Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 August 1876 — A SMUGGLER’S STORY. [ARTICLE]

A SMUGGLER’S STORY.

One November evening last year found me, an elderly London lawyer, standing at the end of one of the two long piers which form the entrance to an important packet port on the south coast. While I was peering intently into the darkness a man came up and stood beside me and looked out to sea. At the same instant one of those sudden squalls which are so common at that time of year came racing past us, and the blinding rain beat upon our faces. “ You had better come into our watchhouse for a bit, sir ’’ said my friend; “it’s close by. I’m a Custom-House officer.” And walking rapidly on he brought me to a neat-looking small house, built just where the pier began to branch off from the harbor into the sea. Opening the door he showed me into a good-sized room lighted with gas, and with a capital fire blazing in the grate. On benches around the fire were three or four men in uniform like my friend, and in a bed-berth hard by another man was snoring away in happy peacefulness, recruiting himself for his turn of night duty. -‘ A fine night Tor smuggling, I should fancy?” I suggested. “ Well, sir, in old times it would have been,” said one; ** but there’s no smuggling nowadays to speak of—just a little trumpeiy bit of baccy now and then, hardly worth taking—is there, Frank ?” addressing the man opjposite. Frank, with infinite disgust, agreed to this. . ' ” ‘'You see, sir?” he went on to me, these Liberak go, on cutting down the tariff, s 6 Hftar there’s nothing left now—inst cigars and spirits, and so on. Not out what the ladies do their little bits of

smuggling still, and dearly they loves it, too. Why, sir, to this day they’re wonderful clever In concealing lace and French gloves, although there’s been no duty on them for years. We often, when we’re examining the ladies’ trunks, find two or three pair of gloves In an old boot, or some lace, perhaps, sewed up inside a petticoat. We never says nothing, and they go home and tell their friends how clever they’ve been and done the CustomHouse.” “Still,” said another mau, who had been silent until now, “we do a bit of business now and then. Last year, sir, twelve casks of pitch came over in one of our steamers with a heap of other goods. They pour the pitch hot into the casks, and when it cools it’s as hard as stone almost. Well, there was no examining this pitch except you took a pickax and broke tbe whole cask up. But our Collector invented a kind of augur, that, with a little oil, went right through tbe pitch in no time. We tried these said casks with this, and in the center of every one of them was a tin case with thirty pounds of good cigars in it—three hundredweight altogether—a very pretty haul for us.” “That was* better than your drawingroom furniture, Jack," said a young officer to one much older, who sat on a bench near me. “Never mind that,” growled the old man. “What is that?” said I. “ Well, sir, it’s rather hard upon Jack there to tell it; but you see, sir, he was at a large port in the North, and a gentleman comes down to the office aud sayß that ho was expecting what he called a ‘ sweet of drawing-room furniture—beautiful walnut wood;’he said—‘and all for awedding present for his sister, who was going to get married. Would they take great care of it ? He’d he so much obliged, and any expense ’ They told him they’d look after it, but they weren’t allowed to take anything. The next steamer, sure enough, the furniture came, and a lovely set it was—sueh couches and easy chairs and sofys! Well, sir. our men took the greatest care of it, and saw it all packed safely in the railway truck and sent away, ana we shouldn’t have heard anything more about it, only, at one of them large railway junctions where luggage trains often have to wait for a long time there was a policeman who’d served his time to a cabinet-maker, and he got wind of this furniture, and must get a look at it to see what sort of work them foreigners turned out. So he got to the truck and took up a hit of tarpaulin and examined the couch, which happened to be at the top. ‘ Pretty work,’ said he to himself; ‘ hut, my word, what a seat! they do stuff well over yonder there. It’s a queer feel, though; I wonder what they stuffs with.’ Well, sir, his curiosity got over him, and he looks out to see if anyon* was coming, whips out his knife, and cuts a little slit where it wouldn’t be seen, and pulls out, to his great wonder, baccy! Every bit of it was brimful of excellent baccy. So they seized the whole lot; but, lor’, what a wipe it was for our men—Jack there, and his mates!”"

“I’ve told you over and over again that I had nothing to do with it,” said the man, angrily. “ Well, you was there, at any rate,” retorted the other. “They’re clever fellows sometimes, sir,” said another man, “ and it isn’t a disgrace to he taken in by them. D’you mind.” said he to the other man, “ that affair at Brinemouth, some years ago?” “Ah, that was a start,” said one of them. “ You must know, sir,” he went on, “ that Brinemouth Harbor is something like this one. It has two long piers running out from the harbor, which is a good large piece of water. These piers are pretty close together, and the Customs has a watch-house on each pier and men always on the lookout, so that it was impossible for the smallest craft to get into the harbor without being seen. Well, sir, the Collector got an anonymous letter to say that the Sally, a well-known smuggler, was somewhere off the coast with a lot of tubs on board, and that they would certainly be run somewhere near. The coastguard were all warned, and we had double watches on the piers, and you may depend upon it that we didn’t go to sleep, for if we got those tubs it would be a jolly Christmas-box apiece. A day or two afterward the Collector got another bit of a note, saying the tubs would certainly be run that night. It was a darkish night, with a good bit of rain; very much such another as this, only not so squally. We walked up and down the piers, and stared out to sea, and nothing whatever did we see until just after the town-hall clock had struck twelve, when we distinctly heard the beat of oars, and after a few minutes a four-oared boat pulled in between the piers, and, being hailed, came up to the steps under the watch-house. One of the men told us that she belonged to the bark Esther, of Newcastle, from Sulina, with a cargo of wheat, which was lying out in the bay wind-bound. One of their men had got himself hurt, and thev’d come ashore for a doctor. They’d find one, wouldn’t they,-in Bank street? Did he know Brinemouth ? He should think so; had lived here years ago. They’d better row right across the harbor to the steps. It would be better to do so than to walk round. Good night! While he’d been speaking two of our men searched every inch of the boat, took up her floor-ing-boards, pricked her timbers all round to see that there was no skin, searched all the men, but with no result whatever. A nice chaffing they got all the time, I can tell you, sir. “I say, governor, I’ve got a mighty big hollow tooth; hadn’t you better have a look into it?” and so on. Well, we came to the conclusion that she was what they said she was, and we wished them good night, and they pulled away across the harbor and were soon lost to sight aad hearing in the darkness. About an hour after the boat went out again with the doctor, for we saw another man in the stern. Nothing more did we see that night, and we went home in the morning grumbling at our ill-luck, and wondering why the- dickens the doctor didn’t come back.

“ That day a young gent who lived a fast kind of life came m to see our Collector, with whom he was acquainted. Says he, ‘ I saw a queer thing last night.’ “ ‘ What was that?’ said the Collector, paring his nails. “ * Why, I was coming along Hill street about a quarter to two, and I saw about forty men, walking one after the other, and each with a couple of little tubs on his shoulders.’ ——: ’' ■ . “‘The deuce 1’ said the Collector, Jumping up and ringing the bell. ‘ Send Ir. Dawson directly,’ said he to the messenger. “Mr. Dawson was our tide surveyor who helped to rummage the boat. “ * Mr. Dawson,’ said the Collector, “ they’ve ran those tubs right under your nose.” “ When Mr. Dawson came to hear Mr. Joe Childer’a story he turned as white as a sheet and was fit to drop. . “ Well, a great hue and cry w-as made, and the men yrci-e traced ever so far, but

it was no go. They’d got the tubs Into some place of safety, ana neither our men nor the coastguard ever got one of them.” “But how on earth was it done?” said I. “It came out some time Afterward, through a friend of wine getting acquainted with one of the men. The whole affair was arranged by & very clever chap. He heard we and the coastguard had been warned and were on the look-out, so he determined to run the tubs right into the harbor. From the stern of the gig of the hark Esther, of Newcastle, wuieh we had searched so thoroughly, a stout cord was fixed below the watermark. When (he boat got to the landing far away across the harbor and out of sight and sound of us, forty men who had come into the town from different directions, and at different times, came quietly down to the landing. The cord hanging from the boat’s stem after a time brought up a stoutish rope, and this was followed by a stouter still. Upon this the men hauled silently but steadily, and the forty tubs of best French brandy, which had been sunk just outside the harbor, were pulled in between the piers, under our very noses, and taken away into the country.” “ I wonder the police didn’t see them,” said I.

“ Ah, sir, there was the funny thing. That very night ; by a curious coincidence, the police, two in number, from information received, went off to watch a house on the outskirts of the town, which was to have been broken into that night. The odd thing was that there was no attempt so break into the house at all. It was funny—wasn’t it, sir?” “ Talking about the coastguard, they get done, too, sometimes,” said another man. “I well remember, on the Kentish coast, some years ago, there had been many tries to run goods, but the coastguard were all so sharp that there was no doing any business at all. My brother-in-law, Jem Mason, was chief boatman on that station, and one hot summer’s day he was on tbe look-out with his glass, when he- saw a boat coming toward the shore from a smack which was standing off and on a good bit away. When the boat got within a short distance of the land, it turned sharp to the right, and began pulling along shore, and at the same time a man took his hat ofl and held it over the name on the stern, so that you couldn’t read it with a glass from the land. When Jem saw this he clapped his glass together, ran to the station, got two of his men to join him, and they began following the boat along the cliffs as hard as they could go. Well,sir,it is the very nastiest coast you ever saw, high cliffs and vaileys between, and it was up one hill and down another, and up another, until when the boat turned into a sandy bay, about seven miles from the station, Jem and his mates had hardly strength enough left to go down and meet it. However, by taking a couple of minutes’ breathing time, they did just manage to get down to the beach as the boat’s keel touched the sand. When the men saw them 1 they made an attempt to back her off, but Jem had hold of her and they found it was no go. Jem felt well rewarded fur all he had gone through when he found three nice little brandy-tubs lying at the bottom of the boat. So he takes ali four men into custody, and nicely they grumbled and growled over their ill-luck and cursed Jem’s sharp eyes and so on. The next thing was to get them all to the station, but when Jem proposed that they should bear a hand with the tubs, never a bit would they. “No,” says they, “hang it all, they’re your property now, and we haven’t nothing more to do with them.” So at last, Jem having made them give him their words that they wouldn’t run away—and little use it would have been, for they were all well known to him. —he and his two mates were obliged to hoist the tubs up on their shoulders and carry them to the station themselves. The tubs held about six gallons apiece and were no light weight to carry seven utiles on a blinding hot summer’s afternoon. “ Well, sir, Jem says he doesn’t know to this day how he got over them seven miles, but at last, dead beat, they did just manage to crawl up to the station and get those blessed tubs off their shoulders. It was only the thought of the share that would be coming to them of this seizure that prevented them, from breaking down altogether long before they got home. “As soon as they recovered themselves a little bit they sets to work to draw the bungs and measure the stuff. It turned out excellent quality, but not so strong as they hoped, for all three tubs was full up to the hung with salt water; and these three coastguardsmen had carried these fine samples of old ocean for seven miles along those awful cliffs. -“As soon as the bold smugglers had seen how well their trick had answered they makes each of them as fine a how as a French dancing-master and walks off. — Chambers' Journal.