SMUGGLING ANECDOTES.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XI, Issue 41, 14 October 1893, Page 293

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, and as he had a deeply rooted aversion to paying duty on them, he adopted various intricate plans for conveying them ashore and past the barriers. One of his most successful methods escaped detection for many a long day, and was carried out in this way. Eor some time before reaching home it might have been noticed that his cabin-boy or servant became subject to alarming fit j , during which, as there was no surgeon on board, he was tended by the captain himself. This state of affairs would go on from bld to worse until the ship reached England, and after they had been in harbour for a day or two a conversation would take place one morning somewhat as follows Tbe captain would sing out, ‘Quartermaster —I say, quartermaster—where's that boy of mine? I’ve been calling him this last half-hour. Confound him !’ ‘ Well, sir,’ the quartermaster would answer, ‘ I think ’e’s a ’avin’ a fit somewheres about.’ • A fit ' Bless me, you don’t say so I What, another ?’ * Yes, sir. ami it do seem a pretty bad ’un, ’e’s a’most bent double.’ ‘Poor little chap !’ the captain would say. ‘ Bring him up to my cabin and let us see what can be done for him !’ The captain accordingly had the boy, stiff as 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 and decide to take him oft 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 we got here?’ ‘Why, the captains boy in a fit. Terrible bad he is, too ; afraid he won’t live. Taking him off to hospital ? Captain’s outside on the box —you’d best speak to him.’ Then the party would be allowed to pass, but, before they had 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 proceed to his own 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 for upholstering purposes. It contained something like three thousand cigars, which had thus been safely conducted past the barriers.