Fifteen minutes later Ramage was spurring his horse and following his uncle along the narrow road to Lympne and Hythe. The road ran eastward along the high land above the Marsh, dipping occasionally and running over a brook and through a copse of trees, then rising over a crest from which Ramage could look to the right across the Marsh and to the left where the land dropped into a valley and then rose and fell in ever increasing hills and valleys until it reached the North Downs.
As they rode at a brisk canter, passing a village every mile or so, Ramage remembered his uncle's comment about shielded lanterns and noticed for the first time that at leas! one house in each hamlet - usually the inn - had a tiny dormer window high in the roof, usually on the south side; a tiny window whose actual opening was shielded from the road but was visible for a long distance from the flat land below - and, he guessed, from pathways and tracks leading up from the Marsh. A train of packhorses coming up to an inn witb contraband liquor, or to a grocer's with tea and tobacco, would watch for the light. There must be some code, so that the light - or its absence - told the smugglers that it was safe to make the delivery or that the Revenue men were out and waiting in ambush.
An old farmer standing at his gate, a fowling piece under his arm and a bulging game bag over his shoulder, gave a cheery wave as they cantered past; the ancient and rheumy-eyed driver of a heavy cart and pair, laden with soggy manure, raised his hat. A parson in black broadcloth, with the bright red complexion and bulbous, purple nose of a determined toper, reined in his apology for a horse, anticipating a chat, but Trefiry called his regrets and they rode on.
'Another five minutes,' he told Ramage. 'Our fellow lives in the lee of Studfall Castle - the ruins of it, anyway.'
Who was 'our fellow'? Was he by any chance the leader of the Marsh smugglers? A quarter of a million in the Funds and a quarter of a million in land - one needed to have been a nabob to have that sort of money. A nabob, a West India planter - or a successful smuggler.
As they cantered on, Ramage found himself wondering about the sheer administration needed for successful smuggling operations; administration and capital, too, since presumably the French wanted cash for their brandy, tobacco, tea, mother of pearl, lace and other luxuries - and no doubt had to pay cash for the whisky, gin, wool and whatever else the Marsh men smuggled to France.
He knew the Board of Customs waged war on the smugglers with all the determination of the Board of Admiralty in its war against the French, and both boards always had the same complaint - too few ships and men to do the job properly. From what he had heard the last time he was in Portsmouth, the Customs people had a good case: the smugglers were now using such large and well-armed vessels that few of the older Revenue cutters could tackle them, and usually they escaped unless the Navy could lend a hand.
He wished he had paid more attention to the gossip, but he remembered talk of smugglers using fast cutters of 200 tons burthen, armed with a dozen or more 4-pounders and regularly running over to the Channel Islands and French ports. They carried their own boats on deck, enormously long and narrow (forty feet, with a beam of less than five feet, rowing ten oars or more). Frequently a cutter arrived a couple of miles off the coast, hoisted out a boat, loaded it with up to five hundred casks, and sent it off to some deserted beach, where carts and packhorses waited. By the time the alarm was raised, the horses had vanished inland with the contraband, and the boat was back with the cutter.
Sometimes the smugglers' cutters did not have to take even that risk: the Customs men were worried about a new trick, known as 'creeping.' A smuggling cutter roped a cask, leaving a very long tail which was lashed round a heavy stone, similar to those used for ballast. The cutter sailed - by prearrangement - near a fishing-boat and (as far as an innocent onlooker was concerned) tacked and at the same time threw some ballast over the side. Quite a normal activity, particularly before running for home. But each sinking stone would take a cask down with it, and at their leisure the fishermen would use grapnels to catch in the tail and 'creep up' both stones and casks, cutting the casks free of the stones as soon as they came to the surface.
Being practical businessmen, the smugglers had a scale of prices depending on the method of delivery: a four-gallon cask of brandy sold at sea (to fishermen loading it into an open boat for transfer to the smack, or sunk for 'creeping') would cost a guinea, while a similar cask landed would be thirty shillings or more. The buyers on shore were usually 'traders'; men who bought direct from the smugglers and distributed the contraband to those that wanted it - innkeepers for the brandy, grocers for the tea.
The more he thought about it the more he realized that smuggling was a good deal more complex than one might think; a good deal more than desperadoes with black eye-patches thrashing their way across the Channel on a stormy night....
First, someone had to put up the cash for building a vessel, whether a small fishing-smack with a lugsail, or a big cutter carrying her own ten-oared boats. Apart from the greater carrying capacity, the big cutters had an advantage over the smaller vessels because they did not come within the Hovering Act and the later Smuggling Act, which were particularly aimed at vessels hovering off the coast, waiting for a chance to land contraband when there was no Revenue cutter in sight. Any small unlicensed boat found more than nine miles from the shore was, under the Acts, considered to be 'hovering' and liable to confiscation, but the big cutters came outside their provisions.
The regulations were strict but the Customs did not have enough vessels to enforce them. And if a privately-owned cutter sailed from Cowes bound for Dover, it was almost impossible - without catching her - to prove in a court of law that she had called in at a French port on the way, loaded contraband, sailed back and unloaded it secretly somewhere along the shores of the Marsh, and then gone on to Dover, entering as though she had come direct from Cowes.
All along the coast the Customs had their Riding Officers, men who patrolled on horseback and watched for unusual activity, usually a suspicious number of carts and packhorses close to a quiet bay or beach. But Riding Officers were responsible for long stretches of coast; often one man had to cover fifteen miles or more; and it was not difficult for a rowing-boat to slip into the beach on a dark and wet night after being given a signal that the officer had passed.
An amused 'Whoa there!' jolted him out of his daydreaming, and he reined in to find his uncle had stopped several yards behind. When Ramage rejoined him, Treffry waved his riding-crop towards a large, well-proportioned stone house set back half a mile from the road and sheltered from the wind by a circular copse of trees. It stood on the edge of the ridge of land over the Marsh; Ramage guessed from the windows on the east and south side there was an uninterrupted view of the coast from Hythe to beyond Dungeness.
His uncle coughed. 'We'd better keep a tight rein on our curiosity, heh?'
Ramage nodded. 'Simply a social call by Squire Treffry and his sailor nephew, I think. He knows what I want, so we can leave it to him to raise the subject.'
'Splendid - ticklish business.'
Ramage sensed that his uncle was uneasy at the prospect of the forthcoming meeting: the Marsh Men must have a fearsome reputation . . .
He might have a fearsome reputation among the Marsh Men, but Charles Henry Simpson (a director of the East India Company, Vice-President of the Westminster Lying-in Hospital, Vice-President of the Sea-bathing Infirmary, director of the British Fire Office, and elected trustee of the British Museum) had enough of the breezy assurance of the wealthy to thoroughly enjoy his last appointment.