The old man cowered in the settle. He would not encumber the gentleman; was unaccustomed to ride such a spirited horse. But Coppinger was not to be put off. The trembling old man was mounted on the crupper of the capering mare. Off she bounded; and Uncle Tom, with his arms cast with the grip of terror round his bulky companion, held on like grim death. Unbuckling his belt, Coppinger passed it round Uncle Tom’s thin body, and buckled it on his own front. When he had firmly secured his victim, he loosened his reins, and urged the mare into a furious gallop. Onwards they rushed, till they fled past the tailor’s own door, where his startled wife, who was on the watch, afterwards declared “she caught sight of her husband clinging to a rainbow”.
At last the mare relaxed her pace; and then Coppinger, looking over his shoulder said: “I have been under long promise to the Devil that I would bring him a tailor to make and mend for him; and I mean to keep my word to-night.”
The agony of terror produced by this announcement caused such struggles that the belt gave way, and the tailor fell among the gorse at the roadside. There he was found next morning in a semi-delirious state, muttering: “No, no; I never will. Let him mend his breeches with his own drag-chain. I will never thread a needle for Coppinger or his friend.”
One boy was the only fruit of poor Dinah’s marriage with the Stranger. He was deaf and dumb, and mischievous and ungovernable from his youth. His cruelty to animals, birds and to other children was intense. Any living thing that he could torture yielded him delight. With savage gestures and jabbering moans he haunted the rocks along the shore, and seemed like some uncouth creature cast up by the sea. When he was only six years old, he was found one day on the brink of a cliff, bounding with joy, and pointing downwards to the beach with convulsions of delight. There, mangled by the fall, and dead, they found the body of a neighbour’s child of his own age; and it was believed that little Coppinger had wilfully cast him over. It was a saying in the district that, as a judgment on his father’s cruelty, his child had been born without a human soul.
But the end arrived. Money became scarce, and more than one armed king’s cutter was seen day and night hovering off the land. So he “who came with the water went with the wind.” His disappearance, like his arrival, was commemorated by a storm.
A wrecker who had gone to watch the shore saw, as the sun went down, a full-rigged vessel standing off and on. Coppinger came to the beach, put off in a boat to the vessel and jumped on board. She spread canvas, stood off shore, and, with Coppinger in her, was seen no more. That night was one of storm. Whether the vessel rode it out or was lost none knew.[[23]]
Tristam Pentire[[*]] has already been mentioned. He was the last of the smugglers, and became Mr. Hawker’s servant-of-all-work. The vicar had many good stories to relate of his man.
“There have been divers parsons in this parish since I have been here,” said Tristam, “some strict, and some not; and there was one that had very mean notions about running goods, and said it was wrong to do so. But even he never took no part with the gauger—never. And besides,” said old Trim, “wasn’t the exciseman always ready to put us to death if he could?”
One day he asked Mr. Hawker: “Can you tell me the reason, sir, that no grass will ever grow on the grave of a man that’s hanged unjustly?”
“No, indeed, Tristam: I never heard of the fact before.”