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.
"To find out how many passengers are ticketed for to-night's boat and get them started," was the reply.
"You don't mean that our passengers are to be Chinamen?"
"Yes, of course. I thought I told you so first thing this morning when you asked me what the sloop carried."
"No. You only said passengers and freight."
"I ought to have said 'chinks.' But what's the odds? Chinks are passengers, aren't they?"
"Do you mean Chinamen? Are 'chinks' Chinamen?"
"Well," said Alaric, who had been on the coast long enough to imbibe all a Californian's contempt for natives of the Flowery Kingdom, "if I'd known that chinks meant Chinamen, and dope meant opium, I should have been too much ashamed of what the _Fancy_ carried ever to tell any one about it."
"I hope you won't," responded Bonny. "There isn't any necessity for you to that I know of."
"But I have already. There was a man on the wharf while I was getting aired who asked me what our cargo was. Just to see what he would say I told him 'chinks and dope,' though I hadn't the slightest idea of what either of them meant."
"My! but that's bad!" cried Bonny, with an anxious look on his face. "I only hope he wasn't a beak. They've been watching us pretty sharp lately, and I know the old man is in a regular tizzy wizzy for fear we'll get nabbed."
Before Alaric could ask why they should be nabbed, Won Lung, the proprietor of the establishment, who also acted as interpreter, came to where they were standing, greeted Bonny as an old acquaintance, looked curiously at Alaric, and announced that thirty-six of his boarders had procured tickets for a passage to the sound on the _Fancy_.
"We can't take but twenty of 'em on this trip," said the young mate, decidedly. "And with their dunnage we'll have to stow 'em like sardines anyway. The others must wait till next time."
"Mebbe you tlake some man in clabin, some mebbe in fo'c's'le," suggested Won Lung, blandly.
"Mebbe we don't do anything of the kind," replied Bonny. "The trip may last several days, and I know I for one am not going to be crowded out of my sleeping quarters. So, Mr. Lung, if you send down one man more than twenty he goes overboard. You savey that?"