"None, Sir," answered Rogers; "though I'm indicted in one place for stage robbery and in the other place for murder."
"Well, well!" commented the big man. "You seem to be a dangerous character. What are you doing aboard my ship?"
"These fellows chased me, and I went to a boarding master to get a ship. They followed and were shanghaied with me—though I do not see why he drugged me, Sir; I was willing to ship."
"But did you," demanded 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."