r wrecking, the revenue officers came out
from Bude to the Bristol Channel to hunt him down. He was seen last on
the Gull Rock, off Hartland Point, signalling one evening to a ship
which lay in the offing. He was taken off by a boat, but almost
immediately a storm came up, the ship was blotted out from the sight of
those watching from the cliffs, and when the squall passed she had
totally disappeared. No one ever knew whether she had foundered with
all hands, or had run out of sight behind Lundy, or whether she had
become, by reason of the wicked wretch aboard her, a second _Flying
Dutchman_, shaping an endless course through stormy seas.

There is a verse of rough doggerel which the children in these parts
still repeat, and which embodies the story of this tyrant:

"Will you hear of cruel Coppinger?
He came from a foreign land;
He was brought to us by the salt water,
He was carried away by the wind."

Probably Coppinger's wild and picturesque rush from the beach, like a
Centaur in a scarlet cloak, was an actual measure of prudence; for in
those cruel times of wreckers and smugglers the survivors who landed
from a wreck were often murdered by the people they were thrown
amongst, because "dead men tell no tales," and the unfortunate seamen
might otherwise give evidence of false lights which had seemed to
promise safety and refuge, and had drawn them on to the rocks. Such
was the case of a French ship which was drawn ashore at Hele by
wreckers, and the only survivor was taken to Champernownesheyes (the
old gabled farmhouse which was formerly the home of the well-known
Devonshire family of Champernowne), and there murdered. There is a
curious ghost-story told in connection with this: The farm in due time
passed into other hands, and all memory of the wreck or the
disappearance of the one unfortunate survivor was lost. But one
evening, while the farmer who was then living at Champernownesheyes was
smoking his pipe in the garden, he fell to idly counting the windows,
and, having done this several times, he discovered that there was one
window unaccounted for. He called his wife, and then the servants,
and, having made sure of this, they located the position of the strange
window, and, going upstairs, they broke down the wall which they judged
to be opposite, and found, indeed, that the window lighted a small
room, furnished in sixteenth-century style, and containing a bed, hung
with mouldering tapestry,