



Produced by David Reed and Bill Stoddard.  HTML version by Al Haines.









"CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS"

A STORY OF THE GRAND BANKS


by

Rudyard Kipling




  TO
  JAMES CONLAND, M.D.,
  Brattleboro, Vermont


  I ploughed the land with horses,
  But my heart was ill at ease,
  For the old sea-faring men
  Came to me now and then,
  With their sagas of the seas.

  Longfellow.




CHAPTER I

The weather door of the smoking-room had been left open to the North
Atlantic fog, as the big liner rolled and lifted, whistling to warn the
fishing-fleet.

"That Cheyne boy's the biggest nuisance aboard," said a man in a frieze
overcoat, shutting the door with a bang. "He isn't wanted here. He's
too fresh."

A white-haired German reached for a sandwich, and grunted between
bites: "I know der breed. Ameriga is full of dot kind. I dell you you
should imbort ropes' ends free under your dariff."

"Pshaw! There isn't any real harm to him. He's more to be pitied than
anything," a man from New York drawled, as he lay at full length along
the cushions under the wet skylight. "They've dragged him around from
hotel to hotel ever since he was a kid. I was talking to his mother
this morning. She's a lovely lady, but she don't pretend to manage him.
He's going to Europe to finish his education."

"Education isn't begun yet." This was a Philadelphian, curled up in a
corner. "That boy gets two hundred a month pocket-money, he told me. He
isn't sixteen either."

"Railroads, his father, aind't