University of Virginia Library

LETTER X.

We resume that part of the tale which relates to
Dudley and Kidd.

The last boat had now left the Quedah in haste,
after setting her on fire and leaving none on board
but the dead. They had scarcely joined the Martyr,
when a fresh breeze sprung up from the southward,
and drove the Quedah before the wind, wrapped
in deep red flames, in the same direction with

the victor ship, and apparently in pursuit. A current
of air was raised by the heat which made her
gain in this singular chase. Her sails and rigging
which had not been shot away, were all set and
standing, and the quick flames all fed by tar and
pitch, ran along her cordage and leaped to the
very top-gallant head, while the ship was yet above
water and under full way; as though the dead men
which were on board of her had awakened with
new life, and sprung to their duty.

This appearance, as she held onward wrapped
in smoke and blaze, added to her character as a
pirate, was a spectacle to the crowded deck of the
Martyr, where some viewed it as sublime, and some
as portentous and supernatural.

The spectacle was long after recorded among
the marvels, and gave rise to the tale of the Ghost
Ship or Flying Dutchman, which was manned
with spectres, and with all her canvass spread,
sailed rapidly in a gale against the wind. It was
necessary for the Martyr to bear away for fear of
being run down by this dreadful fire-ship.

The prisoner of Kidd who had been so providentially
saved from drowning, excited very strongly
the sympathy of Captain Dudley.

“Were it not for the war with France, (said he,
addressing the stranger) you should on our arrival
at Boston be set immediately at liberty; but under
existing circumstances, though the rescued prisoner
of a pirate, you are still in my hands a prisoner of
war, and your parole of honour is the only indulgence
I can give you.”

Dubourg, for that was his name, thanked his
deliverer with a deep feeling of gratitude, and expressed
a desire to continue under his protection.

“I fear (said Dudley) we shall find it impossible.
My services on the water after the capture of

Kidd, will no longer be required. My character
in this new settlement (said he with a smile) is
rather amphibious; and I shall, soon after my arrival,
be despatched on a long and fatiguing land
service to the borders of Lake Champlain, where
the French and Indians on the frontier, threaten to
disturb and destroy the New-England settlements.”

“If that be your destination, (said the stranger)
I will gladly follow you; strange as it may seem,
my business is to visit that very spot. There, in
younger life, on the western shore of that lake, was
I stationed as an officer in Le Gendre's regiment,
before I was ordered on other service. There I
lost my wife, and left my only daughter. She was
then an infant, and now, if living, a woman. I
know where and with whom I left her. I have regularly
heard from her, and I can find the very
spot of her abode, after an absence of twenty years.
I am (added he) a man of property, and if I find my
daughter, shall become a citizen of that country
where I spent my happiest days.”

Dudley made the proposal that Dubourg should
be his company across the country, and march
with the troops which were to be in readiness at
Tantiusque, near the northern line of the colony,
to which place Dudley would repair with him, after
representing his case to the Governor of the Massachusetts
colony, discharging his crew, and settling
his concerns as commander of the Martyr.

On their arrival at Boston, the news of the capture
of the pirate was soon spread; witnesses were
summoned, Dudley among the rest—and even the
peaceful inhabitants of Gardiner's Island, to attend
the public examination of Kidd, who was on this
preliminary proof, sent home to England for trial;
where, after an examination by the House of Commons

he terminated his voyages as recorded in the
Newgate calender, and in the ballad of which he
was the hero,

Meanwhile the provincial troops, in this instance
principally from Massachusetts, though aided by
Connecticut and Rhode-Island, had taken up their
line of march, and with their military `furnishments,'
accomplished a journey of difficulty, thro'
a country unsettled and but little known, and encamped
in safety on the eastern shore of Champlain.
They were strongly posted to defend the
country against an unexpected inroad from the
French and hostile Indians.

Dubourg was anxious for the safety of his daughter,
and obtained from Dudley permission to cross
the lake with a party of men, to convey her and
the family in which she lived, out of the immediate
neighbourhood of Indian hostilities, which were at
this time more rife on the New-York side. As soon
as he discovered their residence, he spent little time
even in expressing his joy, but hurried their departure
from a place of peril. He had reason to be
thankful for his expeditious course; for on the
night following, a detachment from the Iroquois
came upon the plantation and finding it deserted,
laid the whole in ashes.

The New-England troops were disposed in barracks
and huts of their own construction, and as
they had chosen a commanding place, which they
meant to fortify strongly, they erected some small
log houses, in one of which Dudley lived with
Dubourg and the inmates of the removed family.
The troops were well disciplined, and inured to this
sort of peril and warfare. They kept by night

and day the strictest watch against their northern
enemies of every character, by land or water.

It was after the regular arrangement of military
duty, that a centinel at his post near the shore of
the lake, where it indented the land with a little
shady bay, indistinctly discerned the figures of two
men He stood waiting their approach to a short
distance before he should hail. One he saw was
an Indian—the other was dressed in tattered clothes,
and doubtless was a spy—and how many more
might be in the woods behind them he could only
imagine. He edged towards the side of a large
tree, and cocked his gun as he cried, “Who goes
there.”

“Friends.”

“Friends, stand, don't advance,” said the centinel
in alarm; then straining his voice to the utmost,
he called Du—tha—n, dwelling on the last
syllable like a village matron calling her suckling
children, or a militia colonel on a regimental day,
calls “atten—tion the whole.”

Corporal Jeduthan Banks, of Marblehead, had
just incurred the severities of the martial law, by
stretching his martial length and “reposing his
weary virtue” at the foot of an oak tree, and had
just mentally joined in Sancho's benison upon the
“man who first invented this selfsame thing called
sleep,” when he was roused by the unwelcome cry
of his companion in arms.

He was instantly on the ground, where his paltoon
men were directly paraded, and received the new
comers at the point of the bayonet.

Du Quesne, (for he and Weshop were the intruders,)

requested that they might be shown to the
quarters of the chief in command.

They found him alone in a small log hut, without
a fire, and with no appearance of comfort or
convenience about it. A light was burning upon
a large log of wood, sawed at one end, so as to resemble
a horse block more than a table, though it
was meant for the latter. The person who was
seated at it, requires a more particular description.

Miles Standish had the only pride of birth which
is pardonable in this country. He was directly
descended from one of those men who ate their
meal of clams near Plymouth Rock, and listened
to the grace which Parson Robinson said over
them. Even the puritans, who fled from the stake,
called him obstinate, and considered him in matters
of faith, as rather intolerant. He hated all separates,
as he called them; but his greatest dislike
was towards the Church of Rome, and for reasons
which he pretended to be able to explain, he was not
very cordial to the Church of England. The men
who stoned the first Martyrs, he would say, were
no worse than they who stood and held their garments.
Nay, in the zeal of some of his controversial
conversations, he ventured to call them worse—
they were more cowardly and less sincere.

Godfrey of Bolonge, never put on his harness
against the enemies of the Cross in the Holy Land,
with more zeal than Miles Standish buckled on his
sword against the French and Indians in this Land
of Promise. He referred to the scriptural account
of the march of the Israelites from the land of
Egypt, and the house of bondage, and applied it
literally, as did many others, to the emigration of
the Puritans; and he derived his authority for much
of his own conduct, from the fighting part of the
character of Joshua. The Onondagas, the Tuscaroras,

the Wampagoes, and the Potawatamies, were
with him; but the other names for the Hittites,
Perezites, Jebuzites, and Gergushites, all whom
were to be exterminated. Indeed, if Father Raal,
in his way from Penobscot to his Catholic friends,
had fallen into the hands of Miles Standish, he
would have considered the fate of Agag as his sufficient
warrant. He possessed vigorous strength,
was patient of fatigue, and fixed in his purpose.
A man as Southey says,
He sat reading Pilgrim's Progress, which he allegorized
beyond the spirit of Bunyan himself.