Читать книгу Cornish Saints & Sinners - J. Henry Harris - Страница 9

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Our square-set friend owned up to smuggling as one of the virtues of his countrymen. The real thing is getting scarce now. One evening he brought an old acquaintance with him, introducing him crisply as "Uncle Bill." We saw a good deal of Uncle Bill afterwards, who was ninety next birthday, and ready and willing to "fight, wrassel, or run" with any man of his age in this country or the next. We did not doubt him, for his blue eye was clear, he moved easily, and his pink finger-tips and filbert-shaped nails showed breed. Uncle Bill looked as though he intended to carry out his bat for a century or more. He was, he said, as sound as a bell, except that he was a bit "tiched on the wind" when walking against a hill. Never took "doctor's traade," as he contemptuously called physic, and his cure for all ills was a pipe of 'bacca to smoke and a pen'ard of gin mixed with a pen'ard of porter. He said he had done a little smuggling, in the old-fashioned way, in a small lugger, running for dear life across the Channel in a gale of wind when the King's cutters were all snug in harbour, and then landing the tubs of spirits and parcels of lace and other things under the very noses of the preventive men. "They dedn't prevent we," said Uncle Bill, his face all a-glow with the pleasures of memory. He told us that he settled down to fishing when his "calling," and that of his father before him, was interfered with; but the dash and peril and the fame of successful smuggling suited him, and warmed up the cockles of his heart now only to think about. He spoke of himself as an injured man because he received no compensation for disturbance.

Guy worked at the subject, and came to the conclusion that Cornwall was as intended by Nature for smuggling as the inhabitants were for carrying it on. Every little bay and creek and cavern, villages and farmhouses, even the tombs in the parish churches, could tell tales. And the women, they were hand in glove with their husbands and sweethearts, fathers and brothers; and all that made life worth living then was made dependent on a successful "run" from a little French port with goods honestly bought and paid for, but—the sorrow and shame of it!—made contraband the moment they touched English soil.

"Bad laws made smugglers," said the Bookworm, provokingly, to Guy, who always fires up with professional wrath when he hears of anything bad in connection with the law.

"Bad fiddlesticks! People smuggled because they liked it—just as you liked it when you smuggled those nice little Tauchnitz editions last year, and without thinking of the poor devil of an author in England that you were robbing," replied Guy.

"That never occurred to me," said the Bookworm, meekly.

"Of course not. You are only a petty smuggler, but a smuggler all the same. And do you mean to tell me that 'bad laws,' forsooth, made you smuggle the books? Not a bit of it. You liked the game, and you know it."

There is a grandeur about the old smuggler which increases with age. He put his little all upon a venture—nothing of the limited liability principle about him. The lugger which left a Cornish fishing cove was, as a rule, family property, owned by father and sons, or by two or three brothers. The family capital was put into one purse, carried away, and converted into honest brandy, wines, and other articles of commerce. Then the struggle commenced between the individual who pitted his own cunning and frail boat against the King's cruisers and all the resources of a mighty State. He was surrounded by "spies" from the moment his cargo was on board until he was ready to slip from his moorings. He could trust no man. And then his voyage across the Channel was a race for life—in fog, in tempest, when only a madman would run the risk, the old smuggler would "up sail and off;" and if a King's officer liked to follow, then all he'd see would be the drippings from the smuggler's keel. The god of storms was the smuggler's divinity, and he loved his little craft, which was, for the time, a thing of life fleeing from pursuit, from imprisonment, and even death when cannon-balls flew about. How the old smuggler prayed for storm and night, for any peril which would enable him to show courage and mastery over the elemental forces which should drive his pursuers to destruction!

And how he would fight when brought to bay! When becalmed, the King's cutter would send a boat alongside to board the lugger, every man armed with pistol and cutlass, and wearing the uniform of authority. Then the smuggler would fight for property and life, cast off the grappling-irons, and cut down the man who ventured to set foot upon his little craft. And all the while the old man at the helm looked fixedly at the heavens and across the water to see if, perchance, a "breath of wind" was stirring—only a breath might be his salvation when he was too far inshore for the King's cutter to venture, and his men fighting off the cutters crew like heroes. Then a puff, and the sail draws; then more wind, and, inch by inch, the lugger sails away from cutter and cutter's crew, only, perhaps, to fall in with another enemy which has to be out-sailed, or out-manœuvred, or fought off, as best serves the purpose. No surrender when boat and cargo is the bread of the family.

Then the old smuggler reaches home, and every shadow may spell ruin; and all that is done is done in fear, and he has to be cunning always, and ready to fight to the death. The old smuggler belonged to the heroic age, and in all genuine stories he bulks colossal against a midnight sky black with tempest. The race has not disappeared; the conditions have changed, that is all. Uncle Bill told us that he could find a crew to-morrow if there was but a fair prospect of making five hundred pounds on the venture. And "I'd be one," said he.

If Nature intended a county for smuggling, it is Cornwall, which seems somehow to have been caught when cooling between two seas and pressed inward and upward, so that it is full of little bights and bays and caverns, which might have been vents for the gases to escape when the sea pressure at the sides became unbearable, and the earth groaned like the belle of the season in tight corsets. The caverns are given up to bats and otters and slimy things now, but in the "good old days!" The women, by all accounts, took kindly to smuggling, and stood shoulder to shoulder with their men when there was a fight with the preventive men, and ran off with the "tubs" of spirit and whatever they could carry, whilst the men held the King's officers in check. A young man who was content with a "living wage" on sea or on land wasn't thought much of by the black-haired, black-eyed damsels of the coast, who were up to snuff in the free-trade principles of their day and generation. The children were taught to look upon the sea as their own, and to regard smuggling as an honourable calling, and thousands of infant tongues prayed at night for God's blessing on smuggling ventures. And the Church was with the people, and blessed them, and shared their profits when there was no danger of being found out. "Nothing venture, nothing have" was the good old motto bound upon the smugglers' arms and hearts like phylacteries, and was to them as prayer.

A SHORT CUT.

Uncle Bill had a pen'ard of gin in his beer to clear his pipes one evening, and told us some yarns which he had heard from his father, who was called Enoch, who died in his bed at the age of ninety-six, and would have lived longer, only he "catched a cauld dru washing his feet in fresh water."

Uncle Bill was a young man, but not too young to go courting when his father made his last run across the Channel for a cargo of spirits. It came about in this way. Enoch and his family possessed five hundred one-pound notes issued by a bank which had failed, and so were practically worthless. This was a serious matter, and Enoch proposed, at the family council, to run across to Brittany and exchange the worthless notes for tubs of good brandy. Everything was done in secrecy and in hot haste to prevent suspicion, and to get the cargo of contraband on board before news of the bank's failure reached the French merchants. Had they been members of the Japanese Intelligence Department they could not have kept the secret better. They had a splendid run, landed the cargo all serene, and cleared cent. per cent.

"I have often blessed God that there were no telegraphs in those days," said Uncle Bill, fervently.

"What became of the notes?" asked Guy.

"I don't know," replied Uncle Bill, with a lively wink. "All I know is we had the brandy."

"Is this genuine, or only make-up?" asked Guy.

"As true as the Gospel," replied Uncle Bill.

He told us many other stories, but we thought this best worth preserving, as it showed native cunning, promptness, and audacity.

"And I have lived to hear a man bless God that there were no such things as electric telegraphs," said the Bookworm, realizing that he was now in an England of a century ago.

Uncle Bill was a good old sort, and once when he came to see us he pulled a medicine-bottle from the folds of his knitted frock, and, taking out the cork, invited us to taste. It was pure cognac, and its flavour was what the old man called "rich." The spirit had not been coloured, and had a history, which the old man told with relish. News was one day brought to the coastguard station by a boatman that a cask was stranded on an adjacent beach, and the coastguard officer, who loved his joke and good company, summoned numerous good men and true (Uncle Bill being one) to go to the beach, and there hold an inquest upon the said cask and its contents.

"My men," said the coastguard officer, "I summon you in the name of the Queen (God bless her) to come with me to Treganna beach, and to taste the contents of a cask which we shall find there. I think it's a brandy cask," he added, "and you are to act as Queen's tasters. Now, my men, if you declare that the contents of the cask are wines or spirits, then the same will be seized on behalf of the Crown, and the Excise will claim it; and if you further declare that the contents taste of salt water, then the cask will be staved in, and the contents run out upon the beach. You are the jurors, and meet me here in half an hour. If any of 'ee have a tin can it might be handy" said he, with a wink.

When the jurors met again, they all had something in their hands in the shape of tin cans or pitchers; and there were men upon this jury who had not tasted spirits at their own expense for many years, and they carried the largest pitchers.

The coastguard officer produced a gimlet, and broached the cask, and every man tasted.

"The smell of it was enough for me," said Uncle Bill; "but I tasted, like the rest. It went down 'ansum, sure nuff. And some of us tasted again, to make sure for sartin."

Says the coastguard officer, "What is it, my men?"

"Cognac."

"So say you all?"

"One and all, for sure."

"Then I seize the cask, in the Queen's name."

He took out a bit of chalk, and marked the broad arrow upon it; but our jugs were empty. The best of the game was to come.

"Now, my men, tell me, as good men and true, whether the brandy has been touched with salt water."

So we all tasted again, and said it was sickly, and brackish, and made such faces that you might think we were poisoned.

"And so say you all?"

"Ess, one and all."

"And your verdict is that the cask of brandy, seized in the Queen's name, is brackish?"

"That is our verdict."

"Then I order the cask to be stove in and its contents run upon the beach."

And when the head was stove in, he turned his back upon us, and every can and jug and pitcher was filled, and, if we'd only known, we'd have had more pails and buckets and pitchers.

"I've got a drop still left, and 'tis precious," said Uncle Bill.

This medicine-bottle was his gift to us, and we now knew the flavour of cognac cast upon the shore, which had never paid the Queen's penny.

"I don't wonder that smuggling was popular," said Guy.

Smuggling made the sort of sailor that Nelson loved, a man who could fight and forgive when worsted, like the old smuggler of Talland, who had it recorded on his tombstone that he prayed God to pardon those wicked preventive men who shed his innocent blood.

It was in the Lizard district that smuggling reached its zenith. The Bookworm put a copy of the "Autobiography of a Smuggler" into his pocket when he tramped over to Prussia Cove, a place which Nature and a little art intended for an emporium for smugglers. Blind harbours, blind caves, hidden galleries, mysterious inlets and exits form a delicate network of safety and concealment. Only a century ago, the man who lived here was the king of Cornish smugglers and privateers, and defended himself with his own cannon.[C] Now the fine caves are fern-arched, and the water drips, drips, drips upon nothing precious. The smugglers borrowed these caves from the piskies who have re-entered into possession, for here are the piskie sands and piskie caves.

"Here, in cool grot, the piskies dwell," hummed Guy.

The caves seemed none the worse for having been smugglers' storehouses; but the gingerbeer and sandwich man left his trail, as usual. What he couldn't reach or cut down, he left alone, but broken glass he left behind.

Guy ran across a gentleman anxious to tell us things. He was a "pensioner." The man with a pension is a common object by the seashore. After a time, you get to know him as a superior sort of being reduced from his high estate, and only making the two ends meet by the grace of God. "Get a pension, and don't worry" is very good advice when the pension is big enough; but generally the pension-man is a trifle seedy—his pension won't spread all over him, but leaves him minus gloves, with patched shoes, and short everywhere. This honest old gentleman was Guy's find, and he was so eager to tell all he knew, and more on top of it, that Guy was glad, at last, to get rid of him with some excuse covered deftly with a small consideration.