When the evening came, I forgot all about the matter. Old Jerry Vincent looked in, and several other friends, among them two former shipmates of Uncle Kelson’s, and anecdotes and stories innumerable were told. We got on the subject of smuggling. In those days it was certainly not looked on in its proper light, and a smuggler, if he was bold and daring, was considered a very fine fellow. Most of our guests were Hampshire or Isle of Wight men, and had been personally acquainted with many of the smugglers in their day, and might, perhaps, not have refused to purchase any of the goods they had to offer.
“Some of you may have known Jim Dore?” began Jerry.
One or two nodded.
“I thought so,” said Jerry. “Well, then, when he began the work he was very young, and there wasn’t a bolder or more daring hand in the trade. We were boys together, and a braver fellow or better seaman never stepped. He was a Yarmouth man, born and bred, just inside the Needles there. There was a large family of them. He wasn’t always as prudent as he might be, and one day he and the cutter he was in was taken with three hundred tubs on board. Of course he was sent to serve his Majesty. When he found that there was no help for it, he vowed that he would do his duty like a man, and he kept his word.
“He was sent aboard a brig of war employed in looking after smugglers, and though before she had never taken one, now scarcely a month passed that through his means she did not make a prize.
“Once upon a time the brig attacked a large armed smuggler, the crew of which had vowed that they never would be taken alive. There was a desperate fight for more than three hours, and in the end the smugglers kept their word, for they went down with colours flying, under the guns of the brig which was just about to board them. On this occasion, as on every other, Dore behaved so bravely that the captain put him on the quarter-deck, and if he had chosen to follow it, there was the road open to him to become an admiral. But you know there are people who cannot give up habits, so to speak, born and bred with them, as one may say.
“Well, Dore’s time of servitude was up for the smuggling affair, and soon after that the brig put into Portsmouth harbour. The next day Dore got leave to go and see his friends, so he hired a wherry, and got ready for a start for Yarmouth. Just as he was shoving off, I saw him and asked him for a cast down there, as I had some friends in those days in the same place. Now, though he was an officer with a cocked hat on his head, and a sword by his side, I knew that he was in no way proud, at all events. He told me to jump into the boat, by all means. On our way down I asked him if he was going to be long away from his ship.
“‘Long away, do you say?’ he answered, in an indignant tone. ‘I’ll tell you what it is, Vincent, it will be long, I’m thinking, before I go back again. I’ve been made an officer of, it’s true, but I haven’t been treated as one or looked on as one, because I wasn’t born a gentleman, and slavery in a cocked hat I, for one, will not bear.’
“In that way he talked till we got pretty nearly down to Yarmouth. At last he worked himself up into a regular rage, for he was a passionate man, do you see.
“‘Give us a knife, some one of you,’ he sang out.