Captains Courageous

by Rudyard Kipling

  “I told you,” said Harvey; “I told you.” This was his crowning revenge, and a most ample one.

  Mrs. Cheyne decreed a meal, and that nothing might be lacking to the tale Long Jack told afterwards in his boarding-house, she waited on them herself. Men who are accustomed to eat at tiny tables in howling gales have curiously neat and finished manners; but Mrs. Cheyne, who did not know this, was surprised. She longed to have Manuel for a butler; so silently and easily did he comport himself among the frail glassware and dainty silver. Tom Platt remembered the great days on the Ohio and the manners of foreign potentates who dined with the officers; and Long Jack, being Irish, supplied the small talk till all were at their ease.

  In the We’re Here’s cabin the fathers took stock of each other behind their cigars. Cheyne knew well enough when he dealt with a man to whom he could not offer money; equally well he knew that no money could pay for what Disko had done. He kept his own counsel and waited for an opening.

  “I hevn’t done anything to your boy or fer your boy excep’ make him work a piece an’ learn him how to handle the hog-yoke,” said Disko. “He has twice my boy’s head for figgers.”

  “By the way,” Cheyne answered casually, “what d’you calculate to make of your boy?”

  Disko removed his cigar and waved it comprehensively round the cabin. “Dan’s jest plain boy, an’ he don’t allow me to do any of his thinkin’. He’ll hev this able little packet when I’m laid by. He ain’t noways anxious to quit the business. I know that.”

  “Mmm! ’Ever been West, Mr. Troop?”

  “’Bin’s fer ez Noo York once in a boat. I’ve no use for railroads. No more hez Dan. Salt water’s good enough fer the Troops. I’ve been ’most everywhere—in the nat’ral way, o’ course.”

  “I can give him all the salt water he’s likely to need—till he’s a skipper.”

  “Haow’s that? I thought you wuz a kinder railroad king. Harve told me so when—I was mistook in my jedgments.”

  “We’re all apt to be mistaken. I fancied perhaps you might know I own a line of tea-clippers—San Francisco to Yokohama—six of ’em—iron-built, about seventeen hundred and eighty tons apiece.”

  “Blame that boy! He never told. I’d ha’ listened to that, instid o’ his truck abaout railroads an’ pony-carriages.”

  “He didn’t know.”

  “’Little thing like that slipped his mind, I guess.”

  “No, I only capt—took hold of the ‘Blue M.’ freighters—Morgan and McQuade’s old line—this summer.”

  Disko collapsed where he sat, beside the stove.

  “Great Caesar Almighty! I mistrust I’ve been fooled from one end to the other. Why, Phil Airheart he went from this very town six year back—no, seven—an’ he’s mate on the San José now—twenty-six days was her time out. His sister she’s livin’ here yet, an’ she reads his letters to my woman. An’ you own the ‘Blue M.’ freighters?”

  Cheyne nodded.

  “If I’d known that I’d ha’ jerked the We’re Here back to port all standin’, on the word.”

  “Perhaps that wouldn’t have been so good for Harvey.”

  “Ef I’d only known! Ef he’d only said about the cussed Line, I’d ha’ understood! I’ll never stand on my own jedgments again—never. They’re well-found packets. Phil Airheart he says so.”

  “I’m glad to have a recommend from that quarter. Airheart’s skipper of the San José now. What I was getting at is to know whether you’d lend me Dan for a year or two, and we’ll see if we can’t make a mate of him. Would you trust him to Airheart?”

  “It’s a resk taking a raw boy——”

  “I know a man who did more for me.”

  “That’s diff ’runt. Look at here naow, I ain’t recommendin’ Dan special because he’s my own flesh an’ blood. I know Bank ways ain’t clipper ways, but he hain’t much to learn. Steer he can—no boy better, ef I say it—an’ the rest’s in our blood an’ get; but I could wish he warn’t so cussed weak on navigation.”

  “Airheart will attend to that. He’ll ship as boy for a voyage or two, and then we can put him in the way of doing better. Suppose you take him in hand this winter, and I’ll send for him early in the spring. I know the Pacific’s a long ways off—”

  “Pshaw! We Troops, livin’ an’ dead, are all around the earth an’ the seas thereof.”

  “But I want you to understand—and I mean this—any time you think you’d like to see him, tell me, and I’ll attend to the transportation. ’Twon’t cost you a cent.”

  “Ef you’ll walk a piece with me, we’ll go to my house an’ talk this to my woman. I’ve bin so crazy mistook in all my jedgments, it don’t seem to me this was like to be real.”

  They went over to Troop’s eighteen-hundred-dollar, blue-trimmed white house, with a retired dory full of nasturtiums in the front yard and a shuttered parlour which was a museum of oversea plunder. There sat a large woman, silent and grave, with the dim eyes of those who look long to sea for the return of their beloved. Cheyne addressed himself to her, and she gave consent wearily.

  “We lose one hundred a year from Gloucester only, Mr. Cheyne,” she said—“one hundred boys an’ men; and I’ve come so’s to hate the sea as if ’twuz alive an’ listenin’. God never made it fer humans to anchor on. These packets o’ yours they go straight out, I take it, and straight home again?”

  “As straight as the winds let ’em, and I give a bonus for record passages. Tea don’t improve by being at sea.”

  “When he wuz little he used to play at keeping store, an’ I had hopes he might follow that up. But soon’s he could paddle a dory I knew that were goin’ to be denied me.”

  “They’re square-riggers, Mother; iron-built an’ well found. Remember what Phil’s sister reads you when she gits his letters.”

  “I’ve never known as Phil told lies, but he’s too venturesome (like most of ’em that use the sea). Ef Dan sees fit, Mr. Cheyne, he can go—fer all o’ me.”

  “She jest despises the ocean,” Disko explained, “an’ I—I dunno haow to act polite, I guess, er I’d thank you better.”

  “My father—my own eldest brother—two nephews—an’ my second sister’s man,” she said, dropping her head on her hand. “Would you care fer any one that took all those?”

  Cheyne was relieved when Dan turned up and accepted with more delight than he was able to put into words. Indeed, the offer meant a plain and sure road to all desirable things; but Dan thought most of commanding watch on broad decks, and looking into far-away harbours.

  Mrs. Cheyne had spoken privately to the unaccountable Manuel in the matter of Harvey’s rescue. He seemed to have no desire for money. Pressed hard, he said that he would take five dollars, because he wanted to buy something for a girl. Otherwise—“How shall I take money when I make so easy my eats and smokes? You will giva some if I like or no? Eh, wha-at? Then you shall giva me money, but not that way. You shall giva all you can think.” He introduced her to a snuffy Portuguese priest with a list of semi-destitute widows as long as his cassock. As a strict Unitarian, Mrs. Cheyne could not sympathize with the creed, but she ended by respecting the brown, voluble little man.

  Manuel, faithful son of the Church, appropriated all the blessings showered on her for her charity. “That letta me out,” said he. “I have now ver’ good absolutions for six months”; and he strolled forth to get a handkerchief for the girl of the hour and to break the hearts of all the others.

  Salters went West for a season with Penn, and left no address behind. He had a dread that these millionary people, with wasteful private cars, might take undue interest in his companion. It was better to visit inland relatives till the coast was clear. “Never you be adopted by rich folk, Penn,” he said in the cars, “or I’ll take ’n’ break this checker-board over your head. Ef you forgit your name agin—which is Pratt—you remember you belong with Salters Troop, an’ set down right where you are till I come fer you. Don’t go taggin’ araound af
ter them whose eyes bung out with fatness, accordin’ to Scripcher.”

  CHAPTER 10

  BUT IT was otherwise with the We’re Here’s silent cook, for he came up, his kit in a handkerchief, and boarded the “Constance.” Pay was no particular object, and he did not in the least care where he slept. His business, as revealed to him in dreams, was to follow Harvey for the rest of his days. They tried argument and, at last, persuasion; but there is a difference between one Cape Breton and two Alabama negroes, and the matter was referred to Cheyne by the cook and porter. The millionaire only laughed. He presumed Harvey might need a body-servant some day or other, and was sure that one volunteer was worth five hirelings. Let the man stay, therefore; even though he called himself MacDonald and swore in Gaelic. The car could go back to Boston, where, if he were still of the same mind, they would take him West.

  With the “Constance,” which in his heart of hearts he loathed, departed the last remnant of Cheyne’s millionaire-dom, and he gave himself up to an energetic idleness. This Gloucester was a new town in a new land, and he purposed to “take it in,” as of old he had taken in all the cities from Snohomish to San Diego of that world whence he hailed. They made money along the crooked street which was half wharf and half ship’s store: as a leading professional he wished to learn how the noble game was played. Men said that four out of every five fish-balls served at New England’s Sunday breakfast came from Gloucester, and overwhelmed him with figures in proof—statistics of boats, gear, wharf-frontage, capital invested, salting, packing, factories, insurance, wages, repairs, and profits. He talked with the owners of the large fleets whose skippers were little more than hired men, and whose crews were almost all Swedes or Portuguese. Then he conferred with Disko, one of the few who owned their craft, and compared notes in his vast head. He coiled himself away on chain-cables in marine junk-shops, asking questions with cheerful, unslaked Western curiosity, till all the water-front wanted to know “what in thunder that man was after, anyhow.” He prowled into the Mutual Insurance rooms, and demanded explanations of the mysterious remarks chalked up on the blackboard day by day; and that brought down upon him secretaries of every Fisherman’s Widow and Orphan Aid Society within the city limits. They begged shamelessly, each man anxious to beat the other institution’s record, and Cheyne tugged at his beard and handed them all over to Mrs. Cheyne.

  She was resting in a boarding-house near Eastern Point—a strange establishment, managed, apparently, by the boarders, where the table-cloths were red-and-white-checkered and the population, who seemed to have known one another intimately for years, rose up at midnight to make Welsh rarebits if it felt hungry. On the second morning of her stay Mrs. Cheyne put away her diamond solitaires before she came down to breakfast.

  “They’re most delightful people,” she confided to her husband; “so friendly and simple, too, though they are all Boston, nearly.”

  “That isn’t simpleness, Mama,” he said, looking across the boulders behind the apple-trees where the hammocks were slung. “It’s the other thing, that we—that I haven’t got.”

  “It can’t be,” said Mrs. Cheyne quietly. “There isn’t a woman here owns a dress that cost a hundred dollars. Why, we——”

  “I know it, dear. We have—of course we have. I guess it’s only the style they wear East. Are you having a good time?”

  “I don’t see very much of Harvey; he’s always with you; but I ain’t near as nervous as I was.”

  “I haven’t had such a good time since Willie died. I never rightly understood that I had a son before this. Harve’s got to be a great boy. ’Anything I can fetch you, dear? ’Cushion under your head? Well, we’ll go down to the wharf again and look around.”

  Harvey was his father’s shadow in those days, and the two strolled along side by side, Cheyne using the grades as an excuse for laying his hand on the boy’s square shoulder. It was then that Harvey noticed and admired what had never struck him before—his father’s curious power of getting at the heart of new matters as learned from men in the street.

  “How d’you make ’em tell you everything without opening your head?” demanded the son, as they came out of a rigger’s loft.

  “I’ve dealt with quite a few men in my time, Harve, and one sizes ’em up somehow, I guess. I know something about myself, too.” Then, after a pause, as they sat down on a wharf-edge: “Men can ’most always tell when a man has handled things for himself, and then they treat him as one of themselves.”

  “Same as they treat me down at Wouverman’s wharf. I’m one of the crowd now. Disko has told every one I’ve earned my pay.” Harvey spread out his hands and rubbed the palms together. “They’re all soft again,” he said dolefully.

  “Keep ’em that way for the next few years, while you’re getting your education. You can harden ’em up after.”

  “Ye-es, I suppose so,” was the reply, in no delighted voice.

  “It rests with you, Harve. You can take cover behind your mama, of course, and put her on to fussing about your nerves and your high-strungness and all that kind of poppycock.”

  “Have I ever done that?” said Harvey, uneasily.

  His father turned where he sat and thrust out a long hand. “You know as well as I do that I can’t make anything of you if you don’t act straight by me. I can handle you alone if you’ll stay alone, but I don’t pretend to manage both you and Mama. Life’s too short, anyway.”

  “Don’t make me out much of a fellow, does it?”

  “I guess it was my fault a good deal; but if you want the truth, you haven’t been much of anything up to date. Now, have you?”

  “Umm! Disko thinks…Say, what d’you reckon it’s cost you to raise me from the start—first, last and all over?”

  Cheyne smiled. “I’ve never kept track, but I should estimate, in dollars and cents, nearer fifty than forty thousand; maybe sixty. The young generation comes high. It has to have things, and it tires of ’em, and—the old man foots the bill.”

  Harvey whistled, but at heart he was rather pleased to think that his upbringing had cost so much. “And all that’s sunk capital, isn’t it?”

  “Invested, Harve. Invested, I hope.”

  “Making it only thirty thousand, the thirty I’ve earned is about ten cents on the hundred. That’s a mighty poor catch.” Harvey wagged his head solemnly.

  Cheyne laughed till he nearly fell off the pile into the water.

  “Disko has got a heap more than that out of Dan since he was ten; and Dan’s at school half the year, too.”

  “Oh, that’s what you’re after, is it?”

  “No. I’m not after anything. I’m not stuck on myself any just now—that’s all…. I ought to be kicked.”

  “I can’t do it, old man; or I would, I presume, if I’d been made that way.”

  “Then I’d have remembered it to the last day I lived—and never forgiven you,” said Harvey, his chin on his doubled fists.

  “Exactly. That’s about what I’d do. You see?”

  “I see. The fault’s with me and no one else. All the samey, something’s got to be done about it.”

  Cheyne drew a cigar from his vest-pocket, bit off the end, and fell to smoking. Father and son were very much alike; for the beard hid Cheyne’s mouth, and Harvey had his father’s slightly aquiline nose, close-set black eyes, and narrow, high cheek-bones. With a touch of brown paint he would have made up very picturesquely as a Red Indian of the storybooks.

  “Now you can go on from here,” said Cheyne, slowly, “costing me between six or eight thousand a year till you’re a voter. Well, we’ll call you a man then. You can go right on from that, living on me to the tune of forty or fifty thousand, besides what your mother will give you, with a valet and a yacht or a fancy-ranch where you can pretend to raise trotting-stock and play cards with your own crowd.”

  “Like Lorry Tuck?” Harvey put in.

  “Yep; or the two De Vitré boys or old man McQuade’s son. California’s full of ’em, an
d here’s an Eastern sample while we’re talking.”

  A shiny black steam-yacht, with mahogany deck-house, nickel-plated binnacles, and pink-and-white-striped awnings puffed up the harbour, flying the burgee of some New York club. Two young men in what they conceived to be sea costumes were playing cards by the saloon skylight; and a couple of women with red and blue parasols looked on and laughed noisily.

  “Shouldn’t care to be caught out in her in any sort of a breeze. No beam,” said Harvey, critically, as the yacht slowed to pick up her mooring-buoy.

  “They’re having what stands them for a good time. I can give you that, and twice as much as that, Harve. How’d you like it?”

  “Caesar! That’s no way to get a dinghy overside,” said Harvey, still intent on the yacht. “If I couldn’t slip a tackle better than that I’d stay ashore…. What if I don’t?”

  “Stay ashore—or what?”

  “Yacht and ranch and live on ‘the old man,’ and—get behind Mama where there’s trouble,” said Harvey, with a twinkle in his eye.

  “Why, in that case, you come right in with me, my son.”

  “Ten dollars a month?” Another twinkle.

  “Not a cent more until you’re worth it, and you won’t begin to touch that for a few years.”

  “I’d sooner begin sweeping out the office—isn’t that how the big bugs start?—and touch something now than——”

  “I know it; we all feel that way. But I guess we can hire any sweeping we need. I made the same mistake myself of starting in too soon.”

  “Thirty million dollars’worth o’ mistake, wasn’t it? I’d risk it for that.”

  “I lost some; and I gained some. I’ll tell you.”

  Cheyne pulled his beard and smiled as he looked over the still water, and spoke away from Harvey, who presently began to be aware that his father was telling the story of his life. He talked in a low, even voice, without gesture and without expression; and it was a history for which a dozen leading journals would cheerfully have paid many dollars—the story of forty years that was at the same time the story of the New West, whose story is yet to be written.