| Chapter Thirteen - Smugglers den |
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I stepped into a room in which mementos jostled for space with
merchandise. The walls hung with flags of countries both near and far
enough that I had not seen their like. Boxes and barrels were stacked in
corners and weaponry filled almost an entire wall. Fred lit his pipe and
sat on a barrel. I had read much of the history of smuggling from books
yet I didn't interrupt the acount which quickly flowed from him. Not
just out of politeness but also because there could be no better
account, I felt, than that of a true cornish smuggler. First he told me
of the early days of smuggling here on the coast when everything was so
very easy and the government's men could be paid off. Then he went into
the stories of the early years of the 1800's, what he considered the
glory years of smuggling. He told me of daring moonlight landings,
battles with revenue men, and secret caves and tunnels. He explained
though how eventually, the revenue men the government sent had cut down
on their trade and this, coupled with the war, made goods too expensive
and people too poor to buy the limited goods he could get in stock. He
patted the barrels next to him, which would once have been earmarked for
customers before even landing, now cluttering up the headquarters of
Freds operation.
We sat in silence awhile smoking before Fred finally looked up at me. "Its a fools game you're taking on lad. There's no way to make this game pay anymore". I sat thoughtfully puffing slowly on my pipe before replying "and if someone could bring back the kind of items you could easily sell such as scientific papers and materials, not to mention a fair bit of goods, easily and with no fear of capture? The prices would drop and people could buy again, isn't that right?". Fred looked at me as if I'd been babbling "Of course it would my boy, but whats the use in talking about impossible things, you might as well say 'what if I could turn lead to gold?'" Fred chuckled. My eyes stared straight into his "Or I might as well say I have a ship that can fly Fred, like a bird over the sea". "aye, replied Fred you might as well" He finished his pipe and tapped it out onto the floor. I finished my own pipe and blew the smoke into the air. "And what if I had such a craft old chap" I said as I pointed my pipe's stem at him and grinned. As you can imagine this news was received very doubtfully by the old landlord at first but after a long and animated talk downstairs not only did he reluctantly believe me, but with a haste I'd never seen in the man before, he and I planned out where to go next. Fred ran through lists of contacts, possible routes, payments, goods, and a hundred other things he thought I'd need. Before long we had fleshed out the details of the plan. It would be a smuggling run, the like of which the world had never seen before. |
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