"How about robbing the government?"
"Oh, that don't count. What's a few dollars more or less to a government as rich as ours?"
"Which is saying that while you wouldn't steal from any one person, you don't consider it wicked to steal from sixty millions of people. Also, that it is perfectly right to rob a government because it is rich. Wouldn't it be just as right to rob Mr. Vanderbilt or Mr. Astor, or even my—I mean any other millionaire? They are rich, and wouldn't feel the loss."
"I never looked at it in that way," replied Bonny, thoughtfully.
"I thought not," rejoined Alaric. "And there are some other points about this business that I don't believe you ever looked at, either. Did you ever stop to think that every Chinaman you help over the line at once sets to work to throw one of your own countrymen out of a job, and so robs him of his living?"
"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 McNeits Island."