Captains Courageous
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Rudyard Kipling >> Captains Courageous
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The dories gathered in clusters, separated, reformed, and broke
again, all heading one way; while men hailed and whistled and
cat-called and sang, and the water was speckled with rubbish
thrown overboard.
"It's a town," said Harvey. "Disko was right. It U' a town!"
"I've seen smaller," said Disko. "There's about a thousand men
here; an' yonder's the Virgin." He pointed to a vacant space of
greenish sea, where there were no dories.
The We're Here skirted round the northern squadron, Disko
waving his hand to friend after friend, and anchored as nearly as a
racing yacht at the end of the season. The Bank fleet pass good
seamanship in silence; but a bungler is jeered all along the line.
"Jest in time fer the caplin," cried the Mary Chilton.
"'Salt 'most wet?" asked the King Philip.
"Hey, Tom Platt! Come t' supper t0-night?" said the Henry Clay;
and so questions and answers flew back and forth. Men had met
one another before, dory-fishing in the fog, and there is no place
for gossip like the Bank fleet. They all seemed to know about
Harvey's rescue, and asked if be were worth his salt yet. The young
bloods jested with Dan, who had a lively tongue of his own, and
inquired alter their health by the town-nicknames they least liked.
Manuel's countrymen jabbered at him in their own language; and
even the silent cook was seen riding the jib-boom and shouting
Gaelic to a friend as black as himself. After they had buoyed the
cable--all around the Virgin is rocky bottom, and carelessness
means chafed ground-tackle and danger from drifting-after they
had buoyed the cable, their dories went forth to join the mob of
boats anchored about a mile away. The schooners rocked and
dipped at a safe distance, like mother ducks watching their brood,
while the dories behaved like mannerless ducklings.
As they drove into the confusion, boat banging boat, Harvey's ears
tingled at the comments on his rowing. Every dialect from
Labrador to Long Island, with Portuguese, Neapolitan, Lingua
Franca, French, and Gaelic, with songs and shoutings and new
oaths, rattled round him, and he seemed to be the butt of it all. For
the first time in his life he felt shy-perhaps that came from living
so long with only the We're Heres-among the scores of wild faces
that rose and fell with the reeling small craft. A gentle, breathing
swell, three furlongs from trough to barrel, would quietly shoulder
up a string of variously painted dories. They hung for an instant, a
wonderful frieze against the sky-line, and their men pointed and
hailed. Next moment the open mouths, waving arms, and bare
chests disappeared, while on another swell came up an entirely
new line of characters like paper figures in a toy theatre. So
Harvey stared. "Watch out!" said Dan, flourishing a dip-net "When
I tell you dip, you dip. The caplin'll school any time from naow on.
Where'll we lay, Tom Platt?"
Pushing, shoving, and hauling, greeting old friends here and
warning old enemies there, Commodore Tom
100 Rudyard Kipling
Platt led his little fleet well to leeward of the general crowd, and
immediately three or four men began to haul on their anchors with
intent to le~bow the We're Heres. But a yell of laughter went up as
a dory shot from her station with exceeding speed, its occupant
pulling madly on the roding.
"Give her slack!" roared twenty voices. "Let him shake it out."
"What's the matter?" said Harvey, as the boat flashed away to
the~southward. "He's anchored, isn't he?"
"Anchored, sure enough, but his graound-tackle's kinder shifty,"
said Dan, laughing. "Whale's fouled it. . . . Dip Harve! Here they
come!"
The sea round them clouded and darkened, and then frizzed up in
showers of tiny silver fish, and over a space of five or six acres the
cod began to leap like trout in May; while behind the cod three or
four broad gray-backs broke the water into boils.
Then everybody shouted and tried to haul up his anchor to get
among the school, and fouled his neighbour's line and said what
was in his heart, and dipped furiously with his dip-net, and shrieked
cautions and advice to his companions, while the deep fizzed like
freshly opened soda-water, and cod, men, and whales together
flung in upon the luckless bait. Harvey was nearly knocked
overboard by the handle of Dan's net. But in all the wild tumult he
noticed, and never forgot, the wicked, set little eye-something like
a circus elephant's eye-of a whale that drove along almost level with
the water, and, so be ~aid, winked at him. Three boats found their
rodings fouled by these reckless mid-sea hunters, and were towed
half a mile ere their horses shook the line free.
Then the caplin moved off, and five minutes later there was no
sound except the splash of the sinkers overside, the flapping of the
cod, and the whack of the muckles as the men stunned them. It
was wonderful fishing. Harvey could see the glimmering cod
below, swimming slowly in droves, biting as steadily as they
swam. Bank law strictly forbids more than one hook on one line
when the dories are on the Virgin or the Eastern Shoals; but so
close lay the boats that even single hooks snarled, and Harvey
found himself in hot argument with a genfle, hairy Newfoundlander
on one side and a howling Portuguese on the other.
Worse than any tangle of fishing-lines was the confusion of the
dory-rodings below water. Each man had anchored where it
seemed good to him, drifting and rowing round his fixed point As
the fish struck on less quickly, each man wanted to haul up and get
to better ground; but every third man found himself intimately
connected with some four or five neighbours. To cut another's
roding is crime unspeakable on the Banks; yet it was done, and
done without detection, three or four times that day. Tom Platt
caught a Maine man in the black act and knocked him over the
gunwale with an oar, and Manuel served a fellow- countryman in
the same way. But Harvey's anchor-line was cut, and so was
Penn's, and they were turned into relief-boats to carry fish to the
We're Here as the dories filled. The caplin schooled once more at
twilight, when the mad clamour was repeated; and at dusk they
rowed back to dress down by the light of kerosene-lamps on the
edge of the pen.
It was a huge pile, and they went to sleep while they were dressing.
Next day several boats fished right above the cap of the Virgin;
and Harvey, with them, looked down on the very weed of that
lonely rock, which rises to within twenty feet of the surface. The
cod were there in legions, marching solemnly over the leathery
kelp. When they bit, they bit all together; and so when they
stopped. There was a slack time at noon, and the dories began to
search for amusement. It was Dan who sighted the Hope Of Prague
just coming up, and as her boats joined the company they were
greeted with the question: "Who's the meanest man in the Fleet?"
Three hundred voices answered cheerily: "Nick Bra-ady." It
sounded like an organ chant.
"Who stole the lam~wicks?" That was Dan's contribution.
"Nick Bra-ady," sang the boats.
"Who biled the salt bait fer soup?" This was an unknown backbiter
a quarter of a mile away.
Again the joyful chorus. Now, Brady was not especially mean,
but he had that reputation, and the Fleet made the most of it.
Then they discovered a man from a Truro boat who, six years
before, had been convicted of using a tackle with five or six
hooks-a "scrowger," they call it~n the Shoals. Naturally, he had
been christened "Scrowger Jim"; and though he had hidden
himself on the Georges ever since, he found his honours waiting for
him full blown. They took it up in a sort of firecracker chorus:
"Jim! 0 Jim! Jim! 0 Jim! Sssscrowger Jim!" That pleased
everybody. And when a poetical Beverly man-he had been making
it up all day, and talked about it for weeks-sang, "The Carrie
Pitman's anchor doesn't hold her for a cent" the dories felt that they
were indeed fortunate. Then they had to ask that Beverly man how
he was off for beans, because even poets must not have things all
their own way. Every schooner and nearly every man got it in turn.
Was there a careless or dirty cook anywhere? The dories sang
about him and his food. Was a schooner badly found? The Fleet
was told at full length. Had a man hooked tobacco from a
mess-mate? He was named in meeting; the name tossed from roller
to roller. Disko's infallible judgments, Long Jack's market-boat that
he had sold years ago, Dan's sweetheart (oh, but Dan was an angry
boy!), Penn's bad luck with dory-anchors, Salter's views on
manure, Manuel's little slips from virtue ashore, and Harvey's
ladylike handling of the oar-all were laid before the public; and as
the fog fell around them in silvery sheets beneath the sun, the
voices sounded like a bench of invisible judges pronouncing
sentence.
The dories roved and fished and squabbled till a swell underran the
sea. Then they drew more apart to save their sides, and some one
called that if the swell continued the Virgin would break. A
reckless Galway man with his nephew denied this, hauled up
anchor, and rowed over the very rock itself. Many voices called
them to come away, while others dared them to hold on. As the
smooth-backed rollers passed to the southward, they hove the dory
high and high into the mist, and dropped her in ugly, sucking,
dimpled water, where she spun round her anchor, within a foot or
two of the hidden rock. It was playing with death for mere
bravado; and the boats looked on in uneasy silence till Long
Jack rowed up behind his countrymen and quietly cut their roding.
"Can't ye hear ut knockin'?" he cried. "Pull for you miserable
lives! Pull!"
The men swore and tried to argue as the boat drifted; but the next
swell checked a little, like a man tripping on a carpet. There was a
deep sob and a gathering roar, and the Virgin flung up a couple of
acres of foaming water, white, furious, and ghastly over the shoal
sea. Then all the boats greatly applauded Long Jack, and the
Galway men held their tongue.
"Ain't it elegant?" said Dan, bobbing like a young seal at home.
"She'll break about once every ha'af hour now, 'les the swell piles
up good. What's her reg'lar time when she's at work, Tom Platt?"
"Once ivry fifteen minutes, to the tick. Harve, you've seen the
greatest thing on the Banks; an' but for Long Jack you'd seen some
dead men too."
There came a sound of merriment where the fog lay thicker and
the schooners were ringing their bells. A big bark nosed cautiously
out of the mist, and was received with shouts and cries of, "Come
along, darlin'," from the Irishry.
"Another Frenchman?" said Harvey.
"Hain't you eyes? She's a Baltimore boat; goin' in fear an'
tremblin'," said Dan. "We'll guy the very sticks out of her. Guess
it's the fust time her skipper ever met up with the Fleet this way."
She was a black, buxom, eight-hundred-ton craft. Her mainsail was
looped up, and her topsail flapped undecidedly in what little wind
was moving. Now a bark is feminine beyond all other daughters of
the sea, and this tall, hesitating creature, with her white and gilt
figurehead, looked just like a bewildered woman half lifting her
skirts to cross a muddy street under the jeers of bad little boys.
That was very much her situation. She knew she was somewhere
in the neighbourhood of the Virgin, had caught the roar of it, and
was, therefore, asking her way. This is a small part of what she
heard from the dancing dories:
"The Virgin? Fwhat are you talkin' of? 'This is Le
104 Rudyard Kipling
Have on a Sunday mornin'. Go home an' sober up."
"Go home, ye tarrapin! Go home an' tell 'em we're comm.
Half a dozen voices together, in a most tuneful chorus, as her stern
went down with a roll and a bubble into the troughs:
"Thay-aah-she-strikes!"
"Hard up! Hard up fer your life! You're on top of her now."
"Daown! Hard daown! Let go everything!"
"All hands to the pumps!"
"Daown jib an' pole her!"
Here the skipper lost his temper and said things. instantly fishing
was suspended to answer him, and he heard many curious facts
about his boat and her next port of call. They asked him if he were
insured; and whence he had stolen his anchor, because, they said' it
belonged to the Carrie Pitman; they called his boat a mud-scow,
and accused him of dumping garbage to frighten the fish; they
offered to tow him and charge it to his wife; and one audacious
youth slipped up almost under the counter, smacked it with his
open palm, and yelled: "Gid up, Buck!"
The cook emptied a pan of ashes on him, and he replied with
cod-heads. The bark's crew fired small coal from the galley, and
the dories threatened to come aboard and "razee" her. They would
have warned her at once had she been in real peril; but, seeing her
well clear of the Virgin, they made the most of their chances. The
fun was spoilt when the rock spoke again, a half-mile to windward,
and the tormented bark set everything that would draw and went
her ways; but the dories felt that the honours lay with them.
All that night the Virgin roared hoarsely; and next morning, over
an angry, white-headed sea, Harvey saw the Fleet with flickering
masts waiting for a lead. Not a dory was hove out till ten o'clock,
when the two Jeraulds of the Day's Eye, imagining a lull which did
not exist, set the example. In a minute half the boats were out and
bobbing in the cockly swells, but Troop kept the We're Heres at
work dressing down. He saw no sense in "dares"; and as the storm
grew that evening they had the pleasure of receiving wet strangers
only too glad to make any refuge in the gale. The boys stood by the
dory-tackles with lanterns, the men ready to haul, one eye cocked
for the sweeping wave that would make them drop everything and
hold on for dear life. Out of the dark would come a yell of "Dory,
dory!" They would hook up and haul in a drenched man and a
half-sunk boat, till their decks were littered down with nests of
dories and the bunks were full. Five times in their watch did
Harvey, with Dan, jump at the foregaff where it lay lashed on the
boom, and cling with arms, legs, and teeth to rope and spar and
sodden canvas as a big wave filled the decks. One dory was
smashed to pieces, and the sea pitched the man head first on to the
decks, cutting his forehead open; and about dawn, when the racing
seas glimmered white all along their cold edges, another man, blue
and ghastly, crawled in with a broken hand, asking news of his
brother. Seven extra mouths sat down to breakfast: A Swede; a
Chatham skipper; a boy from Hancock, Maine; one Duxbury, and
three Provincetown men.
There was a general sorting out among the Fleet next day; and
though no one said anything, all ate with better appetites when
boat after boat reported full crews aboard. Only a couple of
Portuguese and an old man from Gloucester were drowned, but
many were cut or bruised; and two schooners had parted their
tackle and been blown to the southward, three days' sail. A man
died on a Frenchman-it was the same bark that had traded tobacco
with the We're Heres. She slipped away quite quietly one wet,
white morning, moved to a patch of deep water, her sails all
hanging anyhow, and Harvey saw the funeral through Disko's
spy-glass. It was only an oblong bundle slid overside. They did not
seem to have any form of service, but in the night, at anchor,
Harvey heard them across the star-powdered black water, singing
something that sounded like a hymn. it went to a very slow tune.
"La brigantine
Qui va tourner,
Roule et s'incline
Pour m'entrainer.
Oh, Vierge Marie,
Pour moi priez Dieul
Adieu, patrie;
Ouebec, adjeul"
Tom Platt visited her, because, he said, the dead man was his
brother as a Freemason. It came out that a wave had doubled the
poor fellow over the heel of the bowsprit and broken his back. The
news spread like a flash, for, contrary to general custom, the
Frenchman held an auction of the dead man's kit,-he had no friends
at St Malo or Miquelon,-and everything was spread out on the top
of the house, from his red knitted cap to the leather belt with the
sheath-knife at the back. Dan and Harvey were out on
twenty-fathom water in the Hattie S., and naturally rowed over to
join the crowd. It was a long pull, and they stayed some little time
while Dan bought the knife, which had a curious brass handle.
When they dropped overside and pushed off into a drizzle of rain
and a lop of sea, it occurred to them that they might get into
trouble for neglecting the lines.
"Guess 'twon't hurt us any to be warmed up," said Dan, shivering
under his oilskins, and they rowed on into the heart of a white fog,
which, as usual, dropped on them without warning.
"There's too much blame tide hereabouts to trust to your instinks,"
he said. "Heave over the anchor, Harve, and we'll fish a piece till
the thing lifts. Bend on your biggest lead. Three pound ain't any
too much in this water. See how she's tightened on her rodin'
already."
There was quite a little bubble at the bows, where some
irresponsible Bank current held the dory full stretch on her rope;
but they could not see a boat's length in any direction. Harvey
turned up his collar and bunched himself over his reel with the air
of a wearied navigator. Fog had no special terrors for him now.
They fished a while in silence, and found the cod struck on well.
Then Dan drew the sheath-knife and tested the edge of it on the
gunwale.
"That's a daisy," said Harvey. "How did you get it so cheap?"
"On account o' their blame Cath'lic superstitions," said Dan,
jabbing with the bright blade. "They don't fancy takin'
iron from off a dead man, so to speak. 'See them Arichat
Frenchmen step back when I bid?"
"But an auction ain't taking anythink off a dead man. It's business."
"We know it ain't, but there's no goin' in the teeth o' superstition.
That's one o' the advantages o' livin' in a progressive country."
And Dan began whistling:
"Oh, Double Thatcher, how are you?
Now Eastern Point comes inter view.
The girls an' boys we soon shall see,
At anchor off Cape Ann!"
"Why didn't that Eastport man bid, then? He bought his boots.
Ain't Maine progressive?"
"Maine? Pshaw! They don't know enough, or they hain't got
money enough, to paint their haouses in Maine. I've seen 'em. The
Eastport man he told me that the knife had been used-so the
French captain told him-used up on the French coast last year."
"Cut a man? Heave's the muckle." Harvey hauled in his fish,
rebaited, and threw over.
"Killed him! Course, when I heard that I was keener'n ever to get
it."
"Christmas! I didn't know it," said Harvey, turning round. "I'll give
you a dollar for it when I-get my wages. Say, I'll give you two
dollars."
"Honest? D'you like it as much as all that?" said Dan, flushing.
"Well, to tell the truth, I kinder got it for you-to give; but I didn't
let on till I saw how you'd take it. It's yours and welcome, Harve,
because we're dory-mates, and so on and so forth, an' so followin'.
Catch a-holt!"
He held it out, belt and all.
"But look at here. Dan, I don't see-"
"Take it. 'Tain't no use to me. I wish you to hev it." The temptation
was irresistible. "Dan, you're a white man," said Harvey. "I'll keep
it as long as I live."
"That's good hearin'," said Dan, with a pleasant laugh; and then,
anxious to change the subject: " 'Look's if your line was fast to
somethin'."
"Fouled, I guess," said Harve, tugging. Before he pulled up he
fastened the belt round him, and with deep delight heard the tip of
the sheath click on the thwart. "Concern the thing!" he cried. "She
acts as though she were on strawberry-bottom. It's all sand here,
ain't it?"
Dan reached over and gave a judgmatic tweak. "Hollbut'll act that
way 'f he's sulky. Thet's no strawberry-bottom. Yank her once or
twice. She gives, sure. Guess we'd better haul up an' make certain."
They pulled together, making fast at each turn on the cleats, and
the hidden weight rose sluggishly.
"Prize, oh! Haul!" shouted Dan, but the shout ended in a shrill,
double shriek of horror, for out of the sea cam~the body of the
dead Frenchman buried two days before! The hook had caught him
under the right armpit, and he swayed, erect and horrible, head and
shoulders above water. His arms were tied to his side, and-he had
no face. The boys fell over each other in a heap at the bottom of
the dory, and there they lay while the thing bobbed alongside, held
on the shortened line.
"The tide-the tide brought him!" said Harvey with quivering lips, as
he fumbled at the clasp of the belt.
"Oh, Lord! Oh, Harve!" groaned Dan, "be quick. He's come for it.
Let him have it. Take it off."
"I don't want it! 1 don't want it!" cried Harvey. "I can't find the
bu-buckle."
"Quick, Harve! He's on your line!"
Harvey sat up to unfasten the belt, facing the head that had no face
under its streaming hair. "He's fast still," he whispered to Dan, who
slipped out his knife and cut the line, as Harvey flung the belt far
overside. The body shot down with a plop, and Dan cautiously rose
to his knees, whiter than the fog.
"He come for it. He come for it. I've seen a stale one hauled up on
a trawl and I didn't much care, but he come to us special."
"I wish-I wish I hadn't taken the knife. Then he'd have come on
your line."
"Dunno as thet would ba' made any differ. We're both scared out
o' ten years' growth. Oh, Harve, did ye see his head?"
"Did I? I'll never forget it. But look at here, Dan; it couldn't have
been meant. It was only the tide."
"Tide! He come for it, Harve. Why, they sunk him six miles to
south'ard o' the Fleet, an' we're two miles from where she's lyin'
now. They told me he was weighted with a fathom an' a half o'
chain-cable."
'Wonder what he did with the knife-up on the French coast?"
"Something bad. 'Guess he's bound to take k with him to the
Judgment, an' so-- What are you doin' with the fish?"
"Heaving 'em overboard," said Harvey.
"What for? We sha'n't eat 'em."
"I don't care. I had to look at his face while I was takin' the belt off.
You can keep your catch if you like. I've no use for mine."
Dan said nothing, but threw his fish over again.
"Guess ifs best to be on the safe side," he murmured at last. "I'd
give a month's pay if this fog 'u'd lift. Things go abaout in a fog
that ye don't see in clear weather -yo-hoes an' hollerers and such
like. I'm sorter relieved he come the way he did instid o' walkin'.
He might ha' walked."
"Do~n't, Dan! We're right on top of him now. 'Wish I was safe
aboard, hem' pounded by Uncle Saltem."
"They'll be lookin' fer us in a little. Gimme the tooter." Dan took
the tin dinner-horn, but paused before he blew.
"Go on," said Harvey. "I don't want to stay here all night"
"Question is, haow he'd take it. There was a man frurn down the
coast told me once he was in a schooner where they darsen't ever
blow a horn to the dories, becaze the skipper-not the man he was
with, but a captain that had run her five years before-he'd drowned
a boy alongside in a drunk fit; an' ever after, that boy he'd row
along-side too and shout, 'Dory! dory!' with the rest"
"Dory! dory!" a muffled voice cried through the fog. They cowered
again, and the horn dropped from Dan's hand.
"Hold on!" cried Harvey; "it's the cook."
"Dunno what made me think o' thet fool tale, either," said Dan.
"It's the doctor, sure enough."
"Dan! Danny! Oooh, Dan! Harve! Harvey! Oooh, Haarveee!"
"We're here," sung both boys together. They heard oars, but could
see nothing till the cook, shining and dripping, rowed into them.
"What iss happened?" said he. "You will be beaten at home."
"Thet's what we want. Thet's what we're sufferin' for" said Dan.
"Anything homey's good enough fer us. We've had kinder
depressin' company." As the cook passed. them a line, Dan told
him the tale.
"Yess! He come for hiss knife," was all he said at the end.
Never had the little rocking We're Here looked so deliciously
home-like as when the cook, born and bred in fogs, rowed them
back to her. There was a warm glow of light from the cabin and a
satisfying smell of food forward, and it was heavenly to hear Disko
and the others, all quite alive and solid, leaning over the rail and
promising them a first-class pounding. But the cook was a black.
master of strategy. He did not get the dories aboard till he had
given the more striking points of the tale, explaining as he backed
and bumped round the counter how Harvey was the mascot to
destroy any possible bad luck. So the boys came override as rather
uncanny heroes, and every one asked them questions instead of
pounding them for making trouble. Little Penn delivered quite a
speech on the folly of superstitions; but public opinion was against
him and in favour of Long Jack, who told the most excruciating
ghost-stories, till nearly midnight. Under that influence no one
except Salters and Penn said anything about "idolatry," when the
cook put a lighted candle, a cake of flour and water, and a pinch of
salt on a shingle, and floated them out astern to keep the
Frenchman quiet in case he was still restless. Dan lit the candle
because he had bought the belt, and the cook grunted and muttered
charms as long as be could see the ducking point of flame.
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