"I much question if Captain Truck will be disposed to reason so vaguely.
In the first place, he will be apt to say that his ship was regularly
cleared, and that he had authority to sail; that in permitting the officer
to search his vessel, while in British waters, he did all that could be
required of him, the law not compelling him to be either a bailiff or an
informer; that the process issued was to take Davis, and not to detain the
Montauk; that, once out of British waters, American law governs, and the
English functionary became an intruder of whom he had every right to rid
himself, and that the process by which he got his power to act at all
became impotent the instant it was without the jurisdiction under which it
was granted."

"I think you will find the captain of yonder cruiser indisposed to admit
this doctrine."

"That is not impossible; men often preferring abuses to being thwarted in
their wishes. But the captain of yonder cruiser might as well go on board
a foreign vessel of war, and pretend to a right to command her, in virtue
of the commission by which he commands his own ship, as to pretend to find
reason or law in doing what you seem to predict."

"I rejoice to hear that the poor man cannot now be torn from his wife!"
exclaimed Eve.

"You then incline to the doctrine of Mr. Blunt, Miss Effingham?" observed
the other controversialist a little reproachfully. "I fear you make it a
national question."

"Perhaps I have done what all seem to have done, permitted sympathy to get
the better of reason. And yet it would require strong proof to persuade me