Captains Courageous (Bantam Classic)

by Rudyard Kipling

  “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 ’twuz. 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 Boller. 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 to-morrer, Dad, won’t we? They’re all slippin’ over from the shaol o’ ’Queereau.”

  “You won’t see many boats to-morrow, 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 Beaufort Harbour, 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 clean 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 lengthwise, 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 know a few leadin’ principles. Sailin’s an art, Harvey, as I’d show you if I had ye in the fore-top o’ the——”

  “I know ut. Ye’d talk him dead an’ cowld. Silince, Tom Platt! Now, after all I’ve said, how’d you reef the foresail, Harve? Take your time answerin’.”

  “Haul that in,” said Harvey, pointing to leeward.

  “Fwhat? The North Atlantuc?”

  “No, the boom. Then run that rope you showed me back there——”

  “That’s no way,” Tom Platt burst in.

  “Quiet! He’s larnin’, an’ has not the names good yet. Go on, Harve.”

  “Oh, it’s the reef-pennant. I’d hook the tackle on to the reef-pennant, and then let down——”

  “Lower the sail, child! Lower!” said Tom Platt, in a professional agony.

  “Lower the throat and peak halyards,” Harvey went on. Those names stuck in his head.

  “Lay your hand on thim,” said Long Jack.

  Harvey obeyed. “Lower till that rope-loop—on the after-leach—kris—no, it’s cringle—till the cringle was down on the boom. Then I’d tie her up the way you said, and then I’d hoist up the peak and throat halyards again.”

  “You’ve forgot to pass the tack-earing, but wid time and help ye’ll larn. There’s good and just reason for ivry rope aboard, or else ’twould be overboard. D’ye follow me? ’Tis dollars an’ cents I’m puttin’ into your pocket, ye skinny little supercargo, so that fwhin ye’ve filled out ye can ship from Boston to Cuba an’ tell thim Long Jack larned you. Now I’ll chase ye around a piece, callin’ the ropes, an’ you’ll lay your hand on thim as I call.”

  He began, and Harvey, who was feeling rather tired, walked slowly to the rope named. A rope’s end licked round his ribs, and nearly knocked the breath out of him.

  “When you own a boat,” said Tom Platt, with severe eyes, “you can walk. Till then, take all orders at the run. Once more—to make sure!”

  Harvey was in a glow with the exercise, and this last cut warmed him thoroughly. Now he was a singularly smart boy, the son of a very clever man and a very sensitive woman, with a fine resolute temper that systematic spoiling had nearly turned to mulish obstinacy. He looked at the other men, and saw that even Dan did not smile. It was evidently all in the day’s work, though it hurt abominably; so he swallowed the hint with a gulp and a gasp and a grin. The same smartness that led him to take such advantage of his mother made him very sure that no one on the boat, except, maybe, Penn, would stand the least nonsense. One learns a great deal from a mere tone. Long Jack called over half a dozen ropes, and Harvey danced over the deck like an eel at ebb-tide, one eye on Tom Platt.

  “Ver’ good. Ver’ good don,” said Manuel. “After supper I show you a little schooner I make, with all her ropes. So we shall learn.”

  “Fust-class fer—a passenger,” said Dan. “Dad he’s jest allowed you’ll be wuth your salt maybe ’fore you’re draownded. Thet’s a heap fer Dad. I’ll learn you more our next watch together.”

  “Taller!” grunted Disko, peering through the fog as it smoked over the bows. There was nothing to be seen ten feet beyond the surging jib-boom, while alongside rolled the endless procession of solemn, pale waves whispering and lipping one to the other.

  “Now I’ll learn you something Long Jack can’t,” shouted Tom Platt, as from a locker by the stern he produced a battered deep-sea lead hollowed at one end, smeared the hollow from a saucer full of mutton tallow, and went forward. “I’ll learn you how to fly the Blue Pigeon. Shooo!”

  Disko did something to the wheel that checked the schooner’s way, while Manuel, with Harvey to help (and a proud boy was Harvey), let down the jib in a lump on the boom. The lead sung a deep droning song as Tom Platt whirled it round and round.

  “Go ahead, man,” said Long Jack, impatiently. “We’re not drawin’ twenty-five fut off Fire Island in a fog. There’s no trick to ut.”

  “Don’t be jealous, Galway.” The released lead plopped into the sea far ahead as the schooner surged slowly forward.

  “Soundin’ is a trick, though,” said Dan, “when your dipsey lead’s all the eye you’re like to hev for a week. What d’you make it, Dad?”

  Disko’s face relaxed. His skill and honour were involved in the march he had stolen on the rest of the Fleet, and he had his reputation as a master artist who knew the Banks blindfold. “Sixty, mebbe—ef I’m any judge,” he replied, with a glance at the tiny compass in the window of the house.

  “Sixty,” sung out Tom Platt, hauling in great wet coils.

  The schooner gathered way once more. “Heave!” said Disko, after a quarter of an hour.

  “What d’you make it?” Dan whispered, and he looked at Harvey proudly. But Harvey was too proud of his own performances to be impressed just then.

  “Fifty,” said the father. “I mistrust we’re right over the nick o’ Green Bank on old Sixty-Fifty.”

  “Fifty!” roared Tom Platt. They could scarcely see him through the fog. “She’s bust within a yard—like the shells at Fort Macon.”

  “Bait up, Harve,” said Dan, diving for a line on the reel.

  The schooner seemed to be straying promiscuously through the smother, her headsail banging wildly. The men waited and looked at the boys who began fishing.

  “Heugh!” Dan’s lines twitched on the scored and scarred rail. “Now haow in thunder did Dad know? Help us here, Harve. It’s a big un. Poke-hooked, too.” They hauled together, and landed a goggle-eyed twenty-pound cod. He had taken the bait right into his stomach.

  “Why, he’s all covered with little crabs,” cried Harvey, turning him over.

  “By the great hook-block, they’re lousy already,” said Long Jack. “Disko, ye kape your spare eyes under the keel.”

  Splash went the anchor, and they all heaved over the lines, each man taking his own place at the bulwarks.

  “Are they good to eat?” Harvey panted, as he lugged in another crab-covered cod.

  “Sure. When they’re lousy it’s a sign they’ve all been herdin’ together by the thousand, and when they take the bait that way they’re hungry. Never mind how the bait sets. They’ll bite on the bare hook.”

  “Say, this is great!” Harvey cried, as the fish came in gasping and splashing—nearly all poke-hooked, as Dan had said. “Why can’t we always fish from the boat instead of from the dories?”

  “Allus can, till we begin to dress daown. Efter thet, the heads and offals, �
�u’d scare the fish to Fundy. Boat-fishin’ ain’t reckoned progressive, though, unless ye know as much as Dad knows. Guess we’ll run aout aour trawl to-night. Harder on the back, this, than frum the dory, ain’t it?”

  It was rather back-breaking work, for in a dory the weight of a cod is water-borne till the last minute, and you are, so to speak, abreast of him; but the few feet of a schooner’s freeboard make so much extra dead-hauling, and stooping over the bulwarks cramps the stomach. But it was wild and furious sport so long as it lasted; and a big pile lay aboard when the fish ceased biting.

  “Where’s Penn and Uncle Salters?” Harvey asked, slapping the slime off his oilskins, and reeling up the line in careful imitation of the others.

  “Git ’s coffee and see.”

  Under the yellow glare of the lamp on the pawl-post, the foc’sle table down and opened, utterly unconscious of fish or weather, sat the two men, a checker-board between them, Uncle Salters snarling at Penn’s every move.

  “What’s the matter naow?” said the former, as Harvey, one hand in the leather loop at the head of the ladder, hung shouting to the cook.

  “Big fish and lousy—heaps and heaps,” Harvey replied, quoting Long Jack. “How’s the game?”

  Little Penn’s jaw dropped. “’Tweren’t none o’ his fault,” snapped Uncle Salters. “Penn’s deef.”

  “Checkers, weren’t it?” said Dan, as Harvey staggered aft with the steaming coffee in a tin pail. “That lets us out o’ cleanin’ up to-night. Dad’s a jest man. They’ll have to do it.”

  “An’ two young fellers I know’ll bait up a tub or so o’ trawl, while they’re cleanin’,” said Disko, lashing the wheel to his taste.