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“Your prisoner? Where is he?”

“That fellow standing there–steering, I suppose,” answered Quincy.

The skipper turned toward Rogers. “You a prisoner?” he asked, with the good humor coming of size and self-confidence.

“I’m wanted, Sir,” said Rogers, grimly, “in Arizona and in Manitoba. These men are what they say, officers of the law.”

“What crime have you committed?”

“None, Sir,” answered Rogers; “though I’m indicted in one place for stage robbery and in the other place for murder.”

“Well, well!” commented the big man. “You seem to be a dangerous character. What are you doing aboard my ship?”

“These fellows chased me, and I went to a boarding master to get a ship. They followed and were shanghaied with me–though I do not see why he drugged me, Sir; I was willing to ship.”

“But did you,” demanded the skipper, his voice growing tense and forceful, “rob a stage and kill a man, somewhere in the West?”

“I robbed a stage of what I owned–my own gold-dust. I killed the man who thought I robbed him; but he pulled his gun first, and I shot in self-defense.”

“And I’ve come all the way from Arizona,” interrupted Quincy, “to bring this man back for trial. And–I want him!”

“And I’ve come from Manitoba,” added Benson, “where he’s wanted for murder.”

The skipper turned to Rogers and said calmly, “By your own admission you are a fugitive from justice; hence, entitled to no sympathy from me.” Then he turned to the two others and said, “You men put up a plausible story of being shanghaied. If you told it at the dock where I could get two men to replace you, I might put you ashore. As it is, fifty miles outside of Sandy Hook, I can do nothing of the kind. This ship’s time is valuable, worth about a hundred dollars a day, and I can’t stop to signal and put you aboard an inbound craft. You’re signed on my articles–John Quincy and Walter Benson; though I don’t know which is which. But the fact is that here you stay, and you work, and earn your grub and what pay I choose to put you on.”

“But we did not agree,” yelled Quincy. “You have no warrant in law for this procedure.”

“I have my articles. I did not ship you, as I was not in the shipping office; but I bargained with a crimp for sixteen men, and he gave me fourteen and you two.”

“Well,” said Quincy, quietly, “you seem to be in power here, and responsible to no one that we can reach. But I’ll tell you that the State of Arizona will swarm about your ears, and that you’ll sweat, big as you are!”

“And I’ll tell you,” spoke up Benson, “that the Secretary of State at Washington will hear from the Governor General at Ottawa!”

“Get out o’ this!” exploded the Captain. “Get off the poop, you four-legged farmers! Sweat, will I? All right; but you’ll sweat, the both of you, before you see your friends again! Here, Mr. Billings,” he roared to the first mate amidships, “and Mr. Snelling! Come up here, and turn these men to!”

The two mates answered and appeared.

“Turn them to,” said the Captain, speaking slowly and softly. “Take the starch out of ’em, and make ’em sweat.”

The scene that ensued was too painful even for Rogers to witness or describe, except in its salient points. Billings and Snelling pounced upon the two insurgents, struck, buffeted, kicked, and vilified them with foul-mouthed abuse, until they had borne them off the poop, forward along the main deck, and to the vicinity of the forecastle, where the two victims, subdued and quiescent, were willing to dart for cover, when the two mates gave over and went aft.

Rogers at the wheel had watched the scene, at first with a smile; but the smile grew less as he saw the battered men hurled right and left under the blows of the mates, and when at last the punishment was ended his face was serious and resentful. Some criminals do not lose the qualities of forgiveness and mercy. His mood was increased when the big skipper faced him and said: