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SMUGGLING, PAST AND PRESENT.
BY AN EXAMINING OFFICER.
In a recently issued, readable little volume by Mr W. D. Chester,
H.M. Customs, London, entitled _Chronicles of the Customs_, there
occurs a chapter on the tricks of smugglers, which suggests an
interesting comparison of past and present methods of smuggling. The
volume referred to treats of many matters connected with Customs’ work
besides the prevention of smuggling; but we must confine our remarks to
smuggling pure and simple, with a few examples of clever evasions of
the Customs’ laws.
From the days of Ethelred, when it was enacted that ‘every smaller boat
arriving at Billingsgate should pay for toll or custom one halfpenny, a
larger boat with sails one penny,’ those who have had to carry out the
collection of the revenue have been disliked by everybody who had to
submit to taxation. It is not easy to understand this dislike. People
who use coal, gas, water, or any of the necessities of existence do
not, as a rule, view with very great disfavour the people whom they
pay to supply these commodities. Why they should dislike those whose
business it is to collect the funds which provide government with the
wherewithal to insure protection for life, property, and trade, is an
anomaly which it is difficult to comprehend. In olden days, the bold
and daring smuggler was the darling of the coast, and the officers
who endeavoured to prevent his depredations the most disliked of all
government officials. Yellow-backed novels have portrayed his prowess
in the most glowing colours. The word-pictures which represent him
as a free-and-easy, good-natured soul, with gentlemanly manners and
genteel exterior, have been read and admired wherever English novels
of a seafaring type have been circulated; and no exciting ocean tale
is considered sufficiently spicy unless a chapter or two is devoted to
the daring thief who defies his country’s laws, and is rewarded with
admiration for doing so; while ordinary thieves are spoken of with
contempt, and obtain a far from acceptable recompense in the shape of
jail ‘skilly.’
No longer ago than 1883, an amusing case, illustrative of this feeling,
occurred in the neighbourhood of Sunderland. A party of officers had
been away at Hull attending a departmental examination. On their
return journey in the train, they met with a seafaring man, who,
not knowing the profession of his fellow-passengers, entered into a
long conversation on the comparatively easy methods by which he—the
sailor—evaded detection. Growing eloquent on this theme, he further
explained the _modus operandi_ of his proceedings, and informed the
officers that he had in his chest an ingeniously concealed receptacle
for the very purpose of smuggling, and that he then had in it several
pounds of foreign tobacco. Great was his consternation to find, on
his arrival at Sunderland, that his fellow-passengers were Customs’
officers, who at once seized the man’s chest and confiscated the
tobacco found therein, for the possession of which the loquacious
seaman was subsequently fined. The moral of the story rests in the
fact, that no sooner was the affair made known, than the local press
went ablaze with denunciations of the unfortunate officers who had
prevented the country’s pockets being pilfered of the amount of duty
leviable on the quantity of tobacco found. The incident is one which
proves that among a certain class of people the smuggler is a hero
still. With the audience in a police court the smuggler is no end of
a favourite. Only a few months ago, a case occurred at Whitby where a
couple of fishermen were charged with smuggling about forty-four pounds
of tobacco, the highest penalty for which being £42 with alternative
imprisonment. The Bench, however, let the prisoners off with the
mitigated fine of £30, and yet, on the announcement of the merciful
decision, ‘there were,’ says the police-court reporter, ‘expressions
of disapprobation in the crowded court.’
In contradistinction to the sympathising feeling which in the olden
time and at the present day was and is extended to the smuggler,
it is satisfactory to find that his nefarious transactions do not
always shield him from ridicule. Not long ago, a friend of mine was
crossing from the continent to one of the eastern English ports, and
on the voyage was applied to by another passenger as to how he—the
passenger—could most successfully evade paying the duty on two or three
boxes of cigars which he had in his possession. My friend, who knew
something of Custom House strictness, and had, besides, a conscientious
respect for the laws of his country, advised his fellow-voyager either
to throw the cigars overboard, or to ‘declare’ and pay duty upon them
when he landed. This, it subsequently transpired, the passenger did not
do, but rolled up the cigars in some soiled linen and placed the lot in
a portmanteau. When it came to declaring baggage at the landing-stage
or railway station, the smuggler, like many of his class, grew timid,
and left his portmanteau in the hands of the Customs’ officials without
owning it as his property. My friend declares that the scared look of
the gentleman-smuggler as he hid back in the railway carriage while
a Customs’ boatman walked up and down the platform with the unlucky
portmanteau, and calling out stentoriously, ‘Claim your luggage! claim
your luggage!’ was a sight, once seen, never to be forgotten. The
unfortunate passenger of course lost his portmanteau, clothes, and
cigars.
In order to present to the reader the unromantic aspect of present-day
smuggling in a comparative light, the writer is induced to quote one
or two cases mentioned by Mr Chester. By perusing these selected
instances, and comparing them with the methods adopted in our own
day, it will be seen that smuggling in former times was surrounded
with an adventurous atmosphere which certainly does not obtain in a
matter-of-fact age like the present. One of the cases quoted by Mr
Chester is a characteristic one. It occurred at the time when duties
were levied on laces, silks, gloves, &c. These were mostly French
manufactures, and, consequently, Dover and other southern ports were
the most convenient localities in which the smuggling fraternity
exercised their calling. At that time, well-horsed spring vans were
used to convey the goods from Dover to London, and at intervals on the
journey, particular houses were used as storage places for the booty
until it could be safely conveyed to the metropolis. ‘On one occasion,’
says Mr Chester, ‘the Customs’ officers at Dover were sent on a fool’s
errand. A van loaded with silk and lace left the town at night; and to
insure it a successful journey, an accomplice informed the officers
of its departure, the venture being suspected. Forthwith they went in
pursuit in a postchaise. The parties in the van, after going about four
miles, drew into a side-road, extinguished the lights, and remained
quiet. The officers soon rushed by in hot haste; and when they had
passed, the smugglers betook themselves in another direction, and got
safely off with their booty.’
At a time when goods were subjected to _ad valorem_ duties, there
were no end of tricks practised by which an importer, whose goods were
seized, obtained his own importations for the veriest trifle, and
thus made a handsome profit by his cleverness. Mr Chester relates an
instance of an importer, more shrewd than honest, who imported into
Folkestone a case of gloves on which he declined to pay duty. The
goods, of course, were seized. Into London, the same gentleman imported
a similar case with a like result. When the goods were offered for sale
at the two places, it was found that the Folkestone case contained all
right-hand gloves, while those in London were all left-hand gloves.
Being considered valueless, they were knocked down to the buyer for a
mere trifle. It is needless to add that the buyer in each case was the
importer, who paired the gloves and pocketed a respectable profit by
the transaction.
Another instance from the same authority illustrates the stratagems
which were resorted to for the purpose of evading Customs’ duties on
watches, when such imports were in vogue. A foreigner, it appears,
had made up his mind to realise a small fortune at the expense of his
comfort; so, taking a passage from Holland, he secreted a large number
of watches round his body in leathern receptacles. The weight was so
great that the unfortunate smuggler was unable to lie down. He had
calculated on a voyage of twenty-four hours, but, being a foreigner, he
little knew the density or the stopping powers of a Thames fog. The fog
detained the ship for another twenty-four hours; and when the vessel
arrived in London, the strain on the smuggler’s system had been so
enormous that he was completely exhausted; his courage oozed out with
his strength; and at last he gave himself up to the Customs’ officials,
who had had a watchful eye on his suspiciously distressed-looking
features.
Since the so-called ‘good old days’ of the novelist, smuggling has
lost much of its attractiveness. The abolition of duty on watches,
silks, lace, gloves, &c., has done a great deal to lessen an illicit
traffic, and wholesale attempts at smuggling are now of comparatively
rare occurrence. Of course, now and again a case crops up in which the
old spirit seems to have revived; but such cases are comparatively
few. Yet, though petty smuggling is, in the main, the special offence
with which Customs’ officers have now to deal, wholesale smuggling
has not yet become a thing of the past. In 1881, a daring attempt to
defraud the revenue took place in London. The writer happened to be
stationed there at the time, and can well remember the excitement
caused in official circles by the discovery, and can recollect the
crowds of officers who used daily to visit the quayage front of the
Custom House, where lay a pair of marine boilers in which five tons of
tobacco had been conveyed to this country from Rotterdam. The history
of the attempted fraud is an interesting one. An anonymous writer, it
appears, had been giving continuous hints to the officials in London
that extensive smuggling was being carried on between Rotterdam and
England. Such anonymous communications being far from uncommon in Lower
Thames Street, but little attention was paid to them, till at last the
writer grew so persistent in his efforts, and gave such plausible and
detailed information, that a detective officer was sent to Rotterdam to
watch the ingenious proceedings.
Taking advantage of the information given by the informer, the
officer occupied a room from which a view of a large boiler-foundry
was obtainable. Keeping strict watch, he saw large quantities of
tobacco being packed, by means of hydraulic pressure, into a couple of
marine boilers, which, when the packing was completed, were placed on
board a steamer for conveyance, if I remember aright, to Newcastle.
Unfortunately, however, for the parties concerned in the smuggling
transaction, a telegram arrived before the boilers. These were not
seized at Newcastle, but were allowed to be placed on the railway and
reach King’s Cross, London, without interference, the authorities
wishing to take the principal participators red-handed. At King’s
Cross they duly arrived, and remained unclaimed for several days. At
last, one was taken to a railway arch at Stepney, where it was watched
day and night until the smugglers came to claim it, when they were of
course arrested. The other boiler, which had remained at King’s Cross,
was—through a telegraphic error, which caused the police to relax
their watchfulness—removed from that locality without their knowledge.
But the conveyance on which it was removed broke down under the heavy
weight, and through this unlooked-for casualty, it was at last secured.
The smugglers were mulcted in a fine of nearly five thousand pounds,
and being unable to pay it, were sent to jail. The writer remembers
well inspecting the boilers when they were lying at the Custom House,
and to those who had the opportunity of seeing them, their construction
gave ample evidence that smuggling as a science was not yet entirely
extinct. The boilers were simply ‘dummies.’ The iron used in their
construction was too thin to resist steam-pressure, and they had
evidently been made for the express purpose of conveying tobacco to
this country. It is not at all improbable, either, that the ‘dummy’
boilers had made more than one trip to England, and had put a good
many pounds sterling in the pockets of their ingenious but dishonest
designers.
Another famous instance of present-day smuggling was brought to light
in the Queen’s Bench division in 1883. From the evidence then given,
it appeared that the smugglers had inaugurated a systematic method of
conveying tobacco from Rotterdam, and that, by no means content with
the old-fashioned practice of having a single buyer and seller, they
had regularly appointed agents, whom they stationed at different ports
in the United Kingdom. On the arrival of the tobacco, the agent or
agents communicated by telegraph with the principals in the affair, and
by means of an arranged cipher, gave information as to when the goods
arrived and when they had passed the Customs’ officers undetected.
The principal was an Irishman, who carried on business as a tobacco
merchant. He had a brother who traded in flax-seed. It occurred to the
former that importations of tobacco which had evaded the duty would be
much more profitable than duty-paid importations, and what more natural
than that his brother’s barrels of flax-seed would form a not easily
detected mode of conveyance? The course adopted then was this: a large
quantity of flax-seed was purchased at Rotterdam, and also a quantity
of tobacco. Sixty pounds-weight of the tobacco was rammed firmly down
into the bottom of a cask, which was then filled up with flax-seed;
and the casks so filled were shipped to this country, and reported and
entered as containing flax-seed only. On one occasion, four hundred
casks containing tobacco stowed in this way escaped detection; and in
April 1882, fourteen hundred pounds of tobacco were smuggled into the
country in twenty-five casks, each containing half a hundredweight of
tobacco. Later on in the same month, two thousand pounds of tobacco
followed their predecessors, and further consignments occurred in May.
At last the crisis came. Somebody, in smuggling parlance, ‘split;’
the officers boarded a ship from Rotterdam, opened the casks, and the
nefarious consignment was at last laid bare. Despite the discovery,
the Attorney-general, who conducted the case for the Crown, had no
little difficulty in bringing the guilt home to the proper parties. The
concealed tobacco had all been addressed to fictitious consignees, but
the evidence of an accomplice exposed such a state of affairs that the
defendant consented to a verdict being entered against him for over six
thousand pounds, being treble the value of the goods, of which penalty,
however, only one-third was eventually enforced.
But this was by no means the end of the history of one of the most
daring attempts in the annals of modern smuggling. Some few months
later, an action was brought against a tenant farmer in Ireland
to recover £1731, 12s. 6d., being treble the value of nearly two
thousand pounds of tobacco found on his premises. The discovery, as
in most cases of the sort, was brought about by information. A police
constable, ‘from information received,’ reported his suspicions to his
superiors. A search was then instituted among the outhouses of the
defendant’s premises. In the first story of one of the outhouses were
a piggery and carthouse, the loft being reached by a ladder. One of
the constables mounted the ladder, and peering through a chink in the
locked door, perceived a bag lying on the floor with tobacco protruding
from it. The door having been forced, fourteen bags of tobacco were
found, with flax-seed scattered over them, the latter naturally
suggesting the quarter from which the tobacco was obtained. The farmer
when questioned denied all knowledge of the tobacco, asserting that
he had let the loft at a weekly rental to a man whom he did not know.
Evidence, however, was stronger than assertion. It was proved that the
farmer, subsequent to the flax-seed seizure mentioned above, frequently
brought bags and bales of cake and leaf-tobacco to the tobacco
merchant’s premises about six o’clock in the morning, and that it was
spun during the night. The jury were inclined to think that the farmer
was not so innocent as he pretended to be, and found a verdict for the
Crown in the full amount claimed.
We have now, perhaps, given sufficient instances of wholesale smuggling
to warrant the opinion that illicit traffic in dutiable articles is
not yet confined to the sailor or fireman who ekes out a scanty wage
by bringing a couple or three pounds of tobacco or a few bottles
of spirits to dispose of at the end of a short continental voyage.
We will, then, before bringing this paper to a conclusion, give a
brief description of the methods of concealment now pursued in petty
smuggling cases. One system, now happily on the wane, is known as
that of ‘Coopering,’ and the method is as follows. For some years
past, a number of Dutch vessels had taken up positions along the
eastern coast just outside the ‘three-mile limit.’ Their object was to
provide tobacco, spirits, and even obscene pictures to the fishermen
who frequent the locality. The tobacco was of the vilest description;
and the fiery, so-called brandy viler still. The fishermen, thinking
that the Customs’ officers did not suspect, grew bold in their
transactions, and bought tobacco and spirits right and left from the
Dutch ‘Coopers.’ Suspicion was aroused, however, and a raid was made
on the fishing-boats. Only a small quantity of dutiable articles was
discovered; but, as it subsequently transpired that a fishing coble
had slipped off to give warning of the raid to the vessels that were
still coming in, and that suspicious parcels and stone bottles of
foreign manufacture were thrown by many of these craft into the sea
in full view of the people on the shore, the quantity discovered was
by no means a criterion of the extent of the illicit traffic. It has
been calculated that during the fishing season five hundred pounds of
smuggled tobacco per week were consumed by the fishing population of
a small port on the eastern coast, and that in a seaport fishing-town
in the same district, of from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand
inhabitants, the revenue was defrauded to the extent of from four
thousand to five thousand pounds per annum.
The smuggler’s present methods of concealment, notwithstanding
frequent detections, give evidence that if not so inventive as his
more courageous predecessors, he still retains their faculty of hiding
his contraband goods in places where they will probably be least
suspected. A case occurred at Hull, in December 1883, which proves that
perseverance at least is still an attribute possessed by the smuggler.
On the arrival of a steamer at that port, the officers discovered in
the donkey-engine boiler twenty-one pounds of tobacco. To effect the
seizure, the officers were compelled to unscrew the manhole lid of the
boiler; and on a consulting engineer being called to give evidence, he
stated that it must have taken at least a couple of hours to stow the
tobacco away. Another case of a similar nature occurred at Sunderland
some time ago, when an engineer on board a steamer had a large tin made
exactly to fit the manhole of a water-tank. The water-tight tin was
packed with tobacco and sunk in the tank, so that the smuggler had to
strip to get at it. With amusing candour, the prisoner explained, when
brought before the magistrates, that ‘of course it was no use putting
the can where the officers would easily find it.’ False-bottomed
drawers and chests were formerly a favourite hiding-place for
contraband goods; but the trick is now too well known to be safe.
Another method much in vogue in the old days of smuggling, but seldom
practised now, was to conceal tobacco in loaves of bread specially
baked for the purpose. This particular trick has not been lost sight
of altogether. At Hull, in March 1884, on a Customs’ officer rummaging
the firemen’s quarters on board a steamer, he found two loaves of bread
baked in the German fashion. Taking them in his hand, he suspected
the weight as being excessive, and cutting one in two with his knife,
found four pounds of tobacco inside. The packages had been firmly tied
together, and a thin crust baked over them.
An ingenious place of concealment was discovered by the officers at
Hull in January 1883, when, on boarding a vessel from the continent,
they found seventeen boxes of cigars concealed in the hollow of the
port and starboard rails which surmounted the bulwarks. Underneath
firewood, buried in ballast, hidden in chain lockers, beneath
oilcloths, in the stuffing of sofa-pillows, behind cabin panels,
in the empty interior of an innocent-looking cabin clock, in these
and a thousand other places have the officers, from time to time,
discovered the contraband of the smuggler; while it is known that the
ropes apparently constituting the upper rigging of small craft have
occasionally consisted of tobacco twisted into a resemblance of cordage!
From what we have written, it would appear that though smuggling on
an extensive scale belongs more to past than to present days, yet
the same spirit still exists among people, otherwise honest enough,
whose education and social position ought to free them from thieving
propensities. It is almost against human nature to expect that revenue
frauds will ever be thoroughly eradicated while the present high
duties on special commodities are maintained. The duty on tobacco,
for instance, amounting to five times its value, makes it one of the
greatest temptations to seamen. Most strenuous efforts on the part of
the Customs’ authorities and shipowners have been made to eradicate the
traffic, yet every now and then a successful detection—which represents
three or four successful evasions—occurs, which shows that the spirit
of smuggling is difficult to conquer.
IN ALL SHADES.
BY GRANT ALLEN,
AUTHOR OF ‘BABYLON,’ ‘STRANGE STORIES,’ ETC. ETC.
CHAPTER XXIII.
The governor’s dance was the great event of the Trinidad season—the
occasion to which every girl in the whole island looked forward for
months with the intensest interest. And it was also a great event to
Dr Whitaker; for it was the one time and place, except the Hawthorns’
drawing-room, where he could now meet Nora Dupuy on momentary terms of
seeming equality. In the eye of the law, even in Trinidad, white men,
black men, and brown men are all equal; and under the governor’s roof,
as became the representative of law and order in the little island,
there were no invidious distinctions of persons between European
and negro. Every well-to-do inhabitant, irrespective of cuticular
peculiarities, was duly bidden to the governor’s table: ebony and ivory
mingled freely together once in a moon at the governor’s At Homes and
dances. And Dr Whitaker had made up his mind that on that one solitary
possible occasion he would venture on his sole despairing appeal to
Nora Dupuy, and stand or fall by her final answer.
It was not without serious misgivings that the mulatto doctor had
at last decided upon thus tempting Providence. He was weary of the
terrible disillusion that had come upon him on his return to the home
of his fathers; weary of the painfully vulgar and narrow world into
which he had been cast by unrelenting circumstances. He could not live
any longer in Trinidad. Let him fight it out as he would for the sake
of his youthful ideals, the battle had clearly gone against him, and
there was nothing left for him now but to give it up in despair and fly
to England. He had talked the matter over with Edward Hawthorn—not,
indeed, the question of proposing to Nora Dupuy, for that he held
too sacred for any other ear, but the question of remaining in the
island and fighting down the unconquerable prejudice—and even Edward
had counselled him to go; for he felt how vastly different were the
circumstances of the struggle in his own case and in those of the poor
young mulatto doctor. He himself had only to fight against the social
prejudices of men his real inferiors in intellect and culture and moral
standing. Dr Whitaker had to face as well the utterly uncongenial
brown society into which he had been rudely pitchforked by fate, like
a gentleman into the midst of a pot-house company. It was best for
them all that Dr Whitaker should take himself away to a more fitting
environment; and Edward had himself warmly advised him to return once
more to free England.
The governor’s dance was given, not at Government House in the Plains,
but at Banana Garden, the country bungalow, perched high up on a
solitary summit of the Westmoreland mountains. The big ballroom was
very crowded; and Nora Dupuy, in a pale, maize-coloured evening dress,
was universally recognised by black, brown, and white alike as the
belle of the evening. She danced almost every round with one partner
after another; and it was not till almost half the evening had passed
away that Dr Whitaker got the desired chance of even addressing her.
The chance came at last just before the fifth waltz, a dance that Nora
had purposely left vacant, in case she should happen to pick up in the
earlier part of the evening an exceptionally agreeable and promising
partner. She was sitting down to rest for a moment beside her chaperon
of the night, on a bench placed just outside the window in the tropical
garden, when the young mulatto, looking every inch a gentleman in his
evening dress—the first time Nora had ever seen him so attired—strolled
anxiously up to her, with ill-affected carelessness, and bowed a timid
bow to his former travelling companion. Pure opposition to Mr Dupuy,
and affection for the two Hawthorns, had made Nora exceptionally
gracious just that moment to all brown people; and, on purpose to
scandalise her ‘absurdly punctilious’ chaperon, she returned the
doctor’s hesitating salute with a pleasant smile of perfect cordiality.
‘Dr Whitaker!’ she cried, leaning over towards him in a kindly way,
which made the poor mulatto’s heart flutter terribly; ‘so here you are,
as you promised! I’m so glad you’ve come this evening.—And have you
brought Miss Whitaker with you?’
The mulatto hesitated and stammered. She could not possibly have asked
him a more _mal à propos_ question. The poor young man looked about him
feebly, and then answered in a low voice: ‘Yes; my father and sister
are here somewhere.’
‘Nora, my dear,’ her chaperon said in a tone of subdued feminine
thunder, ‘I didn’t know you had the pleasure of Miss Whitaker’s
acquaintance.’
‘Neither have I, Mrs Pereira; but perhaps Dr Whitaker will be good
enough to introduce me.—Not now, thank you, Dr Whitaker; I don’t want
you to run away this minute and fetch your sister. Some other time will
do as well. It’s so seldom, you know, we have the chance of a good talk
now, together.’
Dr Whitaker smiled and stammered. It was possible, of course, to accept
Nora’s reluctance in either of two senses: she might be anxious that he
should stop and talk to her; or she might merely wish indefinitely to
postpone the pleasure of making Miss Euphemia’s personal acquaintance;
but she flooded him so with the light of her eyes as she spoke, that he
chose to put the most flattering of the two alternative interpretations
upon her ambiguous sentence.
‘You are very good to say so,’ he answered, still timidly; and Nora
noticed how very different was his manner of speaking now from the
self-confident Dr Whitaker of the old _Severn_ days. Trinidad had
clearly crushed all the confidence as well as all the enthusiasm
clean out of him. ‘You are very good, indeed, Miss Dupuy; I wish the
opportunities for our meeting occurred oftener.’
He stood talking beside her for a minute or two longer, uttering the
mere polite commonplaces of ballroom conversation—the heat of the
evening, the shortcomings of the band, the beauty of the flowers—when
suddenly Nora gave a little jump and seized her programme with singular
discomposure. Dr Whitaker looked up at once, and divined by instinct
the cause of her hasty movement. Tom Dupuy, just fresh from the
cane-cutting, was looking about for her down the long corridor at the
opposite end of the inner garden. ‘Where’s my cousin? Have you seen my
cousin?’ he was asking everybody; for the seat where Nora was sitting
with Mrs Pereira stood under the shade of a big papaw tree, and so it
was impossible for him to discern her face, though she could see his
features quite distinctly.
‘I won’t dance with that horrid man, my cousin Tom!’ Nora said in her
most decided voice. ‘I’m quite sure he’s coming here this minute on
purpose to ask me.’
‘Is your programme full?’ Dr Whitaker inquired with a palpitating
heart.
‘No; not quite,’ she answered, and handed it to him encouragingly.
There was just one dance still left vacant—the next waltz. ‘I’m too
tired to dance it out,’ Nora cried pettishly. ‘The horrid man! I hope
he won’t see me.’
‘He’s coming this way, dear,’ Mrs Pereira put in with placid composure.
‘You’ll have to sit it out with him, now; there’s no help for it.’
‘Sit it out with him!—sit it out with Tom Dupuy! O no, Mrs Pereira; I
wouldn’t do it for a thousand guineas.’
‘What will you do, then?’ Dr Whitaker asked tremulously, still holding
the programme and pencil in his undecided hand. Dare he—dare he ask her
to dance just once with him?
‘What shall I do?—Why, nothing simpler. Have an engagement already, of
course, Dr Whitaker.’
She looked at him significantly. Tom Dupuy was just coming up. If Dr
Whitaker meant to ask her, there was no time to be lost. His knees gave
way beneath him, but he faltered out at last in some feeble fashion:
‘Then, Miss Dupuy, may I—may I—may I have the pleasure?’
To Mrs Pereira’s immense dismay, Nora immediately smiled and nodded.
‘I can’t dance it with you,’ she said with a hasty gesture—she shrank,
naturally, from that open confession of faith before the whole
assembled company—‘but if you’ll allow me, I’ll sit it out with you
here in the garden. You may put your name down for it, if you like.
Quickly, please—write it quickly; here’s Tom Dupuy just coming.’
The mulatto had hardly scratched his own name with shaky pencilled
letters on the little card, when Tom Dupuy swaggered up in his awkward,
loutish, confident manner, and with a contemptuous nod of condescending
half-recognition to the overjoyed mulatto, asked, in his insular West
Indian drawl, whether Nora could spare him a couple of dances.
‘Your canes seem to have delayed you too late, Tom Dupuy,’ Nora
answered coldly. ‘Dr Whitaker has just asked me for my last vacancy.
You should come earlier to a dance, you know, if you want to find a
good partner.’
Tom Dupuy stared hard at her face in puzzled astonishment. ‘Your last
vacancy!’ he cried incredulously. ‘Dr Whitaker! No more dances to
spare, Nora! No, no, I say; this won’t do, you know! You’ve done this
on purpose.—Let me have a squint at your programme, will you?’
‘If you don’t choose to take my word for the facts,’ Nora answered
haughtily, ‘you can see the names and numbers of my engagements for
yourself on my programme.—Dr Whitaker, have the kindness to hand my
cousin my programme, if you please.—Thank you.’
Tom Dupuy took the programme ungraciously, and glanced down it with
an angry eye. He read every name out aloud till he came to number
eleven, ‘Dr Whitaker.’ As he reached that name, his lip curled with
an ugly suddenness, and he handed the bit of cardboard back coldly to
his defiant cousin. ‘Very well, Miss Nora,’ he answered with a sneer.
‘You’re quite at liberty, of course, to choose your own company however
it pleases you. I see your programme’s quite full; but your list of
names is rather comprehensive than select, I fancy.—The last name was
written down as I was coming towards you. This is a plot to insult
me.—Dr Whitaker, we shall settle this little difference elsewhere,
probably—with the proper weapon—a horsewhip. Though your ancestors,
to be sure, were better accustomed, I believe, sir, to a good raw
cowhide.—Good-evening, Miss Nora.—Good-evening, Dr Whitaker.’
The mulatto’s eyes flashed fire, but he replied with a low and
stately bow, in suppressed accents: ‘I shall be ready to answer you
in this matter whenever you wish, Mr Dupuy—and with your own weapon.
Good-evening.’ And he held out his arm quietly to Nora.
Nora rose and took the mulatto’s proffered arm at once with a sweeping
air of utter indifference. ‘Shall we take a turn round the gardens,
Dr Whitaker?’ she asked calmly, reassuring herself at the same time
with a rapid glance that nobody except poor frightened Mrs Pereira had
overheard this short altercation.—‘How lovely the moon looks to-night!
What an exquisite undertone of green in the long shadows of those
columns in the portico!’
‘Undertone of green!’ Tom Dupuy exclaimed aloud in vulgar derision (he
was too much of a clod to see that his cue in the scene was fairly
past, and that dignity demanded of him now to keep perfectly silent).
‘Undertone of green, indeed, with her precious nigger!—Mrs Pereira,
this is your fault! A pretty sort of chaperon _you_ make, upon my word,
to let her go and engage herself to sit out a dance with a common
mulatto!—Where’s Uncle Theodore? Where is he, I tell you? I shall run
and fetch him this very minute. I always said that in the end that girl
Nora would go and marry a woolly-headed brown man.’
CHAPTER XXIV.
Nora and the mulatto walked across the garden in unbroken silence, past
the fountain in the centre of the courtyard; past the corridor by the
open supper-room; past the hanging lanterns on the outer shrubbery; and
down the big flight of stone steps to the gravelled Italian terrace
that overlooked the deep tropical gully. When they reached the foot of
the staircase, Nora said in as unconcerned a tone as she could muster
up: ‘Let us walk down here, away from the house, Dr Whitaker. Tom may
perhaps send papa out to look for me, and I’d rather not meet him till
the next dance is well over. Please take me along the terrace.’
Dr Whitaker turned with her silently along the path, and uttered
not a word till they reached the marble seat at the end of the
creeper-covered balustrade. Then he sat down moodily beside her, and
said in what seemed a perfectly unruffled voice: ‘Miss Dupuy, I am not
altogether sorry that this little incident has turned out just as it
has happened. It enables you to judge for yourself the sort of insult
that men of my colour are liable to meet with here in Trinidad.’
Nora fingered her fan nervously. ‘Tom Dupuy’s always an unendurably
rude fellow,’ she said, with affected carelessness. ‘He’s rude by
nature, you know, that’s the fact of it. He’s rude to me. He’s rude to
everybody. He’s a boor, Dr Whitaker; a boor at heart. You mustn’t take
any notice of what he says to you.’
‘Yes; he _is_ a boor, Miss Dupuy—and I shall venture to say so,
although he’s your own cousin—but in what other country in the world
would such a boor venture to believe himself able to look down upon
other men, his equals in everything except an accident of colour?’
‘Oh, Dr Whitaker, you make too much altogether of his rudeness. It
isn’t personal to you; it’s part of his nature.’
‘Miss Dupuy,’ the young mulatto burst out suddenly, after a moment’s
pause and internal struggle, ‘I’m not sorry for it, as I said before;
for it gives me the opportunity of saying something to you that I have
long been waiting to tell you.’
‘Well?’—frigidly.
‘Well, it is this: I mean at once to leave Trinidad.’
Nora started. It was not quite what she was expecting. ‘To leave
Trinidad, Dr Whitaker? And where to go? Back to England?’
‘Yes, back to England.—Miss Dupuy, for heaven’s sake, listen to me for
a moment. This dance won’t be very long. As soon as it’s over, I must
take you back to the ballroom. I have only these few short minutes to
speak to you. I have been waiting long for them—looking forward to
them; hoping for them; dreading them; foreseeing them. Don’t disappoint
me of my one chance of a hearing. Sit here and hear me out: I beg of
you—I implore you.’
Nora’s fingers trembled terribly, and she felt half inclined to rise
at once and go back to Mrs Pereira; but she could not find it in her
heart utterly to refuse that pleading tone of profound emotion, even
though it came from only a brown man. ‘Well, Dr Whitaker,’ she answered
tremulously, ‘say on whatever you have to say to me.’
‘I’m going to England, Miss Dupuy,’ the poor young mulatto went on
in broken accents; ‘I can stand no longer the shame and misery of my
own surroundings in this island. You know what they are. Picture them
to yourself for a moment. Forget you are a white woman, a member of
this old proud unforgiving aristocracy—“for they ne’er pardon who
have done the wrong:” forget it for once, and try to think how it
would feel to you, after your English up-bringing, with your tastes
and ideas and habits and sentiments, to be suddenly set down in the
midst of a society like that of the ignorant coloured class here in
Trinidad. On the one side, contempt and contumely from the most boorish
and unlettered whites; on the other side, utter uncongeniality with
one’s own poor miserable people. Picture it to yourself—how absolutely
unendurable!’
Nora bethought her silently of Tom Dupuy from both points of view, and
answered in a low tone: ‘Dr Whitaker, I recognise the truth of what you
say. I—I am sorry for you; I sympathise with you.’
It was a great deal for a daughter of the old slave-owning oligarchy to
say—how much, people in England can hardly realise; and Dr Whitaker
accepted it gratefully. ‘It’s very kind of you, Miss Dupuy,’ he went on
again, the tears rising quickly to his eyes, ‘very, very kind of you.
But the struggle is over; I can’t stand it any longer; I mean at once
to return to England.’
‘You will do wisely, I think,’ Nora answered, looking at him steadily.
‘I will do wisely,’ he repeated in a wandering tone. ‘Yes, I will do
wisely. But, Miss Dupuy, strange to say, there is one thing that still
binds me down to Trinidad.—Oh, for heaven’s sake, listen to me, and
don’t condemn me unheard.—No, no, I beg of you, don’t rise yet! I will
be brief. Hear me out, I implore of you, I implore of you! I am only a
mulatto, I know; but mulattoes have a heart as well as white men—better
than some, I do honestly believe. Miss Dupuy, from the very first
moment I saw you, I—I loved you! yes, I _will_ say it—I loved you!—I
loved you!’
Nora rose, and stood erect before him, proud but tremulous, in her
girlish beauty. ‘Dr Whitaker,’ she said, in a very calm tone, ‘I knew
it; I saw it. From the first moment you ever spoke to me, I knew it
perfectly.’
He drew a long breath to still the violent throbbing of his heart. ‘You
knew it,’ he said, almost joyously—‘you knew it! And you did not repel
me! Oh, Miss Dupuy, for one of your blood and birth, that was indeed a
great condescension!’
Nora hesitated. ‘I liked you, Dr Whitaker,’ she answered slowly—‘I
liked you, and I was sorry for you.’
‘Thank you, thank you. Whatever else you say, for that one word I
thank you earnestly. But oh, what more can I say to you? I love you;
I have always loved you. I shall always love you in future. Take me
or reject me, I shall always love you. And yet, how can I ask you?
But in England—in England, Miss Dupuy, the barrier would be less
absolute.—Yes, yes; I know how hopeless it is: but this once—this once
only! I _must_ ask you! Oh, for pity’s sake, in England—far away from
it all—in London—where nobody thinks of these things! Why, I know a
Hindu barrister—— But there! it’s not a matter for reasoning; it lies
between heart and heart! Oh, Miss Dupuy, tell me—tell me, tell me, is
there—is there any chance for me?’
Nora’s heart relented within her. ‘Dr Whitaker,’ she said slowly and
remorsefully, ‘you can’t tell how much I feel for you. I can see at
once what a dreadful position you are placed in. I can see, of course,
how impossible it is for you ever to think of marrying any—any lady of
your own colour—at least as they are brought up here in Trinidad. I can
see that you could only fall in love with—with a white lady, a person
fitted by education and manners to be a companion to you. I know how
clever you are, and I think I can see how good you are too. I know how
far all your tastes and ideas are above those of the people you must
mix with here, or, for that matter, above Tom Dupuy’s—or my own either.
I see it all; I know it all. And indeed, I like you—I admire you, and
I like you. I don’t want you to think me unkind and unappreciative.—Dr
Whitaker, I feel truly flattered that you should speak so to me this
evening—but’—— And she hesitated. The young mulatto felt that that
‘but’ was the very deathblow to his last faint hope and aspiration.
‘But—— Well, you know these things are something more than a mere
matter of liking and admiring. Let us still be friends, Dr Whitaker—let
us still be friends.—And there’s the band striking up the next waltz.
Will you kindly take me back to the ballroom? I—I am engaged to dance
it with Captain Castello.’
‘One second, Miss Dupuy—for God’s sake, one second! Is that final? Is
that irrevocable?’
‘Final, Dr Whitaker—quite final. I like you; I admire you; but I can
never, never—never accept you!’
The mulatto uttered a little low sharp piercing cry. ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed
in an accent of terrible despair, ‘then it is all over—all, all over!’
Next instant he had drawn himself together with an effort again, and
offering Nora his arm with constrained calmness, he began to lead her
back towards the crowded ballroom. As he neared the steps, he paused
once more for a second, and almost whispered in her ear in a hollow
voice: ‘Thank you, thank you for ever for at least your sympathy!’
MAN-LIKE APES—AND MAN.
Man-like, or in scientific parlance, Anthropoid Apes, are distinguished
from others of the monkey tribe on account of their greater size
and their greater resemblance to the human species. Within the last
quarter of a century, they have, owing to the growing prominence of
the doctrine of evolution, been raised to a much higher place than
before as subjects of study for the naturalist, the scientist, the
philosopher. From being little other than mere curiosities in animal
life, they have become important objects of psychological inquiry,
and have taken their place as factors not to be overlooked in the
elevated regions of speculative thought. This is due almost solely to
the change that has passed over our methods of studying animal life. We
have ceased to regard the lower creatures as little better than pieces
of living mechanism, and have come to view them as vital steps in the
great ladder of progression which connects the higher with the lower
orders of organic existence. Hence it is not now a matter of wonder
that a whole volume of the ‘International Scientific Series’ should be
devoted to the study of Man-like Apes. The volume, _Anthropoid Apes_
(London: Kegan Paul & Co.), is from the pen of Professor Hartmann of
Berlin, and forms the fifty-third of the above valuable series of works.
On account, says the author, of their external bodily characteristics,
of their anatomical structure, and their highly developed intelligence,
Anthropoids not only stand first among apes, but they take a still
higher place, approximating to the human species. Their fossil remains
carry us into a far-back period of prehistoric time; and even within
historic times, we have them mentioned as early as 500 B.C. They were
then known to the Carthaginians, who call them ‘_gorillai_,’ and
describe them as hairy silvan creatures who replied to the attacks of
the seafarers by throwing stones at them.
The gorilla, the chimpanzee, the orang-utan, and the gibbon, are
the chief of the animals included under the title Anthropoid Apes.
They differ from each other and among themselves in external form
according to the age and sex, the difference between the sexes being
most strongly marked in the gorilla, and least apparent in the
gibbon. ‘When a young male gorilla is compared with an aged animal of
the same species, we are almost tempted to believe that we have to
do with two entirely different creatures.’ Into the distinguishing
physiological peculiarities of the external form of these creatures, we
cannot of course enter here, and must refer to the full and elaborate
investigations placed on record by Professor Hartmann.
Among the Anthropoids, the gorilla, the ‘prototype of the species,’
deserves our notice first. The aged male gorilla, in the full strength
of his bodily development, is a creature of terrible aspect. This
animal, when standing upright, is more than six feet in height. The
hinder part of the head is broader below than above, and the projecting
arches above the eyes give a peculiar prominence to this part of
the skull. ‘The dark eyes glow between the lids with a ferocious
expression.’ The neck is very powerful, almost like that of a bull,
and the shoulders are remarkable for their breadth. The arms are
very long, and of enormous strength; but the legs short and feeble
in proportion. The gorilla inhabits the forests of West Africa, and
is sometimes seen in large numbers on the sea-coast, probably driven
thither from the interior by a scarcity of food. The gorilla, moreover,
lives in a society consisting of male and female, with their young of
varying ages, and the family group inhabits the recesses of the forest.
According to one observer, they frequent the same sleeping-place not
more than three or four times consecutively, and usually spend the
night wherever they happen to be when night comes on. The male gorilla
chooses a suitable tree, not very high, and by twisting and bending
the branches, constructs a kind of rude bed or nest for his family.
He himself spends the night under the tree, and thus protects the
female and their young from the nocturnal attacks of leopards, which
are always ready to devour all species of apes. In the daytime, the
gorillas roam through the forest in search of the favourite leaves or
fruits which form their food.