There are red sails in every sunset off Lantau, largest and westernmost of Hong Kong’s 237 islands. The skipper of a police launch may spend every spare moment scanning the horizon for suspicious-looking craft, but even in full daylight he cannot hope to detect and halt all the smugglers. At night, when the smugglers slip through fog or run without lights, the skipper’s chances are considerably slimmer. The Red Chinese gunboats are also on the prowl just beyond territorial limits, hoping to catch their runaway countrymen, but they are often unsuccessful. The Hong Kong courts charged 1,551 illegal immigrants in 1961; another 1,763 were intercepted by the marine police and sent back to China. Thousands of others slipped through the net either at Macao or Hong Kong. Here are a few typical incidents that occurred during two months in the winter of 1961-62. Eighty-three men, women, and children stole a Chinese military launch and escaped to Macao. Marine police caught seventy-three illegal immigrants in a motor junk off Lamma Island. Police discovered thirty-two men and women attempting to slip past Castle Peak in a sailing junk. A woman and two children were arrested in Tai Tam Bay, Hong Kong Island. A Communist gunboat intercepted a sampan near Lappa Island, opposite Macao, firing shots into the hull and driving the dozen women and children aboard back to Red territory. A Red gunboat fired on a junk at the mouth of the Canton River estuary, sinking it with all twenty-nine immigrants aboard. During the same period, an unknown number of illegal immigrants swam across Starling Inlet from the Chinese mainland to Hong Kong, using rafts and basketballs to keep themselves afloat. A middle-aged man swam from Lappa Island to Macao under the muzzles of Communist guns to visit his son. On every dark night or at any time there is a chance of screening their passage in foggy or overcast weather, the immigrants keep coming in. Marine police inspectors say there is a well-organized traffic in smuggling illegal immigrants. Smugglers can buy a second-hand junk in Macao and stuff its hold with twenty to forty immigrants. They have a regular scale of prices based on the financial blood-count of each customer; $40 for well-heeled Shanghai Chinese, $30 for a moderately solvent Fukienese, and $13 to $20 for a Cantonese farmer or laborer. If the smugglers fall into the hands of the marine police, they may spend a year in prison, and their passengers will be sent back to an ice-cold reception in Red China. Jail sentences seldom keep smugglers from returning to the trade; the profits justify the risk. “If we catch a boat with people that look like genuine fishermen, we may warn them to get a Hong Kong operating license and let them go,” a marine police inspector said. “If we spot one that looks like a regular smuggler, we arrest the whole bunch.”