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

frinds on the ould sod fer a week. Thin they wint back, an’ it cost ‘em two an’ thirty days to beat to the Banks again. ‘Twas gettin’ on towards fall, and grub was low, so Counahan ran her back to Boston, wid no more bones to ut.”

“And what did the firm say?” Harvey demanded.

“Fwhat could they? The fish was on the Banks, an’ Counahan was at T-wharf talkin’ av his record trip east! They tuk their satisfaction out av that, an’ ut all came av not keepin’ the crew and the rum sep’rate in the first place; an’ confusin’ Skibbereen wid ‘Queereau, in the second. Counahan the Navigator, rest his sowl! He was an imprompju citizen!”

“Once I was in the Lucy Holmes,” said Manuel, in his gentle voice. “They not want any of her feesh in Gloucester. Eh, wha-at? Give us no price. So we go across the water, and think to sell to some Fayal man. Then it blow fresh, and we cannot see well. Eh, wha-at? Then it blow some more fresh, and we go down below and drive very fast—no one know where. By and by we see a land, and it get some hot. Then come two, three nigger in a brick. Eh, wha-at? We ask where we are, and they say—now, what you all think?”

“Grand Canary,” said Disko, after a moment. Manuel shook his head, smiling.

“Blanco,” said Tom Platt.

“No. Worse than that. We was below Bezagos, and the brick she was from Liberia! So we sell our feesh there! Not bad, so? Eh, wha-at?”

“Can a schooner like this go right across to Africa?” said Harvey.

“Go araound the Horn ef there’s anythin’ worth goin’ fer, and the grub holds aout,” said Disko. “My father he run his packet, an’ she was a kind o’ pinkey, abaout fifty ton, I guess,—the Rupert,—he run her over to Greenland’s icy mountains the year ha’af our fleet was tryin’ after cod there. An’ what’s more, he took my mother along with him,—to show her haow the money was earned, I presoom,—an’ they was all iced up, an’ I was born at Disko. Don’t remember nothin’ abaout it, o’ course. We come back when the ice eased in the spring, but they named me fer the place. Kinder mean trick to put up on a baby, but we’re all baound to make mistakes in aour lives.”

“Sure! Sure!” said Salters, wagging his head. “All baound to make mistakes, an’ I tell you two boys here thet after you’ve made a mistake—ye don’t make fewer’n a hundred a day—the next best thing’s to own up to it like men.”

Long Jack winked one tremendous wink that embraced all hands except Disko and Salters, and the incident was closed.

Then they made berth after berth to the northward, the dories out almost every day, running along the east edge of the Grand Bank in thirty-to forty-fathom water, and fishing steadily.

It was here Harvey first met the squid, who is one of the best cod-baits, but uncertain in his moods. They were waked out of their bunks one black night by yells of “Squid O!” from Salters, and for an hour and a half every soul aboard hung over his squid-jig—a piece of lead painted red and armed at the lower end with a circle of pins bent backward like half-opened umbrella ribs. The squid—for some unknown reason—likes, and wraps himself round, this thing, and is hauled up ere he can escape from the pins. But as he leaves his home he squirts first water and next ink into his captor’s face; and it was curious to see the men weaving their heads from side to side to dodge the shot. They were as black as sweeps when the flurry ended; but a pile of fresh squid lay on the deck, and the large cod thinks very well of a little shiny piece of squid tentacle at the tip of a clam-baited hook. Next day they caught many fish, and met the Carrie Pitman, to whom they shouted their luck, and she wanted to trade—seven cod for one fair-sized squid; but Disko would not agree at the price, and the Carrie dropped sullenly to leeward and anchored half a mile away, in the hope of striking on to some for herself.

Disco said nothing till after supper, when he sent Dan and Manuel out to buoy the ‘We’re Here’s’ cable and announced his intention of turning in with the broad-axe. Dan naturally repeated these remarks to the dory from the Carrie, who wanted to know why they were buoying their cable, since they were not on rocky bottom.

“Dad sez he wouldn’t trust a ferryboat within five mile o’ you,” Dan howled cheerfully.

“Why don’t he git out, then? Who’s hinderin’?” said the other.

“‘Cause you’ve jest the same ez lee-bowed him, an’ he don’t take that from any boat, not to speak o’ sech a driftin’ gurry-butt as you be.”

“She ain’t driftin’ any this trip,” said the man angrily, for the Carrie Pitman had an unsavory reputation for breaking her ground-tackle.

“Then haow d’you make berths?” said Dan. “It’s her best p’int o’ sailin’. An’ ef she’s quit driftin’, what in thunder are you doin’ with a new jib-boom?” That shot went home.

“Hey, you Portugoosy organ-grinder, take your monkey back to Gloucester. Go back to school, Dan Troop,” was the answer.

“0-ver-alls! 0-ver-alls!” yelled Dan, who knew that one of the Carrie’s crew had worked in an overall factory the winter before.

“Shrimp! Gloucester shrimp! Git aout, you Novy!”

To call a Gloucester man a Nova Scotian is not well received. Dan answered in kind.

“Novy yourself, ye Scrabble-towners! ye Chatham wreckers! Git aout with your brick in your stockin’!” And the forces separated, but Chatharn had the worst of it.

“I knew haow ‘twould be,” said Disko. “She’s drawed the wind raound already. Some one oughter put a deesist on thet packet. She’ll snore till midnight, an’ jest when we’re gettin’ our sleep she’ll strike adrift. Good job we ain’t crowded with craft hereaways. But I ain’t goin’ to up anchor fer Chatham. She may hold.”

The wind, which had hauled round, rose at sundown and blew steadily. There was not enough sea, though, to disturb even a dory’s tackle, but the Carrie Pitman was a law unto herself. At the end of the boys’ watch they heard the crack-crack-crack of a huge muzzle-loading revolver aboard her.

“Gory, glory, hallelujah!” sung Dan. “Here she comes, Dad; butt-end first, walkin’ in her sleep same’s she done on ‘Queereau.”

Had she been any other boat Disko would have taken his chances, but now he cut the cable as the Carrie Pitman, with all the North Atlantic to play in, lurched down directly upon them. The ‘We’re Here’, under jib and riding-sail, gave her no more room than was absolutely necessary,—Disko did not wish to spend a week hunting for his cable,—but scuttled up into the wind as the Carrie passed within easy hail, a silent and angry boat, at the mercy of a raking broadside of Bank chaff.

“Good evenin’,” said Disko, raising his head-gear, “an’ haow does your garden grow?”

“Go to Ohio an’ hire a mule,” said Uncle Salters. “We don’t want no farmers here.”

“Will I lend YOU my dory-anchor?” cried Long Jack.

“Unship your rudder an’ stick it in the mud,” bawled Tom Platt.

“Say!” Dan’s voice rose shrill and high, as he stood on the wheel-box. “Sa-ay! Is there a strike in the o-ver-all factory; or hev they hired girls, ye Shackamaxons?”

“Veer out the tiller-lines,” cried Harvey, “and nail ‘em to the bottom!” That was a salt-flavoured jest he had been put up to by Tom Platt. Manuel leaned over the stern and yelled: “Johanna Morgan play the organ! Ahaaaa!” He flourished his broad thumb with a gesture of unspeakable contempt and derision, while little Penn covered himself with glory by piping up: “Gee a little! Hssh! Come here. Haw!”

They rode on their chain for the rest of the night, a short, snappy, uneasy motion, as Harvey found, and wasted half the forenoon recovering the cable. But the boys agreed the trouble was cheap at the price of triumph and glory, and they thought with grief over all the beautiful things that they might have said to the discomfited Carrie.