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

“I know it; but he thought I was crazy. I’m afraid I called him a thief because I couldn’t find the bills in my pocket.”

“A sailor found them by the flagstaff that—that night,” sobbed Mrs. Cheyne.

“That explains it, then. I don’t blame Troop any. I just said I wouldn’t work—on a Banker, too—and of course he hit me on the nose, and oh! I bled like a stuck hog.”

“My poor darling! They must have abused you horribly.”

“Dunno quite. Well, after that, I saw a light.”

Cheyne slapped his leg and chuckled. This was going to be a boy after his own hungry heart. He had never seen precisely that twinkle in Harvey’s eye before.

“And the old man gave me ten and a half a month; he’s paid me half now; and I took hold with Dan and pitched right in. I can’t do a man’s work yet. But I can handle a dory ‘most as well as Dan, and I don’t get rattled in a fog—much; and I can take my trick in light winds—that’s steering, dear—and I can ‘most bait up a trawl, and I know my ropes, of course; and I can pitch fish till the cows come home, and I’m great on old Josephus, and I’ll show you how I can clear coffee with a piece of fish-skin, and—I think I’ll have another cup, please. Say, you’ve no notion what a heap of work there is in ten and a half a month!”

“I began with eight and a half, my son,” said Cheyne.

“That so? You never told me, sir.”

“You never asked, Harve. I’ll tell you about it some day, if you care to listen. Try a stuffed olive.”

“Troop says the most interesting thing in the world is to find out how the next man gets his vittles. It’s great to have a trimmed-up meal again. We were well fed, though. But mug on the Banks. Disko fed us first-class. He’s a great man. And Dan—that’s his son—Dan’s my partner. And there’s Uncle Salters and his manures, an’ he reads Josephus. He’s sure I’m crazy yet. And there’s poor little Penn, and he is crazy. You mustn’t talk to him about Johnstown, because—

“And, oh, you must know Tom Platt and Long Jack and Manuel. Manuel saved my life. I’m sorry he’s a Portuguee. He can’t talk much, but he’s an everlasting musician. He found me struck adrift and drifting, and hauled me in.”

“I wonder your nervous system isn’t completely wrecked,” said Mrs. Cheyne.

“What for, Mama? I worked like a horse and I ate like a hog and I slept like a dead man.”

That was too much for Mrs. Cheyne, who began to think of her visions of a corpse rocking on the salty seas. She went to her stateroom, and Harvey curled up beside his father, explaining his indebtedness.

“You can depend upon me to do everything I can for the crowd, Harve. They seem to be good men on your showing.”

“Best in the Fleet, sir. Ask at Gloucester,” said Harvey. “But Disko believes still he’s cured me of being crazy. Dan’s the only one I’ve let on to about you, and our private cars and all the rest of it, and I’m not quite sure Dan believes. I want to paralyze ‘em tomorrow. Say, can’t they run the ‘Constance’ over to Gloucester? Mama don’t look fit to be moved, anyway, and we’re bound to finish cleaning out by tomorrow. Wouverman takes our fish. You see, we’re the first off the Banks this season, and it’s four twenty-five a quintal. We held out till he paid it. They want it quick.”

“You mean you’ll have to work tomorrow, then?”

“I told Troop I would. I’m on the scales. I’ve brought the tallies with me.” He looked at the greasy notebook with an air of importance that made his father choke. “There isn’t but three— no-two ninety-four or five quintal more by my reckoning.”

“Hire a substitute,” suggested Cheyne, to see what Harvey would say.

“Can’t, sir. I’m tally-man for the schooner. Troop says I’ve a better head for figures than Dan. Troop’s a mighty just man.”

“Well, suppose I don’t move the ‘Constance’ to-night, how’ll you fix it?”

Harvey looked at the clock, which marked twenty past eleven.

“Then I’ll sleep here till three and catch the four o’clock freight. They let us men from the Fleet ride free as a rule.”

“That’s a notion. But I think we can get the ‘Constance’ around about as soon as your men’s freight. Better go to bed now.”

Harvey spread himself on the sofa, kicked off his boots, and was asleep before his father could shade the electrics. Cheyne sat watching the young face under the shadow of the arm thrown over the forehead, and among many things that occurred to him was the notion that he might perhaps have been neglectful as a father.

“One never knows when one’s taking one’s biggest risks,” he said. “It might have been worse than drowning; but I don’t think it has—I don’t think it has. If it hasn’t, I haven’t enough to pay Troop, that’s all; and I don’t think it has.”

Morning brought a fresh sea breeze through the windows, the “Constance” was side-tracked among freight-cars at Gloucester, and Harvey had gone to his business.

“Then he’ll fall overboard again and be drowned,” the mother said bitterly.

“We’ll go and look, ready to throw him a rope in case. You’ve never seen him working for his bread,” said the father.

“What nonsense! As if any one expected—”

“Well, the man that hired him did. He’s about right, too.”

They went down between the stores full of fishermen’s oilskins to Wouverman’s wharf where the ‘We’re Here’ rode high, her Bank flag still flying, all hands busy as beavers in the glorious morning light. Disko stood by the main hatch superintending Manuel, Penn, and Uncle Salters at the tackle. Dan was swinging the loaded baskets inboard as Long Jack and Tom Platt filled them, and Harvey, with a notebook, represented the skipper’s interests before the clerk of the scales on the salt-sprinkled wharf-edge.

“Ready!” cried the voices below. “Haul!” cried Disko. “Hi!” said Manuel. “Here!” said Dan, swinging the basket. Then they heard Harvey’s voice, clear and fresh, checking the weights.

The last of the fish had been whipped out, and Harvey leaped from the string-piece six feet to a ratline, as the shortest way to hand Disko the tally, shouting, “Two ninety-seven, and an empty hold!”

“What’s the total, Harve?” said Disko.

“Eight sixty-five. Three thousand six hundred and seventy-six dollars and a quarter. ‘Wish I’d share as well as wage.”

“Well, I won’t go so far as to say you hevn’t deserved it, Harve. Don’t you want to slip up to Wouverman’s office and take him our tallies?”

“Who’s that boy?” said Cheyne to Dan, well used to all manner of questions from those idle imbeciles called summer boarders.

“Well, he’s kind o’ supercargo,” was the answer. “We picked him up struck adrift on the Banks. Fell overboard from a liner, he sez. He was a passenger. He’s by way o’ hem’ a fisherman now.”

“Is he worth his keep?”

“Ye-ep. Dad, this man wants to know ef Harve’s worth his keep. Say, would you like to go aboard? We’ll fix up a ladder for her.”

“I should very much, indeed. ‘Twon’t hurt you, Mama, and you’ll be able to see for yourself.”

The woman who could not lift her head a week ago scrambled down the ladder, and stood aghast amid the mess and tangle aft.

“Be you anyways interested in Harve?” said Disko.

“Well, ye-es.”

“He’s a good boy, an’ ketches right hold jest as he’s bid. You’ve heard haow we found him? He was sufferin’ from nervous prostration, I guess, ‘r else his head had hit somethin’, when we hauled him aboard. He’s all over that naow. Yes, this is the cabin. ‘Tain’t in order, but you’re quite welcome to look araound. Those are his figures on the stovepipe, where we keep the reckonin’ mosdy.”

“Did he sleep here?” said Mrs. Cheyne, sitting on a yellow locker and surveying the disorderly bunks.

“No. He berthed forward, madam, an’ only fer him an’ my boy hookin’ fried pies an muggin’ up when they ought to ha’ been asleep, I dunno as I’ve any special fault to find with him.”

“There weren’t nothin’ wrong with Harve,” said Uncle Salters, descending the steps. “He hung my boots on the main-truck, and he ain’t over an’ above respectful to such as knows more’n he do, specially about farmin’; but he were mostly misled by Dan.”

Dan in the meantime, profiting by dark hints from Harvey early that morning, was executing a wardance on deck. “Tom, Tom!” he whispered down the hatch. “His folks has come, an’ Dad hain’t caught on yet, an’ they’re pow-wowin’ in the cabin. She’s a daisy, an’ he’s all Harve claimed he was, by the looks of him.”

“Howly Smoke!” said Long Jack, climbing out covered with salt and fish-skin. “D’ye belave his tale av the kid an’ the little four-horse rig was thrue?”

“I knew it all along,” said Dan. “Come an’ see Dad mistook in his judgments.”

They came delightedly, just in time to hear Cheyne say: “I’m glad he has a good character, because—he’s my son.”

Disko’s jaw fell,—Long Jack always vowed that he heard the click of it,—and he stared alternately at the man and the woman.

“I got his telegram in San Diego four days ago, and we came over.”

“In a private car?” said Dan. “He said ye might.”

“In a private car, of course.”

Dan looked at his father with a hurricane of irreverent winks.

“There was a tale he told us av drivin’ four little ponies in a rig av his own,” said Long Jack. “Was that thrue now?”

“Very likely,” said Cheyne. “Was it, Mama?”

“He had a little drag when we were in Toledo, I think,” said the mother.

Long Jack whistled. “Oh, Disko!” said he, and that was all.

“I wuz—I am mistook in my jedgments—worse’n the men o’ Marblehead,” said Disko, as though the words were being windlassed out of him. “I don’t mind ownin’ to you, Mr. Cheyne, as I mistrusted the boy to be crary. He talked kinder odd about money.”

“So he told me.”

“Did he tell ye anything else? ‘Cause I pounded him once.” This with a somewhat anxious glance at Mrs. Cheyne.

“Oh, yes,” Cheyne replied. “I should say it probably did him more good than anything else in the world.”

“I jedged ‘twuz necessary, er I wouldn’t ha’ done it. I don’t want you to think we abuse our boys any on this packet.”

“I don’t think you do, Mr. Troop.”

Mrs. Cheyne had been looking at the faces—Disko’s ivory-yellow, hairless, iron countenance; Uncle Salters’s, with its rim of agricultural hair; Penn’s bewildered simplicity; Manuel’s quiet smile; Long Jack’s grin of delight, and Tom Platt’s scar. Rough, by her standards, they certainly were; but she had a mother’s wits in her eyes, and she rose with out-stretched hands.

“Oh, tell me, which is who?” said she, half sobbing. “I want to thank you and bless you—all of you.”

“Faith, that pays me a hunder time,” said Long Jack.

Disko introduced them all in due form. The captain of an old-time Chinaman could have done no better, and Mrs. Cheyne babbled incoherently. She nearly threw herself into Manuel’s arms when she understood that he had first found Harvey.

“But how shall I leave him dreeft?” said poor Manuel. “What do you yourself if you find him so? Eh, wha-at? We are in one good boy, and I am ever so pleased he come to be your son.”

“And he told me Dan was his partner!” she cried. Dan was already sufficiently pink, but he