Captains Courageous - Rudyard Kipling (the rosie project .TXT) 📗

“I warned ye,” said Dan, as the drops fell thick and fast on the dark, oiled planking. “Dad ain’t noways hasty, but you fair earned it. Pshaw! there’s no sense takin’ on so.” Harvey’s shoulders were rising and falling in spasms of dry sobbing. “I know the feelin’. First time Dad laid me out was the last—and that was my first trip. Makes ye feel sickish an’ lonesome. I know.”

“It does,” moaned Harvey. “That man’s either crazy or drunk, and—and I can’t do anything.”

“Don’t say that to Dad,” whispered Dan. “He’s set agin all liquor, an’—well, he told me you was the madman. What in creation made you call him a thief? He’s my dad.”

Harvey sat up, mopped his nose, and told the story of the missing wad of bills. “I’m not crazy,” he wound up. “Only—your father has never seen more than a five-dollar bill at a time, and my father could buy up this boat once a week and never miss it.”

“You don’t know what the ‘We’re Here’s’ worth. Your dad must hev a pile o’ money. How did he git it? Dad sez loonies can’t shake out a straight yarn. Go ahead.”

“In gold mines and things, West.”

“I’ve read o’ that kind o’ business. Out West, too? Does he go around with a pistol on a trick-pony, same ez the circus? They call that the Wild West, and I’ve heard that their spurs an’ bridles was solid silver.”

“You are a chump!” said Harvey, amused in spite of himself. “My father hasn’t any use for ponies. When he wants to ride he takes his car.”

“Haow? Lobster-car?”

“No. His own private car, of course. You’ve seen a private car some time in your life?”

“Slatin Beeman he hez one,” said Dan, cautiously. “I saw her at the Union Depot in Boston, with three niggers hoggin’ her run.”, (Dan meant cleaning the windows.) “But Slatin Beeman he owns ‘baout every railroad on Long Island, they say, an’ they say he’s bought ‘baout ha’af Noo Hampshire an’ run a line fence around her, an’ filled her up with lions an’ tigers an’ bears an’ buffalo an’ crocodiles an’ such all. Slatin Beeman he’s a millionaire. I’ve seen his car. Yes?”

“Well, my father’s what they call a multimillionaire, and he has two private cars. One’s named for me, the ‘Harvey’, and one for my mother, the ‘Constance’.”

“Hold on,” said Dan. “Dad don’t ever let me swear, but I guess you can. ‘Fore we go ahead, I want you to say hope you may die if you’re lyin’.”

“Of course,” said Harvey.

“The ain’t ‘niff. Say, ‘Hope I may die if I ain’t speaking’ truth.”’

“Hope I may die right here,” said Harvey, “if every word I’ve spoken isn’t the cold truth.”

“Hundred an’ thirty-four dollars an’ all?” said Dan. “I heard ye talkin’ to Dad, an’ I ha’af looked you’d be swallered up, same’s Jonah.”

Harvey protested himself red in the face. Dan was a shrewd young person along his own lines, and ten minutes’ questioning convinced him that Harvey was not lying—much. Besides, he had bound himself by the most terrible oath known to boyhood, and yet he sat, alive, with a red-ended nose, in the scuppers, recounting marvels upon marvels.

“Gosh!” said Dan at last from the very bottom of his soul when Harvey had completed an inventory of the car named in his honour. Then a grin of mischievous delight overspread his broad face. “I believe you, Harvey. Dad’s made a mistake fer once in his life.”

“He has, sure,” said Harvey, who was meditating an early revenge.

“He’ll be mad clear through. Dad jest hates to be mistook in his jedgments.” Dan lay back and slapped his thigh. “Oh, Harvey, don’t you spile the catch by lettin’ on.”

“I don’t want to be knocked down again. I’ll get even with him, though.”

“Never heard any man ever got even with dad. But he’d knock ye down again sure. The more he was mistook the more he’d do it. But gold-mines and pistols —”

“I never said a word about pistols,” Harvey cut in, for he was on his oath.

“Thet’s so; no more you did. Two private cars, then, one named fer you an’ one fer her; an’ two hundred dollars a month pocket-money, all knocked into the scuppers fer not workin’ fer ten an’ a ha’af a month! It’s the top haul o’ the season.” He exploded with noiseless chuckles.

“Then I was right?” said Harvey, who thought he had found a sympathiser.

“You was wrong; the wrongest kind o’ wrong! You take right hold an’ pitch in ‘longside o’ me, or you’ll catch it, an’ I’ll catch it fer backin’ you up. Dad always gives me double helps ‘cause I’m his son, an’ he hates favourin’ folk. ‘Guess you’re kinder mad at dad. I’ve been that way time an’ again. But dad’s a mighty jest man; all the fleet says so.”

“Looks like justice, this, don’t it?” Harvey pointed to his outraged nose.

“Thet’s nothin’. Lets the shore blood outer you. Dad did it for yer health. Say, though, I can’t have dealin’s with a man that thinks me or dad or any one on the ‘We’re Here’s’ a thief. We ain’t any common wharf-end crowd by any manner o’ means. We’re fishermen, an’ we’ve shipped together for six years an’ more. Don’t you make any mistake on that! I told ye dad don’t let me swear. He calls ‘em vain oaths, and pounds me; but ef I could say what you said ‘baout your pap an’ his fixin’s, I’d say that ‘baout your dollars. I dunno what was in your pockets when I dried your kit, fer I didn’t look to see; but I’d say, using the very same words ez you used jest now, neither me nor dad — an’ we was the only two that teched you after you was brought aboard — knows anythin’ ‘baout the money. Thet’s my say. Naow?”

The bloodletting had certainly cleared Harvey’s brain, and maybe the loneliness of the sea had something to do with it. “That’s all right,” he said. Then he looked down confusedly. “‘Seems to me that for a fellow just saved from drowning I haven’t been over and above grateful, Dan.”

“Well, you was shook up and silly,” said Dan. “Anyway, there was only dad an’ me aboard to see it. The cook he don’t count.”

“I might have thought about losing the bills that way,” Harvey said, half to himself, “instead of calling everybody in sight a thief. Where’s your father?”

“In the cabin. What d’ you want o’ him again?”

“You’ll see,” said Harvey, and he stepped, rather groggily, for his head was still singing, to the cabin steps where the little ship’s clock hung in plain sight of the wheel. Troop, in the chocolate-and-yellow painted cabin, was busy with a notebook and an enormous black pencil which he sucked hard from time to time.

“I haven’t acted quite right,” said Harvey, surprised at his own meekness.

“What’s wrong naow?” said the skipper. “Walked into Dan, hev ye?”

“No; it’s about you.”

“I’m here to listen.”

“Well, I—I’m here to take things back,” said Harvey very quickly. “When a man’s saved from drowning–” he gulped.

“Ey? You’ll make a man yet ef you go on this way.”

“He oughtn’t begin by calling people names.”

“Jest an’ right—right an’ jest,” said Troop, with the ghost of a dry smile.

“So I’m here to say I’m sorry.” Another big gulp.

Troop heaved himself slowly off the locker he was sitting on and held out an eleven-inch hand. “I mistrusted ‘twould do you sights o’ good; an’ this shows I weren’t mistook in my jedgments.” A smothered chuckle on deck caught his ear. “I am very seldom mistook in my jedgments.” The eleven-inch hand closed on Harvey’s, numbing it to the elbow. “We’ll put a little more gristle to that ‘fore we’ve done with you, young feller; an’ I don’t think any worse of ye fer anythin’ the’s gone by. You wasn’t fairly responsible. Go right abaout your business an’ you won’t take no hurt.”

“You’re white,” said Dan, as Harvey regained the deck, flushed to the tips of his ears.

“I don’t feel it,” said he.

“I didn’t mean that way. I heard what Dad said. When Dad allows he don’t think the worse of any man, Dad’s give himself away. He hates to be mistook in his jedgments too. Ho! ho! Onct Dad has a jedgment, he’d sooner dip his colours to the British than change it. I’m glad it’s settled right eend up. Dad’s right when he says he can’t take you back. It’s all the livin’ we make here—fishin’. The men’ll be back like sharks after a dead whale in ha’af an hour.”

“What for?” said Harvey.

“Supper, o’ course. Don’t your stummick tell you? You’ve a heap to learn.”

“Guess I have,” said Harvey, dolefully, looking at the tangle of ropes and blocks overhead.

“She’s a daisy,” said Dan, enthusiastically, misunderstanding the look. “Wait till our mainsail’s bent, an’ she walks home with all her salt wet. There’s some work first, though.” He pointed down into the darkness of the open main-hatch between the two masts.

“What’s that for? It’s all empty,” said Harvey.

“You an’ me an’ a few more hev got to fill it,” said Dan. “That’s where the fish goes.”

“Alive?” said Harvey.

“Well, no. They’re so’s to be ruther dead—an’ flat—an’ salt. There’s a hundred hogshead o’ salt in the bins, an’ we hain’t more’n covered our dunnage to now.”

“Where are the fish, though?”

“‘In the sea they say, in the boats we pray,’” said Dan, quoting a fisherman’s proverb. “You come in last night with ‘baout forty of ‘em.”

He pointed to a sort of wooden pen just in front of the quarterdeck.

“You an’ me we’ll sluice that out when they’re through. ‘Send we’ll hev full pens to-night! I’ve seen her down ha’af a foot with fish waitin’ to clean, an’ we stood to the tables till we was splittin’ ourselves instid o’ them, we was so sleepy. Yes, they’re comm’ in naow.” Dan looked over the low bulwarks at half a dozen dories rowing towards them over the shining, silky sea.

“I’ve never seen the sea from so low down,” said Harvey. “It’s fine.”

The low sun made the water all purple and pinkish, with golden lights on the barrels of the long swells, and blue