"No; I can't say I ever did."
"Or did it ever occur to you that every cargo of opium you help to bring into the country is going to carry sorrow and suffering, perhaps even ruin, to hundreds of your own people?"
"I say, Rick Dale, it seems to me you know enough to be a lawyer. At any rate, you know too much to be a sailor, and ought to be in some other business."
"No, Bonny, I don't know half enough to be a sailor; but I do know too much to be a smuggler, and I am going to get into some other business as quick as I can. You are too, now that you have begun to think about it, for you are too honest a fellow to hold your present position any longer than you can help. By-the-way, what would happen if a cutter should get after us to-night?"
"That depends," replied the first mate, sagely, glad to feel that there were some legal questions concerning which he was wiser than his companion. "They might fire on us, if we didn't stop quick enough to suit 'em, and blow us out of the water. They might capture us, clap us into irons, and put us into a dark lock-up on bread and water. The most likely thing is that we would all be sent to the government prison on McNeil's Island. From there the chinks would be hustled back to Victoria, and the old man would get out on bond; but you and I would be held as witnesses until a court was ready to condemn the vessel and cargo. That would probably take some months, perhaps a year. Then the case would be appealed, and we'd be kept in prison for another year or so.
"And I suppose if we ever got out we would always be watched and suspected," suggested Alaric, who had listened to all this with almost as much dismay as though it were an actual sentence. "Well, I'll never be caught, that's all. I'll drift away in the dinghy first." In saying this the boy threatened to do the very most desperate thing he could think of.
"I believe I'd go with you," said Bonny. "Now, though, I must go and get ready our private signal, for we are getting close to the most dangerous place."