gs go wrong, und
der Russians nab us, dake our skins and our schooner, und send us mit
der anarchists to Siberia. Ach! a pretty pad piziness!"

"Yes, that's where it hurts," the sea lawyer went on. "Fifteen hundred
skins in the salt piles, and all honest, a big pay-day coming to every
man Jack of us, and then to be captured and lose it all! It'd be
different if we'd been poaching, but it's all honest work in open
water."

"But if we haven't done anything wrong, they can't do anything to us,
can they?" Bub queried.

"It strikes me as 'ow it ain't the proper thing for a boy o' your age
shovin' in when 'is elders is talkin'," protested an English sailor,
from over the edge of his bunk.

"Oh, that's all right, Jack," answered the sea-lawyer. "He's a perfect
right to. Ain't he just as liable to lose his wages as the rest of us?"

"Wouldn't give thruppence for them!" Jack sniffed back. He had been
planning to go home and see his family in Chelsea when he was paid off,
and he was now feeling rather blue over the highly possible loss, not
only of his pay, but of his liberty.

"How are they to know?" the sea-lawyer asked in answer to Bub's previous
question. "Here we are in forbidden water. How do they know but what we
came here of our own accord? Here we are, fifteen hundred skins in the
hold. How do they, know whether we got them in open water or in the
closed sea? Don't you see, Bub, the evidence is all against us. If you
caught a man with his pockets full of apples like those which grow on
your tree, and if you caught him in your tree besides, what'd you think
if he told you he couldn't help it, and had just been sort of blown
there, and that anyway those apples came from some other tree--what'd
you think, eh?"

Bub saw it clearly when put in that light, and shook his head
despondently.

"You'd rather be dead than go to Siberia," one of the boat-pullers said.
"They put you into the salt-mines and work you till you die. Never see
daylight again. Why, I've heard tell of one fellow that was chained to
his mate, and that mate died. And they were both chained together! And
if they send you to the quicksilver mines you get salivated. I'd rather
be hung than salivated."

"Wot's salivated?" Jack asked, suddenly sitting up in his bunk at the
hint of fresh misfortunes.

"Why, the quicksilver gets into your blood; I think that's the way. And
your gums all swell like you had the scurvy, only worse, and your teeth
get loose