Bulkeley rarely betrayed emotion, and in his journal he coolly noted this turn of events, as if it were just another trial in that eternal “warfare upon earth.” (As his book on Christianity asked, “How shall thy patience be crowned, if no adversity happen unto thee?”) But his entry did dwell on one unsettling detail. He wrote that Captain Kidd, on his deathbed, had delivered a prophecy concerning the expedition: “It would end in poverty, vermin, famine, death and destruction.”
