Explore "The Lost Poacher" by Jack London on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"But they won't take excuses. You're across the line, and that's enough. They'll take you. In you go, Siberia and the salt-mines. And as for Uncle Sam, why, what's he to know about it? Never a word will get back to the States. 'The _Mary Thomas_,' the papers will say, 'the _Mary Thomas_ lost with all hands. Probably in a typhoon in the Japanese seas. ' That's what the papers will say, and people, too. In you go, Siberia and the salt-mines. Dead to the world and kith and kin, though you live fifty years."
In such manner John Lewis, commonly known as the "sea-lawyer," settled the matter out of hand.