gangs of illicit whisky distillers. He was a resolute, cool,
experienced man, an officer who had faced death a hundred
times under the most perilous circumstances. and when
summoned upon the new duty he accepted the position readily.

By methods of his own he got upon the track of the workers;
the men who did the actual work of landing the contraband
goods.

The latter were not the really guilty men. They were not the
principals, the capitalists; but they were the employees who
for large pay ran off the coast, intercepted the steamers
carrying the contraband goods, and landed them within certain
assigned limits.

The men ostensibly were fishermen, and honest people among
whom they associated never "tumbled" to their real calling.




CHAPTER III.


The necessities of our narrative do not demand that we should
locate the exact quarter where the smugglers operated; and,
besides, as there were numerous gangs covering a space of
fifty miles along the coast, it would be almost impossible to
indicate intelligibly the field of their operations, were we
so inclined.