Captains Courageous | Page 3

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This Project Gutenberg Etext prepared by David Reed
Our version cptcr10.txt was prepared by Bill
Stoddard

"CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS"
A STORY OF THE GRAND BANKS
by Rudyard Kipling

TO JAMES CONLAND, M.D., Brattleboro, Vermont
I ploughed the land with horses, But my heart was ill at ease, For the
old sea-faring men Came to me now and then, With their sagas of the
seas.
Longfellow.
CHAPTER I
The weather door of the smoking-room had been left open to the North
Atlantic fog, as the big liner rolled and lifted, whistling to warn the
fishing-fleet.
"That Cheyne boy's the biggest nuisance aboard," said a man in a frieze

overcoat, shutting the door with a bang. "He isn't wanted here. He's too
fresh."
A white-haired German reached for a sandwich, and grunted between
bites: "I know der breed. Ameriga is full of dot kind. I dell you you
should imbort ropes' ends free under your dariff."
"Pshaw! There isn't any real harm to him. He's more to be pitied than
anything," a man from New York drawled, as he lay at full length along
the cushions under the wet skylight. "They've dragged him around from
hotel to hotel ever since he was a kid. I was talking to his mother this
morning. She's a lovely lady, but she don't pretend to manage him. He's
going to Europe to finish his education."
"Education isn't begun yet." This was a Philadelphian, curled up in a
corner. "That boy gets two hundred a month pocket-money, he told me.
He isn't sixteen either."
"Railroads, his father, aind't it?" said the German.
"Yep. That and mines and lumber and shipping. Built one place at San
Diego, the old man has; another at Los Angeles; owns half a dozen
railroads, half the lumber on the Pacific slope, and lets his wife spend
the money," the Philadelphian went on lazily. "The West don't suit her,
she says. She just tracks around with the boy and her nerves, trying to
find out what'll amuse him, I guess. Florida, Adirondacks, Lakewood,
Hot Springs, New York, and round again. He isn't much more than a
second-hand hotel clerk now. When he's finished in Europe he'll be a
holy terror."
"What's the matter with the old man attending to him personally?" said
a voice from the frieze ulster.
"Old man's piling up the rocks. 'Don't want to be disturbed, I guess.
He'll find out his error a few years from now. 'Pity, because there's a
heap of good in the boy if you could get at it."
"Mit a rope's end; mit a rope's end!" growled the German.

Once more the door banged, and a slight, slim-built boy perhaps fifteen
years old, a half-smoked cigarette hanging