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

found the ‘We’re Heres’ at the back of the audience, and was standing, as by right, between Dan and Disko. Uncle Salters, returned the night before with Penn, from Pamlico Sound, received him suspiciously.

“Hain’t your folk gone yet?” he grunted. “What are you doin’ here, young feller?”

“O ye Seas and Floods, bless ye the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever!”

“Hain’t he good right?” said Dan. “He’s bin there, same as the rest of us.”

“Not in them clothes,” Salters snarled.

“Shut your head, Salters,” said Disko. “Your bile’s gone back on you. Stay right where ye are, Harve.”

Then up and spoke the orator of the occasion, another pillar of the municipality, bidding the world welcome to Gloucester, and incidentally pointing out wherein Gloucester excelled the rest of the world. Then he turned to the sea-wealth of the city, and spoke of the price that must be paid for the yearly harvest. They would hear later the names of their lost dead one hundred and seventeen of them. (The widows stared a little, and looked at one another here.) Gloucester could not boast any overwhelming mills or factories. Her sons worked for such wage as the sea gave; and they all knew that neither Georges nor the Banks were cow-pastures. The utmost that folk ashore could accomplish was to help the widows and the orphans, and after a few general remarks he took this opportunity of thanking, in the name of the city, those who had so public-spiritedly consented to participate in the exercises of the occasion.

“I jest despise the beggin’ pieces in it,” growled Disko. “It don’t give folk a fair notion of us.”

“Ef folk won’t be fore-handed an’ put by when they’ve the chance,” returned Salters, “it stands in the nature o’ things they hev to be ‘shamed. You take warnin’ by that, young feller. Riches endureth but for a season, ef you scatter them araound on lugsuries—

“But to lose everything, everything,” said Penn. “What can you do then? Once I”—the watery blue eyes stared up and down as if looking for something to steady them—“once I read—in a book, I think—of a boat where every one was run down—except some one—and he said to me—”

“Shucks!” said Salters, cutting in. “You read a little less an’ take more int’rust in your vittles, and you’ll come nearer earnin’ your keep, Penn.”

Harvey, jammed among the fishermen, felt a creepy, crawly, tingling thrill that began in the back of his neck and ended at his boots. He was cold, too, though it was a stifling day.

“That the actress from Philadelphia?” said Disko Troop, scowling at the platform. “You’ve fixed it about old man Ireson, hain’t ye, Harve? Ye know why naow.”

It was not “Ireson’s Ride” that the woman delivered, but some sort of poem about a fishing-port called Brixham and a fleet of trawlers beating in against storm by night, while the women made a guiding fire at the head of the quay with everything they could lay hands on.

“They took the grandma’s blanket, Who shivered and bade them go; They took the baby’s cradle, Who could not say them no.”

“Whew!” said Dan, peering over Long Jack’s shoulder. “That’s great! Must ha’ bin expensive, though.”

“Ground-hog case,” said the Galway man. “Badly lighted port, Danny.”

“And knew not all the while If they were lighting a bonfire Or only a funeral pile.”

The wonderful voice took hold of people by their heartstrings; and when she told how the drenched crews were flung ashore, living and dead, and they carried the bodies to the glare of the fires, asking: “Child, is this your father?” or “Wife, is this your man?” you could hear hard breathing all over the benches.

 

“And when the boats of Brixham Go out to face the gales, Think of the love that travels Like light upon their sails!”

There was very little applause when she finished. The women were looking for their handkerchiefs, and many of the men stared at the ceiling with shiny eyes.

“H’m,” said Salters; “that ‘u’d cost ye a dollar to hear at any theatre—maybe two. Some folk, I presoom, can afford it. ‘Seems downright waste to me… . Naow, how in Jerusalem did Cap. Bart Edwardes strike adrift here?”

“No keepin’ him under,” said an Eastport man behind. “He’s a poet, an’ he’s baound to say his piece. ‘Comes from daown aour way, too.”

He did not say that Captain B. Edwardes had striven for five consecutive years to be allowed to recite a piece of his own composition on Gloucester Memorial Day. An amused and exhausted committee had at last given him his desire. The simplicity and utter happiness of the old man, as he stood up in his very best Sunday clothes, won the audience ere he opened his mouth. They sat unmurmuring through seven-and-thirty hatchet-made verses describing at fullest length the loss of the schooner Joan Hasken off the Georges in the gale of 1867, and when he came to an end they shouted with one kindly throat.

A far-sighted Boston reporter slid away for a full copy of the epic and an interview with the author; so that earth had nothing more to offer Captain Bart Edwardes, ex-whaler, shipwright, master-fisherman, and poet, in the seventy-third year of his age.

“Naow, I call that sensible,” said the Eastport man. “I’ve bin over that graound with his writin’, jest as he read it, in my two hands, and I can testily that he’s got it all in.”

“If Dan here couldn’t do better’n that with one hand before breakfast, he ought to be switched,” said Salters, upholding the honor of Massachusetts on general principles. “Not but what I’m free to own he’s considerable litt’ery—fer Maine. Still—”

“Guess Uncle Salters’s goin’ to die this trip. Fust compliment he’s ever paid me,” Dan sniggered. “What’s wrong with you, Harve? You act all quiet and you look greenish. Feelin’ sick?”

“Don’t know what’s the matter with me,” Harvey implied. “Seems if my insides were too big for my outsides. I’m all crowded up and shivery.”

“Dispepsy? Pshaw—too bad. We’ll wait for the readin’, an’ then we’ll quit, an’ catch the tide.”

The widows—they were nearly all of that season’s making—braced themselves rigidly like people going to be shot in cold blood, for they knew what was coming. The summer-boarder girls in pink and blue shirt-waists stopped tittering over Captain Edwardes’s wonderful poem, and looked back to see why all was silent. The fishermen pressed forward as that town official who had talked to Cheyne bobbed up on the platform and began to read the year’s list of losses, dividing them into months. Last September’s casualties were mostly single men and strangers, but his voice rang very loud in the stillness of the hall.

“September 9th. Schooner Florrie Anderson lost, with all aboard, off the Georges.

“Reuben Pitman, master, 50, single, Main Street, City.

“Emil Olsen, 19, single, 329 Hammond Street, City. Denmark.

“Oscar Standberg, single, 25. Sweden.

“Carl Stanberg, single, 28, Main Street. City.

“Pedro, supposed Madeira, single, Keene’s boardinghouse. City.

“Joseph Welsh, alias Joseph Wright, 30, St. John’s, Newfoundland.”

“No—Augusty, Maine,” a voice cried from the body of the hall.

“He shipped from St. John’s,” said the reader, looking to see.

“I know it. He belongs in Augusty. My nevvy.”

The reader made a pencilled correction on the margin of the list, and resumed.

“Same schooner, Charlie Ritchie, Liverpool, Nova Scotia, 33, single.

“Albert May, 267 Rogers Street, City, 27, single.

“September 27th. —Orvin Dollard, 30, married, drowned in dory off Eastern Point.”

That shot went home, for one of the widows flinched where she sat, clasping and unclasping her hands. Mrs. Cheyne, who had been listening with wide-opened eyes, threw up her head and choked. Dan’s mother, a few seats to the right, saw and heard and quickly moved to her side. The reading went on. By the time they reached the January and February wrecks the shots were falling thick and fast, and the widows drew breath between their teeth.

“February 14th. —Schooner Harry Randolph dismasted on the way home from Newfoundland; Asa Musie, married, 32, Main Street, City, lost overboard.

“February 23d. —Schooner Gilbert Hope; went astray in dory, Robert Beavon, 29, married, native of Pubnico, Nova Scotia.”

But his wife was in the hall. They heard a low cry, as though a little animal had been hit. It was stifled at once, and a girl staggered out of the hall. She had been hoping against hope for months, because some who have gone adrift in dories have been miraculously picked up by deep-sea sailing-ships. Now she had her certainty, and Harvey could see the policeman on the sidewalk hailing a hack for her. “It’s fifty cents to the depot”—the driver began, but the policeman held up his hand—“but I’m goin’ there anyway. Jump right in. Look at here, Al; you don’t pull me next time my lamps ain’t lit. See?”

The side-door closed on the patch of bright sunshine, and Harvey’s eyes turned again to the reader and his endless list.

“April 19th. —Schooner Mamie Douglas lost on the Banks with all hands.

“Edward Canton, 43, master, married, City.

“D. Hawkins, alias Williams, 34, married, Shelbourne, Nova Scotia.

“G. W. Clay, coloured, 28, married, City.”

And so on, and so on. Great lumps were rising in Harvey’s throat, and his stomach reminded him of the day when he fell from the liner.

“May 10th. —Schooner ‘We’re Here’ [the blood tingled all over him] Otto Svendson, 20, single, City, lost overboard.”

Once more a low, tearing cry from somewhere at the back of the hall.

“She shouldn’t ha’ come. She shouldn’t ha’ come,” said Long Jack, with a cluck of pity.

“Don’t scrowge, Harve,” grunted Dan. Harvey heard that much, but the rest was all darkness spotted with fiery wheels. Disko leaned forward and spoke to his wife, where she sat with one arm round Mrs. Cheyne, and the other holding down the snatching, catching, ringed hands.

“Lean your head daown—right daown!” he whispered. “It’ll go off in a minute.”

“I ca-an’t! I do-don’t! Oh, let me—” Mrs. Cheyne did not at all know what she said.

“You must,” Mrs. Troop repeated. “Your boy’s jest fainted dead away. They do that some when they’re gettin’ their growth. ‘Wish to tend to him? We can git aout this side. Quite quiet. You come right along with me. Psha’, my dear, we’re both women, I guess. We must tend to aour menfolk. Come!”

The ‘We’re Heres’ promptly went through the crowd as a body-guard, and it was a very white and shaken Harvey that they propped up on a bench in an anteroom.

“Favours his ma,” was Mrs. Troop’s ouly comment, as the mother bent over her boy.

“How d’you suppose he could ever stand it?” she cried indignantly to Cheyne, who had said nothing at all. “It was horrible—horrible! We shouldn’t have come. It’s wrong and wicked! It—it isn’t right! Why—why couldn’t they put these things in the papers, where they belong? Are you better, darling?”

That made Harvey very properly ashamed. “Oh, I’m all right, I guess,” he said, struggling to his feet, with a broken giggle. “Must ha’ been something I ate for breakfast.”

“Coffee, perhaps,” said Cheyne, whose face was all in hard lines, as though it had been cut out of bronze. “We won’t go back again.”

“Guess ‘twould be ‘baout’s well to git daown to the wharf,” said Disko. “It’s close in along with them Dagoes, an’ the fresh air will fresh Mrs. Cheyne up.”

Harvey announced that he never felt better in his life; but it was not till he saw the ‘We’re Here’, fresh from the lumper’s hands, at Wouverman’s wharf, that he lost his all-overish feelings in a queer mixture of pride and sorrowfulness. Other people—summer boarders and such-like—played about in cat-boats or looked at the sea from