SMUGGLERS.

Hokitika Guardian, 6 April 1918, Page 1

SMUGGLERS.

Sydney, March 27 'rife- successful attempt, in the small hours of a recent day, to bring a large quantity' of opium ashore through a, cordon of waiting police—

the smugglers dashing through in a motor car amid a hail of bullets lias set old police and Customs officers reminiscing, and some good stories of defeated .smugglers have been told. So many foreign ships come to Sydney that attempts to evade the Customs •ire continually being made.

Customs officers one day searched a suspected ship from end to end for opium and failed. As they were leaving, an officer suddenly thought of some caroafs of mutton lie had seen innocently hanging. He went back and looked. They were full of opium.

A police patrol on Circular q nay was puzzled one night by a faint noise like hail falling on iron. The bridge of a German steamer was level with the roof of a shed. 1 The police cautiously investigated, and found

that handfuls of opium pellets, wrapped in sausage skin, were being thrown on to the adjoining sheltershed from the steamer. The silent workers on the ship were trapped and arrested. '

The Pori Health Officer, when board in" a ship inside the Meads, suddenly noticed an oil drum floating where, before, there had been nothing He directed the attention of his launch officer in it, and when others appeared, all with opium in the bottom of them, a search was made, and the smugglers caught lowering them -through a port hole on the other side of the ship. A boat, manned by Chinese, which had been hovering around, left the locality in

a great hurry. A big ship was tied up at the quay with 720 feet of 8-inch hawser. One night a rowboat stole alongside, succeeded in detaching the hawser, and towed it away to a hulk, where it was hauled aboard and coiled up. The police arrived promptly and recovered it. Apparently, the purpose of the thieves was to fray it out and sell it for a considerable sum to the paper manufacturers. .

One nisht a prowling Chinaman was chased off a wharf by a policeman. Standing on the same spot, the constable was suddenly startled to see a hand come through the floor of the wharf, with a tin of opium. The constable took it. Another appeared, and he took that. He took fifty altogether. Then he grabbed the band, but the gentleman under the wharf palled frantically, and got away. The constable said that the hand was greased. He lost the man, but he got the goods.

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Customs men who had been watching a ship for some days were about to let the ship’s washing go ashore, when something about it made them look closely. As a result, they found ] 00,000 cigars done up neatly in parcels and distributed through the baskets.

A stylish young lady drove hurriedly on to a wharf just as a Queensland steamer was about to sail, and tried to rush her luggage aboard. .But the Customs men were a,waiting her, and among the lingerie they found a considerable quantity ot opium in tins. This is the only known case of a white woman attempting to assist Chinese .smugglers.