Smuggler's Moon

“Mr. Perkins,” said he, ”what can you tell us of this territory to which we’re headed? So far as I am concerned, east Kent is naught but terra incognita.”

“Terra which?”

“Oh, ‘tis a phrase meaning ‘unknown land.’ Do please forgive me for resorting to Latin, won’t you?”

“Certainly I shall, sir.” Then, having come full awake at last, he glanced round at the rest of us, and said, ”So you’d like to hear a bit about east Kent, would you? First of all, you know what they call it, don’t you?”

“I believe I have heard,” said Sir John. ” ‘The garden of England,’ isn’t that right?”

“It is indeed. That’s for all the farming that’s done here. Most of what’s sold in Covent Garden, all them fruits and vegetables, they come from right here in Kent. The hops they make the ale from-that’s grown here, too.”

I could well believe it, reader, for if you have ever visited that corner of the realm, it must surely have struck you what a verdant and fruitful spot it is. If all the world were as this, then hunger would be quite unknown.

“Now, that’s both good and bad,” continued Constable Perkins, ”my point being that a man an’t got much choice here in Kent for honest employment. There used to be iron smelting done here, but that’s gone up north, and the wool weaving that was done here, that’s moved up north, too, to those big mills where it’s all done by power loom. So the result is you got to work doing old-fashioned farm labor for seven or eight shillings a week, and at best that’s just seasonal work. That’s honest employment I’m talking about.”

“And for those who would sully their hands with dishonest employment-what choice have they?”

“Just one other, and that be the owling trade.”

“The owling trade?” repeated Sir John. ”What, praytell, is the owling trade?”

“That is what others might call the smuggling trade. Out here it’s the owling trade.”

“Whatever for?”

“Oh, in truth, Sir John, your guess would be as good as my own. All I can say is that owls fly by night, and that’s when the smugglers conduct their business, as well. And let me tell you, sir, it can be a very profitable business, too. Instead of the seven or so shillings a farm worker might make in a week, he’ll get ten shillings in a single night.”

“Would that be ten shillings every night?”

“No sir, that an’t the way it works. It an’t every night that you go out, but when there’s a boat coming in from France, the word goes round that men are needed down on the beach, and half the town turns out to unload what’s been brought across.”

“So it’s that way, is it?” said Sir John. ”And how often might this great crowd be needed on the beach?”

“Oh, no less than once a week, nor more than three times.”

“Then an average of two?”

“I suppose so, yes sir.”

A teasing smile twitched at the corners of Sir John’s mouth. ”It strikes me that you know a good deal about this … owling trade, as you call it.”

”You could say that, sir.” And there was a similar air of playfulness in Mr. Perkins’s response.

“Could it be you have had some direct personal experience of all this?”

“Oh, it could be indeed,” said the constable. ”Yet I always figured you knew all that and took me in the Bow Street Runners anyways.”

“Well, I’d heard a few rumors, but I put no great stock in them. It was your army record interested me far more.”

“Glad to hear it, sir.”

“Tell me, Perkins, could your direct personal experience of the owling trade have had some relation to your later experience in the grenadiers?”

“It could. It did.”

I had been watching the two men carefully, greatly enjoying the game they played between them. Clarissa, equally fascinated, seemed nevertheless to be somewhat confused by what passed between them. Were they teasing, or were they in earnest?

“There is a tale to tell there, Sir John,” said Mr. Perkins.

“Then tell it by all means,” said the magistrate. ”And you may rest assured that naught in the telling will be held against you.”

“Ah well, in that case, I’ll not hold back further.” And with a wink at me and a nod to Clarissa, he began his story. ”I was a lad about the age of Jeremy here, doing farm labor for a family by the name of Griggs. It wasn’t quite year-round labor, for I was not paid in the winter when there was naught for me to do. Still, the Griggses were decent people, and they’d given me a place to sleep behind the kitchen and kept me fed through the winter, so it was almost year-round. I was orphaned by then, and this was the best I could do for myself at that time in my life. I was reconciled to it.

“There was a Griggs daughter about my own age I used to dote upon, and I had saved up a bit to buy her a Christmas gift. So one Saturday in December I walked into Deal bright and early and found a locket and chain of silver which I thought just right for her. The problem was, y’see, I didn’t have the price of it, though I’d been laying a bit aside each month for just this purpose. It was just that I’d not laid enough aside-and so back into the store window it went.

“I was fair crushed, so I was, and so I took myself over to an inn in High Street right there in the middle of town to have an ale so as to console myself. Whilst I was there, I fell to talking with a young fellow a bit older than I was. I told him what brought me into Deal and how disappointed I was to be caught short.

“ ‘Well,’ says he, ‘I know how you can earn enough in a night to buy any locket and chain in Deal.’

“ ‘How’s that?’ says I. ‘Is it legal? Is it respectable?’

“ ‘Well, it may not be legal,’ says he, ‘but in this town it’s work that’s damn near respectable. There’s a lugger coming in tonight just filled with Christmas dainties for the lords and ladies of London.’

“I’d no idea what he meant. Finally, with him dropping hints and me trying hard to understand, it come to me that it all had to do with smuggling, that a ship was coming in from France loaded with items of the sort that would be very popular with those in London who had money enough to pay for them. Men would be needed to unload the cargo from the longboats and pack them onto horses and into wagons. It was the offer of a job.

“My newfound employer, whose name was Dick Dickens, told me to be there at the inn at closing time and we’d be right on the hour and the minute to meet the lugger. Well, I was there right enough and went down with Dickens and a whole gang of men to the beach. It was all work once we got there. Once the boats started to ply back and forth from the ship to the shore, it was just a matter of getting them unloaded and the goods transferred to the wagons. We worked fast, for Dick Dickens or one or two others who were in charge were always about telling us to pick up the pace, that it would soon be morning. As it proved out, we was well paid, as promised, but that didn’t mean we didn’t work for it. Strangest thing was, it didn’t seem like we was breaking the law at all-just working hard.

“By dawn the last wagon was gone, and the ship out there off the beach had weighed anchor and was sailing away on the tide. That was when we was paid off. I could scarce believe it when Dick Dickens counted out ten shillings into my hand. He told me I’d earned it, and that I was a good worker, and he wanted to know would I be able to work next time a lugger came across. I told him I would, and we worked out a way he could let me know when I’d be needed. So from then on I was working down on the beach one or two nights a week.

“So for certain sure this wasn’t the sort of winter I’d expected. The way it had been I was happy just having a place to sleep and something to eat each day, but now of a sudden, I was making more money than ever I had in my life. Well, of course I went a bit daft. Instead of the silver locket and chain, I gave the Griggs girl one of gold for Christmas. Naturally, her ma and pa must have wondered where I got the money to pay for it, but they said nothing. And I bought myself a new suit of clothes, though where I supposed I would wear those new duds, I have no idea.

“And through all this, the work on the beach continued. The luggers made the run from France whenever the weather permitted. As it improved, the ships would be coming over often-or so I supposed. I saw, looking ahead to the coming of spring, that I would soon have to make a decision. Was I to continue in the owling trade, or was I to return to my life as a farmhand? How could I, after all, leave the Griggses after they had kept me all winter long? Well, I was saved from that choice by what seemed to me at the time a dreadful circumstance, but