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

Harvey asked as he bent to his oars. He felt he was learning to handle them more easily.

“Dad ain’t mistook this time. Penn’s a sure ‘nuff loony.”

“No, he ain’t thet exactly, so much ez a harmless ijut. It was this way (you’re rowin’ quite so, Harve), an’ I tell you ‘cause it’s right you orter know. He was a Moravian preacher once. Jacob Boiler wuz his name, Dad told me, an’ he lived with his wife an’ four children somewheres out Pennsylvania way. Well, Penn he took his folks along to a Moravian meetin’—camp-meetin’ most like—an’ they stayed over jest one night in Johnstown. You’ve heered talk o’ Johnstown?”

Harvey considered. “Yes, I have. But I don’t know why. It sticks in my head same as Ashtabula.”

“Both was big accidents—thet’s why, Harve. Well, that one single night Penn and his folks was to the hotel Johnstown was wiped out. ‘Dam bust an’ flooded her, an’ the houses struck adrift an’ bumped into each other an’ sunk. I’ve seen the pictures, an’ they’re dretful. Penn he saw his folk drowned all’n a heap ‘fore he rightly knew what was comin’. His mind give out from that on. He mistrusted somethin’ hed happened up to Johnstown, but for the poor life of him he couldn’t remember what, an’ he jest drifted araound smilin’ an’ wonderin’. He didn’t know what he was, nor yit what he hed bin, an’ thet way he run agin Uncle Salters, who was visitin’ ‘n Allegheny City. Ha’af my mother’s folks they live scattered inside o’ Pennsylvania, an’ Uncle Salters he visits araound winters. Uncle Salters he kinder adopted Penn, well knowin’ what his trouble wuz; an’ he brought him East, an’ he give him work on his farm.’, “Why, I heard him calling Penn a farmer last night when the boats bumped. Is your Uncle Salters a farmer?”

“Farmer!” shouted Dan. “There ain’t water enough ‘tween here an’ Hatt’rus to wash the furrer-mold off’n his boots. He’s jest everlastin’ farmer. Why, Harve, I’ve seen thet man hitch up a bucket, long towards sundown, an’ set twiddlin’ the spigot to the scuttle-butt same’s ef ‘twas a cow’s bag. He’s thet much farmer. Well, Penn an’ he they ran the farm—up Exeter way ‘twur. Uncle Salters he sold it this spring to a jay from Boston as wanted to build a summer-haouse, an’ he got a heap for it. Well, them two loonies scratched along till, one day, Penn’s church—he’d belonged to the Moravians—found out where he wuz drifted an’ layin’, an’ wrote to Uncle Salters. ‘Never heerd what they said exactly; but Uncle Salters was mad. He’s a ‘piscopolian mostly—but he jest let ‘em hev it both sides o’ the bow, ‘s if he was a Baptist; an’ sez he warn’t goin’ to give up Penn to any blame Moravian connection in Pennsylvania or anywheres else. Then he come to Dad, towin’ Penn,—thet was two trips back,—an’ sez he an’ Penn must fish a trip fer their health. ‘Guess he thought the Moravians wouldn’t hunt the Banks fer Jacob Boiler. Dad was agreeable, fer Uncle Salters he’d been fishin’ off an’ on fer thirty years, when he warn’t inventin’ patent manures, an’ he took quarter-share in the ‘We’re Here’; an’ the trip done Penn so much good, Dad made a habit o’ takin’ him. Some day, Dad sez, he’ll remember his wife an’ kids an’ Johnstown, an’ then, like as not, he’ll die, Dad sez. Don’t ye talk abaout Johnstown ner such things to Penn, ‘r Uncle Salters he’ll heave ye overboard.”

“Poor Penn!” murmured Harvey. “I shouldn’t ever have thought Uncle Salters cared for him by the look of ‘em together.”

“I like Penn, though; we all do,” said Dan. “We ought to ha’ give him a tow, but I wanted to tell ye first.”

They were close to the schooner now, the other boats a little behind them.

“You needn’t heave in the dories till after dinner,” said Troop from the deck. “We’ll dress daown right off. Fix table, boys!”

“Deeper’n the Whale-deep,” said Dan, with a wink, as he set the gear for dressing down. “Look at them boats that hev edged up sence mornin’. They’re all waitin’ on Dad. See ‘em, Harve?”

“They are all alike to me.” And indeed to a landsman, the nodding schooners around seemed run from the same mold.

“They ain’t, though. That yaller, dirty packet with her bowsprit steeved that way, she’s the Hope of Prague. Nick Brady’s her skipper, the meanest man on the Banks. We’ll tell him so when we strike the Main Ledge. ‘Way off yonder’s the Day’s Eye. The two Jeraulds own her. She’s from Harwich; fastish, too, an’ hez good luck; but Dad he’d find fish in a graveyard. Them other three, side along, they’re the Margie Smith, Rose, and Edith S. Walen, all from home. ‘Guess we’ll see the Abbie M. Deering tomorrer, Dad, won’t we? They’re all slippin’ over from the shaol o’ ‘Oueereau.”

“You won’t see many boats tomorrow, Danny.” When Troop called his son Danny, it was a sign that the old man was pleased. “Boys, we’re too crowded,” he went on, addressing the crew as they clambered inboard. “We’ll leave ‘em to bait big an’ catch small.” He looked at the catch in the pen, and it was curious to see how little and level the fish ran. Save for Harvey’s halibut, there was nothing over fifteen pounds on deck.

“I’m waitin’ on the weather,” he added.

“Ye’ll have to make it yourself, Disko, for there’s no sign I can see,” said Long Jack, sweeping the clear horizon.

And yet, half an hour later, as they were dressing down, the Bank fog dropped on them, “between fish and fish,” as they say. It drove steadily and in wreaths, curling and smoking along the colourless water. The men stopped dressing-down without a word. Long Jack and Uncle Salters slipped the windlass brakes into their sockets, and began to heave up the anchor; the windlass jarring as the wet hempen cable strained on the barrel. Manuel and Tom Platt gave a hand at the last. The anchor came up with a sob, and the riding-sail bellied as Troop steadied her at the wheel. “Up jib and foresail,” said he.

“Slip ‘em in the smother,” shouted Long Jack, making fast the jib-sheet, while the others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the foresail; and the foreboom creaked as the ‘We’re Here’ looked up into the wind and dived off into blank, whirling white.

“There’s wind behind this fog,” said Troop.

It was wonderful beyond words to Harvey; and the most wonderful part was that he heard no orders except an occasional grunt from Troop, ending with, “That’s good, my son!”

“Never seen anchor weighed before?” said Tom Platt, to Harvey gaping at the damp canvas of the foresail.

“No. Where are we going?”

“Fish and make berth, as you’ll find out ‘fore you’ve been a week aboard. It’s all new to you, but we never know what may come to us. Now, take me—Tom Platt—I’d never ha’ thought—”

“It’s better than fourteen dollars a month an’ a bullet in your belly,” said Troop, from the wheel. “Ease your jumbo a grind.”

“Dollars an’ cents better,” returned the man-o’-war’s man, doing something to a big jib with a wooden spar tied to it. “But we didn’t think o’ that when we manned the windlass-brakes on the Miss Jim Buck, 1 outside Beau-fort Harbor, with Fort Macon heavin’ hot shot at our stern, an’ a livin’ gale atop of all. Where was you then, Disko?”

“Jest here, or hereabouts,” Disko replied, “earnin’ my bread on the deep waters, an’ dodgin’ Reb privateers. Sorry I can’t accommodate you with red-hot shot, Tom Platt; but I guess we’ll come aout all right on wind ‘fore we see Eastern Point.”

There was an incessant slapping and chatter at the bows now, varied by a solid thud and a little spout of spray that clattered down on the foc’sle. The rigging dripped clammy drops, and the men lounged along the lee of the house—all save Uncle Salters, who sat stiffly on the main-hatch nursing his stung hands.

“Guess she’d carry stays’l,” said Disko, rolling one eye at his brother.

“Guess she wouldn’t to any sorter profit. What’s the sense o’ wastin’ canvas?” the farmer-sailor replied.

The wheel twitched almost imperceptibly in Disko’s hands. A few seconds later a hissing wave-top slashed diagonally across the boat, smote Uncle Salters between the shoulders, and drenched him from head to foot. He rose sputtering, and went forward only to catch another.

“See Dad chase him all around the deck,” said Dan. “Uncle Salters he thinks his quarter share’s our canvas. Dad’s put this duckin’ act up on him two trips runnin’. Hi! That found him where he feeds.” Uncle Salters had taken refuge by the foremast, but a wave slapped him over the knees. Disko’s face was as blank as the circle of the wheel.

“Guess she’d lie easier under stays’l, Salters,” said Disko, as though he had seen nothing.

“Set your old kite, then,” roared the victim through a cloud of spray; “only don’t lay it to me if anything happens. Penn, you go below right off an’ git your coffee. You ought to hev more sense than to bum araound on deck this weather.”

“Now they’ll swill coffee an’ play checkers till the cows come home,” said Dan, as Uncle Salters hustled Penn into the fore-cabin. “‘Looks to me like’s if we’d all be doin’ so fer a spell. There’s nothin’ in creation deader-limpsey-idler’n a Banker when she ain’t on fish.”

“I’m glad ye spoke, Danny,” cried Long Jack, who had been casting round in search of amusement. “I’d dean forgot we’d a passenger under that T-wharf hat. There’s no idleness for thim that don’t know their ropes. Pass him along, Tom Platt, an’ we’ll larn him.”

“‘Tain’t my trick this time,” grinned Dan. “You’ve got to go it alone. Dad learned me with a rope’s end.”

For an hour Long Jack walked his prey up and down, teaching, as he said, “things at the sea that ivry man must know, blind, dhrunk, or asleep.” There is not much gear to a seventy-ton schooner with a stump-foremast, but Long Jack had a gift of expression. When he wished to draw Harvey’s attention to the peak-halyards, he dug his knuckles into the back of the boy’s neck and kept him at gaze for half a minute. He emphasized the difference between fore and aft generally by rubbing Harvey’s nose along a few feet of the boom, and the lead of each rope was fixed in Harvey’s mind by the end of the rope itself.

The lesson would have been easier had the deck been at all free; but there appeared to be a place on it for everything and anything except a man. Forward lay the windlass and its tackle, with the chain and hemp cables, all very unpleasant to trip over; the foc’sle stovepipe, and the gurry-butts by the foc’sle hatch to hold the fish-livers. Aft of these the foreboom and booby of the main-hatch took all the space that was not needed for the pumps and dressing-pens. Then came the nests of dories lashed to ring-bolts by the quarterdeck; the house, with tubs and oddments lashed all around it; and, last, the sixty-foot main-boom in its crutch, splitting things length-wise, to duck and dodge under every time.

Tom Platt, of course, could not keep his oar out of the business, but ranged alongside with enormous and unnecessary descriptions of sails and spars on the old Ohio.

“Niver mind fwhat he says; attind to me, Innocince. Tom Platt, this bally-hoo’s not the Ohio, an’ you’re mixing the bhoy bad.”

“He’ll be ruined for life, beginnin’ on a fore-an’-after this way,” Tom Platt pleaded. “Give him a chance to