



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 it?" said the German.

"Yep. That and mines and lumber and shipping. Built one place at San
Diego, the old man has; another at Los Angeles; owns half a dozen
railroads, half the lumber on the Pacific <DW72>, and lets his wife
spend the money," the Philadelphian went on lazily. "The West don't
suit her, she says. She just tracks around with the boy and her nerves,
trying to find out what'll amuse him, I guess. Florida, Adirondacks,
Lakewood, Hot Springs, New York, and round again. He isn't much more
than a second-hand hotel clerk now. When he's finished in Europe he'll
be a holy terror."

"What's the matter with the old man attending to him personally?" said
a voice from the frieze ulster.

"Old man's piling up the rocks. 'Don't want to be disturbed, I guess.
He'll find out his error a few years from now. 'Pity, because there's a
heap of good in the boy if you could get at it."

"Mit a rope's end; mit a rope's end!" growled the German.

Once more the door banged, and a slight, slim-built boy perhaps fifteen
years old, a half-smoked cigarette hanging from one corner of his
mouth, leaned in over the high footway. His pasty yellow complexion did
not show well on a person of his years, and his look was a mixture of
irresolution, bravado, and very cheap smartness. He was dressed in a
cherry- blazer, knickerbockers, red stockings, and bicycle
shoes, with a red flannel cap at the back of the head. After whistling
between his teeth, as he eyed the company, he said in a loud, high
voice: "Say, it's thick outside. You can hear the fish-boats squawking
all around us. Say, wouldn't it be great if we ran down one?"

"Shut the door, Harvey," said the New Yorker. "Shut the door and stay
outside. You're not wanted here."

"Who'll stop me?" he answered, deliberately. "Did you pay for my
passage, Mister Martin? 'Guess I've as good right here as the next man."

He picked up some dice from a checkerboard and began throwing, right
hand against left.

"Say, gen'elmen, this is deader'n mud. Can't we make a game of poker
between us?"

There was no answer, and he puffed his cigarette, swung his legs, and
drummed on the table with rather dirty fingers. Then he pulled out a
roll of bills as if to count them.

"How's your mamma this afternoon?" a man said. "I didn't see her at
lunch."

"In her state-room, I guess. She's'most always sick on the ocean. I'm
going to give the stewardess fifteen dollars for looking after her. I
don't go down more 'n I can avoid. It makes me feel mysterious to pass
that butler's-pantry place. Say, this is the first time I've been on
the ocean."

"Oh, don't apologize, Harvey."

"Who's apologizing? This is the first time I've crossed the ocean,
gen'elmen, and, except the first day, I haven't been sick one little
bit. No, sir!" He brought down his fist with a triumphant bang, wetted
his finger, and went on counting the bills.

"Oh, you're a high-grade machine, with the writing in plain sight," the
Philadelphian yawned. "You'll blossom into a credit to your country if
you don't take care."

"I know it. I'm an American--first, last, and all the time. I'll show
'em that when I strike Europe. Piff! My cig's out. I can't smoke the
truck the steward sells. Any gen'elman got a real Turkish cig on him?"

The chief engineer entered for a moment, red, smiling, and wet. "Say,
Mac," cried Harvey cheerfully, "how are we hitting it?"

"Vara much in the ordinary way," was the grave reply. "The young are as
polite as ever to their elders, an' their elders are e'en tryin' to
appreciate it."

A low chuckle came from a corner. The German opened his cigar-case and
handed a skinny black cigar to Harvey.

"Dot is der broper apparatus to smoke, my young friendt," he said. "You
vill dry it? Yes? Den you vill be efer so happy."

Harvey lit the unlovely thing with a flourish: he felt that he was
getting on in grownup society.

"It would take more 'n this to keel me over," he said, ignorant that he
was lighting that terrible article, a Wheeling "stogie".

"Dot we shall bresently see," said the German. "Where are we now, Mr.
Mactonal'?"

"Just there or thereabouts, Mr. Schaefer," said the engineer. "We'll be
on the Grand Bank to-night; but in a general way o' speakin', we're all
among the fishing-fleet now. We've shaved three dories an' near scalped
the boom off a Frenchman since noon, an' that's close sailing', ye may
say."

"You like my cigar, eh?" the German asked, for Harvey's eyes were full
of tears.

"Fine, full flavor," he answered through shut teeth. "Guess we've
slowed down a little, haven't we? I'll skip out and see what the log
says."

"I might if I vhas you," said the German.

Harvey staggered over the wet decks to the nearest rail. He was very
unhappy; but he saw the deck-steward lashing chairs together, and,
since he had boasted before the man that he was never seasick, his
pride made him go aft to the second-saloon deck at the stern, which was
finished in a turtle-back. The deck was deserted, and he crawled to the
extreme end of it, near the flag-pole. There he doubled up in limp
agony, for the Wheeling "stogie" joined with the surge and jar of the
screw to sieve out his soul. His head swelled; sparks of fire danced
before his eyes; his body seemed to lose weight, while his heels
wavered in the breeze. He was fainting from seasickness, and a roll of
the ship tilted him over the rail on to the smooth lip of the
turtle-back. Then a low, gray mother-wave swung out of the fog, tucked
Harvey under one arm, so to speak, and pulled him off and away to
leeward; the great green closed over him, and he went quietly to sleep.

He was roused by the sound of a dinner-horn such as they used to blow
at a summer-school he had once attended in the Adirondacks. Slowly he
remembered that he was Harvey Cheyne, drowned and dead in mid-ocean,
but was too weak to fit things together. A new smell filled his
nostrils; wet and clammy chills ran down his back, and he was
helplessly full of salt water. When he opened his eyes, he perceived
that he was still on the top of the sea, for it was running round him
in silver- hills, and he was lying on a pile of half-dead fish,
looking at a broad human back clothed in a blue jersey.

"It's no good," thought the boy. "I'm dead, sure enough, and this thing
is in charge."

He groaned, and the figure turned its head, showing a pair of little
gold rings half hidden in curly black hair.

"Aha! You feel some pretty well now?" it said. "Lie still so: we trim
better."

With a swift jerk he sculled the flickering boat-head on to a foamless
sea that lifted her twenty full feet, only to slide her into a glassy
pit beyond. But this mountain-climbing did not interrupt blue-jersey's
talk. "Fine good job, I say, that I catch you. Eh, wha-at? Better good
job, I say, your boat not catch me. How you come to fall out?"

"I was sick," said Harvey; "sick, and couldn't help it."

"Just in time I blow my horn, and your boat she yaw a little. Then I
see you come all down. Eh, wha-at? I think you are cut into baits by
the screw, but you dreeft--dreeft to me, and I make a big fish of you.
So you shall not die this time."

"Where am I?" said Harvey, who could not see that life was particularly
safe where he lay.

"You are with me in the dory--Manuel my name, and I come from schooner
_We're Here_ of Gloucester. I live to Gloucester. By-and-by we get
supper. Eh, wha-at?"

He seemed to have two pairs of hands and a head of cast-iron, for, not
content with blowing through a big conch-shell, he must needs stand up
to it, swaying with the sway of the flat-bottomed dory, and send a
grinding, thuttering shriek through the fog. How long this
entertainment lasted, Harvey could not remember, for he lay back
terrified at the sight of the smoking swells. He fancied he heard a gun
and a horn and shouting. Something bigger than the dory, but quite as
lively, loomed alongside. Several voices talked at once; he was dropped
into a dark, heaving hole, where men in oilskins gave him a hot drink
and took off his clothes, and he fell asleep.

When he waked he listened for the first breakfast-bell on the steamer,
wondering why his state-room had grown so small. Turning, he looked
into a narrow, triangular cave, lit by a lamp hung against a huge
square beam. A three-cornered table within arm's reach ran from the
angle of the bows to the foremast. At the after end, behind a well-used
Plymouth stove,