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Read Ebook: Harper's Round Table May 21 1895 by Various
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Ebook has 532 lines and 32937 words, and 11 pages
"Well, we couldn't exactly be sure; but Jo seemed to think that she had come from the slough--that was what set us to thinking she must be a smuggler."
"Have you told anybody about this?"
"No."
"Don't. How about this Indian boy, this Siwash?"
"He hasn't said a word about it to any one. I made him keep it quiet till I had told you."
"Sure no one else knows?"
"No one; at least no one but the man in the outer office here."
"What did you tell him for?" the Chief asked, with sudden vexation.
"He wouldn't let me in till I told him what I wanted; he said you were busy."
At this moment the door opened and a man in uniform entered.
"You may go now," said the Chief, with a preoccupied look, to the boy; "you had better go right home, and next time carry a light yourself. Good-evening."
"I am sorry you let the boy go," the deputy began, as the door closed; "we may need him for evidence. But here's the Captain."
A tall gentleman, in the uniform of the United States navy, entered the room at this moment. "I've been having a word with your salmon-fisher," he said, "and I think he's telling the truth. I'll catch them to-night when they're getting back north, and give them more light in Puget Sound than they will find altogether convenient. Where was it he saw them now?"
"I don't think the boy said," the deputy answered. "Did he tell you?" and he turned to his superior.
"Yes, he did, now I recollect."
"Was it in the main channel, or below the slough to the inside of the island?"
"In the outer channel; it was too large a boat to get through the slough."
"Why, I thought he said it was a sailing sloop," mused the Captain, turning to the deputy.
"No; the boy told me distinctly," the Chief replied, "that it was a much larger vessel, and that she passed him in the outer channel; though candidly, as to her carrying no light, we must remember that boys sometimes have wonderful imaginations."
"Then we'll keep the main channel;" and the Captain left the room.
Down among the ships in the harbor a small boat was moored. It had all the unmistakable signs of being a fishing-boat, and a youth with a large round face of a heavy brown mahogany color was sitting lazily at the edge of the wharf, when Thomas Walton made his appearance. They both got into the boat and pushed from the dock. It was growing quite dusk. The harbor lights were already lit.
"You told them, Tom?"
"Yes."
"What did they think?"
"I hardly know. I wish now I hadn't gone near them at all."
"Didn't they treat you white?"
"I don't know."
"You don't?"
"Well, they didn't seem to believe what I said, anyway. And there's something else I don't like the looks of."
"What else?"
"A man."
"No, the other. You can't see now. She got down low the moment she saw me looking at her. Give her another haul. There; that'll do." The last remark referred to the sail which the Indian had hoisted as Tom was speaking.
"Why, Jo, where did that boat go?" he continued a moment afterward, looking back among the shipping.
The skiff was gone.
A couple of hours later they were cutting across Puget Sound before a fresh wind, with the slap and drench of the rising waves against their bows. The timbered uplands were darkly visible a mile or so ahead, and Tom called out to his companion in the bow:
"I say, Jo, I'm going to tack for the inner channel, and wait in the slough. I have been thinking this thing out, and I've got an idea in my head. I didn't tell the man at the Custom-house about the landing at the rocks."
"You didn't?" came a sleepy voice from the darkness.
"No; I was too confused at first, and afterwards I thought I wouldn't, anyway."
A mile up this narrow channel, or slough, as shallow places of the kind are called on the Pacific coast, there was a small bay, almost hidden by the vast overhanging fir-trees. On one side the shore was steep and rocky, but on the other there was a small strip of very convenient beach, where the boys had landed three or four times to mend their seine. The last time they had been there, Jo, in the spirit of exploration, had pushed his way into the thick woods, and a little way back had come upon a faint trail, which, after making a detour, they found led up to the steep rocks on the other side of the little bay. They never took the trouble to follow it inland.
"Place where the lumbermen land," Jo had remarked upon this occasion, pointing to the trunk of a cedar near the edge. There was a slightly worn place in the bark where a ship's rope had been fastened.
Afterwards they had remembered that the island was part of an Indian reservation, where no lumberman had any right to touch the timber.
Until the incident of the night before they had, however, given this no thought. But it had occurred to Tom then that the mysterious trail in the uninhabited island might possibly have some connection with the strange vessel.
"What are the customs officers going to do?" Jo asked.
"Not likely."
"Well, I'm not so sure of that--at all events we'll wait here through the night, and see if anything does happen."
"But if it isn't an opium smuggler at all; if it's a--a--"
"A what?" Tom asked shortly, familiar with the other's superstitious nature.
"Have we the gun?" said Jo, changing the subject.
"I don't know."
"Yes, it's here," answered the Indian, rummaging for it among a lot of odds and ends at the bow. "I wonder if it's--"
"Don't bang it off into me to find out if it is."
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