Complete Works of William Hope Hodgson

by Hodgson, William Hope

  However, I told him that I was inclined to mercy; and that, no doubt, when he was older, he would look back with gratitude to the old sea-Captain who was too soft-hearted to ruin the career of a young, though insolent, Customs officer, merely to gratify a feeling of indignation, however righteous! Finally, I insisted on shaking hands with him, which he submitted to in a stupefied sort of way.

  “What’s your name, Mister?” I asked him.

  “Grey,” he answered, still in a dazed kind of fashion. You see, he’d been so certain sure of finding the stuff down aft; and, I daresay, my friendly way rather staggered him!

  “Well, Mr. Grey,” I said, “away and do your duty. There’s all the rest of the ship to search yet; and as you say I’ve two hundred thousand cigars aboard, you shouldn’t have much trouble in locating them!

  “When you come to think of it, two hundred thousand cigars would take up a lot of room; why, they’d pretty well fill a whole cabin from deck to deck — eh? Now, don’t you see, Mister, the whole foolishness of what you’ve been told? No ship-master, in his senses, would try to run a cabinful of cigars through the Customs. It couldn’t be done. Some joker’s been pulling your leg! But if you still think I’m clever enough to magic wholesale orders of that kind past you, why, just turn to on the ship again; and afterwards, when you’ve found nothing (for I’m betting that’s all you will find!), come along aft, and own up you’ve been fooled!”

  But my little talk never stopped him one bit. He seemed to get a fresh notion, and went racing up on deck to test it, and I went after him, to see what it was.

  As you know, I’d given the Second Mate orders to start sending down the upper yards, so as to be ready for out trip up the ship canal. Well, what did your Mister Customs Officer do but have the plugs taken out of all the hollow steel yards that had been lowered, to make sure that I’d not packed them with cigars.

  Of course, there was nothing in them; but that didn’t satisfy him. He sent his men aloft, and they took out the cross-bolts and worked out the plugs from the ends of every yard aloft. And when they found nothing there, they examined the hollow steel topmasts and lower masts. Then they came down to the hull again, and tried the spare wooden topmast and royal masts, that were lashed along under the bulwarks. But they were just plain, sound natural wood.

  They were still at it last evening, when we tied up in Ellesmere Port, in the Canal. I could see that the Customs must have had pretty certain information, to waste time like that.

  Last night they kept a watch of two men aboard; and today they’ve had more men down, to tackle the three holds, and they’re simply proving to themselves that the cigars are not aboard.

  November 3, Evening.

  The Customs have at last assured themselves that I’m neither as illegal as a magician nor as big a liar as the man who cabled them misleading cigar-shaped news from Havana.

  They gave up the search last night, after three agitated days of it. During these three days I’ve got quite friendly with the head officer; and when he gave me a clean sheet, and called his men off to something more useful, I invited myself ashore with him, for I was going into Liverpool for the evening.

  “Look here,” I said, as we climbed out at Liverpool, “you’re off duty, now, aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” he replied, “my time’s my own now, till tomorrow — Why?”

  “Well,” I told him, “if you’re off duty, I guess we can bury the hatchet. So come and have a quiet dinner with me, and I’ll tell you a bit of a yarn, as between man and man.”

  He came, and this is the yarn I told him, over the wine —

  “A friend of mine, just a plain, ordinary seafaring man, shipped two hundred thousand cigars aboard, on the strict Q.T. When he reached England, he got word that the Customs had received ‘certain information’; the said information being horribly correct.

  “My friend thought for a while; then he acted. He broke open a number of cigar boxes, and hid all his personal smokes in the saloon. He pitched the boxes out through the after port-holes, for he knew that sharp eyes were sure to be watching his ship; but he left nothing to chance. He had a quiet word or two with his Steward.

  “‘Steward,’ he said, ‘when the Customs House officers come aboard, you can let them know, in a friendly sort of way, that there are possibly some cigars hidden in the saloon. Also, if I should chance to tell you to your face just what a damned thief you are, you need not bother to be as polite as courage might suggest. Got that?’

  “‘Yes, Sir,’ said the Steward. ‘I s’pose there’ll be something in it for me if I does it all right and proper?’

  “‘Five quid, my lad,’ he told him.

  “‘I’ll earn ‘em, Sir,’ said the Steward fervently.

  “And so, it happened that when the Customs officers boarded my friend’s ship, they had not only the information which the floating cigar-boxes had given them of cigars hastily hidden, but they were aided in their search by timely suggestions from the Steward.

  “My friend was careful to declare the exact number of cigars that the officers would be likely to find, and offered to produce them, if they would vacate the saloon for a while; which, of course, he knew they would not do.

  “He then shouted for his First Mate, who had been carefully primed. The First Mate came racing down into the saloon, without waiting even to drop the capstan-bar which he had in his hands. This studied omission imparted a warlike effect to him; yet there was no intention of (or need for) violence; but the head officer of the Customs searchers saw intentions to offer fight, and he whistled for all his men to come to his rescue.

  “They did so, and my friend and his First Mate were somewhat roughly handled. They received further rough treatment when they evinced an unnatural desire to chastise the insolence of the Steward.

  “But finally, when no cigars were discovered, over and above those which had been declared, the Customs House officer had to order the release of my friend and his First Mate.

  “For three days the Customs infested the vessel; and at last had to admit that there was no such thing as a secret consignment of cigars aboard, and that they had been misled, through acting upon ‘uncertain’ information!

  “And yet the two hundred thousand cigars were aboard.

  “You will remember that my friend acted peculiarly in the cabin, hiding no more cigars than he intended to declare. Also, his calling for the First Mate was curious, and their united and earnest desire to hammer the Steward was also somewhat, shall I say, abnormal.

  “You will be able to understand the plot better when I tell you that, at the very moment when my friend and his First Mate and Steward were ‘entertaining’ the whole of the Customs officials in the saloon, the two hundred thousand cigars were being hoisted over the side, under the superintendence of the Second Mate, into a launch, which my friend had arranged to run alongside on a given signal from the deck.

  “You will see now that all that went on in the saloon was nothing more than a lure and a ruse, intended to get all the Customs men aboard below, and keep them interested there whilst the two hundred thousand cigars were being transhipped to the launch.

  “You might ask, however, how it was that none of the watchful eyes ashore noticed this somewhat unusual act of unloading. And would not the Engineer who was left in the Customs launch think there was something wrong?

  “The explanation is simple. My friend was safe from suspicion, either from those ashore, or from the Customs Engineer, through the following causes: First, because the official watchers ashore would not suspect a vessel which had the Customs launch alongside, and the officers actually aboard. Second, the Engineer never saw the other launch, because it came up on the opposite side of the vessel. Third, because no cases were lowered over the side; for the two hundred thousand cigars were all hidden, in sixteen tin cases, inside a dummy ‘spare’ topmast, in which they were actually shipped aboard out abroad. And as the Second Mate was lowering spars from aloft, there was nothing part
icularly noteworthy of the fact that one of the spars at the end of his tackle happened to be that genuine-looking, but exceedingly valuable, spare topmast.

  “And, of course, as soon as it was in the water, the launch took it in tow, and went off, away and away-oh!

  “Neat of my friend, wasn’t it?” I asked.

  “You cunning devil!” said the Customs Officer.

  CONTRABAND OF WAR

  S.S. John L. Sullivan,

  May 15.

  One of the main-hatch slings bust again this morning, and lost a lot of heavy crated goods over the side.

  This is the second time a sling has parted in the last couple of days.

  “Mr. Anwyn,” I said to the First Mate, “scrap every one of those confounded cargo slings at once. You ought never to have lifted another ton with them, after that one parted yesterday. I’ll not have another thing hoisted out of the holds until you’ve new slings. Use some of that new coil of four-inch Manilla; and get some of the men on the job, smart. We’re just wasting money keeping the lighters idle. You ought not to have needed me to tell you a thing like this!”

  I let the Mate see what I felt in the matter, and I said what I had to say flat out before Mr. Jelloyne, the tally clerk; for there was no excuse for the thing happening twice, and I had a right to feel warm.

  This unloading into lighters is a slow, weary job at best, and it will take us another week or ten days to clear the cargo out of her.

  May 16.

  Mr. Jelloyne, the tally clerk, is certainly a bit of a character. He was talking this morning about the government restrictions on landing war material, and the difficulty of doing it secretly.

  The old chap seems quite what one might call a bit of a sport.

  “Would you do it, Mr. Jelloyne, if you got a chance?” I asked him; for I was more than simply curious to find out how he looked at a thing of that kind.

  He took a glance round, and then came closer to me.

  “It all depends, Cap’n,” he said. “There’s a lot of cash in it; but getting caught is a serious business.”

  “But if you were practically sure of not being caught?” I suggested.

  “Ah!” he said, and winked at me. “Who wouldn’t undertake it, under those conditions!”

  That was enough for one time, and I said nothing more to him until this afternoon, when we got talking about it again. He was contending that, apart from the disagreeables attendant upon capture, the thing was enormously difficult. He instanced some of the difficulties.

  First, an “examination” of the ship’s manifest, showing what she was carrying.

  Second, the booking down (or “tallying”) of every case and article hoisted out of the hold of every ship in the bay, by the clerk sent aboard every ship.

  Third, the examination of every lighter-load sent ashore. If any cases went astray between the ship and the shore, a comparison of the tally clerk’s tally-book with the Customs officials’ checking of the load would show instantly that a case or article was missing.

  Fourth, any suspicious-looking case might be opened by the authorities, to verify that its contents were as per ship’s manifest.

  Fifth, if any vessel tried to unload cargo secretly after dark, she was bound to be discovered, because her hatches were sealed every night by the government official on the last tug, and were broken by him each morning when he came round on the first tug.

  Sixth, there was a night patrol boat, which kept an eye on things in general, and especially on any vessel that acted in any way out of the ordinary, or which did any noticeable amount of boat-traffic with the shore, or even with other vessels lying out in the bay.

  “Makes it quite a pleasantly interesting mental problem to see how it might be managed,” I said. “I don’t think it would be very difficult.... One might make the tally clerk a present of a hundred quid on a big job, not to ‘tally’ down a case of contraband every now and again.”

  Old Mr. Jelloyne shook his head at that.

  “No good, Captain!” he said. “No man is going to risk losing his billet for that kind of thing. Why, he’d be at the mercy of anyone who felt like talking.”

  “Not my notion of a clever job,” I told him. “If I were the kind of man who would do things of that sort, Mr. Jelloyne, I’d try to make it interesting to carry out. For instance, one could avoid the sealing of the hatches, by cutting through into the hold from the lazarette under the main cabin. The stuff could be brought up through the cabin without ever touching the sealed hatches. That is one of the big difficulties overcome.”

  “What about these same cases being missing when we come to compare the tally-book with the ship’s manifest?” he asked me.

  “That’s certainly a difficulty,” I admitted; “but it would simply have to be ignored. By the time the cases were proved missing, they’d be away and away-oh, ashore.

  “Then, again, I’d avoid the port risks, and minimize the chance of the patrol-boat dropping on me, by moving the ship over nearer to the north shore. There are plenty of lonely bits of quiet beach there, where I could make a quick dash with a boat-load, now and again at night, if I watched when the patrol-boat was over on the other side of the bay.”

  Mr. Jelloyne grinned at me in his wicked old way.

  “It might do,” he admitted. “It’s plain and simple. Perhaps it’s just as well you’re not in the business, Captain!”

  “My goodness!” I wanted to shout, “I’ve two thousand pounds’ worth of rifles to smuggle ashore, if you only knew it!”

  But I took jolly good care not to, as you may think.

  “As you remarked just now, Mr. Jelloyne,” I said, passing him my case, “it’s a mighty risky business. And a sea-Captain’s like the law: he should be above suspicion.”

  “Quite right, Captain. Quite right, Captain,” he said heartily; and I let it drop at that.

  May 17.

  We’ve been riding to one anchor since we’ve been here; but last night there was a strong breeze from the Southeast that made us drag for nearly a mile. I let her drag; for there’s plenty of room, and it suited my purpose. Then I let go the second bower, and that brought her up.

  “You’ve dragged, Cap’n, during the night,” said old Mr. Jelloyne, when he came out this morning. “That was a stiff little blow you had out here. I never thought the sea would have been quiet enough for the lighters this morning, and I’d promised myself a day off. But there’s no rest for the wicked.”

  “Yes,” I told him. “It was quite a smart little breeze. I’m going to shift over to the north side. It’s nearer in, but the holding’s better.”

  When the tug came out with the second string of lighters, I arranged with the Captain to go ahead of us, while we hove up, and then to give us a tow across to the north side, where, as I told Mr. Jelloyne, the holding is admitted to be better.... All the same, I had my own notion that we had dragged, simply because we must have fouled our anchor; but I did not elabourate the idea. I have waited a couple of weeks for just such a breeze, and I have been fully aware that our anchor must have been fouled for some days.

  By such means as these, I have been able to bring my ship over nearer to the north shore, without exciting any unnecessary comment.

  Night.

  What old Mr. Jelloyne, the tally clerk, told me about the patrol-boat is quite correct. She was lying near us for some time tonight, out in the darkness, about four or five hundred yards away; I spotted her through my night-glasses. Evidently, her officer in charge wants to make sure there’s nothing behind my moving the ship over here. Of course, I’ve simply watched the boat, and said nothing, except had a quiet sniggle to myself.

  May 22.

  Tonight is to be the night. I’ve given the patrol-boat time to get used to my ship being here.

  They had the patrol-boat near the ship most of the night of the 17th, and again on the 18th; but I guessed they’d tire of that! I just looked upon it as a mild diversion, watching them through my night-glasses. They m
ust have been fools not to realise that a good pair of glasses must show them up plain on the water!

  However, the last three nights they appear to have got settled in their minds that there’s no especial need to keep their eyes glued on my ship all night long. And so tonight, the firm ashore being now ready to remove the goods, I’m going to attempt to complete my little investment in rifles. If all goes well, I stand to clear a thousand pounds to my own cheek, and the money is as acceptable as money always is to a man of my somewhat developed tastes. I’ve rather stretched my finances lately, buying a Guido, which I could not let pass me.

  I went ashore this morning, and got into final touch with the consignees. I took elabourate precautions to insure a secrecy as perfect as ever my heart could desire, and I know that there can have been no dangerous information leaking into the wrong quarters.

  The arrangements are, that if I decide, last thing, to send the stuff ashore, I am to have the House-Flag checked, when lowering it at sunset, and re-hoisted, as if the signal haul-yards had fouled and needed clearing. Then the flag can be lowered in the usual way.

  This is to be taken to mean that I will bring the boat ashore, with certain cases, any time after eleven o’clock, the exact time being impossible to fix, owing to the chance of the patrol-boat being on my side of the bay at the time.

  Just before I leave the ship I am to flash a bull’s-eye over the rail — the signal to be two long flashes and two short.

  As an additional precaution for the success of my little adventure, I have had the boat I shall use painted a dead-coloured grey, which should make it almost invisible at night; and new leathers on all the oars, to make them quieter in the rowlocks. The rendezvous is a little bit of lonely beach right opposite the ship.