Captains Courageous. Rudyard Kipling
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said Harvey.
“Well, no. They’re so’s to be ruther dead – an’ flat – an’ salt. There’s a hundred hogshead o’ salt in the bins; an’ we hain’t more’n covered our dunnage to now.”
“Where are the fish, though?”
“ ‘In the sea, they say; in the boats, we pray’,” said Dan, quoting a fisherman’s proverb. “You come in last night with ’baout forty of ’em.”
He pointed to a sort of wooden pen just in front of the quarter-deck.
“You an’ me we’ll sluice that out when they’re through. ’Send we’ll hev full pens tonight! 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 towards them over the shining, silky sea.
“I’ve never seen the sea from so low down,” said Harvey. “It’s fine.”
The low sun made the water all purple and pinkish, with golden lights on the barrels of the long swells, and blue and green mackerel 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, between his half-shut eyes. “Manuel hain’t room fer another fish. Low ez a lily-pad in still water, ain’t he?”
“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 o’ him – he’s a heap better’n he rows – 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 you?”
A melodious bellow stole across the water from the northern dory. Harvey heard something 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’ full.”
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 and share he’s the only man stung up to-day – an’ he’s stung up good.”
“What’ll sting him?” said Harvey, getting interested.
“Strawberries, mostly. Punkins, sometimes, 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’ h’ist ’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 it?”
“I’m going to try to work, anyway,” Harvey replied stoutly. “Only it’s all dead new.”
“Lay a-holt o’ that tackle, then. Behind ye!”
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 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 Harvey 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 crosstrees!” Dan laughed; and Harvey held on, for the boat lay in the air above his head.
“Lower away,” Dan shouted; and as Harvey lowered, Dan swayed the light boat with one hand till it landed softly just behind the 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?”
“I’m – I’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.
“I 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 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. I’ll 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. “I’m murderin’ meself to fill your pockuts. Slate ut for a bad catch. The Portugee has bate me.”
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 bottom of the boat.
“He’s caught on good,” said the scarred