"Is that wrong, your honor?"
"Wrong? Why, it's murder!"
"But we killed a lot on the Caroline and the Monarch and——"
"But that was different, that was war."
"War? Well, and can't I kill a man as calls me a pirate?"
"No, Bob, or you will get hanged for it. Then you did wrong in going into the navy yard. That was treason; you might have been an enemy."
"I don't understand all your fine lingo, your honor. When I swam to the Monarch and climbed on deck and brought away the flag, you said I was a hero, for you wanted to know the size of the guns and all about the Monarch; now, when I climb a wall to look at our own guns—for they are American guns, aren't they?—then I'm to die, for that's wrong."
It was hard to make Bob see the difference between murder and lawful killing.
As the poet Young wrote a hundred and fifty years before, Bob philosophized:
"One to destroy is murder by the law;
And gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe.
To murder thousands, takes a specious name
War's glorious art, and gives immortal fame."