should meet with
any.

With these two commissions he sailed out of Plymouth in May, 1696, in
the _Adventure_ galley of thirty guns and eighty men. The place he first
designed for was New York; in his voyage thither he took a French
banker, but this was no act of piracy, he having a commission for that
purpose, as we have just observed.

When he arrived at New York he put up articles for engaging more hands,
it being necessary to his ship's crew, since he proposed to deal with a
desperate enemy. The terms he offered were that every man should have a
share of what was taken, reserving for himself and owners forty shares.
Upon which encouragement he soon increased his company to a hundred and
fifty-five men.

With this company he sailed first for Madeira, where he took in wine
and some other necessaries; from thence he proceeded to Bonavist, one of
the Cape de Verde islands, to furnish the ship with salt, and from
thence went immediately to St. Jago, another of the Cape de Verde
islands, in order to stock himself with provisions. When all this was
done he bent his course to Madagascar, the known rendezvous of pirates.
In his way he fell in with Captain Warren, commodore of three
men-of-war; he acquainted them with his design, kept them company two or
three days, and then leaving them made the best way for Madagascar,
where he arrived in February, 1696, just nine months from his departure
from Plymouth.

It happened that at this time the pirate ships were most of them out in
search of prey, so that, according to the best intelligence Captain Kid
could get, there was not one of them at this time about the island,
wherefore, having spent some time in watering his ship and taking in
more provisions, he thought of trying his fortune on the coast of
Malabar, where he arrived in the month of June following, four months
from his reaching Madagascar. Hereabouts he made an unsuccessful cruise,
touching sometimes at the island of Mahala, sometimes at that of Joanna,
between Malabar and Madagascar. His provisions were every day wasting,
and his ship began to want repair; wherefore, when he was at Joanna, he
found means of borrowing a sum of money from some Frenchmen who had lost
their ship, but saved their effects, and with this he purchased
materials for putting his ship in good repair.

It does not appear all this while that he had the least design of
turning pirate, for near Mahala and Joanna both he met with several
Indian