Captains Courageous Part 3

"Thet's nothin'. Lets the sh.o.r.e blood outer 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's" a thief. We ain't any common wharf-end crowd by any manner o' means. We're fishermen, an' we've s.h.i.+pped 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 an' his fixin's, I'd say that 'baout your dollars. I dunno what was in your pockets when I dried your kit, fer I didn'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 bloodletting 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 confusedly. "'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."

"I might have thought about losing the bills that way," Harvey said, half to himself, "instead of calling everybody in sight a thief Where's your father?"

"In 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 s.h.i.+p's clock 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

"I haven't acted quite right," said Harvey, surprised at his own meekness.

"What's wrong naow?" said the skipper "Walked into Dan, hev ye?"

"No; it's about you."

"I'm 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.

"Ey? 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 'twould do you sights o' good; an' this shows I weren't mistook in my jedgments." A smothered chuckle on deck caught his ear. "I am very seldom mistook in my jedgments." The eleven-inch hand closed on Harvey's, numbing it to the elbow. "We'll 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 regained the deck, flushed to the tips of his ears.

"I don't feel it," said he.

"I 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--fis.h.i.+n'. The men'll be back like sharks after a dead whale in ha'af an hour."

"What for?" said Harvey. "Supper, o' course. Don't your stummick tell you? You've a heap to learn."

"'Guess I have," said Harvey, dolefully, looking at the tangle of ropes and blocks overhead.

"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 darkness 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."

"Alive?" 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 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 towards them over the s.h.i.+ning, 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 be has fair fis.h.i.+n' 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 grey."

"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 ag'in' 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'

cuc.u.mbers. Yes, he's stung up from his elbows down. That man's luck's perfectly paralysin'. 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."