Captains Courageous | Page 5

and pulled him off and away to leeward;
the great green closed over him, and he went quietly to sleep.
He was roused by the sound of a dinner-horn such as they used to blow
at a summer-school he had once attended in the Adirondacks. Slowly
he remembered that he was Harvey Cheyne, drowned and dead in
mid-ocean, but was too weak to fit things together. A new smell filled
his nostrils; wet and clammy chills ran down his back, and he was
helplessly full of salt water. When he opened his eyes, he perceived
that he was still on the top of the sea, for it was running round him in
silver-coloured hills, and he was lying on a pile of half-dead fish,
looking at a broad human back clothed in a blue jersey.
"It's no good," thought the boy. "I'm dead, sure enough, and this thing

is in charge."
He groaned, and the figure turned its head, showing a pair of little gold
rings half hidden in curly black hair.
"Aha! You feel some pretty well now?" it said. "Lie still so: we trim
better."
With a swift jerk he sculled the flickering boat-head on to a foamless
sea that lifted her twenty full feet, only to slide her into a glassy pit
beyond. But this mountain-climbing did not interrupt blue-jersey's talk.
"Fine good job, I say, that I catch you. Eh, wha-at? Better good job, I
say, your boat not catch me. How you come to fall out?"
"I was sick," said Harvey; "sick, and couldn't help it."
"Just in time I blow my horn, and your boat she yaw a little. Then I see
you come all down. Eh, wha-at? I think you are cut into baits by the
screw, but you dreeft -- dreeft to me, and I make a big fish of you. So
you shall not die this time."
"Where am I?" said Harvey, who could not see that life was particularly
safe where he lay.
"You are with me in the dory -- Manuel my name, and I come from
schooner 'We're Here' of Gloucester. I live to Gloucester. By-and-by
we get supper. Eh, wha-at?"
He seemed to have two pairs of hands and a head of cast-iron, for, not
content with blowing through a big conch-shell, he must needs stand up
to it, swaying with the sway of the flat-bottomed dory, and send a
grinding, thuttering shriek through the fog. How long this
entertainment lasted, Harvey could not remember, for he lay back
terrified at the sight of the smoking swells. He fancied he heard a gun
and a horn and shouting. Something bigger than the dory, but quite as
lively, loomed alongside. Several voices talked at once; he was dropped
into a dark, heaving hole, where men in oilskins gave him a hot drink
and took off his clothes, and he fell asleep.

When he waked he listened for the first breakfast-bell on the steamer,
wondering why his state-room had grown so small. Turning, he looked
into a narrow, triangular cave, lit by a lamp hung against a huge square
beam. A three-cornered table within arm's reach ran from the angle of
the bows to the foremast. At the after end, behind a well-used Plymouth
stove, sat a boy about his own age, with a flat red face and a pair of
twinkling gray eyes. He was dressed in a blue jersey and high rubber
boots. Several pairs of the same sort of foot-wear, an old cap, and some
worn-out woollen socks lay on the floor, and black and yellow oilskins
swayed to and fro beside the bunks. The place was packed as full of
smells as a bale is of cotton. The oilskins had a peculiarly thick flavor
of their own which made a sort of background to the smells of fried fish,
burnt grease, paint, pepper, and stale tobacco; but these, again, were all
hooped together by one encircling smell of ship and salt water. Harvey
saw with disgust that there were no sheets on his bed-place. He was
lying on a piece of dingy ticking full of lumps and nubbles. Then, too,
the boat's motion was not that of a steamer. She was neither sliding nor
rolling, but rather wriggling herself about in a silly, aimless way, like a
colt at the end of a halter. Water-noises ran by close to his ear, and
beams creaked and whined about him. All these things made him grunt
despairingly and think of his mother.
"Feelin' better?" said the boy, with a grin. "Hev some coffee?" He
brought a tin cup full and sweetened it with molasses.
"Isn't there milk?" said Harvey, looking round the dark double tier of
bunks as if he expected to find a cow there.
"Well, no," said