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

the end of a halter. Water-noises ran by close to his ear, and beams creaked and whined about him. All these things made him grunt despairingly and think of his mother.

“Feelin’ better?” said the boy, with a grin. “Hev some coffee?” He brought a tin cup full and sweetened it with molasses.

“Isn’t there milk?” said Harvey, looking round the dark double tier of bunks as if he expected to find a cow there.

“Well, no,” said the boy. “Ner there ain’t likely to be till ‘baout mid-September. ‘Tain’t bad coffee. I made it.”

Harvey drank in silence, and the boy handed him a plate full of pieces of crisp fried pork, which he ate ravenously.

“I’ve dried your clothes. Guess they’ve shrunk some,” said the boy. “They ain’t our style much — none of ‘em. Twist round an’ see if you’re hurt any.”

Harvey stretched himself in every direction, but could not report any injuries.

“That’s good,” the boy said heartily. “Fix yerself an’ go on deck. Dad wants to see you. I’m his son,—Dan, they call me,—an’ I’m cook’s helper an’ everything else aboard that’s too dirty for the men. There ain’t no boy here ‘cep’ me sence Otto went overboard — an’ he was only a Dutchy, an’ twenty year old at that. How’d you come to fall off in a dead flat ca’am?”

“‘Twasn’t a calm,” said Harvey, sulkily. “It was a gale, and I was seasick. Guess I must have rolled over the rail.”

“There was a little common swell yes’day an’ last night,” said the boy. “But ef thet’s your notion of a gale–-” He whistled. “You’ll know more ‘fore you’re through. Hurry! Dad’s waitin’.”

Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all his life received a direct order—never, at least, without long, and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the reasons for the request. Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself walked on the edge of nervous prostration. He could not see why he should be expected to hurry for any man’s pleasure, and said so. “Your dad can come down here if he’s so anxious to talk to me. I want him to take me to New York right away. It’ll pay him.”

Dan opened his eyes as the size and beauty of this joke dawned on him. “Say, Dad!” he shouted up the foc’sle hatch, “he says you kin slip down an’ see him ef you’re anxious that way. ‘Hear, Dad?”

The answer came back in the deepest voice Harvey had ever heard from a human chest: “Quit foolin’, Dan, and send him to me.”

Dan sniggered, and threw Harvey his warped bicycle shoes. There was something in the tones on the deck that made the boy dissemble his extreme rage and console himself with the thought of gradually unfolding the tale of his own and his father’s wealth on the voyage home. This rescue would certainly make him a hero among his friends for life. He hoisted himself on deck up a perpendicular ladder, and stumbled aft, over a score of obstructions, to where a small, thick-set, clean-shaven man with gray eyebrows sat on a step that led up to the quarterdeck. The swell had passed in the night, leaving a long, oily sea, dotted round the horizon with the sails of a dozen fishing-boats. Between them lay little black specks, showing where the dories were out fishing. The schooner, with a triangular riding-sail on the mainmast, played easily at anchor, and except for the man by the cabin-roof —“house” they call it—she was deserted.

“Mornin’—Good afternoon, I should say. You’ve nigh slep’ the clock round, young feller,” was the greeting.

“Mornin’,” said Harvey. He did not like being called “young feller”; and, as one rescued from drowning, expected sympathy. His mother suffered agonies whenever he got his feet wet; but this mariner did not seem excited.

“Naow let’s hear all abaout it. It’s quite providential, first an’ last, fer all concerned. What might be your name? Where from (we mistrust it’s Noo York), an’ where baound (we mistrust it’s Europe)?”

Harvey gave his name, the name of the steamer, and a short history of the accident, winding up with a demand to be taken back immediately to New York, where his father would pay anything any one chose to name.

“H’m,” said the shaven man, quite unmoved by the end of Harvey’s speech. “I can’t say we think special of any man, or boy even, that falls overboard from that kind o’ packet in a flat ca’am. Least of all when his excuse is that he’s seasick.”

“Excuse!” cried Harvey. “D’you suppose I’d fall overboard into your dirty little boat for fun?”

“Not knowin’ what your notions o’ fun may be, I can’t rightly say, young feller. But if I was you, I wouldn’t call the boat which, under Providence, was the means o’ savin’ ye, names. In the first place, it’s blame irreligious. In the second, it’s annoyin’ to my feelin’s—an’ I’m Disko Troop o’ the ‘We’re Here’ o’ Gloucester, which you don’t seem rightly to know.”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Harvey. “I’m grateful enough for being saved and all that, of course! but I want you to understand that the sooner you take me back to New York the better it’ll pay you.”

“Meanin’—haow?” Troop raised one shaggy eyebrow over a suspiciously mild blue eye.

“Dollars and cents,” said Harvey, delighted to think that he was making an impression. “Cold dollars and cents.” He thrust a hand into a pocket, and threw out his stomach a little, which was his way of being grand. “You’ve done the best day’s work you ever did in your life when you pulled me in. I’m all the son Harvey Cheyne has.”

“He’s bin favoured,” said Disko, dryly.

“And if you don’t know who Harvey Cheyne is, you don’t know much—that’s all. Now turn her around and let’s hurry.”

Harvey had a notion that the greater part of America was filled with people discussing and envying his father’s dollars.

“Mebbe I do, an’ mebbe I don’t. Take a reef in your stummick, young feller. It’s full o’ my vittles.”

Harvey heard a chuckle from Dan, who was pretending to be busy by the stump-foremast, and blood rushed to his face. “We’ll pay for that too,” he said. “When do you suppose we shall get to New York?”

“I don’t use Noo York any. Ner Boston. We may see Eastern Point about September; an’ your pa—I’m real sorry I hain’t heerd tell of him—may give me ten dollars efter all your talk. Then o’ course he mayn’t.”

“Ten dollars! Why, see here, I—” Harvey dived into his pocket for the wad of bills. All he brought up was a soggy packet of cigarettes.

“Not lawful currency; an’ bad for the lungs. Heave ‘em overboard, young feller, and try agin.”

“It’s been stolen!” cried Harvey, hotly.

“You’ll hev to wait till you see your pa to reward me, then?”

“A hundred and thirty-four dollars—all stolen,” said Harvey, hunting wildly through his pockets. “Give them back.”

A curious change flitted across old Troop’s hard face. “What might you have been doin’ at your time o’ life with one hundred an’ thirty-four dollars, young feller?”

“It was part of my pocket-money—for a month.” This Harvey thought would be a knock-down blow, and it was—indirectly.

“Oh! One hundred and thirty-four dollars is only part of his pocket-money—for one month only! You don’t remember hittin’ anything when you fell over, do you? Crack agin a stanchion, le’s say. Old man Hasken o’ the East Wind”—Troop seemed to be talking to himself—“he tripped on a hatch an’ butted the mainmast with his head—hardish. ‘Baout three weeks afterwards, old man Hasken he would hev it that the “East Wind” was a commerce-destroyin’ man-o’-war, an’ so he declared war on Sable Island because it was Bridish, an’ the shoals run aout too far. They sewed him up in a bed-bag, his head an’ feet appearin’, fer the rest o’ the trip, an’ now he’s to home in Essex playin’ with little rag dolls.”

Harvey choked with rage, but Troop went on consolingly: “We’re sorry fer you. We’re very sorry fer you—an’ so young. We won’t say no more abaout the money, I guess.”

“‘Course you won’t. You stole it.”

“Suit yourself. We stole it ef it’s any comfort to you. Naow, abaout goin’ back. Allowin’ we could do it, which we can’t, you ain’t in no fit state to go back to your home, an’ we’ve jest come on to the Banks, workin’ fer our bread. We don’t see the ha’af of a hundred dollars a month, let alone pocket-money; an’ with good luck we’ll be ashore again somewheres abaout the first weeks o’ September.”

“But—but it’s May now, and I can’t stay here doin’ nothing just because you want to fish. I can’t, I tell you!”

“Right an’ jest; jest an’ right. No one asks you to do nothin’. There’s a heap as you can do, for Otto he went overboard on Le Have. I mistrust he lost his grip in a gale we f’und there. Anyways, he never come back to deny it. You’ve turned up, plain, plumb providential for all concerned. I mistrust, though, there’s ruther few things you kin do. Ain’t thet so?”

“I can make it lively for you and your crowd when we get ashore,” said Harvey, with a vicious nod, murmuring vague threats about “piracy,” at which Troop almost—not quite—smiled.

“Excep’ talk. I’d forgot that. You ain’t asked to talk more’n you’ve a mind to aboard the ‘We’re Here’. Keep your eyes open, an’ help Dan to do ez he’s bid, an’ sechlike, an’ I’ll give you—you ain’t wuth it, but I’ll give—ten an’ a ha’af a month; say thirty-five at the end o’ the trip. A little work will ease up your head, and you kin tell us all abaout your dad an’ your ma an’ your money afterwards.”

“She’s on the steamer,” said Harvey, his eyes flling with tears. “Take me to New York at once.”

“Poor woman—poor woman! When she has you back she’ll forgit it all, though. There’s eight of us on the ‘We’re Here’, an’ ef we went back naow—it’s more’n a thousand mile—we’d lose the season. The men they wouldn’t hev it, allowin’ I was agreeable.”

“But my father would make it all right.”

“He’d try. I don’t doubt he’d try,” said Troop; “but a whole season’s catch is eight men’s bread; an’ you’ll be better in your health when you see him in the fall. Go forward an’ help Dan. It’s ten an’ a ha’af a month, e I said, an’ o’ course, all f’und, same e the rest o’ us.”

“Do you mean I’m to clean pots and pans and things?” said Harvey.

“An’ other things. You’ve no call to shout, young feller.”

“I won’t! My father will give you enough to buy this dirty little fish-kettle”—Harvey stamped on the deck—“ten times over, if you take me to New York safe; and—and—you’re in a hundred and thirty by me, anyhow.”

“Haow?” said Troop, the iron face darkening.

“How? You know how, well enough. On top of all that, you want me to do menial work”—Harvey was very proud of that adjective—“till the Fall. I tell you I will not. You hear?”

Troop regarded the top of the mainmast with deep interest for a while, as Harvey harangued fiercely all around him.

“Hsh!” he said at last. “I’m figurin’ out my responsibilities in my own mind. It’s a matter o’ jedgment.”

Dan stole up and plucked Harvey by the elbow. “Don’t go to tamperin’ with Dad any more,” he pleaded. “You’ve called him a thief two or three times over, an’ he don’t take that from any livin’ bein’.”

“I won’t!” Harvey almost shrieked, disregarding