“Talking about smuggling, reminds me of a circumstance that happened off Dungeness, when I was in that gallant ship, the Triumph, seventy-four. We were running up channel for the Downs with Dungeness light on our larboard beam, and it was about six bells in the middle watch, when the look-out on the fokstle reported, that there was a lugger close under our bows. ‘Give him a gun,’ cried the officer of the watch. The shot was fired and the lugger instantly let fly her fore-sheet, and rounded to. ‘From whence came you?’ hailed the lieutenant. ‘Wha waw,’ replied the lugger. ‘What the devil place is that?’ said the officer; and again raising the speaking trumpet,--‘where are you bound to?’--‘Wha waw,’ was once more returned. ‘The fellow’s making game of us, sir,’ said the officer to the captain, who, hearing the report of the gun, had come out of his cabin. ‘Shall I board him, sir?’--‘Yes, Mr. ----, lower the quarter-boat down, and see what he is.’ “Well, away we went, and as we pulled towards him, the lieutenant would have it the lugger was a French privateer; but the coxswain, an old hand at the trade, replied, ‘No, sir, she’s no privateer, and I thinks I can _smell_ a secret at this distance. There’s no guns, sir, and but few hands. Eh, eh, we shall see presently.’--‘What are you laden with?’ inquired the officer as soon as we got alongside, and he had jumped upon the deck. ‘What is your cargo?’--‘Bacon and eggs,’ replied a veteran, whose gray locks peeped from underneath a slouched hat, and partly concealed a weather-beaten countenance, where the breakers and time had made deep furrows; ‘bacon and eggs, sir.’--‘It’s of no use axing that man, sir,’ said the coxswain. ‘I can tell him in a minute; he’s brought his hogs to a fine market, and as for eggs,--why, he’s chock full of tubs, your honour, (lifting up the grating.) Ay, there they are, indeed, like eggs in a gull’s nest. There they are, sir; it makes a fellow’s mouth water to look at them. Mayn’t we have a toothful your honour? It’s hard to starve in a land of plenty! I’d only knock one small hole in this head here,’ giving it a thump with the tiller that was nearly accomplishing the purpose.