“I don’t understand,” said Henry.
“Oh, sailors go from boat to boat. They are a roving lot, and it is seldom that a ship’s master can keep the same crew any length of time. But there’s something so attractive about service on the Orient that men seldom leave her. It isn’t because of the high tone of life aboard, either, for they’re a rummy lot on that ship. We figure they are all in on the opium business, and that the captain lets them share in the profits. That’s the only explanation we can see for the situation.”
“Why don’t you stop the Orient before she gets into the harbor and search her?” asked Henry.
“We would do that, but her master is foxy. He has a habit of appearing in the harbor hours before he is expected. He’s here before we know he’s anywhere near New York. There’s no use searching him after he’s in the harbor, for he probably passes his stuff out to fishermen or boatmen before he reaches the Narrows. Likely he drops it overboard, with buoys to mark it, so his confederates can go out in small boats and pick it up. We figure he must do it this way, for the custom guards have watched his ship at her pier as a cat watches a mouse-hole, and they can never get a thing that is suspicious.”
“Why don’t you get a compass bearing on the Orient while she is at sea?” asked Henry. “Then you could steam out and intercept her.”
“Sounds easy, but she won’t answer radio calls. That’s another suspicious thing about her. When she does give her position, as she sometimes does to her owners, we have found that she almost always gives a false one. She’s nearer port by a good deal than she says she is. We’ve tried lots of times to intercept her, and that’s the way she fools us. If we had nothing else to do but catch the Orient, of course we’d get her. But you’ve seen enough in your brief stay aboard the Iroquois to know that the Coast Guard is a pretty busy organization. We don’t have the time necessary to devote to a little matter like this. Yet this smuggling ought to be stopped.”
Henry was all afire with the problem of helping his captain catch the crooked commander of the Orient. He could think of nothing else all that day. Finally an idea popped into his head. “Captain Hardwick,” he said, as soon as he could find the commander, “wouldn’t the Navy Yard wireless help us out?”
“Help us out? What do you mean?”
“Why, to catch the Orient, to be sure.”
The commander laughed. “Are you still thinking about that?” he said.