Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ Every master or owner who refuses or neglects to make payment in manner hereinbefore mentioned without sufficient cause shall pay to the seaman a sum equal to one day's pay for each and every day during which payment is delayed beyond the respective periods.' We assume, not only, as we have said, that the claim of offset was not established, but the more doubtful proposition that it did not furnish sufficient cause for the delay. ”

“ Seeing that the petitioner was held as if the articles still were in force, the question arises how the wages could be estimated at more than the articles fixed. The so-called port pay which added a dollar a day for food was an arrangement altogether outside the articles, and the demand for it and the allowance of it not only raised a new question, but intensified the doubt as to how it could be said that the voyage was not ended and that the penalty could be applied. ”

“ On the return to San Francisco within the time the libellant was paid all that was due to him, and he himself lays his employment as beginning in San Francisco on September 25, after the voyage described in the articles was at an end. No new articles had been signed, and it would seem on the allegations of the libel, coupled with the admitted facts, that the libellant's legal standing was under an oral contract for a few days in port while hoping to be reshipped. It seems to us a very strong thing to say that any fair construction of the facts brings the case within the act. ”