THE COMPLETE WORKS OF RUDYARD KIPLING (Illustrated Edition). Rudyard 1865-1936 Kipling
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what he gave the crews who had sympathised with him. It is on record that the last crew took entire charge of switching operations at Sixteenth 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 Limited from Chicago to Elkhart is something of an autocrat, and he does not approve of being told how to back up to a 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 Fe 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 Chicago 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 "Constance" 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 waiting 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 mother fondled it. His voice was thickened with living in the open, salt air; his palms were rough and hard, his wrists dotted with the 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. Indeed, he caught himself thinking that he knew very little whatever of his son; but he distinctly 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 permanent, 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 didn't you tell this man, Troop, 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 is."
"Why didn't you tell him to put you ashore? You know papa would have made it up to him ten times over."
"I know it; but he thought I was crazy. I'm afraid I called him a thief because I couldn'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 wouldn'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 twinkle 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 hold with Dan and pitched right in. I can't do a man's work yet. But I can handle a dory 'most 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 another cup, please. Say, you've no notion what a heap of work there is in ten and a half a month!"
"I began with eight and a half, my son," said Cheyne.
"'That so? You never told me, sir."
"You never asked, Harve. I'll 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. Best 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 Salters and his manures, an' he reads Josephus. He's sure I'm crazy yet. And there's poor little Penn, and he is crazy. You mustn'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."
"I wonder your nervous system isn't completely 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 rocking 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 sure Dan believes. I want to paralyse 'em to-morrow. Say, can't they run the 'Constance' over to Gloucester? Mama don't look fit to be moved, anyway, and we're bound to finish cleaning out by to-morrow. Wouverman takes our fish. You see, we're 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'll have to work to-morrow, then?"
"I 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 importance that made his father choke. "There isn't but three—no—two ninety-four or five quintal more by my reckoning."
"Hire 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 'Constance' 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 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 watching 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 neglectful 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 hasn't, I haven'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