Page:History of merchant shipping and ancient commerce (Volume 2).djvu/436

 for the purpose of receiving from the lumpers and others employed in the delivery, bags and handkerchiefs of sugar, coffee, and other articles, which they conveyed to the houses and shops of the receivers, according to the plan which had been preconcerted by the confederates in this general conspiracy. Rum, pillaged in large quantities, was obtained by means of a regular system applicable to the nature of the article. Skins and prepared bladders with wooden nozzles were secretly conveyed on board, a bribe being given, as in the case of sugar and coffee, to the mate and revenue officers for a licence to draw off a certain quantity from each cask, for which a pump called a jigger had been previously provided, and also tin tubes, adapted to render the booty accessible in every situation. By these and similar devices the skins and bladders were filled, and handed over to the mudlarks and other hangers-on who infested the neighbourhood of the ship.

The ingenuity of men devoid of the principles of moral rectitude is ever fertile in devising the means of subsistence by criminal expedients. Among the various classes of delinquents who contributed to the removal of plunder from ships and vessels in the river were a set of rascals who pretended to follow the occupation of rat-catchers. These itinerants, who professed to know how to destroy the vermin, being permitted to go on board in the night to set their traps, and afterwards to visit them at such hours as they chose to prescribe for themselves, became dangerous auxiliaries to lumpers and others who had previously concealed plunder in the hold, until a