Top-Notch Magazine/Volume 57/Number 5/Hatching a Volcano/Chapter 3
CHAPTER III.
OUTSIDE THE LAW.
THE skipper knew the particular waters through which he adroitly steered as well as the native fishermen, upon whose homesteaded keys they had been born and raised. In his unprosperous days Korry had been one of them. He had piloted the first of the government surveyors into the vast uncharted region. Every sand bar, cluttered bayou, and treacherous channel had been his playground. Day and night he could take his shallow-draft launch among the coral reefs and lead the floundering Federal cutter a merry chase through tide run and lagoon, or take safe shelter behind a hundred mangrove-covered islands.
In the next half hour, cut down to quarter speed and obedient to the firm hand on the tiller, the boat was winding quietly through placid waters amid a bewildering maze of green-clad islands. The cutter dared not follow. In all probability it was cruising up and down outside in the Gulf, waiting like a cat at a rat hole for the smuggler to show himself.
“Anywhere near your landing place?” Meech asked when two bells sounded from the forward cabin.
“Not yet.” Korry scowled and spun the wheel quickly, at the same time speeding up the engines. The boat rocked, and its keel scraped upon a bar. Presently they were in deeper water again, and the skipper looked relieved.
“Close shave there!” exclaimed Meech, frowning. “Don't seem to be enough water to float a chip.”
“Tide's almost dead low,” Korry grumbled. “Should have figured that. Ought to have stayed outside another mile before heading in,” he admitted, his tone less optimistic.
The water was clear. The dazzling white bottom could be seen on every side. The channel through which they passed did not seem inches deep; but it was deceiving. The boat crept along.
Presently another bar loomed ahead—a long spit of sand over which an army of fiddler crabs played. Korry avoided it neatly, only to break into a stream of imprecations a second later when the boat grated harshly upon an unseen and unexpected oyster bed. He reversed the screws in an effort to back off. The water boiled under the stern, and the launch twisted and squirmed and shuddered like a harpooned shark; but it refused to move backward.
Three times Korry repeated the performance, his countenance black with wrath, his vitriolic language smothered by the roar of the laboring engines. At last he shut off the gas and glared at Meech as though holding his crew responsible for the disaster.
“Fast aground, are we?” Meech ventured.
“Looks that way, don't it?” Korry retorted with a savageness that awed the engineer-mate. “Tide's lower than I've ever seen it before. Of all the blasted luck!”
Meech gazed speculatively about him. “Safe enough here, aren't we? The cutter can't get in; and when the tide rises, we'll”
“No; the cutter can't get in,” Korry came back, cutting short the other's optimistic assertion; “but she can spot us through that channel off our bow. We're less than a mile from the Gulf. And half an hour after they sight us, knowing we're aground, there'll be a small boat coming after us.”
Meech scowled. “I hadn't thought of that,” he admitted, squinting along the narrow channel that led to open water. “We're right in plain sight, ain't we?”
“Plain as if we were in the open,” Korry declared.
“Maybe the cutter won't get up this far,” Meech argued hopefully. “Chances are we'll get off before”
“Not a chance in the world!” the skipper broke in. “Them Federal birds know most of the channels, even if they can't get far in. Tide won't turn for six hours. Before then” Korry stopped with an imprecation and reached for his glasses, training them upon the channel.
Meech's eyes followed. A boat showed far off at the mouth of the channel; a moment later it had vanished.
“That's her!” Korry snapped. “Ten to one they've spotted us.”
The men waited expectantly. In a few minutes the cutter, returning, was in sight again, moving slowly and bearing closer to shore. Korry continued to level his glasses upon the craft.
“Told you so!” he exclaimed. “They're putting over the small boat. A dozen men filling it.”
“How long'll it take 'em to reach us?” Meech inquired, beginning to exhibit signs of apprehension.
“Half an hour. The tide's running against them.”
Korry, breathing hard, looked about him. Meech waited, wondering what would be his skipper's next move. Something had to be done—and inside the next thirty minutes.
After a moment of deliberation, Korry turned upon his crew. “Got to get rid of our cargo!” he declared. “We're trapped. Stir yourself, Meech! No time to waste now.”
“You mean you'll put the chinks ashore?”
“That's it. Do you suppose I'd wait to have 'em found on board? Got any idea what you'd be up against if our cargo was found? Just five thousand fine and five years in jail for each monkey, that's all; we've twelve aboard. That's sixty thousand dollars and sixty years behind bars. Does it listen good to you?”
“But can you get the chinks off?” Meech inquired. “They're likely to raise a holler and”
“A smuggled chink never hollers; he knows it isn't healthy. Besides, he always follows orders. I'll make 'em think this is the regular landing place,” Korry went on with an evil smile. “They'll be glad enough to wade ashore and hit the tall timber when I hand 'em a few remarks.”
“What's over there?” Meech asked, nodding toward the nearest land from which the sand bar extended.
“An island. Most of it under water at high tide; but it'll answer the purpose. A couple of miles wide at this point.”
“You'll come back after 'em later on?”
“Maybe so; maybe not. It all depends. That cutter knows we've got a parcel of chinks aboard; but they won't find any of 'em in half an hour. Of course they'll suspect we've landed 'em somewhere, but somewhere isn't very definite, and it would take the whole standing army a year to comb over these islands.”
The bow of the launch was in plain sight from the channel, and doubtless under constant surveillance; but the stern was concealed by the tangle of mangroves. It was over the stern that Korry, after a short palaver with the English-speaking Chinaman, led the docile cargo.
The water was shallow, and in single file, after removing their shoes and rolling up their trousers, the Chinamen splashed along to the sand bar and from there gained the higher ground. Meech brought up the rear, nervously fingering a revolver that rested in his coat pocket. He never had any love for his charges. The odds were twelve to two, if the cargo suspected the truth. The thought of that prospect was not inviting.
It was under the rusty coconut palms that Korry, who had led the way ashore, delivered his final instructions. He smiled amiably at the patient and trustful yellow men; smiled to conceal the wrath and disappointment that rankled in his heart. Half his profits were lost, and there was probably more trouble in store for him,
“You savee now?” he impressed upon the leader of the Chinamen. “You in United States here. No more danger. You all safe. You walkee straight ahead three-four miles. Come to New York by and by. Good man he meet you there.”
The leader of the band, after listening attentively, translated the substance of Korry's remarks to his companions. They broke into excited and happy chattering and seemed eager to be on their way. In their childish ignorance how were they to know the truth? New York Chinatown was but a few miles away. The captain of the boat had told them so. Their journey's end was just beyond.
“You no come back here,” Korry warned the leader, as the happy caravan prepared to start off. “No come back. Savee? Government man catchee you. Send back to China.”
The skipper and his mate watched the joyful, unsuspecting Chinese depart. Clad in straw hats and new store clothes they presented a strange and pathetic spectacle as they stumbled along in single file behind their leader and disappeared in the pathless, swampy interior of the island. In half an hour they would be lost. After a day or so of frantic wandering, unable to find fresh water or food, tortured by insects and crazed by hunger and thirst, their doom was inevitable.
Korry looked after his victims with the utmost dispassion. Conscience he had none, where his own welfare was in the balance. Other cargoes had been disposed of in like fashion. Once, when capture threatened him he had, one at a time, flung them overboard. That was better than being caught red-handed.
Korry looked upon a Chinaman as he might upon a case of whisky—a thing to be delivered when delivery was possible, or to be disposed of speedily at the first intimation of danger.
“Lucky we had no wise hop-head in the bunch,” he remarked to Meech as the two waded back to the boat. “I've carried 'em occasionally. Smart guys who've been in this country before and knew the ropes. After being deported they've been smuggled in again. You can't put much over on 'em. They'd have queered my game just now, knowing New York wasn't just on ahead a few miles through the palms.”
Meech, for all his career of villainy, seemed rather shaken at what he had witnessed. The thought of those dozen yellow men marooned to die horribly did not rest lightly in his mind. Killing wasn't so bad in a crisis, but this
Back on the launch again the men set about to clean up, to remove all traces of their former passengers. The ports were opened, the cabin swept clean, a smudge started below deck that would clear the air and at the same time drive away the swarms of mosquitos that were becoming vicious.
Korry was lounging on deck, feet cocked upon the rail, and apparently enjoying his pipe, when the revenue cutter's dinghy, with an officer and a dozen men aboard, swept alongside. A moment later the officer and four men were over the rail.
“Hello! what's the excitement?” Korry asked, regarding the officer with a look that simulated surprise as well as displeasure.
The officer, unimpressed, strode up to where the skipper sat. “Cut out the bluff, Korry!” he snapped. “We've been waiting for you since midnight. Hung yourself on a bar, did you? I'm surprised. Always took you for an able steersman.”
Korry shrugged and leisurely relighted his pipe. “What's that to you?” he inquired.
“Had a report you left Havana last night with twelve passengers. Still aboard, are they?”
“Suppose you find out.”
The officer disappeared below deck; he reappeared a few minutes later with chagrined countenance and stormy eyes. “Put them ashore, did you?”
“Did I?” Korry surveyed his accuser with a challenging sneer.
“Oh, come now! Talk sense! You had a cargo of monkeys aboard when we first sighted you off Palm Key. Where'd they go?”
“Did you look through the lockers? Some of 'em may have crawled into the gas pipes. Always heard a chink was slippery.”
The officer turned to study the nearest shore line, firmly convinced that the aliens had been hurried across the bar and sent inland. It was an old and familiar trick of the threatened smuggler; and it usually worked, for the crew of the Federal cutter were not permitted to land and scour the islands. That task was assigned to the immigration officials ashore.
Korry was known to the Federal agents of the Seminole State as the most daring and resourceful of all Chinese runners. Trap after trap had been laid for him, and the keenest of government hounds had followed his trail; but the wily smuggler always outwitted them. Often, as on this occasion, it was at a distinct loss to himself; nevertheless it meant his safety.
An arrest could not be made without tangible evidence. The fact that Korry had been seen leaving port with his Celestials, that he had attempted to evade pursuit, and that the authorities were positive he had disposed of his contraband, could not be held sufficient to condemn him. The smuggler had to be caught red-handed before the machinery of the law began to grind out the inevitable penalty.
The officer knew that; so did Korry. And so, for that matter, did Meech, who came up from the engine room and squatted on the roof of the after cabin, an appreciative listener to the exchange of pleasantries between the law and the lawbreaker.
“We'll get you and your cargo together one of these days, Korry,” the baffled officer predicted, “and you'll spend the remainder of your happy hours making little stones out of big ones.”
“I'm not worrying about it,” the smuggler observed tranquilly.
“You've given us more trouble than all the other chink runners put together. It won't last much longer.”
“Well, I never trouble folks who don't trouble me. I mind my own business and thank others to do the same.”
“I suppose you come up here regularly for the fishing, eh?”
“Plenty of tarpon hereabouts. If you've got nothing better to do, I'll rig up some tackle and we'll go after 'em. I'm at liberty until the tide comes in.”
“Expect to pick up your cargo again when we leave, do you?”
“I hope to be in Havana before dark,” Korry replied.
“We'll keep you company for a time.”
“Suit yourself! I've no objections.”
The officer, who was determined that Korry should not again take on his landed passengers, kept his word. He and some of his men remained on board until noon, when the tide came back high enough to float the stranded launch. More than that, once the launch was under way, Korry was ordered to take the dinghy in tow and head through the channel toward the cutter which lay at anchor in the open Gulf.
Later, after listening to a few choice remarks from the officer, Korry was permitted to depart. The cutter trailed him for two hours, until it was evident that the smuggler did not intend to double cross the officials and that he proposed to make Havana; then the Federal boat turned back to resume its regular patrol.
The officer in charge, smarting under the ruse that had been played upon him, sent a long wireless message in code to a government representative in Havana. The nefarious activities of one Jud Korry, smuggler of Chinese, were becoming intolerable; an end must be put to them. His unchecked operations were a reflection upon the efficiency of the immigration authorities, and some measure, however desperate, must be taken to thwart the smuggler.
Korry, naturally, was far from pleased at the misadventure of the morning, and the thought of not being able to collect on a “landing receipt,” which would have been given him had the dozen saffron-hued passengers been put ashore at the designated bayou, rankled in his heart. It was not often he had failed. Still, he and his boat were safe, and that was some consolation. Better luck next time!
He was not afraid to make a report to the smuggling tong with whom he did business. The prudence of a chink runner did not deter their operations in the least. A certain loss and risk were expected. Korry and his speedboat were necessities; that he was unable to make good on every transaction was a natural conclusion. It was to be regretted, of course, but not held against him.
So long as the Chinese of the United States needed their cousins to relieve a labor shortage, just so long did the smuggling tong prosper. If two thirds of the total aliens shipped across the Caribbean reached the States in safety, the tong and all those employed by it were content. What happened to the unfortunate one third, whether caught and deported, or marooned on a desert key to starve, or dumped overboard for shark meat, mattered little. The greater the loss, the higher the rate exacted from the consignee.
At dusk, an hour out of Havana, Korry sighted a trim, gleaming white yacht with a Tampa Yacht Club pennant fluttering at its bow. He studied her closely through his glasses.
“The Flamingo of Tampa,” he announced at length. “Wonder what she's doing here?”
“Pretty-lookin' baby, ain't she?” remarked Meech.
“Belongs to Newberry.” Korry knew most of the pleasure craft that, during the winter season, plied the Cuban and Florida waters. He recalled that Caleb Pruett, an old acquaintance, was her skipper, and decided to make a call on him ashore.