sea-monster. Beyond an un- common boldness, there was nothing in the crimes he committed to foundation such a popular clamor as rose about his namg in England, _. Those few months of effort, however, had been very profitable. Contemporaries - put the extreme value on the Quedagh Mer- chant’s cargo at twelve thousand pounds— an exaggeration, the probable figure being about nine thousand. Of this, on the forty share basis together with all he could de- duct as charges for supplies and ammuni- tion, Kidd must have obtained some thirty per cent. Not only that, but it appears from the remarks of one of his crew on the trial that the captain by some device or ag coincidence he who had lain at Madgascar other took back this man’s share, and if this ee with Kidd, with Kidd later groaned in the man’s probably others. : eee cells of Newgate, though he probably effected There was a fat three thousand pounds a his discharge by virtue of the proclamation. out of this venture; in addition there must comiebooks. com: q Boh Nas a t yeas Ces hd’ Ny ae