Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling (e manga reader .txt) đ
- Author: Rudyard Kipling
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âWhy, Pennsylvania Pratt,â Salters would shout âYouâll fergit me next!â
âNoânever,â Penn would say, shutting his lips firmly. âPennsylvania Pratt, of course,â he would repeat over and over. Sometimes it was Uncle Salters who forgot, and told him he was Haskins or Rich or McVitty; but Penn was equally contentâtill 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 Saltersâs big sea-boots up thereâa 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 âDonât you want to do so and so?â and âGuess youâd better,â 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 whatsoever; led him, pencil in hand, from berth to berth over the whole string of banksâLe Have, Western, Banquereau, St. Pierre, Green, and Grandâtalking âcodâ meantime. Taught him, too, the principle on which the âhog-yokeâ 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-score 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 âWeâre Hereâ just when she needed it. These things he did as automatically 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 information flying about the schooner on stormy days, when they lay up in the focâsle or sat on the cabin lockers, while spare eye-bolts, leads, 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 tossing 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 ânipâ of â71, when twelve hundred men were made homeless on the ice in three daysâwonderful 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 Jackâs tastes ran more to the supernatural. He held them silent with ghastly stories of the âYo-hoesâ 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 Kiddâs men; of ships that sailed in the fog straight over Truro township; of that harbor 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 the anchor in the bow of their old-fashioned boat, whistlingânot calling, but whistlingâfor 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 entertained in country-houses with hardwood floors and Vantine portires. He laughed at the ghost-tales,ânot as much as he would have done a month before,âbut ended by sitting still and shuddering.
Tom Platt dealt with his interminable trip round the Horn on the old Ohio in flogging days, with a navy more extinct than the dodoâthe 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 blockadeâlong weeks of swaying at anchor, varied only by the departure and return of steamers that had used up their coal (there was no chance for the sailing-ships); of gales and cold that kept two hundred men, night and day, pounding and chopping at the ice on cable, blocks, and rigging, when the galley was as red-hot as the fortâs 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 invention 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.
Manuelâs talk was slow and gentleâall 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 âJosephusâ 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 âOrange Juddâ 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 Saltersâs lectures that the boy gave it up, and suffered in polite silence. That was very good for Harvey.
The cook naturally did not join in these conversations. 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 communicative with the boys, and he never withdrew his prophecy that one day Harvey would be Danâs master, and that he would see it. He told them of mail-carrying in the winter up Cape Breton way, of the dog-train that goes to Coudray, and of the ram-steamer Arctic, that breaks the ice between the mainland 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 cooking was to his taste; and this always made the âsecond halfâ laugh. Yet they had a great respect for the cookâs judgment, and in their hearts considered Harvey something of a mascot by consequence.
And while Harvey was taking in knowledge of new things at each pore and hard health with every gulp of the good air, the Weâre Here went her ways and did her business on the Bank, and the silvery-gray kenches of well-pressed fish mounted higher and higher in the hold. No one dayâs work was out of common, but the average days were many and close together.
Naturally, a man of Diskoâs reputation was closely watchedââscrowged upon,â Dan called itâby 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 experirnents, 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 added there are fine chances for every kind of accident in the crowded fleet, which, like a mob of sheep, is huddled round some unrecognized leader. âLet the two Jeraulds lead âem,â said Disko. âWeâre baound to lay among âem for a spell on the Eastern Shoals; though ef luck holds, we wonât hev to lay long. Where we are naow, Harve, ainât considered noways good graound.â
âAinât it?â said Harvey, who was drawing water (he had learned just how to wiggle the bucket), after an unusually long dressing-down. âShouldnât mind striking some poor ground for a change, then.â
âAll the graound I want to seeâdonât want to strike herâis Eastern Point,â said Dan. âSay, Dad, it looksâs if we wouldnât hev to lay moreân two weeks on the Shoals. Youâll meet all the compâny you want then, Harve. Thatâs the time we begin to work. No regâlar meals fer no one then. âMug-up when yeâre hungry, anâ sleep when ye canât keep awake. Good job you wasnât picked up a month later than you was, or weâd never haâ had you dressed in shape fer the Old Virgin.â
Harvey understood from the Eldridge chart that the Old Virgin and a nest of curiously named shoals were the turning-point of the cruise, and that with good luck they would wet the balance of their salt there. But seeing 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 understood the need of it till, after some blinding thick days, they heard the unmelodious tooting of a foot-power fog-hornâa 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. âSquare-rigger bellowinâ fer his latitude,â said Long Jack. The dripping red headsails of a bark glided out of the fog, and the âWeâre Hereâ rang her bell thrice, using sea shorthand.
The larger boat backed her topsail with shrieks and shoutings.
âFrenchman,â said Uncle Salters, scornfully. âMiquelon boat from St. Malo.â The farmer had a weatherly sea-eye. âIâm âmost outer âbaccy, too, Disko.â
âSame here,â said Tom Platt. âHi! Backez vousâbackez vous! Standez awayez, you butt-ended mucho-bono! Where you fromâ St. Malo, eh?â
âAh, ha! Mucho bono! Oui! oui! Clos PouletâSt. Malo! St. Pierre et Miquelon,â cried the other crowd, waving woollen caps and laughing. Then all together, âBord! Bord!â
âBring up the board, Danny. Beats me how them Frenchmen fetch anywheres, exceptinâ Americaâs fairish broadly. Forty-six forty-nineâs good enough fer them; anâ I guess itâs abaout right, too.â
Dan chalked the figures on the board, and they hung it in the main-rigging to a chorus of mercis from the bark.
âSeems kinder uneighbourly to let âem swedge off like this,â Salters suggested, feeling in his pockets.
âHev ye learned French then sence last trip?â said Disko. âI donât want no more
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