“Well, I’m sorry for it,” he said, “but it was your own fault.”

“Yes,” answered the dying man, “I know that, but I hope you won’t make things worse than they are.  I freely forgive you.”

This was the steersman who had so strenuously opposed the boarding of the St. Thomas.  We can quite sympathise with the feelings of Mr. Stewart, and be thankful that those lawless days of violence have long since passed.  If you talk with any of the Revenue officers still living who were employed in arresting, lying in wait for, receiving information concerning, and sometimes having a smart fight with the smugglers, you will be told how altogether hateful it was to have to perform such a duty.  It is such incidents as the above which knock all romance out of the smuggling incidents.  An encounter with fisticuffs, a few hard blows, and an arrest after a smart chase or a daring artifice, whilst not lessening the guilt of smuggling, cannot take away our interest.  Our sympathies all the time are with the Revenue men, because they have on their side right, and in the long-run right must eventually conquer might.  But, as against this, the poorer classes in those days were depressed in ignorance with low ideals, and lacking many of the privileges which no thinking man to-day would refuse them.  And because they were so daring and so persistent, because they had so much to lose and (comparatively speaking) so little really to gain, we extend to them a portion of our sympathy and a large measure of our interest.  They were entirely in the wrong, but they had the right stuff in them for making the best kind of English sailormen, the men who helped to win our country’s battles, and to make her what she is to-day as the owner of a proud position in the world of nations.

Ten of these twelve men were taken as prisoners to the Florida, and the St. Thomas with her cargo still aboard were towed by the Florida into Yarmouth Roads, and there delivered to the Collector of Customs.  She was found to be a 54-foot galley—­a tremendous length for an oared craft—­with no deck, and rigged with three lugsails and jib, her size working out at about 11 tons burthen.  On delivering the cargo at Yarmouth it was found that there were altogether 207 kegs.  The ten uninjured prisoners were taken before the Yarmouth magistrates, and the two whom the officer had cut down were sent on shore immediately the Florida arrived in that port.  The English steersman, to whose case we call special attention, died, two others were fined L100 each, two were sent to gaol, and one, who was the son of the man who died, was liberated, as it was shown that he had only been a passenger.  The man who had been born of English parents at Flushing was also set free, as the magistrates had not sufficient proof that he was a British subject.