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Captains Courageous: Harvey
Harvey was next aware of being on a pile of fish with a broadbacked man in a blue jersey, who said: "You in dory with me. Manuel my name." Later he was hoisted aboard of a schooner and lowered into her heaving fo'c's'le, where men in oilskins gave him a hot drink and put him to sleep in a bunk. When he awoke, a boy whose name was Dan asked him smilingly if he was feeling better. The schooner was the We're Here of Gloucester, and the boy's father, Disko Troop, was her skipper.
Harvey went up on deck to see Disko, and demanded that he be taken back to New York, where, as he told Disko condescendingly, his father would pay them very well for their trouble; he added many other items to what his father could and would do. Disko, as it happened, was an old-fashioned type of Bank fisherman, wise in the ways of fish, but knowing little of the great world. He decided that this boy with his talk of his father's immense wealth must be crazy; with an idea of restoring the poor boy to sanity, he offered him the berth of second boy on the We're Here at ten dollars and fifty cents per month. Harvey had a fit of sullenness, but his sullenness worried nobody; he went to work. The dories were returning to the vessel with their catches of fish; so for the first work of his life Harvey was set to helping Dan hoist in the dories, to swabbing the gurry from their insides, and then to nesting them on the deck. By the time he had finished doing that and eating his supper it was nighttime, and Manuel, Penn, Long Jack, Old Salters, Tom Platt--all hands were standing by to dress fish.
Manuel and Penn stood deep among the fish, flourishing sharp knives. "Hi!" shouted Manuel, with one finger under the gill of a cod, the other in an eye. The blade glimmered, there was a sound of tearing, the fish, slit from throat to tail, dropped at Long Jack's feet. "Hi!" cried Jack, and, with a scoop of a mittened hand, dropped the cod's liver into a basket; another wrench and scoop sent head and offal flying. The gutted fish slid across to Old Salters, who snorted fiercely, ripped out the backbone, and splashed the headless, gutless fish into a tub of water.
Harvey pitched the washed fish down into the hold, whence came tramplings and rumblings as Tom Platt and Disko moved among the salt-bins. The rasping sound of rough salt rubbed on rough flesh from below made a heavy undertone to the click-nick of the knives in the pens, the wrench and schloop of torn heads, the flap of rippedopen fish falling into the tub on deck. At the end of an hour Harvey wanted terribly to rest, but also for the first time in his life he was one of a working gang of men; and so, beginning to take pride in the thought, he held on grimly. Not till the last fish was stowed below did a man rest. But when that moment came! Disko and Old Salters rolled toward their cabin bunks, Manuel and Long Jack went forward. Tom Platt waited only long enough to slide home the hatch, Penn to empty a basket of fish livers into a big cask.
All hands were below and asleep, except the two boys; they had to stand watch; so by and by the moon looked down on one slim boy in knickerbockers, which was Harvey, staggering around the cluttered deck; while behind him, waving a knotted rope, walked another boy, which was Dan, yawning and nodding between taps he dealt the first boy to keep him awake.
The We're Here was on a salt-fishing trip, which meant four months away from home; so there was time for Harvey to learn many strange new things if he cared to. After a time, as the pride in honest work well done began to grip him, he cared. He learned to fish from a dory; to make his way in safety around a heaving vessel's deck; to know what each rope and sail aboard a vessel was for. Disko allowed him, when the wind was light, to steer the vessel from one berth to another, and wonderful was Harvey's sense of power when he first felt the vessel answer to his touch of the wheel. Almost did he come to understand, as a fisherman understands, the never-absent dangers of the Banks--the eternal fogs, the tides, the gales, the wicked seas; and learned, too, fishermen's opinion of the officers of the great steamers who, after cutting a vessel down, raise high hands to heaven and swear with unanimity that the careless fisherman had never--absolutely never--shown so much as a single light.
He saw one day a foul, draggled, unkempt vessel heaving up past the We're Here, for all the world like a blowsy, frowsy, bad old woman sneering at a decent girl--saw her sail off into a patch of watery sunshine and--go under--taking all hands with her! He saw, while his hair stood on end, a whiteness moving in the whiteness of the fog with a breath like the breath of a grave; and then he heard a roaring, plunging, and spouting; that was his first iceberg. He saw the surf break over Virgin Rocks; and the fish strike in so thick on a shoal that scores of dories stood riding gunwale to gunwale while their crews battled for the catch. He saw a gale break so sudden and fierce that everywhere on the sea were men in dories cutting riding-lines and racing for their vessels, but some never making their vessels. So he passed four busy, wonderful months, growing in body, mind, and soul with every hour that passed; and then came the great day when they left the Banks for home. Toil, hardship, and danger were now mostly behind them; there was left little to do but stand watch and study the folding and packing away of the morning mists, the hurry of winds across the open spaces, the glare and blaze of the high sun; to harken to the grinding of the booms against the masts, the creaking of the sheets against the bitts, the sail filling to the roaring winds.
Now about the time the We're Here, a hundred quintals of fish in her hold, was laying her course for Gloucester, Harvey's father was beginning to wonder in his mahogany offices in Los Angeles if it wasn't a better game to drop the ceaseless struggle for more power and wealth. What was the use of it all--with no son to hand it to? He was still wondering when one day an excited secretary brought him a telegram.