anded 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, an