Rudyard Kipling - Captains Courageous

“Thirty fathom,” said Dan, stringing a salt clam on to the hook. “Over with the dough-boys. Bait same’s I do, Harve, an’ don’t snarl your reel.”

Dan’s line was out long before Harvey had mastered the mystery of baiting and heaving out the leads. The dory drifted along easily. It was not worth while to anchor till they were sure of good ground.

“Here we come!” Dan shouted, and a shower of spray rattled on Harvey’s shoulders as a big cod flapped and kicked alongside. “Muckle, Harvey, muckle! Under your hand! Quick!”

Evidently “muckle” could not be the dinner-horn, so Harvey passed over the maul, and Dan scientifically stunned the fish before he pulled it inboard, and wrenched out the hook with the short wooden stick he called a “gob-stick”. Then Harvey felt a tug, and pulled up zealously.

“Why, these are strawberries!” he shouted. “Look!”

The hook had fouled among a bunch of strawberries, red on one side and white on the other – perfect reproductions of the land fruit, except that there were no leaves, and the stem was all pipy and slimy.

“Don’t tech ’em! Slat ’em off. Don’t – ”

The warning came too late. Harvey had picked them from the hook, and was admiring them.

“Ouch!” he cried, for his fingers throbbed as though he had grasped many nettles.

“Naow ye know what strawberry-bottom means. Nothin’ ’cep’ fish should be teched with the naked fingers, dad says. Slat ’em off agin’ the gunnel, an’ bait up, Harve. Lookin’ won’t help any. It’s all in the wages.”

Harvey smiled at the thought of his ten and a half dollars a month, and wondered what his mother would say if she could see him hanging over the edge of a fishing-dory in mid-ocean. She suffered agonies whenever he went out on Saranac Lake; and, by the way, Harvey remembered distinctly that he used to laugh at her anxieties. Suddenly the line flashed through his hand, stinging even through the “flippers”, the woolen circlets supposed to protect it.

“He’s a logy. Give him room accordin’ to his strength,” cried Dan. “I’ll help ye.”

“No, you won’t,” Harvey snapped, as he hung on to the line. “It’s my first fish. Is – is it a whale?”

“Halibut, mebbe.” Dan peered down into the water alongside, and flourished the big “muckle”, ready for all chances. Something white and oval flickered and fluttered through the green. “I’ll lay my wage an’ share he’s over a hundred. Are you so everlastin’ anxious to land him alone?” Harvey’s knuckles were raw and bleeding where they had been banged against the gunwale; his face was purple-blue between excitement and exertion; he dripped with sweat, and was half blinded from staring at the circling sunlit ripples about the swiftly moving line. The boys were tired long ere the halibut, who took charge of them and the dory for the next twenty minutes. But the big flat fish was gaffed and hauled in at last.

“Beginner’s luck,” said Dan, wiping his forehead. “He’s all of a hundred.”

Harvey looked at the huge gray-and-mottled creature with unspeakable pride. He had seen halibut many times on marble slabs ashore, but it had never occurred to him to ask how they came inland. Now he knew; and every inch of his body ached with fatigue.

“Ef dad was along,” said Dan, hauling up, “he’d read the signs plain’s print. The fish are runnin’ smaller an’ smaller, an’ you’ve took ’baout as logy a halibut’s we’re apt to find this trip. Yesterday’s catch – did ye notice it? – was all big fish an’ no halibut. Dad he’d read them signs right off. Dad says everythin’ on the Banks is signs, an’ can be read wrong er right. Dad’s deeper’n the Whale-hole.”

Even as he spoke some one fired a pistol on the We’re Here, and a potato-basket was run up in the fore-rigging.

“What did I say, naow? That’s the call fer the whole crowd. Dad’s onter something, er he’d never break fishin’ this time o’ day. Reel up, Harve, an’ we’ll pull back.”

They were to windward of the schooner, just ready to flirt the dory over the still sea, when sounds of woe half a mile off led them to Penn, who was careering around a fixed point, for all the world like a gigantic water-bug. The little man backed away and came down again with enormous energy, but at the end of each manoeuvre his dory swung round and snubbed herself on her rope.

“We’ll hev to help him, else he’ll root an’ seed here,” said Dan.

“What’s the matter?” said Harvey. This was a new world, where he could not lay down the law to his elders, but had to ask questions humbly. And the sea was horribly big and unexcited.

“Anchor’s fouled. Penn’s always losing ’em. Lost two this trip a’ready, – on sandy bottom, too, – an’ dad says next one he loses, sure’s fishin’, he’ll give him the kelleg. That ’u’d break Penn’s heart.”

“What’s a ‘kelleg’?” said Harvey, who had a vague idea it might be some kind of marine torture, like keel-hauling in the story-books.

“Big stone instid of an anchor. You kin see a kelleg ridin’ in the bows fur’s you can see a dory, an’ all the Fleet knows what it means. They’d guy him dreadful. Penn couldn’t stand that no more’n a dog with a dipper to his tail. He’s so everlastin’ sensitive. Hello, Penn! Stuck again? Don’t try any more o’ your patents. Come up on her, and keep your rodin’ straight up an’ down.”

“It doesn’t move,” said the little man, panting. “It doesn’t move at all, and indeed I tried everything.”

“What’s all this hurrah’s-nest for’ard?” said Dan, pointing to a wild tangle of spare oars and dory-roding, all matted together by the hand of inexperience.

“Oh, that,” said Penn, proudly, “is a Spanish windlass. Mr. Salters showed me how to make it; but even that doesn’t move her.”

Dan bent low over the gunwale to hide a smile, twitched once or twice on the roding, and, behold, the anchor drew at once.

“Haul up, Penn,” he said, laughing, “er she’ll git stuck again.”

They left him regarding the weed-hung flukes of the little anchor with big, pathetic blue eyes, and thanking them profusely.

“Oh, say, while I think of it, Harve,” said Dan, when they were out of ear-shot, “Penn ain’t quite all caulked. He ain’t nowise dangerous, but his mind’s give out. See?”

“Is that so, or is it one of your father’s judgments?” Harvey asked, as he bent to his oars. He felt he was learning to handle them more easily.

“Dad ain’t mistook this time. Penn’s a sure ’nuff loony. No, he ain’t thet, exactly, so much ez a harmless ijjit. It was this way (you’re rowin’ quite so, Harve), an’ I tell you ’cause it’s right you orter know. He was a Moravian preacher once. Jacob Boller wuz his name, dad told me, an’ he lived with his wife an’ four children somewheres out Pennsylvania way. Well, Penn he took his folks along to a Moravian meetin’, – camp-meetin’, most like, – an’ they stayed over jest one night in Johnstown. You’ve heered talk o’ Johnstown?”

Harvey considered. “Yes, I have. But I don’t know why. It sticks in my head same as Ashtabula.”

“Both was big accidents – thet’s why, Harve. Well, that one single night Penn and his folks was to the hotel Johnstown was wiped out. Dam bu’st an’ flooded her, an’ the houses struck adrift an’ bumped into each other an’ sunk. I’ve seen the pictures, an’ they’re dretful. Penn he saw his folk drowned all ’n a heap ’fore he rightly knew what was comin’. His mind give out from that on. He mistrusted somethin’ hed happened up to Johnstown, but for the poor life of him he couldn’t remember what, an’ he jest drifted araound smilin’ an’ wonderin’. He didn’t know what he was, nor yit what he hed bin, an’ thet way he run agin’ Uncle Salters, who was visitin’ ’n Allegheny City. Ha’af my mother’s folks they live scattered inside o’ Pennsylvania, an’ Uncle Salters he visits araound winters. Uncle Salters he kinder adopted Penn, well knowin’ what his trouble wuz; an’ he brought him East, an’ he give him work on his farm.”