human
How are they to know? the sea-lawyer asked in answer to Bub's previous question.
gpt
Here we are in forbidden water. How do they know but what we came here of our own accord? Here we are, fifteen hundred skins in the hold. How do they, know whether we got them in open water or in the closed sea? Don't you see, Bub, the evidence is all against us. If you caught a man with his pockets full of apples like those which grow on your tree, and if you caught him in your tree besides, what'd you think if he told you he couldn't help it, and had just been sort of blown there, and that anyway those apples came from some other tree--what'd you think, eh?
human
You'd rather be dead than go to Siberia, one of the boat-pullers said.
gpt
They put you into the salt-mines and work you till you die. Never see daylight again. Why, I've heard tell of one fellow that was chained to his mate, and that mate died. And they were both chained together! And if they send you to the quicksilver mines you get salivated. I'd rather be hung than salivated.
human
Wot's salivated?
gpt
Why, the quicksilver gets into your blood; I think that's the way. And your gums all swell like you had the scurvy, only worse, and your teeth get loose in your jaws. And big ulcers form, and then you die horrible. The strongest man can't last long a-mining quicksilver.
human
A pad piziness, the boat-steerer reiterated, dolorously, in the silence which followed.
gpt
A pad piziness. I vish I was in Yokohama. Eh? Vot vas dot?
human
All hands on deck and make sail!