Shortly after this the score of long-queued passengers arrived with their odd-looking packages of personal belongings, were taken aboard in silence, and stowed in the hold until Alaric wondered if they were piled on top of one another like sticks of cord-wood.
Then the mooring-lines were cast off, and the Fancy drifted noiselessly out of the slip with the ebbing tide. Once clear of it the jib was hoisted, and she began to glide out of the harbor before a gentle, off-shore breeze.
CHAPTER X
PUGET SOUND SMUGGLERS
The great landlocked body of salt water known as Puget Sound, penetrating for nearly one hundred miles the northwestern corner of Washington, the Northwest State, is justly termed a smuggler's paradise. It pierces the land in every direction with a perfect net-work of inlets, channels, and bays lined with endless miles of forest, frowning cliffs, and snuggly hidden harbors. The upper end of the Sound, where its width entitles it to be called a gulf, is filled with an archipelago of rugged islands of all sizes and shapes, thinly settled, and offering innumerable secure hiding-places for small boats. Here and there along the shores of the Sound are Indian reservations uncleared and unoccupied save by dwindling remnants of the once populous coast tribes. These Indians, though retaining their tribal names among themselves, are all known to the whites under the one designation of "Siwash," a corruption of the French sauvage.
On the eastern side of the Sound are the important American cities of Seattle and Tacoma; while at its extreme southern end stands Olympia, Washington's capital. On its western side, and just north of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, that connects the Sound with the ocean, is located the Canadian city of Victoria, from which all the smuggling operations of these waters are conducted.
From Victoria to the American island of San Juan on the east, the largest of the archipelago already mentioned, the distance is only twelve miles, while it is but twenty miles across the Strait of Fuca to the American mainland on the south. These two points being so near at hand, it is easy enough to run a boat-load of opium or Chinamen over to either of them in a night. For such a passage each Chinaman is compelled to pay from fifteen to twenty dollars, while opium yields a profit of four or five dollars a pound. Smuggling from Victoria is thus such a lucrative business that many men of easy conscience are engaged in it.
Both the island route and that by way of the strait present the serious drawbacks of having their landing-places so remote from railroads and cities that, though the frontier has been passed, there is still a dangerous stretch of territory to be crossed before either of these can be reached. In view of this fact, it occurred to one of the more enterprising among the Victoria smugglers to undertake a greater risk for the sake of greater profits, and run a boat nearly one hundred miles up the Sound to some point in near vicinity to one of its large cities.
He had just the craft for the purpose, and finally secured a captain who, having recently lost a schooner through seizure by the American authorities for unlawful sealing in Bering Sea, was reckless and desperate enough for the new venture. As this man undertook the run for a share of the profits, he was inclined to reduce all expenses to their very lowest limits, and had already made a number of highly successful trips. Although the fare to each Chinaman by this new line was twenty-five dollars, it offered such superior advantages as to be liberally patronized, and the boat was always crowded.