nd he was
ready to weigh anchor, he would seize upon all the commodities he could
lay his hands upon, and without paying a copper to the distressed and
indignant Indians, he would gayly sail away, his black flag flaunting
derisively in the wind.

But although in reality Captain Kidd was no hero, he has been known for
a century and more as the great American pirate, and his name has been
representative of piracy ever since. Years after he had been hung, when
people heard that a vessel with a black flag, or one which looked black
in the distance, flying from its rigging had been seen, they forgot that
the famous pirate was dead, and imagined that Captain Kidd was visiting
their part of the coast in order that he might find a good place to bury
some treasure which it was no longer safe for him to carry about.

There were two great reasons for the fame of Captain Kidd. One of these
was the fact that he had been sent out by important officers of the
crown who expected to share the profits of his legitimate operations,
but who were supposed by their enemies to be perfectly willing to take
any sort of profits provided it could not be proved that they were the
results of piracy, and who afterwards allowed Kidd to suffer for their
sins as well as his own. These opinions introduced certain political
features into his career and made him a very much talked-of man. The
greater reason for his fame, however, was the widespread belief in his
buried treasures, and this made him the object of the most intense
interest to hundreds of misguided people who hoped to be lucky enough to
share his spoils.

There were other pirates on the American coast during the eighteenth
century, and some of them became very well known, but their stories are
not uncommon, and we need not tell them here. As our country became
better settled, and as well-armed revenue cutters began to cruise up and
down our Atlantic coast for the protection of our commerce, pirates
became fewer and fewer, and even those who were still bold enough to ply
their trade grew milder in their manners, less daring in their exploits,
and--more important than anything else--so unsuccessful in their illegal
enterprises that they were forced to admit that it was now more
profitable to command or work a merchantman than endeavor to capture
one, and so the sea-robbers of our coasts gradually passed away.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BUCCANEERS AND PIRATES OF OUR
COASTS***