“Just around the foot of the island.”
“What does he mean?” inquired Harvey. “Who’s the Old Man?”
“Oh, he means the captain of the police tub,” replied Sam Black, grinning. “They’ll look us over, by and by, just to see if everything’s straight. It’s one of the state’s oyster navy.”
Harvey’s heart gave a jump. Might not here be a chance for liberty? But, the next moment, his hopes were dashed.
“Don’t you go reckoning on it, though, youngster,” continued Sam Black, “for ’twon’t do you a bit of good. There’s no police as slick as Ham Haley, nor the rest of his crowd. What’s the good of two old police steamers and a few schooners in goodness knows how many hundred square miles of bay, with hundreds of harbours to run to and hide, and islands to dodge ’round, and a score of pirates like Haley to help each other dodge? And any captain in the fleet willing to tell where the police tub is?”
“I tell you, it ain’t often they catch a captain napping, no matter what he’s done. Let ’em swear out a warrant, up in Baltimore, for a captain that has been beating up his men. Well, I dunno how it does come, hardly; but, all the same, the news gets down the bay and spreads all through the fleet like a field of grass afire. Pshaw! By the time they gets him, that cap’n has got half a new crew, and there isn’t a man aboard as saw the beating done, except the cap’n and his mate; and if they’ve done any beating up, you bet they’ve clean forgotten it.”
Harvey’s face looked blanker than before. “Then there isn’t much hope in the law, no matter what happens,” he said.
“Haley and the rest of ’em have got the law,” responded Black. “Haley showed that fellow, Edwards, the law. Don’t you get in the way of it. That’s my advice.”
“All the captains alike?” asked Harvey.
“About a score or so of ’em are downright pirates,” replied Sam Black. “They’re the kind I’ve fell in with, mostly. There’s good ones, too, I suppose—or not so bad.”