ns of being a fishing-boat, and a youth with a large
round face of a heavy brown mahogany color was sitting lazily at the
edge of the wharf, when Thomas Walton made his appearance. They both got
into the boat and pushed from the dock. It was growing quite dusk. The
harbor lights were already lit.

"You told them, Tom?"

"Yes."

"What did they think?"

"I hardly know. I wish now I hadn't gone near them at all."

"Didn't they treat you white?"

"I don't know."

"You don't?"

"Well, they didn't seem to believe what I said, anyway. And there's
something else I don't like the looks of."

"What else?"

"Oh, nothing much. I think I was followed down to the wharf. Look over
there. Can you see? Is that a man or a woman in that boat there--the one
that just came around the stern of the _Umatilla_?"

"A man."

"No, the other. You can't see now. She got down low the moment she saw
me looking at her. Give her another haul. There; that'll do." The last
remark referred to the sail which the Indian had hoisted as Tom was
speaking.

"Why, Jo, where did that boat go?" he continued a moment afterward,
looking back among the shipping.

The skiff was gone.

A couple of hours later they were cutting across Puget Sound before a
fresh wind, with the slap and drench of the rising waves against their
bows. The timbered uplands were darkly visible a mile or so ahead, and
Tom called out to his companion in the bow:

"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 inlan