Green’s Dictionary of Slang

a bet that is made without sufficient funds to cover one’s losses; usu. as run a levant, come the levant.

1701		N. Ward ‘A Walk to Islington’ in Writings (1704) 70: Thus wanders asham’d, till by Sharping and Tricking, / Or slinging Levant with the hazard of Kicking.
1714		T. Lucas Lives of the Gamesters (1930) 179: He hath ventur’d to come the Levant over gentlemen; that is, to play without any money at all in his pocket.
1728		Vanbrugh & Cibber Provoked Husband I i: From thence [...] crowd to the Hazard table, throw a familiar Levant upon some sharp lurching Man of Quality, and if he demands his money, turn it off with a loud Laugh.
1749		Fielding Tom Jones (1959) 281: Never mind that, man; e’en boldly run a levant.
1759		Memoirs of the celebrated Miss Fanny M- 173: A few Levants at the chocolate-house proscribed me. Here terminated my present glory.
1792		Sporting Mag. Nov. I 105/1: ‘Throwing of stones’, or being ‘basketted’ for a Levant, are terms which we have no occasion to explain to a sportsman.
1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang. in McLachlan (1964) 250: levanting, or running a levant: an expedient practised by broken gamesters to retrieve themselves, and signifies to bet money at a race, cockmatch, &c., without a shilling in their pocket to answer the event. The punishment for this conduct in a public cockpit is rather curious; the offender is placed in a large basket, kept on purpose, which is then hoisted up to the ceiling or roof of the building, and the party is there kept suspended, and exposed to derision during the pleasure of the company.