it was naturally considered more logical (since hang
you must for almost any misdeed) to hang for a sheep than a lamb, and
human life on the whole was held rather cheap in consequence. They are
the days when in Liverpool the privateers were daily fitting out or
bringing in the "prizes," and when, in Lord Street Offices, distant
cargoes of "living ebony" were put to auction by steady, intensely
respectable, Church-going merchants. But especially they are the days
of war and the fortunes of war; days of pressgangs, to kidnap
unwilling rulers of the waves; of hulks and prisons filled to
overflowing, even in a mere commercial port like Liverpool, with
French prisoners of war._

_A long course of relentless hostilities, lasting the span of a
full-grown generation, had cultivated the predatory instinct of all
men with the temperament of action, and seemed to justify it.
Venturesome, hot-spirited youths, with their way to make in the world
(who in a former age might have been reduced to "the road") took up
privateering on a systematic scale. In such an atmosphere there could
not fail to return a belief in the good old_ border rule, _"the simple
plan: that they should take who have the power, and they should keep
who can." And it must be remembered that an island country's border is
the enemy's coast! On that ethical understanding many privateer owners
built up large fortunes, still enjoyed by descendants who in these
days would look upon high-sea looting of non-combatants with definite
horror._

_The years of the great French war, however, fostered a species of
nautical enterprise more venturesome even than privateering, raiding,
blockade-running and all the ordinary forms of smuggling that are
usual when two coast lines are at enmity. I mean that smuggling of
gold specie and bullion which incidentally was destined to affect the
course of Sir Adrian's life so powerfully._

* * * * *

_As Captain Jack's last venture may, at this distance of time, appear
a little improbable, it is well to state here some little-known facts
concerning the now rather incomprehensible pursuit of gold
smuggling--a romantic subject if ever there was one._

_The existence at one time of this form of "free-trade" is all but
forgotten. Indeed very little was ever heard of it in the world,
except among parties directly interested, even at the time when it
played an important part in the machinery of governments. Its