To return to Captain Stewart and the two boats:  for the first twenty minutes these oared craft gained on the luggers owing to the absence of wind, and the smugglers could do nothing.  The dawn had revealed the presence of the Jackal to the smugglers no less than the latter had been revealed to the gun-brig.  And as soon as the illicit carriers realised what was about to happen they, too, began to make every effort to get moving.  The early morning calm, however, was less favourable to them than to the comparatively light-oared craft which had put out from the Jackal, so the three luggers just rolled to the swell under the cliffs of the Foreland as their canvas and gear slatted idly from side to side.

But presently, as the sun rose up in the sky, a little breeze came forth which bellowed the lug-sails and enabled the three craft to stand off from the land and endeavour, if possible, to get out into the Channel.  In order to accelerate their speed the crews laid on to the sweeps and pulled manfully.  Every sailorman knows that the tides in that neighbourhood are exceedingly strong, but the addition of the breeze did not improve matters for the Jackal’s two boats, although the luggers were getting along finely.  However, the wind on a bright June morning is not unusually fitful and light, so the boats kept up a keen chase urged by their respective officers, and after three hours of strenuous rowing Captain Stewart’s boat came up with the first of these named the I.O. But before he had come alongside her and was still 300 yards away, the master and pilot of this smuggler and six of her crew was seen to get into the lugger’s small boat and row off to the second lugger named the Nancy, which they boarded.  When the Jackal’s commander, therefore, came up with the I.O. he found only one man aboard her.  He stopped to make some inquiries, and the solitary man produced some Bills of Lading and other papers to show that the craft was bound from Emden to Guernsey, and that their cargo was destined for the latter place.

The reader may well smile at this barefaced and ingenuous lie.  Not even a child could be possibly persuaded to imagine that a vessel found hovering about the North Foreland was really making for the Channel Isles from Germany.  It was merely another instance of employing these papers if any awkward questions should be asked by suspecting Revenue vessels or men-of-war.  What was truth, however, was that the I.O. was bound not to but from Guernsey, where she had loaded a goodly cargo of brandy and gin, all of which was found on board, and no doubt would shortly have been got ashore and placed in one of the caves not far from Longnose.  Moreover, the men were as good as convicted when it was found that the spirits were in those small casks or tubs which were only employed by the smugglers; and indeed never had such a cargo of spirits to Guernsey been carried in such small-sized kegs, for Guernsey always received its spirits in casks of bold dimensions.