'They'd rather die than let you go like that. How in thunder have you kept them?'
And Ticehurst explained his wonderful theory.
'I've really tried to make them comfortable, and I've treated them like men. I give them all they earn while they're in port. But what am I to do?'
'I'll think of it,' said Sedgwick.
He thought to some purpose. For it was commonly stated in Portland that many masters of merchant ships paid the boarding-house masters to induce the men to desert, when the amount of wages due to them from the ship was more than the 'blood-money' which had to be paid for a new crew.
'I think that's the line,' said Sedgwick. He got a reporter to go and interview Mr. Healy, and Healy being more than half-seas over and in high delight at having held up Ticehurst and the Oriana, let himself go.
'Curse the lot of 'em,' said Healy; 'they talk as if a boarding-house master was necessary a scoundrel. Ay, they do, and there's them lying in the Willammette now as have come to me winking the eye, and saying, "Now, Mr. Healy, how much do you want to take my crew out of my ship?" Why, I've done it as low as ten dollars a head, and have had a hundred a head for putting a new crowd in, and then it's been money in the pockets of the ship-owners and the captain, as it stands to reason it would be if the ship owed the men more than a hundred and ten dollars, besides saving the grub for a time when the men are doing little.'
'But Ticehurst didn't do this?'
Healy smiled and was incautious.
'To be sure he didn't. But he would if it paid him. If he'd come in here after a long voyage instead of a short passage out from Liverpool, he'd have been in my back room with dollars.'