Tommy, the smuggler chief, was a short, stout, ruddy-faced, good-humoured fellow, who lived much as small tradesmen (of whom he was also one) live in that part of the south of England to which he belonged. Every body, it is said, liked him, and he liked every body—except a revenue-officer.
Of Johnson’s kith and kindred nobody knew, and few cared to inquire, any thing. Whether Tommy was his real name or not, I am uncertain. When on one occasion, being in trouble, he was asked by a local magistrate who his friends (perhaps meaning his relatives) were, jovial Tommy, with a show of distress, replied somewhat as that eccentric child of the Rev. Mrs. Stowe, Topsy, might have done, “that he ’spected he hadn’t got any.” There was, however, too much modesty or a little untruth in this. Tommy Johnson had hosts of sympathisers, who were prepared at all times to do him any service in their power. Rumour for many miles about his place of abode gave him credit for being what he really was—a smuggler. Tommy felt it necessary sometimes to vary the compliment, but not always. He never went so far as to repudiate having defrauded the revenue. He was rather pleased to hear folks embody in words the popular theory that there was no harm in robbing the Custom House. He did not care to hide from some people that he did now and then run a vessel clandestinely between a Dutch port and some mysterious point off a craggy side of the Isle of Wight. He, however, usually preferred to be known as a man who had once been in, but now retired from, that business.
Tommy, who was an otherwise prosperous man, once determined that he would indeed give up his perilous and unlawful business or profession.
“My dear,” he once observed to his loving wife, on their return from church one Sunday evening, “I’ll cut smuggling. I’m thinking it’s time I did. We can afford it, you know. This here business, the butcher’s shop, pays; the inn at P—— would honestly pay of itself; and the brickfield turns out right.”
“I wish you would, with all my heart,” his wife replied.
“I will. My mind’s made up.”
“You have said that before, Tommy,” observed his sweet partner; “but you can’t do it. I wish you could. You must be a smuggler. It’s the fun of it you like, as you say, I suppose?”
“Well, yes, I will. I’ve quite made up my mind. When I do really make up my mind to any thing, you know, I do it. I’ll have just one more run, just one more, and then I drop the game, and stick to the trade on land.”
“That’s what you said the year before last. Do you recollect the time, Tommy?”
Tommy shuddered. He made that promise to himself, and kept it by running a lugger from a port in the Netherlands to one of his points of concealment here. The affair turned out a bad one. The coast-guard discovered the arrival of the boat, seized the craft and its contents, and Tommy Johnson also, and ultimately lodged him in the gaol at Winchester, where he had to undergo a long imprisonment, pending the arrival of the assizes.