om further service;
and we have also resolved to pay the surgeons' bills for such of the
mariners as may receive slighter wounds." But it was stipulated that
no allowance was to be paid unless certificates were produced from the
commanders of these cruisers.

And before we go any further with the progress of these cutters, let
us afford actual instances of the kind of treatment which had led the
Board to make this allowance to its men. Three years before the above
resolution, that is to say on April 24, 1777, Captain Mitchell was
cruising in command of the Revenue cutter _Swallow_ in the North Sea.
Off Robin Hood's Bay he fell in with a smuggling cutter commanded by a
notorious contraband skipper who was known as "Smoker," or "Smoaker."
Mitchell was evidently in sufficient awe of him to give him a wide
berth, for the cruiser's commander in his official report actually
recorded that "Smoker" "waved us to keep off"! However, a few days
later, the _Swallow_, when off the Spurn, fell in with another famous
smuggler. This was the schooner _Kent_, of about two hundred tons,
skippered by a man known as "Stoney." Again did this gallant Revenue
captain send in his report to the effect that "as their guns were in
readiness, and at the same time waving us to go to the Northward, we
were, by reason of their superior force, obliged to sheer off, but did
our best endeavours to spoil his Market. There [_sic_] being a large
fleet of colliers with him."

But that was not to be their last meeting, for on May 2, when off
Whitby, the _Swallow_ again fell in with the _Kent_, but (wrote
Mitchell) the smuggler "would not let us come near him." The following
day the two ships again saw each other, and also on May 13, when off
Runswick Bay. On the latter occasion the _Kent_ "fired a gun for us,
as we imagined, to keep farther from him." The same afternoon the
_Swallow_ chased a large lugsail boat, with fourteen hands in her, and
supposed to belong to the _Kent_. But the _Swallow_ was about as timid
as her name, for, according to her commander, she was "obliged to
stand out to sea, finding that by the force they had in their boat,
and a number of people on shore, we had no chance of attacking them
with our boat, as they let us know they were armed, by giving us a
volley of small arms." None the less the _Swallow_ had also fourteen
men as her complement, so one would have thought that this
chicken-hearted commander would at least have made an e