“are you any good as a shot?”
“Not with a thing like that,” replied the Captain. “I can hit a man with a revolver at ten paces, and that’s all the good shooting I want. Put that thing down and don’t be fooling with it.”
“It’s not loaded,” replied Harman, who had opened the breech.
“And it’s not likely to be,” replied the other, “for there’s no ammunition on board and no need for it. If we’re caught, there must be no fighting.”
“Why, I thought you was a fighting man,” said Harman, putting the rifle back. “You have the name for it.”
“And so I am, when fighting is to be had on the square; but there’s fighting and fighting. Can’t you see, if we were caught tinkering at some cable we had no right to be meddling with, and if we were chased by some gunboat, and if we were to fight and draw blood—can’t you see we’d be hanged without benefit of clergy? No, I never fight against the law. Never have and never will.”
“Suppose a cruiser overhauled her when we was at work?” said Harman.
“Well, what’s easier to say than that we were sent to mend? We are a sure-enough cable ship, and how’s a cruiser to know whether the cable we are fishing for or tinkering with isn’t broken? Oh, no; you may make your mind easy on that. Our position is sound and safe, on the outside. Inside it’s as rotten as punk.”
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