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Updated: June 19, 2025
At first the coper seemed to have the best of it, but afterwards the breeze freshened and the Sunbeam soon left it far astern. Seeing that the race was lost, the floating grog-shop changed her course. "Ah, she'll steer for other fleets where there's no opposition," remarked the skipper. "To win our first race is a good omen," said John Binning, with much satisfaction.
Others went, and, with their skipper, got themselves "fuddled" on the proceeds of the owner's oysters. If oysters had not been handy, fish or something else would have been used instead, for Skipper Fox was not particular he was still clinging to "the poor old stranded wreck." It was dawn when, according to their appropriate phrase, they "tumbled" over the side of the coper into their boat.
Reader, the mode of dealing with the abominable "coper" traffic referred to by these men has at last happily been adopted, and the final blow has been dealt by the simple expedient of underselling the floating grog-shops in the article of tobacco.
He looked up sharply at the owner of the Coper, who stood in front of him, and who of course assented cheerfully to the question. "Ain't it?" he repeated still more sharply, turning to Luke Trevor, who sat close to him with a grave, anxious look. "Why don't you drink?" he added. "Because I don't want to," returned Luke, quietly.
And so he does; for he is one of a large, an honest, a kind, and an industrious family, where all goes well, and where the poor ploughboy is sure of finding cheerful faces and coarse comforts all that he has learned to desire. Oh, to be as cheaply and as thoroughly contented as George Coper! All his luxuries a cricket-match! all his wants satisfied in 'home! sweet home!
As I've had enough now, I'll go on deck and walk myself dry." On deck a new subject of interest occupied the mind of the rapidly reviving student, for the race between the Sunbeam and the coper was not yet decided. They were trying which would be first to reach a group of smacks that were sailing at a considerable distance ahead on the port bow.
Whenever a coper came in sight at that time Thomson was sure to have the boat over the side an' pay him a visit. "Well, about this time o' the year there came one night a most tremendous gale, wi' thick snow, from the nor'ard. It was all we could do to make out anything twenty fathom ahead of us. The skipper he was lyin' drunk down below.
"But I'm sure you've got no occasion," he said, "to blackguard the Coper, for you haven't bin to visit her much." "No, thank God, I have not," said Luke earnestly, "yet I've bin aboard often enough to wish I had never bin there at all. It's not that, mates, that makes me so hard on the Coper, but it was through the accursed drink got aboard o' that floatin' grog-shop that I lost my best friend."
She was to sell the tobacco at a fixed price that just covered the cost, and undersold the "coper" by fifty per cent. She was to hoist her flag for business every morning, while the small boats were out boarding fish on the carrier, and was to lie as far to leeward of the coper as possible so that the men could not go to both.
One night he stayed on board a coper until a breeze came away; he then insisted on straddling across the bow of the boat on the return journey, and he lost his grip for once in his life and went overboard. A dip of that sort, with heavy sea-boots on, is rather dangerous, and Master Jack felt as though all the water in the North Sea was dragging at his legs; but he was hauled in at last.
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