overcome with surprise.

After a few minutes' silence his spirits revived.

'I'll send you some tea down before long,' he said, and then went on
deck without another word.

'Do you know what this ship is?' Charlie asked as soon as he was gone.

'If this is not a pleasure-boat, I do not know what it is,' Ping Wang
answered.

'It's a coper.'

'A coper! What is that?'

'I thought every one in the North Sea knew.'

'This is only my second voyage, and your countrymen do not talk to me as
freely as if I were an Englishman. What is a coper?'

'It is a boat that sails about the North Sea to sell drink and tobacco
to our fishermen. She flies a flag to show that she has tobacco for
sale, and when the men come aboard her, they are tempted to drink, just
as we were a few minutes ago. As a rule the poor fellows do drink, and
if their money is not all spent by the time that they are intoxicated,
they are cheated at cards or robbed. I am very much afraid that we have
not bettered ourselves by leaving the _Sparrow-hawk_, for if the skipper
of the coper finds that we have money, even though we neither drink nor
gamble, he will be anxious to get rid of us.'

A few minutes later a boy brought down to them two mugs of what was
supposed to be tea.

'What awful stuff,' Charlie exclaimed after tasting it. 'One sip is
quite enough for me.'

'There must be something besides sugar and milk in it,' Ping Wang
declared.

'That is very likely. The skipper hopes that it will get in our heads
without our knowing that we have been drinking intoxicants. We will
upset the rascal's plans by not drinking any more of the tea.'

In about a quarter of an hour the skipper returned.

'Well, boys, how are you getting on?' he exclaimed. 'Have some more
tea?'

'No, thank you,' Charlie replied. 'We haven't drunk this. There's
something about the taste that we don't like.'

'It's first-class tea. I've never had any complaints about it until now.
I'm very sorry that you don't like it, for you need something warming
after your long swim. But look here, if you are tee-totalers, what did
you come aboard the _Lily_ for?'

'We made a mistake. We mistook her for another boat.'

The skipper looked at Charlie searchingly. 'Did you think she was a
revenue cutter?' he asked.

'Oh, no; we mistook her for a mission ship.'

Now, coper skippers have the same hatred for mission ships that they
have for revenue cutters, for the former, by selling tobacco