are very severe; but when we
note that ninety thousand gallons of confiscated whisky were seized in
godly Massachusetts in one year, we can infer the difficulties in the
Maine law of the Celestials. The custom is for a hong, a smuggler in a
Chinese junk, to draw up beside the English contrabandist and transfer
the cargo in the outer harbor.

It is afternoon, and the great slumbering ocean breathes, but not with
the quick, palpitating tide of the Atlantic. The smuggler sits on the
oleaginous sea, tinged to ochreous yellow, waiting for evening and the
confederate junk. The tropic twilight comes on swift red-golden wings
that fan the vivid stars to brightness, and the rising tide breaks the
surface into wrinkles of phosphorescent fire. High over head is the
wide, unbroken canopy of the Pacific sky, and the gush of a larger
moon than ours fills all the sphere with splendor as the huge ship
stirs lazily in its Narcissus poise over its own reflection. There
is a reddish glow in the western horizon over Hong-Kong, a fainter
glimmer west by south over Macao, and farther west and north the
reflected glories of the sacred city of Canton. The three make a
semicircular crescent, like a great floating moon, on the horizon. A
coral islet juts out between the cities under which the huge smuggler
affects to play "I spy"--only affects, for she does not care for the
authorities she bribes nor the laws she despises.

But the wind draws up the curtain of cloud by strands of rainy
cordage, and men aloft are loosing the reefed topsail, bracing the
after-yards and setting them for a run in on the larboard tack. They
handle gaskets, bunt-lines, leech-lines, fix her best bib and spencer,
like a country girl for a run up to town. Men are swarming about the
yards and rigging. That is not all: Lascars, stevedores, supercargoes,
the hong merchants, agents, are all busy breaking bulk. The India
opium is covered with petals of the plant and stowed in chests lined
with hides and covered with gunny; and these cases are locked in by
stays, spars and bulkheads to prevent jamming. Helter-skelter and
confusion alow and aloft, on the yards, rigging, deck, between decks
and under hatches. The captain and purser are gloating over the sycee
silver, for the Chinese government is as jealous of its exportation
as of the importation of opium; and the sky and the sea are dark and
angry. In a slovenly way the sails are trimmed, and she edges clumsily
around the po