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

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СКАЧАТЬ explains it, then. I don’t blame Troop any. I just said I wouldn’t work—on a Banker, too—and of course he hit me on the nose, and, oh! I bled like a stuck hog.’

      ‘My poor darling! They must have abused you horribly.’

      ‘Dunno quite. Well, after that, I saw a light.’

      Cheyne slapped his leg and chuckled. This was going to be a boy after his own hungry heart. He had never seen precisely that twinkle in Harvey’s eye before.

      ‘And the old man gave me ten and a half a month; he’s paid me half now; and I took hold with Dan and pitched right in. I can’t do a man’s work yet. But I can handle a dory ’most as well as Dan, and I don’t get rattled in a fog—much; and I can take my trick in light winds—that’s steering, dear—and I can ’most bait up a trawl, and I know my ropes, of course; and I can pitch fish till the cows come home, and I’m great on old Josephus, and I’ll show you how I can clear coffee with a piece of fish-skin and—I think I’ll have another cup, please. Say, you’ve no notion what a heap of work there is in ten and a half a month!’

      ‘I began with eight and a half, my son,’ said Cheyne.

      ‘That so? You never told me, sir.’

      ‘You never asked, Harve. I’ll tell you about it some day, if you care to listen. Try a stuffed olive.’

      ‘Troop says the most interesting thing in the world is to find out how the next man gets his vittles. It’s great to have a trimmed-up meal again. We were well fed, though. Best mug on the Banks. Disko fed us first-class. He’s a great man. And Dan—that’s his son—Dan’s my partner. And there’s Uncle Salters and his manures, an’ he reads Josephus. He’s sure I’m crazy yet. And there’s poor little Penn, and he is crazy. You mustn’t talk to him about Johnstown, because—And, oh, you must know Tom Platt and Long Jack and Manuel. Manuel saved my life. I’m sorry he’s a Portugee. He can’t talk much, but he’s an everlasting musician. He found me struck adrift and drifting, and hauled me in.’

      ‘I wonder your nervous system isn’t completely wrecked,’ said Mrs. Cheyne.

      ‘What for, mamma? I worked like a horse and I ate like a hog and I slept like a dead man.’

      That was too much for Mrs. Cheyne, who began to think of her visions of a corpse rocking on the salty seas. She went to her state-room, and Harvey curled up beside his father, explaining his indebtedness.

      ‘You can depend upon me to do everything I can for the crowd, Harve. They seem to be good men on your showing.’

      ‘Best in the fleet, sir. Ask at Gloucester,’ said Harvey. ‘But Disko believes still he’s cured me of being crazy. Dan’s the only one I’ve let on to about you, and our private cars and all the rest of it, and I’m not quite sure Dan believes. I want to paralyse ’em to-morrow. Say, can’t they run the “Constance” over to Gloucester? Mamma don’t look fit to be moved, anyway, and we’re bound to finish cleaning out by to-morrow. Wouverman takes our fish. You see, we’re first off the Banks this season, and it’s four twenty-five a quintal. We held out till he paid it. They want it quick.’

      ‘You mean you’ll have to work to-morrow, then?’

      ‘I told Troop I would. I’m on the scales. I’ve brought the tallies with me.’ He looked at the greasy notebook with an air of importance that made his father choke. ‘There isn’t but three—no—two ninety-four or five quintal more by my reckoning.’

      ‘Hire a substitute,’ suggested Cheyne, to see what Harvey would say.

      ‘Can’t, sir. I’m tally-man for the schooner. Troop says I’ve a better head for figures than Dan. Troop’s a mighty just man.’

      ‘Well, suppose I don’t move the “Constance” to-night, how’ll you fix it?’

      Harvey looked at the clock, which marked twenty past eleven.

      ‘Then I’ll sleep here till three and catch the four o’clock freight. They let us men from the fleet ride free as a rule.’

      ‘That’s a notion. But I think we can get the “Constance” around about as soon as your men’s freight. Better go to bed now.’

      Harvey spread himself on the sofa, kicked off his boots, and was asleep before his father could shade the electrics. Cheyne sat watching the young face under the shadow of the arm thrown over the forehead, and among many things that occurred to him was the notion that he might perhaps have been neglectful as a father.

      ‘One never knows when one’s taking one’s biggest risks,’ he said. ‘It might have been worse than drowning; but I don’t think it has—I don’t think it has. If it hasn’t, I haven’t enough to pay Troop, that’s all; and I don’t think it has.’

      Morning brought a fresh sea breeze through the windows, the ‘Constance’ was side-tracked among freight-cars at Gloucester, and Harvey had gone to his business.

      ‘Then he’ll fall overboard again and be drowned,’ the mother said bitterly.

      ‘We’ll go and look, ready to throw him a rope in case. You’ve never seen him working for his bread,’ said the father.

      ‘What nonsense! As if any one expected——’

      ‘Well, the man that hired him did. He’s about right, too.’

      They went down between the stores full of fishermen’s oilskins to Wouverman’s wharf, where the We’re Here rode high, her Bank flag still flying, all hands busy as beavers in the glorious morning light. Disko stood by the main-hatch superintending Manuel, Penn, and Uncle Salters at the tackle. Dan was swinging the loaded baskets inboard as Long Jack and Tom Platt filled them, and Harvey, with a notebook, represented the skipper’s interests before the clerk of the scales on the salt-sprinkled wharf-edge.

      ‘Ready!’ cried the voices below. ‘Haul!’ cried Disko. ‘Hi!’ said Manuel. ‘Here!’ said Dan, swinging the basket. Then they heard Harvey’s voice, clear and fresh, checking the weights.

      The last of the fish had been whipped out, and Harvey leaped from the string-piece six feet to a ratline, as the shortest way to hand Disko the tally, shouting, ‘Two ninety-seven, and an empty hold!’

      ‘What’s total, Harve?’ said Disko.

      ‘Eight sixty-five. Three thousand six hundred and seventy-six dollars and a quarter. Wish I’d share as well as wage.’

      ‘Well, I won’t go so far as to say you hevn’t deserved it, Harve. Don’t you want to slip up to Wouverman’s office and take him our tallies?’

      ‘Who’s that boy?’ said Cheyne to Dan, well used to all manner of questions from those idle imbeciles called summer-boarders.

      ‘Well, he’s a kind o’ supercargo,’ was the answer. ‘We picked him up struck adrift on the Banks. Fell overboard from a liner, he sez. He was a passenger. He’s by way o’ bein’ a fisherman now.’

      ‘Is he worth his keep?’

      ‘Ye-ep. СКАЧАТЬ