the trigger is let go. By her own impetus the
lugger rushes down the steep slope on the slippery skids into the sea.
Even when a heavy sea is beating right on shore, the force acquired by
the rush is sufficient to drive her safely into deep water. Lest too
heavy a surf or any unforeseen accident should prevent this, a cable
called a 'haul-off warp' is made fast to an anchor moored out far, by
which the lugger men, if need arise, haul their boat out beyond the
shallow water. The arrangements above described are exactly those
adopted by the lifeboats, which are also lugger-rigged, and being
almost identical in their rig are singularly familiar to Deal men. The
introduction of steam has diminished greatly the number of the luggers,
as fewer vessels than formerly wait in the Downs, and there is less
demand for the services of the boatmen.

There was formerly another class of Deal boats, the forty-feet
smuggling boats of sixty or seventy years ago. The length, flat floor,
and sharpness of those open boats, together with the enormous press of
sail they carried, enabled them often to escape the revenue vessels by
sheer speed, and to land their casks of brandy or to float them up
Sandwich River in the darkness, and then run back empty to France for
more. In the 'good old times' those piratical-looking craft would pick
up a long thirty-feet baulk of timber at sea--timber vessels from the
Baltic or coming across the Atlantic often lose some of their
deck-load--and when engaged in towing it ashore would be pounced upon
by the revenue officers, who would only find, to their own
discomfiture, amidst the hearty 'guffaws' of the boatmen, that the
latter were merely trying to earn 'salvage' by towing the timber ashore.

A little closer search would have revealed that the innocent-looking
baulk of timber was hollow from end to end, and was full of lace,
tobacco, cases of schnapps, 'square face,' brandy, and silks. There is
little or no smuggling now, and the little that there is, is almost
forced on the men by foreign vessels.

Perhaps four boatmen have been out all night looking for a job in their
galley punt. At morning dawn they find a captain who employs them to
get his ship a good berth, or to take him to the Ness. Perhaps the
captain says--and this is an actual case--in imperfect English, 'I have
no money to pay you, but I have forty pounds of tobacco, vill you take
dat? Or vill you have it in ze part payment?' The bo