SMUGGLING ANECDOTES.

Evening Post, Volume XLVI, Issue 43, 19 August 1893, Page 2 (Supplement)

SMUGGLING ANECDOTES.

.» The following is the most elaborate fraud that has ever come under the writer's notice. A certain merchant captain was in the habit of bringing home from time to time immense quantities of cigars, aud us he had a deeply-rooted averxion to paying duty on them, he adopted various intricate plans fur convoying them anhore and past the barrier". One of his most successful method-* escaped detection for many a long day, aud wan carried out on thin wise: — For some time before reachiug home it might have been noticed that his cabinboy or fcervant became subject to alarming fits, during which, as there was no surgeon on board, he was tended by the captain himself. This state of affairs would iro on from bad to worse until the ship reached England, aud after they had been in the harbour for a day or two a conversation would take place one morning somewhat as follows. The captain would sing out: "Quartermaster — I say, quartermaster — where's that boy of mine ? I've been calliug him this last half-hour. Confound him!" "Well, sir," the quartermaster would answer, " I think 'c's a-'avin' a fit somewheres about." "A fit! Bless me, you don't say_ sol What, another?" " Yes, sir, and it do seem a pretty bad 'un, 'c's a'tnost bent double." "Poor little chap!" the captain would say. "Bring ldm up to my cabin, and let us see what can be done for him !" The captain accordingly had the boy, stiff at, a poker, and frothing at the mouth, carried up to his cabin on deck. After a while he would get alarmed at the boy's condition, aud decide to take him off to a hospital on shore for further treatment. The captain would thereupon direct the poor boy to be lifted out, bed and all, into a cab brought alongside on the quay for the purpose. Then he would put on a stately silk hat and mount the box, while a steward went inside the conveyance to look after the patient. When they were stopped at the dock gates, the steward's reply to official questions ran thus: — "What have wo got here?" " Why, the captain's boy in afit. Terrible bad he is, too ; afraid he won't live." " Taking him off to hospital f" " Captain's <utside on the box— you'd best speak to him." Then the party would be allowed to pass, but, before they h«d got very far into the town, the boy usually got wonderfully better all at once. He would sit up, spit a piece of soap out of his mouth, and wink at the steward, who immediately notified the patient's recovery to the captain outside. The latter, in consequence, would give directions to nrocecd to his rooms instead of to the "hospital. On reaching his lodgings the boy and the bed were taken inside, and the cab dismissed. Now, that bed was stuffed with a material far more precious than that ordinarily used tor upholstering purposes. It contained something like three thousand cigars, which had thus been safely conducted past the barriers. — Chums.