He did not forget his friends, but had Parson Jones brought to New York to live.

As to Molly and Matt Abrahamson, they both enjoyed a pension of ten pounds a year for as long as they lived; for now that all was well with him, Tom bore no grudge against the old fisherman for all the drubbings he had suffered.

The treasure-box was brought on to New York, and if Tom Chist did not get all the money there was in it (as Parson Jones had opined he would) he got at least a good big lump of it.  And it is my belief that those log-books did more to get Captain Kidd arrested in Boston town and hanged in London than anything else that was brought up against him.

III.  THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND

Being a Narrative of Certain Extraordinary Adventures that Befell Barnaby True, Esquire, of the Town of New York, in the Year 1753.

I

It is not so easy to tell why discredit should be cast upon a man because of something his grandfather may have done amiss, but the world, which is never over-nice in its discrimination as to where to lay the blame, is often pleased to make the innocent suffer instead of the guilty.

Barnaby True was a good, honest boy, as boys go, but yet was he not ever allowed altogether to forget that his grandfather had been that very famous pirate, Captain William Brand, who, after so many marvellous adventures (if one may believe the catchpenny stories and ballads that were writ about him), was murdered in Jamaica by Captain John Malyoe, the commander of his own consort, the Adventure galley.

It hath never been denied, that ever I heard, that up to the time of Captain Brand’s being commissioned against the South Sea pirates, he had always been esteemed as honest, reputable a sea-captain as could be.  When he started out upon that adventure it was with a ship, the Royal Sovereign, fitted out by some of the most decent merchants of New York.  Governor Van Dam himself had subscribed to the adventure, and himself had signed Captain Brand’s commission.  So, if the unfortunate man went astray, he must have had great temptation to do so; many others behaving no better when the opportunity offered in these far-away seas, when so many rich purchases might very easily be taken and no one the wiser.

To be sure those stories and ballads made our captain to be a most wicked, profane wretch; and if he were, why God knows he suffered and paid for it, for he laid his bones in Jamaica, and never saw his home or his wife or his daughter after he had sailed away on the Royal Sovereign on that long, misfortunate voyage, leaving his family behind him in New York to the care of strangers.