Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 3).pdf/418

 of this boat was in no manner connected with the agreement between the parties, or their rights and duties thereunder, or the claim of the interveners for the earnings of the boat. So far as such connection is concerned, the case would have been the same if they had seized other property belonging to the defendant. By the seizure of the Eclipse they violated no provision of their agreement. They invaded the defendant's rights as owner. But those rights were not secured to him by the contract. He obtained them by virtue of his purchase of the boat at the marshal’s sale. The agreement gave him no title to the boat. By it the interveners did not agree to defend him in that title; nor did they promise not to molest him in his ownership. They merely agreed to furnish him certain money to enable him to buy the vessel, and thereafter he was to run the boat in their interests until their advances and their old claims against the boat were fully paid. Whatever rights he enjoyed as owner the parties left to the protection of the same law which protects all persons in the ownership of property. The act of the interveners in converting the boat had a twofold effect,—it affected the defendant Braithwaite’s rights as owner, and it affected his interests under the contract. So far as it invaded his rights as owner, the act had no connection with the rights of the parties under the contract. What rights of the defendant under the agreement did it interfere with? This brings us to the second counterclaim. It is for the loss of a year’s wages which it is claimed defendant would have earned had he run the boat as captain under the agreement. But the interveners nowhere in the writing agree to pay the defendant any stipulated wages. He is merely to receive $150 out of the earnings of the boat. It cannot be said that the parties intended, if defendant ran the boat at aloss, that they should nevertheless pay this salary out of their own means. Nor is there any time specified during which defendant is to receive this salary. If he can recover a year's pay, why not two years’ pay as well? This claim is founded in a mistaken construction of the agreement. The interveners did not hire defendant to run his