foresail! Run down the flying jib! Clew up the foretopsail! And aft here
and swing on to the main-sheet!"

The _Mary Thomas_ ran into the eye of the wind, lost headway, and
fell to courtesying gravely to the long seas rolling up from the west.

The cruiser steamed a little nearer and lowered a boat. The sealers
watched in heartbroken silence. They could see the white bulk of the
boat as it was slacked away to the water, and its crew sliding aboard.
They could hear the creaking of the davits and the commands of the
officers. Then the boat sprang away under the impulse of the oars, and
came toward them. The wind had been rising, and already the sea was too
rough to permit the frail craft to lie alongside the tossing schooner;
but watching their chance, and taking advantage of the boarding ropes
thrown to them, an officer and a couple of men clambered aboard.
The boat then sheered off into safety and lay to its oars, a young
midshipman, sitting in the stern and holding the yoke-lines, in charge.

The officer, whose uniform disclosed his rank as that of second
lieutenant in the Russian navy, went below with the captain of the
_Mary Thomas_ to look at the ship's papers. A few minutes later he
emerged, and upon his sailors removing the hatch-covers, passed down
into the hold with a lantern to inspect the salt piles. It was a goodly
heap which confronted him--fifteen hundred fresh skins, the season's
catch; and under the circumstances he could have had but one conclusion.

"I am very sorry," he said, in broken English to the sealing captain,
when he again came on deck, "but it is my duty, in the name of the tsar,
to seize your vessel as a poacher caught with fresh skins in the closed
sea. The penalty, as you may know, is confiscation and imprisonment."