"'Now, you canting, cowardly lubber, why the henckers didn't you hang out a light?' he bellowed in a hoarse voice.
"'I have been in the dark these hundred years,' replied the spirit, meekly.
"'Likely enough; seas and thunder! you were the faintest-hearted fellow in the _Adventure_.'
"'I suffered sorely at your hands since you captured the ship of Queda, of which I was captain, and made me a prisoner in yon galley.'
"'I have repented me of my sins in life,' said the spirit, mournfully.
"''Sblood and plunder!' shouted the other, with a diabolical laugh; 'I shot you through the head, as a canting Scotsman, on this night one hundred years ago, and buried you here--you know for what purpose.'
"'That my unquiet spirit might watch your buried treasure,' moaned the other.
"'Right,' chuckled the pirate; 'I shot you as I would have done my lord the Earl of Bellamont, though he was Governor of New England and Admiral of all the seas about it, for that long-snouted Dutch lubber, William of Orange, who sent him to lord it over the Yankees.'
"'I have waited and watched your treasure long, and now am anxious for the repose of the grave.'
"On hearing this, Kidd and his boat's crew laughed, and gnashed their teeth; but a few there were who wept and wailed heavily, and the sound of their lamentation was fearful as it mingled with the chafing of the surge.
"'I have some fine things stowed away here in Baccalao,' said Kidd; 'but I have some that are better still in the haunted Kaatskill Mountain, and at Tapaan Zee, up the Hudson.'
"'Since I saw you last, brother, I have been twice hanged and strung in chains on the banks of the Thames--ha! ha! at Gravesend Reach.'
"'Yes, by all the devils in New Amsterdam!--HANGED! Hanged by order of him of pious, glorious, and immortal memory--by Orange Billy, who assassinated the De Witts in Holland, who murdered eighty men, women, and children in cold blood in Scotland; who abandoned his soldiers at Steinkirk; who boiled and burned women alive in London for coining a few brass halfpence; and who departed this life amid the prayers of canting hypocrites and lawn-sleeved parasites, on the 8th day of March, 1701! He roasts now, for some of his pranks, I can tell you! But heave a-head, brother! we must ship our cargo, and be off to-night for Cape Cod at New Amsterdam (or New York, as the folks call it now-a-days), ere the moon wanes or the tide falls. Where is the plunder?'