Then in the same month the _Elizabeth_, forced to drop some of her cargo overboard when pressed by a revenue cutter off Seaton, just across the bay, lost fifty-seven of her tubs to the Looe boat, which fished up the line to which they were attached. And a year or so later one reads of “the Looe lugger, _Morning Star_, being chased off the Lizard by the Plymouth revenue cutter and lost sight of in a fog.... Next day being again sighted and boarded but found empty.” What a world of romance is to be found hidden in that entry? A vision of an exciting chase, with the smugglers aboard the _Morning Star_ doing all they knew (and that was much one may rest assured) to give the cutter the slip. Perhaps even seeing to the priming of pistols and muskets lest their attempt to escape should not prove successful. And then the coming on of the merciful fog, the dark night off Looe, the lowering of the boats, loading of the tubs, the cautious rowing ashore towards the signal lights of those who waited anxiously to assist at the run. Then the putting again to sea, the falling in with the revenue cutter, and the innocent and doubtless conciliatory interview when the _Morning Star_, after heaving to, was boarded and searched and found--empty! Looe must have been a busy place in those days, and many prosperous folk, who though nominally fishermen seldom shot a net, there undoubtedly were. It was no uncommon thing for a £1,000 cargo to be brought safely across from Roscoff, and on a suitable night (a winter’s night for choice with not much moon) landed and dispersed through the usual channels on the shore a few miles east or west of Looe. Those were rough times, too, ashore, when occasionally a coastguard would disappear if found too successful or energetic in frustrating the smugglers’ doings; but although tradition speaks of several such disappearances details are wanting, and one can only hope for the credit of the Cornish smuggler--who generally seems to have taken rough luck with the smooth without the exercise of undue violence--that these traditions have little foundation upon fact. Looe, like Plymouth and other west country ports and places, in the olden times possessed “instruments in the shape of a cage and ducking stool or chair for the proper subjugation of women addicted to overmuch exercise of their tongues,” and that these somewhat barbarous methods were at least occasionally put into practice and to good and even humorous account the following anecdote will show: Bessy Niles and Hannah White, two women of East Looe, “having quarrelled and exerted all their powers of oratory on each other,” at last decided to appeal to the Mayor, a Mr John Chubb, for the settlement of their dispute.