Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling (best classic books of all time TXT) 📕

“Ben Ireson he was skipper o’ the Betty, young feller, comin’ home frum the Banks—that was before the war of 1812, but jestice is jestice at all times. They fund the Active o’ Portland, an’ Gibbons o’ that town he was her skipper; they fund her leakin’ off Cape Cod Light. There was a terr’ble gale on, an’ they was gettin’ the Betty home ‘s fast as they could craowd her. Well, Ireson he said there warn’t any sense to reskin’ a boat in that sea; the men they wouldn’t hev it; and he laid it before them to stay by the Active till the sea run daown a piece. They wouldn’t hev that either, hangin’ araound the Cape in any sech weather, leak or no leak. They jest up stays’l an’ quit, nat’rally takin’ Ireson with ‘em. Folks to Marblehead was mad at him not runnin’ the risk, and becaze nex’ day, when the sea was ca’am (they never stopped to think o’ that), some of the Active’s folks was took off by a Truro man. They come into Marblehead with their own tale to tell, sayin’ how Ireson had shamed his town, an’ so forth an’ so on, an’ Ireson’s men they was scared, seein’ public feelin’ agin’ ‘em, an’ they went back on Ireson, an’ swore he was respons’ble for the hull act. ‘Tweren’t the women neither that tarred and feathered him—Marblehead women don’t act that way—‘twas a passel o’ men an’ boys, an’ they carted him araound town in an old dory till the bottom fell aout, and Ireson he told ‘em they’d be sorry for it some day. Well, the facts come aout later, same’s they usually do, too late to be any ways useful to an honest man; an’ Whittier he come along an’ picked up the slack eend of a lyin’ tale, an’ tarred and feathered Ben Ireson all over onct more after he was dead. ‘Twas the only tune Whittier ever slipped up, an’ ‘tweren’t fair. I whaled Dan good when he brought that piece back from school. You don’t know no better, o’ course; but I’ve give you the facts, hereafter an’ evermore to be remembered. Ben Ireson weren’t no sech kind o’ man as Whittier makes aout; my father he knew him well, before an’ after that business, an’ you beware o’ hasty jedgments, young feller. Next!”

Harvey had never heard Disko talk so long, and collapsed with burning cheeks; but, as Dan said promptly, a boy could only learn what he was taught at school, and life was too short to keep track of every lie along the coast.

Then Manuel touched the jangling, jarring little machette to a queer tune, and sang something in Portuguese about “Nina, innocente!” ending with a full-handed sweep that brought the song up with a jerk. Then Disko obliged with his second song, to an old-fashioned creaky tune, and all joined in the chorus. This is one stanza:

“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.”

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 lamplight. 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 starvin’. 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 O, 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.

“Seems 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 crosstrees, 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 O! Dead to the no’th’ard, corain’ down like smoke! Schooner she be, too.’”

They waited yet another half-hour, the 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-fashioned 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 spliced 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