"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.
"From the little I could hear I expect that the Madrona will keep watch for the smugglers in the open waters of the Sound. The slough won't be guarded at all, in that case, and I'm going to wait here till towards morning; then, if nothing passes, we can put into the bay, and see if there are any signs of anybody having been on the trail the last few hours."
"Not likely."