Rudyard Kipling - Rudyard Kipling - The Complete Novels and Stories

‘Hi!’ said Long Jack, with a scoop of his mittened hand. The cod’s liver dropped in the basket. Another wrench and scoop sent the head and offal flying, and the empty fish slid across to Uncle Salters, who snorted fiercely. There was another sound of tearing, the backbone flew over the bulwarks, and the fish, headless, gutted, and open, splashed in the tub, sending the salt water into Harvey’s astonished mouth. After the first yell, the men were silent. The cod moved along as though they were alive, and long ere Harvey had ceased wondering at the miraculous dexterity of it all, his tub was full.

‘Pitch!’ grunted Uncle Salters, without turning his head, and Harvey pitched the fish by twos and threes down the hatch.

‘Hi! Pitch ’em bunchy,’ shouted Dan. ‘Don’t scatter! Uncle Salters is the best splitter in the fleet. Watch him mind his book!’

Indeed, it looked a little as though the round uncle were cutting magazine pages against time. Manuel’s body, cramped over from the hips, stayed like a statue; but his long arms grabbed the fish without ceasing. Little Penn toiled valiantly, but it was easy to see he was weak. Once or twice Manuel found time to help him without breaking the chain of supplies, and once Manuel howled because he had caught his finger in a Frenchman’s hook. These hooks are made of soft metal to be rebent after use; but the cod very often get away with them and are hooked again elsewhere; and that is one of the many reasons why Gloucester boats despise the Frenchmen.

Down below, the rasping sound of rough salt rubbed on rough flesh sounded like the whirring of a grindstone—a steady undertune to the ‘click-nick’ of the knives in the pen, the wrench and schloop of torn heads, dropped liver and flying offal; the ‘caraaah’ of Uncle Salters’s knife scooping away backbones; and the flap of wet, opened bodies falling into the tub.

At the end of an hour Harvey would have given the world to rest; for fresh, wet cod weigh more than you would think, and his back ached with the steady pitching. But he felt for the first time in his life that he was one of a working gang of men, took pride in the thought, and held on sullenly.

‘Knife oh!’ shouted Uncle Salters at last. Penn doubled up, gasping among the fish, Manuel bowed back and forth to supple himself, and Long Jack leaned over the bulwarks. The cook appeared, noiseless as a black shadow, collected a mass of backbones and heads, and retreated.

‘Blood-ends for breakfast an’ head-chowder,’ said Long Jack, smacking his lips.

‘Knife oh!’ repeated Uncle Salters, waving the flat, curved splitter’s weapon.

‘Look by your foot, Harve,’ cried Dan below.

Harvey saw half a dozen knives stuck in a cleat in the hatch combing. He dealt these around, taking over the dulled ones.

‘Water!’ said Disko Troop.

‘Scuttle-butt’s for’ard an’ the dipper’s alongside. Hurry, Harve,’ said Dan.

He was back in a minute with a big dipperful of stale brown water which tasted like nectar, and loosed the jaws of Disko and Tom Platt.

‘These are cod,’ said Disko. ‘They ain’t Damarskus figs, Tom Platt, nor yet silver bars. I’ve told you that every single time sence we’ve sailed together.’

‘A matter o’ seven seasons,’ returned Tom Platt coolly. ‘Good stowin’s good stowin’ all the same, an’ there’s a right an’ a wrong way o’ stowin’ ballast even. If you’d ever seen four hundred ton o’ iron set into the——’

‘Hi!’ With a yell from Manuel the work began again, and never stopped till the pen was empty. The instant the last fish was down, Disko Troop rolled aft to the cabin with his brother; Manuel and Long Jack went forward; Tom Platt only waited long enough to slide home the hatch ere he too disappeared. In half a minute Harvey heard deep snores in the cabin, and he was staring blankly at Dan and Penn.

‘I did a little better that time, Danny,’ said Penn, whose eyelids were heavy with sleep. ‘But I think it is my duty to help clean.’

‘Wouldn’t hev your conscience fer a thousand quintal,’ said Dan. ‘Turn in, Penn. You’ve no call to do boy’s work. Draw a bucket, Harvey. Oh, Penn, dump these in the gurry-butt ’fore you sleep. Kin you keep awake that long?’

Penn took up the heavy basket of fish-livers, emptied them into a cask with a hinged top lashed by the foc’sle; then he too dropped out of sight in the cabin.

‘Boys clean up after dressin’ down, an’ first watch in ca’am weather is boys’ watch on the We’re Here .’ Dan sluiced the pen energetically, unshipped the table, set it up to dry in the moonlight, ran the red knife-blades through a wad of oakum, and began to sharpen them on a tiny grindstone, as Harvey threw offal and backbones overboard under his direction.

At the first splash a silvery-white ghost rose bolt upright from the oily water and sighed a weird whistling sigh. Harvey started back with a shout, but Dan only laughed. ‘Grampus,’ said he. ‘Beggin’ fer fish-heads. They up-eend thet way when they’re hungry. Breath on him like the doleful tombs, hain’t he?’ A horrible stench of decayed fish filled the air as the pillar of white sank, and the water bubbled oilily. ‘Hain’t ye never seen a grampus up-eend before? You’ll see ’em by hundreds ’fore ye’re through. Say, it’s good to hev a boy aboard again. Otto was too old, an’ a Dutchy at that. Him an’ me we fought consid’ble. Wouldn’t ha keered fer thet ef he’d hed a Christian tongue in his head. Sleepy?’

‘Dead sleepy,’ said Harvey, nodding forward.

‘Mustn’t sleep on watch. Rouse up an’ see ef our anchor-light’s bright an’ shinin’. You’re on watch now, Harve.’

‘Pshaw! What’s to hurt us? Bright’s day. Sn—orrr!’

‘Jest when things happen, dad says. Fine weather’s good sleepin’, an’ ’fore you know mebbe you’re cut in two by a liner, an’ seventeen brass-bound officers, all gen’elmen, lift their hand to it that your lights was aout an’ there was a thick fog. Harve, I’ve kinder took to you, but ef you nod onct more I’ll lay into you with a rope’s end.’

The moon, who sees many strange things on the Banks, looked down on a slim youth in knickerbockers and a red jersey, staggering around the cluttered decks of a seventy-ton schooner, while behind him, waving a knotted rope, walked, after the manner of an executioner, a boy who yawned and nodded between the blows he dealt.

The lashed wheel groaned and kicked softly, the riding-sail slatted a little in the shifts of the light wind, the windlass creaked, and the miserable procession continued. Harvey expostulated, threatened, whimpered, and at last wept outright, while Dan, the words clotting on his tongue, spoke of the beauty of watchfulness and slashed away with the rope’s end, punishing the dories as often as he hit Harvey. At last the clock in the cabin struck ten, and upon the tenth stroke little Penn crept on deck. He found two boys in two tumbled heaps side by side on the main hatch, so deeply asleep that he actually rolled them to their berths.

▲▲▲

It was the forty-fathom slumber that clears the soul and eye and heart, and sends you to breakfast ravening. They emptied a big tin dish of juicy fragments of fish—the blood-ends the cook had collected overnight. They cleaned up the plates and pans of the elder mess, who were out fishing, sliced pork for the mid-day meal, swabbed down the foc’sle, filled the lamps, drew coal and water for the cook, and investigated the fore-hold, where the boat’s stores were stacked. It was another perfect day—soft, mild, and clear; and Harvey breathed to the very bottom of his lungs.

More schooners had crept up in the night, and the long blue seas were full of sails and dories. Far away on the horizon, the smoke of some liner, her hull invisible, smudged the blue, and to eastward a big ship’s top-gallant sails, just lifting, made a square nick in it. Disko Troop was smoking by the roof of the cabin—one eye on the craft around, and the other on the little fly at the mainmast-head.