In the Roar of the Sea

by S. Baring-Gould

Then she left the room, and Coppinger dashed his posset cup to the ground, but held the ring and turned it in his fingers, and the light flickered on it, a red gold ring like that red gold hair that was about his throat.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
A CHANGE OF WIND.

After many years of separation, father and son were together once more. Early in the morning after the wreck in Dover Bar, Oliver Menaida appeared at his father’s cottage, bruised and wet through, but in health and with his purse in his hand.

When he had gone overboard with the wrecker, the tide was falling and he had been left on the sands of the Bar, where he had spent a cold and miserable night, with only the satisfaction to warm him that his life and his money were his. He was not floating, like Wyvill, a headless trunk, nor was he without his pouch that contained his gold and valuable papers.

Mr. Menaida was roused from sleep very early to admit Oliver. The young man had recognized where he was, as soon as sufficient light was in the sky, and he had been carried across the estuary of the Camel by one of the boats that was engaged in clearing the wreck, under the direction of the captain of the coast-guard. But three men had been arrested on the wrecked vessel, three of those who had boarded her for plunder, all the rest had effected their escape, and it was questionable whether these three could be brought to justice, as they protested they had come from shore as salvers. They had heard the signals of distress and had put off to do what they could for those who were in jeopardy. No law forbad men coming to the assistance of the wrecked. It could not be proved that they had laid their hands on and kept for their own use any of the goods of the passengers or any of the cargo of the vessel. It was true that from some of the women their purses had been exacted, but the men taken professed their innocence of having done this, and the man who had made the demand—there was but one—had disappeared. Unhappily he had not been secured.

It was a question also whether proceedings could be taken relative to the exhibition of lights that had misguided the merchantman. The coast-guard had come on Mr. Menaida and Judith on the downs with a light, but he was conducting her to her new house, and there could be entertained against them no suspicion of having acted with evil intent.

“Do you know, father,” said Oliver, after he was rested, had slept and fed, “I am pretty sure that the scoundrel who attacked me was Captain Coppinger. I cannot swear. It is many years now since I heard his voice, and when I did hear it, it was but very occasionally. What made me suspect at the time that I was struggling with Captain Cruel was that he had my head back over the gunwale and called for an axe, swearing that he would treat me like Wyvill. That story was new when I left home, and folk said that Coppinger had killed the man.”

Mr. Menaida fidgeted.

“That was the man who was at the head of the entire gang. He it was who issued the orders which the rest obeyed; and he, moreover, was the man who required the passengers to deliver up their purses and valuables before he allowed them to enter the boat.”