"Why is he working in these waters?"
Stirling did not answer this question, but stared forward and directly at the watch on deck. He counted them, searching for the seaman who had put up the fight when brought aboard. He was not in evidence.
"I wonder," asked Stirling, with a pucker on his brow, "if Marr expects that crew to follow him in a lawless enterprise? Outside of three or four, I know them from hearsay. They're drifters. They expect nothing but an iron dollar. Larribee hasn't paid a whaling hand a cent over the legal dollar in five seasons. He figures the advance money and the stuff they draw from the slop-chest is enough for sea scum. He has no heart at all!"
"Dirty work!"
"It is," said Stirling, sincerely. "Particularly when they don't even get the advance money. The boarding-house keepers, crimps, and runners get that. They furnish a man with an outfit and a dunnage bag. The outfit consists of a 'donkey's breakfast' for a mattress and a pair of pasteboard sea boots which will melt under the first hose. That's no way to send a man North!"
Cushner glanced at the Ice Pilot. He shook his head. "You're sticking up for poor Jack," he said. "That's no more than right. The laws are all for the owners and the boarding-house crimps. Poor Jack is friendless. What can he do?"
"There's seamen and seamen, Sam! There's the coasting crews and the deep-water bunch who know enough to get big wages and hold to the Union. The ones who suffer are boys like we got forward. They have no chance; they work eight months for an iron dollar and are cheated out of that!"
Cushner slanted his eyes forward. "They don't look as if they'd care what happened," he said. "Marr, or anybody else, could give them a good argument and they'd follow him to the end of the world. Five square faces of gin and tobacco would buy the whole fo'c's'le."
Stirling lifted his strong shoulders expressively. "You're partly right!" he admitted. "I wouldn't blame them, either. But you're here and I'm here, and we're going to see that this ship keeps within the law."