The Amaranth

L. HAND, Circuit Judge.

On April 3, 1929, the United States filed a libel of information to forfeit 885 cases of gin, which were thereupon arrested upon mesne process and brought into the custody of the court. The libel, as later amended, alleged that on September 17,1927, within four leagues of the United States, a Coast Guard officer seized on board the British auxiliary schooner Amaranth the gin in suit, of which the libelant had kept possession thereafter; that before the seizure the officer demanded of the Amaranth’s master his manifest, whieh he failed to produce, although the vessel was…