In “The Smugglers’ Song” Mr. Rudyard Kipling has vividly reconstructed those old times of dread, when, night and day, the numerous and well-armed bodies of smugglers openly traversed the country, terrorising every one. To look too curiously at these high-handed ruffians was, as we have already seen, an offence, and the most cautious among the rustics made quite sure of not incurring their high displeasure—and incidentally of not being called upon by the revenue authorities as witnesses to the identity of any among their number—by turning their faces the other way when the free-traders passed. Mothers, too, were careful to bid their little ones on the Marshland roads, or in the very streets of New Romney, to turn their faces to the hedge-side, or to the wall, “when the gentlemen went by.” And— If you wake at midnight, and hear a horse’s feet, Don’t go drawing back the blind, or looking in the street; Them that ask no questions isn’t told a lie, Watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by. Five and twenty ponies Trotting through the dark— Brandy for the parson; ’Baccy for the clerk; Laces for a lady; letters for a spy, And watch the wall, my darling, while the gentlemen go by. [Picture: The cautious turned their faces away] CHAPTER IV THE “MURDERS BY SMUGGLERS” IN HAMPSHIRE THE most outstanding chapter in the whole history of smuggling is that of the cold-blooded “Murders by Smugglers” which stained the annals of the southern counties in the mid-eighteenth century with peculiarly revolting deeds that have in them nothing of romance; nothing but a long-drawn story of villainy and fiendish cruelty. It is a story that long made dwellers in solitary situations shiver with apprehension, especially if they owned relatives connected in any way with the hated customs officers. This grim chapter of horrors, upon which the historian can dwell only with loathing, and with pity for himself in being brought to the telling of it, was the direct outcome of the lawless and almost unchecked doings of the Hawkhurst Gang, whose daring grew continually with their long-continued success in terrorising the countryside. The beginnings of this affair are found in an expedition entered upon by a number of the gang in September 1747, in Guernsey, where they purchased a considerable quantity of tea, for smuggling into this country. Unfortunately for their enterprise, they fell in with a revenue cutter, commanded by one Captain Johnson, who pursued and captured their vessel, took it into the port of Poole, and lodged the tea in the custom-house there.