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Captains Courageous

R >> Rudyard Kipling >> Captains Courageous



"CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS"

A STORY OF THE GRAND BANKS

by Rudyard Kipling




TO
JAMES CONLAND, M.D.,
Brattleboro, Vermont

I ploughed the land with horses,
But my heart was ill at ease,
For the old sea-faring men
Came to me now and then,
With their sagas of the seas.
Longfellow.




CHAPTER I

The weather door of the smoking-room had been left open to the
North Atlantic fog, as the big liner rolled and lifted, whistling to
warn the fishing-fleet.

"That Cheyne boy's the biggest nuisance aboard," said a man in a
frieze overcoat, shutting the door with a bang. "He isn't wanted
here. He's too fresh."

A white-haired German reached for a sandwich, and grunted
between bites: "I know der breed. Ameriga is full of dot kind. I dell
you you should imbort ropes' ends free under your dariff."

"Pshaw! There isn't any real harm to him. He's more to be pitied
than anything," a man from New York drawled, as he lay at full
length along the cushions under the wet skylight. "They've dragged
him around from hotel to hotel ever since he was a kid. I was
talking to his mother this morning. She's a lovely lady, but she
don't pretend to manage him. He's going to Europe to finish his
education."

"Education isn't begun yet." This was a Philadelphian, curled up in
a corner. "That boy gets two hundred a month pocket-money, he
told me. He isn't sixteen either."

"Railroads, his father, aind't it?" said the German.

"Yep. That and mines and lumber and shipping. Built one place at
San Diego, the old man has; another at Los Angeles; owns half a
dozen railroads, half the lumber on the Pacific slope, and lets his
wife spend the money," the Philadelphian went on lazily. "The
West don't suit her, she says. She just tracks around with the boy
and her nerves, trying to find out what'll amuse him, I guess.
Florida, Adirondacks, Lakewood, Hot Springs, New York, and
round again. He isn't much more than a second-hand hotel clerk
now. When he's finished in Europe he'll be a holy terror."

"What's the matter with the old man attending to him personally?"
said a voice from the frieze ulster.

"Old man's piling up the rocks. 'Don't want to be disturbed, I guess.
He'll find out his error a few years from now. 'Pity, because there's
a heap of good in the boy if you could get at it."

"Mit a rope's end; mit a rope's end!" growled the German.

Once more the door banged, and a slight, slim-built boy perhaps
fifteen years old, a hall-smoked cigarette hanging from one corner
of his mouth, leaned in over the high footway. His pasty yellow
complexion did not show well on a person of his years, and his
look was a mixture of irresolution, bravado, and very cheap
smart-ness. He was dressed in a cherry--coloured blazer,
knickerbockers, red stockings, and bicycle shoes, with a red
flannel cap at the back of the head. After whistling between his
teeth, as he eyed the company, he said in a loud, high voice: "Say,
it's thick outside. You can hear the fish-boats squawking all around
us. Say, wouldn't it be great if we ran down one?"

"Shut the door, Harvey," said the New Yorker. "Shut the door and
stay outside. You're not wanted here."

"Who'll stop me?" he answered, deliberately. "Did you pay for my
passage, Mister Martin? 'Guess I've as good right here as the next
man."

He picked up some dice from a checkerboard and began throwing,
right hand against left.

"Say, gen'elmen, this is deader'n mud. Can't we make a game of
poker between us?"

There was no answer, and he puffed his cigarette, swung his legs,
and drummed on the table with rather dirty fingers. Then he pulled
out a roll of bills as if to count them.

"How's your mama this afternoon?" a man said. "I didn't see her at
lunch."

"In her state-room, I guess. She's 'most always sick on the ocean.
I'm going to give the stewardess fifteen dollars for looking after
her. I don't go down more 'n I can avoid. It makes me feel
mysterious to pass that butler's-pantry place. Say, this is the first
time I've been on the ocean."

"Oh, don't apologize, Harvey."

"Who's apologizing? This is the first time I've crossed the ocean,
gen'elmen, and, except the first day, I haven't been sick one little
bit. No, sir!" He brought down his fist with a triumphant bang,
wetted his finger, and went on counting the bills.

"Oh, you're a high-grade machine, with the writing in plain sight,"
the Philadelphian yawned. "You'll blossom into a credit to your
country if you don't take care."

"I know it. I'm an American-first, last, and all the time. I'll show
'em that when I strike Europe. Piff! My cig's out. I can't smoke the
truck the steward sells. Any gen'elman got a real Turkish cig on
him?"

The chief engineer entered for a moment, red, smiling, and wet.
"Say, Mac," cried Harvey cheerfully, "how are we hitting it?"

"Vara much in the ordinary way," was the grave reply. "The young
are as polite as ever to their elders, an' their elders are e'en tryin' to
appreciate it."

A low chuckle came from a corner. The German opened his
cigar-case and handed a shiny black cigar to Harvey.

"Dot is der broper apparatus to smoke, my young friendt," he said.
"You vill dry it? Yes? Den you vill be efer so happy."

Harvey lit the unlovely thing with a flourish: he felt that he was
getting on in grownup society.

"It would take more 'n this to keel me over," he said, ignorant that
he was lighting that terrible article, a Wheeling "stogie'."

"Dot we shall bresently see," said the German. "Where are we
now, Mr. Mactonal'?"

"Just there or thereabouts, Mr. Schaefer," said the engineer. "We'll
be on the Grand Bank to-night; but in a general way o' speaking',
we're all among the fishing-fleet now. We've shaved three dories
an' near scalped the boom off a Frenchman since noon, an' that's
close sailing', ye may say."

"You like my cigar, eh?" the German asked, for Harvey's eyes were
full of tears.

"Fine, full flavor," he answered through shut teeth.

"Guess we've slowed down a little, haven't we? I'll skip out and see
what the log says."

"I might if I has you," said the German.

Harvey staggered over the wet decks to the nearest rail. He was
very unhappy; but he saw the deck-steward lashing chairs together,
and, since he had boasted before the man that he was never
seasick, his pride made him go aft to the second-saloon deck at the
stern, which was finished in a turtle-back. The deck was deserted,
and he crawled to the extreme end of it, near the flag-pole. There
he doubled up in limp agony, for the Wheeling "stag" joined with
the surge and jar of the screw to sieve out his soul. His head
swelled; sparks of fire danced before his eyes; his body seemed to
lose weight, while his heels wavered in the breeze. He was fainting
from seasickness, and a roll of the ship tilted him over the rail on
to the smooth lip of the turtle-back. Then a low, gray mother-wave
swung out of the fog, tucked Harvey under one arm, so to speak,
and pulled him off and away to leeward; the great green closed
over him, and he went quietly to sleep.

He was roused by the sound of a dinner-horn such as they used to
blow at a summer-school he had once attended in the Adirondacks.
Slowly he remembered that he was Harvey Cheyne, drowned and
dead in mid-ocean, but was too weak to fit things together. A new
smell filled his nostrils; wet and clammy chills ran down his back,
and he was helplessly full of salt water. When he opened his eyes,
he perceived that he was still on the top of the sea, for it was
running round him in silver-coloured hills, and he was lying on a
pile of half-dead fish, looking at a broad human back clothed in a
blue jersey.

"It's no good," thought the boy. "I'm dead, sure enough, and this
thing is in charge."

He groaned, and the figure turned its head, showing a pair of little
gold rings half hidden in curly black hair.

"Aha! You feel some pretty well now?" it said. "Lie still so: we
trim better."

With a swift jerk he sculled the flickering boat-head on to a
foamless sea that lifted her twenty full feet, only to slide her into a
glassy pit beyond. But this mountain-climbing did not interrupt
blue-jersey's talk. "Fine good job, I say, that I catch you. Eh,
wha-at? Better good job, I say, your boat not catch me. How you
come to fall out?"

"I was sick," said Harvey; "sick, and couldn't help it."

"Just in time I blow my horn, and your boat she yaw a little. Then I
see you come all down. Eh, wha-at? I think you are cut into baits
by the screw, but you dreeft-dreeft to me, and I make a big fish of
you. So you shall not die this time."

"Where am I?" said Harvey, who could not see that life was
particularly safe where he lay.

"You are with me in the dory-Manuel my name, and I come from
schooner We're Here of Gloucester. I live to Gloucester. By-and-by
we get supper. Eh, wha-at?"

He seemed to have two pairs of bands and a head of cast-iron, for,
not content with blowing through a big conch-shell, he must needs
stand up to it, swaying with the sway of the flat-bottomed dory,
and send a grinding, thuttering shriek through the fog. How long
this entertainment lasted, Harvey could not remember, for he lay
back terrified at the sight of the smoking swells. He fancied he
heard a gun and a horn and shouting. Something bigger than the
dory, but quite as lively, loomed alongside. Several voices talked
at once; he was dropped into a dark, heaving hole, where men in
oilskins gave him a hot drink and took off his clothes, and he fell
asleep.

When he waked he listened for the first breakfast-bell on the
steamer, wondering why his state-room had grown so small.
Turning, he looked into a narrow, triangular cave, lit by a lamp
hung against a huge square beam. A three-cornered table within
arm's reach ran from the angle of the bows to the foremast. At the
after end, behind a well-used Plymouth stove, sat a boy about his
own age, with a flat red face and a pair of twinkling gray eyes. He
was dressed in a blue jersey and high rubber boots. Several pairs of
the same sort of foot-wear, an old cap, and some worn-out woollen
socks lay on the floor, and black and yellow oilskins swayed to and
fro beside the bunks. The place was packed as full of smells as a
bale is of cotton. The oilskins had a peculiarly thick flavor of their
own which made a sort of background to the smells of fried fish,
burnt grease, paint, pepper, and stale tobacco; but these, again,
were all hooped together by one encircling smell of ship and salt
water. Harvey saw with disgust that there were no sheets on his
bed-place. He was lying on a piece of dingy ticking full of lumps
and nubbles. Then, too, the boat's motion was not that of a
steamer. She was neither sliding nor rolling, but rather wriggling
herself about in a silly, aimless way, like a colt at the end of a
halter. Water-noises ran by close to his ear, and beams creaked and
whined about him. All these things made him grunt despairingly
and think of his mother.

"Feelin' better?" said the boy, with a grin. ".Hev some coffee?" He
brought a tin cup full and sweetened it with molasses.

"Isn't there milk?" said Harvey, looking round the dark double tier
of bunks as if he expected to find a cow there.

"Well, no," said the boy. "Ner there ain't likely to be till 'baout
mid-September. 'Tain't bad coffee. I made it.',

Harvey drank in silence, and the boy handed him a plate full of
pieces of crisp fried pork, which he ate ravenously.

"I've dried your clothes. Guess they've shrunk some," said the boy.
"They ain't our style much-none of 'em. Twist round an' see if
you're hurt any."

Harvey stretched himself in every direction, but could not report
any injuries.

"That's good," the boy said heartily. "Fix yerself an' go on deck.
Dad wants to see you. I'm his son,-Dan, they call me,-an' I'm cook's
helper an' everything else aboard that's too dirty for the men. There
ain't no boy here 'cep' me sence Otto went overboard-an' he was
only a Dutchy, an' twenty year old at that. How d'you come to fall
off in a dead flat ca'am?"

"'Twasn't a calm," said Harvey, sulkily. "It was a gale, and I was
seasick. Guess I must have rolled over the rail."

"There was a little common swell yes'day an' last night," said the
boy. "But ef thet's your notion of a gale----" He whistled. "You'll
know more 'fore you're through. Hurry! Dad's waitin'."

Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all
his life received a direct order-never, at least, without long, and
sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of. obedience
and the reasons for the request. Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of
breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself
walked on the edge of nervous prostration. He could not see why
he should be expected to hurry for any man's pleasure, and said so.
"Your dad can come down here. if he's so anxious to talk to me. I
want him to take me to New York right away. It'll pay him."

Dan opened his eyes as the size and beauty of this joke dawned on
him. "Say, Dad!" he shouted up the foc'sle hatch, "he says you kin
slip down an' see him ef you're anxious that way. 'Hear, Dad?"

The answer came back in the deepest voice Harvey had ever heard
from a human chest: "Quit foolin', Dan, and send him to me."

Dan sniggered, and threw Harvey his warped bicycle shoes. There
was something in the tones on the deck that made the boy
dissemble his extreme rage and console himself with the thought
of gradually unfolding the tale of his own and his father's wealth
on the voyage home. This rescue would certainly make him a hero
among his friends for life. He hoisted himself on deck up a
perpendicular ladder, and stumbled aft, over a score of
obstructions, to where a small, thick-set, clean-shaven man with
gray eyebrows sat on a step that led up to the quarter-deck. The
swell had passed in the night, leaving a long, oily sea, dotted round
the horizon with the sails of a dozen fishing-boats. Between them
lay little black specks, showing where the dories were out fishing.
The schooner, with a triangular riding-sail on the mainmast, played
easily at anchor, and except for the man by the cabin-roof -"house"
they call. it-she was deserted.

"Mornin'--Good afternoon, I should say. You've nigh slep' the
clock round, young feller," was the greeting.

"Mornin'," said Harvey. He did not like being called "young feller";
and, as one rescued from drowning, expected sympathy. His
mother suffered agonies whenever he got his feet wet; but this
mariner did not seem excited.

"Naow let's hear all abaout it. It's quite providential, first an' last,
fer all concerned. What might be your name? Where from (we
mistrust it's Noo York), an' where baound (we mistrust it's
Europe)?"

Harvey gave his name, the name of the steamer, and a short history
of the accident, winding up with a demand to be taken back
immediately to New York, where his father would pay anything
any one chose to name.

"H'm," said the shaven man, quite unmoved by the end of Harvey's
speech. "I can't say we think special of any man, or boy even, that
falls overboard from that kind o' packet in a flat ca'am. Least of all
when his excuse is that he's seasick."

"Excuse!" cried Harvey. "D'you suppose I'd fall overboard into
your dirty little boat for fun?"

"Not knowin' what your notions o' fun may be, I can't rightly say,
young feller. But if I was you, I wouldn't call the boat which, under
Providence, was the means o' savin' ye, names. In the first place,
it's blame irreligious. In the second, it's annoyin' to my feelin's-an'
I'm Disko Troop o' the We're Here o' Gloucester, which you don't
seem rightly to know."

"I don't know and I don't care," said Harvey. "I'm grateful enough
for being saved and all that, of course! but I want you to
understand that the sooner you take me back to New York the
better it'll pay you."

"Meanin'-haow?" Troop raised one shaggy eyebrow over a
suspiciously mild blue eye.

"Dollars and cents," said Harvey, delighted to think that he was
making an impression. "Cold dollars and cents." He thrust a hand
into a pocket, and threw out his stomach a little, which was his
way of being grand. "You've done the best day's work you ever did
in your life when you pulled me in. I'm all the son Harvey Cheyne
has."

"He's bin favoured," said Disko, dryly.

"And if you don't know who Harvey Cheyne is, you don't know
much-that's all. Now turn her around and let's hurry."

Harvey had a notion that the greater part of America was filled
with people discussing and envying his father's dollars.

"Mebbe I do, an' mebbe I don't. Take a reef in your stummick,
young feller. It's full o' my vittles."

Harvey heard a chuckle from Dan, who was pretending to be busy
by the stump-foremast, and blood rushed to his face. "We'll pay for
that too," he said. "When do you suppose we shall get to New
York?"

"I don't use Noo York any. Ner Boston. We may see Eastern Point
about September; an' your pa-I'm real sorry I hain't heerd tell of
him-may give me ten dollars efter all your talk. Then o' course he
mayn't."

"Ten dollars! Why, see here, I-" Harvey dived into his pocket for
the wad of bills. All he brought up was a soggy packet of
cigarettes.

"Not lawful currency; an' bad for the lungs. Heave 'em overboard,
young feller, and try agin."

"It's been stolen!" cried Harvey, hotly.

"You'll hev to wait till you see your pa to reward me, then?"

"A hundred and thirty-four dollars-all stolen," said Harvey, hunting
wildly through his pockets. "Give them back."

A curious change flitted across old Troop's hard face. "What might
you have been doin' at your time o' life with one hundred an' thirty-
four dollars, young feller?"

"It was part of my pocket-money-for a month." This Harvey
thought would be a knock-down blow, and it was--indirectly.

"Oh! One hundred and thirty-four dollars is only part of his pocket-
money--for one month only! You don't remember hittin' anything
when you fell over, do you? Crack agin a stanchion, le's say. Old
man Hasken o' the East Wind"--Troop seemed to be talking to
himself--"he tripped on a hatch an' butted the mainmast with his
head--hardish. 'Baout three weeks afterwards, old man Hasken he
would hev it that the East Wind was a commerce-destroyin' man-
o'-war, an' so he declared war on Sable Island because it was
Bridish, an' the shoals run aout too far. They sewed him up in a
bed-bag, his head an' feet appearin', fer the rest o' the trip, an, now
he's to home in Essex playin' with little rag dolls."

Harvey choked with rage, but Troop went on consolingly: "We're
sorry fer you. We're very sorry fer you-an' so young. We won't say
no more abaout the money, I guess."

"'Course you won't. You stole it."

"Suit yourself. We stole it ef it's any comfort to you. Naow, abaout
goin' back. Allowin' we could do it, which we can't, you ain't in no
fit state to go back to your home, an' we've jest come on to the
Banks, workin' fer our bread. We don't see the ha'af of a hundred
dollars a month, let alone pocket-money; an' with good luck we'll
be ashore again somewheres abaout the first weeks o' September."

"But-but it's May now, and I can't stay here doin' nothing just
because you want to fish. I can't, I tell you!"

"Right an' jest; jest an' right. No one asks you to do nothin'. There's
a heap as you can do, for Otto he went overboard on Le Have. I
mistrust he lost his grip in a gale we fund there. Anyways, he never
come back to deny it. You've turned up, plain, plumb providential
for all concerned. I mistrust, though, there's ruther few things you
kin do. Ain't thet so?"

"I can make it lively for you and your crowd when we get ashore,"
said Harvey, with a vicious nod, murmuring vague threats about
"piracy," at which Troop almost -not quit--smiled.

"Excep' talk. I'd forgot that. You ain't asked to talk more'n you've a
mind to aboard the We're Here. Keep your eyes open, an' help Dan
to do ez he's bid, an' sechlike, an' I'll give you-you ain't wuth it, but
I'll give--ten an' a ha'af a month; say thirty-five at the end o' the
trip. A little work will ease up your head, and you kin tell us all
abaout your dad an' your ma an' your money afterwards."

"She's on the steamer," said Harvey, his eyes flling with tears.
"Take me to New York at once."

"Poor woman--poor woman! When she has you back she'll forgit it
all, though. There's eight of us on the! We're Here, an' ef we went
back naow-it's more'n a thousand mile-we'd lose the season. The
men they wouldn't hev it, allowin' I was agreeable."

"But my father would make it all right."

"He'd try. I don't doubt he'd try," said Troop; "but a whole season's
catch is eight men's bread; an' you'll be better in your health when
you see him in the fall. Go forward an' help Dan. It's ten an' a ha'af
a month, e I said, an' o' course, all fund, same e the rest o' us."

"Do you mean I'm to clean pots and pans and things?" said Harvey.

"An' other things. You've no call to shout, young feeler."

"I won't! My father will give you enough to buy this dirty little
fish-kettle"-Harvey stamped on the deck-"ten times over, if you
take me to New York safe; and-and-you're in a hundred and thirty
by me, anyhow."

"Ha<,w?" said Troop, the iron face darkening.

"How? You know how, well enough. On top of all that, you want
me to do menial work"-Harvey was very proud of that
adjective"till the Fall. I tell you I will not. You hear?"

Troop regarded the top of the mainmast with deep interest for a
while, as Harvey harangued fiercely all around him.

"Hsh!" he said at last. "I'm figurin' out my responsibilities in my
own mind. It's a matter o' jedgment."

Dan stole up and plucked Harvey by the elbow. "Don't go to
tamperin' with Dad any more," he pleaded. "You've called him a
thief two or three times over, an' he don't take that from any livin'
bein'."

"I won't!" Harvey almost shrieked, disregarding the advice, and
still Troop meditated.

"Seems kinder unneighbourly," he said at last, his eye travelling
down to Harvey. "I - don't blame you, not a mite, young feeler, nor
you won't blame me when the bile's out o' your systim. Be sure you
sense what I say? Ten an' a ha'af fer second boy on the
schooner-an' all found-fer to teach you an' fer the sake o' your
health. Yes or no?"

"No!" said Harvey. "Take me back to New York or I'll see you "

He did not exactly remember what followed. He was lying in the
scuppers, holding on to a nose that bled while Troop looked down
on him serenely.

"Dan," he said to his son, "I was sot agin this young feeler when I
first saw him on account o' hasty jedgments. Never you be led
astray by hasty jedgments, Dan. Naow I'm sorry for him, because
he's clear distracted in his upper works. He ain't responsible fer the
names he's give me, nor fer his other statements--nor fer jumpin'
overboard, which I'm abaout ha'af convinced he did. You he gentle
with him, Dan, 'r I'll give you twice what I've give him. Them
hemmeridges clears the head. Let him sluice it off!"

Troop went down solemnly into the cabin, where he and the older
men bunked, leaving Dan to comfort the luckless heir to thirty
millions.

CHAPTER II

"I warned ye," said Dan, as the drops fell thick and fast on the
dark, oiled planking. "Dad ain't noways hasty, but you fair earned
it. Pshaw! there's no sense takin' on so." Harvey's shoulders were
rising and falling in spasms of dry sobbing. "I know the feelin'.
First time Dad laid me out was the last-and that was my first trip.
Makes ye feel sickish an' lonesome. I know."

"It does," moaned Harvey. "That man's either crazy or drunk,
and-and I can't do anything."

"Don't say that to Dad," whispered Dan. "He's set agin all liquor,
an'-well, he told me you was the madman. What in creation made
you call him a thief? He's my dad."

Harvey sat up, mopped his nose, and told the story of the missing
wad of bills. "I'm not crazy," he wound up. "Only-your father has
never seen more than a five-dollar bill at a time, and my father
could buy up this boat once a week and never miss it."

"You don't know what the We're Here's worth. Your dad must hev
a pile o' money. How did he git it? Dad sez loonies can't shake out
a straight yarn. Go ahead"

"In gold mines and things, West."

"I've read o' that kind o' business. Out West, too? Does he go
around with a pistol on a trick-pony, same ez the circus? They call
that the Wild West, and I've heard that their spurs an' bridles was
solid silver."

"You are a chump!" said Harvey, amused in spite of himself. "My
father hasn't any use for ponies. When he wants to ride he takes his
car."

"Haow? Lobster-car?"

"No. His own private car, of course. You've seen a private car
some time in your life?"

"Slatin Beeman he hez one," said Dan, cautiously. "I saw her at the
Union Depot in Boston, with three niggers hoggin' her run.', (Dan
meant cleaning the windows.) "But Slatin Beeman he owns 'baout
every railroad on Long Island, they say, an' they say he's bought
'baout ha'af Noo Hampshire an' run a line fence around her, an'
filled her up with lions an' tigers an' bears an' buffalo an' crocodiles
an' such all. Slatin Beeman he's a millionaire. I've seen his car.
Yes?"

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