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Updated: June 19, 2025
"If she was the coper you'd steer the other way," remarked the mate, with a laugh. "In course I would," retorted Fox, "for there I'd find cheap baccy and brandy." "Ay, bad brandy," said the mate; "but, skipper, you can get baccy cheaper aboard the mission ships now than aboard the coper." "What! at a shillin' a pound?" "Ay, at a shillin' a pound." "I don't believe it."
You see I'm trying to beat a coper that's close ahead of us just now. The Sunbeam is pretty swift on her heels, an' if the breeze holds ha! you've got it, sir?" He certainly had got it, in his lap where neither cup, saucer, nor tea should be. "You are right, skipper, and if your ready hands had not prevented it I should have got the teapot and sugar-basin also. But no matter.
Moreover, he was so inexperienced and timid in this new line of life, that he did not know how to turn the watch into cash with safety, and had no place in which to conceal it. On the very day about which we write, seeing the Coper not far off, the unhappy man had thrust the watch into his trousers pocket with the intention of bartering it with the Dutchman for rum, if he should get the chance.
"I won't go to her," thought Stephen Lockley, who overheard the conversation, and in whose breast a struggle had been going on, for he also had seen the coper, and, his case-bottle having run dry, he was severely tempted to have it replenished. "Would it not be as well, skipper, to go aboard o' the coper, as she's so near at hand!" said the mate, coming aft at the moment.
As surely as Johnston, and Moore, and Jim Frost, and such men, hung about the mission-ship ready to go aboard and to have a little meeting when suitable calms occurred, so surely did David Bright, the Swab, and other like-minded men, find themselves in the neighbourhood of the Coper when there was nothing to be done in the way of fishing.
"DT," remarked the skipper of the Cormorant, who could hardly speak because of a bad cold, and who thus curtly referred to the drunkard's complaint of delirium tremens. "Nothin' o' the sort!" growled Joe. "I've not seed a coper for a week or two. Brandy's more in your way, Groggy Fox, than in mine. No, it's mulligrumps o' some sort that's the matter wi' me."
Mr. Coper, the Dutch trader, did not care a rush for ready money; ropes, nets, sails were quite as much in his line, and a continual temptation was held out to men who wanted to rob their owners. Jim Billings used to get drunk as often as possible, and he himself told me of one ghastly expedient to which he was reduced when he and his shipmates were parched and craving for more poison.
The skipper of the Coper acted on the advice at once, and made the end of a rope fast round Bright's waist. Again the boat rose, surged seaward, then swooped towards the Coper, against which it would have been dashed but for the strong arms of Luke. It rose so high that the drunk man was for a moment on a level with the gunwale. It was too good a chance to be missed. "Shove!" roared Gunter.
Its rig was so similar to that of the other smacks that a stranger might have taken it for one of the fleet but the fishermen knew better. It was that enemy of souls, that floating grog-shop, that pirate of the North Sea, the coper. "Good luck to 'ee," muttered Joe Stubley, whose sharp, because sympathetic, eye was first to observe the vessel.
We bundled into our boat an' made for our smack, but by ill luck we had to pass the Coper, an' nothin' would please the skipper but to go aboard and have a glass. Sterlin' tried to prevent him, but he grew savage an' told him to mind his own business. Well, he had more than one glass, and by that time it was blowin' so 'ard we began to think we'd have some trouble to get back again.
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