aeEeereeeeiag)

 

 

 

 

   

Hae

ik

mn

  
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

i
abe EAT

=

om
4 '
a

; ue bE ct ck aa

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     
  

Ia

 

 

Hinata i
eg ‘an f te
: ' , Hl ll

   

 

 

      
 

i) on “ua

 
 
    

a ee

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
  

eT ne EI eee eee ntanttesnt tat tes , p
'''' 
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”
'' 

Books By RupyarpD KIPLING

 

 

Actions AND REACTIONS

Brusnwoop Boy, THE

Caprains CouRAGEOUS

CoLLecTeD VERSE

Day’s Work, THE

DeEpaRTMENTAL Ditties
AND BALLaDs AND Bar-
RACK-Room Ba.iaps

Diversity oF REA-
tures, A

Eyes or Asta, THE

FEET oF THE YOUNG
Men, THE

Five Nations, THE

FRANCE AT WaR

FrincEs OF THE FLEET

From Sega To SEA :

History oF ENGLAND, A

Junc.e Book,

Juncie Book, Seconp

Just So Sone

eer So Srorres
IM

Kietinc Stories AND
Porms Every Cuirp
SHouLtp Know

Kipitne Birtapay Book,

HE

Lerrers OF TRAVEL

Lire’s HanpicapP: BEING
Srorres or Mine Own
PEoPLE

Licur Tuat Fatrep, THe
Many INVENTIONS
Navuranka, THe (With
Wolcott Balestier)
Prats Tates From THE

ILLS

Puck oF Poox’s Hii

REWARDS AND Fairies

Rupyarp Kip.ine’s
Verse: Inclusive Edi-
tion, 1885-1918

Sea WaRFARE

Seven Seas, THE

SotpieR Stories

Sotpiers THREE, THE
Story oF THE GaDsByYs,
anD In BiacK AND
WHITE

Sonc oF THE EnGiisu, A

Soncs From Books

Statky & Co.

THey

Trarrics aND DiscoverR-
IES

Unpver THE Deopars,
Tue Psantrom ’Rick-
SHAW, AND WEE WILLIE
WINKIE

Wrra tHe Nicatr Mairi

Years BETWEEN, [HE

 

 
'' 
''Uy? ee
Nyy \ :
ce ee :
a / z
Y GY \ e
ey es 5

       

             

Gi

lle '
C4 Wy,

Yi Y ff

      

My
WY, ae fe is

y YU:

[40
a

an
*IT WAS THICK WEATHER OUTSIDE,

 

Wy wv.

THE NOSING BOWS SLAPPED AND SCUFFLED WITH THE SEAS-”
'' 

 

"CAPTAING

COURAGEOUS” ||

 

 

By Rudyard Kipling

 

 

 

 

 

GARDEN CITY NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, DORAN & COMPANY, INC.

1932

 

 

 

 
'' 

MORRISON MEMORIAL LIBRARY

Pyro Ealing

COPYRIGHT, 1896, 1897, BY RUDYARD
KIPLING. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES AT THE
COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
''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.

860171
'' 
''LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

“7T WAS THICK WEATHER OUTSIDE, WITH A RISING

WIND. - .» THE NOSING BOWS SLAPPED AND
SCUFFLED WITH THE SEAS.” .. . . . Frontispiece
PAGE

PEARVE CO Rg Ge Ue

“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
PEEWARD. 3 ie a ee
“HE MUST NEEDS STAND UP TO IT, SWAYING WITH
THE SWAY OF THE FLAT-BOTTOMED DORY, AND
SEND A GRINDING, THUTTERING SHRIEK THROUGH
THE BOG ORNs a as
“ EXCUSE!’ CRIED HARVEY. ‘D’ YOU SUPPOSE I ’D
FALL OVERBOARD INTO YOUR DIRTY LITTLE BOAT
WOR PONCHO OU Ue
Pee WE REERE ge Nea ee
“I ’LL LAY MY WAGE AN’ SHARE HE ’S OVER A
HUNDRED. GR SOE Se ee
“A FEW SECONDS LATER A HISSING WAVE-TOP SMOTE
UNCLE SALTERS BETWEEN THE SHOULDERS, AND
DRENCHED HIM FROM HEAD TO FOOT.” . .. . 85
“FOR AN HOUR LONG JACK WALKED HIS PREY UP
AND DOWN, TEACHING, AS HE SAID, ‘THINGS IVRY
MAN MUST KNOW, BLIND, DHRUNK, OR ASLEEP.” Of

Vil
''Viti LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

66 ¢

T IS A CONCERT, SAID LONG JACK, BEAMING
THROUGH THE SMOKE. ‘A REG'LAR BOSTON
as

“THEY RAN DOWN TO WHERE ABISHAI'’S CRAFT HAD
VANISHED; FOUND TWO OR THREE TRAWL-TUBS,

A GIN-BOTTLE, AND A STOVE-IN DORY, BUT NOTH-

Oa a Pe ek ee oe Ee
“A WHITENESS MOVED IN THE WHITENESS OF THE

FOG. . . IT WAS HIS FIRST INTRODUCTION TO

THE DREAD SUMMER BERG OF THE BANK.” . . 143

“THERE WERE DAYS OF LIGHT AIRS, WHEN HARVEY
WAS TAUGHT HOW TO STEER THE SCHOONER
PROM ONE BERTH TO ANOTHER.” ... .. . I51
“ail say! ARRETEZ VOUS! ATTENDEZ! NOUS
SOMMES VENANT POUR TABAC. ‘AH, TABAC,
a ae en
“IT WAS WONDERFUL FISHING. HARVEY COULD SEE
THE GLIMMERING COD BELOW, . . . BITING AS

STEADILY AS THEY SWAM. . . . BUT SO CLOSE
LAY THE BOATS THAT EVEN SINGLE HOOKS
Ce a eee ea. SO ae?
DRESSING-DOWN ON THE “WE ’RE HERE.” . .. . 225
“DORIES CAME ALONGSIDE WITH LETTERS FOR
a ee Waele ear eas
i ee ee a ee

MRS. CHEYNE INTRODUCES THE CREW OF THE

“WE ’RE HERE” TO THE “CONSTANCE.” . . . . 273
“HIS FATHER TURNED WHERE HE SAT AND THRUST

OUT A LONG HAND. ‘YOU KNOW AS WELL AS I

DO THAT t CAN’T MAKE ANYTHING OF YOU IF

"OU OON T ACT STRAIGHT BY ME.” ... . . . 289
SIDDING FAREWELL TO THE ‘WE RE HERE.” . . . 319
''*CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

A STORY OF THE GRAND BANKS

CHAPTER I

HE 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, shut-
ting the door with a bang. ‘He is n’t wanted
here. Fle’s too fresh.”

A white-haired German reached for a sand-
wich, 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

I
''2 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

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 fin-
ish his education.”

“Education isn’t begun yet.” This was a

ee Phil ‘adelphian, curled up in acorner. ‘That
cote POY: gets two hundred a month Pee -money,
‘“«* hie'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 slope, 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 ho.
tel clerk now. When he’s finished in Europe
he ’ll be a holy terror.”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 3

“What’s the matter with the old man at-
tending 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. Hell find out
his error a few years from now. ’Pity, be-
cause there’s a heap of good in the boy if
you could get at it.”

“Mit a rope’s end; mut a ropes) endl”
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 cor-
ner of his mourh, 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, bra-
vado, and very cheap smartness. He was
dressed in a cherry-coloured blazer, knicker-
bockers, 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,
would n’t it be great if we ran down one?”

“Shut the door, Harvey,” said the New
''4 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

Yorker. “Shut the door and stay outside.
You ’re not wanted here.”

“Who ’ll stop me?” he answered, deliber-
ately. “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 checker-
board and began throwing, right hand
against left.

“Say, gen’elmen, this is deader’n mud.
Can’t we make a game of poker between
usr"

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 mama this afternoonr” a
man said. “I didn’t see her at lunch.”

“Tn 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
'' 

 

 

 

 

HARVEY
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 7

time I ’ve crossed the ocean, gen’elmen, and,
except the first day, I have n’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. “Youll blossom into a credit to
your country if you don’t take care.”

“T know it. I’m an American—first, last,
and all the time. Ill show ’em that when I
strike Europe. Pfft! My cig’s out. I can’t
smoke the truck the steward sells. Any
gen’elman got a real Turkish cig on hime”

The chief engineer entered for a moment,
red, smiling, and wet. “Say, Mac,” cried
Harvey cheerfully, “how are we hitting ite”

“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
itr Yesr Den you vill be efer so happy,”
''8 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

Harvey lit the unlovely thing with a flour-
ish: he felt that he was getting on in grown-
up 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. Mac-
tonal’ r”

“Just there or thereabouts, Mr. Schaefer,”
said the engineer. “Well be on the Grand
Bank to-night; but in a general way o’ speak -
in’, we’re all among the fishing-fleet now.
Weve shaved three dories an’ near skelped
the boom off a Frenchman since noon, an’
that’s close sailin’, ye may say.”

“You like my cigar, eh?” the German
asked, for Harvey’s eyes were full of tears,

“Fine, full flavour,” he answered through
shut teeth. ‘Guess we ’ve slowed down a lit-
tle, haven’t we? Ill skip out and see what
the log says.”

“T 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
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” a

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 ex-
treme 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 wa-
vered 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 tur-
tle-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 Adiron-
dacks. 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 clam-
my chills ran down his back, and he was help-
lessly full of salt water. When he opened his
''10 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

eyes, he perceived that he was still on the top
of the sea, for it was running round him in
silver-coloured hills, and he was lying on a
pile of half-dead fish, looking at a broad
human back clothed in a blue jersey.

“Tt’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, J say, your boat not catch
me. How you come to fall out?”

“Twas sick,” said Harvey; “sick, and
could n’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,
'' 

GRAY MOTHER-WAVE SWUNG OUT OF THE FOG,

“THEN A LOW,

, AND

SO TO SPEAK

?

TUCKED HARVEY UNDER ONE ARM

”

PULLED HIM OFF AND AWAY TO LEEWARD.
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 13

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 blow-
ing 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. Some-
thing 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
''14 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

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, sat a boy about his own age, with a
flat red face and a pair of twinkling gray
eyes. He was dressed in a blue jersey and
high rubber boots. Several pairs of the same
sort of foot-wear, an old cap, and some worn-
out woollen socks lay on the floor, and black
and yellow oilskins swayed to and fro beside
the bunks. The place was packed as full of
smells as a bale is of cotton. The oilskins had
a peculiarly thick flavour ot their own which
made a sort of background to the smells of
fried fish, burnt grease, paint, pepper, and
stale tobacco; but these, again, were all
hooped together by one encircling smell of
ship and salt water. Harvey saw with dis-
gust that there were no sheets on his bed-place.
He was lying on a piece of dingy ticking full
of lumps and nubbles. Then, too, the boat’s
motion was not that of a steamer. She was
neither sliding nor rolling, but rather wrig-
gling herself about in a silly, aimless way,
'' 

 

 

 

 

“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.”
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 17

like a colt at the end of a halter. Water-
noises ran by close to his ear, and beams
creaked and whined about him. All these
things made him grunt despairingly and
think of his mother.

“Feelin’ better?” said the boy, with a grin.
“Flev some coffee?” He brought a tin cup
full and sweetened it with molasses.

“Tsn’t there milk?” said Harvey, look-
ing round the dark double tier of bunks as if
he expected to find a cow there.

“Well, no,” said the boy. “Ner there ain’t
likely to be till ’baout mid-September. ’T ain’t
bad ¢offee... I made. it,”

Harvey drank in silence, and the boy handed
him a plate full of pieces of crisp fried pork,
which he ate ravenously.

“T ve dried your clothes. Guess they ’ve
shrunk some,” said the boy. “They ain’t our
style much—none of ’em. ‘Twist round an’
see ef you ’re hurt any.”

Harvey stretched himself in every direc-
tion, but could not report any injuries.

“That ’s good,” the boy said heartily. “Fix
yerself an’ go on deck. Dad wants to see you.
I’m his son,—Dan, they call me,—an’ I’m
cook’s helper an’ everything else aboard that’s
''18 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

too dirty for the men. There ain’t no boy here
’cep’ me sence Otto went overboard—an’ he
was only a Dutchy, an’ twenty year old at
that. How d’ you come to fall off in a dead
flat ca’am?”

“"'T was n’t a calm,” said Harvey, sulkily.
“It was a gale, and I was seasick. Guess I
must have rolled over the rail.”

“There was a little common swell yes’day
an’ last night,” said the boy. “But ef thet’s
your notion of a gale——’” He whistled.
“You ’ll know more ’fore you’re through.
Hurry! Dad’s waitin’.”

Like many other unfortunate young people,
Harvey had never in all his life received a di-
rect order—never, at least, without long, and
sometimes tearful, explanations of the advan-
tages of obedience and the reasons for the re-
quest. Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of breaking
his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that
she herself walked on the edge of nervous
prostration. He could not see why he should
be expected to hurry for any man’s pleasure,
and said so. ‘Your dad can come down here
if he’s so anxious to talk to me. I want him
to take me to New York right away. It’ll
pay him.”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 19

Dan opened his eyes as the size and beauty
of this joke dawned on him. ‘Say, Dad!” he
shouted up the foc’sle hatch, “he says you kin
slip down an’ see him ef you’re anxious that
way. ’Hear, Dade”

The answer came back in the deepest voice
Harvey had ever heard from a human chest:
“Quit foolin’, Dan, and send him to me.”

Dan sniggered, and threw Harvey his
warped bicycle shoes. There was something
in the tones on the deck that made the boy
dissemble his extreme rage and console him-
self with the thought of gradually unfolding
the tale of his own and his father’s wealth on
the voyage home. This rescue would cer-
tainly make him a hero among his friends for
life. He hoisted himself on deck up a per-
pendicular ladder, and stumbled aft, over a
score of obstructions, to where a small, thick-
set, clean-shaven man with gray eyebrows
sat on a step that led up to the quarter-deck.
The swell had passed in the night, leaving a
long, oily sea, dotted round the horizon with
the sails of a dozen fishing-boats. Between
them lay little black specks, showing where
the dories were out fishing. The schooner,
with a triangular riding-sail on the mainmast,
''20 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

played easily at anchor, and except for the
man by the cabin-roof—“house’’ they call it
—she was deserted.

“Mornin’—Good afternoon, I should say.
Youve nigh slep’ the clock around, young
feller,” was the greeting.

‘“Mornin’,” said Harvey. He did not like
being called “young feller”; and, as one res-
cued from drowning, expected sympathy. His
mother suffered agonies whenever he got his
feet wet; but this mariner did not seem ex-
cited.

‘“Naow let’s hear all abaout it. It’s
quite providential, first an’ last, fer all con-
cerned. What might be your name? Where
from (we mistrust it’s Noo York), an’ where
baound (we mistrust it’s Europe) ?”

Harvey gave his name, the name of the
steamer, and a short history of the accident,
winding up with a demand to be taken
back immediately to New York, where his
father would pay anything any one chose to
name.

“Hm,” said the shaven man, quite un-
moved by the end of Harvey’s speech. “I
can’t say we think special of any man, or boy
even, that falls overboard from that kind o!
'' 

 

 

 

“oe

EXCUSE!’ CRIED HARVEY. ‘D’ YOU SUPPOSE I ’D FALL
OVERBOARD INTO YOUR DIRTY LITTLE BOAT FOR FUN?’”

 
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 23

packet in a flat ca’am. Least of all when his
excuse is thet he’s seasick.”

“Excuse!’? cried Harvey. ‘“D’ you suppose
I’d fall overboard into your dirty little boat
for fune”

“Not knowin’ what your notions o’ fun
may be, I can’t rightly say, young feller. But
if I was you, I would n’t call the boat which,
under Providence, was the means o’ savin’
ye, names. In the first place, it’s blame irreli-
gious. In the second, it’s annoyin’ to my
feelin’s—an’ I’m Disko Troop o’ the We ’re
Here o’ Gloucester, which you don’t seem
rightly to know.”

“T don’t know and I don’t care,” said
Harvey. “I’m grateful enough for being
saved and all that, of course! but I want
you to understand that the sooner you take
me back to New York the better it’ll pay
you.”

“Meanin—haowr” Troop raised one
shaggy eyebrow over a suspiciously mild blue
eye.
“Dollars and cents,” said Harvey, delighted
to think that he was making an impression.
“Cold dollars and cents.” He thrust a hand
into a pocket, and threw out his stomach a
''24 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

little, which was his way of being grand.
“You ’ve done the best day’s work you ever did
in your life when you pulled mein. I’m all
the son Harvey Cheyne has.”

‘““He’s bin favoured,” said Disko, dryly.

“And if you don’t know who Harvey
Cheyne is, you don’t know much—that’s all.
Now turn her around and let’s hurry.”

Harvey had a notion that the greater part
of America was filled with people discussing
and envying his father’s dollars.

“Mebbe I do, an’ mebbe I don’t. Take a
reef in your stummick, young feller. It’s full
0’ my vittles.”

Harvey heard a chuckle from Dan, who was
pretending to be busy by the stump-foremast,
and the blood rushed to his face. “We’ll pay
for that too,” he said. ‘When do you suppose
we shall get to New York?”

“T don’t use Noo York any. Ner Boston.
We may see Eastern Point about Septem-
ber; an’ your pa—I’m real sorry I hain’t
heerd tell of him—may give me ten dollars
efter all your talk. Then o’ course he may
ae”

‘Ten dollars! Why, see here, I——”  Har-
vey dived into his pocket for the wad of bills,
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 25

All he brought up was a soggy packet of cig-
arettes.

“Not lawful currency, an’ bad for the lungs.
Heave ’em overboard, young feller, and try
agin.”

“Tt’s been stolen!” cried Harvey, hotly.

“Youll hev to wait till you see your pa
to reward me, then?”

“A hundred and thirty-four dollars—all
stolen,” said Harvey, hunting wildly through
his pockets. “Give them back.”

A curious change flitted across old Troop’s
hard face. “What might you have been
doin’ at your time o’ life with one hundred an’
thirty-four dollars, young feller?”

“Tt was part of my pocket-money—for a
month.” ‘This Harvey thought would be a
knock-down blow, and it was—indirectly.

“Oh! One hundred and thirty-four dollars
is only part of his pocket-money—for one
month only! You don’t remember hittin’ any-
thing when you fell over, do you? Crack agin
a stanchion, le’’s say. Old man Hasken o’ the
East Wind’’—Troop seemed to be talking to
himself—“he tripped on a hatch an’ butted
the mainmast with his head—hardish. ’Baout
three weeks afterwards, old man Hasken he
''26 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

would hev it that the East Wind was a com:
merce-destroyin’ man-o’-war, an’ so he de-
clared war on Sable Island because it was
Bridish, an’ the shoals run aout too far. They
sewed him up in a bed-bag, his head an’ feet
appearin’, fer the rest o’ the trip, an’ now he’s
to home in Essex playin’ with little rag dolls.”

Harvey choked with rage, but Troop went
on consolingly: ‘“We’re sorry fer you. We’re
very sorry fer you—an’ so young. We won’t
say no more abaout the money, I guess.”

‘““’Course you won’t. You stole it.”

“Suit yourself. We stole it ef it’s any com-
fort to you. Naow, abaout goin’ back. AlI-
lowin’ we could do it, which we can’t, you ain’t
in no fit state to go back to your home, an’
we’ve jest come on to the Banks, workin’ fer
our bread. We don’t see the ha’af of a hun-
dred dollars a month, let alone pocket-money;
an’ with good luck we’ll be ashore again.
somewheres abaout the first weeks 0’ Septem-
ber.”

‘“‘But—but it’s May now, and I can’t stay
here doin’ nothing just because you want to
fish. I can’t, I tell you!”

“Right an’ jest; jest an’ right. No one asks
you to do nothin’. There’s a heap as you ran
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 27

do, for Otto he went overboard on Le Have.
I mistrust he lost his grip in a gale we f’und
there. Anyways, he never come back to deny
it. You ’ve turned up, plain, plumb providen-
tial for all concerned. I mistrust, though,
there ’s ruther few things you kin do. Ain’t
thet so?”

“T can make it lively for you and your
crowd when we get ashore,” said Harvey, with
a vicious nod, murmuring vague threats about
“piracy,” at which Troop almost—not quite
—smiled.

“Excep’ talk. I’d forgot that. You ain’t
asked to talk more ’n you ’ve a mind to aboard
the We’re Here. Keep your eyes open, an’

help Dan to do ez he’s bid, an’ sechlike, an’

I’ give you—you ain’t wuth it, but Ill give
—ten an’ a ha’af a month; say thirty-five at
the end o’ the trip. A little work will ease
up your head, and you kin tell us all abaout
your dad an’ your ma an’ your money efter-
wards.”

“She ’s on the steamer,” said Harvey, his
eyes filling with tears. ‘Take me to New
York at once.”

“Poor woman—poor woman! When she
kas you back she’ll forgit it all, though.
''28 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

There’s eight of us on the We ’re Here, an’ ef
we went back naow—it’s more’n a thousand
mile—we ’d lose the season. The men they
would n’t hev it, allowin’ I was agree-
able.”

“But my father would make it all right.”

“He’d try. I don’t doubt he’d try,” said
Troop; “but a whole season’s catch is eight
men’s bread; an’ you’ll be better in your
health when you see him in the fall. Go for-
ward an’ help Dan. It’s ten an’ a ha’af a
month, ez I said, an’, o’ course, all f’und,
same ez the rest 0’ us.”

“Do you mean I’m to clean pots and pans
and things?” said Harvey.

‘An’ other things. You ’ve no call to shout,
young feller.”

“T won't! My father will give you enough
to buy this dirty little fish-kettle’—Harvey
stamped on the deck—“ten times over, if you
take me to New York safe; and—and—you ’re
in a hundred and thirty by me, anyway.”

“Ha-ow?’” said Troop, the iron face dark-
ening.

“How? You know how, well enough. On
top of all that, you want me to do menial
work’’—Harvey was very proud of that adjec-
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 29

tive—“till the Fall. I tell you I will not. You
hear?”

Troop regarded the top of the mainmast
with deep interest for a while, as Harvey ha-
rangued fiercely all around him.

“Fish!” he said at last. “lm figurin out
my responsibilities in my own mind. It’s a
matter o’ jedgment.”’

Dan stole up and plucked Harvey by the
elbow. ‘Don’t go to tamperin’ with Dad any
more,” he pleaded. ‘“You’ve called him a
thief two or three times over, an’ he don’t take
that from any livin’ bein’.”

“T won't!” Harvey almost shrieked, disre-
garding the advice, and still Troop meditated.

“Seems kinder unneighbourly,” he said at
last, his eye travelling down to Harvey. “I
don’t blame you, not a mite, young feller, nor
you won’t blame me when the bile’s out o’
your systim. Be sure you sense what I say?
Ten an’ a ha’af fer second boy on the schooner
—an’ all found—fer to teach you an’ fer the
sake o’ your health. Yes or no?”

“No!” said tiarvey. ‘lake me back: to
New York or I'll see you——”

He did not exactly remember what fol-
lowed. He was lying in the scuppers, holding
''30 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

on to a nose that bled while Troop looked
down on him serenely.

“Dan,” he said to his son, “I was sot agin
this young feller when I first saw him on ac-
count o’ hasty jedgments. Never you be led
astray by hasty jedgments, Dan. Naow I’m
sorry for him, because he’s clear distracted in
his upper works. He ain’t responsible fer the
names he’s give me, nor fer his other state-
ments—nor fer jmpin’ overboard, which I’m
abaout ha’af convinced he did. You be gentle
with him, Dan, ’r Ill give you twice what
I’ve give him. Them hemmeridges clears
the head. Let him sluice it off!”

Troop went down solemnly into the cabin,
where he and the older men bunked, leaving
Dan to comfort the luckless heir to thirty mil-
lions.
''CHAPT RR: TT

“JT 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. J know.”

“Tt 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

31
''/

32 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

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.”

“Tn gold mines and things, West.”

“T?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
lifer”

“Slatin Beeman he hez one,” said Dan, cau-
tiously. “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
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 33

line fence around her, an’ filled her up with
lions an’ tigers an’ bears an’ buffalo an’ croc-
odiles an’ such all. Slatin Beeman he’s a
millionaire. I’ve seen his car. Yes?”

“Well, my father’s what they call a multi-
millionaire, 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,

‘“Thet ain’t ’nuff. Say, ‘Hope I may die if I
ain’t speakin’ 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. “TI 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 con-
vinced him that Harvey was not lying—much.
Besides, he had bound himself by the most
''34 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

terrible oath known to boyhood, and yet he
sat, alive, with a red-ended nose, in the scup-
pers, recounting marvels upon marvels.

“Gosh!” said Dan at last from the very
bottom of his soul when Harvey had complet-
ed 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 med-
itating an early revenge.

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

“T don’t want to be knocked down again.
Ill 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 pistolh_——”

‘T 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
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 35

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 sympathizer.

“You was wrong; the wrongest kind 0’
wrong! You take right hold an’ pitch in
*longside o’ me, or you’ll catch it, an’ Ill
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 oute{
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’:
a thief. We ain’t any common wharf-end
crowd by any manner o’ means. We’ re fish-
ermen, 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 au’
''36 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

his fixin’s, I’d say that ’baout your dollars. I
dunno what was in your pockets when I dried
your kit fer I did n’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 blood letting 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 con-
fusedly. “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.”

“T might have thought about losing the bills
that way,” Harvey said, half to himself, “in-
stead of calling everybody in sight a thief.
Where ’s your father?”

“Tn 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
'' 

 

 

 

THE “
Ww ’
E’RE HERE”

 
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 39

hung in plain sight of the wheel. Troop, in
the chocolate-and-yellow painted cabin, was
busy with a note-book and an enormous black
pencil which he sucked hard from time to
time.

“T have n’t acted quite right,” said Harvey,
surprised at his own meekness.

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

“No; it’s about you.”

“Tm 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.

“Ky? 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 ’t would do you sights
o’ good; an’ this shows I were n’t mistook in
my jedgments.”’ A smothered chuckle on deck
''40 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

caught his ear. “I am very seldom mistook
in my jedgments.” ‘The eleven-inch hand
closed on Harvey’s, numbing it to the elbow.
“Well 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’ thet ’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 re-
gained the deck, flushed to the tips of his ears.

“T don’t feel it,” said he.

“T 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’l] be back like sharks after a
dead whale in ha’af an hour.”

“What fore” said Harvey.

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

“Guess I have,” said Harvey, dolefully,
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 41

looking at the tangle of ropes and blocks over-
head.

“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 dark-
ness 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.”

“‘Aliver” said Harvey.

“Well, no. They’re so’s to be ruther dead
—an’ flat—an’ salt. There’s a hundred hogs-
head 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 quarter-deck.

“You an’ me we’ll sluice that out when
they ’re through. ’Send we’ll hev full pens

&
''42 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

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
comin’ in naow.” Dan looked over the low
bulwarks at half a dozen dories rowing to-
wards them over the shining, silky sea.

“T ’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 and green mack-
erel shades in the hollows. Each schooner in
sight seemed to be pulling her dories towards
her by invisible strings, and the little black
figures in the tiny boats pulled like clockwork
toys.

“They ’ve struck on good,” said Dan, be-
tween his half-shut eyes. ‘Manuel hain’t
room fer another fish. Low ez a lily-pad in
still water, ain’t her”

“Which is Manuel? I don’t see how you
can tell ’em ’way off, as you do.”

“Last boat to the south’ard. He f’und you
last night,” said Dan, pointing. ‘Manuel
rows Portugoosey; ye can’t mistake him.
East 0’ him—he ’s a heap better ’n he rows—
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 43

is Pennsylvania. Loaded with saleratus, by
the looks of him. East o’ him—see how pretty
they string out all along—with the humpy
shoulders, is Long Jack. He’s a Galway man
inhabitin’ South Boston, where they all live
mostly, an’ mostly them Galway men are good
in a boat. North, away yonder—you ’ll hear
him tune up in a minute—is Tom Platt. Man-
o’-war’s man he was on the old Ohio—first of
our navy, he says, to go araound the Horn. He
never talks of much else, ’cept when he sings,
but he has fair fishin’ luck. There! What
did I tell your”

A melodious bellow stole across the water
from the northern dory. Harvey heard some-
thing about somebody ’s hands and feet being
cold, and then:

“Bring forth the chart, the doleful chart,
See where them mountings meet!
The clouds are thick around their heads,
The mists around their feet.”

“Full boat,” Said Dan, with a chuckle.
“If he gives us ‘O Captain’ it’s toppin’
too!”
''44 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” —

The bellow continued:

“And naow to thee, O Capting,

Most earnestly I pray,
That they shall never bury me
In church or cloister gray.”

“Double game for Tom Platt. He ’ll tell
you all about the old Ohio to-morrow. ’See
that blue dory behind him? He’s my uncle,
—Dad’s own brother,—an’ ef there’s any bad
luck loose on the Banks she ’ll fetch up agin
Uncle Salters, sure. Look how tender he’s
rowin’. I’ll lay my wage an share he’s the
only man stung up to-day—an’ he’s stung up
good.”

“What ’ll sting hime” said Harvey, getting
interested.

“Strawberries, mostly. Punkins, some-
times, an’ sometimes lemons an’ cucumbers.
Yes, he’s stung up from his elbows down.
That man’s luck ’s perfectly paralyzin’. Naow
we ’ll take a-holt o’ the tackles an’ hist ’em in.
Is it true what you told me jest now, that you
never done a hand’s turn o’ work in all your
born life? Must feel kinder awful, don’t
ar”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 45

“Tm going to try to work, anyway,” Har-
vey replied stoutly. “Only it’s all dead new.”

“Lay a-holt o’ that tackle, then. Behind
ye i

Harvey grabbed at a rope and long iron
hook dangling from one of the stays of the
mainmast, while Dan pulled down another
that ran from something he called a “‘topping-
lift,” as Manuel drew alongside in his loaded
dory. The Portuguese smiled a brilliant smile
that Harvey learned to know well later, and
with a short-handled fork began to throw
fish into the pen on deck. “Two hundred and
thirty-one,” he shouted.

“Give him the hook,” said Dan, and Har-
vey ran it into Manuel’s hands. He slipped
it through a loop of rope at the dory’s bow,
caught Dan’s tackle, hooked it to the stern-
becket, and clambered into the schooner.

“Pull!” shouted Dan, and Harvey pulled,
astonished to find how easily the dory rose.

‘“‘Hold on, she don’t nest in the cross-trees!”’
Dan laughed; and Harvey held on, for the boat
lay in the air above his head.

“Lower away,” Dan shouted, and as Har-
vey lowered, Dan swayed the light boat with
one hand till it landed softly just behind the .
''46 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

mainmast. ‘They don’t weigh nothin’ empty.
Thet was right smart fer a passenger. There ’s
more trick to it in a sea-way.”

“Ah ha!” said Manuel, holding out a brown
hand. “You are some pretty well now? This
time last night the fish they fish for you. Now
you fish for fish. Eh, wha-at?”

viel ’m ever (so grateful,” Harvey
stammered, and his unfortunate hand stole to
his pocket once more, but he remembered that
he had no money to offer. When he knew
Manuel better the mere thought of the mistake
he might have made would cover him with
hot, uneasy blushes in his bunk.

“There is no to be thankful for to me!”
said Manuel. “How shall I leave you dreeft,
dreeft all around the Banks? Now you are
a fisherman—eh, wha-at? Ouh! Auh!” He
bent backward and forward stiffly from the
hips to get the kinks out of himself.

“T have not cleaned boat to-day. Too busy.
They struck on queek. Danny, my son, clean
for me.”

Harvey moved forward at once. Here was
something he could do for the man who had
saved his life.

Dan threw him a swab, and he leaned over
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 47

the dory, mopping up the slime clumsily, but
with great good-will. ‘Hike out the foot-
boards; they slide in them grooves,” said Dan.
“Swab ’em an’ lay ’em down. Never let
a foot-board jam. Ye may want her bad some
day. Here’s Long Jack.”

A stream of glittering fish flew into the pen
from a dory alongside.

“Manuel, you take the tackle. Ill fix the
tables. Harvey, clear Manuel’s boat. Long
Jack ’s nestin’ on the top of her.”

Harvey looked up from his swabbing at the
bottom of another dory just above his head.

“Jest like the Injian puzzle-boxes, ain't
they?” said Dan, as the one boat dropped into
the other.

“Takes to ut like a duck to water,” said
Long Jack, a grizzly-chinned, long-lipped
Galway man, bending to and fro exactly as
Manuel had done. Disko in the cabin
growled up the hatchway, and they could hear
him suck his pencil.

‘Wan hunder an’ forty-nine an’ a half—
bad luck to ye, Discobolus!” said Long Jack.
“Tm murderin’ meself to fill your pockuts.
Slate ut for a bad catch. The Portugee has
bate me.”
''48 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

Whack came another dory alongside, and
more fish shot into the pen.

‘Two hundred and three. Let’s look at the
passenger!” The speaker was even larger
than the Galway man, and his face was made
curious by a purple cut running slantways
from his left eye to the right corner of his
mouth.

Not knowing what else to do, Harvey
swabbed each dory as it came down, pulled
out the foot-boards, and laid them in the bot-
tom of the boat.

“He’s caught on good,” said the scarred
man, who was Tom Platt, watching him criti-
cally. ‘There are two ways o’ doin’ every-
thing. One’s fisher-fashion—any end first an’
a slippery hitch over all—an’ the other ’s——_”’

‘What we did on the old Ohto/” Dan in-
terrupted, brushing into the knot of men with
a long board on legs. ‘Git out o’ here, Tom
Platt, an’ leave me fix the tables.”

He jammed one end of the board into two
nicks in the bulwarks, kicked out the leg, and
ducked just in time to avoid a swinging blow
from the man-o’-war’s man.

“An’ they did that on the Ohio, too, Danny.
See?” said Tom Platt, laughing.
''“ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 49

“Guess they was swivel-eyed, then, fer it
did n’t git home, and I know who’ll find his
boots on the main-truck ef he don’t leave us
alone. Haul ahead! I’m busy, can’t ye
seer”

“Danny, ye lie on the cable an’ sleep all
day,” said Long Jack. ‘“You’re the hoight
av impidence, an’ I’m persuaded ye "ll corrupt
our supercargo in a week.”

“His name’s Harvey,” said Dan, waving
two strangely shaped knives, ‘an’ he’ll be
worth five of any Sou’ Boston clam-digger
fore long.” He laid the knives tastefully on
the table, cocked his head on one side, and ad-
mired the effect.

“T think it’s forty-two,” said a small voice
overside, and there was a roar of laughter as
another voice answered, “Then my luck’s
turned fer onct, ’caze I’m forty-five, though I
be stung outer all shape.”

“Forty-two or forty-five. I’ve lost count,”
the small voice said.

“Tt’s Penn an’ Uncle Salters caountin’
catch. This beats the circus any day,” said
Dan. “Jest look at ’em!”

“Come in—come in!” roared Long Jack.
“Tt’s wet out yondher, children.”
''50 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

“Forty-two, ye said.” This was Uncle Sal-
ters.

“Ill count again, then,” the voice replied
meekly.

The two dories swung together and bunted
into the schooner’s side.

“Patience o’ Jerusalem!” snapped Uncle
Salters, backing water with a splash. “What
possest a farmer like you to set foot in a boat
beats me. Youve nigh stove me all up.”

“I am sorry, Mr. Salters. I came to sea on
account of nervous dyspepsia. You advised
me, I think.”

“You an’ your nervis dyspepsy be drowned
in the Whale-hole,” roared Uncle Salters, a
fat and tubby little man. ‘“You’re comin’
down on me agin. Did ye say forty-two or
forty-five?”

“I’ve forgotten, Mr. Salters. Let’s count.”

“Don’t see as it could be forty-five. I’m
forty-five,” said Uncle Salters. “You count
keerful, Penn.”

Disko Troop came out of the cabin. “Sal-
ters, you pitch your fish in naow at once,” he
said in the tone of authority.

‘Don’t spile the catch, Dad,” Dan mur-

mured. “Them two are on’y jest beginnin’.”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 51

“Mother av delight! He’s forkin’ them
wan by wan,” howled Long Jack, as Uncle
Salters got to work laboriously; the little
man in the other dory counting a line of
notches on the gunwale.

“‘That was last week’s catch,” he said, look-
ing up plaintively, his forefinger where he had
left off.

Manuel nudged Dan, who darted to the
after-tackle, and, leaning far overside, slipped
the hook into the stern-rope as Manuel made
her fast forward. The others pulled gallantly
and swung the boat in—man, fish, and all.

“One, two, four—nine,” said Tom Platt,
counting with a practised eye. ‘Forty-seven.
Penn, you’re it!’ Dan let the after-tackle
tun, and slid him out of the stern on to the
deck amid a torrent of his own fish.

“Hold on!” roared Uncle Salters, bobbing
by the waist. ‘Hold on, I’m a bit mixed in
my caount.”

He had no time to protest, but was hove
inboard and treated like “Pennsylvania.”

_ “Forty-one,” said Tom Platt. “Beat by
a farmer, Salters. An’ you sech a sailor,
too!”

“T were n’t fair caount,” said he, stumbling
''52 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

Opt of the pen; “an’ I’m stung up all to
pieces.”

His thick hands were puffy and mottled
purply white.

“Some folks will find strawberry-bottom,”
said Dan, addressing the newly risen moon,
“ef they hev to dive fer it, seems to me.”

‘An’ others,” said Uncle Salters, “eats the
fat o’ the land in sloth, an’ mocks their own
blood-kin.”

“Seat ye! Seat ye!” a voice Harvey had
not heard called from the foc’sle. Disko
Troop, Tom Platt, Long Jack, and Salters
went forward on the word. Little Penn bent
above his square deep-sea reel and the tangled
cod-lines; Manuel lay down full length on the
deck, and Dan dropped into the hold, where
Harvey heard him banging casks with a ham-
mer.

“Salt,” he said, returning. ‘Soon as we’re
through supper we git to dressing-down.
You ’ll pitch to Dad. ‘Tom Platt an’ Dad they
stow together, an’ you’ll hear ’em arguin’.
We’re second ha’af, you an’ me an’ Manuel
an’ Penn—the youth an’ beauty o’ the boat.”

‘“What’s the good of that?” said Harvey.
“Tm hungry.”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 3

“They ’ll be through in a minute. Snff!
She smells good to-night. Dad ships a good
cook ef he do suffer with his brother. It’s a
full catch to-day, ain’t it?” He pointed at the
pens piled high with cod. ‘What water did
ye hev, Manuel?”

‘“‘Twenty-fife father,” said the Portuguese,
sleepily. “They strike on good an’ queek.
Some day I show you, Harvey.”

The moon was beginning to walk on the
still sea before the elder men came aft. The
cook had no need to cry “second half.” Dan
and Manuel were down the hatch and at table
ere Tom Platt, last and most deliberate of the
elders, had finished wiping his mouth with
the back of his hand. Harvey followed Penn,
and sat down before a tin pan of cod’s tongues
and sounds, mixed with scraps of pork and
fried potato, a loaf of hot bread, and some
black and powerful coffee. Hungry as they
were, they waited while “Pennsylvania” sol-
emnly asked a blessing. Then they stoked
in silence till Dan drew breath over his tin
cup and demanded of Harvey how he felt.

“Most full, but there ’s just room for an-
other piece.”

The cook was a huge, jet-black negro, and,
''54 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

unlike all the negroes Harvey had met, did
not talk, contenting himself with smiles and
dumb-show invitations to eat more.

“See, Harvey,” said Dan, rapping with his
fork on the table, “it’s jest as I said. The
young an’ handsome men—like me an’ Pennsy
an’ you an’ Manuel—we’re second ha’af, an’
we eats when the first ha’af are through.
They’re the old fish; an’ they’re mean an’
humpy, an’ their stummicks has to be hu-
moured; so they come first, which they don’t
deserve. Ain’t that so, doctor?”

The cook nodded.

“Can’t he talk?” said Harvey in a whisper.

“°Nough to git along. Not much o’ any-
thing we know. His natural tongue’s kinder
curious. Comes from the innards of Cape
Breton, he does, where the farmers speak
homemade Scotch. Cape Breton’s full o’
niggers whose folk run in there durin’ aour
war, an’ they talk like the farmers—all huffy-
chuffy.”

“That is not Scotch,” said “Pennsylvania.”
“That is Gaelic. So I read in a book.”

“Penn reads a heap. Most of what he says
is so—’cep’ when it comes to a caount o’ fish
—ehr”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 55

“Does your father just let them say how
many they’ve caught without checking
them?” said Harvey.

“Why, yes. Where’s the sense of a man
lyin’ fer a few old cod?”

‘Was a man once lied for his catch,” Man-
wel put in “Lied every ‘days Fite, ten,
twenty-fife more fish than come he say there
was.”

‘Where was that?” said Dan. “None 0°
aour folk.”

“Frenchman of Anguille.”

“Ah! Them West Shore Frenchmen don’t
caount anyway. Stands to reason they can’t
caount. Ef you run acrost any of their soft
hooks, Harvey, you ll know why,” said Dan,
with an awful contempt.

“Always more and never less,
Every time we come to dress,”

Long Jack roared down the hatch, and the
“second ha’af” scrambled up at once.

The shadow of the masts and rigging, with
the never-furled riding-sail, rolled to and fro
on the heaving deck in the moonlight; and
the pile of fish by the stern shone like a dump
''56 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

of fluid silver. In the hold there were tram-
plings and rumblings where Disko Troop and
Tom Platt moved among the salt-bins. Dan
passed Harvey a pitchfork, and led him to
the inboard end of the rough table, where
Uncle Salters was drumming impatiently with
a knife-haft. A tub of salt water lay at his
feet.

“You pitch to Dad an’ Tom Platt down the
hatch, an’ take keer Uncle Salters don’t cut
yer eye out,” said Dan, swinging himself into
the hold. “I'll pass salt below.”

Penn and Manuel stood knee deep among
cod in the pen, flourishing drawn knives.
Long Jack, a basket at his feet and mittens
on his hands, faced Uncle Salters at the table,
and Harvey stared at the pitchfork and the
tub.

“Hil shouted Manuel, stooping to the fish,
and bringing one up with a finger under its
gill and a finger in its eye. He laid it on
the edge of the pen; the knife-blade glim-
mered with a sound of tearing, and the fish,
slit from throat to vent, with a nick on either
side of the neck, dropped at Long Jack’s feet.

“Hi!” said Long Jack, with a scoop of his
mittened hand. The cod’s liver dropped in
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 57

the basket. Another wrench and scoop sent
the head and offal flying, and the empty fish
slid across to Uncle Salters, who snorted
fiercely. There was another sound of tearing,
the backbone flew over the bulwarks, and the
fish, headless, gutted, and open, splashed in
the tub, sending the salt water into Harvey’s
astonished mouth. After the first yell, the
men were silent. The cod moved along as
though they were alive, and long ere Harvey
had ceased wondering at the miraculous dex-
terity of it all, his tub was full.

“Pitch!” grunted Uncle Salters, without
turning his head, and Harvey pitched the fish
by twos and threes down the hatch.

“Hil Pitch ’em bunchy,” shouted Dan.
“Don’t scatter! Uncle Salters is the best
splitter in the fleet. Watch him mind his
book!”

Indeed, it looked a little as though the
round uncle were cutting magazine pages
against time. Manuel’s body, cramped over
from the hips, stayed like a statue; but his
long arms grabbed the fish without ceasing.
Little Penn toiled valiantly, but it was easy
to see he was weak. Once or twice Manuel
found time to help him without breaking the
''58 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

chain of supplies, and once Manuel howled
because he had caught his finger in a French-
man’s hook. ‘These hooks are made of soft
metal, to be rebent after use; but the cod
very often get away with them and are hooked
again elsewhere; and that is one of the many
reasons why the Gloucester boats despise the
Frenchmen.

Down below, the rasping sound of rough
salt rubbed on rough flesh sounded like the
whirring of a grindstone—a steady undertune
to the “click-nick” of knives in the pen; the
wrench and schloop of torn heads, dropped
liver, and flying offal; the ‘““caraaah” of Uncle
Salters’s knife scooping away backbones; and
the flap of wet, opened bodies falling into the
tub.

At the end of an hour Harvey would have
given the world to rest; for fresh, wet cod
weigh more than you would think, and his
back ached with the steady pitching. But he
felt for the first time in his life that he was
one of a working gang of men, took pride in
the thought, and held on sullenly.

“Knife oh!” shouted Uncle Salters at last.
Penn doubled up, gasping among the fish,
Manuel bowed back and forth to supple him-
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 59

self, and Long Jack leaned over the bulwarks.
The cook appeared, noiseless as a black shad-
ow, collected a mass of backbones and heads,
and retreated.

“Blood-ends for breakfast an’ head-chow-
der,” said Long Jack, smacking his lips.

“Knife oh!” repeated Uncle Salters, wav-
ing the flat, curved splitter’s weapon.

“Look by your foot, Harve,” cried Dan
below.

Harvey saw half a dozen knives stuck in a
cleat in the hatch combing. He dealt these
around, taking over the dulled ones.

“Water!” said Disko Troop.

“Scuttle-butt’s for’ard an’ the dipper’s
alongside. Hurry, Harve,” said Dan.

He was back in a minute with a big dipper-
ful of stale brown water which tasted like nec-
tar, and loosed the jaws of Disko and Tom
Platt.

“These are cod,” said Disko. ‘They ain’t
Damarskus figs, Tom Platt, nor yet silver
bars. I’ve told you that every single time
sence we ’ve sailed together.”

‘““A matter o’ seven seasons,” returned Tom
Platt coolly. “Good stowin’s good stowin’ all
the same, an’ there’s a right an’ a wrong way
''60 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

0’ stowin’ ballast even. If you’d ever seen
four hundred ton o’ iron set into the nN

“FYil’ With a yell from Manuel the work
began again, and never stopped till the pen
was empty. The instant the last fish was
down, Disko Troop rolled aft to the cabin
with his brother; Manuel and Long Jack
went forward; Tom Platt only waited long
enough to slide home the hatch ere he too
disappeared. In half a minute Harvey heard
deep snores in the cabin, and he was staring
blankly at Dan and Penn.

“T did a little better that time, Danny,”
said Penn, whose eyelids were heavy with
sleep. “But I think it is my duty to help
clean.”

“Would n’t hev your conscience fer a thou-
sand quintal,” said Dan. “Turn in, Penn.
You ’ve no call to do boy’s work. Draw a
bucket, Harvey. Oh, Penn, dump these in
the gurry-butt fore you sleep. Kin you keep
awake that long?”

Penn took up the heavy basket of fish-livers,
emptied them into a cask with a hinged top
lashed by the foc’sle; then he too dropped out
of sight in the cabin.

“Boys clean up after dressin’ down, an’

 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 61

first watch in ca’am weather is boy’s watch on
the We’re Here.” Dan sluiced the pen en-
ergetically, unshipped the table, set it up to
dry in the moonlight, ran the red knife-blades
through a wad of oakum, and began to sharpen
them on a tiny grindstone, as Harvey threw
offal and backbones overboard under his di-
rection.

At the first splash a silvery-white ghost rose
bolt upright from the oily water and sighed
a weird whistling sigh. Harvey started back
with a shout, but Dan only laughed. “Gram-
pus,” said he. ‘Beggin’ fer fish-heads. They
up-eend thet way when they’re hungry.
Breath on him like the doleful tombs, hain’t
hee” A horrible stench of decayed fish filled
the air as the pillar of white sank, and the
water bubbled oilily. ‘Hain’t ye never seen
a grampus up-eend before? Youll see ’em
by hundreds ’fore ye’re through. Say, it’s
good to hev a boy aboard again. Otto was
too old, an’ a Dutchy at that. Him an’ me
we fought consid’ble. ’Would n’t ha’ keered
fer thet ef he’d hed a Christian tongue in his
head. Sleepyr”

“Dead sleepy,” said Harvey, nodding for-
ward,
''62 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

“Must n’t sleep on watch. Rouse up an’
see ef our anchor-light’s bright an’ shinin’.
You ’re on watch now, Harve.”

“Pshaw! What’s to hurt us? ’Bright’s
day. Sn—orrr!”

“Jest when things happen, Dad says. Fine
weather ’s good sleepin’, an’ ’fore you know,
mebbe, you ’re cut in two by a liner, an’ sev-
enteen brass-bound officers, all gen’elmen, lift
their hand to it that your lights was aout an’
there was a thick fog. Harve, I’ve kinder
took to you, but ef you nod onct more I'’Il lay
into you with a rope’s end.”

The moon, who sees many strange things on
the Banks, looked down on a slim youth in
knickerbockers and a red jersey, staggering
around the cluttered decks of a seventy-ton
schooner, while behind him, waving a knotted
rope, walked, after the manner of an execu-
tioner, a boy who yawned and nodded be-
tween the blows he dealt.

The lashed wheel groaned and kicked softly,
the riding-sail slatted a little in the shifts of
the light wind, the windlass creaked, and the
miserable procession continued. Harvey ex-
postulated, threatened, whimpered, and at last
wept outright, while Dan, the words clotting
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 63

on his tongue, spoke of the beauty of watchful-
ness and slashed away with the rope’s end,
punishing the dories as often as he hit Harvey.
At last the clock in the cabin struck ten, and
upon the tenth stroke little Penn crept on
deck. He found two boys in two tumbled
heaps side by side on the main hatch, so deeply
asleep that he actually rolled them to their
berths.
''CHAPTER Tit

T WAS the forty-fathom slumber that
clears the soul and eye and heart, and sends
you to breakfast ravening. They emptied a
big tin dish of juicy fragments of fish—the
blood-ends the cook had collected overnight.
They cleaned up the plates and pans of the
elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork
for the midday meal, swabbed down the foc-
’sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for
the cook, and investigated the fore-hold, where
the boat’s stores were stacked. It was another
perfect day—soft, mild, and clear; and Har-
vey breathed to the very bottom of his lungs.
More schooners had crept up in the night,
and the long blue seas were full of sails and
dories. Far away on the horizon, the smoke
of some liner, her hull invisible, smudged the
blue, and to eastward a big ship’s top-gallant
64
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 65

sails, just lifting, made a square nick in it.
Disko Troop was smoking by the roof of the
cabin—one eye on the craft around, and the
other on the little fly at the mainmast-head.
“When Dad kerflummoxes that way,” said
Dan in a whisper, “he’s doin’ some high-line
thinkin’ fer all hands. Ill lay my wage an’
share we ll make berth soon. Dad he knows
the cod, an’ the Fleet they know Dad knows.
*See ’em comin’ up one by one, lookin’ fer
nothin’ in particular, o’ course, but scrowgin’
onusallthetime? There’s the Prince Leboo;
she ’s a Chat-ham boat. She’s crep’ up sence
last night. An’ see that big one with a patch
in her foresail an’ a new jibe? She’s the
Carrie Pitman from West Chat-ham. She
won’t keep her canvas long onless her luck’s
changed since last season. She don’t do much
cep’ drift,’ There ain’t an anchor made i
hold her. . . . When the smoke pufis up
in little rings like that, Dad ’s studyin’ the fish.
Ef we speak to him now, he’ll git mad: Las’
time I did, he jest took an’ hove a boot at me.”
Disko Troop stared forward, the pipe be-
tween his teeth, with eyes that saw nothing.
As his son said, he was studying the fish—
pitting his knowledge and experience on the
''66 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

Banks against the roving cod in his own sea.
He accepted the presence of the inquisitive
schooners on the horizon as a compliment to
his powers. But now that it was paid, he
wished to draw away and make his berth
alone, till it was time to go up to the Virgin
and fish in the streets of that roaring town
upon the waters. So Disko Troop thought
of recent weather, and gales, currents, food-
supplies, and other domestic arrangements,
from the point of view of a twenty-pound cod:
was, in fact, for an hour a cod himself, ana
looked remarkably like one. Then he re-
moved the pipe from his teeth.

“Dad,” said Dan, “we ’ve done our chores,
Can’t we go overside a piece? It’s good
catchin’ weather.”

‘Not in that cherry-coloured rig ner them
ha’af baked brown shoes. Give him suthin’
fit to wear.”

“Dad ’s pleased—that settles it,” said Dan,
delightedly, dragging Harvey into the cabin,
while Troop pitched a key down the steps.
“Dad keeps my spare rig where he kin over-
haul it, ’cause Ma sez I’m keerless.” He
rummaged through a locker, and in less than
three minutes Harvey was adorned with fish-
''“ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 67

erman’s rubber boots that came half up his
thigh, a heavy blue jersey well darned at the
elbows, a pair of nippers, and a sou’wester.

“‘Naow ye look somethin’ like,” said Dan.
“Hurry!”

“Keep nigh an’ handy,” said Troop, ‘an’
don’t go visitin’ raound the Fleet. Ef any one
asks you what I’m cal’latin’ to do, speak the
truth—fer ye don’t know.”

A little red dory, labelled Hattie S., lay
astern of the schooner. Dan hauled in the
painter, and dropped lightly on to the bottom
boards, while Harvey tumbled clumsily after.

‘That ’s no way 0’ gettin’ into a boat,” said
Dan. “Ef there was any sea you’d go to the
bottom, sure. You got to learn to meet
her.”

Dan fitted the thole-pins, took the forward
thwart and watched Harvey’s work. The boy
had rowed, in a lady-like fashion, on the Adi-
rondack ponds; but there is a difference be-
tween squeaking pins and _ well-balanced
rullocks—light sculls and stubby, eight-foot
sea-oars. ‘They stuck in the gentle swell, and
Harvey grunted.

“Short! Row short!” said Dan. “Ef you
ramp your oar in any kind o’ sea you’re
''68 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

liable to turn her over. Ain’t she a daisy?
Mine, too.”

The little dory was specklessly clean. In
her bows lay a tiny anchor, two jugs of water,
and some seventy fathoms of thin, brown dory-
roding. A tin dinner-horn rested in cleats
just under Harvey’s right hand, beside an
ugly-looking maul, a short gaff, and a shorter
wooden stick. A couple of lines, with very
heavy leads and double cod-hooks, all neatly
coiled on square reels, were stuck in their
place by the gunwale.

‘Where ’s the sail and mast?” said Harvey,
for his hands were beginning to blister.

Dan chuckled. “Ye don’t sail fishin’-dories
much. Ye pull; but ye need n’t pull so hard.
Don’t you wish you owned her?”

“Well, I guess my father might give me
one or two if I asked ’em,” Harvey replied.
He had been too busy to think much of his
family till then.

“That’s so. I forgot your dad’s a million-
aire. You don’t act millionary any, naow.
But a dory an’ craft an’ gear”—Dan spoke as
though she were a whaleboat—“costs a heap.
Think your dad ’u’d give you one fer—fer a
pet like?”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 69

“Should n’t wonder. It would be ’most the
only thing I have n’t stuck him for yet.”

““*Must be an expensive kinder kid to home.
Don’t slitheroo thet way, Harve. Short’s the
trick, because no sea’s ever dead still, an’ the
swells ’1]——_”

Crack! The loom of the oar kicked Harvey
under the chin and knocked him backwards,

“That was what I was goin’ to say. I hed
to learn too, but J wasn’t more than eight
years old when I got my schoolin’.”

Harvey regained his seat with aching jaws
and a frown.

“No good gettin’ mad at things, Dad says,
It’s our own fault ef we can’t handle ’em, he
says. Le’s try here. Manuel ’ll give us the
water.”

The “Portugee” was rocking fully a mile
away, but when Dan up-ended an oar he
waved his left arm three times.

“Thirty fathom,” said Dan, stringing a salt
clam on to the hook. “Over with the dough-
boys. Bait same’s I do, Harve, an’ don’t
snarl your reel.”

Dan’s line was out long before Harvey had.
mastered the mystery of baiting and heaving
out the leads. The dory drifted along easily.
''70 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

It was not worth while to anchor till they
were sure of good ground.

“Here we come!” Dan shouted, and a
shower of spray rattled on Harvey’s shoulders
as a big cod flapped and kicked alongside.
“Muckle, Harvey, muckle! Under your
hand! Quick!”

Evidently “muckle” could not be the dinner-
horn, so Harvey passed over the maul, and
Dan scientifically stunned the fish before he
pulled it inboard, and wrenched out the hook
with the short wooden stick he called a “‘gob-
stick.” Then Harvey felt a tug, and pulled
up zealously.

‘Why, these are strawberries!” he shouted.
“Look!”

The hook had fouled among a bunch of
strawberries, red on one side and white on the
other—perfect reproductions of the land fruit,
except that there were no leaves, and the stem
was all pipy and slimy.

“Don’t tech em. Slat’em off. Don’t -

The warning came too late. Harvey had
picked them from the hook, and was admiring
them.

“Ouch!” he cried, for his fingers throbbed
as though he had grasped many nettles.

 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 71

“Naow ye know what strawberry-bottom
means. Nothin’ ’cep’ fish should be teched
with the naked fingers, Dad says. Slat ’em off
agin the gunnel, an’ bait up, Harve. Lookin’
won't help any. It’s all in the wages.”

Harvey smiled at the thought of his ten and
a half dollars a month, and wondered what his
mother would say if she could see him hanging
over the edge of a fishing-dory in mid-ocean.
She suffered agonies whenever he went out on
Saranac Lake; and, by the way, Harvey re-
membered distinctly that he used to laugh at
her anxieties. Suddenly the line flashed
through his hand, stinging even through the
“nippers,” the woollen circlets supposed to
protect it.

“He’s a logy. Give him room accordin’
to his strength,” cried Dan. “I?ll help
ve.

“No, you won't,” Harvey snapped, as he
hung on to the line. “It’s my first fish. Is—
is it a whale?”

“Halibut, mebbe.” Dan peered down into
the water alongside, and flourished the big
“muckle,” ready for all chances. Something
white and oval flickered and fluttered through
the green. “Ill lay my wage an’ share he’s
''72 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

over a hundred. Are you so everlastin’ anx-
ious to land him alone?”

Harvey’s knuckles were raw and bleeding
where they had been banged against the gun-
wale; his face was purple-blue between ex-
citement and exertion; he dripped with sweat,
and was half-blinded from staring at the cir-
cling sunlit ripples about the swiftly moving
line. The boys were tired long ere the halibut,
who took charge of them and the dory for the
next twenty minutes. But the big flat fish
was gaffed and hauled in at last.

“Beginner’s luck,” said Dan, wiping his
forehead. ‘“He’s all of a hundred.”

Harvey looked at the huge gray-and-mottled
creature with unspeakable pride. He had
seen halibut many times on marble slabs
ashore, but it had never occurred to him to
ask how they came inland. Now he knew;
and every inch of his body ached with fatigue.

“Ef Dad was along,” said Dan, hauling up,
“he ’d read the signs plain’s print. The fish
are runnin’ smaller an’ smaller, an’ you ’ve
took ’baout as logy a halibut’s we’re apt to
find this trip. Yesterday’s catch—did ye no-
tice it?—was all big fish an’ no halibut. Dad
he’d read them signs right off. Dad says.
'' 

S OVER A HUNDRED.’”

’

“LL LAY MY WAGE AN’ SHARE HE
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 75

everythin’ on the Banks is signs, an’ can be
read wrong er right. Dad’s deeper’n the
Whale-hole.”

Even as he spoke some one fired a pistol on
the We’re Here, and a potato-basket was run
up in the fore-rigging.

“What did I say, naow? That’s the call fer
the whole crowd. Dad’s onter something,
er he’d never break fishin’ this time o’ day.
Reel up, Harve, an’ we ’ll pull back.”

They were to windward of the schooner,
just ready to flirt the dory over the still sea,
when sounds of woe half a mile off led them to
Penn, who was careering around a fixed point
for all the world like a gigantic water-bug.‘
The little man backed away and came down
again with enormous energy, but at the end of
each manceuvre his dory swung round and
snubbed herself on her rope.

“Well hev to help him, else he ’ll root an’
seed here,” said Dan.

‘“What’s the matter?” said Harvey. This
was a new world, where he could not lay down
the law to his elders, but had to ask questions
humbly. And the sea was horribly big and
unexcited.

“Anchor’s fouled. Penn’s always losing
''96 “ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

’em. Lost two this trip a’ready—on sandy
bottom too—an’ Dad says next one he loses,
sure ’s fishin’, he ’1l give him the kelleg. That
*u’d break Penn’s heart.”

‘“What’s a ‘kelleg’?” said Harvey, who
had a vague idea it might be some kind of
marine torture, like keel-hauling in the story-
books,

“Big stone instid of an anchor. You kin see
a kelleg ridin’ in the bows fur ’s you can see a
dory, an’ all the Fleet knows what it means.
They ’d guy him dreadful. Penn could n’t
stand that no more’n a dog with a dipper to
his tail. He’s so everlastin’ sensitive. Hello,
Penn! Stuck again? Don’t try any more o'
your patents. Come up on her, and keep
your rodin’ straight up an’ down.”

“Tt does n’t move,” said the little man, pant-
ing. “It doesn’t move at all, and indeed I
tried everything.”

‘“What’s all this hurrah’s-nest for’ard?”
said Dan, pointing to a wild tangle of spare
oars and dory-roding, all matted together by
the hand of inexperience.

“Oh, that,” said Penn proudly, “is a Span-
ish windlass. Mr. Salters showed me how to
make it; but even that doesn’t move her,”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 7

Dan bent low over the gunwale to hide a
smile, twitched once or twice on the roding,
and, behold, the anchor drew at once.

“Haul up, Penn,” he said laughing, “er
she ll git stuck again.”

They left him regarding the weed-hung
flukes of the little anchor with big, pathetic
blue eyes, and thanking them profusely.

“Qh, say, while I think of it, Harve,” said
Dan when they were out of ear-shot, “Penn
ain’t quite all caulked. He ain’t nowise dan-
gerous, but his mind’s give out. Seer”

“Ts that so, or is it one of your father’s
judgments?” Harvey asked as he bent to his
oars. He felt he was learning to handle them
more easily.

“Dad ain’t mistook this time. Penn’s a
sure "nuff loony. No, he ain’t thet exactly, so
much ez a harmless ijjit. It was this way
(you’re rowin’ quite so, Harve), an’ I tell
you ’cause it’s right you orter know. He was
a Moravian preacher once. Jacob Boller wuz
his name, Dad told me, an’ he lived with his
wife an’ four children somewheres out Penn-
sylvania way. Well, Penn he took his folks
along to a Moravian meetin’—camp-meetin’
“most like—an’ they stayed over jest one night
''78 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

in Johnstown. You’ve heered talk o’ Johnse
town?”

Harvey considered. “Yes, I have. But I
don’t know why. It sticks in my head same
as Ashtabula.”

“Both was big accidents—thet’s why,
Harve. Well, that one single night Penn and
his folks was to the hotel Johnstown was
wiped out. *Dam bust an’ flooded her, an’
the houses struck adrift an’ bumped into each
other an’ sunk. I’ve seen the pictures, an’
they re dretful. Penn he saw his folk drown-
ed all ’n a heap ’fore he rightly knew what
was comin’. His mind give out from that on.
He mistrusted somethin’ hed happened up to
Johnstown, but for the poor life of him he
could n’t remember what, an’ he jest drifted
araound smilin’ an’ wonderin’. He didn’t
know what he was, nor yit what he hed bin,
an’ thet way he run agin Uncle Salters, who
was visitin’ ’n Allegheny City. Ha’af my
mother’s folks they live scattered inside 0’
Pennsylvania, an’ Uncle Salters he visits
araound winters. Uncle Salters he kinder
adopted Penn, well knowin’ ,,hat his trouble
wuz; an’ he brought him East, an’ he give him
work on his farm.”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 79

“Why, I heard him calling Penn a farmer
last night when the boats bumped. Is your
Uncle Salters a farmer?”

“Farmer!” shouted Dan. “There ain’t
water enough ’tween here an’ Hatt’rus to wash
the furrer-mold off’n his boots. He’s jest
everlastin’ farmer. Why, Harve, I’ve seen
thet man hitch up a bucket, long towards sun-
down, an’ set twiddlin’ the spigot to the
scuttle-butt same ’s ef ’t was a cow’s bag. He’s
thet much farmer. Well, Penn an’ he they
ran the farm—up Exeter way ’t wuz. Uncle
Salters he sold it this spring to a jay from
Boston as wanted to build a summer-haouse,
an’ he got a heap for it. Well, them two
loonies scratched along till, one day, Penn’s
church he’d belonged to—the Moravians—
found out where he wuz drifted an’ layin’, an’
wrote to Uncle Salters. ‘Never heerd what
they said exactly; but Uncle Salters was mad.
He’s a ’piscopolian mostly—but he jest let ’em
hev it both sides o’ the bow, ’s if he was a
Baptist; an’ sez he warn’t goin’ to give up
Penn to any blame Moravian connection in
Pennsylvania or anywheres else. Then he
come to Dad, towin’ Penn,—thet was two trips
back,—an’ sez he an’ Penn must fish a trip fer
''80 “ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

their health. ’Guess he thought the Moravi-
ans wouldn’t hunt the Banks fer Jacob Boller.
Dad was agreeable, fer Uncle Salters he’d
been fishin’ off an’ on fer thirty years, when
he warn’t inventin’ patent manures, an’ he
took quarter-share in the We ’re Here, an’ the
trip done Penn so much good, Dad made a
habit o’ takin’ him. Some day, Dad sez, he ’Il
remember his wife an’ kids an’ Johnstown, an’
then, like as not, he ll die, Dad sez. Don’t
ye talk abaout Johnstown ner such things to
Penn, ’r Uncle Salters he’ll heave ye over-
board.”

“Poor Penn!’ murmured Harvey. “I
should n’t ever have thought Uncle Salters
cared for him by the look of ’em together.”

“T like Penn, though; we all do,” said Dan.
“We ought to ha’ give him a tow, but I wanted
to tell ye first.”

They were close to the schooner now, the
other boats a little behind them.

“You need n’t heave in the dories till after
dinner,” said Troop from the deck. “We’ll
dress daown right off. Fix table, boys!”

“Deeper ’n the Whale-deep,” said Dan,
with a wink, as he set the gear for dressing
down. “Look at them boats that hev edged
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 81

up sence mornin’. They ’re all waitin’ on Dad.
See em, Harver”

“They are all alike to me.” And indeed to
a landsman, the nodding schooners around
seemed run from the same mold.

“They ain’t, though. That yaller, dirty
packet with her bowsprit steeved that way,
she’s the Hope of Prague. Nick Brady’s her
skipper, the meanest man on the Banks.
Well tell him so when we strike the Main
Ledge. "Way off yonder ’s the Day’s Eye. The
two Jeraulds own her. She’s from Harwich;
fastish, too, an’ hez good luck; but Dad he’d
find fish in a graveyard. Them other three,
side along, they’re the Margie Smith, Rose,
and Edith S. Walen, all frum home. ’Guess
we 'll see the dbbie M. Deering to-morrer,
Dad, won’t wee They’re all slippin’ over
from the shoal o’ ’Queereau.”’

“You won’t see many boats to-morrow,
Danny.” When Troop called his son Danny,
it was a sign that the old man was pleased.
“Boys, we’re too crowded,” he went on, ad-
dressing the crew as they clambered inboard.
“We ll leave ’em to bait big an’ catch small.”
He looked at the catch in the pen, and it was
curious to see how little and level the fish ran,
''82 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

Save for Harvey’s halibut, there was nothing
over fifteen pounds on deck.

“T ’m waitin’ on the weather,” he added.

“Yell have to make it yourself, Disko, for
there’s no sign J can see,” said Long Jack,
sweeping the clear horizon.

And yet, half an hour later, as they were
dressing down, the Bank fog dropped on them,
“between fish and fish,” as they say. It drove
steadily and in wreaths, curling and smoking
along the colourless water. The men stopped
dressing-down without a word. Long Jack
and Uncle Salters slipped the windlass brakes
into their sockets, and began to heave up the
anchor; the windlass jarring as the wet hemp-
en cable strained on the barrel. Manuel and
Tom Platt gave a hand at the last. The anchor
came up with a sob, and the riding-sail bellied
as Troop steadied her at the wheel. “Up jib
and foresail,” said he.

“Slip ’em in the smother,” shouted Long
Jack, making fast the jib-sheet, while the
others raised the clacking, rattling rings of the
foresail; and the fore-boom creaked as the
We’re Here looked up into the wind and
dived off into blank, whirling white.
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 83

“There’s wind behind this fog,” said
Troop.

It was wonderful beyond words to Harvey;
and the most wonderful part was that he heard
no orders except an occasional grunt from
Troop, ending with, ““That’s good, my son!”

“Never seen anchor weighed before?”
said Tom Platt, to Harvey gaping at the damp
canvas of the foresail.

“No. Where are we goinge”

“Fish and make berth, as you’ll find out
fore you ’ve been a week aboard. It’s all new
to you, but we never know what may come to
us. Now, take me—Tom Platt—I ’d never ha’
thought——”

“Tt’s better than fourteen dollars a month
an’ a bullet in your belly,” said Troop, from
the wheel. ‘Ease your jumbo a grind.”

“Dollars an’ cents better,” returned the
man-o’-war’s man, doing something to a big
jib with a wooden spar tied to it. “But we
did n’t think o’ that when we manned the
windlass-brakes on the Miss Jim Buck,’ out-
side Beaufort Harbour, with Fort Macon
heavin’ hot shot at our stern, an’ a livin’ gale
atop of all. Where was you then, Disko?”

The Gemsbok, U. S. N.?
''84 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

‘‘Jest here, or hereabouts,”’ Disko replied,
“earnin’ my bread on the deep waters, an’
dodgin’ Reb privateers. Sorry I can’t accom-
modate you with red-hot shot, Tom Platt; but
I guess we’ll come aout all right on wind
fore we see Eastern Point.”

There was an incessant slapping and chat-
ter at the bows now, varied by a solid thud and
a little spout of spray that clattered down on
the foc’sle. The rigging dripped clammy
drops, and the men lounged along the lee of
the house—all save Uncle Salters, who sat
stiffly on the main-hatch nursing his stung
hands.

‘““*Guess she’d carry stays’l,” said Disko,
rolling one eye at his brother.

“Guess she would n’t to any sorter profit.
What’s the sense o’ wastin’ canvas?” the
farmer-sailor replied.

The wheel twitched almost imperceptibly in
Disko’s hands. A few seconds later a hissing
wave-top slashed diagonally across the boat,
smote Uncle Salters between the shoulders,
and drenched him from head to foot. He rose
sputtering, and went forward only to catch
another.

“See Dad chase him all around the deck,”
'' 

 

 

 

 

SMOTE

UNCLE SALTERS BETWEEN THE SHOULDERS, AND

A FEW SECONDS LATER A HISSING WAYE-TOP

6“

DRENCHED HIM FROM HEAD TO FOOT.”
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 87

said Dan. “Uncle Salters he thinks his quar-
ter share ’sour canvas. Dad_’s put this duckin’
act up on him two trips runnin’. Hi! That
found him where he feeds.” Uncle Salters
had taken refuge by the foremast, but a wave
slapped him over the knees. Disko’s face was
as blank as the circle of the wheel.

“Guess she ’d lie easier under stays’l, Sal-
ters,” said Disko, as though he had seen noth-
ing.

“Set your old kite, then,” roared the victim
through a cloud of spray; “‘only don’t lay it
to me if anything happens. Penn, you go be-
low right off an’ git your coffee. You ought
to hev more sense than to bum araound on deck
this weather.”

“Now they ’11 swill coffee an’ play checkers
till the cows come home,” said Dan, as Uncle
Salters hustled Penn into the fore-cabin.
“°Looks to me like’s if we’d all be doin’ so
fer a spell. There’s nothin’ in creation dead-
er-limpsey-idler ’n a Banker when she ain’t
on fish.””

“T’m glad ye spoke, Danny,” cried Long
Jack, who had been casting round in search
of amusement. “I ’d clean forgot we’d a pas-
senger under that T-wharf hat. There’s no
''88 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

idleness for thim that don’t know their ropes.
Pass him along, Tom Platt, an’ we’ll larn
him.”

“?Tain’t my trick this time,” grinned Dan.
“You ve got to go it alone. Dad learned me
with a rope’s end.”

For an hour Long Jack walked his prey up
and down, teaching, as he said, “things at the
sea that ivry man must know, blind, dhrunk,
or asleep.” There is not much gear to a sev-
enty-ton schooner with a stump-foremast, but
Long Jack had a gift of expression. When
he wished to draw Harvey’s attention to the
peak-halyards, he dug his knuckles into the
back of the boy’s neck and kept him at gaze
for half a minute. He emphasized the differ-
ence between fore and aft generally by rub-
bing Harvey’s nose along a few feet of the
boom, and the lead of each rope was fixed in
Harvey’s mind by the end of the rope itself.

The lesson would have been easier had the
deck been at all free; but there appeared to be
a place on it for everything and anything ex-
cept a man. Forward lay the windlass and.
its tackle, with the chain and hemp cables, all
very unpleasant to trip over; the foc’sle stove-
pipe, and the gurry-butts by the foc’sle hatch,
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 89

to hold the fish-livers. Aft of these the fore-
boom and booby of the main-hatch took all
the space that was not needed for the pumps
and dressing-pens. ‘Then came the nests of
dories lashed to ring-bolts by the quarter-
deck; the house, with tubs and oddments
lashed all around it; and, last, the sixty-foot
main-boom in its crutch, splitting things
lengthwise, to duck and dodge under every
time.

Tom Platt, of course, could not keep his oar
out of the business, but ranged alongside with
enormous and unnecessary descriptions of sails
and spars on the old Ohio.

‘“‘Niver mind fwhat he says; attind to me,
Innocince. Tom Platt, this bally-hoo’s not
the Ohio, an’ you’re mixing the bhoy bad.”

‘He ’ll be ruined for life, beginnin’ on a
fore-an’-after this way,’ Tom Platt pleaded.
“Give him a chance to know a few leadin’
principles. Sailin’’s an art, Harvey, as I’d
show you if I had ye in the fore-top o’
the——””

“T know ut. Ye’d talk him dead an’ cowld.
Silince, Tom Platt! Now, after all I’ve
said, how’d you reef the foresail, Harve?
Take your time answerin’.”
''go “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

“Haul that in,” said Harvey, pointing to
leeward.

“Fwhat? The North Atlantuc?”

“No, the boom. Then run that rope you
showed me back there——”

“That ’s no way,” Tom Platt burst in.

“Quiet! He’s larnin’, an’ has not the
names good yet. Go on, Harve.”

“Oh, it’s the reef-pennant. I’d hook the
tackle on to the reef-pennant, and then let
down :

“Lower the sail, child! Lower!” said Tom
Platt, in a professional agony.

“Lower the throat and peak halyards,”’
Harvey went on. Those names stuck in his
head.

“Lay your hand on thim,” said Long Jack.

Harvey obeyed. “Lower till that rope-
loop—on the after-leach—kris—no, it’s
cringle—till the cringle was down on the
boom. Then I’d tie her up the way you said,
and then I’d hoist up the peak and throat
halyards again.”

“You ’ve forgot to pass the tack-earing, but
wid time and help ye’ ll larn. There’s good
and just reason for ivry rope aboard, or else ’t
would be overboard. D’ye follow me? ’T is

 
'' 

 

 

 

 

“FoR AN HOUR LONG JACK WALKED HIS PREY UP AND DOWN,
TEACHING, AS HE SAID, ‘THINGS IVRY MAN MUST
KNOW, BLIND, DHRUNK, OR ASLEEP.’”
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 93

dollars an’ cents I’m puttin’ into your pocket,
ye skinny little supercargo, so that fwhin ye ’ve
filled out ye can ship from Boston to Cuba an’
tell thim Long Jack larned you. Now I'll
chase ye around a piece, callin’ the ropes, an’
you Il lay your hand on thim as I call.”

He began, and Harvey, who was feeling
rather tired, walked slowly to the rope named.
A rope’s end licked round his ribs, and nearly
knocked the breath out of him.

‘When you own a boat,” said Tom Platt,
with severe eyes, “you can walk. ‘Till then,
take all orders at the run. Once more—to
make sure!”

Harvey was in a glow with the exercise,
and this last cut warmed him thoroughly.
Now, he was a singularly smart boy, the son
of a very clever man and a very sensitive wom-
an, with a fine resolute temper that systematic
spoiling had nearly turned to mulish obsti-
nacy. He looked at the other men, and saw that
even Dan did not smile. It was evidently all
in the day’s work, though it hurt abominably;
so he swallowed the hint with a gulp and a
gasp and a grin. The same smartness that led
him to take such advantage of his mother made
him very sure that no one on the boat, except,
''94 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

maybe, Penn, would stand the least nonsense.
One learns a great deal from a mere tone.
Long Jack called over half a dozen ropes,
and Harvey danced over the deck like an eel
at ebb-tide, one eye on Tom Platt.

“Ver good. Ver’ good don,” said Manuel.
“After supper I show you a little schooner
I make, with all her ropes. So we shall
learn.”

“Fust-class fer—a passenger,” said Dan.
“Dad he’s jest allowed you’ll be wuth your
salt maybe ’fore you’re draownded. Thet’s
a heap fer Dad. Ill learn you more our next
watch together.”

“Taller!” grunted Disko, peering through
the fog as it smoked over the bows. There
was nothing to be seen ten feet beyond the
surging jib-boom, while alongside rolled the
endless procession of solemn, pale waves
whispering and lipping one to the other.

“Now I[’ll learn you something Long Jack
can’t,” shouted Tom Platt, as from a locker
by the stern he produced a battered deep-sea
lead hollowed at one end, smeared the hollow
from a saucer full of mutton tallow, and went
forward. “I’ll learn you how to fly the Blue
Pigeon. Shooo!”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 95

Disko did something to the wheel that
checked the scheoner’s way, while Manuel,
with Harvey to help (and a proud boy was
Harvey), let down the jib in a lump on the
boom. The lead sung a deep droning song as
Tom Platt whirled it round and round.

“Go ahead, man,” said Long Jack, impa-
tiently. “We’re not drawin’ twenty-five fut
off Fire Island in a fog. There’s no trick to
ae

“Don’t be jealous, Galway.” The released
lead plopped into the sea far ahead as the
schooner surged slowly forward.

‘“Soundin’ is a trick, though,” said Dan,
“when your dipsey lead’s all the eye you’re
like to hev for a week. What d’ you make it,
Dad?”

Disko’s face relaxed. His skill and honour
were involved in the march he had stolen on
the rest of the Fleet, and he had his reputation
as a master artist who knew the Banks blind-
fold. ‘Sixty, mebbe—ef I’m any judge,” he
replied, with a glance at the tiny compass in
the window of the house.

“Sixty,” sung out Tom Platt, hauling in
great wet coils.

The schooner gathered way once more.
''96 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

“Heave!” said Disko, after a quarter of an
hour.

“What d’ you make it?” Dan whispered,
and he looked at Harvey proudly. But Har-
vey was too proud of his own performances to
be impressed just then.

“Fifty,” said the father. “I mistrust we ’re
right over the nick o’ Green Bank on old
Sixty-Fifty.”

“Fifty!” roared Tom Platt. They could
scarcely see him through the fog. “She’s bust
within a yard—like the shells at Fort Macon.”

“Bait up, Harve,” said Dan, diving for a
line on the reel.

The schooner seemed to be straying pro-
miscuously through the smother, her headsail
banging wildly. The men waited and looked
at the boys who began fishing.

“Heugh!” Dan’s lines twitched on the
scored and scarred rail. ‘Now haow in thun-
der did Dad know? Help us here, Harve.
It’s a big un. Poke-hooked, too.” They
hauled together, and landed a goggle-eyed
twenty-pound cod. He had taken the bait
tight into his stomach.

“Why, he’s all covered with little crabs,”
cried Harvey, turning him over.
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 97

“By the great hook-block, they’re lousy
already,” said Long Jack. ‘Disko, ye kape
your spare eyes under the keel.”

Splash went the anchor, and they all heaved
over the lines, each man taking his own place
at the bulwarks.

‘Are they good to eat?’ Harvey panted, as
he lugged in another crab-covered cod.

“Sure. When they’re lousy it’s a sign
they ’ve all been herdin’ together by the thou-
sand, and when they take the bait that way
they ’re hungry. Never mind how the bait
sets. They ’ll bite on the bare hook.”

“Say, this is great!” Harvey cried, as the
fish came in gasping and splashing—nearly
all poke-hooked, as Dan had said. “Why
can’t we always fish from the boat instead of
from the dories?”

“Allus can, till we begin to dress daown.
Efter thet, the heads and offals ’u’d scare the
fish to Fundy. Boat-fishin’ ain’t reckoned
progressive, though, unless ye know as much
as dad knows. Guess we’ll run aout aour
trawl to-night. Harder on the back, this,
than frum the dory, ain’t it?”

It was rather back-breaking work, for in a
dory the weight of a cod is water-borne til!
''68 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

the last minute, and you are, so to speak,
abreast of him; but the few feet of a schooner’s
freeboard make so much extra dead-hauling,
and stooping over the bulwarks cramps the
stomach. But it was wild and furious sport
so long as it lasted; and a big pile lay aboard
when the fish ceased biting.

“Where’s Penn and Uncle Salters?” Har-
vey asked, slapping the slime off his oilskins,
and reeling up the line in careful imitation of
the others.

“(sit 's coftee and sec.”’

Under the yellow glare of the lamp on the
pawl-post, the foc’sle table down and opened,
utterly unconscious of fish or weather, sat the
two men, a checker-board between them,
Uncle Salters snarling at Penn’s every move.

““What’s the matter naow?” said the former,
as Harvey, one hand in the leather loop at
the head of the ladder, hung shouting to the
cook.

“Big fish and lousy—heaps and heaps,”
Harvey replied, quoting Long Jack. “How’s
the game?”

Little Penn’s jaw dropped. “’T were n’t
none o’ his fault,” snapped Uncle Salters,
“Fenn ’s deef.”
''* CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 99

“Checkers, were n’t it?” said Dan, as Har-
vey staggered aft with the steaming coffee in
atin pail. ‘That lets us out o’ cleanin’ up to-
night. Dad’s a jest man. They ’ll have to
do it.”

‘An’ two young fellers I know ’ll bait ‘up a
tub or so o’ trawl, while they’re cleanin’,”
said Disko, lashing the wheel to his taste.

“Um! Guess I'd ruther clean up, Dade’

“Don’t doubt it. Ye wun’t, though. Dress
daown! Dress daown! Penn’ll pitch while
you two bait up.”

“Why in thunder did n’t them blame boys
fell us you ’d struck on?” said Uncle Salters,
shuffling to his place at the table. ‘This
knife ’s gum-blunt, Dan.”

“Ef stickin’ out cable don’t wake ye, guess
you ’d better hire a boy o’ your own,” said
Dan, muddling about in the dusk over the
tubs full of trawl-line lashed to windward of
the house. “Oh, Harve, don’t ye want to slip
down an’ git ’s bait?”

“Bait ez we are,” said Disko. “I mistrust
shag-fishin’ will pay better, ez things go.”

That meant the boys would bait with select-
ed offal of the cod as the fish were cleaned—
an improvement on paddling bare-handed in
''100 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

the little bait-barrels below. The tubs were
full of neatly coiled line carrying a big hook
each few feet; and the testing and baiting of
every single hook, with the stowage of the
baited line so that it should run clear when
shot from the dory, was a scientific business,
Dan managed it in the dark, without looking,
while Harvey caught his fingers on the barbs
and bewailed his fate. But the hooks flew
through Dan’s fingers like tatting on an old
maid’s lap. “I helped bait up trawl ashore
fore I could well walk,” he said. “But it’s
a putterin’ job all the same. Oh, Dad!” This
shouted towards the hatch, where Disko and
Tom Platt were salting. ‘How many skates
you reckon we ’Il need?”

“ *Baout three. Hurry

“There’s three hundred fathom to each
tub,” Dan explained; “more ’n enough to lay
out to-night. Ouch! ’Slipped up there, I
did.” He stuck his finger in his mouth. “I
tell you, Harve, there ain’t money in Glouces-
ter ’u’d hire me to ship on a reg’lar trawler.
It may be progressive, but, barrin’ that, it’s
the putterin’est, slimjammest business top of
earth.”

“I don’t know what this is, if ’t is n’t Xegu-

y?
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 101

lar trawling,” said Harvey ahi ne fin- ]

gers are all cut to frazzles.”

“Pshaw! This is just one o Dad blame. eee
experiments. He don’t trawi..’less there’s

mighty good reason fer it. Dad knows. Thet’s
why he’s baitin’ ez he is. We’ll hev her
saggin’ full when we take her up er we won't
see a fin.”

Penn and Uncle Salters cleaned up as Disko
had ordained, but the boys profited little. No
sooner were the tubs furnished than Tom Platt
and Long Jack, who had been exploring the
inside of a dory with a lantern, snatched them
away, loaded up the tubs and some small,
painted trawl-buoys, and hove the boat over-
board into what Harvy regarded as an exceed-
ingly rough sea. “They ’ll be drowned. Why,
the dory ’s loaded like a freight-car,” he cried.

“Well be back,” said Long Jack, “an’ in
case you'll not be lookin’ for us, we'll lay
into you both if the trawl’s snarled.”

The dory surged up on the crest of a wave,
and just when it seemed impossible that she
could avoid smashing against the schooner’s
side, slid over the ridge, and was swallowed
up in the damp dusk.

“Take ahold here, an’ keep ringin’ steady,”
''102 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

said Dan, passing Harvey the lanyard of a
_. beli that hung just behind the windlass.

0 ‘ .. Harvey rang lustily, for he felt two lives

depended: on him. But Disko in the cabin,
scrawling in the log-book, did not look like a
murderer, and when he went to supper he even
smiled dryly at the anxious Harvey.

“This ain’t no weather,” said Dan. “Why,
you an’ me could set thet trawl! They ’ve
only gone out jest far ’nough so’s not to foul
our cable. They don’t need no bell reelly.”

“Clang! clang! clang!” Harvey kept it up,
varied with occasional rub-a-dubs, for an-
other half-hour. There was a bellow and a
bump alongside. Manuel and Dan raced to
the hooks of the dory-tackle; Long Jack and
Tom Platt arrived on deck together, it seemed,
one half the North Atlantic at their backs, and
the dory followed them in the air, landing with
a clatter.

‘“Nary snarl,” said Tom Platt as he dripped.
“Danny, you ’ll do yet.”

‘The pleasure av your comp’ny to the ban-
quit,” said Long Jack, squelching the water
from his boots as he capered like an elephant
and stuck an oil-skinned arm into Harvey’s
face. ‘We do be condescending to honour the
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 103

second half wid our presence.” And off they
all four rolled to supper, where Harvey
stuffed himself to the brim on fish-chowder
and fried pies, and fell fast asleep just as
Manuel produced from a locker a lovely two-
foot model of the Lucy Holmes, his first boat,
and was going to show Harvey the ropes.
Harvey never even twiddled his fingers as
Penn pushed him into his bunk.

“Tt must be a sad thing—a very sad thing,”
said Penn, watching the boy’s face, “for his
mother and his father, who think he is dead.
To lose a child—to lose a man-child!”

“Git out o’ this, Penn,” said Dan. “Go
aft and finish your game with Uncle Salters.
Tell Dad I ll stand Harve’s watch ef he don’t
keer. THe’s played aout.”

“Ver’ good boy,” said Manuel, slipping out
of his boots and disappearing into the black
shadows of the lower bunk. “Expec’ he
make good man, Danny. I no see he is any
so mad as your parpa he says. Eh, wha-at?”

Dan chuckled, but the chuckle ended in a
snore.

It was thick weather outside, with a rising
wind, and the elder men stretched their
watches. The hour struck clear in the cabin;
''104 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

the nosing bows slapped and scuffled with
the seas; the foc’sle stove-pipe hissed and sput-
tered as the spray caught it; and the boys slept
on, while Disko, Long Jack, Tom Platt, and
Uncle Salters, each in turn, stumped aft to
look at the wheel, forward to see that the an-
chor held, or to veer out a little more cable
against chafing, with a glance at the dim
anchor-light between each round.
''CHAPTER IV

ARVEY waked to find the “first half”
at breakfast, the foc’sle door drawn to a
crack, and every square inch of the schooner
singing its own tune. The black bulk of the
cook balanced behind the tiny galley over the
glare of the stove, and the pots and pans in
the pierced wooden board before it jarred
and racketed to each plunge. Up and up the
foc’sle climbed, yearning and surging and
quivering, and then, with a clear, sickle-like
swoop, came down into the seas. He could
hear the flaring bows cut and squelch, and
there was a pause ere the divided waters came
down on the deck above, like a volley of
buckshot. Followed the woolly sound of the
cable in the hawse-hole; a grunt and squeal
of the windlass; a yaw, a punt, and a kick,
and the We ’re Here gathered herself together
to repeat the motions.
“Now, ashore,” he heard Long Jack say-

105
''106 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

ing, “ye’ve chores, an’ ye must do thim in
any weather. Here we’re well clear of the
fleet, an’ we ’ve no chores—an’ that’s a bles-
sin’. Good night, all.” He passed like a big
snake from the table to his bunk, and began to
smoke. Tom Platt followed his example;
Uncle Salters, with Penn, fought his way up
the ladder to stand his watch, and the cook set
for the “second half.”

It came out of its bunks as the others had
entered theirs, with a shake and a yawn. It
ate till it could eat no more; and then Manuel
filled his pipe with some terrible tobacco,
crotched himself between the pawl-post and a
forward bunk, cocked his feet up on the table,
and smiled tender and indolent smiles at the
smoke. Dan lay at length in his bunk, wres-
tling with a gaudy, gilt-stopped accordion,
whose tunes went up and down with the pitch-
ing of the We’re Here. The cook, his shoul-
ders against the locker where he kept the
fried pies (Dan was fond of fried pies), peeled
potatoes, with one eye on the stove in event
of too much water finding its way down the
pipe; and the general smell and smother were
past all description.

Harvey considered affairs, wondered that
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 107

he was not deathly sick, and crawled into his
bunk again, as the softest and safest place,
while Dan struck up, “I don’t want to play in
your yard,” as accurately as the wild jerks
allowed.

“How long is this for?” Harvey asked of
Manuel.

“Till she get a little quiet, and we can row
to trawl. Perhaps to-night. Perhaps two
days more. You do not like? Eh, wha-at?”

“T should have been crazy sick a week ago,
but it does n’t seem to upset me now—much.”

“That is because we make you fisherman,
these days. If I was you, when I come to
Gloucester I would give two, three big candles
for my good luck.”

“Give whore”

“To be sure—the Virgin of our Church on
the Hill. She is very good to fishermen all
the time. That is why so few of us Portugee
men ever are drowned.”

“You ’re a Roman Catholic, then?”

“T ama Madeira man. Lam not a Porto
Pico boy. Shall I be Baptist; thence Th,
wha-at? I always give candles—two, three
more when I come to Gloucester. The good
Virgin she never forgets me, Manuel.”
''108 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

“T don’t sense it that way,” Tom Platt put in
from his bunk, his scarred face lit up by the
glare of a match as he sucked at his pipe. “It
stands to reason the sea’s the sea; and you ’ll
git jest about what’s goin’, candles or kero-
sene, fer that matter.”

“Tis a mighty good thing,” said Long
Jack, ‘“‘to have a frind at coort, though. I’m
o’ Manuel’s way o’ thinkin’. About tin years
back I was crew to a Sou’ Boston market-
boat. We was off Minot’s Ledge wid a north-
easter, butt first, atop of us, thicker ’n burgoo.
The ould man was dhrunk, his chin waggin’
on the tiller, an’ I sez to myself, ‘If iver I stick
my boat-huk into T-wharf again, Ill show
the saints fwhat manner o’ craft they saved
me out av.’ Now, I’m here, as ye can well
see, an’ the model of the dhirty ould Kathleen,
that took me a month to make, I gave ut to
the priest, an’ he hung ut up forninst the altar.
There ’s more sense in givin’ a model that’s
by way o’ bein’ a work av art than any candle.
Ye can buy candles at store, but a model shows
the good saints ye’ve tuk trouble an’ are
grateful.”

“D’ you believe that, Irish?” said Tom
Platt, turning on his elbow.
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 109

“Would I do ut if I did not, Ohio?”

“Wa-al, Enoch Fuller he made a model o’
the old Ohio, and she’s to Salem museum
now. Mighty pretty model, too, but I guess
Enoch he never done it fer no sacrifice; an’
the way I take it is y

There were the makings of an hour-long
discussion of the kind that fishermen love,
where the talk runs in shouting circles and
no one proves anything at the end, had not
Dan struck up this cheerful rhyme:

 

“Up jumped the mackerel with his stripéd back.
Reef in the mainsail, and haul on the tack;
For it’s windy weather. io

 

Here Long Jack joined in:

“And it’s blowy weather;
W hen the winds begin to blow, pipe all hands together!”

Dan went on, with a cautious look at Tom
Platt, holding the accordion low in the
bunk:

“Up jumped the cod with his chuckle-head,
Went to the main-chains to heave at the lead;
For it’s windy weather,” etc.
''110 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

Tom Platt seemed to be hunting for some-
thing. Dan crouched lower, but sang louder:

“Up jumped the flounder that swims to the ground.
Chuckle-head! Chuckle-head! Mind where ye sound!”

Tom Platt’s huge rubber boot whirled
across the foc’sle and caught Dan’s uplifted
arm. There was war between the man and
the boy ever since Dan had discovered that
the mere whistling of that tune would make
him angry as he heaved the lead.

‘Thought I’d fetch yer,” said Dan, return-
ing the gift with precision. “Ef you don’t
like my music, git out your fiddle. I ain’t
goin’ to lie here all day an’ listen to you an’
Long Jack arguin’ ’baout candles. Fiddle,
Tom Platt; or I’ll learn Harve here the
tune!”

Tom Platt leaned down to a locker and
brought up an old white fiddle. Manuel’s eye
glistened, and from somewhere behind the
pawl-post he drew out a tiny, guitar-like thing
with wire strings, which he called a machette.

‘T is a concert,” said Long Jack, beaming
through the smoke. “A reg’lar Boston con-
cert,”
'' 

 

 

 

‘

“““%> Ig A CONCERT, SAID LONG JACK, BEAMING THROUGH THE SMOKE. ‘A

REG’LAR BOSTON CONCERT.’ ”

 
'' 
''* CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 113

There was a burst of spray as the hatch
opened, and Disko, in yellow oilskins, de-
scended.

“Ye’re just in time, Disko. Fwhat’s she
doin’ outside?”

“Test this!” He dropped on to the lock-
ers with the push and heave of the We’re
Here.

‘Were singin’ to kape our breakfasts down.
Yell lead, av course, Disko,” said Long
Jack.

“Guess there ain’t more’n ’baout two old
songs I know, an’ ye ’ve heerd them both.”

His excuses were cut short by Tom Platt
launching into a most dolorous tune, like un-
to the moaning of winds and the creaking of
masts. With his eyes fixed on the beams
above, Disko began this ancient, ancient ditty,
Tom Platt flourishing all round him to make
the tune and words fit a little:

“There is a crack packet—crack packet o’ fame,

She hails from Noo York, an’ the Dreadnought ’s her
name.

You may talk o’ your fliers—Swallow-tail and Black
Ball—

But the Dreadnought ’s the packet that can beat them
all.
''114 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

_ “Now the Dreadnought she lies in the River Mersey,
Because of the tug-boat to take her to sea;
But when she ’s off soundings you shortly will know

(Chorus.)
She ’s the Liverpool packet—O Lord, let her go!

“Now the Dreadnought she ’s howlin’ ’crost the Banks o’
Newfoundland,
Where the water ’s all shallow and the bottoms all sand.
Sez all the little fishes that swim to and fro:

(Chorus.)
‘She ’s the Liverpool packet—O Lord, let her go!’ ”

There were scores of verses, for he worked
the Dreadnought every mile of the way be-
tween Liverpool and New York as conscien-
tiously as though he were on her deck, and the
accordion pumped and the fiddle squeaked
beside him. Tom Platt followed with some-
thing about “the rough and tough McGinn,
who would pilot the vessel in.” Then they
called on Harvey, who felt very flattered, to
contribute to the entertainment; but all that
he could remember were some pieces of
“Skipper Ireson’s Ride” that he had been
taught at the camp-school in the Adirondacks.
It seemed that they might be appropriate to
the time and place, but he had no more than
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 115

mentioned the title when Disko brought down
one foot with a bang, and cried, “‘Don’t go on,
young feller. That’s a mistaken jedgment—
one o’ the worst kind, too, becaze it’s catchin’
to the ear.”

“T orter ha’ warned you,” said Dan. ‘“Thet
allus fetches Dad.”

‘“What’s wrong?” said Harvey, surprised
and a little angry.

“All you ’re goin’ to say,” said Disko. “AI
dead wrong from start to finish, an’ Whittier
he’s to blame. I have no special call to right
any Marblehead man, but ’t were n’t no fault
o’ Ireson’s. My father he told me the tale
time an’ again, an’ this is the way ’t wuz.”

“For the wan hundredth time,” put in Long
Jack under his breath.

“Ben Ireson he was skipper o” the Betty,
young feller, comin’ home frum the Banks—
that was before the war of 1812, but jestice
is jestice at all times. They f’und the Active
o’ Portland, an’ Gibbons o’ that town he was
her skipper; they f’und her leakin’ off Cape
Cod Light. There was a terr’ble gale on, an’
they was gettin’ the Betty home’s fast as they
could craowd her. Well, Ireson he said there
war n’t any sense to reskin’ a boat in that sea;
''116 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

the men they would n’t hev it; and he laid it
before them to stay by the Active till the sea
run daown a piece. They would n’t hev that
either, hangin’ araound the Cape in any sech
weather, leak or no leak. They jest up stays’!
an’ quit, nat’rally takin’ Ireson with ’em.
Folks to Marblehead was mad at him not
runnin’ the risk, and becaze nex’ day, when the
sea was ca’am (they never stopped to think o’
that), some of the Active ’s folks was took off
by a Truroman. They come into Marblehead
with their own tale to tell, sayin’ how Ireson
had shamed his town, an’ so forth an’ so on;
an’ Ireson’s men they was scared, seein’ public
feelin’ agin’ ’em, an’ they went back on I[reson,
an’ swore he was respons’ble for the hull act.
’T were n’t the women neither that tarred and
feathered him—Marblehead women don’t act
that way—’t was a passel o’ men an’ boys, an’
they carted him araound town in an old dory
till the bottom fell aout, an’ Ireson he told ’em
they ’d be sorry for it some day. Well, the
facts come aout later, same’s they usually do,
too late to be any ways useful to an honest
man; an’ Whittier he come along an’ picked
up the slack eend of a lyin’ tale, an’ tarred and
feathered Ben Ireson all over onct more aftes
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 119

he was dead. "I was the only time Whittier
ever slipped up, an’ ’t were n’t fair. I whaled
Dan good when he brought that piece back
from school. You don’t know no better, 0’
course; but I’ve give you the facts, hereafter
an’ evermore to be remembered. Ben Ireson
were n’t no sech kind o’ man as Whittier makes
aout; my father he knew him well, before an’
after that business, an’ you beware o’ hasty
jedgments, young feller. Next!”

Harvey had never heard Disko talk so long,
and collapsed with burning cheeks; but, as
Dan said promptly, a boy could only learn
what he was taught at school, and life was too
short to keep track of every lie along the coast.

Then Manuel touched the jangling, jarring
little nachette to a queer tune, and sang some-
thing in Portuguese about “Nina, innocente!”’
ending with a full-handed sweep that brought
the song up with a jerk. Then Disko obliged
with his second song, to an old-fashioned
creaky tune, and all joined in the chorus. This
is one stanza:

“Now Aprile is over and melted the snow,
And outer Noo Bedford we shortly must tow;
Yes, out o’ Noo Bedford we shortly must clear,
We're the whalers that never see wheat in the ear.”
''118 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

Here the fiddle went very softly for a while
by itself, and then:

“‘Wheat-in-the-ear, my true-love’s posy blowin’;
Wheat-in-the-ear, we ’re goin’ off to sea;
Wheat-in-the-ear, I left you fit for sowin’ ;
When I come back a loaf 0’ bread you ’ll be!”

That made Harvey almost weep, though he
could not tell why. But it was much worse
when the cook dropped the potatoes and held
out his hands for the fiddle. Still leaning
against the locker door, he struck into a tune
that was like something very bad but sure to
happen whatever you did. After a little he
sang, in an unknown tongue, his big chin down
on the fiddle-tail, his white eyeballs glaring in
the lamp-light. Harvey swung out of his
bunk to hear better; and amid the straining of
the timbers and the wash of the waters the tune
crooned and moaned on, like lee surf in a blind
fog, till it ended with a wail.

“Jiminy Christmas! Thet gives me the
blue creevles,” said Dan. ‘What in thunder
is itr”

“The song of Fin McCoul,” said the cook,
“when he wass going to Norway.” His Eng:
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 119

lish was not thick, but all clear-cut, as though
it came from a phonograph.

“Faith, I’ve been to Norway, but I did n’t
make that unwholesim noise. ”T is like some
of the old songs, though,” said Long Jack,
sighing.

“Don’t let’s hev another ’thout somethin’
between,” said Dan; and the accordion struck
up a rattling, catchy tune that ended:

“It’s six an’ twenty Sundays sence las’ we saw the land,
With fifteen hunder quintal,
An’ fifteen hunder quintal,
”Teen hunder toppin’ quintal,
Twix’ old ’Queereau an’ Grand!”

“Hold on!” roared Tom Platt, .“D’ ye
want to nail the trip, Dan? That’s Jonah
sure, less you sing it after all our salt’s wet.”

“No, ’t ain’t. Is it, Dad? Not unless you
sing the very las’ verse. You can’t learn me
anything on Jonahs!”’

“What’s thatr” said Harvey. ‘“What’s
a Jonah?” —

“A Jonah’s anything that spoils the luck.
Sometimes it’s a man—sometimes it’s a boy
—or a bucket. I’ve known a splittin’-knife
Jonah two trips till we was on to her,” said
''120 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

Tom Platt. “There’s all sorts o’ Jonahs. Jim
Bourke was one till he was drowned on
Georges. I’d never ship with Jim Bourke,
not if I was starvin’. There wuz a green dory
on the Ezra Flood. 'Thet was a Jonah, too,
the worst sort o’ Jonah. Drowned four men,
she did, an’ used to shine fiery o’ nights in
the nest.”

“And you believe that?” said Harvey, re-
membering what Tom Platt had said about
candles and models. “Have n’t we all got to
take what ’s served?”

A mutter of dissent ran round the bunks.
“Outboard, yes; inboard, things can happen,”
said Disko. ‘Don’t you go makin’ a mock of
Jonahs, young feller.”

“Well, Harve ain’t no Jonah. Day after
we catched him,” Dan cut in, ‘‘we had a top-
pin’ good catch.”

The cook threw up his head and laughed
suddenly—a queer, thin laugh. He was a
most disconcerting nigger.

“Murder!” said Long Jack. “Don’t do that
again, doctor. We ain’t used to ut.”

“What’s wrongP” said Dan. “Ain’t he our
mascot, and did n’t they strike on good after
we ’d struck him?”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 123

“Oh! yess,” said the cook. “I know that,
but the catch iss not finish yet.”

“He ain’t goin’ to do us any harm,” said
Dan, hotly. “Where are ye hintin’ an’ edgin’
tor fe’s all sight.”

“No harm. No. But one day he will be
your master, Danny.”

“That all?” said Dan, placidly. “He
wun’t—not by a jugful.”

“Master!” said the cook, pointing to Har-
vey. “Man!” and he pointed to Dan.

“That’s news. Haow soon?” said Dan,
with a laugh.

“In some years, and I shall see it. Master
and man—man and master.”

“How in thunder d’ ye work that out?”
said Tom Platt.

“In my head, where I can see.”

‘“Haow?” This from all the others at once.

“I do not know, but so it will be.” He
dropped his head, and went on peeling the
potatoes, and not another word could they get
out of him. —

“Well,” said Dan, “a heap o’ things ’ll hev
to come abaout ’fore Harve’s any master o’
mine; but I’m glad the doctor ain’t choosen
to mark him for a Jonah. Now, I mistrust
''122 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

Uncle Salters fer the Jonerest Jonah in the
Fleet regardin’ his own special luck. Dunno
ef it’s spreadin’ same’s smallpox. He ought
to be on the Carrie Pitman. That boat’s her
own Jonah, sure—crews an’ gear make no
differ to her driftin’. Jiminy Christmas!
She ’Il etch loose in a flat ca’am.”

““We’re well clear o’ the Fleet, anyway,”
said Disko. “Carrie Pitman an all.” There
was a rapping on the deck.

“Uncle Salters has catched his luck,” said
Dan as his father departed.

“It’s blown clear,”’ Disko cried, and all the
foc’sle tumbled up for a bit of fresh air. The
fog had gone, but a sullen sea ran in great
rollers behind it. The We’re Here slid, as it
were, into long, sunk avenues and ditches
which felt quite sheltered and homelike if
they would only stay still; but they changed
without rest or mercy, and flung up the schoon-
er to crown one peak of a thousand gray hills,
while the wind hooted through her rigging as
she zigzagged down the slopes. Far away a
sea would burst in a sheet of foam, and the
others would follow suit as at a signal, till
Harvey’s eyes swam with the vision of inter-
lacing whites and grays. Four or five Mother
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 123

Carey’s chickens stormed round in circles,
shrieking as they swept past the bows. A
rain-squall or two strayed aimlessly over the
hopeless waste, ran down wind and back again,
and melted away.

“Seems to me I saw somethin’ flicker jest
naow over yonder,” said Uncle Salters, point-
ing to the northeast.

“‘Can’t be any of the fleet,” said Disko, peer-
ing under his eyebrows, a hand on the foc’sle
gangway as the solid bows hatcheted into the
troughs. “Sea’s oilin’ over dretful fast. Dan-
ny, don’t you want to skip up a piece an’ see
how aour trawl-buoy lays?”

Danny, in his big boots, trotted rather than
climbed up the main rigging (this consumed
Harvey with envy), hitched himself around
the reeling cross-trees, and let his eye rove
till it caught the tiny black buoy-flag on the
shoulder of a mile-away swell.

vehe’s all tight,” he hailed; “Sail O}
Dead to the no’th’ard, comin’ down like
smoke! Schooner she be, too.”

They waited yet another half-hour, the sky
clearing in patches, with a flicker of sickly
sun from time to time that made patches of
olive-green water. Then a stump-foremast
''124 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

lifted, ducked, and disappeared, to be followed
on the next wave by a high stern with old-
fashioned wooden snail’s-horn davits. The
sails were red-tanned.

“Frenchmen!” shouted Dan. “No, ’t ain’t,
neither. Da-ad!”

“That ’s no French,” said Disko. “Salters,
your blame luck holds tighter ’n a screw in a
keg-head.”

“T ve eyes. It’s Uncle Abishai.”

“You can’t nowise tell fer sure.”

“The head-king of all Jonahs,” groaned
Tom Platt. ‘Oh, Salters, Salters, why wasn’t
you abed an’ asleep?”

“How could I tell?” said poor Salters, as
the schooner swung up.

She might have been the very Flying
Dutchman, so foul, draggled, and unkempt
was every rope and stick aboard. Her old-
style quarterdeck was some four or five feet
high, and her rigging flew knotted and tan-
gled like weed at a wharf-end. She was run-
ning before the wind—yawing frightfully—
her staysail let down te act as a sort of extra
foresail,—“scandalized,” they call it,—and her
foreboom guyed out over the side. Her bow-
sprit cocked up like an old-fashioned frigate’s,
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 125

her jib-boom had been fished and spliced and
nailed and clamped beyond further repair;
and as she hove herself forward, and sat down
on her broad tail, she looked for all the world
like a blouzy, frouzy, bad old woman sneer-
ing at a decent girl.

“That’s Abishai,” said Salters. ‘Full o°
gin an’ Judique men, an’ the judgments o'
Providence layin’ fer him an’ never takin’
good holt. He’s run in to bait, Miquelon
way.”

“Ffe ll run her under,” said Long Jack.
“That ’s no rig fer this weather.”

“Not he, ’r he ’’d’a’ done it long ago,” Disko
replied. ‘Looks ’s if he cal’lated to run us
under. Ain’t she daown by the head more’n-
natural, Tom Platt?”

“Ef it’s his style o’ loadin’ her she ain’t
safe,” said the sailor slowly. “Ef she’s
spewed her oakum he’d better git to his
pumps mighty quick.”

The creature threshed up, wore round with
a clatter and rattle, and lay head to wind
within ear-shot.

A gray-beard wagged over the bulwark,
and a thick voice yelled something Harvey
sould not understand. But Disko’s face dark-
''126 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

ened. “He’d resk every stick he hez to carry
bad news. Says we’re in fer a shift o’ wind.
He’s in fer worse. Abishai! Abi-shai/’? He
waved his arm up and down with the gesture
of a man at the pumps, and pointed forward.
The crew mocked him and laughed.

“‘Jounce ye, an’ strip ye an’ trip ye!” yelled
Uncle Abishai. “A livin’ gale—a livin’ gale.
Yah! Cast up fer your last trip, all you
Gloucester haddocks. You won’t see Glouces-
ter no more, no more!”

“Crazy full—as usual,” said Tom Platt.
“Wish he had n’t spied us, though.”

She drifted out of hearing while the gray-
head yelled something about a dance at the
Bay of Bulls and a dead man in the foc’sle.
Harvey shuddered. He had seen the sloven
tilled decks and the savage-eyed crew.

“An’ that’s a fine little floatin’ hell fer her
draught,” said Long Jack. “I wondher what
mischief he’s been at ashore.”

“He’s a trawler,” Dan explained to Har-
vey, ‘an’ he runs in fer bait all along the
coast. Oh, no, not home, he don't go. He
deals along the south an’ east shore up yon-
der.” He nodded in the direction of the piti-
less Newfoundland beaches. “Dad won’t
''“ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 127

never take me ashore there. They ’re a mighty
tough crowd—an’ Abishai’s the toughest.
You saw his boat? Well, she’s nigh seventy
year old, they say; the last o’ the old Marble-
head heel-tappers. They don’t make them
quarterdecks any more. Abishai don’t use
Marblehead, though. He ain’t wanted there.
He jes’ drif’s araound, in debt, trawlin’ an’
cussin’ like you’ve heard. Bin a Jonah fer
years an’ years, he hez. ’Gits liquor frum the
Feecamp boats fer makin’ spells an’ selling
winds an’ such truck. Crazy, I guess.”

“°T won't be any use underrunnin’ the
trawl to-night,” said Tom Platt, with quiet
despair. ‘He come alongside special to cuss
us. I’d give my wage an’ share to see him at
the gangway o’ the old Ohio ’fore we quit flog-
gin’, Jest abaout six dozen, an’ Sam Mocatta
layin’ ’em on criss-cross!”

The dishevelled ‘‘heel-tapper” danced
drunkenly down wind, and all eyes followed
her. Suddenly the cook cried in his phono-
graph voice: “It wass his own death made him
speak so! He iss fey—fey, I tell you! Look!”
She sailed into a patch of watery sunshine
three or four miles distant. The patch dulled
and faded out, and even as the light passed so
''$28 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

did the schooner. She dropped into a hollow
and—was not.

“Run under, by the Great Hook-Block!”
shouted Disko, jumping aft. ‘Drunk or sober,
we’ve got tohelp’em. Heave short and break
her out! Smart!”

Harvey was thrown on the deck by the
shock that followed the setting of the jib and
foresail, for they hove short on the cable, and
to save time, jerked the anchor bodily from
the bottom, heaving in as they moved away.
This is a bit of brute force seldom resorted to
except in matters of life and death, and the
little We’re Here complained like a human.
They ran down to where Abishai’s craft had
vanished; found two or three trawl-tubs, a
gin-bottle, and a stove-in dory, but nothing
more. ‘“‘Let’em go,” said Disko, though no one
had hinted at picking them up. “I would n’t
hev a match that belonged to Abishai aboard. -
Guess she run clear under. Must ha’ been
spewin’ her oakum fer a week, an’ they never
thought to pump her. That’s one more boat
gone along o’ leavin’ port all hands drunk.”

“Glory be!” said Long Jack. ‘“We’d ha’
been obliged to help ’em if they was top 0’
water.”
'' 

 

 

 

 

“DHEY RAN DOWN TO WHERE ABISHAI’S CRAFT HAD VANISHED; FOUND TWO OR THREE
TRAWL-TUBS, A GIN-BOTTLE, AND A STOVE-IN DORY, BUT NOTHING MORE.”
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 131

“*Thinkin’ o’ that myself,” said Tom Platt.

“Fey! Fey! said the cook, rolling his
eyes. “He hass taken his own luck with
him.”

“Ver’ good thing, I think, to tell the Fleet
when we see. Eh, wha-at?” said Manuel.
“Tf you runna that way before the wind, and
she work open her seams ” He threw out
his hands with an indescribable gesture, while
Penn sat down on the house and sobbed at the
sheer horror and pity of it all. Harvey could
not realize that he had seen death on the open
waters, but he felt very sick.

Then Dan went up the cross-trees, and
Disko steered them back to within sight of
their own trawl-buoys just before the fog
blanketed the sea once again.

“We go mighty quick hereabouts when we
do go,” was all he said to Harvey. ‘You
think on that fer a spell, young feller. That
was liquor.”

After dinner it was calm enough to fish
from the decks,—Penn and Uncle Salters were
very zealous this time,—and the catch was
large and large fish.

‘“Abishai has shorely took his luck with
him,” said Salters. “The wind hain’t backed

 
''132 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

ner riz ner nothin’. How abaout the trawl?
I despise superstition, anyway.”

Tom Platt insisted that they had much bet-
ter haul the thing and make a new berth. But
the cook said: “The luck iss in two pieces.
You will find it so when you look. J know.”
This so tickled Long Jack that he overbore
Tom Platt and the two went out together.

Underrunning a trawl means pulling it in
on one side of the dory, picking off the fish,
rebaiting the hooks, and passing them back to
the sea again—something like pinning and
unpinning linen on a wash-line. It is a
lengthy business and rather dangerous, for
the long, sagging line may twitch a boat under
in a flash. But when they heard, “And naow
to thee, O Capting,” booming out of the fog,
the crew of the We ’re Here took heart. The
dory swirled alongside well loaded, Tom
Platt yelling for Manuel to act as relief-boat.

“The luck ’s cut square in two pieces,” said
Long Jack, forking in the fish, while Harvey
stood open-mouthed at the skill with which the
plunging dory was saved from destruction.
“One half was jest punkins. Tom Platt want-
ed to haul her an’ ha’ done wid ut; but I
said, ‘I ’ll back the doctor that has the second
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 133

sight,’ an’ the other half come up sagging full
o big uns. Hurry, Man’nle, an’ bring ’s a
tub o’ bait. There’s tuck afloat to-night.”

The fish bit at the newly baited hooks from
which their brethren had just been taken, and
Tom Platt and Long Jack moved methodi-
cally up and down the length of the trawl, the
boat’s nose surging under the wet line of hooks,
stripping the sea-cucumbers that they called
pumpkins, slatting off the fresh-caught cod
against the gunwale, rebaiting, and loading
Manuel’s dory till dusk.

“Tl take no risks,” said Disko then—‘“not
with him floatin’ around so near. Abishai
won’t sink fer a week. Heave in the dories,
an’ we ’ll dress daown after supper.”

That was a mighty dressing-down, attended
by three or four blowing grampuses. It lasted
till nine o’clock, and Disko was thrice heard
to chuckle as Harvey pitched the split fish
into the hold.

“Say, you’re haulin’ ahead dretful fast,”
said Dan, when they ground the knives after
the men had turned in. ‘“There’s somethin’
of a sea to-night, an’ I hain’t heard you make
no remarks on it.”

“Too busy,” Harvey replied, testing a
''134 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

blade’s edge. ‘Come to think of it, she ts a
high-kicker.”

The little schooner was gambolling all
around her anchor among the silver-tipped
waves. Backing with a start of affected sur-
prise at the sight of the strained cable, she
pounced on it like a kitten, while the spray of
her descent burst through the hawse-holes
with the report of a gun. Shaking her head,
she would say: “Well, I’m sorry I can’t stay
any longer with you. I’m going North,” and,
would sidle off, halting suddenly with a dra-
matic rattle of her rigging. ‘As I was just
going to observe,” she would begin, as grave-
ly as a drunken man addressing a lamp-post.
The rest of the sentence (she acted her words
in dumb-show, of course) was lost in a fit of
the fidgets, when she behaved like a puppy
chewing a string, a clumsy woman in a side-
saddle, a hen with her head cut off, or a cow
stung by a hornet, exactly as the whims of the
sea took her.

“See her sayin’ her piece. She’s Patrick
Henry naow,” said Dan.

She swung sideways on a roller, and gestic-
ulated with her jib-boom from port to star-

board.
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 135

“But—ez—fer—me, give me liberty—er
give me—death!”’

Wop! She sat down in the moon-path on
the water, courtesying with a flourish of pride
impressive enough had not the wheel-gear
sniggered mockingly in its box.

Harvey laughed aloud. “Why, it’s just as
if she was alive,” he said.

“She ’s as stiddy as a haouse an’ as dry as
a herrin’,” said Dan enthusiastically, as he was
slung across the deck in a batter of spray.
“Fends ’em off an’ fends ’em off, an’ ‘Don’t
ye come anigh me,’ she sez. Look at her—
jest look at her! Sakes! You should see one
o’ them toothpicks histin’ up her anchor on
her spike outer fifteen-fathom water.”

“What’s a toothpick, Dan?”

“Them new haddockers an’ herrin’-boats.
Fine ’s a yacht forward, with yacht sterns to
"em, an’ spike bowsprits, an’ a haouse that ’u’d
take our hold. I’ve heard that Burgess him-
self he made the models fer three or four of
’em. Dad’s sot agin ’em on account o’ their
pitchin’ an’ joltin’, but there ’s heaps o’ money
in ’em. Dad can find fish, but he ain’t no
ways progressive—he don’t go with the march
o’ the times. They ’re chock-full o’ labour-
''136 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

savin’ jigs an’ sech all. ’Ever seed the Elector
my trloucester? She’s a daisy, ef she is a
toothpick.”

“What do they cost, Danr”

“Hills o’ dollars. Fifteen thousand, p’haps;
more, mebbe. There’s gold-leaf an’ every-
thing you kin think of.” Then to himself,
half under his breath, “Guess I’d call her
Hattie S., too.”
''CHAPTER Vv.

HAT was the first of many talks with

Dan, who told Harvey why he would
transfer his dory’s name to the imaginary Bur-
gess-modelled haddocker. Harvey heard a
good deal about the real Hattie at Gloucester ;
saw a lock of her hair—which Dan, finding
fair words of no avail, had “hooked” as she
sat in front of him at school that winter—and
a photograph. Hattie was about fourteen
years old, with an awful contempt for boys,
and had been trampling on Dan’s heart
through the winter. All this was revealed
under oath of solemn secrecy on moonlit decks,
in the dead dark, or in choking fog; the whin-
ing wheel behind them, the climbing deck be-
fore, and without, the unresting, clamorous
sea. Once, of course, as the boys came to
know each other, there was a fight, which
raged from bow to stern till Penn came up
and separated them, but promised not to tell

137
''138 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

Disko, who thought fighting on watch rather
worse than sleeping. Harvey was no match
for Dan physically, but it says a great deal for
his new training that he took his defeat and
did not try to get even with his conqueror by
underhand methods.

That was after he had been cured of a string
of boils between his elbows and wrists, where
the wet jersey and oilskins cut into the flesh.
The salt water stung them unpleasantly, but
when they were ripe Dan treated them with
Disko’s razor, and assured Harvey that now he
was a “blooded Banker’; the affliction of
gurry-sores being the mark of the caste that
claimed him.

Since he was a boy and very busy, he did
not bother his head with too much thinking.
He was exceedingly sorry for his mother, and
often longed to see her and above all to tell
her of this wonderful new life, and how bril-
liantly he was acquitting himself in it. Other-
wise he preferred not to wonder too much
how she was bearing the shock of his sup-
posed death. But one day, as he stood on the
foc’sle ladder, guying the cook, who had ac-
cused him and Dan of hooking fried pies, it
occurred to him that this was a vast improves
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 139

ment on being snubbed by strangers in the
smoking-room of a hired liner.

He was a recognized part of the scheme of
things on the We’re Here, had his place at
the table and among the bunks; and could hold
his own in the long talks on stormy days, when
the others were always ready to listen to what
they called his “fairy-tales” of his life ashore.
It did not take him more than two days and a
quarter to feel that if he spoke of his own life
—it seemed very far away—no one except
Dan (and even Dan’s belief was sorely tried)
credited him. So he invented a friend, a boy
he had heard of, who drove a miniature four-
pony drag in Toledo, Ohio, and ordered five
suits of clothes at a time and led things called
“germans” at parties where the oldest girl was
not quite fifteen, but all the presents were
solid silver. Salters protested that this kind
of yarn was desperately wicked, if not indeed
positively blasphemous, but he listened as
greedily as the others; and their criticisms at
the end gave Harvey entirely new notions on
“germans,” clothes, cigarettes with gold-leaf
tips, rings, watches, scent, small dinner-parties,
champagne, card-playing, and hotel accom-
modation. Little by little he changed his tone
''140 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

when speaking of his “friend,” whom Long
Jack had christened “the Crazy Kid,” “the
Gilt-edged Baby,” “the Suckin’ Vanderpoop,”
and other pet names; and with his sea-booted
feet cocked up on the table would even invent
histories about silk pajamas and specially im-
ported neckwear, to the “friend’s” discredit.
Harvey was a very adaptable person, with a
keen eye and ear for every face and tone about
him.

Before long he knew where Disko kept the
old green-crusted quadrant that they called
the “hog-yoke’—under the bed-bag in his
bunk. When he took the sun, and with the
help of “The Old Farmer’s” almanac found
the latitude, Harvey would jump down into
the cabin and scratch the reckoning and date
with a nail on the rust of the stove-pipe. Now,
the chief engineer of the liner could have done
no more, and no engineer of thirty years’
service could have assumed one half of the
ancient-mariner air with which Harvey, first
careful to spit over the side, made public the
schooner’s position for that day, and then
and not till then relieved Disko of the quad-
rant. There is an etiquette in all these things,

The said “hog-yoke,” an Eldridge chart, the
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 141

farming almanac, Blunt’s “Coast Pilot,” and
Bowditch’s “Navigator” were all the weapons
Disko needed to guide him, except the deep-
sea lead that was hisspare eye. Harvey nearly
slew Penn with it when Tom Platt taught him
first how to “fly the blue pigeon”; and, though
his strength was not equal to continuous
sounding in any sort of a sea, for calm weather
with a seven-pound lead on shoal water Disko
used him freely, As Dan said: "Tam
soundin’s dad wants. It’s samples. Grease
her up good, Harve.” Harvey would tallow
the cup at the end, and carefully bring the
sand, shell, sludge, or whatever it might be, to
Disko, who fingered and smelt it and gave
judgment. As has been said, when Disko
thought of cod he thought as a cod; and
by some long-tested mixture of instinct and
experience, moved the We’re Here from
berth to berth, always with the fish, as a
blindfolded chess-player moves on the unseen
board.

But Disko’s board was the Grand Bank—
a triangle two hundred and fifty miles on each
side—a waste of wallowing sea, cloaked with
dank fog, vexed with gales, harried with
drifting ice, scored by the tracks of the reck-
''142 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

tess liners, and dotted with the sails of the
fishing-fleet.

For days they worked in fog—Harvey at
the bell—till, grown familiar with the thick
airs, he went out with Tom Platt, his heart
rather in his mouth. But the fog would not
lift, and the fish were biting, and no one can
stay helplessly afraid for six hours at a time.
Harvey devoted himself to his lines and the
gaff or gob-stick as Tom Platt called for them;
and they rowed back to the schooner guided
by the bell and Tom’s instinct; Manuel’s
conch sounding thin and faint beside them.
But it was an unearthly experience, and, for
the first time in a month, Harvey dreamed of
the shifting, smoking floors of water round
the dory, the lines that strayed away into noth-
ing, and the air above that melted on the sea
below ten feet from his straining eyes. A
few days later he was out with Manuel on what
should have been forty-fathom bottom, but the
whole length of the roding ran out, and still
the anchor found nothing, and Harvey grew
mortally afraid, for that his last touch with
earth was lost. ‘Whale-holc,” said Manuel,
hauling in. “That is good joke on Disko.
Come!” and he rowed to the schooner to find
'' 

 

WM” DT ith
Le yell » Yi 7 y // /f /
Ss Mii

i A,

4"

                           
   

        

               

                  

                   

     

       

Nh

     

        

Ly
Ni i

Wp
i

 

|

I) ae

   

     

 
   

    

    

   
  

 
   
   
 
   

Vv, h i\ y
WH fi ; lift ALAA i) y ‘ee, |
WM iON caine Malic his if
é

 

”

ENESS OF THE FOG.
TO THE DREAD
THE BANK.

BERG OF

IT WAS HIS FIRST INTRODUCTION
SUMMER

A WHITENESS MOVED IN THE WHIT

 

oe
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 145

Tom Platt and the others jeering at the skip-
per because, for once, he had led them to the
edge of the barren Whale-deep, the blank
hole of the Grand Bank. They made another
berth through the fog, and that time the hair
of Harvey’s head stood up when he went out
in Manuel’s dory. A whiteness moved in the
whiteness of the fog with a breath like the
breath of the grave, and there was a roaring,
a plunging, and spouting. It was his first in-
troduction to the dread summer berg of the
Banks, and he cowered in the bottom of the
boat while Manuel laughed. There were
days, though, clear and soft and warm, when
it seemed a sin to do anything but loaf over
the hand-lines and spank the drifting “sun-
scalds” with an oar; and there were days of
light airs, when Harvey was taught how to
steer the schooner from one berth to another.

It thrilled through him when he first felt
the keel answer to his hand on the spokes and
slide over the long hollows as the foresail
scythed back and forth against the blue sky.
That was magnificent, in spite of Disko saying
that it would break a snake’s back to follow his
wake. But, as usual, pride ran before a fall,
They were sailing on the wind with the stay-
''146 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

sail—an old one, luckily—set, and Harvey
jammed her right into it to show Dan how
completely he had mastered the art. The
foresail went over with a bang, and the fore-
gaff stabbed and ripped through the staysail,
which was, of course, prevented from going
over by the mainstay. They lowered the
wreck in awful silence, and Harvey spent his
leisure hours for the next few days under Tom
Platt’s lee, learning to use a needle and palm.
Dan hooted with joy, for, as he said, he had
made the very same blunder himself in his
early days.

Boylike, Harvey imitated all the men by
turns, till he had combined Disko’s peculiar
stoop at the wheel, Long Jack’s swinging
overhand when the lines were hauled, Manu-
el’s round-shouldered but effective stroke in a
dory, and Tom Platt’s generous Ohio stride
along the deck.

““°T is beautiful to see how he takes to ut,”
said Long Jack, when Harvey was looking
out by the windlass one thick noon. “Ill lay
my wage an’ share ’t is more’n half play-actin’
to him, an’ he consates himself he’s a bowld
mariner. Watch his little bit av a back now!”

“That’s the way we all begin,” said Tom
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 147

Platt. “The boys they make believe all the
time till they ve cheated ’emselves into bein’
men, an’ so till they die—pretendin’ an’ pre-
tendin’. J done it on the old Ohio, I know.
Stood my first watch—harbour-watch—feelin’
finer’n Farragut. Dan’s full o’ the same
kind o’ notions. See ’em now, actin’ to be
genewine moss-backs—every hair a rope-
yarn an’ blood Stockholm tar.” He spoke
down the cabin stairs. ‘Guess you ’re mistook
in your judgments fer once, Disko. What in
Rome made ye tell us all here the kid was
crazy?”

‘He wuz, Disko ‘replied. “Crazy ez a
loon when he come aboard; but I'll say he’s
sobered up consid’ble sence. I cured him.”

“Fe yarns good,” said Tom Platt. “T’ other
night he told us abaout a kid of his own size
steerin’ a cunnin’ little rig an’ four ponies up
an’ down Toledo, Ohio, I think ’t was, an’
givin’ suppers to a crowd o’ sim’lar kids. Cur’-
us kind o’ fairy-tale, but blame interestin’. He
knows scores of ’em.”

“Guess he strikes ’em outen his own head,”
Disko called from the cabin, where he was
busy with the log-book. ‘Stands to reason
that sort is all made up. It don’t take in no
''148 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

one but Dan, an’ he laughs at it. I’ve heard
him, behind my back.”

“Y? ever hear what Sim’on Peter Ca’houn
said when they whacked up a match ’twix’ his
sister Hitty an’ Lorin’ Jerauld, an’ the boys
put up that joke on him daown to Georges?”
drawled Uncle Salters, who was dripping
peaceably under the lee of the starboard dory-
nest.

Tom Platt puffed at his pipe in scornful
silence: he was a Cape Cod man, and had not
known that tale more than twenty years. Un-
cle Salters went on with a rasping chuckle:

“Sim’on Peter Ca’houn he said, an’ he was
jest right, abaout Lorin’, ‘Ha’af on the taown,’
he said, ‘an’ t’ other ha’af blame fool; an’ they
told me she’s married a ’ich man.’ Sim’on
Peter Ca’houn he hed n’t no roof to his mouth,
an’ talked that way.”

“He did n’t talk any Pennsylvania Dutch,”
Tom Platt replied. “You’d better leave a
Cape man to tell that tale. The Ca’houns was
gypsies frum ’way back.”

“Wal, I don’t profess to be any elocution-
ist,” Salters said. “I’m comin’ to the moral
o’ things. That’s jest abaout what aour Harve
be! Ha’af on the taown, an’ t’ other ha’af
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 149

blame fool; an’ there’s some ’ll believe he’s
arich man. Yah!”

“Did ye ever think how sweet ’t would be
to sail wid a full crew o’ Salterses?” said Long
Jack. “Ha’af in the furrer an’ other ha’af in
the muck-heap, as Ca’houn did not say, an’
makes out he’s a fisherman!”

A little laugh went round at Salters’s ex-
pense.

Disko held his tongue, and wrought over
the log-book that he kept in a hatchet-faced,
square hand; this was the kind of thing that
ran on, page after soiled page:

“July 17. This day thick fog and few fish.
Made berth to northward. So ends this day.

“July 18. This day comes in with thick
fog. Caught a few fish.

“July 19. This day comes in with light
breeze from N. E. and fine weather. Made
a berth to eastward. Caught plenty fish.

“July 20. This, the Sabbath, comes in with
fog and light winds. So ends this day. Total
fish caught this week, 3,478.”

They never worked on Sundays, but shaved,
and washed themselves if it were fine, and
Pennsylvania sang hymns. Once or twice he
suggested that, if it was not an impertinence,
''150 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

he thought he could preach a little. Uncle
Salters nearly jumped down his throat at the
mere notion, reminding him that he was not a
preacher and mustn’t think of such things.
“We'd hev him rememberin’ Johnstown
next,” Salters explained, ‘an’ what would
happen then?” So they compromised on his
reading aloud from a book called “Josephus.”
It was an old leather-bound volume, smelling
of a hundred voyages, very solid and very like
the Bible, but enlivened with accounts of
battles and sieges; and they read it nearly from
cover to cover. Otherwise Penn was a silent
little body. He would not utter a word for
three days on end sometimes, though he played
checkers, listened to the songs, and laughed at
the stories. When they tried to stir him up, he
would answer: “I don’t wish to seem unneigh-
bourly, but it is because I have nothing to say.
My head feels quite empty. I’ve almost for-
gotten my name.” He would turn to Uncle
Salters with an expectant smile.

“Why, Pennsylvania Pratt,’ Salters would
shout. ‘Youll fergit me next!”

““No—never,” Penn would say, shutting his
lips firmly. ‘Pennsylvania Pratt, of course,”
he would repeat over and over. Sometimes it
''   
     
    
 

   
  
 

ph

p>

ae X S a Np

ap =

. TRAE
SR

Z

‘a
a

ea S
SSS ie
BS a “A

  
 

SS
ae
=. *

Sw

Hg

“,

THERE WERE DAYS OF LIGHT AIRS, WHEN HARVEY WAS TAUGHT HOW TO STEER
THE SCHOONER FROM ONE BERTH TO ANOTHER.”
'' 

 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 153

was Uncle Salters who forgot, and told him
he was Haskins or Rich or McVitty; but Penn
was equally content—till next time.

_ He was always very tender with Harvey,
whom he pitied both as a lost child and as a
lunatic; and when Salters saw that Penn liked
the boy, he relaxed, too. Salters was not an
amiable person (he esteemed it his business
to keep the boys in order) ; and the first time
Harvey, in fear and trembling, on a still day,
managed to shin up to the main-truck (Dan
was behind him ready to help), he esteemed
it his duty to hang Salters’s big sea-boots up
there—a sight of shame and derision to the
nearest schooner. With Disko, Harvey took
no liberties; not even when the old man
dropped direct orders, and treated him, like
the rest of the crew, to “Don’t you want to do
so and so?” and “Guess you’d better,” and
so forth. There was something about the
clean-shaven lips and the puckered corners
of the eyes that was mightily sobering to young
blood. :

Disko showed him the meaning of the
thumbed and pricked chart, which, he said,
laid over any government publication whatso-
ever; led him, pencil in hand, from berth to
''154 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

berth over the whole string of banks—Le
Hiave, Western, Banquéereau, St. Pierre,
Green, and Grand—talking “cod” meantime.
Taught him, too, the principle on which the
“hog-yoke” was worked.

In this Harvey excelled Dan, for he had
inherited a head for figures, and the notion of
stealing information from one glimpse of the
sullen Bank sun appealed to all his keen wits.
For other sea-matters his age handicapped
him. As Disko said, he should have begun
when he was ten. Dan could bait up trawl
or lay his hand on any rope in the dark; and
at a pinch, when Uncle Salters had a gurry-
sore on his palm, could dress down by sense of
touch. He could steer in anything short of
half a gale from the feel of the wind on his
face, humouring the We’re Here just when
she needed it. These things he did as auto-
matically as he skipped about the rigging, or
made his dory a part of his own will and body.
But he could not communicate his knowledge
to Harvey.

Still there was a good deal of general infor-
mation flying about the schooner on stormy
days, when they lay up in the foc’sle or sat on
the cabin lockers, while spare eye-bolts, leads,
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 155

and rings rolled and rattled in the pauses of
the talk. Disko spoke of whaling voyages in
the Fifties; of great she-whales slain beside
their young; of death agonies on the black toss-
ing seas, and blood that spurted forty feet in
the air; of boats smashed to splinters; of patent
rockets that went off wrong-end-first and
bombarded the trembling crews; of cutting-in
and boiling-down, and that terrible “nip” of
’71, when twelve hundred men were made
homeless on the ice in three days—wonderful
tales, all true. But more wonderful still were
his stories of the cod, and how they argued
and reasoned on their private businesses deep
down below the keel.

Long Jack’s tastes ran more to the super-
natural. He held them silent with ghastly
stories of the ‘“Yo-hoes” on Monomoy Beach,
that mock and terrify lonely clam-diggers; of
sand-walkers and dune-haunters who were
never properly buried; of hidden treasure on
Fire Island guarded by the spirits of Kidd’s
men; of ships that sailed in the fog straight
over Truro township; of that harbour in
Maine where no one but a stranger will lie at
anchor twice in a certain place because of a
dead crew who row alongside at midnight with
''156 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

the anchor in the bow of their old-fashioned
boat, whistling—not calling, but whistling—
for the soul of the man who broke their rest.

Harvey had a notion that the east coast of
his native land, from Mount Desert south,
was populated chiefly by people who took
their horses there in the summer and enter-
tained in country-houses with hardwood floors
and Vantine portiéres. He laughed at the
ghost-tales—not as much as he would have
done a month before,—but ended by sitting
still and shuddering.

Tom Platt dealt with his interminable trip
round the Horn on the old Ohio in the flogging
days, with a navy more extinct than the dodo
—the navy that passed away in the great war.
He told them how red-hot shot are dropped
into a cannon, a wad of wet clay between
them and the cartridge; how they sizzle and
reek when they strike wood, and how the little
ship-boys of the Miss Jim Buck hove water
over them and shouted to the fort to try again.
And he told tales of blockade—long weeks of
swaying at anchor, varied only by the depart-
ure and return of steamers that had used up
their coal (there was no change for the sailing-
ships) ; of gales and cold—cold that kept two,
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 157

hundred men, night and day, pounding and
chopping at the ice on cable, blocks, and rig-
ging, when the galley was as red-hot as the
fort’s shot, and men drank cocoa by the bucket.
Tom Platt had no use for steam. His service
closed when that thing was comparatively
new. He admitted that it was a specious in-
vention in time of peace, but looked hopefully
for the day when sails should come back again
on ten-thousand-ton frigates with hundred-
and-ninety-foot booms.

Manuel’s talk was slow and gentle—all
about pretty girls in Madeira washing clothes
in the dry beds of streams, by moonlight,
under waving bananas; legends of saints, and
tales of queer dances or fights away in the
cold Newfoundland baiting-ports. Salters
was mainly agricultural; for, though he read
“Josephus” and expounded it, his mission in
life was to prove the value of green manures,
and specially of clover, against every form
of phosphate whatsoever. He grew libellous
about phosphates; he dragged greasy “Orange
Judd” books from his bunk and intoned them,
wagging his finger at Harvey, to whom it was
all Greek. Little Penn was so genuinely
pained when Harvey made fun of Salters’s
''158 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

lectures that the boy gave it up, and suffered in
polite silence. That was very good for Har-
vey.

The cook naturally did not join in these con-
versations. As a rule, he spoke only when it
was absolutely necessary; but at times a queer
gift of speech descended on him, and he held
forth, half in Gaelic, half in broken English,
an hour at a time. He was especially com-
municative with the boys, and he never with-
drew his prophecy that one day Harvey would
be Dan’s master, and that he would see it.
He told them of mail-carrying in the winte1
up Cape Breton way, of the dog-train that
goes to Coudray, and of the ram-steamer
Arctic, that breaks the ice between the main-
land and Prince Edward Island. Then he told
them stories that his mother had told him, of
life far to the southward, where water never
froze; and he said that when he died his soul
would go to lie down on a warm white beach
of sand with palm-trees waving above. That
seemed to the boys a very odd idea for a man
who had never seen a palm in his life. Then,
too, regularly at each meal, he would ask
Harvey, and Harvey alone, whether the cook-
ing was to his taste; and this always made the
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 159

“second half” laugh. Yet they had a great
respect for the cook’s judgment, and in their
hearts considered Harvey something of a mas-
cot by consequence.

And while Harvey was taking in knowl-
edge of new things at each pore and hard
health with every gulp of the good air, the
We’re Here went her ways and did her busi-
ness on the Bank, and the silvery-gray kenches
of well-pressed fish mounted higher and
higher in the hold. No one day’s work was
out of the common, but the average days were
many and close together.

Naturally, a man of Disko’s reputation was
closely watched—“scrowged upon,’ Dan
called it—by his neighbours, but he had a very
pretty knack of giving them the slip through
the curdling, glidy fog-banks. Disko avoided
company for two reasons. He wished to
make his own experiments, in the first place;
and in the second, he objected to the mixed
gatherings of a fleet of all nations. The bulk
of them were mainly Gloucester boats, with
a scattering from Provincetown, Harwich,
Chatham, and some of the Maine ports, but
the crews drew from goodness knows where.
Risk breeds recklessness, and when greed is
''160 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

added there are fine chances for every kind of
accident in the crowded fleet, which, like a
mob of sheep, is huddled round some unrec-
ognized leader. ‘Let the two Jeraulds lead
em,” said, Disko. ‘“We’re baound to lay
among ’em fer a spell on the Eastern Shoals;
though ef luck holds, we won’t hev to lay long.
Where we are naow, Harve, ain’t considered
noways good graound.”

“Ain’t it?” said Harvey, who was drawing
water (he had learned just how to wiggle the
bucket), after an unusually long dressing-
down. “Should n’t mind striking some poor
ground for a change, then.”

“All the graound I want to see—don’t want
to strike her—is Eastern Point,” said Dan,
“Say, Dad, it looks ’s if we would n’t hev to
lay more ’n two weeks on the Shoals. You'll
meet all the comp’ny you want then, Harve.
That’s the time we begin to work. No reg’-
lar meals fer no one then. ’Mug-up when
ye’re hungry, an’ sleep when ye can’t keep
awake. Good job you wasn’t picked up a
month later than you was, or we’d never ha’
had you dressed in shape fer the Old Virgin.”

Harvey understood from the Eldridge chart
that the Old Virgin and a nest of curiously
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 16t

named shoals were the turning-point of the
cruise, and that with good luck they would
wet the balance of their salt there. But see-
ing the size of the Virgin (it was one tiny
dot), he wondered how even Disko with the
hog-yoke and the lead could find her. He
learned later that Disko was entirely equal to
that and any other business and could even
help others. A big four-by-five blackboard
hung in the cabin, and Harvey never under-
stood the need of it till, after some blinding
thick days, they heard the unmelodious tooting
of a foot-power fog-horn—a machine whose
note is as that of a consumptive elephant.

They were making a short berth, towing the
anchor under their foot to save trouble.
“Square-rigger bellowin’ fer his latitude,”
said Long Jack. The dripping red headsails
of a bark glided out of the fog, and the We ’re
Here rang her bell thrice, using sea short-
hand.

The larger boat backed her topsail with
shrieks and shoutings.

‘‘Frenchman,” said Uncle Salters, scorn-
fully. ‘“Muquelon boat from St. Malo.” The
farmer had a weatherly sea-eye. “I’m ’most
outer ’baccy, too, Disko.
''162 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

yoarme Gere, said ‘Tom Platt. “Hi!

Backez vous—backez vous! Standez awayez.
you butt-ended mucho-bono! Where you from
—St. Malo, eh?”

“Ah, ha! Mucho bono! Oui! oui! Clos
Poulet—St. Malo! St. Pierre et Miquelon,”
cried the other crowd, waving woollen caps
and laughing. Then all together, “Bord/
Bord!”

“Bring up the board, Danny. Beats me
how them Frenchmen fetch anywheres, ex-
ceptin’ America’s fairish broadly. Forty-six
forty-nine’s good enough fer them; an’ }
guess it’s abaout right, too.”

Dan chalked the figures on the board, and
they hung it in the main-rigging to a chorus
of mercis from the bark.

“Seems kinder unneighbourly to let ’em
swedge off like this,” Salters suggested, feel-
ing in his pockets.

“Fev ye learned French then sence last
trip?” said Disko. “JZ don’t want no more
stone-ballast hove at us ‘long o’ your callin’
Miquelon boats ‘footy cochins,’ same’s you
did off Le Have.”

“Ffarmon Rush he said that was the way
to rise "em. Plain United States is good
'' 

 

 

 

 

“Car! say! ARRETEZ VOUS! ATTENDEZ! NOUS SOMMES VENANT POUR TABAC.’
‘AH, TABAC, TABACI’ ”
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 165

enough fer me. We’re all dretful short on
terbakker. Young feller, don’t you speak
Frenche”

“Oh, yes,” said Harvey valiantly; and he
bawled: “Hi! Say! <Arrétez vous! Atten-
dez! Nous sommes venant pour tabac.”

“Ah, tabac, tabac!’ they cried, and laughed
again.

“That hit ’em. Let’s heave a dory over,
anyway,” said Tom Platt. “I don’t exactly
hold no certificates on French, but I know
another lingo that goes, I guess. Come on,
Harve, an’ interpret.”

The raffle and confusion when he and Har-
vey were hauled up the bark’s black side was
indescribable. Her cabin was all stuck round
with glaring coloured prints of the Virgin—
the Virgin of Newfoundland, they called her.
Harvey found his French of no recognized
Bank brand, and his conversation was limited
to nods and grins. But Tom Platt waved his
arms and got along swimmingly. The cap-
tain gave him a-drink of unspeakable gin,
and the opera-comique crew, with their hairy
throats, red caps, and long knives, greeted
him as a brother. Then the trade began.
They had tobacco, plenty of it—American,
''166 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

that had never paid duty to France. They
wanted chocolate and crackers. Harvey
rowed back to arrange with the cook and
Disko, who owned the stores, and on his re-
turn the cocoa-tins and cracker-bags were
counted out by the Frenchman’s wheel. It
looked like a piratical division of loot; but
Tom Platt came out of it roped with black
pigtail and stuffed with cakes of chewing and
smoking tobacco. Then those jovial mariners
swung off into the mist, and the last Harvey
heard was a gay chorus:

“Par derriére chez ma tante,
Il y a un bois joli,
Et le rossignol y chante
Pt te jour ct la nuit . .°

Que donneriez vous, belle,
Qui l’aménerait ici?

Je donnerai Québec,

Sorel et Saint Denis.”

“How was it my French didn’t go, ané&
your sign-talk did?” Harvey demanded when
the barter had been distributed among the
We’re Heres.

“Sign-talk!” Platt guffawed. “Well, yes,
’t was sign-talk, but a heap older ’n your
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 167

French, Harve. Them French boats are
chock-full o’ Freemasons, an’ that’s why.”

“Are you a Freemason, then?”

“Looks that way, don’t it?” said the man-
o’-war’s man, stuffing his pipe; and Harvey
had another mystery of the deep sea to brood
upon.
''CHAPTER VI

HE thing that struck him most was the
exceedingly casual way in which some
craft loafed about the broad Atlantic. Fish-
ing-boats, as Dan said, were naturally depen-
dent on the courtesy and wisdom of their
neighbours; but one expected better things of
steamers. That was after another interesting
interview, when they had been chased for
three miles by a big lumbering old cattle-boat,
all boarded over on the upper deck, that smelt
like a thousand cattle-pens. A very excited
officer yelled at them through a speaking-
trumpet, and she lay and lollopped helplessly
on the water while Disko ran the We ’re Here
under her lee and gave the skipper a piece of
his mind. “Where might ye be—eh? Ye
don’t deserve to be anywheres. You barn-yard
tramps go hoggin’ the road on the high seas
with no blame consideration fer your neigh-
bours, an’ your eyes in your coffee-cups instid
o’ in your silly heads.”
168
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 169

At this the skipper danced on the bridge
and said something about Disko’s own eyes.
“We have n’t had an observation for three
days. D’ you suppose we can run her blind?”
he shouted.

“Wa-al, I can,” Disko retorted. ‘“What’s
come to your lead? Et it? Can’t ye smell
bottom, or are them cattle too rank?”

“What d’ ye feed ’em?” said Uncle Salters
with intense seriousness, for the smell of the
pens woke all the farmer in him. ‘They say
they fall off dretful on a v’yage. Dunno as it’s
any o’ my business, but I’ve a kind o’ notion
that oil-cake broke small an’ sprinkled ——”

“Thunder?” said a cattle-man in a red jer-
sey as he looked over the side. ‘‘What asylum
did they let His Whiskers out of 2?”

“Young feller,” Salters began, standing up
in the fore-rigging, “let me tell yeou ’fore we
go any further that I ’ve——”

The officer on the bridge took off his cap
with immense politeness. ‘Excuse me,” he
said, “but I’ve asked for my reckoning. If
the agricultural person with the hair will
kindly shut his head, the sea-green barnacle
with the wall-eye may per-haps condescend to
enlighten us.”
''170 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

““Naow you ’ve made a show o’ me, Salters,”
said Disko, angrily. He could not stand up to
that particular sort of talk, and snapped out
the latitude and longitude without more lec-
tures.

“Well, that’s a boat-load of lunatics, sure,”
said the skipper, as he rang up the engine-
room and tossed a bundle of newspapers into
the schooner.

“Of all the blamed fools, next to you, Salt-
ers, him an’ his crowd are abaout the likeliest
I’ve ever seen,” said Disko as the We’re
Here slid away. “I was jest givin’ him my
jedgment on lullsikin’ round these waters like
a lost child, an’ you must cut in with your fool
farmin’. Can’t ye never keep things sep’rate?”

Harvey, Dan, and the others stood back,
winking one to the other and full of joy; but
Disko and Salters wrangled seriously till eve-
ning, Salters arguing that a cattle-boat was
practically a barn on blue water, and Disko
insisting that, even if this were the case, de-
cency and fisher-pride demanded that he
should have kept “things sep’rate.” Long Jack
stood it in silence for a time,—an angry skip-
per makes an unhappy crew,—and then he
spoke across the table after supper:
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 171

“Fwhat’s the good o’ bodderin’ fwhat
they ’1l say?” said he.

“They ’ll tell that tale agin us fer years—
that ’s all,” said Disko. ‘“‘Oil-cake sprinkled!”

“With salt, o’ course,” said Salters, impeni-
tent, reading the farming reports from a week-
old New York paper.

“It’s plumb mortifyin’ to all my feelin’s,”
the skipper went on.

“Can’t see ut that way,” said Long Jack,
the peacemaker. “Look at here, Disko! Is
there another packet afloat this day in this
weather cud ha’ met a tramp an’, over an’
above givin’ her her reckonin’—over an’
above that, I say,—cud ha’ discoorsed wid
her quite intelligent on the management av
steers an’ such at sea? Forgit ut! Av coorse
they will not. "I’was the most compenjus
conversation that iver accrued. Double game
an’ twice runnin’—all to us.” Dan kicked
Harvey under the table, and Harvey choked
in his cup.

“Well,” said Salters, who felt that his honour
had been somewhat plastered, “I said I did n’t
know as ’t wuz any business o’ mine, ’fore I
spoke.”

“An? right there,” said Tom Piatt, experi-
''172 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

enced in discipline and etiquette— “right
there, I take it, Disko, you should ha’ asked
him to stop ef the conversation wuz likely, in
your jedgment, to be anyways—what it
should n’t.”

“°Dunno but that’s so,” said Disko, who
saw his way to an honourable retreat from a
fit of the dignities.

“Why, o’ course it was so,” said Salters,
“you bein’ skipper here; an’ I’d cheerful
hev stopped on a hint—not from any lead-
in’ or conviction, but fer the sake o’ bearin’
an example to these two blame boys of
aours,”

“Did n’t I tell you, Harve, ’t would come
araound to us fore we’d done? Always those
blame boys. But I would n’t have missed the
show fer a half-share in a halibutter,”’ Dar.
whispered.

“Still, things should ha’ been kep’ sep’rate,”
said Disko, and the light of new argument
lit in Salters’s eye as he crumbled cut plug
into his pipe.

“There’s a power av vartue in keepin’
things sep’rate,” said Long Jack, intent on
stilling the storm. ‘“That’s fwhat Steyning
of Steyning and Hare’s f’und when he sent
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 173.

Counahan fer skipper on the Marilla D.
Kuhn, instid o’ Cap. Newton that was took
with inflam’try rheumatism an’ could n’t go.
Counahan the Navigator we called him.”

“Nick Counahan he never went aboard fer
a night ’thout a pond o’ rum somewheres in
the manifest,” said Tom Platt, playing up to
the lead. “He used to bum araound the c’mis-
sion houses to Boston lookin’ fer the Lord to
make him captain of a tow-boat on his merits.
Sam Coy, up to Atlantic Avenoo, give him
his board free fer a year or more on account
of his stories. Counahan the Navigator!
Tck! Tck! Dead these fifteen year, ain’t
he?”

“Seventeen, I guess. He died the year
the Caspar McV eagh was built; but he could
niver keep things sep’rate. Steyning tuk him
fer the reason the thief tuk the hot stove—
bekaze there was nothin’ else that season.
The men was all to the Banks, and Counahan
he whacked up an iverlastin’ hard crowd fer
crew. Rum! Yevcud ha’ floated the Marilla,
insurance an’ all, in fwhat they stowed aboard
her. They lef’ Boston Harbour for the great
Grand Bank wid a roarin’ nor’wester behind
"em an’ all hands full to the bung. An’ the
''174 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

hivens looked after thim, for divil a watch
did they set, an’ divil a rope did they lay hand
to, till they ’d seen the bottom av a fifteen-gal-
lon cask o’ bug-juice. That was about wan
week, so far as Counahan remembered. (If I
cud only tell the tale as he told ut!) All that
whoile the wind blew like ould glory, an’ the
Marilla—'t was summer, and they ’d give her
a foretopmast—struck her gait and kept ut.
‘Then Counahan tuk the hog-yoke an’ threm-
bled over it for a whoile, an’ made out, be-
twix’ that an’ the chart an’ the singin’ in his
head, that they was to the south’ard o’ Sable
Island, gettin’ along glorious, but speakin’’
nothin’. Then they broached another keg, an’
quit speculatin’ about anythin’ fer another
spell. The Marilla she lay down whin she
dropped Boston Light, and she never lufted
her lee-rail up to that time—hustlin’ on one
an’ the same slant. But they saw no weed, nor
gulls, nor schooners; an’ prisintly they ob-
sarved they’d bin out a matter o’ fourteen
daysand they mistrusted the Bank has suspind-
ed payment. So they sounded, an’ got sixty
fathom. “That’s me,’ sez Counahan. ‘That’s
me iv’ry time! I’ve run her slat on the Bank
fer you. an’ when we get thirty fathom we ’ll
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 175

turn in like little men. Counahan is the b’y,’
sez he. ‘Counahan the Navigator!’

‘Nex’ cast they got ninety. Sez Counahan:
‘Either the lead-line’s tuk to stretchin’ or else
the Bank ’s sunk.’

“They hauled ut up, bein’ just about in
that state when ut seemed right an’ reasonable,
and sat down on the deck countin’ the knots,
an’ gettin’ her snarled up hijjus. The Maril-
la she ’d struck her gait, an’ she hild ut, an’
prisintly along come a tramp, an’ Counahan
spoke her.

‘‘*Hev ye seen any fishin’-boats now?’ sez
he, quite casual.

“There ’s lashin’s av them off the Irish
coast,’ sez the tramp.

““‘Aah! go shake yerself,’ sez Counahan.
‘Fwhat have I to do wid the Irish coast?’

“““Then fwhat are ye doin’ here?’ sez the
tramp.

“ ‘Sufferin’ Christianity!’ sez Counahan (he
always said that whin his pumps sucked an’
he was not feelin’ good )—‘Sufferin’ Christian-
ity!’ he sez, ‘where am I at?”

“Thirty-five mile west-sou’west o’ Cape
Clear,’ sez the tramp, ‘if that’s any consola-
tion to you.’
''176 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

“Counahan fetched wan jump, four feet
sivin inches, measured by the cook.

“ “Consolation! sez he, bould as brass. ‘D’
ye take me fer a dialect? Thirty-five mile
from Cape Clear, an’ fourteen days from Bos-
ton Light. Sufferin’ Christianity, ’t is a
record, an’ by the same token I’ve a mother
to Skibbereen!’ Think av ut! The gall av
um! But ye see he could niver keep things
sep’rate.

“The crew was mostly Cork an’ Kerry men,
barrin’ one Marylander that wanted to go
back, but they called him a mutineer, an’ they
ran the ould Marilla into Skibbereen, an’ they
had an illigant time visitin’ around with
frinds on the ould sod fer a week. Thin they
wint back, an’ it cost ’em two an’ thirty days
to beat to the Banks again. °T was gettin’ on
towards fall, and grub was low, so Counahan
ran her back to Boston, wid no more bones to
ut.”

“And what did the firm say?” Harvey
demanded.

“Fwhat could they? The fish was on the
Banks, an’ Counahan was at T-wharf talkin’
av his record trip east! They tuk their satis-
faction out av that, an’ ut all came av not
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 177

keepin’ the crew and the rum sep’rate in the
first place; an’ confusin’ Skibbereen wid
’Queereau, in the second. Counahan the
Navigator, rest his sowl! He was an im-
prompju citizen!”

“Once I was in the Lucy Holmes,” said
Manuel, in his gentle voice. ‘They not want
any of her feesh in Gloucester. Eh, wha-at?
Give us no price. So we go across the water,
and think to sell to some Fayal man. Then
it blow fresh, and we cannot see well. Eh,
wha-at? Then it blow some more fresh, and
we go down below and drive very fast—no one
know where. By and by we see a land, and
it get some hot. Then come two, three nigger
in a brick. Eh, wha-at? We ask where we
are, and they say—now, what you all think?”

“Grand Canary,” said Disko, after a mo-
ment. Manuel shook his head, smiling.

“Blanco,” said Tom Platt.

“No. Worse than that. We was below
Bezagos, and the brick she was from Liberia!
So we sell our feesh there! Not bad, so? Eh,
wha-at?”

“Can a schooner like this go right across to
Africa?” said Harvey.

“Go araound the Horn ef there’s anythin’
''178 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

worth goin’ fer, and the grub holds aout,” said
Disko. ‘‘My father he run his packet, an’
she was a kind o’ pinkey, abaout fifty ton, I
guess,—the Rufert,—he run her over to
Greenland’s icy mountains the year ha’af our
fleet was tryin’ after cod there. An’ what’s
more, he took my mother along with him,—
to show her haow the money was earned, I
presoom,—an’ they was all iced up, an’ I was
born at Disko. Don’t remember nothin’
abaout it, o’ course. We come back when the
ice eased in the spring, but they named me fe
the place. Kinder mean trick to put up ona
baby, but we ’re all baound to make mistakes
in aour lives.”

“Sure! Sure!” said Salters, wagging his
head. ‘“AIl baound to make mistakes, an’ I
tell you two boys here thet after you ’ve made
a mistake—ye don’t make fewer ’n a hundred
a day—the next best thing’s to own up to it
like men.”

Long Jack winked one tremendous wink
that embraced all hands except Disko and
Salters, and the incident was closed.

Then they made berth after berth to the
northward, the dories out almost every day,
running along the east edge of the Grand
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 179

Bank in thirty- to forty-fathom water, and
fishing steadily.

It was here Harvey first met the squid, who
is one of the best cod-baits, but uncertain in
his moods. They were waked out of their
bunks one black night by yells of “Squid O!”
from Salters, and for an hour and a half every
soul aboard hung over his squid-jig—a piece
of lead painted red and armed at the lower
end with a circle of pins bent backward like
half-opened umbrella ribs. The squid—for
some unknown reason—likes, and wraps him-
self round, this thing, and is hauled up ere he
can escape from the pins. But as he leaves
his home he squirts first water and next ink
into his captor’s face; and it was curious to
see the men weaving their heads from side to
side to dodge the shot. They were as black
as sweeps when the flurry ended; but a pile
of fresh squid lay on the deck, and the large
cod thinks very well of a little shiny piece of
squid tentacle at the tip of a clam-baited hook.
Next day they caught many fish, and met the
Carrie Pitman, to whom they shouted their
luck, and she wanted to trade—seven cod for
one fair-sized squid; but Disko would not
agree at the price, and the Carrie dropped
''180 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

sullenly to leeward and anchored half a mile
away, in the hope of striking on to some for
herself.

Disko said nothing till after supper, when
he sent Dan and Manuel out to buoy the
We’re Here’s cable and announced his inten-
tion of turning in with the broad-axe. Dan
naturally repeated these remarks to a dory
from the Carrie, who wanted to know why
they were buoying their cable, since they were
not on rocky bottom.

“Dad sez he would n’t trust a ferryboat
within five mile o’ you,” Dan howled cheer-
fully.

“Why don’t he git out, then? Who’s hin-
derin’?” said the other.

‘““*Cause you ’ve jest the same ez lee-bowed
him, an’ he don’t take that from any boat, not
to speak o’ sech a driftin’ gurry-butt as you
be,”

“She ain’t driftin’ any this trip,” said the
man angrily, for the Carrie Pitman had an
unsavory reputation for breaking her ground-
tackle.

‘Then haow d’ you make berths?” said Dan.
"it’s her best p’int o’ sailin’, An’ ef. she’s
quit driftin’, what in thunder are you doin’
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 181

with a new jib-boome”’ That shot went
home.

“Hey, you Portugoosy organ-grinder, take
your monkey back to Gloucester. Go back
to school, Dan Troop,” was the answer.

“O-ver-alls! O-ver-alls!” yelled Dan, who
knew that one of the Carrie’s crew had worked
in an overall factory the winter before.

“Shrimp! Gloucester shrimp! Git aout,
you Novy!”

To call a Gloucester man a Nova Scotian
is not well received. Dan answered in kind.

“Novy yourself, ye Scrabble-towners! ye
Chatham wreckers! Git aout with your brick
in your stockin’!” And the forces separated,
but Chatham had the worst of it.

“T knew haow ’t would be,” said Disko.
“She’s drawed the wind raound already.
Some one oughter put a deesist on thet packet.
she ’1l snore till midnight, an’ jest when we ’re
gittin’ our sleep she’ll strike adrift. Good
job we ain’t crowded with craft hereaways.
But I ain’t goin’ to up anchor fer Chatham.
She may hold.”

The wind, which had hauled round, rose at
sundown and blew steadily. There was not
enough sea, though, to disturb even a dory’s
''182 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

tackle, but the Carrie Pitman was a law unto
herself. At the end of the boys’ watch they
heard the crack-crack-crack of a huge muzzle-
loading revolver aboard her.

“Glory, glory, hallelujah!” sung Dan.
‘“FYere she comes, Dad; butt-end first, walkin’
in her sleep same ’s she done on ’Queereau.”’

Had she been any other boat Disko would
have taken his chances, but now he cut the
cable as the Carrie Pitman, with all the North
Atlantic to play in, lurched down directly
upon them. The We’re Here, under jib and
riding-sail, gave her no more room than was
absolutely necessary,—Disko did not wish to
spend a week hunting for his cable,—but
scuttled up into the wind as the Carrie passed
within easy hail, a silent and angry boat, at
the mercy of a raking broadside of Bank
chaff.

“Good evenin’,” said Disko, raising his
head-gear, ‘“‘an’ haow does your garden grow?”

“Go to Ohio an’ hire a mule,” said Uncle
Salters. ‘We don’t want no farmers here.”

“Will I lend you my dory-anchor?” cried
Long Jack.

“Unship your rudder an’ stick it in the
mud,” said Tom Platt.
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 183

“Say!” Dan’s voice rose shrill and high,
as he stood on the wheel-box. ‘“Sa-ay! Is
there a strike in the o-ver-all factory; or hev
they hired girls, ye Shackamaxons?”’

“Veer out the tiller-lines,”’ cried Harvey,
“and nail ’em to the bottom.” ‘That was a
salt-flavoured jest he had been put up to by
Tom Platt. Manuel leaned over the stern
and yelled: “Johnna Morgan play the organ!
Ahaaaa!” He flourished his broad thumb
with a gesture of unspeakable contempt and
derision, while little Penn covered himself
with glory by piping up: “Gee a little! Hssh}
Come here. Haw!”

They rode on their chain for the rest of
the night, a short, snappy, uneasy motion, as
Harvey found, and wasted half the forenoon
recovering the cable. But the boys agreed
the trouble was cheap at the price of triumph
and glory, and they thought with grief over
all the beautiful things that they might have
said to the discomfited Carrie.
''CHAPTER VII

EXT day they fell in with more sails,
all circling slowly from the east north-
erly towards the west. But just when they
expected to make the shoals by the Virgin
the fog shut down, and they anchored, sur-
rounded by the tinklings of invisible bells.
There was not much fishing, but occasionally
dory met dory in the fog and exchanged news.
That night, a little before dawn, Dan and
Harvey, who had been sleeping most of the
day, tumbled out to “hook” fried pies. There
was no reason why they should not have taken
them openly; but they tasted better so, and it
made the cook angry. The heat and smell be-
low drove them on deck with their plunder,
and they found Disko at the bell, which he
handed over to Harvey.

“Keep her goin’,” said he. “I mistrust I
hear somethin’. Ef it’s anything, I’m best
where I am so’s to get at things.”

184
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 185

It was a forlorn little jingle; the thick air
seemed to pinch it off; and in the pauses Har-
vey heard the muffled shriek of a liner’s siren,
and he knew enough of the Banks to know
what that meant. It came to him, with horri-
ble distinctness, howa boy in a cherry-coloured
jersey—he despised fancy blazers now with
all a fisherman’s contempt—how an ignorant,
rowdy boy had once said it would be “great”
if a steamer ran down a fishing-boat. That
boy had a stateroom with a hot and cold bath,
and spent ten minutes each morning picking
over a gilt-edged bill of fare. And that same
boy—no, his very much older brother—was
up at four of the dim dawn in streaming,
crackling oilskins, hammering, literally for
the dear life, on a bell smaller than the stew-
ard’s breakfast-bell, while somewhere close at
hand a thirty-foot steel stem was storming
along at twenty miles an hour! The bitterest
thought of all was that there were folks asleep
in dry, upholstered cabins who would never
learn that they had massacred a boat before
breakfast. So Harvey rang the bell.

“Yes, they slow daown one turn o’ their
blame propeller,” said Dan, applying himself
to Manuel’s conch, “‘fer to keep inside the law,
''186 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

an’ that’s consolin’ when we’re all at the bot-
tom. Hark to her! She’s a humper!”

“Aoooo—whoooo—whupp!” went the siren.
“W ingle—tingle—tink,;’ went the bell.
“Graaa—ouch!” went the conch, while sea and
sky were all milled up in milky fog. Then
Harvey felt that he was near a moving body,
and found himself looking up and up at the
wet edge of a cliff-like bow, leaping, it seemed,
directly over the schooner. A jaunty little
feather of water curled in front of it, and as
it lifted it showed a long ladder of Roman
numerals—XV., XVI., XVII., XVIII., and
so forth—on a salmon-coloured gleaming side.
It tilted forward and downward with a heart-
stilling ‘“‘Ssssooo”’; the ladder disappeared; a
line of brass-rimmed port-holes flashed past; a
jet of steam puffed in Harvey’s helplessly up-
lifted hands; a spout of hot water roared along
the rail of the We’re Here, and the little
schooner staggered and shook in a rush of
screw-torn water, as a liner’s stern vanished
in the fog. Harvey got ready to faint or be
sick, or both, when he heard a crack like a
trunk thrown on a sidewalk, and, all small in
his ear, a far-away telephone voice drawling:
‘“Heave to! You’ve sunk us!”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 187

“Ts it us?” he gasped.

“No! Boat out yonder. Ring! We’re
goin’ to look,” said Dan, running out a
dory.

In half a minute all except Harvey, Penn,
and the cook were overside and away. Pres-
ently a schooner’s stump-foremast, snapped
clean across, drifted past the bows. Then an
empty green dory came by, knocking on the
We’re Here’s side, as though she wished to
be taken in. Then followed something, face
dewn, in a blue jersey, but—it was not the
whole of a man. Penn changed colour and
caught his breath with a click. Harvey
pounded despairingly at the bell, for he feared
they might be sunk at any minute, and he
jumped at Dan’s hail as the crew came back.

“The Jennie Cushman,’ said Dan, hysteri-
cally, “cut clean in half—graound up an’
trompled on at that! Nota quarter of a mile
away. Dad’s got the old man. There ain’t
any one else, and—there was his son, too. Oh,
Harve, Harve, I can’t stand it! I’ve seen

” He dropped his head on his arms and
sobbed while the others dragged a gray-
headed man aboard.

‘What did you pick me up for?” the stran-
''188 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

ger groaned. “Disko, what did you pick me
up fore”

Disko dropped a heavy hand on his shoul-
der, for the man’s eyes were wild and his lips
trembled as he stared at the silent crew. Then
up and spoke Pennsylvania Pratt, who was
also Haskins or Rich or McVitty when Uncle
Salters forgot; and his face was changed on
him from the face of a fool to the countenance
of an old, wise man, and he said in a strong
voice: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath
taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!
I was—I am a minister of the Gospel. Leave
him to me.”

“Oh, you be, be you?” said the man. “Then
pray my son back to me! Pray back a nine-
thousand-dollar boat an’ a thousand quintal of
fish. If you’d left me alone my widow could
ha’ gone on to the Provident an’ worked fer
her board, an’ never known—an’ never known.
Now Ill hev to tell her.”

“There ain’t nothin’ to say,” said Disko.
“Better lie down a piece, Jason Olley.”

When a man has lost his only son, his sum-
mer’s work, and his means of livelihood, in
thirty counted seconds, it is hard to give con-
solation.
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 189

“All Gloucester men, wasn’t they?” said
Tom Platt, fiddling helplessly with a dory-
becket.

“Qh, that don’t make no odds,” said Jason,
wringing the wet from his beard. “Ill be
rowin’ summer boarders araound East Glou-
cester this fall.” He rolled heavily to the rail,
singing:

“Happy birds that sing and fly
Round thine altars, O Most High!”

“Come with me. Come below!” said Penn,
as though he had a right to give orders. Their
eyes met and fought for a quarter of a minute.

“T dunno who you be, but Ill come,” said
Jason submissively. ‘“Mebbe I’ll get back
some o’ the—some o’ the—nine thousand dol-
lars.” Penn led him into the cabin and slid
the door behind.

“That ain’t Penn,” cried Uncle Salters.
“It’s Jacob Boller, an’-—he’s remembered
Johnstown! I never seed such eyes in any
livin’ man’s head. What’s to do naow?
What ’ll I do naowr”

They could hear Penn’s voice and Jason’s
together. Then Penn’s went on alone, and
''190 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

Salters slipped off his hat, for Penn was pray-
ing. Presently the little man came up the
steps, huge drops of sweat on his face, and
looked at the crew. Dan was still sobbing by
the wheel.

“Fle don’t know us,” Salters groaned. “It’s
all to do over again, checkers and everything
—an’ what'll he say to me?”

Penn spoke; they could hear that it was to
strangers. “I have prayed,” said he. “Our
people believe in prayer. I have prayed for
the life of this man’s son. Mine were drowned
before my eyes—she and my eldest and—the
others. Shall a man be more wise than his
Maker? I prayed never for their lives, but I
have prayed for this man’s son, and he will
surely be sent him.”

Salters looked pleadingly at Penn to see if
he remembered.

“Flow long have I been mad?” Penn asked
suddenly. His mouth was twitching.

“Pshaw, Penn! You were n’t never mad,”
Salters began. “Only a little distracted
fike,”’

“T saw the houses strike the bridge before
the fires broke out. I do not remember any
more. How long ago is that?”
''“ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 191

“T can’t stand it! I can’t stand it!”
cried Dan, and Harvey whimpered in sym-
pathy.

“A baout five year,” said Disko, in a shaking
voice.

“Then I have been a charge on some one
for every day of that time. Who was the
manp”’

Disko pointed to Salters.

“Ye hain’t—ye hain’t!” cried the sea-far-
mer, twisting his hands together. “Ye’ve
more’n earned your keep twice-told; an’
there ’s money owin’ you, Penn, besides ha’af
o’ my quarter-share in the boat, which is yours
fer value received.”

“You are good men. I can see that in your
faces. But ”

“Mother av Mercy,” whispered Long Jack,
‘an’ he’s been wid us all these trips! He’s
clean bewitched.”

A schooner’s bell struck up alongside, and
a voice hailed through the fog: “O Disko!
"Heard abaout the Jennie Cushman?”

“They have found his son,” cried Penn.
“Stand you still and see the salvation of the
Lord!”

“Got Jason aboard here,” Disko answered,

 
''192 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

but his voice quavered. ‘“There—war n’t any
one else?”

‘Weve f’und one, though. ‘Run acrost
him snarled up in a mess o’ lumber thet might
ha’ bin a foc’sle. His head ’s cut some.”

“Who is her”

The We’re Heres’ heart-beats answered
one another.

“Guess it’s young Olley,” the voice
drawled.

Penn raised his hands and said something
in German. Harvey could have sworn that
a bright sun was shining upon his lifted face;
but the drawl went on: “Sa-ay! You fellers
guyed us consid’rable t’ other night.”

“We don’t feel like guyin’ any now,” said
Disko.

“T know it; but to tell the honest truth we
was kinder—kinder driftin’ when we run agin
young Olley.”

It was the irrepressible Carrie Pitman, and
a roar of unsteady laughter went up from the
deck of the We’re Here.

“Hed n’t you *baout’s well send the old
man aboard? We’re runnin’ in fer more
bait an’ graound-tackle. Guess you won’t
want him, anyway, an’ this blame windlass:
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 193

work makes us short-handed. We’ll take care
of him. He married my woman’s aunt.”

“TH give you anything in the boat,” said
Troop.

“Don’t want nothin’, ’less, mebbe, an anchor
that ll] hold. Say! Young Olley’s gittin’
kinder baulky an’ excited. Send the old man
along.”

Penn waked him from his stupor of despair,
and Tom Platt rowed him over. He went
away without a word of thanks, not knowing
what was to come; and the fog closed over all.

“And now,” said Penn, drawing a deep
breath as though about to preach. “And
now’’—the erect body sank like a sword driven
home into the scabbard; the light faded from
the overbright eyes; the voice returned to its
usual pitiful little titter—‘“and now,” said
Pennsylvania Pratt, “do you think it’s too
early for a little game of checkers, Mr.
Salters?”

“The very thing—the very thing I was
goin’ to say myself,” cried Salters promptly.
“It beats all, Penn, how ye git on to what’s
in a man’s mind.”

The little fellow blushed and meekly fol-
lowed Salters forward.
''194 “ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

“Cp -anchorl’ Blurry! Let’s quit: these
crazy waters,” shouted Disko, and never was
he more swiftly obeyed.

“‘Now what in creation d’ ye suppose is the
meanin’ o’ that all?” said Long Jack, when
they were working through the fog once
more, damp, dripping, and bewildered.

“The way I sense it,” said Disko, at the
wheel, “‘is this: The Jennie Cushman business
comin’ on an empty stummick. "

“‘(He—we saw one of them go by,” sobbed
Harvey.

“An? that, o’ course, kinder hove him outer
water, julluk runnin’ a craft ashore; hove him
right aout, I take it, to rememberin’ Johns-
town an’ Jacob Boller an’ such-like reminis-
cences. Well, consolin’ Jason there held him
up a piece, same’s shorin’ up a boat. Then,
bein’ weak, them props slipped an’ slipped,
an’ he slided down the ways, an’ naow he’s
water-borne agin. That’s haow I sense
1

They decided that Disko was entirely cor-
rect.

“T would ha’ bruk Salters all up,” said
Long Jack, “if Penn had stayed Jacob Bol-
lerin’. Did ye see his face when Penn asked

 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 195

who he’d been charged on all these years?
How is ut, Salters?”

“‘Asleep—dead asleep. Turned in like a
child,” Salters replied, tiptoeing aft. “There
won't be no grub till he wakes, natural. Did
ye ever see sech a gift in prayer? He ever-
lastin’ly hiked young Olley outer the ocean.
Thet’s my belief. Jason was tur’ble praoud
of his boy, an’ I mistrusted all along ’t was a
jedsment on worshippin’ vain idols.”

“There ’s others jest as sot,” said Disko.

“That’s dif’runt,” Salters retorted quickly.
“Penn’s not all caulked, an’ I ain’t only but
doin’ my duty by him.”

They waited, those hungry men, three
hours, till Penn reappeared with a smooth
face and a blank mind. He said he believed
that he had been dreaming. Then he wanted
to know why they were so silent, and they
could not tell him.

Disko worked all hands mercilessly for the
next three or four days; and when they could
not go out, turned them into the hold to stack
the ship’s stores into smaller compass, to make
more room for the fish. The packed mass ran
from the cabin partition to the sliding door
behind the foc’sle stove; and Disko showed
''196 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

how there is great art in stowing cargo so
as to bring a schooner to her best draft. The
crew were thus kept lively till they recovered
their spirits; and Harvey was tickled with a
rope’s end by Long Jack for being, as the Gal-
way man said, “sorrowful as a sick cat over
fwhat could n’t be helped.” He did a great
deal of thinking in those weary days, and told
Dan what he thought, and Dan agreed with
him—even to the extent of asking for fried
pies instead of hooking them.

But a week later the two nearly upset the
Hattie S.in a wild attempt to stab a shark with
an old bayonet tied to a stick. The grim brute
rubbed alongside the dory begging for small
fish, and between the three of them it was
a mercy they all got off alive.

At last, after playing blindman’s-buff in the
fog, there came a morning when Disko shout-
ed down the foc’sle: “Hurry, boys! We’re in
taown |”
''CHAPTER. ViTE

O THE end of his days, Harvey will
never forget that sight. The sun was just
clear of the horizon they had not seen for
nearly a week, and his low red light struck
into the riding-sails of three fleets of anchored
schooners—one to the north, one to the west-
ward, and one to the south. There must have
been nearly a hundred of them, of every pos-
sible make and build, with, far away, a
square-rigged Frenchman, all bowing and
courtesying one to the other. From every boat
dories were dropping away like bees from a
crowded hive, and the clamour of voices, the
rattling of ropes and blocks, and the splash of
the oars carried for miles across the heaving
water. The sails turned all colours, black,
pearly-gray, and white, as the sun mounted;
and more boats swung up through the mists
to the southward.
The dories gathered in clusters, separated,
197
''198 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

reformed, and broke again, all heading one
way; while men hailed and whistled and cat-
called and sang, and the water was speckled
with rubbish thrown overboard.

“Tt’s a town,” said Harvey. ‘Disko was
right. It7zs a town!”

“T ve seen smaller,” said Disko. ‘“There’s
about a thousand men here; an’ yonder’s the
Virgin.” He pointed to a vacant space of
greenish sea, where there were no dories.

The We’re Here skirted round the north-
ern squadron, Disko waving his hand to friend
after friend, and anchored as neatly as a rac-
ing yacht at the end of the season. The Bank
fleet pass good seamanship in silence; but a
bungler is jeered all along the line.

"yest in time fer the caplin,” cried the
Mary Chilton.

“Salt "most wet?” asked the King Philip.

“Hey, Tom Platt! Come t’ supper to-
night?” said the Henry Clay, and so questions
and answers flew back and forth. Men had
met one another before, dory-fishing in the
fog, and there is no place for gossip like the
Bank fleet. They all seemed to know about
Harvey’s rescue, and asked if he were worth
his salt yet. The young bloods jested with
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 199

Dan, who had a lively tongue of his own, and
inquired after their health by the town-nick-
names they least liked. Manuel’s country-
men jabbered at him in their own language;
and even the silent cook was seen riding the
jib-boom and shouting Gaelic to a friend as
black as himself. After they had buoyed the
cable—all around the Virgin is rocky bottom,
and carelessness means chafed ground-tackle
and danger from drifting—after they had
buoyed the cable, their dories went forth to
join the mob of boats anchored about a mile
away. ‘The schooners rocked and dipped at
a safe distance, like mother ducks watching
their brood, while the dories behaved like
mannerless ducklings.

As they drove into the confusion, boat bang-
ing boat, Harvey’s ears tingled at the com-
ments on his rowing. Every dialect from
Labrador to Long Island, with Portuguese,
Neapolitan, Lingua Franca, French, and
Gaelic, with songs and shoutings and new
oaths, rattled round him, and he seemed to
be the butt of it all. For the first time in his
life he felt shy—perhaps that came from liv-
ing so long with only the We’re Heres—
among the scores of wild faces that rose and
''200 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

fell with the reeling small craft. A gentle,
breathing swell, three furlongs from trough to
barrel, would quietly shoulder up a string of
variously painted dories. They hung for an
instant, a wonderful frieze against the sky-line,
and their men pointed and hailed. Next mo-
ment the open mouths, waving arms, and bare
chests disappeared, while on another swell
came up an entirely new line of characters like
paper figures in a toy theatre. So Harvey
stared. ‘Watch out!” said Dan, flourishing a
dip-net. “When I tell you dip, you dip. The
caplin’ll school any time from naow on.
Where ’ll we lay, Tom Platt?”

Pushing, shoving, and hauling, greeting old
friends here and warning old enemies there,
Commodore Tom Platt led his little fleet well
to leeward of the general crowd, and immedi-
aely three or four men began to haul on their
anchors with intent to lee-bow the We’re
Heres. But a yell of laughter went up as a
dory shot from her station with exceeding
speed, its occupant pulling madly on the rod-
ing.

“Give her slack!” roared twenty voices.
“Let him shake it out.”

“What’s the matter?” said Harvey, as the
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 201

boat flashed away to the southward. “He’s
anchored, is n’t her”

‘‘Anchored, sure enough, but his graound-
tackle ’s kinder shifty,” said Dan, laughing.
“Whale’s fouled it... 2): .7 (Dip iaevel
Here they come!”

The sea round them clouded and darkened,
and then frizzed up in showers of tiny silver
fish, and over a space of five or six acres the
cod began to leap like trout in May; while be-
hind the cod three or four broad gray-backs
broke the water into boils.

Then everybody shouted and tried to haul
up his anchor to get among the school, and
fouled his neighbour’s line and said what was
in his heart, and dipped furiously with his
dip-net, and shrieked cautions and advice to
his companions, while the deep fizzed like
freshly opened soda-water, and cod, men, and
whales together flung in upon the luckless bait.
Harvey was nearly knocked overboard by the
handle of Dan’s net. But in all the wild tu-
mult he noticed, and never forgot, the wicked,
set little eye—something like a circus ele-
phant’s eye—of a whale that drove along al-
most level with the water, and, so he said,
winked at him. Three boats found their rod-
''202 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

ings fouled by these reckless mid-sea hunters,
and were towed half a mile ere their horses
shook the line free.

Then the caplin moved off, and five minutes
later there was no sound except the splash of
the sinkers overside, the flapping of the cod,
and the whack of the muckles as the men
stunned them. It was wonderful fishing.
Harvey could see the glimmering cod below,
swimming slowly in droves, biting as steadily
as they swam. Bank law strictly forbids more
than one hook on one line when the dories are
on the Virgin or the Eastern Shoals; but sa
close lay the boats that even single hooks
snarled, and Harvey found himself in hot
argument with a gentle, hairy Newfoundland-
er on one side and a howling Portuguese on the
other.

Worse than any tangle of fishing-lines was
the confusion of the dory-rodings below water.
Each man had anchored where it seemed good
to him, drifting and rowing round his fixed
point. As the fish struck on less quickly, each
man wanted to haul up and get to better
ground; but every third man found himself
intimately connected with some four or five
neighbours. To cut another ’s roding is crime
'' 

“IT WAS WONDERFUL FISHING. HARVEY COULD SEE THE GLIM«
MERING COD BELOW, . . . BITING AS STEADILY AS THEY
SWAM. . . . BUT SO CLOSE LAY THE BOATS
THAT EVEN SINGLE HOOKS SNARLED.”
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 205

unspeakable on the Banks; yet it was done, and
done without detection, three or four times
that day. Tom Platt caught a Maine man in
the black act and knocked him over the gun-
wale with an oar, and Manuel served a fellow-
countryman in the same way. But Harvey’s
anchor-line was cut, and so was Penn’s, and
they were turned into relief-boats to carry
fish to the We’re Here as the dories filled.
The caplin schooled once more at twilight,
when the mad clamour was repeated; and at
dusk they rowed back to dress down by the
light of kerosene-lamps on the edge of the
pen.

It was a huge pile, and they went to sleep
while they were dressing. Next day several
boats fished right above the cap of the Virgin;
and Harvey, with them, looked down on the
very weed of that lonely rock, which rises to
within twenty feet of the surface. The cod
were there in legions, marching solemnly over
the leathery kelp. When they bit, they bit all
together; and so when they stopped. There
was a slack time at noon, and the dories began
to search for amusement. It was Dan who
sighted the Hope of Prague just coming up,
and as her boats joined the company they were
''206 * CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

greeted with the question: ““Who’s the mean-
est man in the Fleet?”

Three hundred voices answered cheerily:
“Nick Bra-ady.” It sounded like an organ
chant.

‘Who stole the lamp-wicks?” That was
Dan’s contribution.

“Nick Bra-ady,” sang the boats.

‘Who biled the salt bait fer soup?” This
was an unknown backbiter a quarter of a mile
away.

Again the joyful chorus. Now, Brady was
not especially mean, but he had that reputa-
tion, and the Fleet made the most of it. Then
they discovered a man from a Truro boat who,
six years before, had been convicted of using
a tackle with five or six hooks—a “‘scrowger,”.
they call it—on the Shoals. Naturally, he had
been christened “Scrowger Jim”; and though
he had hidden himself on the Georges ever
since, he found his honours waiting for him
full blown. They took it up in a sort of fire-
cracker chorus: “Jim! O Jim! Jim! O Jim!
Sssscrowger Jim!” That pleased everybody.
And when a poetical Beverly man—he had
been making it up all day, and talked about it
for weeks—sang, “The Carrie Pitman’s an-
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 207

chor does n’t hold her for a cent!” the dories
felt that they were indeed fortunate. Then
they had to ask that Beverly man how he was
off for beans, because even poets must not
have things all their own way. Every schoon-
er and nearly every man got it in turn. Was
there a careless or dirty cook anywhere?
The dories sang about him and his food. Was
a schooner badly found? ‘The Fleet was told
at full length. Had a man hooked tobacco
froma messmate? He was named in meeting;
the name tossed from roller to roller. Disko’s
infallible judgments, Long Jack’s market-boat
that he had sold years ago, Dan’s sweetheart
(oh, but Dan was an angry boy!), Penn’s bad
luck with dory-anchors, Salter’s views on
manure, Manuel’s little slips from virtue
ashore, and Harvey’s ladylike handling of the
oar—all were laid before the public; and as
the fog fell around them in silvery sheets be-
neath the sun, the voices sounded like a bench
of invisible judges pronouncing sentence.
The dories roved and fished and squabbled
till a swell underran the sea. Then they drew
more apart to save their sides, and some one
called that if the swell continued the Virgin
would break. A reckless Galway man with
''208 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

his nephew denied this, hauled up anchor, and
rowed over the very rock itself. Many voices
called them to come away, while others dared
them to hold on. As the smooth-backed roll-
ers passed to the southward, they hove the
dory high and high into the mist, and dropped
her in ugly, sucking, dimpled water, where
she spun round her anchor, within a foot or
two of the hidden rock. It was playing with
death for mere bravado; and the boats looked
on in uneasy silence till Long Jack rowed up
behind his countrymen and quietly cut their
roding.

“Can’t ye hear ut knockin’ ?” he cried. “Pull
for your miserable lives! Pull!”

The men swore and tried to argue as the
boat drifted; but the next swell checked a
little, like a man tripping ona carpet. There
was a deep sob and a gathering roar, and the
Virgin flung up a couple of acres of foaming
water, white, furious, and ghastly over the
shoal sea. Then all the boats greatly applaud-
ed Long Jack, and the Galway men held their
tongue.

“Ain’t it elegant?” said Dan, bobbing like
a young seal at home. ‘“She’ll break about
once every ha’af hour now, ’less the swell piles
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 209

up good. What’s her reg’lar time when she’s
at work, Tom Platt?”

“Once ivry fifteen minutes, to the tick.
Harve, youve seen the greatest thing on the
Banks; an’ but for Long Jack you ’’d seen some
dead men too.”

There came a sound of merriment where
the fog lay thicker and the schooners were
ringing their bells. A big bark nosed cau-
tiously out of the mist, and was received with
shouts and cries of, ‘Come along, darlin’,”
from the I[rishry.

“Another Frenchman?” said Harvey.

‘““HHain’t you eyes? She’s a Baltimore boat;
goin’ in fear an’ tremblin’,” said Dan. “Well
guy the very sticks out of her. Guess it’s the
fust time her skipper ever met up with the
Fleet this way.”

She was a black, buxom, eight-hundred-ton
craft. Her mainsail was looped up, and her
topsail flapped undecidedly in what little wind
was moving. Now a bark is feminine beyond
all other daughters of the sea, and this tall,
hesitating creature, with her white and gilt
figurehead, looked just like a bewildered wom-
an half lifting her skirts to cross a muddy
street under the jeers of bad little boys. That
''210 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

was very much her situation. She knew she
was somewhere in the neighbourhood of the
Virgin, had caught the roar of it, and was,
therefore, asking her way. This is a small
part of what she heard from the dancing
dories:

“The Virgin? Fwhat are you talkin’ of?
This is Le Have on a Sunday mornin’. Go
home an’ sober up.”

“Go home, ye tarrapin! Go home an’ tell
’em we ’re comin’.”

Half a dozen voices together, in a most
tuneful chorus, as her stern went down with a
roll and a bubble into the troughs: “Thay-aah
—she—strikes!”

“Hard up! Hard up fer your life! You’re
on top of her now.”

“Daown! Hard daown! Let go every-
thing!”

“All hands to the pumps!”

“Daown jib an’ pole her!”

Here the skipper lost his temper and said
things. Instantly fishing was suspended to
answer him, and he heard many curious facts
about his boat and her next port of call. They
asked him if he were insured; and whence he
had stolen his anchor, because, they said, it
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 211

belonged to the Carrie Pitman, they called
his boat a mud-scow, and accused him of
dumping garbage to frighten the fish; they
offered to tow him and charge it to his wife;
and one audacious youth slipped up almost
under the counter, smacked it with his open
palm, and yelled: “Gid up, Buck!”

The cook emptied a pan of ashes on him,
and he replied with cod-heads. The bark’s
crew fired small coal from the galley, and the
dories threatened to come aboard and ‘“‘razee”’
her. They would have warned her at once
had she been in real peril; but, seeing her
well clear of the Virgin, they made the most
of their chances. The fun was spoilt when
the rock spoke again, a half-mile to windward,
and the tormented bark set everything that
would draw and went her ways; but the dories
felt that the honours lay with them.

All that night the Virgin roared hoarsely;
and next morning, over an angry, white-head-
ed sea, Harvey saw the Fleet with flickering
masts waiting for a lead. Nota dory was hove
out till ten o’clock, when the two Jeraulds of
the Day’s Eye, imagining a lull which did not
exist, set the example. In a minute half the
boats were out and bobbing in the cockly
''212 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

swells, but Troop kept the We’re Heres at
work dressing down. He saw no sense in
“dares”; and as the storm grew that evening
they had the pleasure of receiving wet stran-
gers only too glad to make any refuge in the
gale. The boys stood by the dory-tackles with
lanterns, the men ready to haul, one eye cocked
for the sweeping wave that would make them
drop everything and hold on for dear life.
Out of the dark would come a yell of “Dory,
dory!” They would hook up and haul in a
drenched man and a half-sunk boat, till their
decks were littered down with nests of dories
and the bunks were full. Five times in their
watch did Harvey, with Dan, jump at the fore-
gaff where it lay lashed on the boom, and cling
with arms, legs, and teeth to rope and spar and
sodden canvas as a big wave filled the decks.
One dory was smashed to pieces, and the sea
pitched the man head first on to the decks,
cutting his forehead open; and about dawn,
when the racing seas glimmered white all
along their cold edges, another man, blue
and ghastly, crawled in with a broken hand,
asking news of his brother. Seven extra
mouths sat down to breakfast: a Swede;
a Chatham skipper; a boy from Hancock,
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 213

Maine; one Duxbury, and three Province-
town men.

There was a general sorting out among the
Fleet next day; and though no one said any-
thing, all ate with better appetites when boat
after boat reported full crews aboard. Only
a couple of Portuguese and an old man from
Gloucester were drowned, but many were cut
or bruised ; and two schooners had parted their
tackle and been blown to the southward, three
days’ sail. A man died on a Frenchman—it
was the same bark that had traded tobacco
with the We’re Heres. She slipped away
quite quietly one wet, white morning, moved
to a patch of deep water, her sails all hanging
anyhow, and Harvey saw the funeral through
Disko’s spy-glass. It was only an oblong
bundle slid overside. They did not seem to
have any form of service, but in the night, at
anchor, Harvey heard them across the star-
powdered black water, singing something that
sounded like a hymn. It went to a very slow
tune.

“La brigantine
Qui va tourner,
Roule et s’incline
Pour m’entrainer.
''214 “ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

Oh, Vierge Marie,
Pour moi priez Dieu!
Adieu, patrie;
Québec, adieu!”

Tom Platt visited her, because, he said, the
dead man was his brother as a Freemason.
It came out that a wave had doubled the poor
fellow over the heel of the bowsprit and bro-
ken his back. The news spread like a flash,
for, contrary to general custom, the French-
man held an auction of the dead man’s kit,—
he had no friends at St. Malo or Miquelon,—
and everything was spread out on the top of
the house, from his red knitted cap to the
leather belt with the sheath-knife at the back.
Dan and Harvey were out on twenty-fathom
water in the Hattie S., and naturally rowed
over to join the crowd. It was a long
pull, and they stayed some little time while
Dan bought the knife, which had a cu-
rious brass handle. When they dropped over-
side and pushed off into a drizzle of rain
and a lop of sea, it occurred to them that
they might get into trouble for neglecting the
lines. .

“Guess ’t won’t hurt us any to be warmed
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 218

up,” said Dan, shivering under his oilskins,
and they rowed on into the heart of a white
fog, which, as usual, dropped on them with-
out 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’ al-
ready.”

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 super-
stitions,” said Dan, jabbing with the bright
blade. ‘They don’t fancy takin’ iron frum
''216 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

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 nu goin’ in
the teeth o’ superstition. That’s one o’ the ad-
vantages 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 did n’t that Eastport man bid, then?
He bought his boots. Ain’t Maine progres-
sive?”

“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.” Har-
very hauled in his fish, rebaited, and threw
over.
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 217

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

“Christmas! I didn’t know it,” said Har-
vey, 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
did n’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 fol-
lowin’. Catch a-holt!”

He held it out, belt and all.

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

‘Vake: it, “T ain't no use to me.) 1) 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

 
''218 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

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 hor-
ror, 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 short-
ened line.

“The tide—the tide brought him!” said
Harvey with quivering lips, as he fumbled at
the clasp of the belt.
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 219

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

“T don’t want it! JZ 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.

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

“T wish—I wish I had n’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 Le: I’ never forget it. But look at
here, Dan; it could n’t have been meant. It
was only the tide.”

“Tide! Hecome 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.
''220 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

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.”

“T 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 re-
lieved he come the way he did instid o’ walkin’.
He might ha’ walked.”

“To-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. Gim-
me the tooter.” Dan took the tin dinner-horn,
put paused before he blew.

 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 223

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

“Question is, haow he'd take it, here
was a man frum down the coast told me once
he was in a schooner where they darse n’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
drownded 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
''222 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

sufferin’ for,” said Dan. ‘Anything homey’s
good enough fer us. We’ve had kinder de-
pressin’ 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 for-
ward, and it was heavenly to hear Diske 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
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 223

midnight. Under that influence no one except
Salters and Penn said anything about “‘idola-
try,” 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 pro-
gressive 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 Nor-
man, and so close was the struggle that the
Fleet took side and betted tobacco. All hands
''224 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

worked at the lines or dressing-down till they
fell asleep where they stood—beginning be-
fore 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 cab-
in 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 pre-
tended 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 pro-
''   

i
‘

     

¢

ad
y Yy Ny
i,

i gl

i
/

  

Mp hil
fy fr i)
ON oy.

7 yy

a

  

i

i

fl
y

pe Sip 3

ij

4

/
|
Coes

Ny

 

 

 

ERE HERE.”

WwW

6.
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 227

cession, 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 Yankee-
land—
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 women-
folks and owners, while the We’re Here fin-
ished 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;
''228 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

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 in-
timate terms with her surroundings. They
saw little of the horizon save when she topped
a swell; and usually she was elbowing, fidget-
ing, 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 would n’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
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 229

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 up-
heaval 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
''230 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

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 George’s.
From there they picked up the deeper water,
and let her go merrily.

“Ffattie ’s pulling on the string,” Dan con-
fided to Harvey. ‘Hattie an’ Ma. Next Sun-
day you ’ll be hirin’ a boy to throw water on
the windows to make ye go to sleep. ’Guess
you Il keep with us till your folks come. Do
you know the best of gettin’ ashore again?”

“Hot bathe” 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’
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 231

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 flourishing his harpoon, his bare
head plastered down with the wet. ‘And all’s
well!” he sang cheerily, as though he were
watch ona 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
''232 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

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! Wa'af mast. They can see us frum
shore now.”

“Td clean forgot. He’s no folk to Glou-
cester, has her”

“Girl he was goin’ to be married to this
fart,”

“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, giv-
ing his orders in whispers, while she swung
round moored tugs and night-watchmen
hailed her from the ends of inky-biack piers.
''i

L :

ae a I

y |
qv &

  
     
 

   
 

1

  

     

ei
2

“PORIES CAME ALONGSIDE WITH LETTERS FOR HOME,”
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 235

Over and above the darkness and the mys-
tery 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 glim-
mered 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
tnere without a sound.

Then Harvey sat down by the wheel, and
sobbed and sobbed as though his heart would
break, and a tall woman who had been sit-
ting on a weigh-scale dropped down into the
schooner and kissed Dan once on the cheek;
for she was his mother, and she had seen the
We’re Here by the lightning flashes. She took
no notice of Harvey till he had recovered
himself a little and Disko had told her his
story. Then they went to Disko’s house to-
gether as the dawn was breaking; and until the
''236 CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

telegraph office was open and he could wire
his folk, Harvey Cheyne was perhaps the
loneliest boy in all America. But the curious
thing was that Disko and Dan seemed to think
none the worse of him for crying.

Wouverman was not ready for Disko’s
prices till Disko, sure that the We’re Here
was at least a week ahead of any other Glou-
cester boat, had given him a few days to swal-
low them; so all hands played about the streets,
and Long Jack stopped the Rocky Neck trol-
ley, on principle, as he said, till the conductor
let him ride free. But Dan went about with
his freckled nose in the air, bung-full of mys-
tery and most haughty to his family.

“Dan, [’ll hev to lay inter you ef you act
this way,” said Troop, pensively. ‘“Sence
we’ve come ashore this time you’ve bin a
heap too fresh.”

“Td lay into him naow ef he was mine,”
said Uncle Salters, sourly. He and Penn
boarded with the Troops.

“Oho!” said Dan, shuffling with the accor-
dion round the back-yard, ready to leap the
fence if the enemy advanced. ‘Dan, you ’re
welcome to your own judgment, but remem-
ber I’ve warned ye. Your own flesh an’
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 237

blood ha’ warned ye! °’Tain’t any o’ my
fault ef you’re mistook, but Ill be on deck
to watch ve. An’ ez fer yeou, Uncle Salters,
Pharaoh’s chief butler ain’t in it ’longside o’
you! You watch aout an’ wait. You’ll be
plowed under like your own blamed clover;
but me—Dan Troop—I’ll flourish like a
green bay-tree because J war n’t stuck on my
own opinion.”

Disko was smoking in all his shore dignity
and a pair of beautiful carpet-slippers.
“You’re gettin’ ez crazy as poor Harve.
You two go araound gigglin’ an’ squinchin’
an’ kickin’ each other under the table till
there ’s no peace in the haouse,” said he.

‘There ’s goin’ to be a heap less—fer some
folks,” Dan replied. “You wait an’ see.”

He and Harvey went out on the trolley to
East Gloucester, where they tramped through
the bayberry bushes to the lighthouse, and lay
down on the big red boulders and laughed
themselves hungry. Harvey had shown Dan
a telegram, and the two swore to keep silence
till the shell burst.

“Harve’s folk?” said Dan, with an unruffled
face after supper. “Well, I guess they don’t
amount to much of anything, or we’d ha’
''238 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

heard frum ’em by naow. His pop keeps a
kind o’ store out West. Maybe he’ll give
you ’s much as five dollars, Dad.”

“What did I tell ye?” said Salters. “Don’t
sputter over your vittles, Dan.”
''CHAPTER IX

HATEVER his private sorrows may

be, a multimillionaire, like any other
workingman, should keep abreast of his busi-
ness. Harvey Cheyne, senior, had gone East
late in June to meet a woman broken down,
half mad, who dreamed day and night of her
son drowning in the gray seas. He had sur-
rounded her with doctors, trained nurses,
massage-women, and even faith-cure compan-
ions, but they were useless. Mrs. Cheyne lay
still and moaned, or talked of her boy by the
hour together to any one who would listen.
Hope she had none, and who could offer it?
All she needed was assurance that drowning
did not hurt; and her husband watched to
guard lest she should make the experiment.
Of his own sorrow he spoke little—hardly
tealized the depth of it till he caught himself

230
''240 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

asking the calendar on his writing-desk,
“What’s the use of going on?”

There had always lain a pleasant notion at
the back of his head that, some day, when he
had rounded off everything and the boy had
left college, he would take his son to his heart
and lead him into his possessions. Then that
boy, he argued, as busy fathers do, would in-
stantly become his companion, partner, and
ally, and there would follow splendid years of
great works carried out together—the old
head backing the young fire. Now his boy
was dead—lost at sea, as it might have been
a Swede sailor from one of Cheyne’s big tea-
ships; the wife dying, or worse; he himself
was trodden down by platoons of women and
doctors and maids and attendants; worried al-
most beyond endurance by the shift and change
of her poor restless whims; hopeless, with no
heart to meet his many enemies.

He had taken the wife to his raw new pal-
ace in San Diego, where she and her people
occupied a wing of great price, and Cheyne,
in a veranda-room, between a secretary and a
typewriter, who was also a telegraphist, toiled
along wearily from day to day. There was a
war of rates among four Western railroads in
''“ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 241

which he was supposed to be interested; a
devastating strike had developed in his lum-
ber-camps in Oregon, and the legislature of
the State of California, which has no love for
its makers, was preparing open war against
him.

Ordinarily he would have accepted battle
ere it was offered, and have waged a pleasant
and unscrupulous campaign. But now he sat
limply, his soft black hat pushed forward on
to his nose, his big body shrunk inside his
loose clothes, staring at his boots or the Chi-
nese junks in the bay, and assenting absently to
the secretary’s questions as he opened the Sat-
urday mail.

Cheyne was wondering how much it would
cost to drop everything and pull out. He
carried huge insurances, could buy himself
royal annuities, and between one of his places
in Colorado and a little society (that would do
the wife good), say in Washington and the
South Carolina islands, a man might forget
plans that had come to nothing. On the other
hand t

The click of the typewriter stopped; the
girl was looking at the secretary, who had
turned white.
''242 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

He passed Cheyne a telegram repeated from
San Francisco:

Picked up by fishing schooner We’re Here
having fallen off boat great times on Banks
fishing all well waiting Gloucester Mass care

Disko Troop for money or orders wire what
shall do and how 1s Mama Harvey N.Cheyne.

The father let it fall, laid his head down on
the roller-top of the shut desk, and breathed
heavily. The secretary ran for Mrs. Cheyne’s
doctor who found Cheyne pacing to and fro,

“What—what d’ you think of ite Is it
possible? Is there any meaning to it? [
can’t quite make it out,” he cried.

“T can,” said the doctor. “I lose seven
thousand a year—that’s all.” He thought of
the struggling New York practice he had
dropped at Cheyne’s imperious bidding, and
returned the telegram with a sigh.

“You mean you’d tell here ’May be a
fraud?”

‘“What’s the motive?” said the doctor,
coolly. ‘Detection ’s too certain. It’s the boy
sure enough.”

Enter a French maid, impudently, as an in-
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 243

dispensable one who is kept on only by large
wages.

“Mrs. Cheyne she say you must come at
once. She think you are seek.”

The master of thirty millions bowed his
head meekly and followed Suzanne; and a
thin, high voice on the upper landing of the
great white-wood square staircase cried:
‘What is it? What has happened?”

No doors could keep out the shriek that
rang through the echoing house a moment
later, when her husband blurted out the news.

“And that’s all right,” said the doctor, se-
renely, to the typewriter. ‘About the only
medical statement in novels with any truth to
it is that joy don’t kill, Miss Kinzey.”

“T know it; but we’ve a heap to do first.”
Miss Kinzey was from Milwaukee, somewhat
direct of speech; and as her fancy leaned to-
wards the secretary, she divined there was
work in hand. He was looking earnestly at
the vast roller-map of America on the wall.

“Milsom, we’re going right across. Pri-
vate car—straight through—Boston. Fix the
connections,” shouted Cheyne down the stair-
case.

“T thought so.”
''244 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

The secretary turned to the typewriter, and
their eyes met (out of that was born a story—
nothing to do with this story). She looked
inquiringly, doubtful of his resources. He
signed to her to move to the Morse as a gen-
eral brings brigades into action. Then he
swept his hand musician-wise through his
hair, regarded the ceiling, and set to work,
while Miss Kinzey’s white fingers called up
the Continent of America.

“K. H. Wade, Los Angeles The ‘Con-
stance’ is at Los Angeles, isn’t she, Miss
Kinzeye”

“Yep.” Miss Kinzey nodded between clicks
as the secretary looked at his watch.

“Ready? Send ‘Constance, private car,
here, and arrange for special to leave here
Sunday in time to connect with New York
Limited at Sixteenth Street, Chicago, Tues-
day next.”

Click—click—click! “Could n’t you bet-
ter that?”

“Not on those grades. That gives ’em
sixty hours from here to Chicago. They
won’t gain anything by taking a special east
of that. Ready? Also arrange with Lake
Shore and Michigan Southern to take ‘Con-

 
''“ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 245

stance’ on New York Central and Hudson
River Buffalo to Albany, and B. and A. the
same Albany to Boston. Indispensable I
should reach Boston Wednesday evening. Be
sure nothing prevents. Have also wired Can-
nif, Toucey, and Barnes.—Sign, Cheyne.”

Miss Kinzey nodded, and the secretary
went on.

“Now then. Canniff, Toucey, and Barnes,
of course. Ready? Canniff, Chicago. Please
take my private car ‘Constance’ from Santa
Fé at Sixteenth Street next Tuesday p. m.
on N.Y. Limited through to Buffalo and
deliver N. Y. C. for Albany.—Ever bin to
N’ York, Miss Kinzey? We'll go some
day.—Ready? Take car Buffalo to Albany
on Lemited Tuesday, p. m. | (That's for
Toucey.”

‘Have n’t bin to Noo York, but I know
that!’ with a toss of the head.

“Beg pardon. Now, Boston and Albany,
Barnes, same instructions from Albany
through to Boston. Leave three-five P. M.
(you need n’t wire that) ; arrive nine-five P.M.
Wednesday. That covers everything Wade
will do, but it pays to shake up the man-
agers.”
''246 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

“It’s great,” said Miss Kinzey, with a look
of admiration. This was the kind of man she
understood and appreciated.

“T is n’t bad,” said Milsom, modestly.
“Now, any one but me would have lost thirty
hours and spent a week working out the run,
instead of handing him over to the Santa Fé
straight through to Chicago.”

“But see here, about that Noo York Lim-
ited. Chauncey Depew himself could n’t
hitch his car to her,’ Miss Kinzey suggested,
recovering herself.

“Yes, but this isn’t Chauncey. It’s Cheyne
—lightning. It goes.”

“Even so. Guess we’d better wire the boy.
You ’ve forgotten that, anyhow.”

Uf Task.”

When he returned with the father’s mes-
sage bidding Harvey meet them in Boston at
an appointed hour, he found Miss Kinzey
laughing over the keys. Then Milsom
laughed too, for the frantic clicks from Los
Angeles ran: “We want to know why—why
—why? General uneasiness developed and
spreading.”

Ten minutes later Chicago appealed to
Miss Kinzey in these words: “If crime of cen-
'' 

 

 

 

 

THE “CONSTANCE.”

 
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 249

tury is maturing please warn friends in time.
We are all getting to cover here.”

This was capped by a message from To-
peka (and wherein Topeka was concerned
even Milsom could not guess) : “Don’t shoot,
Colonel. We'll come down.”

Cheyne smiled grimly at the consternation
of his enemies when the telegrams were laid
before him. “They think we’re on the war-
path. Tell ’em we don’t feel like fighting just
now, Milsom. Tell ’em what we ’re going for.
I guess you and Miss Kinzey had better come
along, though it isn’t likely I shall do any
business on the road. Tell ’em the truth—for
once.”

So the truth was told. Miss Kinzey clicked
in the sentiment while the secretary added the
memorable quotation, “Let us have peace,”
and in board rooms two thousand miles away
the representatives of sixty-three million dol-
lars’ worth of variously manipulated railroad
interests breathed more freely. Cheyne was
flying to meet the only son, so miraculously
restored to him. The bear was seeking his
cub, not the bulls. Hard men who had their
knives drawn to fight for their financial lives
vut away the weapons and wished him God-
''250 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

speed, while half a dozen panic-smitten tin-pot
roads perked up their heads and spoke of the
wonderful things they would have done had
not Cheyne buried the hatchet.

It was a busy week-end among the wires;
for now that their anxiety was removed, men
and cities hastened to accommodate. Los
Angeles called to San Diego and Barstow that
the Southern California engineers might
know and be ready in their lonely round-
houses; Barstow passed the word to the At-
lantic and Pacific; and Albuquerque flung it
the whole length of the Atchison, Topeka, and
Santa Fé management, even into Chicago. An
engine, combination-car with crew, and the
great and gilded “Constance” private car were
to be “expedited” over those two thousand.
three hundred and fifty miles. The train
would take precedence of one hundred and
seventy-seven others meeting and passing;
despatchers and crews of every one of those
said trains must be notified. Sixteen locomo-
tives, sixteen engineers, and sixteen firemen
would be needed—each and every one the best
available. ‘Two and one half minutes would
be allowed for changing engines, three for
watering, and two for coaling. ‘Warn the
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 25!

men, and arrange tanks and chutes according-
ly; for Harvey Cheyne is in a hurry, a hurry
—a hurry,” sang the wires. ‘Forty miles an
hour will be expected, and division superin-
tendents will accompany this special over
their respective divisions. From San Diego
to Sixteenth Street, Chicago, let the magic
carpet be laid down. Hurry! Oh, hurry!”

“It will be hot,” said Cheyne, as they rolled
out of San Diego in the dawn of Sunday.
“Were going to hurry, Mama, just as fast as
ever we can; but I really don’t think there’s
any good of your putting on your bonnet and
gloves yet. You’d much better lie down and
take your medicine. I’d play you a game o!
dominoes, but it’s Sunday.”

“I?ll be good. Oh, I will be good. Only
—taking off my bonnet makes me feel as if
we 'd never get there.”

“Try to sleep a little, Mama, and we’ll be
in Chicago before you know.”

“But it’s Boston, Father. Tell them to
hurry.”

The six-foot drivers were hammering their
way toSan Bernardino and the Mohave wastes,
but this was no grade for speed. That would
ceme later. The heat of the desert followed
''252 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

the heat of the hills as they turned east to the
Needles and the Colorado River. The car
cracked in the utter drouth and glare, and they
put crushed ice to Mrs, Cheyne’s neck, and
toiled up the long, long grades, past Ash Fork,
towards Flagstaff, where the forests and quar-
ries are, under the dry, remote skies. The
needle of the speed-indicator flicked and
wagged to and fro; the cinders rattled on the
roof, and a whirl of dust sucked after the
whirling wheels. The crew of the combina-
tion sat on their bunks, panting in their shirt-
sleeves, and Cheyne found himself among
them shouting old, old stories of the railroad
that every trainman knows, above the roar of
the car. He told them about his son, and how
the sea had given up its dead, and they nodded
and spat and rejoiced with him; asked after
“her, back there,” and whether she could
stand it if the engineer “let her out a piece,”
and Cheyne thought she could. Accordingly,
the great fire-horse was “‘let-out” from Flag-
staff to Winslow, till a division superintendent
protested.

But Mrs. Cheyne, in the boudoir stateroom,
where the French maid, sallow-white with
fear, clung to the silver door-handle, only
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 253

moaned a little and begged her husband to bid
them “hurry.” And so they dropped the dry
sands and moon-struck rocks of Arizona be-
hind them, and grilled on till the crash of
the couplings and the wheeze of the brake-
hose told them they were at Coolidge by the
Continental Divide.

Three bold and experienced men—cool,
confident, and dry when they began; white,
quivering, and wet when they finished their
trick at those terrible wheels—swung her over
the great lift from Albuquerque to Glorietta
and beyond Springer, up and up to the Raton
Tunnel on the State line, whence they dropped
rocking into La Junta, had sight of the Arkan-
saw, and tore down the long slope to Dodge
City, where Cheyne took comfort once again
from setting his watch an hour ahead.

There was very little talk in the car. The
secretary and typewriter sat together on the
stamped Spanish-leather cushions by the
plate-glass observation-window at the rear
end, watching the surge and ripple of the ties
crowded back behind them, and, it is believed,
making notes of the scenery. Cheyne moved
nervously between his own extravagant gor
geousness and the naked necessity of the com<
''254 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

- bination, an unlit cigar in his teeth, till the
pitying crews forgot that he was their tribal
enemy, and did their best to entertain him.

At night the bunched electrics lit up that
distressful palace of all the luxuries, and they
fared sumptuously, swinging on through the
emptiness of abject desolation. Now they
heard the swish of a water-tank, and the gut-
tural voice of a Chinaman, the clink-clink of
hammers that tested the Krupp steel wheels,
and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear-
platform; now the solid crash of coal shot
into the tender; and now a beating back of
noises as they flew past a waiting train. Now
they looked out into great abysses, a trestle
purring beneath their tread, or up to rocks
that barred out half the stars. Now scaur
and ravine changed and rolled back to jagged
mountains on the horizon’s edge, and now
broke into hills lower and lower, till at last
came the true plains.

At Dodge City an unknown hand threw in
a copy of a Kansas paper containing some
sort of an interview with Harvey, who had
evidently fallen in with an enterprising re-
porter, telegraphed on from Boston. The
joyful journalese revealed that it was beyond
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 255

question their boy, and it soothed Mrs.
Cheyne for a while. Her one word “hurry”
was conveyed by the crews to the engineers at
Nickerson, ‘Topeka, and Marceline, where the
grades are easy, and they brushed the Conti-
nent behind them. Towns and villages were
close together now, and a man could feel here
that he moved among people.

“T can’t see the dial, and my eyes ache so.
What are we doing?”

“The very best we can, Mama. There’s no
sense in getting in before the Limited. We’d
only have to wait.”

“f don’t care. I want to feel we ’re moving.
Sit down and tell me the miles.”

Cheyne sat down and read the dial for her
(there were some miles which stand for rec-
ords to this day), but the seventy-foot car never
changed its long steamer-like roll, moving
through the heat with the hum of a giant bee.
Yet the speed was not enough for Mrs.
Cheyne; and the heat, the remorseless August
heat, was making her giddy; the clock-hands
would not move, and when, oh, when would
they be in Chicago?

It is not true that, as they changed engines
at Fort Madison, Cheyne passed over to the
''256 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

Amalgamated Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers an endowment sufficient to enable
them to fight him and his fellows on equal
terms for evermore. He paid his obligations
to engineers and firemen as he believed they
deserved, and only his bank knows what he
gave the crews who had sympathized with
him. It ison record that the last crew took en-
tire charge of switching operations at Six-
teenth Street, because “she” was in a doze at
last, and Heaven was to help any one who
bumped her.

Now the highly paid specialist who conveys
the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Lim-
ited from Chicago to Elkhart is something of
an autocrat, and he does not approve of being
told how to back up toa car. None the less he
handled the “Constance” as if she might have
been a load of dynamite, and when the crew
rebuked him, they did it in whispers and dumb
show.

“Pshaw!” said the Atchison, Topeka, and
Santa Fé men, discussing life later, “we
weren’t runnin’ for a record. Harvey
Cheyne’s wife, she were sick back, an’ we
didn’t want to jounce her. ’Come to think of
it, our runnin’ time from San Diego to Chi-
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 257

cago was 57.54. You can tell that to them
Eastern way-trains. When we’re tryin’ for a
record, we ’ll let you know.”

To the Western man (though this would not
please either city) Chicago and Boston are
cheek by jowl, and some railroads encourage
the delusion. The Limited whirled the “‘Con-
stance” into Buffalo and the arms of the New
York Central and Hudson River (illustrious
magnates with white whiskers and _ gold
charms on their watch-chains boarded her here
to talk a little business to Cheyne), who slid
her gracefully into Albany, where the Boston
and Albany completed the run from tide-
water to tide-water—total time, eighty-seven
hours and thirty-five minutes, or three days,
fifteen hours and one half. Harvey was wait-
ing for them.

AFTER violent emotion most people and all
boys demand food. They feasted the returned
prodigal behind drawn curtains, cut off in
their great happiness, while the trains roared
in and out around them. Harvey ate, drank,
and enlarged on his adventures all in one
breath, and when he had a hand free his moth-
er fondled it. His voice was thickened with
''258 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

living in the open, salt air; his palms were
rough and hard, his wrists dotted with marks
of gurry-sores; and a fine full flavour of cod-
fish hung round rubber boots and blue jersey.

The father, well used to judging men,
looked at him keenly. He did not know what
enduring harm the boy might have taken. In-
deed, he caught himself thinking that he knew
very little whatever of his son; but he distinct-
ly remembered ‘an unsatisfied, dough-faced
youth who took delight in “calling down the
old man,” and reducing his mother to tears—
such a person as adds to the gaiety of public
rooms and hotel piazzas, where the ingenuous
young of the wealthy play with or revile the
bell-boys. But this well set-up fisher-youth
did not wriggle, looked at him with eyes
‘steady, clear, and unflinching, and spoke in a
tone distinctly, even startlingly, respectful.
There was that in his voice, too, which seemed
to promise that the change might be perma-
nent, and that the new Harvey had come to stay.

“Some one’s been coercing him,” thought
Cheyne. ‘Now Constance would never have
allowed that. Don’t see as Europe could have
done it any better.”

“But why did n’t you tell this man, Troop,
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 259

who you were?” the mother repeated, when
Harvey had expanded his story at least twice.

“Disko Troop, dear. The best man that
ever walked a deck. I don’t care who the next
18,"?

“Why didn’t you tell him to put you
ashore? You know Papa would have made
it up to him ten times over.”

“T know it; but he thought I was crazy.
I’m afraid I called him a thief because I
could n’t find the bills in my pocket.”

“A sailor found them by the flagstaff that—
that night,” sobbed Mrs. Cheyne.

“That explains it, then. I don’t blame
Troop any. I just said I would n’t work—on
a Banker, too—and of course he hit me on the
nose, and oh! [I bled like a stuck hog.”

“My poor darling! They must have abused
you horribly.”

“Dunno quite. Well, after that, I saw a
light.”

Cheyne slapped his leg and chuckled. This
was going to be a boy after his own hungry
heart. He had never seen precisely that twin-
kle in Harvey’s eye before.

‘“‘And the old man gave me ten and a half
a month; he’s paid me half now; and I took
''260 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

hold with Dan and pitched right in. I can’t
do a man’s work yet. But I can handle a dory
’4most as well as Dan, and I don’t get rattled in
a fog—much; and I can take my trick in light
winds—that ’s steering, dear—and I can ’most
bait up a trawl, and I know my ropes, of
course; and I can pitch fish till the cows come
home, and I ’m great on old Josephus, and
I ’ll show you how I can clear coffee with a
piece of fish-skin, and—I think I ’ll have an-
other cup, please. Say, you ’ve no notion what
a heap of work there is in ten and a half a
month!”

“T began with eight and a half, my son,”
said Cheyne.

“That so? You never told me, sir.”

“You never asked, Harve. I ’Il tell you
about it some day, if you care to listen. Try
a stuffed olive.”

“Troop says the most interesting thing in the
world is to find out how the next man gets
his vittles. It’s great to have a trimmed-up
meal again. We were well fed, though. But
mug on the Banks. Disko fed us first-class.
He’s a great man. And Dan—that ’s his son
—Dan’s my partner. And there ’s Uncle Sal-
ters and his manures, an’ he reads Josephus.
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 261

He’s sure I’m crazy yet. And there’s poor
little Penn, and he zs crazy. You must n’t
talk to him about Johnstown, because
And, oh, you must know Tom Platt and Long
Jack and Manuel. Manuel saved my life.
I’m sorry he’s a Portugee. He can’t talk
much, but he’s an everlasting musician. He
found me struck adrift and drifting, and
hauled me in.”

“T wonder your nervous system is n’t com-
pletely wrecked,” said Mrs. Cheyne.

“What for, Mama? _ I worked like a horse
and I ate like a hog and I slept like a dead
man.”

That was too much for Mrs, Cheyne, who
began to think of her visions of a corpse rock-
ing on the salty seas. She went to her state-
room, and Harvey curled up beside his father,
explaining his indebtedness.

“You can depend upon me to do everything
I can for the crowd, Harve. They seem to be
good men on your showing.”

“Best in the Fleet, sir. Ask at Gloucester,”
said Harvey. “But Disko believes still he’s
cured me of being crazy. Dan’s the only
one I’ve let on to about you, and our private
cars and all the rest of it, and I’m not quite

 
''262 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

sure Dan believes. I want to paralyze ’em
to-morrow. Say, can’t they run the ‘Con-
stance’ over to Gloucester? Mama don’t look
fit to be moved, anyway, and we’re bound to
finish cleaning out by to-morrow. Wouver-
man takes our fish. You see, we’re the first off
the Banks this season, and it’s four twenty-
five a quintal. We held out till he paid it.
They want it quick.”

“You mean you ’Il have to work to-morrow,
then?”

“T told Troop I would. I’m on the scales.
I’ve brought the tallies with me.” He looked
at the greasy notebook with an air of impor-
tance that made his father choke. “There
isn’t but three—no—two ninety-four or five
quintal more by my reckoning.”

“Fire a substitute,” suggested Cheyne, to
see what Harvey would say.

“Can't, sir. I’m tally-man for the schooner.
Troop says I ’ve a better head for figures than
Dan. Troop’s a mighty just man.”

“Well, suppose I don’t move the ‘Con-
stance’ to-night, how ’ll you fix it?”

Harvey looked at the clock, which marked
twenty past eleven.

“Then I’ll sleep here till three and
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 263

catch the four o’clock freight. They let
us men from the Fleet ride free as a
rule,”

“That’s a notion. But I think we can
get the ‘Constance’ around about as soon
as your men’s freight. Better go to bed
now.”

Harvey spread himself on the sofa, kicked
off his boots, and was asleep before his father
could shade the electrics. Cheyne sat watch-
ing the young face under the shadow of the
arm thrown over the forehead, and among
many things that occurred to him was the
notion that he might perhaps have been neg-
lectful as a father.

“One never knows when one’s taking one’s
biggest risks,” he said. “It might have been
worse than drowning; but I don’t think it
has—I don’t think it has. If it has n't, I
have n’t enough to pay Troop, that’s all; and
I don’t think it has.”

Morning brought a fresh sea breeze through
the windows, the “Constance” was side-
tracked among freight-cars at Gloucester, and
Harvey had gone to his business.

“Then he’ll fall overboard again and be
drowned,” the mother said bitterly.
''264 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

“Well go and look, ready to throw him
a rope in case. You’ve never seen him
working for his bread,” said the father.

‘What nonsense! As if any one expect-
a

‘Well, the man that hired him did. He’s
about right, too.”

They went down between the stores full of
fishermen’s oilskins to Wouverman’s wharf
where the We’re Here rode high, her Bank
flag still flying, all hands busy as beavers in |
the glorious morning light. Disko stood by
the main hatch superintending Manuel, Penn
and Uncle Salters at the tackle. Dan was
swinging the loaded baskets inboard as Long
Jack and Tom Platt filled them, and Harvey,
with a notebook, represented the skipper’s in-
terests before the clerk of the scales on the salt-
sprinkled wharf-edge.

“Ready!” cried the voices below. “Haul!”
cried Disko. “Hi! said Manuel. “Here!”
said Dan, swinging the basket. Then they
heard Harvey’s voice, clear and fresh, check-
ing the weights.

The last of the fish had been whipped out,
and Harvey leaped from the string-piece six
feet to a ratline, as the shortest way to hand
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 265

Disko the tally, shouting, “Two ninety-seven,
and an empty hold!”

‘“What’s the total, Harve?” said Disko.

“Bight sixty-five. Three thousand six hun-
dred and seventy-six dollars and a quarter.
’Wish I’d share as well as wage.”

‘‘Well, I won’t go so far as to say you hev n't
deserved it, Harve. Don’t you want to slip
up to Wouverman’s office and take him our
tallies?”

“Who’s that boy?” said Cheyne to Dan,
well used to all manner of questions from
those idle imbeciles called summer board.
ers.

“Well, he’s kind o’ supercargo,” was the
answer. “We picked him up struck adrift on
the Banks. Fell overboard from a liner, he
sez. He was a passenger. He’s by way o’
bein’ a fisherman now.”

“Ts he worth his keep?”

“Ye-ep. Dad, this man wants to know ef
Harve ’s worth his keep. Say, would you like
to go aboard? We'll fix a ladder for her.”

“T should very much, indeed. ’T won’t hurt
you, Mama, and you ’1l be able to see for your-
self.”

The woman who could not lift her head a

)
''266 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS *

week ago scrambled down the ladder, and
stood aghast amid the mess and tangle aft.

“Be you anyways interested in Harve?”
said Disko.

“Well, ye-es.”

‘“HHe’s a good boy, an’ ketches right hold
jest as he’s bid. You’ve heard haow we
found him? He was sufferin’ from nervous
prostration, I guess, ’r else his head had hit
somethin’, when we hauled him aboard. He’s
all over that naow. Yes, this is the cabin.
*T ain’t anyways in order, but you’re quite
welcome to look araound. Those are his fig-
ures on the stove-pipe, where we keep the
reckonin’ mostly.”

“Did he sleep here?” said Mrs. Cheyne,
sitting on a yellow locker and surveying the
disorderly bunks.

“No. He berthed forward, madam, an’
only fer him an’ my boy hookin’ fried pies an’
muggin’ up when they ought to ha’ been
asleep, I dunno as I’ve any special fault to
find with him.”

“There weren’t nothin’ wrong’ with
Harve,” said Uncle Salters, descending the
steps. ‘He hung my boots on the main-truck,
and he ain’t over an’ above respectful to such
''“ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 26%.

as knows more’n he do, specially about farm.
in’; but he were mostly misled by Dan.”

Dan in the meantime, profiting by dark
hints from Harvey early that morning, was
executing a war-dance on deck. “Tom,
Tom!” he whispered down the hatch. “His
folks has come, an’ Dad hain’t caught on yet,
an’ they ’re pow-wowin’ in the cabin. She’s
a daisy, an’ he’s all Harve claimed he was, by
the looks of him.”

“Howly Smoke!” said Long Jack, climbing
out covered with salt and fish-skin. “D’ ye
belave his tale av the kid an’ the little four-
horse rig was thrue?P”

“T knew it all along,” said Dan. ‘Come an’
see Dad mistook in his judgments.”

They came delightedly, just in time to hear
Cheyne say: “I’m glad he has a good char-
acter, because—he ’s my son.”

Disko’s jaw fell_—Long Jack always vowed
that he heard the click of it,—and he stared
alternately at the man and the woman.

“T got his telegram in San Diego four days
ago, and we came over.”

“In a private car?” said Dan. “He said
ye might.”

“In a private.car, of course.”
''268 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

Dan looked at his father with a hurricane
of irreverent winks.

“There was a tale he tould us av drivin’
four little ponies in a rig av his own,” said
Long Jack. “Was that thrue now?”

ww ery likely,” said. Cheyne... “Was it,
Mama?”

“He had a little drag when we were in
Toledo, I think,” said the mother.

Long Jack whistled. “Oh, Disko!” said he,
and that was all.

“T wuz—I am mistook in my jedgments—
worse ’n the men o’ Marblehead,” said Disko,
as though the words were being windlassed
out of him. “I don’t mind ownin’ to you,
Mister Cheyne, as I mistrusted the boy to be
crazy. He talked kinder odd about money.”

“So he told me.”

“Did he tell ye anything else? ’Cause I
pounded him once.” ‘This with a somewhat
anxious glance at Mrs. Cheyne.

“Oh, yes,” Cheyne replied. “I should say
it probably did him more good than anything
else in the world.”

“T jedged ’t wuz necessary, er I would n’t
ha’ done it. I don’t want you to think we
abuse our boys any on this packet.”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 269

“T don’t think you do, Mr. Troop.”

Mrs. Cheyne had been looking at the faces
—Disko’s ivory-yellow, hairless, iron coun-
tenance; Uncle Salters’s, with its rim of agri-
cultural hair; Penn’s bewildered simplicity;
Manuel’s quiet smile; Long Jack’s grin of
delight, and Tom Platt’s scar. Rough, by her
standards, they certainly were; but she had a
mother’s wits in her eyes, and she rose with
out-stretched hands.

“Oh, tell me, which is who?” said she, half
sobbing. “I want to thank you and bless you
—all of you.”

“Faith, that pays me a hunder time,” said
Long Jack.

Disko introduced them all in due form.
The captain of an old-time Chinaman could
have done no better, and Mrs. Cheyne bab-
bled incoherently. She nearly threw herself
into Manuel’s arms when she understood that
he had first found Harvey.

“But how shall I leave him dreeft?” said
poor Manuel. “What do you yourself if you
find him so? Eh, wha-at? We are in one
good boy, and I am ever so pleased he come
to be your son.”

“And he told me Dan was his partner!”
''270 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

she cried. Dan was already sufficiently pink,
but he turned a rich crimson when Mrs,
Cheyne kissed him on both cheeks before the
assembly. Then they led her forward to show
her the foc’sle, at which she wept again, and
must needs go down to see Harvey’s identical
bunk, and there she found the nigger cook
cleaning up the stove, and he nodded as though
she were some one he had expected to meet
for years. They tried, two at a time, to ex-
plain the boat’s daily life to her, and she
sat by the pawl-post, her gloved hands on the
greasy table, laughing with trembling lips and
crying with dancing eyes.

“And who’s ever to use the We’re Here
after this?” said Long Jack to Tom Platt.
“T feel as if she’d made a cathedral av ut
all,”

“Cathedral!” sneered Tom Platt. “Oh,
ef it had bin even the Fish C’mmission boat
instid o’ this bally-hoo o’ blazes. Ef we only
hed some decency an’ order an’ side-boys when
she goes over! She’ll have to climb that lad-
der like a hen, an’ we—we ought to be man-
nin’ the yards!”

“Then Harvey was not mad,” said Penn,
slowly, to Cheyne.
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 274

“No, indeed—thank God,” the big million-
aire replied, stooping down tenderly.

“Tt must be terrible to be mad. Except to
lose your child, I do not know anything more
terrible. But your child has come backer
Let us thank God for that.”

“Ffello!” cried Harvey, looking down upon
them benignly from the wharf.

“T wuz mistook, Harve. I wuz mistook,”
said Disko, swiftly, holding up a hand. “I
wuz mistook in my jedgments. Ye need n’t
rub it in any more.”

“Guess Ill take care o’ that,” said Dan,
under his breath.

“Youll be goin’ off naow, won’t yer”

“Well, not without the balance of my
wages, ’less you want to have the We ’re Here
attached.”

ML het’s: 50; 1d clean, forgot’ +\-and) ne
counted out the remaining dollars. ‘You
done all you contracted to do, Harve; and
you done it ’baout’s well as ef you’d been
brought up ” Here Disko brought himself
up. He did not quite see where the sentence
was going to end.

“Outside of a private car?” suggested Dan,
wickedly.

 
''292 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS’

“Come on, and I’ll show her to you,” said
Harvey.

Cheyne stayed to talk to Disko, but the
others made a procession to the depot, with
Mrs. Cheyne at the head. The French maid
shrieked at the invasion; and Harvey laid the
glories of the “Constance” before them with-
out a word. They took them in in equal
silence—stamped leather, silver door-handles
and rails, cut velvet, plate-glass, nickel,
bronze, hammered iron, and the rare woods
of the continent inlaid.

“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 noth-
ing might be lacking to the tale Long Jack
told afterwards in his boarding-house, she
waited on them herself. Men who are accus-
tomed 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 Ofzo and the manners of foreign po-
'' 

“WERE HERE”

MRS. CHEYNE INTRODUCES THE CREW OF THE

CONSTANCE.”

“

EO DES
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 275

tentates 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 coun-
sel and waited for an opening.

“T hev n’t done anything fo 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 com-
prehensively 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.
''276 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

I’ve bin ’most everywhere—in the nat’ral
way, o’ course.”

“T 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.”

“Were 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 rail-
roads an’ pony-carriages.”

“He did n’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 Cesar Almighty) I mistrust I ’ve
bin 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
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 277

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.

“T¢ I’d known that I’d ha’ jerked the
We’re Here back to port all standin’, on the
word.”

“Perhaps that would n’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!
Z ll never stand on my own jedgments again
—never. They’re well-found packets. Phil
Airheart he says so.”

“Tm 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?”

“Tt’s a resk taking a raw boy i

“T know a man who did more for me.”

“That’s diffrunt. Look at here naow, I
ain’t recommendin’ Dan special because he’s
my own flesh an’ blood. J know Bank ways
ain’t clipper ways, but he hain’t much to learn,

 
''278 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

Steer he can—no boy better, ef J say it—an’
the rest’s in our blood an’ get; but I could
wish he war n’t so cussed weak on navigation.”

‘“‘Airheart will attend to that. He’ll ship
as a 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 ’1l 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, teli me, and Ill attend to the trans-
portation. "I won’t cost you a cent.”

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

They went over to Troop’s eighteen-hun-
dred-dollar, blue-trimmed white house, with a
retired dory full of nasturtiums in the front
yard and a shuttered parlour which was a mu-
seum 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
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 279

of their beloved. Cheyne addressed himself
to her, and she gave consent wearily.

“We lose one hundred a year from Glou-
cester only, Mr. Cheyne,” she said—"one
hundred boys an’ men; and I’ve come so’s
to hate the sea as if ’t wuz alive an’ listenin’.
God never made it fer humans to anchor on.
These packets o’ yours ihey go straight out,
I take it, and straight home again?”

“Ags 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 fol-
low 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.”

“Tye 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 0’ me.”

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

“My father—my own eldest brother—two
''280 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

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 Har-
vey’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 orno? 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, appro-
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 285

priated all the blessings showered on her for
her charity, : “That letta me out’: said he:
“T have now ver’ good absolutions for six
months”; and he strolled forth to get a hand-
kerchief 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 rela-
tives 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 be-
long with Salters Troop, an’ set down right
where you are till I come fer you. Don’t go
taggin’ araound after them whose eyes bung
out with fatness, accordin’ to Seripcher.”
''CHAPTER X

UT it was otherwise with the We’re
Here’s silent cook, for he came up, his
kit in a handkerchief, and boarded the “Con-
stance.” 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, there-
fore; even though he called himself Mac-
Donald 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
282
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 283

of hearts he loathed, departed the last rem-
nant of Cheyne’s millionairedom, 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 lead-
ing professional he wished to learn how the
noble game was played. Men said that four
out of every five fish-balls served at New Eng-
land’s Sunday breakfast came from Glouces:
ter, and overwhelmed him with figures in
proof—statistics of boats, gear, wharf-front-
age, capital invested, salting, packing, fac-
tories, 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 Dis-
ko, 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
''284 “ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

was after, anyhow.” He prowled into the Mu«
tual Insurance rooms, and demanded explana-
tions of the mysterious remarks chalked up on
the blackboard day by day; and that brought
down upon him secretaries of every Fisher-
man’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, man-
aged, 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 soli-
taires before she came down to breakfast.

“They ’re most delightful people,” she con-
fided 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 have n’t got.”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 285

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

“T 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?”

“T don’t see very much of Paryey; ties
always with you; but [ ain’t near as nervous
as I was.”

“T 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 fa-
ther’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.
''286 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

“T 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-dge: “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 Wouver-
man’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.

“Tt 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 poppy-
cock.”

“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
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 287

do that I can’t make anything of you if you
don’t act straight by me. I can handle you
alone if youll 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
re

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

“Umm! Disko thinks . . . Say, what
d’ you reckon it’s cost you to raise me from
the start—first, last and ali 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, is n’t
itr

“Invested, Harve. Invested, I hope.”

“Making it only thirty thousand, the thirty
I’ve earned is about ten cents on the hun-
''288 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

dred. 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.”

“T can’t do it, old man; or I would, I pre-
sume, 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?”

“T 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
'' 

“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’”
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 291

touch of brown paint he would have made up
very picturesquely as a Red Indian of the
story-books.

“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.”

“Tike Lorry Tuck?” Harvey put in.

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

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 con-
ceived 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.
''292 “ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

“Should n’t care to be caught out in her in
any sort of a breeze. No beam,” said Har-
vey, 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?”

“Cesar! That’s no way to get a dinghy
overside,” -said Harvey, still intent on the
yacht. “If I could n’t slip a tackle better
than that fdstay ashore. . . 2 What if I
don’t?”

“Stay ashore—or whatr”

“Yacht and ranch and live on ‘the old
man,’ and—get behind Mama when 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 monthr” Another twinkle.

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

“Td sooner begin sweeping out the office
—isn’t that how the big bugs start?—and
touch somethirg now than "

“T know it', we all feel that way. But I

 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 293

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.”

“T lost some; and I gained’ some. IU
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, with-
out gesture and without expression; and it
was a history for which a dozen leading jour-
nals 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.

It began with a kinless boy turned loose in
Texas, and went on fantastically through a
hundred changes and chops of life, the scenes
shifting from State after Western State, from
cities that sprang up in a month and in a
season utterly withered away, to wild ven-
tures in wilder camps that are now laborious,
paved municipalities. It covered the building
of three railroads and the deliberate wreck of
''294. “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

a fourth. It told of steamers, townships, for-
ests, and mines, and the men of every nation
under heaven, manning, creating, hewing, and
digging these. It touched on chances of gi-
gantic wealth flung before eyes that could not
see, or missed by the merest accident of time
and travel; and through the mad shift of
things, sometimes on horseback, more often
afoot, now rich, now poor, in and out, and
back and forth, deck-hand, train-hand, con-
tractor, boarding-house keeper, journalist,
engineer, drummer, real-estate agent, politi-
cian, dead-beat, rum-seller, mine-owner, spec-
ulator, cattle-man, or tramp, moved Harvey
Cheyne, alert and quiet, seeking his own ends,
and, so he said, the glory and advancement
of his country.

He told of the faith that never deserted him
even when he hung on the ragged edge of
despair—the faith that comes of knowing.
men and things. He enlarged, as though he
were talking to himself, on his very great
courage and resource at all times. The thing
was so evident in the man’s mind that he never
even changed his tone. He described how
he had bested his enemies, or forgiven them,
exactly as they had bested or forgiven him in
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 295

those careless days; how he had entreated,
cajoled, and bullied towns, companies, and
syndicates, all for their enduring good;
crawled round, through, or under mountains
and ravines, dragging a string and hoop-
iron railroad after him, and in the end, how
he had sat still while promiscuous commun-
ities tore the last fragments of his character to
shreds.

The tale held Harvey almost breathless, his
head a little cocked to one side, his eyes fixed
on his father’s face, as the twilight deepened
and the red cigar-end lit up the furrowed
cheeks and heavy eyebrows. It seemed to him
like watching a locomotive storming across
country in the dark—a mile between each
glare of the opened fire-door: but this locomo-
tive could talk,and the words shook and stirred
the boy to the core of his soul. At last Cheyne
pitched away the cigar-butt, and the two sat in
the dark over the lapping water.

“T ve never told that to any one before,”
said the father.

Harvey gasped. “It’s just the greatest
thing that ever was!” said he.

“That ’s what I got. Now I’m coming to
what I didn’t get. It won’t sound much of
''296 “ CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

anything to you, but I don’t wish you to be
as old as I am before you find out. I can
handle men, of course, and I’m no fool along
my own lines, but—but—I can’t compete with
the man who has been taught! I’ve picked up
as I went along, and I guess it sticks out all
over me.”

“T ve never seen it,” said the son, indig-
nantly.

“You will, though, Harve. You will—just
as soon as you’re through college. Don’t I
know it? Don’t I know the look on men’s
faces when they think me a—a ‘mucker,’ as
they call it out here? I can break them to
little pieces—yes—but I can’t get back at ’em
to hurt ’em where they live. I don’t say
they ’re way ’way up, but I feel I’m ’way,
’way, way off, somehow. Now you've got
your chance. You’ve got to soak up all the
learning that’s around, and you ’ll live with a
crowd that are doing the same thing. They ’Il
be doing it for a few thousand dollars a year
at most; but remember you’l] be doing it
for millions. You’ll learn law enough to
look after your own property when I’m out 0’
the light, and you ’Il have to be solid with the
best men in the market (they are useful later) ;
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 297

and above all, you’ll have to stow away the
plain, common, sit-down-with-your-chin-on-
your-elbows book-learning. Nothing pays
like that, Harve, and it’s bound to pay more
and more each year in our country—in busi-
ness and in politics. Youll see.”

“There ’s no sugar my end of the deal,”
said Harvey. “Four years at college! "Wish
Id chosen the valet and the yacht!”

‘(Never mind, my son,” Cheyne insisted.
“You ’re investing your capital where it’ll
bring in the best returns; and I guess you
won’t find our property shrunk any when
you ’re ready to take hold. Think it over,
and let me know in the morning. Hurry!
We'll be late for supper!”

As this was a business talk, there was no
need for Harvey to tell his mother about it;
and Cheyne naturally took the same point of
view. But Mrs. Cheyne saw and feared, and
was a little jealous. Her boy, who rode
rough-shod over her, was gone, and in his
stead reigned a keen-faced youth, abnormally
silent, who addressed most of his conversation
to his father. She understood it was business,
and therefore a matter beyond her premises.
If she had any doubts, they were resolved
''298 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

when Cheyne went to Boston and brought back
a new diamond marquise ring.

“What have you two been doing now?”
she said, with a weak little smile, as she turned
it in the light.

“Talking—just talking, Mama; there’s
nothing mean about Harvey.”

There was not. The boy had made a treaty
on his own account. Railroads, he explained
gravely, interested him as little as lumber,
real estate, or mining. What his soul yearned
after was control of his father’s newly pur-
chased sailing-ship. If that could be promised’
him within what he conceived to be a reason-
able time, he, for his part, guaranteed dili-
gence and sobriety at college for four or five
years. In vacation he was to be allowed full
access to all details connected with the line—
he had asked not more than two thousand
questions about it,—from his father’s most
private papers in the safe to the tug in San
Francisco harbour.

‘it’s a deal,” said Cheyne at the last.
“You'll alter your mind twenty times before
you leave college, o’ course; but if you take
hold of it in proper shape, and if you don’t
tie it up before you’re twenty-three, IJ]
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 299

make the thing over to you. How’s that,
Harve?”

‘Nope; never pays to split up a going con-
cern. There’s too much competition in the
world anyway, and Disko says ‘blood-kin hev
to stick together.’ His crowd never go back
vn him. That’s one reason, he says, why they
make such big fares. Say, the We’re Here
goes off to the Georges on Monday. They
don’t stay long ashore, do they?”

“Well, we ought to be going, too, I guess.
I’ve left my business hung up at loose ends
between two oceans, and it’s time to connect
again. I just hate to do it, though; have n’t
had a holiday like this for twenty years.”

“We can’t go without seeing Disko off,”
said Harvey; “and Monday ’s Memorial Day.
Let ’s stay over that, anyway.”

“What is this memorial business? They
were talking about it at the boarding-house,”
said Cheyne weakly. He, too, was not anx-
ious to spoil the golden days.

“Well, as far as I can make out, this busi-
ness is a sort of song-and-dance act, whacked
up for the summer boarders. Disko don’t
think much of it, he says, because they take
up a collection for the widows and orphans.
''300 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

Disko’s independent. Haven’t you noticed
that?”

“Well—yes. A little. In spots. ‘Is it a
town show, thene”

“The summer convention is. They read
out the names of the fellows drowned or gone
astray since last time, and they make speeches,
and recite, and all. Then, Disko says, the sec-
retaries of the Aid Societies go into the back
yard and fight over the catch. The real show,
he says, is in the spring. The ministers all
take a hand then, and there aren’t any sum-
mer boarders around.”

“T see,” said Cheyne, with the brilliant and
perfect comprehension of one born into and
bred up to city pride. ‘“We’ll stay over for
Memorial Day, and get off in the afternoon.”

“Guess I’ll go down to Disko’s and make
him bring his crowd up before they sail. Ill
have to stand with them, of course.”

MO, that’s. it, is it,” said Cheyne. “I’m
only a poor summer boarder, and you ’re C

“A Banker—full-blooded Banker,” Harvey
called back as he boarded a trolley, and
Cheyne went on with his blissful dreams for
the future.

Disko had no use for public functions where

 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 301

appeals were made for charity, but Harvey
pleaded that the glory of the day would be
lost, so far as he was concerned, if the We ’re
Heres absented themselves. Then Disko
made conditions. He had heard—it was as-
tonishing how all the world knew all the
world’s business along the water-front—he
had heard’ that a “Philadelphia actress-
woman” was going to take part in the exer-
cises; and he mistrusted that she would deliver
“Skipper Ireson’s Ride.” Personally, he had
as little use for actresses as for summer board-
ers; but justice was justice, and though he
himself (here Dan giggled) had once slipped
up on a matter of judgment, this thing must
not be. So Harvey came back to East Glou-
cester, and spent half a day explaining to an
amused actress with a royal reputation on two
seaboards the inwardness of the mistake she
contemplated; and she admitted that it was
justice, even as Disko-had said.

Cheyne knew by old experience what would
happen; but anything of the nature of a pub-
tic palaver was meat and drink to the man’s
soul. He saw the trolleys hurrying west, in
the hot, hazy morning, full of women in light
summer dresses, and white-faced straw-hatted
''302 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

men fresh from Boston desks; the stack of
bicycles outside the post-office; the come-and-
go of busy officials, greeting one another; the
slow flick and swash of bunting in the heavy
air; and the important man with a hose sluic-
ing the brick sidewalk.

“Mother,” he said suddenly, “don’t you re-
member—after Seattle was burned out—and
they got her going again?”

Mrs. Cheyne nodded, and looked critically
down the crooked street. Like her husband,
she understood these gatherings, all the West
over, and compared them one against another.
The fishermen began to mingle with the
crowd about the town-hall doors—blue-
jowled Portuguese, their women bare-headed
or shawled for the most part; clear-eyed Nova
Scotians, and men of the Maritime Provinces;
French, Italians, Swedes, and Danes, with out-
side crews of coasting schooners; and every-
where women in black, who saluted one an-
other with gloomy pride, for this was their day
of great days. And there were ministers of
many creeds,—pastors of great, gilt-edged
congregations, at the seaside for a rest, with
shepherds of the regular work,—from the
priests of the Church on the Hill to bush-
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 303

bearded ex-sailor Lutherans, hail-fellow with
the men of a score of boats. There were
owners of lines of schooners, large contribu-
tors to the societies, and small men, their few
craft pawned to the mastheads, with bankers
and marine-insurance agents, captains of tugs
and water-boats, riggers, fitters, lumpers, salt-
ers, boat-builders, and coopers, and all the
mixed population of the water-front.

They drifted along the line of seats made
gay with the dresses of the summer boarders,
and one of the town officials patrolled and
perspired till he shone all over with pure civic
pride. Cheyne had met him for five minutes
a few days before, and between the two there
was entire understanding.

“Well, Mr. Cheyne, and what d’ you think
of our citye—Yes, madam, you can sit any-
where you please——You have this kind of
thing out West, I presume?”

“Yes, but we are n’t as old as you.”

“That ’s so, of course. You ought to have
been at the exercises when we celebrated our
two hundred and fiftieth birthday. I tell
you, Mr. Cheyne, the old city did herself
credit,”

“So I heard. It pays, too. What’s the
''304 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

matter with the town that it don’t have a first-
class hotel, though?”

“Right over there to the left, Pedro.
Heaps o’ room for you and your crowd.—
Why, that’s what J tell ’em all the time, Mr.
Cheyne. There’s big money in it, but I pre-
sume that don’t affect you any. What we
want is——”’

A heavy hand fell on his broadcloth shoul-
der, and the flushed skipper of a Portland
coal-and-ice coaster spun him half round.
“What in thunder do you fellows mean by
clappin’ the law on the town when all decent
men are at sea this way? Heh? Town’s dry
as a bone, an’ smells a sight worse sence I quit.
"Might ha’ left us one saloon for soft drinks,
anyway.”

“Don’t seem to have hindered your nourish-
ment this morning, Carsen. Ill go into the
politics of it later. Sit down by the door
and think over your arguments till I come
back.”

‘What good is arguments to me? In Mi-
quelon champagne’s eighteen dollars a case
and ” The skipper lurched into his seat
as an organ-prelude silenced him.

“Our new organ,” said the official proudly

 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 305

to Cheyne. “’Cost us four thousand dollars,
too. We’ll have to get back to high-license
next year to pay for it. I wasn’t going to
let the ministers have all the religion at their
convention. Those are some of our orphans
standing up to sing. My wife taught ’em.
See you again later, Mr. Cheyne. I’m wanted
on the platform.”

High, clear, and true, children’s voices bore
down the last noise of those settling into their
places.

“O all ye Works of the Lord, bless ye the
Lord: praise him and magnify him for
ever!”

The women throughout the hall leaned for-
ward to iook as the reiterated cadences filled
the air. Mrs. Cheyne, with some others, be-
gan to breathe short; she had hardly imagined
there were so many widows in the world;
and instinctively searched for Harvey. He
had found the We ’re Heres at the back of the
audience, and was standing, as by right, be-
tween Dan and Disko. Uncle Salters, re-
turned the night before with Penn, from
Pamlico Sound, received him suspiciously.

‘“Flain’t your folk gone yet?” he grunted
‘What are you doin’ here, young feller?”
''306 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

“O ye Seas and Floods, bless ye the Lord:
praise him, and magnify him for ever!”

“Flain’t he good right?” said Dan. “He’s
bin there, same as the rest of us.”

“Not in them clothes,” Salters snarled.

“Shut your head, Salters,” said Disko.
“Your bile’s gone back on you. Stay right
where ye are, Harve.”

Then up and spoke the orator of the occa-
sion, another pillar of the municipality, bid-
ding the world welcome to Gloucester, and in-
cidentally pointing out wherein Gloucester
excelled the rest of the world. Then he turned
to the sea-wealth of the city, and spoke of the
price that must be paid for the yearly harvest,
They would hear later the names of their lost
dead—one hundred and seventeen of them.
(The widows stared a little, and looked at one
another here.) Gloucester could not boast
any overwhelming mills or factories. Her
sons worked for such wage as the sea gave;
and they all knew that neither Georges nor
the Banks were cow-pastures. The utmost
that folk ashore could accomplish was to help
the widows and the orphans, and after a few
general remarks he took this opportunity of
thanking, in the name of the city, those who
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 307

had so public-spiritedly consented to partici-
pate in the exercises of the occasion.

“T jest despise the beggin’ pieces in it,”
growled Disko. “It don’t give folk a fair
notion of us.”

“Ef folk won’t be fore-handed an’ put by
when they ’ve the chance,” returned Salters,
“it stands in the nature o’ things they hev to
be ’shamed. You take warnin’ by that, young
feller. Riches endureth but for a season, ef
you scatter them araound on lugsuries mn

“But to lose everything, everything,” said
Penn. “What can you do then? Once I’—
the watery blue eyes stared up and down as if
looking for something to steady them—‘once
I read—in a book, I think—of a boat where
every one was run down—except some one—
and he said to me a

“Shucks!” said Salters, cutting in. ‘You
read a little less an’ take more int’rust in your
vittles, and you ll come nearer earnin’ your
Keep, Penn.”

Harvey, jammed among the fishermen, felt
a creepy, crawly, tingling thrill that began in
the back of his neck and ended at his boots.
He was cold, too, though it was a stifling
day.

 

’

 
''308 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

“That the actress from Philadelphia?”
said Disko Troop, scowling at the platform.
“You ’ve fixed it about old man Ireson, hain’t
ye, Harve? Ye know why naow.”

It was not “Ireson’s Ride” that the woman
delivered, but some sort of poem about a fish-
ing-port called Brixham and a fleet of trawl-
ers beating in against storm by night, while
the women made a guiding fire at the head
of the quay with everything they could lay
hands on.

“They took the grandam’s blanket,
Who shivered and bade them go;
‘They took the baby’s cradle,
Who could not say them no.”

“Whew!” said Dan, peering over Long
Jack’s shoulder. ‘“‘That’s great! Must he’
bin expensive, though.”

“Ground-hog case,” said the Galway man.
“Badly lighted port, Danny.”

“And knew not all the while
If they were lighting a bonfire
Or only a funeral pile.’

The wonderful voice took hold of people
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 309.

by their heartstrings; and when she told how
the drenched crews were flung ashore, living
and dead, and they carried the bodies to the
glare of the fires, asking: “Child, is this your
father?” or “Wife, is this your man?” you
could hear hard breathing all over the
benches.

“And when the boats of Brixham
Go out to face the gales,
Think of the love that travels
Like light upon their sails!”

There was very little applause when she
finished. The women were looking for their
handkerchiefs, and many of the men stared at
the ceiling with shiny eyes.

“F’m,” said Salters; “that ’wd cost ye a
dollar to hear at any theatre—maybe two.
Some folk, I presoom, can afford it. ’Seems
downright waste tome. . . . Naow, how
in Jerusalem did Cap Bart Edwardes strike
adrift here?”

“No keepin’ him under,” said an Eastport
man behind. ‘“He’s a poet, an’ he’s baound
to say his piece. ’Comes from daown aour
way, toa*
''310 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

He did not say that Captain B. Edwardes
had striven for five consecutive years to be
allowed to recite a piece of his own composi-
tion on Gloucester Memorial Day. An
amused and exhausted committee had at last
given him his desire. The simplicity and ut-
ter happiness of the old man, as he stood up in
his very best Sunday clothes, won the audience
ere he opened his mouth. They sat unmur-
muring through seven-and-thirty hatchet-
made verses describing at fullest length the
loss of the schooner Joan Hasken off the
(Georges in the gale of 1867, and when he came
to an end they shouted with one kindly throat.

A far-sighted Boston reporter slid away
for a full copy of the epic and an interview
with the author; so that earth had nothing
more to offer Captain Bart Edwardes, ex-
whaler, shipwright, master-fisherman, and
poet, in the seventy-third year of his age.

‘“Naow, I call that sensible,” said the East-
port man. “I’ve bin over that graound with
his writin’, jest as he read it, in my two hands,
and I can testify that he’s got it all in.”

“Tf Dan here could n’t do better’n that
with one hand before breakfast, he ought to
be switched,” said Salters. upholding the hon-
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 318

or of Massachusetts on general principles,
“Not but what I’m free to own he’s consid-
erable litt’ery—fer Maine. Still——”

“Guess Uncle Salters ’s goin’ to die this trip.
Fust compliment he’s ever paid me,” Dan
sniggered. “What’s wrong with you, Harve?
You act all quiet and you look greenish. Feel-
in’ sick?”

“Don’t know what’s the matter with me,”
Harvey replied. ‘‘’Seems if my insides were
too big for my outsides. I’m all crowded up
and shivery.”

“Dispepsy? Pshaw—too bad. We’ll wait
for the readin’, an’ then we'll quit, an’ catch
the tide.”

The widows—they were nearly all of that
season’s making—braced themselves rigidly
like people going to be shot in cold blood, for
they knew what was coming. The summer-
boarder girls in pink and blue shirt-waists
stopped tittering over Captain Edwardes’s
wonderful poem, and looked back to see why
all was silent. The fishermen pressed forward
as that town official who had talked to Cheyne
bobbed up on the platform and began to read
the year’s list of losses, dividing them into
months. Last September’s casualties were
''312 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

mostly single men and strangers, but his voice
rang very loud in the stillness of the hall.

“September 9th.—Schooner Florrie Anderson lost, with
all aboard, off the Georges.

“Reuben Pitman, master, 50, single, Main Street, City.

“Emil Olsen, 19, single, 329 Hammond Street, City.
Denmark.

“Oscar Standberg, single, 25. Sweden.

“Carl Stanberg, single, 28, Main Street. City.

“Pedro, supposed Madeira, single, Keene’s boarding-
house. City.

“Joseph Welsh, alias Joseph Wright, 30, St. John’s,
Newfoundland.”

‘“No—Augusty, Maine,” a voice cried from
the body of the hall.

“He shipped from St. John’s,” said the
reader, looking to see.

“T know it. He belongs in Augusty. My
nevvy.”

The reader made a pencilled correction on
the margin of the list, and resumed

“Same schooner, Charlie Ritchie, Liverpool, Nova
Scotia, 33, single.

“Albert May, 267 Rogers Street, City, 27, single.

“September 27th—Orvin Dollard, 30, married,
drowned in dory off Eastern Point.”
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 313

That shot went home, for one of the widows
flinched where she sat, clasping and unclasp-
ing her hands. Mrs. Cheyne, who had been
listening with wide-opened eyes, threw up her
head and choked. Dan’s mother, a few seats
to the right, saw and heard and quickly moved
to her side. The reading went on. By the
time they reached the January and February
wrecks the shots were falling thick and fast,
and the widows drew breath between their
teeth.

“February 14th—Schooner Harry Randolph dismasted
on the way home from Newfoundland; Asa Musie, mar-
ried, 32, Main Street, City, lost overboard.

“February 23d.—Schooner Gilbert Hope; went astray
in dory, Robert Beavon, 29, married, native of Pubnico,
Nova Scotia.”

But his wife was in the hall. They heard
a low cry, as though a little animal had been
hit. It was stifled at once, and a girl stag-
gered out of the hall. She had been hoping
against hope for months, because some who
have gone adrift in dories have been miracu-
lously picked up by deep-sea sailing-ships.
Now she had her certainty, and Harvey could
see the policeman on the sidewalk hailing a
''314 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

hack for her. ‘It’s fifty cents to the depot”—
the driver began, but the policeman held up
his hand—“but I’m goin’ there anyway.
Jump right in. Look at here, Alf; you don’t
pull me next time my lamps ain’t lit.
Seer”

The side-door closed on the patch of bright
sunshine, and Harvey’s eyes turned again to
the reader and his endless list.

“April 19:h—Schooner Mamie Douglas lost on the
Banks with all hands.

“Edward Canton, 43, master, married, City.

“T). Hawkins, alias Williams, 34, married, Shelbourne,
Nova Scotia.

“G. W. Clay, coloured, 28, married, City.”

And so on, and so on. Great lumps were
rising in Harvey’s throat, and his stomach
reminded him of the day when he fell from
the liner.

“May 10th—Schooner We ’re Here [the blood
tingled all over him]. Otto Svendson, 20, single, City,
lost overboard.”

Once more a low, tearing cry from some-
where at the back of the hall.
''* CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS” 315

“She should n’t ha’ come. She should n’t
ha’ come,” said Long Jack, with a cluck of
pity.

“Don’t scrowge, Harve,” grunted Dan.
Harvey heard that much, but the rest was
all darkness spotted with fiery wheels. Disko
leaned forward and spoke to his wife, where
she sat with one arm round Mrs. Cheyne, and
the other holding down the snatching, catch-
ing, ringed hands.

“Lean your head daown—right daown!”
she whispered. “It’ll go off in a minute.”

“T ca-an’t! I do-don’t! Oh, let me My
Mrs. Cheyne did not at all know what she
said.

“You must,” Mrs. Troop repeated. “Your
boy ’s jest fainted dead away. They do that
some when they’re gettin’ their growth.
"Wish to tend to him? We can git aout this
side. Quite quiet. You come right along with
me. Psha’, my dear, we’re both women, I
guess. We must tend to aour men-folk.
Come!”

The We’re Heres promptly went through
the crowd as a body-guard, and it was a very
white and shaken Harvey that they propped
up on a bench in an anteroom.

 
''316 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

“Favours his ma,” was Mrs. Troop’s only
comment, as the mother bent over her boy.

“How d’ you suppose he could ever stand
it?” she cried indignantly to Cheyne, who had
said nothing at all. “It was horrible—hor-
rible! We should n’t have come. It’s wrong
and wicked! It—it isn’t right! Why—why
could n’t they put these things in the papers,
where they belong? Are you better, dar-
linge”

That made Harvey very properly ashamed.
“Oh, I’m all right, I guess,” he said, strug-
gling to his feet, with a broken giggle. “Must
ha’ been something I ate for breakfast.”

“Coffee, perhaps,” said Cheyne, whose face
was all in hard lines, as though it had been
cut out of bronze. ‘We won't go back again.”

“Guess "t would be ’baout’s well to git
daown to the wharf,” said Disko. “It’s close
in along with them Dagoes, an’ the fresh air
will fresh Mrs. Cheyne up.”

Harvey announced that he never felt better
in his life; but it was not till he saw the We ’re
Here, fresh from the lumper’s hands, at Wou-
verman’s wharf, that he lost his all-overish
feelings in a queer mixture of pride and sor-
rowfulness. Other people—summer boarders.
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” |

and such-like—played about in cat-boats or
looked at the sea from pier-heads; but he
understood things from the inside—more
things than he could begin to think about.
None the less, he could have sat down and
howled because the little schooner was going
off. Mrs. Cheyne simply cried and cried
every step of the way and said most extraor-
dinary things to Mrs. Troop, who “‘babied”
her till Dai, who had not been “‘babied” since
he was six, whistled aloud.

And so the old crowd—Harvey felt like the
most ancient of mariners—dropped into the
old schooner among the battered dories, while
Harvey slipped the stern-fast from the pier-
head, and they slid her along the wharf-side
with their hands. Every one wanted to say so
much that no one said anything in particular.
Harvey bade Dan take care of Uncle Salters’s
sea-boots and Penn’s dory-anchor, and Long
Jack entreated Harvey to remember his les-
sons in seamanship; but the jokes fell flat in
the presence of the two women, and it is hard
to be funny with green harbour-water widen-
ing between good friends.

“Up jib and fores’1!” shouted Disko, get-
ting to the wheel, as the wind took her. “’See
''318 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ”

you later, Harve. Dunno but I come neat
thinkin’ a heap o’ you an’ your folks.”

Then she glided beyond ear-shot, and they
sat down to watch her up the harbour. And
still Mrs. Cheyne wept.

““Psha, my dear,” said Mrs. Troop: “we’re
both women, I guess. Like’s not it’ll ease
your heart to hev your cry aout. God He
knows it never done me a mite o’ good, but
then He knows I’ve had something to cry
fer!”

Now it was a few years later, and upon the
other edge of America, that a young man
came through the clammy sea fog up a windy
street which is flanked with most expensive
houses built of wood to imitate stone. To
him, as he was standing by a hammered iron
gate, entered on horseback—and the horse
would have been cheap at a thousand dollars
—another young man. And this is what they
said:

“Hello, Dan!”

“Hello, Harve!”

““What’s the best with you?”

“Well, I’m so’s to be that kind o’ animal
called second mate this trip. Ain’t you most
''Y

FLL ae

 

BIDDING FAREWELL TO THE “WE'RE HERE,”
'' 
''“CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS ” 321

through with that triple-invoiced college of
yours?”

“Getting that way. I tell you, the Leland
Stanford Junior, isn’t a circumstance to the
old We’re Here; but I’m coming into the
business for keeps next fall.”

‘““Meanin’ aour packets?”

“Nothing else. You just wait till I get my
knife into you, Dan. I’m going to make the
old line lie down and cry when I take hold.”

“T°ll resk it,” said Dan, with a brotherly
grin, as Harvey dismounted and asked wheth-
er he were coming in.

“That ’s what I took the cable fer; but, say,
is the doctor anywheres araound? I ’1l draown
that crazy nigger some day, his one cussed
joke an’ all.”

There was a low, triumphant chuckle, as the
ex-cook of the We’re Here came out of the
fog to take the horse’s bridle. He allowed
no one but himself to attend to any of Har-
vey’s wants.

‘Thick as the Banks, ain’t it, doctor?” said
Dan, propitiatingly.

But the coal-black Celt with the second-
sight did not see fit to reply till he had tapped
Dan on the shoulder, and for the twentieth
''322 “CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS”

time croaked the old, old prophecy in his
ear.

“Master—man. Man—master,” said he.
“You remember, Dan Troop, what I said?
On the We’re Here?”

“Well, I won’t go so far as to deny that it
do look like it as things stand at present,” said
Dan. “She was a noble packet, and one way ~
an’ another I owe her a heap—her and Dad.”

“Me too,” quoth Harvey Cheyne.
'' 
'' 
'' 
'' 
''BERKELEY LIBRARIES

‘iin
''''