In the Roar of the Sea. Baring-Gould Sabine
do not know.”
“I must know. You will want it – bills must be paid. You will eat and drink, I suppose? You must be clothed. I’ll tell you what: I’ll put the whole case into the hands of Lawyer Jenkyns, and he shall demand arrears of tithes. I know what quixotish conduct Peter – ”
“Aunt, I will not allow this.” A light flush came into the girl’s cheek.
“It is all very well talking,” said Aunt Dionysia; “but black is not white, and no power on earth can make me say that it is so. Money must be found. Money must be paid for expenses, and it is hard that I should have to find it; so I think. What money is there in the house for present necessities? I must know.”
Suddenly a loud voice was heard shouting through the house —
“Mother Dunes! old Dunes! I want you.”
Judith turned cold and white. Who was this that dared to bellow in the house of death, when her dear, dear father lay up-stairs with the blinds down, asleep? It was an insult, an outrage. Her nerves had already been thrilled, and her heart roused into angry revolt by the cold, unfeeling conduct of the woman who was her sole relative in the world. And now, as she was thus quivering, there came this boisterous shout.
“It is the master!” said Mrs. Trevisa, in an awestruck voice, lowered as much as was possible to her.
To Coppinger alone she was submissive, cringing, obsequious.
“What does he mean by this – this conduct?” asked Judith, trembling with wrath.
“He wants me.”
Again a shout. “Dunes! old fool! the keys!”
Then Judith started forward, and went through the door to the head of the staircase. At the foot stood a middle-sized, strongly built, firmly knit man, in a dress half belonging to the land and half to the sea, with high boots on his legs, and slouched hat on his head. His complexion was olive, his hair abundant and black, covering cheeks and chin and upper lip. His eyes were hard and dark. He had one brown hand on the banister, and a foot on the first step, as though about to ascend, when arrested by seeing the girl at the head of the stairs before him. The house was low, and the steps led without a break directly from the hall to the landing which gave communication to the bedrooms. There was a skylight in the roof over the staircase, through which a brilliant flood of pure white light fell over Judith, whereas every window had been darkened by drawn blinds. The girl had found no sombre dress suitable to wear, and had been forced to assume the same white gown as the day before, but she had discarded the green sash and had bound a black ribbon about her waist, and another about her abundant hair. A black lace kerchief was drawn over her shoulders across her breast and tied at her back. She wore long, black mittens.
Judith stood motionless, her bosom rising and falling quickly, her lips set, the breath racing through her nostrils, and one hand resting on the banister at the stair-head.
In a moment her eyes met those of Coppinger, and it was at once as though a thrill of electric force had passed between them.
He desisted from his attempt to ascend, and said, without moving his eyes from hers, in a subdued tone, “She has taken the keys,” but he said no more. He drew his foot from the step hesitatingly, and loosened his hand from the banister, down which went a thrill from Judith’s quivering nerves, and he stepped back.
At the same moment she descended a step, still looking steadily into the dark, threatening pupils, without blinking or lowering her orbs. Emboldened by her boiling indignation, she stood on the step she had reached with both feet firmly planted there, and finding that the banister rattled under her hand she withdrew it, and folded her arms. Coppinger raised his hand to his head and took off his hat. He had a profusion of dark, curly, flowing hair, that fell and encircled his saturnine face.
Then Judith descended another step, and as she did so he retreated a step backwards. Behind him was the hall door, open; the light lay wan and white there on the gravel, for no sunshine had succeeded the gale. At every step that Judith took down the stair Coppinger retreated. Neither spoke; the hall was still, save for the sound of their breath, and his came as fast as hers. When Judith had reached the bottom she turned – Coppinger stood in the doorway now – and signed to her aunt to come down with the keys.
“Take them to him – Do not give them here – outside.”
Mrs. Trevisa, surprised, confounded, descended the stair, went by her, and out through the door. Then Judith stepped after her, shut the door to exclude both Aunt Dionysia and that man Coppinger, who had dared, uninvited, on such a day to invade the house.
She turned now to remount the stairs, but her strength failed her, her knees yielded, and she sank upon a step, and burst into a flood of tears and convulsive sobs.
CHAPTER III
CAPTAIN CRUEL
Captain Coppinger occupied an old farmhouse, roomy, low-built, granite quoined and mullioned, called Pentyre Glaze, in a slight dip of the hills near the cliffs above the thundering Atlantic. One ash shivered at the end of the house – that was the only tree to be seen near Pentyre Glaze. And – who was Coppinger? That is more than can be told. He had come – no one knew whence. His arrival on the north coast of Cornwall was mysterious. There had been haze over the sea for three days. When it lifted, a strange vessel of foreign rig was seen lying off the coast. Had she got there in the fog, not knowing her course; or had she come there knowingly, and was making for the mouth of the Camel? A boat was seen to leave the ship, and in it a man came ashore; the boat returned to the vessel, that thereupon spread sail and disappeared in the fog that re-descended over the water. The man gave his name as Coppinger – his Christian name, he said, was Curll, and he was a Dane; but though his intonation was not that of the Cornish, it was not foreign. He took up his residence in S. Enodoc at a farm, and suddenly, to the surprise of every one, became by purchase the possessor of Pentyre Glaze, then vacant and for sale. Had he known that the estate was obtainable when he had come suddenly out of the clouds into the place to secure it? Nobody knew, and Coppinger was silent.
Thenceforth Pentyre Glaze became the harbor and den of every lawless character along the coast. All kinds of wild uproar and reckless revelry appalled the neighborhood day and night. It was discovered that an organized band of smugglers, wreckers, and poachers made this house the centre of their operations, and that “Cruel Coppinger” was their captain. There were at that time – just a century ago – no resident magistrates or gentry in the immediate neighborhood. The yeomen were bribed, by kegs of spirits left at their doors, to acquiesce in a traffic in illicit goods, and in the matter of exchange they took their shares. It was said that on one occasion a preventive man named Ewan Wyvill, who had pursued Coppinger in his boat, was taken by him, and his head chopped off by the captain, with his boat axe, on the gunwale. Such was the story. It was never proved. Wyvill had disappeared, and the body was recovered headless on the Doom Bar. That violence had been used was undoubted, but who had committed the crime was not known, though suspicion pointed to Coppinger. Thenceforth none ever called him Curll; by one consent he was named Cruel. In the West of England every one is given his Christian name. An old man is Uncle, and an old woman Aunt, and any one in command is a Captain. So Coppinger was known as Captain Cruel, or as Cruel Coppinger.
Strange vessels were often seen appearing at regular intervals on the coast, and signals were flashed from the one window of Pentyre Glaze that looked out to sea.
Among these vessels, one, a full-rigged schooner, soon became ominously conspicuous. She was for long the terror of the Cornish coast. Her name was The Black Prince. Once, with Coppinger on board, she led a revenue cutter into an intricate channel among the rocks, where, from knowledge of the bearings, The Black Prince escaped scathless, while the king’s vessel perished with all on board.
Immunity increased Coppinger’s daring. There were certain bridle-roads along the fields over which he exercised exclusive control. He issued orders that no man should pass over them by night, and accordingly from that hour none ever did.1
Moreover, if report spoke true – and reports do not arise without cause – Coppinger was not averse from
Many stories of Cruel Coppinger may be found in Hawker’s Footprints of Former Men in Cornwall. I have also told them in my Vicar of Morwenstow. I have ventured to translate the scene of Coppinger’s activity further west, from Wellcombe to S. Enodoc. But, indeed, he is told of in many places on this coast.