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"But it's a fact," returned the mate firmly, "for Simon Brooks, as was in the Short-Blue fleet last week, told me it's a noo regulation they've started the sale o' baccy in the Gospel ships, just to keep us from going to the copers." "That'll not keep me from going to the copers," said Groggy Fox, with an oath.
But he has a somewhat unusual capacity for mastering obstacles, and he contrived to sweep the copers off the sea by the most audacious expedient that I have heard of in the commercial line.
Moreover, I've heard say that there's a talk about sellin' baccy on board of the mission-ships cheaper than what they do aboard o' the copers. Did any of 'ee hear o' that?" "I heard somethin' about it," answered Luke, "but it's too good news to be true. If they do, it'll drive the copers off the sea." "Of course it will. That's just what they're a-goin' to do it for, I suppose."
He used to take an occasional glass of beer or spirits when on shore or on board the copers, but he became a total abstainer, much to his own benefit in every way, and as a result he became rich in an extremely small way. There was a very small, thin, and dirty, but lively and intelligent boy in Yarmouth, who loved Bob Lumsden better, if possible, than himself. His name was Pat Stiver.
"So he might," retorted Luke; "nevertheless it was the Coper that finished him off at that time as it has finished off many a man before, and will, no doubt, be the death o' many more in time to come." The Copers, which Luke Trevor complained of so bitterly, are Dutch vessels which provide spirits and tobacco, the former of a cheap, bad, and peculiarly fiery nature.
If anything were needed to accent its artless domesticity, it would be the group of boys, horse copers in ambition, possibly in achievement, who sit in a row under a fence, with their teeth grimly clenched upon clay pipes, their eyes screwed up in perpetual and ungenial observation. Their conversation is telegraphic, smileless, esoteric, and punctuated with expectoration.
At the same time the pleasant meeting of friends, who never met in such numbers anywhere else not even in the copers and the hearty good wishes and shaking of hands, with now and then expressions of thankfulness from believers all tended to increase the bustle and excitement, so that the two invalid clergymen began at once to experience the recuperative influence of glad enthusiasm.
"Where's your 'bacca?" said the skipper. "Left him aboard." "Never mind. Take half a pound and pay for it to-morrow. We sell the best at a shilling a pound." Jim gaped. Here was a decidedly practical religious agency. A shilling a pound! Cheaper than the Copers' rubbish. Jim took a few pulls at the strong, black tobacco, and began to reconsider his notion about smashing up the service.
Prayer hummed up on every side, rising as the fragrant breath of souls above a city where, by way of divine service, nothing was chanted but the price-current of grain and the higher and lower cost of horses in the fairs which, on certain days, brought all the copers of La Perche together in the cafés on the Place.
For several trips after this, my handsome fellow was wild and careless; his splendid constitution enabled him to drink with impunity the abominable stuff sold by the Copers, and he was merely merry when older soakers were delirious. His father and he parted, and the old man stayed at home as ship's husband to a firm of smack owners, and the lad had his head free.
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