It is possible that Kidd may at first have meant to act in accordance with his instructions.  But, on the subject of piracy, he held the notions which were then common in the North American colonies; and most of his crew were of the same mind.  He found himself in a sea which was constantly traversed by rich and defenceless merchant ships; and he had to determine whether he would plunder those ships or protect them.  The gain which might be made by plundering them was immense, and might be snatched without the dangers of a battle or the delays of a trial.  The rewards of protecting the lawful trade were likely to be comparatively small.  Such as they were, they would be got only by first fighting with desperate ruffians who would rather be killed than taken, and by then instituting a proceeding and obtaining a judgment in a Court of Admiralty.  The risk of being called to a severe reckoning might not unnaturally seem small to one who had seen many old buccaneers living in comfort and credit at New York and Boston.  Kidd soon threw off the character of a privateer, and became a pirate.  He established friendly communications, and exchanged arms and ammunition, with the most notorious of those rovers whom his commission authorised him to destroy, and made war on those peaceful traders whom he was sent to defend.  He began by robbing Mussulmans, and speedily proceeded from Mussulmans to Armenians, and from Armenians to Portuguese.  The Adventure Galley took such quantities of cotton and silk, sugar and coffee, cinnamon and pepper, that the very foremast men received from a hundred to two hundred pounds each, and that the captain’s share of the spoil would have enabled him to live at home as an opulent gentleman.  With the rapacity Kidd had the cruelty of his odious calling.  He burned houses; he massacred peasantry.  His prisoners were tied up and beaten with naked cutlasses in order to extort information about their concealed hoards.  One of his crew, whom he had called a dog, was provoked into exclaiming, in an agony of remorse, “Yes, I am a dog; but it is you that have made me so.”  Kidd, in a fury, struck the man dead.

News then travelled very slowly from the eastern seas to England.  But, in August 1698, it was known in London that the Adventure Galley from which so much had been hoped was the terror of the merchants of Surat, and of the villagers of the coast of Malabar.  It was thought probable that Kidd would carry his booty to some colony.  Orders were therefore sent from Whitehall to the governors of the transmarine possessions of the Crown, directing them to be on the watch for him.  He meanwhile, having burned his ship and dismissed most of his men, who easily found berths in the sloops of other pirates, returned to New York with the means, as he flattered himself, of making his peace and of living in splendour.  He had fabricated a long romance to which Bellamont, naturally unwilling to believe that he had been duped and had been the means of duping others, was at first disposed to listen with favour.  But the truth soon came out.  The governor did his duty firmly; and Kidd was placed in close confinement till orders arrived from the Admiralty that he should be sent to England.