Captains Courageous
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Rudyard Kipling >> Captains Courageous
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Said Harvey to Dan, as they turned in after watch:
"How about progress and Catholic superstitions?"
"Huh! I guess I'm as enlightened and progressive as the next man,
but when it comes to a dead St Malo deck-hand scarin' a couple o'
pore boys stiff fer the sake of a thirty-cent knife, why, then, the
cook can take hold fer all o' me. I mistrust furriners, livin' or
dead."
Next morning all, except the cook, were rather ashamed of the
ceremonies, and went to work double tides, speaking gruffly to one
another.
The We're Here was racing neck and neck for her last few loads
against the Parry Norman; and so close was the struggle that the
Fleet took side and betted tobacco. All hands worked at the lines
or dressing-down till they fell asleep where they stood-beginning
before dawn and ending when it was too dark to see. They even
used the cook as pitcher, and turned Harvey into the hold to pass
salt, while Dan helped to dress down. Luckily a Parry Norman man
sprained his ankle falling down the foc'sle, and the We're Heres
gained. Harvey could not see how one more fish could be
crammed into her, but Disko and Tom Platt stowed and stowed, and
planked the mass down with big stones from the ballast, and there
was always "jest another day's work." Disko did not tell them when
all the salt was wetted. He rolled to the lazarette aft the cabin and
began hauling out the big mainsail. This was at ten in the morning.
The riding-sail was down and the main- and topsail were up by
noon, and dories came alongside with letters for home, envying
their good fortune. At last she cleared decks, hoisted her flag,-as is
the right of the first boat off the Banks,-up~anchored, and began to
move. Disko pretended that he wished to accommodate folk who
had not sent in their mail, and so worked her gracefully in and out
among the schooners. In reality, that was his little triumphant
procession, and for the fifth year running it showed what kind of
mariner he was. Dan's accordion and Tom Platt's fiddle supplied
the music of the magic verse you must not sing till all the salt is
wet:
"Hih! Yih'. Yoho! Send your letters raound!
All our salt is wetted, an' the anchor's off the graound!
Bend, oh, bend your mains'1, we're back to Yankeeland-
With fifteen hunder' quintal,
An' fifteen hunder' quintal,
'Teen hunder' toppin' quintal,
'Twix' old 'Queereau an' Grand."
The last letters pitched on deck wrapped round pieces of coal, and
the Gloucester men shouted messages to their wives and
womenfolks and owners, while the We're Here finished the
musical ride through the Fleet, her headsails quivering like a man's
hand when he raises it to say good-by.
Harvey very soon discovered that the We're Here, with her
riding-sail, strolling from berth to berth, and the We're Here
headed west by south under home canvas, were two very different
boats. There was a bite and kick to the wheel even in "boy's"
weather; he could feel the dead weight in the hold flung forward
mightily across the surges, and the streaming line of bubbles
overside made his eyes dizzy.
Disko kept them busy fiddling with the sails; and when those were
flattened like a racing yacht's, Dan had to wait on the big topsail,
which was put over by hand every time she went about. In spare
moments they pumped, for the packed fish dripped brine, which
does not improve a cargo. But since there was no fishing, Harvey
had time to look at the sea from another point of view. The,
low-sided schooner was naturally on most intimate terms with her
surroundings. They saw little of the horizon save when she topped
a swell; and usually she was elbowing, fidgeting, and coa'ing
her steadfast way through gray, gray-blue, or black hollows l
aced across and across with streaks of shivering foam; or
rubbing herself caressingly along the flank of some bigger
water-hill. It was as if she said: "You wouldn't hurt me, surely?
I'm ouly the little We're Here." Then she would slide away
chuckling softly to herself till she was brought up by some
fresh obstacle. The dullest of folk cannot see this kind of thing
hour after hour through long days without noticing it; and Harvey,
being anything but dull, began to comprehend and enjoy the dry
chorus of wave-tops turning over with a sound of incessant
CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS
113
tearing; the hurry of the winds working across open spaces and
herding the purple-blue cloud-shadows; the splendid upheaval of
the red sunrise; the folding and packing away of the morning
mists, wall after wall withdrawn across the white floors; the salty
glare and blaze of noon; the kiss of rain falling over thousands of
dead, flat square miles; the chilly blackening of everything at the
day's end; and the million wrinkles of the sea under the moonlight,
when the jib-boom solemnly poked at the low stars, and Harvey
went down to get a doughnut from the cook.
But the best fun was when the boys were put on the wheel
together, Tom Platt within hail, and she cuddled her lee-rail down
to the crashing blue, and kept a little home-made rainbow arching
unbroken over her windlass. Then the jaws of the booms whined
against the masts, and the sheets creaked, and the sails filled with
roaring; and when she slid into a hollow she trampled like a
woman tripped in her own silk dress, and came out, her jib wet
half-way up, yearning and peering for the tall twin-lights of
Thatcher's Island.
They left the cold gray of the Bank sea, saw the lumber-ships
making for Quebec by the Straits of St. Lawrence, with the Jersey
salt-brigs from Spain and Sicily; found a friendly northeaster off
Artimon Bank that drove them within view of the East light of
Sable Island,-a sight Disko did not linger over,-and stayed with
them past Western and Le Have, to the northern fringe of George's.
From there they picked up the deeper water, and let her go merrily.
"Hattie's pulling on the string," Dan confided to Harvey. "Hattie an'
Ma. Next Sunday you'll be hirin' a boy to throw water on the
windows to make ye go to sleep. 'Guess you'll keep with us till
your folks come. Do you know the best of gettin' ashore again?"
"Hot bath?" said Harvey. His eyebrows were all white with dried
spray.
"That's good, but a night-shirt's better. I've been dreamin' o'
night-shirts ever since we bent our mainsail. Ye can wiggle your
toes then. Ma'll hev a new one fer me, all washed soft. It's home,
Harve. It's home! Ye can sense it in the air. We're riurnin' into the
aidge of a hot wave naow, an' I can smell the bayberries. Wonder
if we'll get in fer supper. Port a trifle."
The hesitating sails flapped and lurched in the close air as the deep
smoothed out, blue and oily, round them. When they whistled for a
wind only the rain came in spiky rods, bubbling and drumming,
and behind the rain the thunder and the lightning of mid-August.
They lay on the deck with bare feet and arms, telling one another
what they would order at their first meal ashore; for now the land
was in plain sight. A Gloucester swordfish-boat drifted alongside,
a man in the little pulpit on the bowsprit flourished his harpoon,
his bare head plastered down with the wet. "And all's well!" he
sang cheerily, as though he were watch on a big liner.
"Wouverman's waiting fer you, Disko. What's the news o' the
Fleet?"
Disko shouted it and passed on, while the wild summer storm
pounded overhead and the lightning flickered along the capes from
four different quarters at once. It gave the low circle of hills round
Gloucester Harbor, Ten Pound Island, the fish-sheds, with the
broken line of house-roofs, and each spar and buoy on the water, in
blinding photographs that came and went a dozen times to the
minute as the We're Here crawled in on half-flood, and the
whistling-buoy moaned and mourned behind her. Then the storm
died out in long, separated, vicious dags of blue-white flame,
followed by a single roar like the roar of a mortar-battery, and the
shaken air tingled under the stars as it got back to silence.
"The flag, the flag!" said Disko, suddenly, pointing upward.
"What is Ut?" said Long Jack.
"Otto! Ha'af mast. They can see us frum shore now."
"I'd clean forgot He's no folk to Gloucester, has he?"
"Girl he was goin' to be married to this fall."
"Mary pity her!" said Long Jack, and lowered the little flag
half-mast for the sake of Otto, swept overboard in a gale off Le
Have three months before.
Disko wiped the wet from his eyes and led the We're Here to
Wouverman's wharf, giving his orders in whispers, while she
swung round moored tugs and night-watchmen hailed her from the
ends of inky-black piers. Over and above the darkness and the
mystery of the procession, Harvey could feel the land close round
him once more, with all its thousands of people asleep, and the
smell of earth after rain, and the familiar noise of a switching-engine
coughing to herself in a freight-yard; and all those things made his
heart beat and his throat dry up as he stood by the foresheet. They
heard the anchor-watch snoring on a lighthouse-tug, nosed into a
pocket of darkness where a lantern glimmered on either side;
somebody waked with a grunt, threw them a rope, and they made
fast to a silent wharf flanked with great iron-roofed sheds fall of
warm emptiness, and lay there without a sound.
Then Harvey sat down by the wheel, and sobbed and sobbed as
though his heart would break, and a tall woman who had been
sitting on a weigh-scale dropped down into the schooner and
kissed Dan once on the cheek; for she was his mother, and she had
seen the We~re Here by the lightning flashes. She took no notice
of Harvey till he had recovered himself a little and Disko had told
her his story. Then they went to Disko's house together as the dawn
was breaking; and until the telegraph office was open and he could
wire his folk, Harvey Cheyne was perhaps the loneliest boy in all
America. But the curious thing was that Disko and Dan seemed to
think none the worse of him for crying.
Wouverman was not ready for Disko's prices till Disko, sure that
the We're Here was at least a week ahead of any other Gloucester
boat, had given him a few days to swallow them; so all hands
played about the streets, and Long Jack stopped the Rocky Neck
trolley, on principle, as be said, till the conductor let him ride free.
But Dan went about with his freckled nose in the air, bung-full of
mystery and most haughty to his family.
"Dan, I'll hev to lay inter you ef you act this way," said Troop,
pensively. "Sence we've come ashore this time you've bin a heap
too fresh."
"I'd lay into him naow ef he was mine," said Uncle Salters, sourly.
He and Penn boarded with the Troops.
"Oho!" said Dan, shuffling with the accordion round the backyard,
ready to leap the fence if the enemy advanced. "Dan, you're
welcome to your own judgment, but remember I've warned ye.
Your own flesh an' blood ha' warned ye! 'Tain't any o' my fault
ef you're mistook, but I'll be on deck to watch ye An' ez fer yeou,
Uncle Salters, Pharaoh's chief butler ain't in it 'longside o' you!
You watch aout an' wak. You'll be plowed under like your own
blamed clover; but me-Dan Troop-I'll flourish
like a green bay-tree because I warn't stuck on my own opinion."
Disko was smoking in all his shore dignity and a pair of beautiful
carpet-slippers. "You're gettin' ez crazy as poor Harve. You two go
araound gigglin' an' squinchin' an' kickin' each other under the
table till there's no peace in the haouse," said he.
"There's goin' to be a heap less-fer some folks," Dan replied. "You
wait an' see."
He and Harvey went out on the trolley to East Gloucester, where
they tramped through the bayberry bushes to the lighthouse, and
lay down on the big red boulders and laughed themselves hungry.
Harvey had shown Dan a telegram, and the two swore to keep
silence till the shell burst
"Harve's folk?" said Dan, with an unruffled face after supper.
"Well, I guess they don't amount to much of anything, or we'd ha'
heard from 'em by naow. His pop keeps a kind o' store out West.
Maybe he'll give you 's much as five dollars, Dad."
"What did I tell ye?" said Salters. "Don't sputter over your vittles,
Dan."
CHAPTER IX
Whatever his private sorrows may be, a multimillionaire, like any
other workingman, should keep abreast of his business. Harvey
Cheyne, senior, had gone East late in June to meet a woman
broken down, hall mad, who dreamed day and night of her son
drowning in the gray seas. He had surrounded her 'with doctors,
trained nurses, massage-women, and even faith-cure companions,
but they were useless. Mrs. Cheyne lay still and moaned, or talked
of her boy by the hour together to any one who would listen. Hope
she had none, and who could offer it? All she needed was
assurance that drowning did not hurt; and her husband watched to
guard lest she should make the experiment. Of his own sorrow he
spoke little-hardly realized the depth of it till he caught himself
ask'ng the calendar on his writing-desk, "What's the use of going
on?"
There had always lain a pleasant notion at the back of his head
that, some day, when he had rounded off everything and the boy
had left college, he would take his son to his heart and lead him
into his possessions. Then that boy, he argued, as busy fathers do,
would instantly become his companion, partner, and ally, and there
would follow splendid years of great works carried out
together-the old head backing the young fire. Now his boy was
dead-lost at sea, as it might have been a Swede sailor from one of
Cheyne's big teaships; the wife dying, or worse; he himself was
trodden down by platoons of women and doctors and maids and
attendants; worried almost beyond endurance by the shift and
change of her poor restless whims; hopeless, with no heart to meet
his many enemies.
He had taken the wife to his raw new palace in San Diego, where
she and her people occupied a wing of great price,
and Cheyne, in a veranda-room, between a secretary and a
typewriter, who was also a telegraphist, toiled along wearily from
day to day. There was a war of rates among four Western railroads
in which he was supposed to be interested; a devastating strike had
developed in his lumber camps in Oregon, and the legislature of
the State of California, which has no love for its makers, was
preparing open war against him.
Ordinarily he would have accepted battle ere it was offered, and
have waged a pleasant and unscrupulous campaign. But now he sat
limply, his soft black hat pushed forward on to his nose, his big
body shrunk inside his loose clothes, staring at his boots or the
Chinese junks in the bay, and assenting absently to the secretary's
questions as he opened the Saturday mail.
Cheyne was wondering how much it would cost to drop everything
and pull out. He carried huge insurances, could buy himself royal
annuities, and between one of his places in Colorado and a little
society (that would do the wife good), say in Washington and the
South Carolina islands, a man might forget plans that had come to
nothing. On the other hand
The click of the typewriter stopped; the girl was looking at the
secretary, who had turned white.
He passed Cheyne a telegram repeated from San Francisco:
Picked up by fishing schooner We're Here having fallen off boat
great times on Banks fishing all well waiting Gloucester Mass care
Disko Troop for money or orders wire what shall do and how is
Mama Harvey N. Cheyne.
The father let it fall, laid his head down on the roller-top of the
shut desk, and breathed heavily. The secretary ran for Mrs.
Cheyne's doctor who found Cheyne pacing to and fro.
'~What-what d' you think of it? Is it possible? Is there any meaning
to it? I can't quite make it out," he cried.
"I can," said the doctor. "I lose seven thousand a year-that's all." He
thought of the struggling New York practice he had dropped at
Cheyne's imperious bidding, and returned the telegram with a sigh.
"You mean you'd tell her? 'May be a fraud?"
"What's the motive?" said the doctor, coolly. "Detection's too
certain. It's the boy sure enough."
Enter a French maid, impudently, as an indispensable one who is
kept on only by large wages.
"Mrs. Cheyne she say you must come at once. She think you are
seek."
The master of thirty millions bowed his head meekly and followed
Suzanne; and a thin, high voice on the upper landing of the great
white-wood square staircase cried: "What is it? What has
happened?"
No doors could keep out the shriek that rang through the echoing
house a moment later, when her husband blurted out the news.
"And that's all right," said the doctor, serenely, to the typewriter.
"About the only medical statement in novels with any truth to it is
that joy don't kill, Miss Kinzey."
"I know it; but we've a heap to do first." Miss Kinzey was from
Milwaukee, somewhat direct of speech; and as her fancy leaned
towards the secretary, she divined there was work in hand. He was
looking earnestly at the vast roller-map of America on the wall.
"Milsom, we're going right across. Private car-straight
through-Boston. Fix the connections," shouted Cheyne down the
staircase.
"I thought so."
The secretary turned to the typewriter, and their eyes met (out of
that was born a story-nothing to do with this story). She looked
inquiringly, doubtful of his resources. He signed to her to move to
the Morse as a general brings brigades into action. Then he swept
his hand musician-wise through his hair, regarded the ceiling, and
set to work, while Miss Kinzey's white fingers called up the
Continent of America.
"K. H. Wade, Los Angeles The 'Constance' is at Los Angeles, isn't
she, Miss Kinzey?"
"Yep." Miss Kinzey nodded between clicks as the secretary looked
at his watch.
"Ready? Send 'Constance,' private car, here, and arrange for
special to leave here Sunday in time to connect with New York
Limited at Sixteenth Street, Chicago, Tuesday next."
Click~lick~lick! "Couldn't you better that?"
"Not on those grades. That gives 'em sixty hours from here to
Chicago. They won't gain anything by taking a special east of that.
Ready? Also arrange with Lake Shore and Michigan Southern to
take 'Constance' on New York Central and Hudson River Buffalo
to Albany, and B. and A. the same Albany to Boston. Indispensable
I should reach Boston Wednesday evening. Be sure nothing
prevents. Have also wired Canniff, Toucey, and Barnes. --Sign,
Cheyne."
Miss Kinzey nodded, and the secretary went on.
"Now then. Canniff, Toucey, and Barnes, of course. Ready?
Canniff, Chicago. Please take my private car 'Constance' from
Santa Fe' at Sixteenth Street next Tuesday p. m. on N. Y. Limited
through to Buffalo and deliver N. Y. C. for Albany.-Ever bin to N'
York, Miss Kinzey? We'll go some day.-Ready? Take car Buffalo
to Albany on Limited Tuesday p. m. That's for Toucey."
"Haven't bin to Noo York, but I know that!" with a toss of the
head.
"Beg pardon. Now, Boston and Albany, Barnes, same instructions
from Albany through to Boston. Leave three-five P. M. (you
needn't wire that); arrive nine-five P. M. Wednesday. That covers
everything Wade will do, but it pays to shake up the managers."
"It's great," said Miss Kinzey, with a look of admiration. This was
the kind of man she understood and appreciated.
'Tisn't bad," said Milsom, modestly. "Now, any one but me would
have lost thirty hours and spent a week working out the run,
instead of handing him over to the Santa Fe' straight through to
Chicago."
"But see here, about that Noo York Limited. Chauncey Depew
himself couldn't hitch his car to her," Miss Kinzey suggested,
recovering herself.
"Yes, but this isn't Chauncey. It's Cheyne--lightiiing. It goes."
"Even so. Guess we'd better wire the boy. You've forgotten that,
anyhow."
"I'll ask."
When he returned with the father's message bidding Harvey meet
them in Boston at an appointed hour, he found Miss Kinzey
laughing over the keys. Then Milsom laughed too, for the frantic
clicks from Los Angeles ran: "We want to know why-why-why?
General uneasiness developed and spreading."
Ten minutes later Chicago appealed to Miss Kinzey in these
words: ~'lf crime of century is maturing please warn friends in
time. We are all getting to cover here."
This was capped by a message from Topeka (and wherein Topeka
was concerned even Milsom could not guess): "Don't shoot,
Colonel. We'll come down."
Cheyne smiled grimly at the consternation of his enemies when the
telegrams were laid before him. "They think we're on the warpath.
Tell 'em we don't feel like fighting just now, Milsom. Tell 'em
what we're going for. I guess you and Miss Kinsey had better come
along, though it isn't likely I shall do any business on the road. Tell
'em the truth-for once."
So the truth was told. Miss Kinzey clicked in the sentiment while
the secretary added the memorable quotation, "Let us have peace,"
and in board rooms two thousand miles away the representatives
of sixty-three million dollars' worth of variously manipulated
railroad interests breathed more freely. Cheyne was flying to meet
the only son, so miraculously restored to him. The bear was
seeking his cub, not the bulls. Hard men who had their knives
drawn to fight for their financial lives put away the weapons and
wished him God-speed, while half a dozen panic-smitten tin-pot
roads perked up their heads and spoke of the wonderful things they
would have done had not Cheyne buried the hatchet.
It was a busy week-end among the wires; for now that their anxiety
was removed, men and cities hastened to accommodate. Los
Angeles called to San Diego and Barstow that the Southern
California engineers might know and be ready in their lonely
roundhouses; Barstow passed the word to the Atlantic and Pacific;
and Albuquerque flung it the whole length of the Atchinson,
Topeka, and Santa Fe management, even into Chicago. An engine,
combination-car with crew, and the great and gilded "Constance"
private car were to be "expedited" over those two thousand three
hundred and fifty miles. The train would take precedence of one
hundred and seventy-seven others meeting and passing; despatchers
and crews of every one of those said trains must be notified. Sixteen
locomotives, sixteen engineers, and sixteen firemen would be
needed-each and every one the best available. Two and one half
minutes would be allowed for changing engines, three for
watering, and two for coaling. "Warn the men, and arrange tanks
and chutes accordingly; for Harvey Cheyne is in a hurry, a hurry-a
hurry," sang the wires. "Forty miles an hour will be expected, and
division superintendents will accompany this special over their
respective divisions. From San Diego to Sixteenth Street, Chicago,
let the magic carpet be laid down. Hurry! Oh, hurry!"
"It will be hot," said Cheyne, as they rolled out of San Diego in the
dawn of Sunday. "We're going to hurry, Mama, just as fast as ever
we can; but I really don't think there's any good of your putting on
your bonnet and gloves yet. You'd much better lie down and take
your medicine. I'd play you a game of dominoes, but it's Sunday."
"I'll be good. Oh, I will be good. Only-taking off my bonnet makes
me feel as if we'd never get there."
"Try to sleep a little, Mama, and we'll be in Chicago before you
know."
"But it's Boston, Father. Tell them to hurry."
The six-foot drivers were hammering their way to San Bernardino
and the Mohave wastes, but this was no grade for speed. That
would come later. The heat of the desert followed the heat of the
hills as they turned east to the Needles and the Colorado River.
The car cracked in the utter drouth and glare, and they put crushed
ice to Mrs. Cheyne's neck, and toiled up the long, long grades, past
Ash Fork, towards Flagstaff, where the forests and quarries are,
under the dry, remote skies. The needle of the speed-indicator
flicked and wagged to and fro; the cinders rattled on the roof, and
a whirl of dust sucked after the whirling wheels. The crew of the
combination sat on their bunks, panting in their shirtsleeves, and
Cheyne found himself - among them shouting old, old stories of
the railroad that every trainman knows, above the roar of the car.
He told them about his son, and how the sea had given up its dead,
and they nodded and spat and rejoiced with him; asked after "her,
back there," and whether she could stand it if the engineer "let her
out a piece," and Cheyne thought she could. Accordingly, the great
fire-horse was "let~ut" from Flagstaff to Winslow, till a division
superintendent protested.
But Mrs. Cheyne, in the boudoir stateroom, where the French
maid, sallow-white with fear, clung to the silver door-handle, only
moaned a little and begged her husband to bid them "hurry." And
so they dropped the dry sands and moon-struck rocks of Arizona
behind them, and grilled on till the crash of the couplings and the
wheeze of the brake-hose told them they were at Coolidge by the
Continental Divide.
Three bold and experienced men-cool, confident, and dry when
they began; white, quivering, and wet when they finished their
trick at those terrible wheels-swung her over the great lift from
Albuquerque to Glorietta and beyond Springer, up and up to the
Raton Tunnel on the State line, whence they dropped rocking into
La Junta, had sight of the Arkansaw, and tore down the long slope
to Dodge City, where Cheyne took comfort once again from
setting his watch an hour ahead.
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