Captains Courageous
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Rudyard Kipling >> Captains Courageous
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There was very little talk in the car. The secretary and typewriter
sat together on the stamped Spanish-leather cushions by the
plate-glass observation-window at the rear end, watching the surge
and ripple of the ties crowded back behind them, and, it is
believed, making notes of the scenery. Cheyne moved nervously
between his own extravagant gorgeousness and the naked
necessity of the combination, an unlit cigar in his teeth, till the
pitying crews forgot that he was their tribal enemy, and did their
best to entertain him.
At night the bunched electrics lit up that distressful palace of all
the luxuries, and they fared sumptuously, swinging on through the
emptiness of abject desolation.
124 Rudyard Kipling
Now they heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice
of a Chinaman, the click-clink of hammers that tested the Krupp
steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear- platform;
now the solid crash of coal shot into the tender; and now a beating
back of noises as they flew past a waiting train. Now they looked
out into great abysses, a trestle purring beneath their tread, or up to
rocks that barred out half the stars. Now scaur and ravine changed
and rolled back to jagged mountains on the horizon's edge, and
now broke into hills lower and lower, till at last came the true
plains.
At Dodge City an unknown hand threw in a copy of a Kansas
paper containing some sort of an interview with Harvey, who had
evidently fallen in with an enterprising reporter, telegraphed on
from Boston. The joyful journalese revealed that it was beyond
question their boy, and it soothed Mrs. Cheyne for a while. Her
one word "hurry" was conveyed by the crews to the engineers at
Nickerson, Topeka, and Marceline, where the grades are easy, and
they brushed the Continent behind them. Towns and villages were
close together now, and a man could feel here that he moved
among people.
"I can't see the dial, and my eyes ache so. What are we doing?"
"The very best we can, Mama. There's no sense in getting in before
the Limited. We'd only have to wait."
"I don't care. I want to feel we're moving. Sit down and tell me the
miles."
Cheyne sat down and read the dial for her (there were some miles
which stand for records to this day), but the seventy-foot car never
changed its long steamer-like roll, moving through the heat with
the hum of a giant bee. Yet the speed was not enough for Mrs.
Cheyne; and the heat, the remorseless August heat, was making
her giddy; the clock-hands would not move, and when, oh, when
would they be in Chicago?
It is not true that, as they changed engines at Fort Madison, Cheyne
passed over to the Amalgamated Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers an endowment sufficient to enable them to fight him
and his fellows on equal terms for evermore. He paid his
obligations to engineers and firemen as he believed they deserved,
and only his bank knows what he gave the crews who had
sympathized with him. It is on record that the last crew took entire
charge of switching operations at Sixteenth Street, because "she" was
in a doze at last, and Heaven was to help any one who bumped her.
Now the highly paid specialist who conveys the Lake Shore and
Michigan Southern Limited from Chicago to Elkhart is something
of an autocrat, and he does not approve of being told how to back
up to a car. None the less he handled the "Constance" as if she
might have been a load of dynamite, and when the crew rebuked
him, they did it in whispers and dumb show.
"Pshaw!" said the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe men,
discussing life later, "we weren't runnin' for a record. Harvey
Cheyne's wife, she were sick back, an' we didn't want to jounce
her. 'Come to think of it, our runnin' time from San~Diego to
Chicago was 57.54. You can tell that to them Eastern way-trains.
When we're tryin' for a record, we'll let you know."
To the Western man (though this would not please either city)
Chicago and Boston are cheek by jowl, and some railroads
encourage the delusion. The Limited whirled the "Constance" into
Buffalo and the arms of the New York Central and Hudson River
(illustrious magnates with white whiskers and gold charms on their
watch-chains boarded her here to talk a little business to Cheyne),
who slid her gracefully into Albany, where the Boston and Albany
completed the run from tide-water to tide- water-total time,
eighty-seven hours and thirty-five minutes, or three days, fifteen
hours and one half. Harvey was waiting for them.
Alter violent emotion most people and all boys demand food.
They feasted the returned prodigal behind drawn curtains, cut off
in their great happiness, while the trains roared in and out around
them. Harvey ate, drank, and enlarged on his adventures all in one
breath, and when he had a hand free his mother fondled it. His
voice was thickened with living in the open, salt air; his palms
were rough and hard, his wrists dotted with marks of gurrysores;
and a fine full flavour of codfish hung round rubber boots and blue
jersey.
The father, well used to judging men, looked at him keenly. He did
not know what enduring harm the boy might have taken. Indeed,
he caught himself thinking that he knew very little whatever of his
son; but he distinctly remembered an unsatisfied, dough-faced
youth who took delight in "calling down the old man," and
reducing his mother to tears-such a person as adds to the gaiety of
public rooms and hotel piazzas, where the ingenuous young of the
wealthy play with or revile the bell-boys. But this well set-up
fisher-youth did not wriggle, looked at him with eyes steady, clear,
and unflinching, and spoke in a tone distinctly, even startlingly,
respectful. There was that in his voice, too, which seemed to
promise that the change might be permanent, and that the new
Harvey had come to stay.
"Some one's been coercing him," thought Cheyne. "Now
Constance would never have allowed that. Don't see as Europe
could have done it any better."
"But why didn't you tell this man, Troop, who you were?" the
mother repeated, when Harvey had expanded his story at least
twice.
"Disko Troop, dear. The best man that ever walked a deck. I don't
care who the next is."
"Why didn't you tell him to put you ashore? You know Papa would
have made it up to him ten times over."
"I know it; but he thought I was crazy. I'm afraid I called him a
thief because I couldn't find the bills in my pocket."
"A sailor found them by the flagstaff that-that night," sobbed Mrs.
Cheyne.
"That explains it, then. I don't blame Troop any. I just said I
wouldn't work-on a Banker, too--and of course he hit me on the
nose, and oh! I bled like a stuck hog."
"My poor darling! They must have abused you horribly."
"Dunno quite. Well, after that, I saw a light."
Cheyne slapped his leg and chuckled. This was going to be a boy
after his own hungry heart. He had never seen precisely that
twinkle in Harvey's eye before.
"And the old man gave me ten and a half a month; he's paid me
half now; and I took hold with Dan and pitched right in. I can't do
a man's work yet. But I can handle a dory 'most as well as Dan,
and I don't get rattled in a fog-much; and I can take my trick in
light winds-that's steering, dear-and I can 'most bait up a trawl,
and I know my ropes, of course; and I can pitch fish till the cows
come home, and I'm great on old Josephus, and I'll show you how
I can clear coffee with a piece of fish-skin, and-I think I'll have
another cup, please. Say, you've no notion what a heap of work
there is in ten and a half a month!"
"I began with eight and a half, my son," said Cheyne.
'That so? You never told me, sir."
"You never asked, Harve. I'll tell you about it some day, if you care
to listen. Try a stuffed olive."
"Troop says the most interesting thing in the world is to find out how the
next man gets his vittles. It's great to have a trimmed-up meal again. W
e were well fed, though. But mug on the Banks. Disko fed us first-class.
He's a great man.And Dan-that's his son-Dan's my partner. And
there's Uncle Salters and his manures, an' he reads Josephus. He's
sure I'm crazy yet. And there's poor little Penn, and he is crazy.
You mustn't talk to him about Johnstown, because-
And, oh, you must know Tom Platt and Long Jack and Manuel.
Manuel saved my life. I'm sorry he's a Portuguee. He can't talk
much, but he's an everlasting musk ian. He found me struck
adrift and drifting, and hauied me in."
"I wonder your nervous system isn't completely wrecked," said
Mrs. Cheyne.
"What for, Mama? I worked like a horse and I ate like a hog and I
slept like a dead man."
That was too much for Mrs. Cheyne, who began to think of her
visions of a corpse rocking on the salty seas. She went to her
stateroom, and Harvey curled up beside his father, explaining
his indebteeiness.
"You can depend upon me to do everything I can for the crowd,
Harve. They seem to be good men on your showing."
"Best in the Fleet, sir. Ask at Gloucester," said Harvey. "But Disko
believes still he's cured me of being crazy. Dan's the only one I've
let on to about you, and our private cars and all the rest of it, and
I'm not quite sure Dan believes. I want to paralyze 'em to-morrow.
Say, can't they run the 'Constance' over to Gloucester? Mama don't
look fit to be moved, anyway, and we're bound to finish cleaning
out by tomorrow. Wouverman takes our fish. You see, we're the
first off the Banks this season, and it's four twenty-five a quintal.
We held out till he paid it. They want it quick."
"You mean you'll have to work to-morrow, then?"
"I told Troop I would. I'm on the scales. I've brought the tallies
with me." He looked at the greasy notebook with an air of
importance that made his father choke. "There isn't but three-
no-two ninety-four or five quintal more by my reckoning."
"Hire a substitute," suggested Cheyne, to see what Harvey would
say.
"Can't, sir. I'm tally-man for the schooner. Troop says I've a better
head for figures than Dan. Troop's a mighty just man."
"Well, suppose I don't move the 'Constance' to-night, how'll you fix
it?"
Harvey looked at the clock, which marked twenty past eleven.
"Then I'll sleep here till three and catch the four o'clock freight.
They let us men from the Fleet ride free as a rule."
"That's a notion. But I think we can get the 'Constance' around
about as soon as your men's freight. Better go to bed now."
Harvey spread himself on the sofa, kicked off his boots, and was
asleep before his father could shade the electrics. Cheyne sat
watching the young face under the shadow of the arm thrown over
the forehead, and among many things that occurred to him was the
notion that he might perhaps have been neglectful as a father.
"One never knows when one's taking one's biggest risks," he said.
"It might have been worse than drowning; but I don't think it has-I
don't think it has. If it hasn't, I haven't enough to pay Troop, that's
all; and I don't think it has."
Morning brought a fresh sea breeze through the windows, the
"Constance" was side-tracked among freight-cars at Gloucester,
and Harvey had gone to his business.
"Then he'll fall overboard again and he drowned," the mother said
bitterly.
"We'll go and look, ready to throw him a rope m case. You've
never seen him working for his bread," said the father.
"What nonsense! As if any one expected
"Well, the man that hired him did. He's about right, too."
They went down between the stores full of fishermen's oilskins to
Wouverman's wharf where the We're Here rode high, her Bank flag
still flying, all hands busy as beavers in the glorious morning light.
Disko stood by the main hatch superintending Manuel, Penn, and
Uncle Salters at the tackle. Dan was swinging the loaded baskets
inboard as Long Jack and Tom Platt filled them, and Harvey, with
a notebook, represented the skipper's interests before the clerk of
the scales on the salt-sprinkled wharf-edge.
"Ready!" cried the voices below. "Haul!" cried Disko. "Hi!" said
Manuel. "Here!" said Dan, swinging the basket. Then they heard
Harvey's voice, clear and fresh, checking the weights.
The last of the fish had been whipped out, and Harvey leaped from
the string-piece six feet to a ratline, as the shortest way to hand
Disko the tally, shouting, "Two ninety-seven, and an empty hold!"
"What's the total, Harve?" said Disko.
"Eight sixty-five. Three thousand six hundred and seventy-six
dollars and a quarter. 'Wish I'd share as well as wage."
"Well, I won't go so far as to say you hevn't deserved it, Harve.
Don't you want to slip up to Wouverman's office and take him our
tallies?"
"Who's that boy?" said Cheyne to Dan, well used to all manner of
questions from those idle imbeciles called summer boarders.
"Well, he's kind o' supercargo," was the answer. "We picked him
up struck adrift on the Banks. Fell overboard from a liner, he sez.
He was a passenger. He's by way o' hem' a fisherman now."
"Is he worth his keep?"
"Ye-ep. Dad, this man wants to know ef Harve's worth his keep.
Say, would you like to go aboard? We'll fix up a ladder for her."
"I should very much, indeed. 'Twon't hurt you, Mama, and you'll be
able to see for yourself."
The woman who could not lift her head a week ago scrambled
down the ladder, and stood aghast amid the mess and tangle aft.
"Be you anyways interested in Harve?" said Disko.
"Well, ye-es."
"He's a good boy, an' ketches right hold jest as he's bid. You've
heard haow we found him? He was sufferin' from nervous
prostration, I guess, 'r else his head had hit somethin', when we
hauled him aboard. He's all over that naow. Yes, this is the cabin.
'Tain't in order, but you're quite welcome to look araound. Those
are his figures on the stove-pipe, where we keep the reckonin'
mosdy."
"Did he sleep here?" said Mrs. Cheyne, sitting on a yellow locker
and surveying the disorderly bunks.
"No. He berthed forward, madam, an' only fer him an' my boy
hookin' fried pies an muggin' up when they ought to ha' been
asleep, I dunno as I've any special fault to find with him."
"There weren't nothin' wrong with Harve," said Uncle Salters,
descending the steps. "He hung my boots on the main-truck, and he
ain't over an' above respectful to such as knows more'n he do,
specially about farmin'; but he were mostly misled by Dan."
Dan in the meantime, profiting by dark hints from Harvey early
that morning, was executing a war-dance on deck. "Tom, Tom!" he
whispered down the hatch. "His folks has come, an' Dad hain't
caught on yet, an' they're pow-wowin' in the cabin. She's a daisy,
an' he's all Harve claimed he was, by the looks of him."
"Howly Smoke!" said Long Jack, climbing out covered with salt
and fish-skin. "D'ye belave his tale av the kid an' the little
four-horse rig was thrue?"
"I knew it all along," said Dan. "Come an' see Dad mistook in his
judgments."
They came delightedly, just in time to hear Cheyne say: "I'm glad he
has a good character, because-he's my son."
Disko's jaw fell,-Long Jack always vowed that he heard the click
of it,-and he stared alternately at the man and the woman.
"I got his telegram in San Diego four days ago, and we came over."
"In a private car?" said Dan. "He said ye might."
"In a private car, of course."
Dan looked at his father with a hurricane of irreverent winks.
"There was a tale he told us av drivin' four little ponies in a rig av
his own," said Long Jack. "Was that thrue now?"
"Very likely," said Cheyne. "Was it, Mama?"
"He had a little drag when we were in Toledo, I think," said the
mother.
Long Jack whistled. "Oh, Disko!" said he, and that was all.
"I wuz-I am mistook in my jedgments-worse'n the men o'
Marblehead," said Disko, as though the words were being
windlassed out of him. "I don't mind ownin' to you, Mr. Cheyne, as
I mistrusted the boy to he crary. He talked kinder odd about
money."
"So he told me."
"Did he tell ye anything else? 'Cause I pounded him once." This
with a somewhat anxious glance at Mrs. Cheyne.
"Oh, yes," Cheyne replied. "I should say it probably did him more
good than anything else in the world."
"I jedged 'twuz necessary, er I wouldn't ha' done it. I don't want you
to think we abuse our boys any on this packet."
"I don't think you do, Mr. Troop."
Mrs. Cheyne had been looking at the faces-Disko's ivory-yellow,
hairless, iron countenance; Uncle Salters's, with its rim of
agricultural hair; Penn's bewildered simplicity; Manuel's quiet
smile; Long Jack's grin of delight, and Tom Platt's scar. Rough, by
her standards, they certainly were; but she had a mother's wits in
her eyes, and she rose with out-stretched hands.
"Oh, tell me, which is who?" said she, half sobbing. "I want to
thank you and bless you-all of you."
"Faith, that pays me a hunder time," said Long Jack.
Disko introduced them all in due form. The captain of an old-time
Chinaman could have done no better, and Mrs. Cheyne babbled
incoherently. She nearly threw herself into Manuel's arms when
she understood that he had first found Harvey.
"But how shall I leave him dreeft?" said poor Manuel. "What do
you yourself if you find him so? Eh, wha-at? We are in one good
boy, and I am ever so pleased he come to be your son."
"And he told me Dan was his partner!" she cried. Dan was already
sufficiently pink, but he turned a rich crimson when Mrs. Cheyne
kissed him on both cheeks before the assembly. Then they led her
forward to show her the foc'sle, at which she wept again, and must
needs go down to see Harvey's identical bunk, and there she found
the nigger cook cleaning up the stove, and he nodded as though
she were some one he had expected to meet for years. They tried,
two at a time, to explain the boat's daily life to her, and she sat by
the pawl-post, her gloved hands on the greasy table, laughing with
trembling lips and crying with dancing eyes.
"And who's ever to use the We're Here after this?" said Long Jack
to Tom Platt. "I feel as if she'd made a cathedral av ut all."
"Cathedral!" sneered Tom Platt. "Oh, if it had bin even the Fish
C'mmission boat instid of this bally-hoo o' blazes. If we only hed
some decency an' order an' side-boys when she goes over! She'll
have to climb that ladder like a hen, an' we-we ought to be mannin'
the yards!"
"Then Harvey was not mad," said Penn, slowly, to Cheyne.
"No, indeed-thank God," the big millionaire replied, stooping
down tenderly.
"It must be terrible to be mad. Except to lose your child, I do not
know anything more terrible. But your child has come back? Let us
thank God for that."
"Hello!" cried Harvey, looking down upon them benignly from the
wharf.
"I wuz mistook, Harve. I wuz mistook," said Disko, swiftly,
holding up a hand. "I wuz mistook in my jedgments. Ye needn't
rub in any more."
"Guess I'll take care o' that," said Dan, under his breath.
"You'll be goin' off naow, won't ye?"
"Well, not without the balance of my wages, 'less you want to have
the We're Here attached."
"Thet's so; I'd clean forgot"; and he counted out the remaining
dollars. "You done all you contracted to do, Harve; and you done it
'baout's well as if you'd been brought up-" Here Disko brought
himself up. He did not quite see where the sentence was going to
end.
"Outside of a private car?" suggested Dan, wickedly.
"Come on, and I'll show her to you," said Harvey.
Cheyne stayed to talk with Disko, but the others made a
procession to the depot, with Mrs. Cheyne at the head. The French
maid shrieked at the invasion; and Harvey laid the glories of the
"Constance" before them without a word. They took them in in
equal silence-stamped leather, silver door-handles and rails, cut
velvet, plate-glass, nickel, bronze, hammered iron, and the rare
woods of the continent inlaid.
"I told you," said Harvey; "I told you." This was his crowning
revenge, and a most ample one.
Mrs. Cheyne decreed a meal, and that nothing might be lacking to
the tale Long Jack told afterwards in his boarding-house, she
waited on them herself. Men who are accustomed to eat at tiny
tables in howling gales have curiously neat and finished manners;
but Mrs. Cheyne, who did not know this, was surprised. She
longed to have Manuel for a butler; so silently and easily did he
comport himself among the frail glassware and dainty silver. Tom
Platt remembered the great days on the Ohio and the manners of
foreign potentates who dined with the officers; and Long Jack,
being Irish, supplied the small talk till all were at their ease.
In the We're Here's cabin the fathers took stock of each other
behind their cigars. Cheyne knew well enough when he dealt with
a man to whom he could not offer money; equally well he knew
that no money could pay for what Disko had done. He kept his
own counsel and waited for an opening.
"I hevn't done anything to your boy or fer your boy excep' make
him work a piece an' learn him how to handle the hog-yoke," said
Disko. "He has twice my boy's head for figgers."
"By the way," Cheyne answered casually, "what d'you calculate to
make of your boy?"
Disko removed his cigar and waved it comprehensively round the
cabin. "Dan's jest plain boy, an' he don't allow me to do any of his
thinkin'. He'll hev this able little packet when I'm laid by. He ain't
noways anxious to quit the business. I know that."
"Mmm! 'Ever been West, Mr. Troop?"
'Bin's fer ez Noo York once in a boat. I've no use for railroads. No
more hez Dan. Salt water's good enough fer the Troops. I've been
'most everywhere-in the nat'ral way, o' course."
"I can give him all the salt water he's likely to need-till he's a
skipper."
"Haow's that? I thought you wuz a kinder railroad king. Harve told
me so when-I was mistook in my jedgments."
"We're all apt to be mistaken. I fancied perhaps you might know I
own a line of tea-clippers~an Francisco to Yokohama-six of
'em-iron-built, about seventeen hundred and eighty tons apiece.
"Blame that boy! He never told. I'd ha' listened to that, instid o' his
truck abaout railroads an' ponycarriages."
"He dldn't know."
"'Little thing like that slipped his mind, I guess."
"No, I only capt-took hold of the 'Blue M.' freighters -Morgan
and McQuade's old lin~this summer." Disko collapsed where he
sat, beside the stove.
"Great Caesar Almighty! I mistrust I've been fooled from one end
to the other. Why, Phil Airheart he went from this very town six
year back-no, seven-an' he's mate on the San Jose-- now-twenty-six
days was her time out. His sister she's livin' here yet, an' she reads
his letters to my woman. An' you own the 'Blue M.' freighters?"
Cheyne nodded.
"If I'd known that I'd ha' jerked the We're Here back to port all
standin', on the word."
"Perhaps that wouldn't have been so good for Harvey."
"If I'd only known! If he'd only said about the cussed Line, I'd ha'
understood! I'll never stand on my own jedgments again-never.
They're well-found packets. Phil Airheart he says so."
"I'm glad to have a recommend from that quarter. Airheart's
skipper of the San Jose now. What I was getting at is to know
whether you'd lend me Dan for a year or two, and we'll see if we
can't make a mate of him. Would you trust him to Airheart?"
"It's a resk taking a raw boy--"
"I know a man who did more for me."
"That's diff'runt. Look at here naow, I ain't recommendin' Dan
special because he's my own flesh an' blood. I know Bank ways
ain't clipper ways, but he hain't much to learn. Steer he can-no boy
better, if I say it-an' the rest's in our blood an' get; but I could wish
he warn't so cussed weak on navigation."
"Airheart will attend to that. He'll ship as boy for a voyage or two,
and then we can put him in the way of doing better. Suppose you
take him in hand this winter, and I'll send for him early in the
spring. I know the Pacific's a long ways off
"Pshaw! We Troops, livin' an' dead, are all around the earth an' the
seas thereof."
"But I want you to understand-and I mean this-any time you think
you'd like to see him, tell me, and I'll attend to the transportation.
'Twon't cost you a cent."
"If you'll walk a piece with me, we'll go to my house an' talk this
to my woman. I've bin so crazy mistook in all my jedgments, it
don't seem to me this was like to be real."
They went blue-trimmed of nasturtiums over to Troop's
eighteen-hundred-dollar, white house, with a retired dory full in
the front yard and a shuttered parlour which was a museum of
oversea plunder. There sat a large woman, silent and grave, with
the dim eyes of those who look long to sea for the return of their
beloved. Cheyne addressed himself to her, and she gave consent
wearily.
"We lose one hundred a year from Gloucester only, Mr. Cheyne,"
she said-"one hundred boys an' men; and I've come so's to hate the
sea as if 'twuz alive an' listenin'. God never made it fer humans to
anchor on. These packets o' yours they go straight out, I take it'
and straight home again?"
"As straight as the winds let 'em, and I give a bonus for record
passages. Tea don't improve by being at sea."
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