with
the job."

"By which simple means you would secure the acquittal of the thing you
call your conscience against the charge of murdering me!" I ejaculated
scornfully. "Do you know, Polson, that the man who consents to a murder
is every whit as guilty as he who actually does the deed?"

"Well, I dunno," answered Polson; "I don't see how that can be, Mr
Troubridge. If another man chooses to murder ye, what's that got to do
wi' me? Besides, what can we do? All hands of us has already signed a
paper agreein' to obey Mr Wilde's orders."

"Tut!" I exclaimed impatiently. "Do you seriously wish me to believe,
Polson, that you are such an utter fool that you are unable to
discriminate between right and wrong? With one breath you give me to
understand that you would have no conscientious objection to permitting
a man to murder me; and with the next you intimate that having, as I
understand it, blindly pledged yourself to obey all Wilde's orders--
whatever their nature may be--your conscience will not permit you to
break your pledge! Let me tell you, man, that such a pledge as that is
in nowise binding, and the law will hold you blameless if you choose to
break it."

"Ay--yes--the law!" retorted the boatswain, spitting over the rail, the
more strongly to mark his contempt of that system which was once tersely
denounced as being "a hass". "I don't take no account of the law, Mr
Troubridge. Mr Wilde have showed us that the law ain't justice. It
have been made by rich men to grind down the poor, and keep 'em down;
and there ain't goin' to be no law in this here new country what we're
goin' to make. Everybody's goin' to be just as good as everybody else,
and is goin' to do just what he jolly well likes."

"Just so!" I said. "I have heard that yarn before, and if I knew of a
country where such a state of things existed I would take precious good
care to steer clear of it. Can't you picture to yourself the joy of
living in a place where, if a stronger man than you happened to take a
fancy to your clothes, or your house, or anything else that belonged to
you, he could compel you to give them up, and nobody would interfere to
say him nay. That is the kind of thing that is to be expected in a
country where there are no laws, and where everybody is at liberty to do
`just what he jolly well likes'. I am astonished to hear you talking
such utter tomfoolery; I set you down as having more common sense!"

The poor man