Captains Courageous

R >> Rudyard Kipling >> Captains Courageous

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12

"Now Aprile is over and melted the snow,
And outer Noo Bedford we shortly must tow;
Yes, out o' Noo Bedford we shortly must clear,
We're the whalers that never see wheat in the ear.'t

Here the fiddle went very softly for a while by itself, and then:

"Wheat-in-the-ear, my true-love's posy blowin,
Wheat-in-the-ear, we're goin' off to sea;
Wheat-in-the-ear, I left you fit for sowin,
When I come back a loaf o' bread you'll be!"

That made Harvey almost weep, though he could not tell why. But
it was much worse when the cook dropped the potatoes and held
out his hands for the fiddle. Still leaning against the locker door,
he struck into a tune that was like something very bad but sure to
happen whatever you did. After a little he sang, in an unknown
tongue, his big chin down on the fiddle-tail, his white eyeballs
glaring in the lam~light. Harvey swung out of his bunk to hear
better; and amid the straining of the timbers and the wash of the
waters the tune crooned and moaned on, like lee surf in a blind
fog, till it ended with a wail.

"Jimmy Christmas! Thet gives me the blue creevles," said Dan.
"What in thunder is it?"

"The song of Fin McCoul," said the cook, "when he wass going to
Norway." His English was not thick, but all clear-cut, as though it
came from a phonograph.

"Faith, I've been to Norway, but I didn't make that unwholesim
noise. 'Tis like some of the old songs, though," said Long Jack,
sighing.

"Don't let's hev another 'thout somethin' between," said Dan; and
the accordion struck up a rattling, catchy tune that ended:

"It's six an' twenty Sundays sence las' we saw the land,
With fifteen hunder quintal,
An' fifteen hunder quintal,
'Teen hunder toppin' quintal,
'Twix' old 'Queereau an' Grand!"

"Hold on!" roared Tom Platt. "D'ye want to nail the trip, Dan?
That's Jonah sure, 'less you sing it after all our salt's wet."

"No, 'tain't Is it, Dad? Not unless you sing the very las' verse. You
can't learn me anything on Jonahs!"

"What's that?" said Harvey. "What's a Jonah?"

"A Jonah's anything that spoils the luck. Sometimes it's a
man-sometimes it's a boy-or a bucket. I've known a splittin'-knife
Jonah two trips till we was on to her," said Tom Platt. "There's all
sorts o' Jonahs. Jim Bourke was one till he was drowned on
Georges. I'd never ship with Jim Bourke, not if I was starin'. There
wuz a green dory on the Ezra Flood. Thet was a Jonah, too, the
worst sort o' Jonah. Drowned four men, she did, an' used to shine
fiery 0, nights in the nest"

"And you believe that?" said Harvey, remembering what Tom Platt
had said about candles and models. "Haven't we all got to take
what's served?"

A mutter of dissent ran round the bunks. "Outboard, yes; inboard,
things can happen," said Disko. "Don't you go makin' a mock of
Jonahs, young feller."

"Well, Harve ain't no Jonah. Day after we catched him," Dan cut
in, "we had a toppin' good catch."

The cook threw up his head and laughed suddenly-a queer, thin
laugh. He was a most disconcerting nigger.

"Murder!" said Long Jack. "Don't do that again, doctor. We ain't
used to ut"

"What's wrong?" said Dan. "Ain't he our mascot, and didn't they
strike on good after we'd struck him?"

"Oh! yess," said the cook. "I know that, but the catch iss not finish
yet."

"He ain't goin' to do us any harm," said Dan, hotly. "Where are ye
hintin' an' edgin' to? He's all right"

"No harm. No. But one day he will be your master, Danny."

"That all?" said Dan, placidly. "He wun't-not by a jugful."

"Master!" said the cook, pointing to Harvey. "Man!" and he
pointed to Dan.

"That's news. Haow soon?" said Dan, with a laugh.

"In some years, and I shall see it. Master and man-man and
master."

"How in thunder d'ye work that out?" said Tom Platt.

"In my head, where I can see."

"Haow?" This from all the others at once.

"I do not know, but so it will be." He dropped his head, and went
on peeling the potatoes, and not another word could they get out of
him.

"Well," said Dan, "a heap o' things'll hev to come abaout 'fore
Harve's any master o' mine; but I'm glad the doctor ain't choosen to
mark him for a Jonah. Now, I mistrust Uncle Salters fer the
Jonerest Jonah in the Fleet regardin' his own special luck. Dunno
ef it's spreadin' same's smallpox. He ought to be on the Carrie
Pitman. That boat's her own Jonah, sure-crews an' gear made no
differ to her driftin'. Jiminy Christmas! She'll etch loose in a flat
ca'am."

"We're well clear o' the Fleet, anyway," said Disko. "Carrie
Pitman an' all." There was a rapping on the deck.

"Uncle Salters has catched his luck," said Dan as his father
departed.

"It's blown clear," Disko cried, and all the foc'sle tumbled up for a
bit of fresh air. The fog had gone, but a sullen sea ran in great
rollers behind it. The We're Here slid, as it were, into long, sunk
avenues and ditches which felt quite sheltered and homelike if they
would only stay still; but they changed without rest or mercy, and
flung up the schooner to crown one peak of a thousand gray hills,
while the wind hooted through her rigging as she zigzagged down
the slopes. Far away a sea would burst into a sheet of foam, and
the others would follow suit as at a signal, till Harvey's eyes swam
with the vision of interlacing whites and grays. Four or five Mother

Carey's chickens stormed round in circles, shrieking as they swept
past the bows. A rain-squall or two strayed aimlessly over the
hopeless waste, ran down 'wind and back again, and melted away.

"Seerns to me I saw somethin' flicker jest naow over yonder," said
Uncle Salters, pointing to the northeast.

"Can't be any of the fleet," said Disko, peering under his eyebrows,
a hand on the foc'sle gangway as the solid bows hatcheted into the
troughs. "Sea's oilin' over dretful fast. Danny, don't you want to
skip up a piece an' see how aour trawl-buoy lays?"

Danny, in his big boots, trotted rather than climbed up the main
rigging (this consumed Harvey with envy), hitched himself around
the reeling cross-trees, and let his eye rove till it caught the tiny
black buoy-flag on the shoulder of a mile-away swell.

"She's all right," he hailed. "Sail 0! Dead to the no'th'ard, corain'
down like smoke! Schooner she be, too.',.

They waited yet another half-hour, il~e sky clearing in patches,
with a flicker of sickly sun from time to time that made patches of
olive-green water. Then a stump-foremast lifted, ducked, and
disappeared, to. be followed on the next wave by a high stern with
old-fash-ioned wooden snail's-horn davits. The snails were
red-tanned.

"Frenchmen!" shouted Dan. "No, 'tain't, neither. Daad!"

'That's no French," said Disko. "Salters, your blame luck holds
tighter'n a screw in a keg-head."

"I've eyes. It's Uncle Abishai."

"You can't nowise tell fer sure."

"The head-king of all Jonahs," groaned Tom Platt. "Oh, Salters,
Salters, why wasn't you abed an' asleep?"

"How could I tell?" said poor Salters, as the schooner swung up.

She might have been the very Flying Dutchman, so foul, draggled,
and unkempt was every rope and stick aboard. Her old-style
quarterdeck was some or five feet high, and her rigging flew
knotted and tangled like weed at a wharf-end. She was running
before the wind-yawing frightfully-her staysail let down to act as a
sort of extra foresail,-"scandalized," they call it,-and her foreboom
guyed out over the side. Her bowsprit cocked up like an
old-fashioned frigate's; her jib-boom had been fished and s~iced
and nailed and clamped beyond further repair; and as she hove
herself forward, and sat down on her broad tail, she looked for all
the world like a blouzy, frouzy, bad old woman sneering at a
decent girl.

"That's Abishal," said Salters. "Full o' gin an' Judique men, an' the
judgments o' Providence layin' fer him an' never takin' good holt
He's run in to bait, Miquelon way."

"He'll run her under," said Long Jack. "That's no rig fer this
weather."

"Not he, 'r he'd'a done it long ago," Disko replied. "Looks 's if he
cal'lated to run us under. Ain't she daown by the head more 'n
natural, Tom Platt?"

"Ef it's his style o' loadin' her she ain't safe," said the sailor slowly.
"Ef she's spewed her oakum he'd better git to his pumps mighty
quick."

The creature threshed up, wore round with a clatter and raffle, and
lay head to wind within ear-shot.

A gray-beard wagged over the bulwark, and a thick voice yelled
something Harvey could not understand. But Disko's face
darkened. "He'd resk every stick he hez to carry bad news. Says
we're in fer a shift o' wind. He's in fer worse. Abishai! Abi-shai!"
He waved his arm up and down with the gesture of a man at the
pumps, and pointed forward. The crew mocked him and laughed.

"Jounce ye, an' strip ye an' trip ye!" yelled Uncle Abishal. "A livin'
gale-a livin' gale. Yab! Cast up fer your last trip, all you Gloucester
haddocks. You won't see Gloucester no more, no more!"

"Crazy full-as usual," said Tom Platt. "Wish he hadn't spied us,
though."

She drifted out of hearing while the gray-head yelled something
about a dance at the Bay of Bulls and a dead man in the foc'sle.
Harvey shuddered. He had seen the sloven tilled decks and the
savage-eyed crew.

"An' that's a fine little floatin' hell fer her draught," said Long Jack.
"I wondher what mischief he's been at ashore."

"He's a trawler," Dan explained to Harvey, "an' he runs in fer bait
all along the coast. Oh, no, not home, he don't go. He deals along
the south an' east shore up yonder." He nodded in the direction of
the pitiless Newfoundland beaches. "Dad won't never take me
ashore there. They're a mighty tough crowd-an' Abishal's the
toughest. You saw his boat? Well, she's nigh seventy year old, they
say; the last o' the old Marblehead heel-tappers. They don't make
them quarterdecks any more. Abishal don't use Marblehead,
though. He ain't wanted there. He jes' drif's araound, in debt,
trawlin' an' cussin' like you've heard. Bin a Jonah fer years an,
years, he hez. 'Gits liquor frum the Feecamp boats fer makin' spells
an' selling winds an' such truck. Crazy, I guess."

'Twon't be any use underrunnin' the trawl to-night," said Tom Platt,
with quiet despair. "He come alongside special to cuss us. l'd give
my wage an' share to see him at the gangway o' the old Ohio 'fore
we quit fioggin'. Jest abaout six dozen, an' Sam Mocatta layin' 'em
on criss-cross!"

The disheveled "heel-tapper" danced drunkenly down wind, and
all eyes followed her. Suddenly the cook cried in his phonograph
voice: "It wass his own death made him speak so! He iss fey-fey, I
tell you! Look!" She sailed into a patch of watery sunshine three or
four miles distant. The patch dulled and faded out, and even as the
light passed so did the schooner. She dropped into a hollow
and-was not.

"Run under, by the Great Hook-Block!" shouted Disko, jumping
aft. "Drunk or sober, we've got to help 'em. Heave short and break
her out! Smart!"

Harvey was thrown on the deck by the shock that followed the
setting of the jib and foresail, for they hove short on the cable, and
to save time, jerked the anchor bodily from the bottom, heaving
in~as they moved away. This is a bit of brute force seldom resorted
to except in matters of life and death, and the little We're Here
complained like a human. They ran down to where Abishal's craft
had vanished; found two or three trawl-tubs, a gin-bottle, and a
stove-in dory, but nothing more. "Let 'em go," said Disko, though
no one had hinted at picking them up. "I wouldn't hev a match that
belonged to Abishai aboard. Guess she run clear under. Must ha'
been spewin' her oakum fer a week, an' they never thought to pump
her. That's one more boat gone along o' leavin' port all hands
drunk."

"Glory be!" said Long Jack. "We'd ha' been obliged to help 'em if
they was top o' water."

"'Thinkin' o' that myself," said Tom Platt.

"Fey! Fey!" said the cook, rolling his eyes. "He haas taken his own
luck with him."

"Ver' good thing, I think, to tell the Fleet when we see. Eh,
wha-at?" said Manuel. "If you runna that way before the 'wind, and
she work open her seams-" He threw out his hands with an
indescribable gesture, while Penn sat down on the house and
sobbed at the sheer horror and pity of it all. Harvey could not
realize that he had seen death on the open waters, but he felt very
sick. p Then Dan went up the cross-trees, and Disko steered them
back to within sight of their own trawl-buoys just before the fog
blanketed the sea once again.

"We go mighty quick hereabouts when we do go," was all he said
to Harvey. "You think on that fer a spell, young feller. That was
liquor."

"After dinner it was calm enough to fish from the decks,-Penn and
Uncle Salters were very zealous this time,-and the catch was large
and large fish.

"Abishal has shorely took his luck with him," said Salters. "The
wind hain't backed ner riz ner nothin'. How abaout the trawl? I
despise superstition, anyway."

Tom Platt insisted that they had much better haul the thing and
make a new berth. But the cook said: "The luck iss in two pieces.
You will find it so when you look. I know." This so tickied Long
Jack that he overbore Tom Platt and the two went out together.

Underrunning a trawl means pulling it in on one side of the dory,
picking off the fish, rebaiting the hooks, and passing them back to
the sea again-something like pinning and unpinning linen on a
wash-line. It is a lengthy business and rather dangerous, for the
long, sagging line may twitch a boat under in a flash. But when
they heard, "And naow to thee, 0 Capting," booming out of the fog,
the crew of the We're Here took heart. The dory swirled alongside
well loaded, Tom Platt yelling for Manuel to act as relief-boat.

"The luck's cut square in two pieces," said long Jack, forking in the
fish, while Harvey stood open-mouthed at the skill with which the
plunging dory was saved from destruction. "One half was jest
punkins. Tom Platt wanted to haul her an' ha' done wid Ut; but I
said, "I'll back the doctor that has the second sight, an' the other
half come up sagging full o' big uns. Hurry, Man'nle, an' bring's a
tub o' bait. There's luck afloat to-night."

The fish bit at the newly baited hooks from which their brethren
had just been taken, and Tom Platt and Long Jack moved
methodically up and down the length of the trawl, the boat's nose
surging under the wet line of hooks, stripping the sea-cucumbers
that they called pumpkins, slatting off the fresh-caught cod against
the gunwale, rebaiting, and loading Manuel's dory till dusk.

"I'll take no risks," said Disko then-"not with him floatin' around so
near. Abishal won't sink fer a week. Heave in the dories an' we'll
dress daown after supper."

That was a mighty dressing-down, attended by three or four
blowing grampuses. It lasted till nine o'clock, and Disko was thrice
heard to chuckle as Harvey pitched the split fish into the hold.

"Say, you're haulin' ahead dretful fast," said Dan, when they
ground the knives after the men had turned m. "There's somethin'
of a sea to-night, an' I hain't heard you make no remarks on it."

"Too busy," Harvey replied, testing a blade's edge. "Come to think
of it, she is a high-kicker."

The little schooner was gambolling all around her anchor among
the silver-tipped waves. Backing with a start of affected surprise at
the sight of the strained cable, she pounced on it like a kitten,
while the spray of her descent burst through the hawse-holes with
the report of a gun. Shaking her head, she would say: "Well, I'm
sorry I can't stay any longer with you. I'm going North," and would
sidle off, halting suddenly with a dramatic rattle of her rigging.
"As I was just going to observe," she would begin, as gravely as a
drunken man addressing a lamp-post. The rest of the sentence (she
acted her words in dumb-show, of course) was lost in a fit of the
fidgets, when she behaved like a puppy chewing a string, a clumsy
woman in a side-saddle, a hen with her head cut off, or a cow stung
by a hornet, exactly as the whims of the sea took her.

"See her sayin' her piece. She's Patrick Henry naow," said Dan.

She swung sideways on a roller, and gesticulated with her
jib~boom from port to starboard.

"But-ez-fer me, give me liberty-er give me-death!"

Wop! She sat down in the moon-path on the water, courtesying
with a flourish of pride impressive enough had not the wheel-gear
sniggered mockingly in its box.

Harvey laughed aloud. "Why, it's just as if she was alive," he said.

"She's as stiddy as a haouse an' as dry as a herrin'," said Dan
enthusiastically, as he was slung across the deck in a batter of
spray. "Fends 'em off an' fends 'em off, an' 'Don't ye come anigh
me,' she sez. Look at her-jest look at her! Sakes! You should see
one o' them toothpicks histin' up her anchor on her spike outer
fifteen-fathom water."

"What's a toothpick, Dan?"

"Them new haddockers an' herrin'-boats. Fine's a yacht forward,
with yacht sterns to 'em, an' spike bowsprits, an' a haouse that 'u'd
take our hold. I've heard that Burgess himself he made the models
fer three or four of 'em. Dad's sot agin 'em on account o' their
pitchin' an' joltin', but there's heaps o' money in 'em. Dad can find
fish, but he ain't no ways progressive-he don't go with the march
o' the times. They're chock-full o' labour-savin' ' ech all. 'Ever
seed the Elector o' Gloucester? She's a daisy, ef she is a
toothpick."

"What do they cost, Dan?"

"Hills o' dollars. Fifteen thousand, p'haps; more, mebbe. There's
gold-leaf an' everything you kin think of." Then to himself, half
under his breath, "Guess I'd call her Hattie S., too."

CHAPTER V

That was the first of many talks with Dan, who told Harvey why he
would transfer his dory's name to the imaginary Burgess-modelled
haddocker. Harvey heard a good deal about the real Hattie at
Gloucester; saw a lock of her hair-which Dan, finding fair words
of no avail, had "hooked" as she sat in front of him at school that
winter-and a photograph. Hattie was about fourteen years old, with
an awful contempt for boys, and had been trampling on Dan's heart
through the winter. All this was revealed under oath of solemn
secrecy on moonlit decks, in the dead dark, or in choking fog; the
whining wheel behind them, the climbing deck before, and
without, the unresting, clamorous sea. Once, of course, as the boys
came to know each other, there was a fight, which raged from bow
to stern till Penn came up and separated them, but promised not to
tell Disko, who thought fighting on watch rather worse than
sleeping. Harvey was no match for Dan physically, but it says a
great deal for his new training that he took his defeat and did not
try to get even with his conqueror by underhand methods.

That was after he had been cured of a string of boils between his
elbows and wrists, where the wet jersey and oilskins cut into the
flesh. The salt water stung them unpleasantly, but when they were
ripe Dan treated them with Disko's razor, and assured Harvey that
now he was a "blooded Banker"; the affliction of gurry-sores being
the mark of the caste that claimed him.

Since he was a boy and very busy, he did not bother his head with
too much thinking. He was exceedingly sorry for his mother, and
often longed to see her and above all to tell her of this wonderful
new life, and how brilliantly he was acquitting himself in it.
Otherwise he preferred not to wonder too much how she was
bearing the shock of his supposed death. But one day, as he stood
on the foc'sle ladder, guying the cook, who had accused him and
Dan of hooking fried pies, it occurred to him that this was a vast
improvement on being snubbed by strangers in the smoking-room
of a hired liner.

He was a recognized part of the scheme of things on the We're
Here; had his place at the table and among the bunks; and could
hold his own in the long talks on stormy days, when the others
were always ready to listen to what they called his "fairy-tales" of
his life ashore. It did not take him more than two days and a
quarter to feel that if he spoke of his own life-it seemed very far
away-no one except Dan (and even Dan's belief was sorely tried)
credited him. So he invented a friend, a boy he had heard of, who
drove a miniature four-pony drag in Toledo, Ohio, and ordered
five suits of clothes at a time and led things called "germans" at
parties where the oldest girl was not quite fifteen, but all the
presents were solid silver. Salters protested that this kind of yarn
was desperately wicked, if not indeed positively blasphemous, but
he listened as greedily as the others; and their criticisms at the end
gave Harvey entirely new notions on "germans," clothes, cigarettes
with gold-leaf tips, rings, watches, scent, small dinner-parties,
champagne, card-playing, and hotel accommodation. Little by little
he changed his tone when speaking of his "friend," whom long
Jack had christened "the Crazy Kid," "the Gilt-edged Baby," "the
Suckin' Vanderpoop," and other pet names; and with his
sea-booted feet cocked up on the table would even invent histories
about silk pajamas and specially imported neckwear, to the
"friend's" discredit. Harvey was a very adaptable person, with a
keen eye and ear for every face and tone about him.

Before long he knew where Disko kept the old greencrusted
quadrant that they called the "hog-yoke"-under the bed-bag in his
bunk. When he took the sun, and with the help of "The Old
Farmer's" almanac found the latitude, Harvey would jump down
into the cabin and scratch the reckoning and date with a nail on the
rust of the stove-pipe. Now, the chief engineer of the liner could
have done no more, and no engineer of thirty years' service could
have assumed one half of the ancient-mariner air with which
Harvey, first careful to spit over the side, made public the
schooner's position for that day, and then and not till then relieved
Disko of the quadrant. There is an etiquette in all these things.

The said "hog-yoke," an Eldridge chart, the farming almanac,
Blunt's "Coast Pilot," and Bowditch's "Navigator" were all the
weapons Disko needed to guide him, except the deep-sea lead that
was his spare eye. Harvey nearly slew Penn with it when Tom Platt
taught him first how to "fly the blue pigeon"; and, though his
strength was not equal to continuous sounding in any sort of a sea,
for calm weather with a seven-pound lead on shoal water Disko
used him freely. As Dan said:

'Tain't soundin's dad wants. It's samples. Grease her up good,
Harve." Harvey would tallow the cup at the ~end, and carefully
bring the sand, shell, sludge, or whatever it might be, to Disko,
who fingered and smelt it and gave judgment As has been said,
when Disko thought of cod he thought as a cod; and by some
long-tested mixture of instinct and experience, moved the We~re
Here from berth to berth, always with the fish, as a blindfolded
chess-player moves on the unseen board.

But Disko's board was the Grand Bank-a triangle two hundred and
fifty miles on each side-a waste of wallowing sea, cloaked with
dank fog, vexed with gales, harried with drifting ice, scored by the
tracks of the reckless liners, and dotted with the sails of the
fishing-fleet.

For days they worked in fog-Harvey at the bell-till, grown familiar
with the thick airs, he went out with Tom Platt, his heart rather in
his mouth. But the fog would not lift, and the fish were biting, and
no one can stay helplessly afraid for six hours at a time. Harvey
devoted himself to his lines and the gaff or gob-stick as Tom Platt
called for them; and they rowed back to the schooner guided by
the bell and Tom's instinct; Manuel's conch sounding thin and faint
beside them. But it was an unearthly experience, and, for the first
time in a month, Harvey dreamed of the shifting, smoking floors of
water round the dory, the lines that strayed away into nothing, and
the air above that melted on the sea below ten feet from his
straining eyes. A few days later he was out with Manuel on what
should have been forty-fathom bottom, but the whole length of the
roding ran out, and still the anchor found nothing, and Harvey
grew mortally afraid, for that his last touch with earth was lost.
"Whale-hole," said Manuel, hauling m. "That is good joke on
Disko. Come!" and he rowed to the schooner to find Tom Platt and
the others jeering at the skipper because, for once, he had led them
to the edge of the barren Whale-deep, the blank hole of the Grand
Bank. They made another berth through the fog, and that time the
hair of Harvey's head stood up when he went out in Manuel's dory.
A whiteness moved in the whiteness of the fog with a breath like
the breath of the grave, and there was a roaring, a plunging, and
spouting. It was his first introduction to the dread summer berg of
the Banks, and he cowered in the bottom of the boat while Manuel
laughed. There were days, though, clear and soft and warm, when
it seemed a sin to do anything but loaf over the hand-lines and
spank the drifting "sun-scalds" with an oar; and there were days of
light airs, when Harvey was taught how to steer the schooner from
one berth to another.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12