Captains Courageous (Bantam Classic)

by Rudyard Kipling

  “Guess ’twon’t hurt us any to be warmed up,” said Dan, shivering under his oilskins, and they rowed on into the heart of a white fog, which, as usual, dropped on them without warning.

  “There’s too much blame tide hereabouts to trust to your instinks,” he said. “Heave over the anchor, Harve, and we’ll fish a piece till the thing lifts. Bend on your biggest lead. Three pound ain’t any too much in this water. See how she’s tightened on her rodin’ already.”

  There was quite a little bubble at the bows, where some irresponsible Bank current held the dory full stretch on her rope; but they could not see a boat’s length in any direction. Harvey turned up his collar and bunched himself over his reel with the air of a wearied navigator. Fog had no special terrors for him now. They fished a while in silence, and found the cod struck on well. Then Dan drew the sheath-knife and tested the edge of it on the gunwale.

  “That’s a daisy,” said Harvey. “How did you get it so cheap?”

  “On account o’ their blame Cath’lic superstitions,” said Dan, jabbing with the bright blade. “They don’t fancy takin’ iron from off a dead man, so to speak. ’See them Arichat Frenchmen step back when I bid?”

  “But an auction ain’t taking anythink off a dead man. It’s business.”

  “We know it ain’t, but there’s no goin’ in the teeth o’ superstition. That’s one o’ the advantages o’ livin’ in a progressive country.” And Dan began whistling:

  “Oh, Double Thatcher, how are you?

  Now Eastern Point comes inter view.

  The girls an’ boys we soon shall see,

  At anchor off Cape Ann!”

  “Why didn’t that Eastport man bid, then? He bought his boots. Ain’t Maine progressive?”

  “Maine? Pshaw! They don’t know enough, or they hain’t got money enough, to paint their haouses in Maine. I’ve seen ’em. The Eastport man he told me that the knife had been used—so the French captain told him—used up on the French coast last year.”

  “Cut a man? Heave’s the muckle.” Harvey hauled in his fish, rebaited, and threw over.

  “Killed him! Course, when I heard that I was keener’n ever to get it.”

  “Christmas! I didn’t know it,” said Harvey, turning round.

  “I’ll give you a dollar for it when I—get my wages. Say, I’ll give you two dollars.”

  “Honest? D’you like it as much as all that?” said Dan, flushing. “Well, to tell the truth, I kinder got it for you—to give; but I didn’t let on till I saw how you’d take it. It’s yours and welcome, Harve, because we’re dory-mates, and so on and so forth, an’ so followin’. Catch a-holt!”

  He held it out, belt and all.

  “But look at here. Dan, I don’t see——”

  “Take it. ’Tain’t no use to me. I wish you to hev it.”

  The temptation was irresistible. “Dan, you’re a white man,” said Harvey. “I’ll keep it as long as I live.”

  “That’s good hearin’,” said Dan, with a pleasant laugh; and then, anxious to change the subject: “’Look ’s if your line was fast to somethin’.”

  “Fouled, I guess,” said Harve, tugging. Before he pulled up he fastened the belt round him, and with deep delight heard the tip of the sheath click on the thwart. “Concern the thing!” he cried. “She acts as though she were on strawberry-bottom. It’s all sand here, ain’t it?”

  Dan reached over and gave a judgmatic tweak. “Holibut’ll act that way ’f he’s sulky. Thet’s no strawberry-bottom. Yank her once or twice. She gives, sure. Guess we’d better haul up an’ make certain.”

  They pulled together, making fast at each turn on the cleats, and the hidden weight rose sluggishly.

  “Prize, oh! Haul!” shouted Dan, but the shout ended in a shrill, double shriek of horror, for out of the sea came—the body of the dead Frenchman buried two days before! The hook had caught him under the right armpit, and he swayed, erect and horrible, head and shoulders above water. His arms were tied to his side, and—he had no face. The boys fell over each other in a heap at the bottom of the dory, and there they lay while the thing bobbed alongside, held on the shortened line.

  “The tide—the tide brought him!” said Harvey with quivering lips, as he fumbled at the clasp of the belt.

  “Oh, Lord! Oh, Harve!” groaned Dan, “be quick. He’s come for it. Let him have it. Take it off.”

  “I don’t want it! I don’t want it!” cried Harvey. “I can’t find the bu-buckle.”

  “Quick, Harve! He’s on your line!”

  Harvey sat up to unfasten the belt, facing the head that had no face under its streaming hair. “He’s fast still,” he whispered to Dan, who slipped out his knife and cut the line, as Harvey flung the belt far overside. The body shot down with a plop, and Dan cautiously rose to his knees, whiter than the fog.

  “He come for it. He come for it. I’ve seen a stale one hauled up on a trawl and I didn’t much care, but he come to us special.”

  “I wish—I wish I hadn’t taken the knife. Then he’d have come on your line.”

  “Dunno as thet would ha’ made any differ. We’re both scared out o’ ten years’ growth. Oh, Harve, did ye see his head?”

  “Did I? I’ll never forget it. But look at here, Dan; it couldn’t have been meant. It was only the tide.”

  “Tide! He come for it, Harve. Why, they sunk him six miles to south’ard o’ the Fleet, an’ we’re two miles from where she’s lyin’ now. They told me he was weighted with a fathom an’ a half o’ chain-cable.”

  “’Wonder what he did with the knife—up on the French coast?”

  “Something bad. ’Guess he’s bound to take it with him to the Judgment, an’ so——What are you doin’ with the fish?”

  “Heaving ’em overboard,” said Harvey.

  “What for? We sha’n’t eat ’em.”

  “I don’t care. I had to look at his face while I was takin’ the belt off. You can keep your catch if you like. I’ve no use for mine.”

  Dan said nothing, but threw his fish over again.

  “Guess it’s best to be on the safe side,” he murmured at last. “I’d give a month’s pay if this fog ’u’d lift. Things go abaout in a fog that ye don’t see in clear weather—yo-hoes an’ hollerers and such like. I’m sorter relieved he come the way he did instid o’ walkin’. He might ha’ walked.”

  “Do-on’t, Dan! We’re right on top of him now. ’Wish I was safe aboard, bein’ pounded by Uncle Salters.”

  “They’ll be lookin’ fer us in a little. Gimme the tooter.” Dan took the tin dinner-horn, but paused before he blew.

  “Go on,” said Harvey. “I don’t want to stay here all night.”

  “Question is, haow he’d take it. There was a man frum down the coast told me once he was in a schooner where they darsen’t ever blow a horn to the dories, becaze the skipper—not the man he was with, but a captain that had run her five years before—he’d drowned a boy alongside in a drunk fit; an’ ever after, that boy he’d row alongside too and shout, ‘Dory! dory!’ with the rest.”

  “Dory! dory!” a muffled voice cried through the fog. They cowered again, and the horn dropped from Dan’s hand.

  “Hold on!” cried Harvey; “it’s the cook.”

  “Dunno what made me think o’ thet fool tale, either,” said Dan. “It’s the doctor, sure enough.”

  “Dan! Danny! Oooh, Dan! Harve! Harvey! Oooh, Haarveee!”

  “We’re here,” sung both boys together. They heard oars, but could see nothing till the cook, shining and dripping, rowed into them.

  “What iss happened?” said he. “You will be beaten at home.”

  “Thet’s what we want. Thet’s what we’re sufferin’ for,” said Dan. “Anything homey’s good enough fer us. We’ve had kinder depressin’ company.” As the cook passed them a line, Dan told him the tale.

  “Yess! He come for hiss knife,” was all he said at the end.

  Never had the little rocking We’re Here looked
so deliciously home-like as when the cook, born and bred in fogs, rowed them back to her. There was a warm glow of light from the cabin and a satisfying smell of food forward, and it was heavenly to hear Disko and the others, all quite alive and solid, leaning over the rail and promising them a first-class pounding. But the cook was a black master of strategy. He did not get the dories aboard till he had given the more striking points of the tale, explaining as he backed and bumped round the counter how Harvey was the mascot to destroy any possible bad luck. So the boys came overside as rather uncanny heroes, and every one asked them questions instead of pounding them for making trouble. Little Penn delivered quite a speech on the folly of superstitions; but public opinion was against him and in favour of Long Jack, who told the most excruciating ghost-stories, till nearly midnight. Under that influence no one except Salters and Penn said anything about “idolatry,” when the cook put a lighted candle, a cake of flour and water, and a pinch of salt on a shingle, and floated them out astern to keep the Frenchman quiet in case he was still restless. Dan lit the candle because he had bought the belt, and the cook grunted and muttered charms as long as he could see the ducking point of flame.

  Said Harvey to Dan, as they turned in after watch: “How about progress and Catholic superstitions?”

  “Huh! I guess I’m as enlightened and progressive as the next man, but when it comes to a dead St. Malo deck-hand scarin’ a couple o’ pore boys stiff fer the sake of a thirty-cent knife, why, then, the cook can take hold fer all o’ me. I mistrust furriners, livin’ or dead.”

  Next morning all, except the cook, were rather ashamed of the ceremonies, and went to work double tides, speaking gruffly to one another.

  The We’re Here was racing neck and neck for her last few loads against the Parry Norman; and so close was the struggle that the Fleet took side and betted tobacco. All hands worked at the lines or dressing-down till they fell asleep where they stood—beginning before dawn and ending when it was too dark to see. They even used the cook as pitcher, and turned Harvey into the hold to pass salt, while Dan helped to dress down. Luckily a Parry Norman man sprained his ankle falling down the foc’sle, and the We’re Heres gained. Harvey could not see how one more fish could be crammed into her, but Disko and Tom Platt stowed and stowed, and planked the mass down with big stones from the ballast, and there was always “jest another day’s work.” Disko did not tell them when all the salt was wetted. He rolled to the lazarette aft the cabin and began hauling out the big mainsail. This was at ten in the morning. The riding-sail was down and the main- and topsail were up by noon, and dories came alongside with letters for home, envying their good fortune. At last she cleared decks, hoisted her flag,—as is the right of the first boat off the Banks,—up-anchored, and began to move. Disko pretended that he wished to accommodate folk who had not sent in their mail, and so worked her gracefully in and out among the schooners. In reality, that was his little triumphant procession, and for the fifth year running it showed what kind of mariner he was. Dan’s accordion and Tom Platt’s fiddle supplied the music of the magic verse you must not sing till all the salt is wet:

  “Hih! Yih! Yoho! Send your letters raound!

  All our salt is wetted, an’the anchor’s off the graound!

  Bend, oh, bend your mains’l, we’re back to

  Yankeeland—

  With fifteen hunder’ quintal,

  An’ fifteen hunder’ quintal,

  ’Teen hunder’ toppin’ quintal,

  ’Twix’old ’Queereau an’Grand.”

  The last letters pitched on deck wrapped round pieces of coal, and the Gloucester men shouted messages to their wives and womenfolks and owners, while the We’re Here finished the musical ride through the Fleet, her headsails quivering like a man’s hand when he raises it to say good-by.

  Harvey very soon discovered that the We’re Here, with her riding-sail, strolling from berth to berth, and the We’re Here headed west by south under home canvas, were two very different boats. There was a bite and kick to the wheel even in “boy’s” weather; he could feel the dead weight in the hold flung forward mightily across the surges, and the streaming line of bubbles overside made his eyes dizzy.

  Disko kept them busy fiddling with the sails; and when those were flattened like a racing yacht’s, Dan had to wait on the big topsail, which was put over by hand every time she went about. In spare moments they pumped, for the packed fish dripped brine, which does not improve a cargo. But since there was no fishing, Harvey had time to look at the sea from another point of view. The low-sided schooner was naturally on most intimate terms with her surroundings. They saw little of the horizon save when she topped a swell; and usually she was elbowing, fidgeting, and coaxing her steadfast way through gray, gray-blue, or black hollows laced across and across with streaks of shivering foam; or rubbing herself caressingly along the flank of some bigger water-hill. It was as if she said: “You wouldn’t hurt me, surely? I’m only the little We’re Here.” Then she would slide away chuckling softly to herself till she was brought up by some fresh obstacle. The dullest of folk cannot see this kind of thing hour after hour through long days without noticing it; and Harvey, being anything but dull, began to comprehend and enjoy the dry chorus of wave-tops turning over with a sound of incessant tearing; the hurry of the winds working across open spaces and herding the purple-blue cloud-shadows; the splendid upheaval of the red sunrise; the folding and packing away of the morning mists, wall after wall withdrawn across the white floors; the salty glare and blaze of noon; the kiss of rain falling over thousands of dead, flat square miles; the chilly blackening of everything at the day’s end; and the million wrinkles of the sea under the moonlight, when the jib-boom solemnly poked at the low stars, and Harvey went down to get a doughnut from the cook.

  But the best fun was when the boys were put on the wheel together, Tom Platt within hail, and she cuddled her lee-rail down to the crashing blue, and kept a little home-made rainbow arching unbroken over her windlass. Then the jaws of the booms whined against the masts, and the sheets creaked, and the sails filled with roaring; and when she slid into a hollow she trampled like a woman tripped in her own silk dress, and came out, her jib wet half-way up, yearning and peering for the tall twin-lights of Thatcher’s Island.

  They left the cold gray of the Bank sea, saw the lumber-ships making for Quebec by the Straits of St. Lawrence, with the Jersey salt-brigs from Spain and Sicily; found a friendly northeaster off Artimon Bank that drove them within view of the East light of Sable Island,—a sight Disko did not linger over,—and stayed with them past Western and Le Have, to the northern fringe of Georges. From there they picked up the deeper water, and let her go merrily.

  “Hattie’s pulling on the string,” Dan confided to Harvey.

  “Hattie an’ Ma. Next Sunday you’ll be hirin’ a boy to throw water on the windows to make ye go to sleep. ’Guess you’ll keep with us till your folks come. Do you know the best of gettin’ ashore again?”

  “Hot bath?” said Harvey. His eyebrows were all white with dried spray.

  “That’s good, but a night-shirt’s better. I’ve been dreamin’ o’ night-shirts ever since we bent our mainsail. Ye can wiggle your toes then. Ma’ll hev a new one fer me, all washed soft. It’s home, Harve. It’s home! Ye can sense it in the air. We’re runnin’ into the aidge of a hot wave naow, an’ I can smell the bayberries. Wonder if we’ll get in fer supper. Port a trifle.”

  The hesitating sails flapped and lurched in the close air as the deep smoothed out, blue and oily, round them. When they whistled for a wind only the rain came in spiky rods, bubbling and drumming, and behind the rain the thunder and the lightning of mid-August. They lay on the deck with bare feet and arms, telling one another what they would order at their first meal ashore; for now the land was in plain sight. A Gloucester swordfish-boat drifted alongside, a man in the little pulpit on the bowsprit flourished his harpoon, his bare head plastered down with the wet. “And all’s well!” he sang cheer
ily, as though he were watch on a big liner. “Wouverman’s waiting fer you, Disko. What’s the news o’ the Fleet?”

  Disko shouted it and passed on, while the wild summer storm pounded overhead and the lightning flickered along the capes from four different quarters at once. It gave the low circle of hills round Gloucester Harbor, Ten Pound Island, the fish-sheds, with the broken line of house-roofs, and each spar and buoy on the water, in blinding photographs that came and went a dozen times to the minute as the We’re Here crawled in on half-flood, and the whistling-buoy moaned and mourned behind her. Then the storm died out in long, separated, vicious dags of blue-white flame, followed by a single roar like the roar of a mortar-battery, and the shaken air tingled under the stars as it got back to silence.

  “The flag, the flag!” said Disko, suddenly, pointing upward.

  “What is ut?” said Long Jack.

  “Otto! Ha’af mast. They can see us from shore now.”

  “I’d clean forgot. He’s no folk to Gloucester, has he?”

  “Girl he was goin’ to be married to this fall.”

  “Mary pity her!” said Long Jack, and lowered the little flag half-mast for the sake of Otto, swept overboard in a gale off Le Have three months before.

  Disko wiped the wet from his eyes and led the We’re Here to Wouverman’s wharf, giving his orders in whispers, while she swung round moored tugs and night-watchmen hailed her from the ends of inky-black piers. Over and above the darkness and the mystery of the procession, Harvey could feel the land close round him once more, with all its thousands of people asleep, and the smell of earth after rain, and the familiar noise of a switching-engine coughing to herself in a freight-yard; and all those things made his heart beat and his throat dry up as he stood by the foresheet. They heard the anchor-watch snoring on a lighthouse-tug, nosed into a pocket of darkness where a lantern glimmered on either side; somebody waked with a grunt, threw them a rope, and they made fast to a silent wharf flanked with great iron-roofed sheds full of warm emptiness, and lay there without a sound.