Rudyard Kipling : The Complete Novels and Stories. Редьярд Джозеф Киплинг

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      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.

      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 flavour 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 the boy. ‘Ner there ain’t likely to be till ’baout mid-September. ’Tain’t bad coffee. I made it.’

      Harvey drank in silence, and the boy handed him a plate full of pieces of crisp fried pork, which he ate ravenously.

      ‘I’ve dried your clothes. Guess they’ve shrunk some,’ said the boy. ‘They ain’t our style much—none of ’em. Twist round an’ see ef you’re hurt any.’

      Harvey stretched himself in every direction, but could not report any injuries.

      ‘That’s good,’ the boy said heartily. ‘Fix yerself an’ go on deck. Dad wants to see you. I’m his son—Dan, they call me—an’ I’m cook’s helper an’ everything else aboard that’s too dirty for the men. There ain’t no boy here ’cep’ me sence Otto went overboard—an’ he was only a Dutchy, an’ twenty year old at that. How d’you come to fall off in a dead flat ca’am?’

      ‘’Twasn’t a calm,’ said Harvey sulkily. ‘It was a gale, and I was sea-sick. Guess I must have rolled over the rail.’

      ‘There was a little common swell yes’day an’ last night,’ said the boy. ‘But ef thet’s your notion of a gale——’ He whistled. ‘You’ll know more ’fore you’re through. Hurry! Dad’s waitin’.’

      Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all his life received a direct order—never, at least, without long, and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the reasons for the request. Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself walked on the edge of nervous prostration. He could not see why he should be expected to hurry for any man’s pleasure, and said so. ‘Your dad can come down here if he’s so anxious to talk to me. I want him to take me to New York right away. It’ll pay him.’

      Dan opened his eyes, as the size and beauty of this joke dawned on him. ‘Say, dad,’ he shouted up the foc’sle hatch, ‘he says you kin slip down an’ see him ef you’re anxious that way. Hear, dad?’

      The answer came back in the deepest voice Harvey had ever heard from a human chest: ‘Quit foolin’, Dan, and send him to me.’

      Dan sniggered, and threw Harvey his warped bicycle shoes. There was something in the tones on the deck that made the boy dissemble his extreme rage and console himself with the thought of gradually unfolding the tale of his own and his father’s wealth on the voyage home. This rescue would certainly make him a hero among his friends for life. He hoisted himself on deck up a perpendicular ladder, and stumbled aft, over a score of obstructions, to where a small, thick-set, clean-shaven man with gray eyebrows sat on a step that led up to the quarter-deck. The swell had passed in the night, leaving a long, oily sea, dotted round the horizon with the sails of a dozen fishing-boats. Between them lay little black specks, showing where the dories were out fishing. The schooner, with a triangular riding-sail on the mainmast, played easily at anchor, and except for the man by the cabin roof—‘house,’ they call it—she was deserted.

      ‘Mornin’—good afternoon, I should say. You’ve nigh slep’ the clock around, young feller,’ was the greeting.