“I’ve seen that same trick done more’n once, but it was never played upon me before, and never shall be again.”
“But what are you going to do about it?” asked Guy.
“What can I do?”
“Why, arrest Rupert for robbery. I will be a witness against him.”
“Ha!” laughed the sailor. “He’d bring a dozen men to prove that I owed him every cent of my advance, and more too. Besides, there’s no telling where Rupert will be by the time our cruise is ended.”
“But you need not go on this voyage. You were not legally shipped. You don’t remember of signing articles, do you?”
“Of course not; but it will do no good to make a fuss about it, for the old man will say I had too much liquor in me when I did it to remember anything.”
“Suppose he does. I have heard my father say that a note obtained from a person in a state of intoxication is not good in law, and the same principle ought to apply in this case.”
“Well, it won’t,” said Flint. “Law was made for land-lubbers, not for sailors. Nobody cares for a sailor.”
Guy begun to think so, too. It was utterly incomprehensible to him that men who had been kidnapped and robbed, as Flint and his companions had been, must put up with it, having no redress in law. He could not see why it was so.