midnight
And some taking tea and tobacco to Hamburg and Emden , where the people were all uncouth foreigners who spoke neither French nor English and so must offer mighty change from Sercq . Then there were multitudes of smaller vessels , sloops and chasse-marées , bound on shorter and still more profitable , if more dangerous voyages . Wherever they were going , on whatsoever errand bent , it was into the great outside world , and they all cried , `` Come ! '' Those shorter flights to the nearer shores had a special appeal of their own , and the stories one heard among one 's fellows -- of the wild midnight runs into Cornish creeks and Devon and Dorset coves , of encounters now and again with the revenue men , of exhilarating flights and narrow escapes from Government cutters -- these but added zest to the traffic in one 's imagination which , in actual fact , might possibly have been found wanting . The moral aspects of the free-trade business did not trouble me in the slightest in those days . It was the old-established and natural trade of the Islands , for which they had evidently been set just where they were with that special end in view . We looked upon it as very much akin to the running of cargoes into blockaded ports -- a large profit for a large risk and no ill-feeling , though , indeed , at times , human nature would out , and attempts at the enforcement of laws in the making of which we had no hand , would result in collisions , and occasionally in the shedding of blood .