"Remember, Louis, you only received $75 a month in San Francisco. Here the Brotherhood provides every man with his food, his clothes, and his house. Wages are merely the inducement used to satisfy each individual that labour may still be done by free contract, not by force." "Well, it'll take a hundred a month to satisfy me," was the stolid reply. "I didn't come here to cook. I could do that in the old hell we lived in. I came here to do better and bigger things. I can do them, too----" "But we've fixed the salary of the general manager at only seventy-five dollars a month, and you demand a hundred?" "I do, and if the general manager prefers my job, I'll trade with you and guarantee to do your work better than it's being done." "Yes, you will!" old Tom growled, as he leaned over Barbara and whispered to Norman. "Make it thirty dollars a month, and if he don't go to work--leave him to me, I'll beat him till he does it." "No, we can't manage it that way, Tom. We must try to satisfy him." "Hit's a hold-up, I tell ye--highway robbery--the triflin' son of a gun! Don't you say so, miss?" Tom appealed earnestly to Barbara. "We must have cooks, Tom--and we want everybody to be happy." "Make him cook, make him--that's his business--I'd do it if I knowed how. He's got to take what we give 'im. He can't git off this island. He enlisted for five years. If he deserts, court-martial and shoot him." In spite of old Tom's bitter protest, Norman and Barbara succeeded in persuading the chief cook to accept eighty-five dollars a month--an advance of ten dollars over the highest wages he had ever received before. When the eighteen assistant cooks lined up for the settlement of their wages a new problem of unexpected proportions was presented. They had listened attentively to the case of the chef, and their chosen orator presented his argument in brief but emphatic words: "We demand the exact wages you have voted the chef." "Well, what do ye think er that?" old Tom groaned to Norman. "Hit's jist like I told ye. Hit's a hold-up." "We must persuade them, Tom," the young leader replied. "Let me persuade 'em!" the old miner pleaded. "How?" Barbara asked, with a twinkle in her brown eyes. "I'll line 'em up agin that wall and trim their hair with my six-shooter. I won't hurt 'em. But when I finish the job I'll guarantee they'll do what I tell 'em without any back talk. You folks take a walk and make me Chief Justice fer an hour, and when you come back we'll have peace and plenty. Jest try it now, and don't you butt in. Let me persuade 'em!" Norman shook his head. "Keep still, Tom! We must reason with them." "Ye 're wastin' yer breath," the miner drawled in disgust. "Don't you think, comrades," Norman began, in persuasive tones, "that your demands are rather high?"