into the country have to have a certificate bearing his picture?” asked Tom. “Seems to me I’ve read that.”
“Perfectly true,” replied Mr. Chillingworth, “but it’s easy enough for men of Lake’s stripe to fake such certificates. After the men have worked at the mines a while, they leave there and mingle with their countrymen in the Chinatowns of any large Eastern or Western city. If any one asks questions, all they have to do is to show their certificates. As for the pictures, I guess one does for all. Every Chinaman looks pretty much alike.”
“That’s a fact,” agreed Mr. Dacre, “but all this must take a lot of money to engineer. Who provides the funds?”
“Ah, that’s a mystery. I’ve heard that a big syndicate is in it. It must pay tremendously. You see, the Chinamen will pay all the way from two hundred to a thousand dollars to be landed safely in the country. Lake, if he manages things right, can bring in as many as two hundred at a time. You see for yourself what that means – sixty thousand dollars at one fell swoop.”
“Phew!” whistled Mr. Dacre, “no wonder desperate men will take desperate chances for such rewards. But you mentioned an island from which Lake brings the men. Where is it?”
“That’s pure speculation,” rejoined Mr. Chillingworth. “The only reason for presuming that there is an island on which the Chinamen live till they can be run into the country is this: It is not probable that a schooner like Lake’s can run over to China. Her trips, in fact, rarely occupy more than a month or so. But as for the location of the island, I am as much in the dark as you are.”
“Hark!” cried Tom suddenly. “Isn’t that the sound of oars?”
“It is,” agreed Mr. Dacre, after listening a minute. “They’ve got a lantern in the boat, too. See, it is coming this way.”
Sure enough, they could now perceive a light coming over the water, evidently borne in the boat the splash of whose oars they had heard. On through the darkness came the moving light. Presently it stopped not far from the sloop. The occupants of the latter could see now that three men were in the little craft. One, a tall man with a sailor cap on his head, another, a short, thickset fellow, and the third man was undoubtedly a Chinaman. It was too dark to make out features, but the lantern light shone sufficiently on the occupants of the small boat for their general outlines to be apparent.
The Oriental member of the party wore loose flowing garb. On his head was a skull-cap surmounted by a button.
But after their first surprise our friends on the sloop turned their attention from the craft and its occupants to the freight with which the little boat was loaded. So far as they could make out, these were big canvas sacks about five feet or more in length. There seemed to be more than one of them. The boat rode very low in the water, apparently; whatever the freight was, it was fairly heavy.
As the oarsmen ceased their motions and the boat came to a stop, the men in her arose and the two white men laid hold of one of the bundles at either end. They lifted it, and before the party on the sloop had any idea of what they were going to do, they had swung their burden two or three times and then cast it out into the water. It sank with a sullen splash. As it did so, the Chinaman raised his hands above his head and seemed to be uttering some prayer, or invoking some deity.
But a sudden noise in their midst caused the party on the sloop to turn sharply.
For some inexplicable reason the mask-faced Fu was groveling on the deck. His lips were murmuring oriental words in a rapid sing-song. In his voice, and, above all, in his attitude, there was every indication of abject terror.
Mr. Chillingworth stepped over to him and shook him not too roughly by the shoulder.
“Fu, Fu, what’s the trouble?” he exclaimed.
“Oh, Missa Chillingworth, me welly much flaid,” stammered the Mongolian, still evidently in the bonds of fear.
“But why, Fu – why? Is it because of what they are doing in that boat?”
“Yes, Missa Chillingworth. Dey be deadee men in dose sacks. Dey dlop them in the sea for gib dem belial.”
“They are burying them you mean?”
“Yes, missa. De Chinaman he allee same plest. He say players for dem. Plenty bad for Chinaman to see.”
“And for any one else, too, I should think,” commented Mr. Chillingworth. “It is evident enough now what those fellows are up to. Some Chinamen have died during the voyage and they are burying them in this cove. Packed together as they are, it’s surprising more of them are not killed.”
A slight shudder passed through the boys as they heard. There was something uncanny, something awe-inspiring about this night burial in the lonely cove by the light of the lantern.
Presently the last of the grewsome freight of the small boat was consigned to the waves, and she was pulled back to the schooner.
“We must set a good watch to-night,” said Mr. Chillingworth. “It is important to know if those fellows land anybody.”
The others agreed. Accordingly, it fell to Tom and Jack to watch the first part of the night, while the remaining hours were carefully watched through by Mr. Dacre and Mr. Chillingworth. Fu was too badly scared by the sight of the burial of his countrymen to be of much use. It appeared, according to his belief, that if a Chinaman gazed on another’s burial without announcing himself, he would be haunted forever by the ghosts of the buried ones.
The watch was kept faithfully, and carefully, but nothing occurred apparently to mar the silence of the dark hours. Yet, when the first streaks of gray began to show above the pine-clad shoulders of the coast hills, the dim dawn showed them that no schooner was there.
CHAPTER VI.
MR. DACRE SUSTAINS AN ACCIDENT
During breakfast the mysterious vanishing of the schooner was discussed, with what eager interest may be imagined. They could not understand why the noise of her incoming anchor chain had not been observed. Nor yet, why the creak of the blocks and the rattle of the rigging as her sails were hoisted, had not been heard. It was Tom who solved the first part of the puzzle.
Coming on deck after breakfast, the lad found the sun sparkling down on the dancing waters, and flashing brightly on the white-capped wave tops. Looking in the direction in which he was sure the schooner had lain the night before, he perceived a dark object bobbing about on the water. It looked like a barrel. And so, on investigation, it proved to be. When the sloop was sculled alongside by her big sixteen-foot oars, they found that an anchor chain had been made fast to the keg. The schooner had silently slipped her moorings in the night. The fact that the keg was fast to her anchor chain would make it an easy matter, however, for her to pick it up again at her leisure.
“Does that mean that they saw us, do you think?” asked Mr. Dacre.
Mr. Chillingworth shook his head.
“If they had seen us,” he said rather grimly, “I hardly think we should have all been here this morning. At any rate, that is the reputation that Bully Banjo has. He has an unpleasant way of disposing of any one he thinks may have spied on him.”
“I don’t see how in the twentieth century such a rascal can be permitted at large,” said Mr. Dacre angrily. “He ought to be captured and his just deserts dealt out to him.”
“Well,” said Mr. Chillingworth, “the
