Captains Courageous
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Rudyard Kipling >> Captains Courageous
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"Grampus," said he. "Beggin' fer fish-heads. They up-eend the way
when they're hungry. Breath on him like the doleful tombs, hain't
he?" A horrible stench of decayed fish filled the air as the pillar of
white sank, and the water bubbled oilily. "Hain't ye never seen a
grampus up-eend before? You'll see 'em by hundreds 'fore ye're
through. Say, it's good to hev a boy aboard again. Otto was too old,
an' a Dutchy at that. Him an' me we fought consid'ble. 'Wouldn't
ha' keered fer that ef he'd hed a Christian tongue in his head.
Sleepy?"
"Dead sleepy," said Harvey, nodding forward.
"Mustn't sleep on watch. Rouse up an' see ef our anchor-light's
bright an' shinin'. You're on watch now, Harve."
"Pshaw! What's to hurt us? 'Bright's day. Sn-orrr!"
"Jest when things happen, Dad says. Fine weather's good sleepin',
an' 'fore you know, mebbe, you're cut in two by a liner, an'
seventeen brass-bound officers, all gen'elmen, lift their hand to it
that your lights was aout an' there was a thick fog. Harve, I've
kinder took to you, but ef you nod onet more I'll lay into you with a
rope's end."
The moon, who sees many strange things on the Banks, looked
down on a slim youth in knickerbockers and a red jersey,
staggering around the cluttered decks of a seventy-ton schooner,
while behind him, waving a knotted rope, walked, after the manner
of an executioner, a boy who yawned and nodded between the
blows he dealt.
The lashed wheel groaned and kicked softly, the riding-sail slatted
a little in the shifts of the light wind, the windlass creaked, and the
miserable procession continued. Harvey expostulated, threatened,
whimpered, and at last wept outright, while Dan, the words
clotting on his tongue, spoke of the beauty of watchfulness and
slashed away with the rope's end, punishing the dories as often as
he hit Harvey. At last the clock in the cabin struck ten, and upon
the tenth stroke little Penn crept on deck. He found two boys in
two tumbled heaps side by side on the main hatch, so deeply
asleep that he actually rolled them to their berths.
CHAPTER III
It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and
heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening. They emptied a big tin
dish of juicy fragments of fish-the blood-ends the cook had
collected overnight. They cleaned up the plates and pans of the
elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork for the midday meal,
swabbed down the foc'sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water
for the cook, and investigated the fore-hold, where the boat's stores
were stacked. It was another perfect day-soft, mild, and clear; and
Harvey breathed to the very bottom of his lungs.
More schooners had crept up in the night, and the long blue seas
were full of sails and dories. Far away on the horizon, the smoke of
some liner, her hull invisible, smudged the blue, and to eastward a
big ship's top-gallant sails, just lifting, made a square nick in it.
Disko Troop was smoking by the roof of the cabin~ne eye on the
craft around, and the other on the little fly at the main-mast-head.
"When Dad kerfiummoxes that way," said Dan in a whisper, "he's
doin' some high-line thinkin' fer all hands. I'll lay my wage an'
share we'll make berth soon. Dad he knows the cod, an' the Fleet
they know Dad knows. 'See 'em comm' up one by one, lookin' fer
nothin' in particular, o' course, but scrowgin' on us all the time?
There's the Prince Leboo; she's a Chat-ham boat. She's crep' up
sence last night. An' see that big one with a patch in her foresail an'
a new jib? She's the Carrie Pitman from West Chat-ham. She won't
keep her canvas long onless her luck's changed since last season.
She don't do much 'cep' drift. There ain't an anchor made 'II hold
her. . . . When the smoke puffs up in little rings like that, Dad's
studyin' the fish. Ef we speak to him now, he'll git mad. Las' time I
did, he jest took an' hove a boot at me."
Disko Troop stared forward, the pipe between his teeth, with eyes
that saw nothing. As his son said, he was studying the fish-pitting
his knowledge and experience on the Banks against the roving cod
in his own sea. He accepted the presence of the inquisitive
schooners on the horizon as a compliment to his powers. But now
that it was paid, he wished to draw away and make his berth alone,
till it was time to go up to the Virgin and fish in the streets of that
roaring town upon the waters. So Disko Troop thought of recent
weather, and gales, currents, food-supplies, and other domestic
arrangements, from the point of view of a twenty-pound cod; was,
in fact, for an hour a cod himself, and looked remarkably like one.
Then he removed the pipe from his teeth.
"Dad," said Dan, "we've done our chores. Can't we go overside a
piece? It's good catchin' weather."
"Not in that cherry-coloured rig ner them ha'af baked brown shoes.
Give him suthin' fit to wear."
"Dad's pleased-that settles it," said Dan, delightedly, dragging
Harvey into the cabin, while Troop pitched a key down the steps.
"Dad keeps my spare rig where he kin overhaul it, 'cause Ma sez
I'm keerless." He rummaged through a locker, and in less than
three minutes Harvey was adorned with fisherman's rubber boots
that came half up his thigh, a heavy blue jersey well darned at the
elbows, a pair of nippers, and a sou'wester.
"Naow ye look somethin' like," said Dan. "Hurry!"
"Keep nigh an' handy," said Troop "an' don't go visitin' racund the
Fleet. If any one asks you what I'm cal'latin' to do, speak the
truth-fer ye don't know."
A little red dory, labelled Hattie S., lay astern of the schooner. Dan
hauled in the painter, and dropped lightly on to the bottom boards,
while Harvey tumbled clumsily after.
"That's no way o' gettin' into a boat," said Dan. "Ef there was any
sea you'd go to the bottom, sure. You got to learn to meet her."
Dan fitted the thole-pins, took the forward thwart and watched
Harvey's work. The boy had rowed, in a lady-like fashion, on the
Adirondack ponds; but there is a difference between squeaking
pins and well-balanced ruflocks-light sculls and stubby, eight-foot
sea-oars. They stuck in the gentle swell, and Harvey grunted.
"Short! Row short!" said Dan. "Ef you cramp your oar in any kind
o' sea you're liable to turn her over. Ain't she a daisy? Mine, too."
The little dory was specklessly clean. In her bows lay a tiny
anchor, two jugs of water, and some seventy fathoms of thin,
brown dory-roding. A tin dinner-horn rested in cleats just under
Harvey's right hand, beside an ugly-looking maul, a short gaff, and
a shorter wooden stick. A couple of lin~, with very heavy leads
and double cod-hooks, all neatly coiled on square reels, were stuck
in their place by the gunwale.
"Where's the sail and mast?" said Harvey, for his hands were
beginning to blister.
Dan chuckled. "Ye don't sail fishin'-dories much. Ye pull; but ye
needn't pull so hard. Don't you wish you owned her?"
"Well, I gtiess my father might give me one or two if I asked 'em,"
Harvey replied. He had been too busy to think much of his family
till then.
"That's so. I forgot your dad's a millionaire. You don't act
rnillionary any, naow. But a dory an' craft an' gear"-Dan spoke as
though she were a whaleboat -"costs a heap. Think your dad 'u'd
give you one fer-fer a pet like?"
"Shouldn't wonder. It would be 'most the ouly thing I haven't stuck
him for yet."
'Must be an expensive kinder kid to home. Don't slitheroo thet
way, Harve. Short's the trick, because no sea's ever dead still, an'
the swells 'il~"
Crack! The loom of the oar kicked Harvey under the chin and
knocked him backwards.
"That was what I was goin' to say. I hed to learn too, but I wasn't
more than eight years old when I got my schoolin'."
Harvey regained his seat with aching jaws and a frown.
"No good gettin' mad at things, Dad says. It's our own fault ef we
can't handle 'em, he says. Le's try here. Manuel 'll give us the
water."
The "Portugee" was rocking fully a mile away, but when Dan
up-ended an oar he waved his left arm three times.
"Thirty fathom," said Dan, stringing a salt clam on to the hook.
"Over with the doughboys. Bait same's I do, Harvey, an' don't snarl
your reel."
Dan's line was out long before Harvey had mastered the mystery of
baiting and heaving out the leads. The dory drifted along easily. It
was not worth while to anchor till they were sure of good ground.
"Here we come!" Dan shouted, and a shower of spray rattled on
Harvey's shoulders as a big cod flapped and kicked alongside.
"Muckie, Harvey, muckle! Under your hand! Onick!"
Evidently "muckle" could not be the dinner-horn, so Harvey passed
over the maul, and Dan scientifically stunned the fish before he
pulled it inboard, and wrenched out the hook with the short
wooden stick he called a "go~stick." Then Harvey felt a tug, and
pulled up zealously.
"Why, these are strawberries!" he shouted. "Look!"
The hook had fouled among a bunch of strawberries, red on one
side and white on the other-perfect reproductions of the land fruit,
except that there were no leaves, and the stem was all pipy and
slimy.
"Don't tech 'em. Slat 'em off. Don't
The warning came too late. Harvey had picked them from the
hook, and was admiring them.
"Ouch!" he cried, for his fingers throbbed as though he had
grasped many nettles.
"Nnow ye know what strawberry-bottom means. Nothin' 'cep' fish
should be teched with the naked fingers, Dad says. Slat 'em off
agin the guunel, an' bait up, Harve. Lookin' won't help any. It's all
in the wages."
Harvey smiled at the thought of his ten and a half dollars a month,
and wondered what his mother would say if she could see him
hanging over the edge of a fishing-dory in mid-ocean. She suffered
agonies whenever he went out on Saranac Lake; and, by the way,
Harvey remembered distinctly that he used to laugh at her
annieties. Suddenly the line flashed through his hand, stinging
even through the "nippers," the woolen cirdets supposed to protect
it.
"He's a logy. Give him room accordin' to his strength," cried Dan.
"I'll help ye."
"No, you won't," Harvey snapped, as he hung on to the line. "It's
my first fish. I~is it a whale?"
"Halibut, mebbe." Dan peered down into the water alongside, and
flourished the big "muckle," ready for all chances. Something
white and oval flickered and fluttered through the green. "I'll lay
my wage an' share he's over a hundred. Are you so everlastin'
anxious to land him alone?"
Harvey's knuckles were raw and bleeding where they had been
hanged against the gunwale; his face was purple-blue between
excitement and exertion; he dripped with sweat, and was
half-blinded from staring at the circling sunlit ripples about the
swiftly moving line. The boys were tired long ere the halibut, who
took charge of them and the dory for the next twenty minutes. But
the big flat fish was gaffed and hauled in at last.
"Beginner's luck," said Dan, wiping his forehead. "He'~ all of a
hundred."
Harvey looked at the huge gray-and-mottled creature with
unspeakable pride. He had seen halibut many times on marble
slabs ashore, but it had never occurred to him to ask how they
came inland. Now he knew; and every inch of his body ached with
fatigue.
"Ef Dad was along," said Dan, hauling up, "he'd read the signs
plain's print. The fish are runnin' smaller an' smaller, an' you've
took 'baout as logy a halibut's we're apt to find this trip. Yesterday's
catch-did ye notice it?-was all big fish an' no halibut. Dad he'd read
them signs right off. Dad says everythin' on the Banks is signs, an'
can be read wrong er right. Dad's deeper'n the Whale-hole."
Even as he spoke some one fired a pistol on the We're Here, and a
potato-basket was run up in the fore-rigging.
"What did I say, naow? That's the call fer the whole crowd. Dad's
onter something, er he'd never break fishin' this time o' day. Reel
up, Harve, an' we'll pull back."
They were to windward of the schooner, just ready to flirt the dory
over the still sea, when sounds of woe half a mile off led them to
Penn, who was careering around a fixed point for all the world like
a gigantic water-bug. The little man backed away and came down
again with enormous energy, but at the end of each maneuver his
dory swung round and snubbed herself on her rope.
"We'll hev to help him, else he'll root an' seed here," said Dan.
"What's the matter?" said Harvey. This was a new world, where he
could not lay down the law to his elders, but had to ask questions
humbly. And the sea was horribly big and unexcited.
"Anchor's fouled. Penn's always losing 'em. Lost two this trip
a'ready-on sandy bottom too-an' Dad says next one he loses, sure's
fishin', he'll give him the kelleg. That 'u'd break Penn's heart."
"What's a 'kelleg'?" said Harvey, who had a vague idea it might be
some kind of marine torture, like keel-hauling in the storybooks.
"Big stone instid of an anchor. You kin see a kelleg ridin' in the
bows fur's you can see a dory, an' all the fleet knows what it
means. They'd guy him dreadful. Penn couldn't stand that no
more'n a dog with a dipper to his tail. He's so everlastin' sensitive.
Hello, Penn! Stuck again? Don't try any more o' your patents.
Come up on her, and keep your rodin' straight up an' down."
"It doesn't move," said the little man, panting. "It doesn't move at
all, and instead I tried everything."
"What's all this hurrah's-nest for'ard?" said Dan, pointing to a wild
tangle of spare oars and dory-roding, all matted together by the
hand of inexperience.
"Oh, that," said Penn proudly, "is a Spanish windlass. Mr. Salters
showed me how to make it; but even that doesn't move her."
Dan bent low over the gunwale to hide a smile, twitched once or
twice on the roding, and, behold, the anchor drew at once.
"Haul up, Penn," he said laughing, "er she'll git stuck again.
They left him regarding the weed-hung flukes of the little anchor
with big, pathetic blue eyes, and thanking them profusely.
"Oh, say, while I think of it, Harve," said Dan when they were out
of ear-shot, "Penn ain't quite all caulked.
He ain't nowise dangerous, but his mind's give out.
See?"
"Is that so, or is it one of your father's judgments?"
Harvey asked as he bent to his oars. He felt he was learning to
handle them more easily.
"Dad ain't mistook this time. Penn's a sure 'nuff loony.
No, he ain't thet exactly, so much ez a harmless ijut. It was this
way (you're rowin' quite so, Harve), an' I tell you 'cause it's right
you orter know. He was a Moravian preacher once. Jacob Boiler
wuz his name, Dad told me, an' he lived with his wife an' four
children somewheres out Pennsylvania way. Well, Penn he took
his folks along to a Moravian meetin'camp-meetin' most like-an'
they stayed over jest one night in Johns- town. You've heered talk
o' Johnstown?"
Harvey considered. "Yes, I have. But I don't know why. It sticks in
my head same as Ashtabula."
"Both was big accidents-thet's why, Harve. Well, that one single
night Penn and his folks was to the hotel Johnstown was wiped
out. 'Dam bust an' flooded her, an' the houses struck adrift an'
bumped into each other an' sunk. I've seen the pictures, an' they're
dretful.Penn he saw his folk drowned all'n a heap 'fore he rightly
knew what was comin'. His mind give out from that on. He
mistrusted somethin' hed happened up to Johnstown, but for the
poor life of him he couldn't remember what, an' he jest drifted araound
smilin' an' wonderin'. He didn't know what he was, nor yit what
he hed bin, an' thet way he run agin Uncle Salters, who was visitin'
'n Allegheny City. Ha'af my mother's folks they live scattered
inside o' Pennsylvania, an' Uncle Salters he visits araound winters.
Uncle Salters he kinder adopted Penn, well knowin' what his
trouble wuz; an' he brought him East, an' he give him work on his
farm.', "Why, I heard him calling Penn a farmer last night when
the boats bumped. Is your Uncle Salters a farmer?"
"Farmer!" shouted Dan. "There ain't water enough 'tween here an'
Hatt'rus to wash the furrer-mold off'n his boots. He's jest everlastin'
farmer. Why, Harve, I've seen thet man hitch up a bucket, long
towards sundown, an' set twiddlin' the spigot to the scuttle-butt
same's ef 'twas a cow's bag. He's thet much farmer. Well, Penn an'
he they ran the farm-up Exeter way 'twur. Uncle Salters he sold it
this spring to a jay from Boston as wanted to build a
summer-haouse, an' he got a heap for it. Well, them two loonies
scratched along till, one day, Penn's church he'd belonged t~the
Moravians -found out where he wuz drifted an' layin', an' wrote to
Uncle Salters. 'Never heerd what they said exactly; but Uncle
Salters was mad. He's a 'piscopolian mostly-but he jest let 'em hev
it both sides o' the bow, 's if he was a Baptist; an' sez he warn't
goin' to give up Penn to any blame Moravian connection in
Pennsylvania or anywheres else. Then he come to Dad, towin'
Penn,-thet was two trips back,-an' sez he an' Penn must fish a trip
fer their health. 'Guess he thought the Moravians wouldn't hunt the
Banks fer Jacob Boiler. Dad was agreeable, fer Uncle Salters he'd
been fishin' off an' on fer thirty years, when he warn't inventin'
patent manures, an' he took quarter-share in the We're Here; an' the
trip done Penn so much good, Dad made a habit o' takin' him.
Some day, Dad sez, he'll remember his wife an' kids an'
Johnstown, an' then, like as not, he'll die, Dad sez. Don't ye talk
abaout Johnstown ner such things to Penn, 'r Uncle Salters he'll
heave ye overboard."
"Poor Penn!" murmured Harvey. "I shouldn't ever have thought
Uncle Salters cared for him by the look of 'em together."
"I like Penn, though; we all do," said Dan. "We ought to ha' give
him a tow, but I wanted to tell ye first."
They were close to the schooner now, the other boats a little
behind them.
"You needn't heave in the dories till after dinner," said Troop from
the deck. "We'll dress daown right off. Fix table, boys!"
"Deeper'n the Whale-deep," said Dan, with a wink, as he set the
gear for dressing down. "Look at them boats that hev edged up
sence mornin'. They're all waitin' on Dad. See 'em, Harve?"
"They are all alike to me." And indeed to a landsman, the nodding
schooners around seemed run from the same mold.
"They ain't, though. That yaller, dirty packet with her bowsprit
steeved that way, she's the Hope of Prague. Nick Brady's her
skipper, the meanest man on the Banks. We'll tell him so when we
strike the Main Ledge. 'Way off yonder's the Day's Eye. The two
Jeraulds own her. She's from Harwich; fastish, too, an' hez good
luck; but Dad he'd find fish in a graveyard. Them other three, side
along, they're the Margie Smith, Rose, and Edith S. Walen, all
from home. 'Guess we'll see the Abbie M. Deering to-morrer, Dad,
won't we? They're all slippin' over from the shaol o' 'Oueereau."
"You won't see many boats to-morrow, Danny." When Troop
called his son Danny, it was a sign that the old man was pleased.
"Boys, we're too crowded," he went on, addressing the crew as they
clambered inboard. "We'll leave 'em to bait big an' catch small."
He looked at the catch in the pen, and it was curious to see how
little and level the fish ran. Save for Harvey's halibut, there was
nothing over fifteen pounds on dec~
"I'm waitin' on the weather," he added.
"Ye'll have to make it yourself, Disko, for there's no sign I can
see," said Long Jack, sweeping the clear horizon.
And yet, half an hour later, as they were dressing down, the Bank
fog dropped on them, "between fish and fish," as they say. It drove
steadily and in wreaths, curling and smoking along the colourless
water. The men stopped dressing-down without a word. Long Jack
and Uncle Salters slipped the windlass brakes into their sockets,
and began to heave up the anchor; the windlass jarring as the wet
hempen cable strained on the barrel. Manuel and Tom Platt gave a
hand at the last. The anchor came up with a sob, and the riding-sail
bellied as Troop steadied her at the wheel. "Up jib and foresail,"
said he.
"Slip 'em in the smother," shouted Long Jack, making fast the
jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the
foresail; and the for~boom creaked as the We're Here looked up
into the wind and dived off into blank, whirling white.
"There's wind behind this fog," said Troop.
It was wonderful beyond words to Harvey; and the most wonderful
part was that he heard no orders except an occasional grunt from
Troop, ending with, "That's good, my son!"
'Never seen anchor weighed before?" said Tom Platt, to Harvey
gaping at the damp canvas of the foresail.
"No. Where are we going?"
"Fish and make berth, as you'll find out 'fore you've been a week
aboard. It's all new to you, but we never know what may come to
us. Now, take m~Tom Platt -I'd never ha' thought~"
"It's better than fourteen dollars a month an' a bullet in your belly,"
said Troop, from the wheel. "Ease your jumbo a grind."
"Dollars an' cents better," returned the man~ -war S man, doing
something to a big jib with a wooden spar tied to it. "But we didn't
think o' that when we manned the windlass-brakes on the Miss
Jim Buck, 1 outside Beau-fort Harbor, with Fort Macon heavin'
hot shot at our stern, an' a livin' gale atop of all. Where was you
then, Disko?"
"Jest here, or hereabouts," Disko replied, "earnin' my bread on the
deep waters, an' dodgin' Reb privateers. Sorry I can't accommodate
you with red-hot shot, Tom Platt; but I guess we'll come aout all
right on wind 'fore we see Eastern Point."
There was an incessant slapping and chatter at the bows now,
varied by a solid thud and a little spout of spray that clattered
down on the foc'sle. The rigging dripped clammy drops, and the
men lounged along the lee of the house-all save Uncle Salters, who
sat stiffly on the main-hatch nursing his stung hands.
'Guess she'd carry stays'l," said Disko, rolling one eye at his
brother.
'Guess she wouldn't to any sorter profit. What's the sense o' wastin'
canvas?" the farmer-sailor replied.
1 The Gemsbok, U.S.N.?
The wheel twitched almost imperceptibly in Disko's hands. A few
seconds later a hissing wave-top slashed diagonally across the
boat, smote Uncle Salters between the shoulders, and drenched
him from head to foot. He rose sputtering, and went forward only
to catch another.
"See Dad chase him all around the deck," said Dan. "Uncle Salters
he thinks his quarter share's our canvas. Dad's put this duckin' act
up on him two trips runnin'. Hi! That found him where he feeds."
Uncle Salters had taken refuge by the foremast, but a wave
slapped him over the knees. Disko's face was as blank as the circle
of the wheel.
"Guess she'd lie easier under stays'l, Salters," said Disko, as though
he had seen nothing.
"Set your old kite, then," roared the victim through a cloud of
spray; "only don't lay it to me lf anything happens. Penn, you go
below right off an' git your coffee. You ought to hev more sense
than to bum araound on deck this weather."
"Now they'll swill coffee an' play checkers till the cows come
home," said Dan, as Uncle Salters hustled Penn into the fore-cabin.
" 'Looks to me like's if we'd all be doin' so fer a spell. There's
nothin' in creation deader-limpsey-idler'n a Banker when she ain't
on fish."
"I'm glad ye spoke, Danny," cried Long Jack, who had been casting
round in search of amusement. "I'd dean forgot we'd a passenger
under that T-wharf hat. There's no idleness for thim that don't
know their ropes. Pass him along, Tom Platt, an' we'll larn him."
"'Tain't my trick this time," grinned Dan. "You've got to go it alone.
Dad learned me with a rope's end."
For an hour Long Jack walked his prey up and down, teaching, as
he said, "things at the sea that ivry man must know, blind, dhrunk,
or asleep." There is not much gear to a seventy-ton schooner with a
stump-foremast, but Long Jack had a gift of expression. When he
wished to draw Harvey's attention to the peak-halyards, he dug his
knuckles into the back of the boy's neck and kept him at gaze for
half a minute. He emphasized the difference between fore and aft
generally by rubbing Harvey's nose along a few feet of the boom,
and the lead of each rope was fixed in Harvey's mind by the end of
the rope itself.
The lesson would have been easier had the deck been at all free;
but there appeared to be a place on it for everything and anything
except a man. Forward lay the windlass and its tackle, with the
chain and hemp cables, all very unpleasant to trip over; the foc'sle
stovepipe, and the gurry-butts by the foc'sle hatch to hold the
fish-livers. Aft of these the foreboom and booby of the main-hatch
took all the space that was not needed for the pumps and
dressing-pens. Then came the nests of dories lashed to ring-bolts
by the quarter-deck; the house, with tubs and oddments lashed all
around it; and, last, the sixty-foot main-boom in its crutch, splitting
things length-wise, to duck and dodge under every time.
Tom Platt, of course, could not keep his oar out of the business,
but ranged alongside with enormous and unnecessary descriptions
of sails and spars on the old Ohio.
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