Of the three books, two were evidently log-books of the pirates who had
been lying off the mouth of the Delaware Bay all this time. The other
book was written in Spanish, and was evidently the log-book of some
captured prize.

It was then, sitting there upon the sand, the good old gentleman
reading in his high, cracking voice, that they first learned from the
bloody records in those two books who it was who had been lying inside
the Cape all this time, and that it was the famous Captain Kidd. Every
now and then the reverend gentleman would stop to exclaim, "Oh, the
bloody wretch!" or, "Oh, the desperate, cruel villains!" and then would
go on reading again a scrap here and a scrap there.

And all the while Tom Chist sat and listened, every now and then
reaching out furtively and touching the heap of money still lying upon
the coat.

One might be inclined to wonder why Captain Kidd had kept those bloody
records. He had probably laid them away because they so incriminated
many of the great people of the colony of New York that, with the books
in evidence, it would have been impossible to bring the pirate to
justice without dragging a dozen or more fine gentlemen into the dock
along with him. If he could have kept them in his own possession, they
would doubtless have been a great weapon of defence to protect him from
the gallows. Indeed, when Captain Kidd was finally brought to
conviction and hung, he was not accused of his piracies, but of
striking a mutinous seaman upon the head with a bucket and accidentally
killing him. The authorities did not dare try him for piracy. He was
really hung because he was a pirate, and we know that it was the
log-books that Tom Chist brought to New York that did the business for him;