Captains Courageous
Rudyard Kipling
CHAPTER IX Page 2
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 reporter, telegraphed on from Boston. The joyful journalese revealed that it was beyond 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 Continent behind them. Towns and villages were close together now, and a man could feel here that he moved among people.
"I 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."
"I don't care. I want to feel we're moving. Sit down and tell me the miles."
It is not true that, as they changed engines at Fort Madison, Cheyne passed over to the 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 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 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. we're tryin' for a record, we'll let you know."
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 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. 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."
"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."
"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 and be drowned," the mother said bitterly.
"We'll go and look, ready to throw him a rope in case. You've never seen him working for his bread," said the father.
"nonsense! As if any one expected -"
"Well, the man that hired him did. He's about right, too."
"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, checking 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 Disko the tally, shouting, "Two ninety-seven, and an empty hold!"
"Eight sixty-five. Three thousand six hundred 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 hevn'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 boarders.
"Well, he's a 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."
"Is 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."
"I should very much, indeed. 'Twon't hurt you, mama, and you'll be able to see for yourself."
The woman who could not lift her head a 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."
"He'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. 'Tain't anyways in order, but you're quite welcome to look around. Those are his figures 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 as knows more'n he do, especially about farmin'; 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."
"I 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 character, 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.
"I 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."
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 thrue now?"
"Very 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.
"I 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."