Captains Courageous

by Rudyard Kipling

  “Jiminy Christmas! Thet gives me the blue creevles,” said Dan. “What in thunder is it?”

  “The song of Fin McCoul,” said the cook, “when he wass going to Norway.” His English was not thick, but all clear-cut, as though it came from a phonograph.

  “Faith, I’ve been to Norway, but I didn’t make that unwholesim noise. ’Tis like some of the old songs, though,” said Long Jack, sighing.

  “Don’t let’s hev another ’thout somethin’ between,” said Dan; and the accordion struck up a rattling, catchy tune that ended:

  “It’s six an’ twenty Sundays sence las’we saw the land,

  With fifteen hunder quintal,

  An’ fifteen hunder quintal,

  ’Teen hunder toppin’ quintal,

  ’Twix’ old ’Queereau an’Grand!”

  “Hold on!” roared Tom Platt. “D’ye want to nail the trip, Dan? That’s Jonah sure, ’less you sing it after all our salt’s wet.”

  “No, ’tain’t. Is it, Dad? Not unless you sing the very las’ verse. You can’t learn me anything on Jonahs!”

  “What’s that?” said Harvey. “What’s a Jonah?”

  “A Jonah’s anything that spoils the luck. Sometimes it’s a man—sometimes it’s a boy—or a bucket. I’ve known a splittin’-knife Jonah two trips till we was on to her,” said Tom Platt. “There’s all sorts o’ Jonahs. Jim Bourke was one till he was drowned on Georges. I’d never ship with Jim Bourke, not if I was starvin’. There wuz a green dory on the Ezra Flood. Thet was a Jonah, too, the worst sort o’ Jonah. Drowned four men, she did, an’ used to shine fiery o’ nights in the nest.”

  “And you believe that?” said Harvey, remembering what Tom Platt had said about candles and models. “Haven’t we all got to take what’s served?”

  A mutter of dissent ran round the bunks. “Outboard, yes; inboard, things can happen,” said Disko. “Don’t you go makin’a mock of Jonahs, young feller.”

  “Well, Harve ain’t no Jonah. Day after we catched him,” Dan cut in, “we had a toppin’ good catch.”

  The cook threw up his head and laughed suddenly—a queer, thin laugh. He was a most disconcerting nigger.

  “Murder!” said Long Jack. “Don’t do that again, doctor. We ain’t used to ut.”

  “What’s wrong?” said Dan. “Ain’t he our mascot, and didn’t they strike on good after we’d struck him?”

  “Oh! yess,” said the cook. “I know that, but the catch iss not finish yet.”

  “He ain’t goin’ to do us any harm,” said Dan, hotly. “Where are ye hintin’ an’ edgin’ to? He’s all right.”

  “No harm. No. But one day he will be your master, Danny.”

  “That all?” said Dan, placidly. “He wun’t—not by a jugful.”

  “Master!” said the cook, pointing to Harvey. “Man!” and he pointed to Dan.

  “That’s news. Haow soon?” said Dan, with a laugh.

  “In some years, and I shall see it. Master and man—man and master.”

  “How in thunder d’ye work that out?” said Tom Platt.

  “In my head, where I can see.”

  “Haow?” This from all the others at once.

  “I do not know, but so it will be.” He dropped his head, and went on peeling the potatoes, and not another word could they get out of him.

  “Well,” said Dan, “a heap o’ things’ll hev to come abaout ’fore Harve’s any master o’mine; but I’m glad the doctor ain’t choosen to mark him for a Jonah. Now, I mistrust Uncle Salters fer the Jonerest Jonah in the Fleet regardin’ his own special luck. Dunno ef it’s spreadin’ same’s smallpox. He ought to be on the Carrie Pitman. That boat’s her own Jonah, sure—crews an’ gear made no differ to her driftin’. Jiminy Christmas! She’ll etch loose in a flat ca’am.”

  “We’re well clear o’ the Fleet, anyway,” said Disko. “Carrie Pitman an’ all.” There was a rapping on the deck.

  “Uncle Salters has catched his luck,” said Dan as his father departed.

  “It’s blown clear,” Disko cried, and all the foc’sle tumbled up for a bit of fresh air. The fog had gone, but a sullen sea ran in great rollers behind it. The We’re Here slid, as it were, into long, sunk avenues and ditches which felt quite sheltered and home-like if they would only stay still; but they changed without rest or mercy, and flung up the schooner to crown one peak of a thousand gray hills, while the wind hooted through her rigging as she zigzagged down the slopes. Far away a sea would burst into a sheet of foam, and the others would follow suit as at a signal, till Harvey’s eyes swam with the vision of interlacing whites and grays. Four or five Mother Carey’s chickens stormed round in circles, shrieking as they swept past the bows. A rain-squall or two strayed aimlessly over the hopeless waste, ran down wind and back again, and melted away.

  “Seems to me I saw somethin’ flicker jest naow over yonder,” said Uncle Salters, pointing to the northeast.

  “Can’t be any of the fleet,” said Disko, peering under his eyebrows, a hand on the foc’sle gangway as the solid bows hatcheted into the troughs. “Sea’s oilin’ over dretful fast. Danny, don’t you want to skip up a piece an’ see how aour trawl-buoy lays?”

  Danny, in his big boots, trotted rather than climbed up the main rigging (this consumed Harvey with envy), hitched himself around the reeling cross-trees, and let his eye rove till it caught the tiny black buoy-flag on the shoulder of a mile-away swell.

  “She’s all right,” he hailed. “Sail O! Dead to the no’th’ard, comin’ down like smoke! Schooner she be, too.”

  They waited yet another half-hour, the sky clearing in patches, with a flicker of sickly sun from time to time that made patches of olive-green water. Then a stump-foremast lifted, ducked, and disappeared, to be followed on the next wave by a high stern with old-fashioned wooden snail’s-horn davits. The snails were red-tanned.

  “Frenchmen!” shouted Dan. “No, ’tain’t, neither. Da-ad!”

  “That’s no French,” said Disko. “Salters, your blame luck holds tighter’n a screw in a keg-head.”

  “I’ve eyes. It’s Uncle Abishai.”

  “You can’t nowise tell fer sure.”

  “The head-king of all Jonahs,” groaned Tom Platt. “Oh, Salters, Salters, why wasn’t you abed an’ asleep?”

  “How could I tell?” said poor Salters, as the schooner swung up.

  She might have been the very Flying Dutchman, so foul, draggled, and unkempt was every rope and stick aboard. Her old-style quarterdeck was some four five feet high, and her rigging flew knotted and tangled like weed at a wharf-end. She was running before the wind—yawing frightfully—her staysail let down to act as a sort of extra foresail,—“scandalized,” they call it,—and her foreboom guyed out over the side. Her bowsprit cocked up like an old-fashioned frigate’s; her jib-boom had been fished and spliced and nailed and clamped beyond further repair; and as she hove herself forward, and sat down on her broad tail, she looked for all the world like a blouzy, frouzy, bad old woman sneering at a decent girl.

  “That’s Abishai,” said Salters. “Full o’ gin an’ Judique men, an’ the judgments o’ Providence layin’ fer him an’ never takin’ good holt. He’s run in to bait, Miquelon way.”

  “He’ll run her under,” said Long Jack. “That’s no rig fer this weather.”

  “Not he, ’r he’d’a done it long ago,” Disko replied. “Looks ’s if he cal’lated to run us under. Ain’t she daown by the head more ’n natural, Tom Platt?”

  “Ef it’s his style o’ loadin’ her she ain’t safe,” said the sailor slowly. “Ef she’s spewed her oakum he’d better git to his pumps mighty quick.”

  The creature threshed up, wore round with a clatter and rattle, and lay head to wind within ear-shot.

  A gray-beard wagged over the bulwark, and a thick voice yelled something Harvey could not understand. But Disko’s face darkened. “He’d resk every stick he hez to carry bad news. Says we’re in fer a shift o’ wind. He’s in fer worse. Abishai! Abis
hai!” He waved his arm up and down with the gesture of a man at the pumps, and pointed forward. The crew mocked him and laughed.

  “Jounce ye, an’ strip ye an’ trip ye!” yelled Uncle Abishai. “A livin’ gale—a livin’gale. Yah! Cast up fer your last trip, all you Gloucester haddocks. You won’t see Gloucester no more, no more!”

  “Crazy full—as usual,” said Tom Platt. “Wish he hadn’t spied us, though.”

  She drifted out of hearing while the gray-head yelled something about a dance at the Bay of Bulls and a dead man in the foc’sle. Harvey shuddered. He had seen the sloven tilled decks and the savage-eyed crew.

  “An’ that’s a fine little floatin’ hell fer her draught,” said Long Jack. “I wondher what mischief he’s been at ashore.”

  “He’s a trawler,” Dan explained to Harvey, “an’ he runs in fer bait all along the coast. Oh, no, not home, he don’t go. He deals along the south an’ east shore up yonder.” He nodded in the direction of the pitiless Newfoundland beaches. “Dad won’t never take me ashore there. They’re a mighty tough crowd—an’ Abishai’s the toughest. You saw his boat? Well, she’s nigh seventy year old, they say; the last o’the old Marblehead heel-tappers. They don’t make them quarterdecks any more. Abishai don’t use Marblehead, though. He ain’t wanted there. He jes’ drif’s araound, in debt, trawlin’ an’ cussin’ like you’ve heard. Bin a Jonah fer years an’ years, he hez. ’Gits liquor frum the Feecamp boats fer makin’ spells an’ selling winds an’ such truck. Crazy, I guess.”

  “’Twon’t be any use underrunnin’ the trawl to-night,” said Tom Platt, with quiet despair. “He come alongside special to cuss us. I’d give my wage an’ share to see him at the gangway o’ the old Ohio ’fore we quit floggin’. Jest abaout six dozen, an’ Sam Mocatta layin’ ’em on criss-cross!”

  The dishevelled “heel-tapper” danced drunkenly down wind, and all eyes followed her. Suddenly the cook cried in his phonograph voice: “It wass his own death made him speak so! He iss fey—fey, I tell you! Look!” She sailed into a patch of watery sunshine three or four miles distant. The patch dulled and faded out, and even as the light passed so did the schooner. She dropped into a hollow and—was not.

  “Run under, by the Great Hook-Block!” shouted Disko, jumping aft. “Drunk or sober, we’ve got to help ’em. Heave short and break her out! Smart!”

  Harvey was thrown on the deck by the shock that followed the setting of the jib and foresail, for they hove short on the cable, and to save time, jerked the anchor bodily from the bottom, heaving in as they moved away. This is a bit of brute force seldom resorted to except in matters of life and death, and the little We’re Here complained like a human. They ran down to where Abishai’s craft had vanished; found two or three trawltubs, a gin-bottle, and a stove-in dory, but nothing more. “Let ’em go,” said Disko, though no one had hinted at picking them up. “I wouldn’t hev a match that belonged to Abishai aboard. Guess she run clear under. Must ha’ been spewin’ her oakum fer a week, an’ they never thought to pump her. That’s one more boat gone along o’ leavin’ port all hands drunk.”

  “Glory be!” said Long Jack. “We’d ha’ been obliged to help ’em if they was top o’ water.”

  “’Thinkin’ o’ that myself,” said Tom Platt.

  “Fey! Fey!” said the cook, rolling his eyes. “He haas taken his own luck with him.”

  “Ver’ good thing, I think, to tell the Fleet when we see. Eh, wha-at?” said Manuel. “If you runna that way before the wind, and she work open her seams——” He threw out his hands with an indescribable gesture, while Penn sat down on the house and sobbed at the sheer horror and pity of it all. Harvey could not realize that he had seen death on the open waters, but he felt very sick.

  Then Dan went up the cross-trees, and Disko steered them back to within sight of their own trawl-buoys just before the fog blanketed the sea once again.

  “We go mighty quick hereabouts when we do go,” was all he said to Harvey. “You think on that fer a spell, young feller. That was liquor.”

  After dinner it was calm enough to fish from the decks,—Penn and Uncle Salters were very zealous this time,—and the catch was large and large fish.

  “Abishai has shorely took his luck with him,” said Salters. “The wind hain’t backed ner riz ner nothin’. How abaout the trawl? I despise superstition, anyway.”

  Tom Platt insisted that they had much better haul the thing and make a new berth. But the cook said: “The luck iss in two pieces. You will find it so when you look. I know.” This so tickled Long Jack that he overbore Tom Platt and the two went out together.

  Underrunning a trawl means pulling it in on one side of the dory, picking off the fish, rebaiting the hooks, and passing them back to the sea again—something like pinning and unpinning linen on a wash-line. It is a lengthy business and rather dangerous, for the long, sagging line may twitch a boat under in a flash. But when they heard, “And naow to thee, O Capting,” booming out of the fog, the crew of the We’re Here took heart. The dory swirled alongside well loaded, Tom Platt yelling for Manuel to act as relief-boat.

  “The luck’s cut square in two pieces,” said Long Jack, forking in the fish, while Harvey stood open-mouthed at the skill with which the plunging dory was saved from destruction. “One half was jest punkins. Tom Platt wanted to haul her an’ ha’ done wid ut; but I said, ‘I’ll back the doctor that has the second sight,’ an’ the other half come up sagging full o’ big uns. Hurry, Man’nle, an’ bring’s a tub o’ bait. There’s luck afloat to-night.”

  The fish bit at the newly baited hooks from which their brethren had just been taken, and Tom Platt and Long Jack moved methodically up and down the length of the trawl, the boat’s nose surging under the wet line of hooks, stripping the sea-cucumbers that they called pumpkins, slatting off the fresh-caught cod against the gunwale, rebaiting, and loading Manuel’s dory till dusk.

  “I’ll take no risks,” said Disko then—“not with him floatin’ around so near. Abishai won’t sink fer a week. Heave in the dories an’ we’ll dress daown after supper.”

  That was a mighty dressing-down, attended by three or four blowing grampuses. It lasted till nine o’clock, and Disko was thrice heard to chuckle as Harvey pitched the split fish into the hold.

  “Say, you’re haulin’ ahead dretful fast,” said Dan, when they ground the knives after the men had turned in. “There’s somethin’ of a sea to-night, an’ I hain’t heard you make no remarks on it.”

  “Too busy,” Harvey replied, testing a blade’s edge. “Come to think of it, she is a high-kicker.”

  The little schooner was gambolling all around her anchor among the silver-tipped waves. Backing with a start of affected surprise at the sight of the strained cable, she pounced on it like a kitten, while the spray of her descent burst through the hawse-holes with the report of a gun. Shaking her head, she would say: “Well, I’m sorry I can’t stay any longer with you. I’m going North,” and would sidle off, halting suddenly with a dramatic rattle of her rigging. “As I was just going to observe,” she would begin, as gravely as a drunken man addressing a lamp-post. The rest of the sentence (she acted her words in dumb-show, of course) was lost in a fit of the fidgets, when she behaved like a puppy chewing a string, a clumsy woman in a side-saddle, a hen with her head cut off, or a cow stung by a hornet, exactly as the whims of the sea took her.

  “See her sayin’ her piece. She’s Patrick Henry naow,” said Dan.

  She swung sideways on a roller, and gesticulated with her jib-boom from port to starboard.

  “But—ez—fer me, give me liberty—er give me—death!”

  Wop! She sat down in the moon-path on the water, courtesying with a flourish of pride impressive enough had not the wheel-gear sniggered mockingly in its box.

  Harvey laughed aloud. “Why, it’s just as if she was alive,” he said.

  “She’s as stiddy as a haouse an’ as dry as a herrin’,” said Dan enthusiastically, as he was slung across
the deck in a batter of spray. “Fends ’em off an’ fends ’em off, an’ ‘Don’t ye come anigh me,’ she sez. Look at her—jest look at her! Sakes! You should see one o’ them toothpicks histin’ up her anchor on her spike outer fifteen-fathom water.”

  “What’s a toothpick, Dan?”

  “Them new haddockers an’ herrin’-boats. Fine’s a yacht forward, with yacht sterns to ’em, an’ spike bowsprits, an’ a haouse that ’u’d take our hold. I’ve heard that Burgess himself he made the models fer three or four of ’em. Dad’s sot agin ’em on account o’ their pitchin’ an’ joltin’, but there’s heaps o’ money in ’em. Dad can find fish, but he ain’t no ways progressive—he don’t go with the march o’the times. They’re chock-full o’ labour-savin’ jigs an’ sech all. ’Ever seed the Elector o’ Gloucester? She’s a daisy, ef she is a toothpick.”

  “What do they cost, Dan?”

  “Hills o’ dollars. Fifteen thousand, p’haps; more, mebbe. There’s gold-leaf an’ everything you kin think of.” Then to himself, half under his breath, “Guess I’d call her Hattie S., too.”

  CHAPTER 5

  THAT WAS the first of many talks with Dan, who told Harvey why he would transfer his dory’s name to the imaginary Burgess-modelled haddocker. Harvey heard a good deal about the real Hattie at Gloucester; saw a lock of her hair—which Dan, finding fair words of no avail, had “hooked” as she sat in front of him at school that winter—and a photograph. Hattie was about fourteen years old, with an awful contempt for boys, and had been trampling on Dan’s heart through the winter. All this was revealed under oath of solemn secrecy on moonlit decks, in the dead dark, or in choking fog; the whining wheel behind them, the climbing deck before, and without, the unresting, clamorous sea. Once, of course, as the boys came to know each other, there was a fight, which raged from bow to stern till Penn came up and separated them, but promised not to tell Disko, who thought fighting on watch rather worse than sleeping. Harvey was no match for Dan physically, but it says a great deal for his new training that he took his defeat and did not try to get even with his conqueror by underhand methods.