It should be added that Slade had taken the precaution to put on board this sloop before she left England a Mr. Thomas Aldridge, an expert judge of pictures, his exact description for this voyage being as supercargo, a term which signifies an officer in a trading vessel whose duty it is to manage the sales and superintend all the commercial concerns of the voyage.  Having arrived, then, off Calais, Cheney, Aldridge, and some of the crew proceeded ashore and, guided by the art expert, went to a certain Monsieur Dessein, who kept an hotel in that town.  From him they obtained a large number of cases containing the Orleans collection, and brought them off to the Grace.  Altogether there were no less than fifteen of these cases, and although the Grace was a vessel of some thirty-two tons burthen, yet the weight of these paintings was sufficiently great to lower her water-line a good six inches.

After this valuable cargo had been got aboard and stowed, a gale of wind sprang up and detained them for a few days, but at length they cleared from the French coast and steered for the Downs.  From there they rounded the North Foreland, and after running up the Thames entered the Medway and let go at Gillingham until it was dark.  But as soon as night had fallen they got going once more, and ran alongside the Victualling Wharf at Chatham.  The pictures were brought up from the sloop and taken ashore by means of a crane, and then quietly carried into Mr. Slade’s house.  By this he had thus saved the cost both of carriage and of duty, the pictures being afterwards sold for a very large sum.  However, this dishonest business at length leaked out, an action was brought against Slade, and a verdict was given for the King and for six pictures of the single value of twenty guineas.

On the evening of a November day in the year 1819, the Revenue cutter Badger, under the command of Captain Mercer, was cruising in the English Channel between Dungeness and Boulogne.  About seven o’clock it was reported to the commander that about a quarter of a mile away there was a lugger steering about N.W. by W. towards the English coast.  The Badger thereupon gave chase, but as she drew nearer and nearer the lugger altered her course many times.  Carrying a smart press of canvas, the Badger, which was one of the fastest vessels employed in the Revenue, came up rapidly.  As usual she fired her warning gun for the lugger to heave-to, but all the notice taken by the chased ship was to go about on the other tack and endeavour still to escape.  But presently the cutter, running with the wind on her quarter and doing her eight knots to the lugger’s four or five, came up to her foe so quickly as to run right past her.  But before the Badger luffed up she hailed the lugger (whose name was afterwards found to be the Iris of Boulogne) and ordered her to heave-to.

“I be hove-to,” answered back one of the lugger’s crew in unmistakable English.