making anti-damp socks, like cork soles, for himself, but has made them much too thick. Besides, they are made of tobacco cake, which is no doubt a capital thing for the purpose, but looks very suspicious. So the gentle docker is kept for awhile to explain, and he probably finds the explanation a difficult one.
The tobacco sole dodge is a very common one, and quite "blown upon"; but as it is impossible to examine everybody's boots, no doubt some such things get through still, from time to time. Sailors and others employ it, as well as dockers.
Here comes another blameless docker. He looks neither to the right nor the left, but gazes straight ahead through the gates with an expression which may mean thoughts of his happy boyhood, or bloater for tea, or indeed anything but smuggled smokes and drinks. Still he is stopped, and the constable's hand falls upon his arm. Something about the arm takes the constable's fancy, so he slips his hand under the sleeve, and draws forth an odd article—an article at which the docker gazes with intense astonishment, as though he couldn't think how it came there. And, indeed, how could it have come there? For it is a piece of bamboo, nearly a foot long, with one end open, and a piece of small rubber or leather tubing attached to the other end. Now there is nothing contraband in a piece of bamboo, with an indiarubber tube attached, but somehow about half a pint of rum has contrived to get into this particular piece of bamboo, and docker No. 2 goes to join his persecuted colleague.
Now this docker was a man of sagacity. When he took that bit of bamboo and dropped it, open end downward, into a barrel of rum, it immediately filled up with the spirit, because the air escaped through the india-rubber tube. Then this scientific person pinched the sides of the tube close together, near the bamboo, so that no air could re-enter to allow the rum to fall out, and carefully lifted the machine out of the bung-hole. Having turned it open-end up, and dexterously manipulated the rubber tube so that no rum might escape thereby, nothing remained but to slip the whole instrument up his sleeve, march to the dock gates and—be caught.
The bamboo dipper is not an uncommon dodge, and its success varies. It is a much more artistic trick than the generality of those adopted by men employed about the docks, whose genius does not often rise above tobacco in a coat-lining, or "sucking the monkey." But honest Jack Tar is perhaps a greater smuggler than the docker—honest Jack Tar nowadays being often a Lascar. 'Baccy is Jack's chief weakness, of course. Dive down into the lowermost internals of some sailing vessel in the London Dock—down where the smell of pitch hangs solid in the air, and where the dirty lantern rarely saves the explorer's head and shins from grievous bangs. Here are coils of rope, not by ones, or tens, but by hundreds, all tarry, all smelly, all in confusion alike. There is no difference, one might say, between any of them, excepting, perhaps, in size. But if somebody connected with the ship were confiding enough, and foolish enough, to come and pick out for us the right coil of rope, and hold it close against our noses, we might, even in that pitch-laden atmosphere, just detect the familiar smell of—twist. There it is, one fraudulent coil among a hundred innocent ones, simply several pounds of twist tobacco. The Custom-house officers know this dodge, but it is not surprising that it has at times eluded them after they did know it.
If the vessel is a Dutch-trading one, or one trading to other ports where the 'baccy temptation is especially great, we may perhaps discover something else—a trick which, we believe, is not very generally known among the customs men, and which we hereby reveal for their information. Lying about the deck will be a number of "fenders"—shapeless conglomerations of fibrous rope, which are hung over the side coming into dock to ease the scraping of the ship's side against the quay or against other ships' sides. Now an honourable fender is filled up inside with scraps of oakum, old rope, waste yarn, and things of that sort; but, sad to say, all fenders are not honourable. Tobacco makes a good stuffing, and doesn't smoke much the worse for having been squeezed a bit against a ship's timbers.
Logs and billets of wood lie about promiscuously on deck and below. It is not a difficult thing for a handy man to hollow out a billet of wood and provide it with so neatly fitting a lid or end that it looks as solid a log as ever was chopped. But then its lightness and hollow sound would betray its ingenuity of construction, so that it becomes necessary to fill it with something to make it feel and sound solid. Again tobacco is found to be a most valuable material for the purpose, and stuffed full it accordingly is. Melancholy to relate,
