"To be sure I do," answered the other, a trifle impatiently. "It's dope. Most any one would know that. Didn't you ever smell it before?"
"Dope!" Once before had Alaric heard the word during that eventful day, and he had even used it himself, without knowing its meaning. Now it flashed across him. Dope was opium, and it was to form the sloop's cargo.
The passage they had been traversing ended in an open court, so foreign in its every detail that it appeared like a bit from some Chinese city lifted bodily and transported to the New World. The dingy buildings surrounding it were liberally provided with balconies, galleries, and odd little projecting windows, all of which were occupied by Chinamen gazing with languid interest at the busy scene below. From most of the galleries hung rows of gayly colored paper lanterns, which gave the place a very quaint and festive aspect.
On the pavement were dozens of other Chinamen, with here and there a demure-looking little woman and a few children. Heaps of queer-looking luggage, each piece done up in matting and fastened with narrow strips of rattan, were piled in the corners. At one side was an immense stove, or rather a huge affair of brick, containing a score or more of little charcoal stoves, each fitted for the cooking of a single kettle of rice or pot of tea. About this were gathered a number of men preparing their evening meal. Many of the others were comparing certificates and photographs, a proceeding that puzzled Alaric more than a little, for he was so ignorant of the affairs of his own country that he knew nothing of its Chinese Exclusion Law.
He began to learn something about it right there, however, and subsequently discovered that while Chinese gentlemen and scholars are as freely admitted to travel, study, or reside in the United States as are similar classes from any other nation, the lower grades of Chinese, rated as laborers, are forbidden by law to set foot on American soil.
Many thousands of Chinese laborers had come to the United States before the exclusion law was passed, and these, by registering and allowing themselves to be photographed for future identification, obtain certificates which, while not permitting them to return if they once leave the country, allow them to remain here undisturbed. Any Chinaman found without such a protection is liable to be arrested and sent back to his own land.
These certificates, therefore, are so valuable that there are plenty of Chinamen who want to buy them, and thus get into the United States.
This, then, is what many of those whom Alaric and Bonny now encountered were doing, for the place into which they had come was a Chinese hotel in which all newly arrived Chinamen found shelter while waiting for work or for a chance to smuggle themselves into the United States, which is what ninety-nine out of every one hundred of them proposed to do if possible.
As the lads stood together on the edge of this novel scene, while their guide went from group to group making a brief announcement, Alaric, seizing this first opportunity for acquiring definite information, asked,
"What on earth are we here for, Bonny?" asked Alaric.