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

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. Dad, this man wants to know ef Harvey’s worth his keep. Say, would you like to go aboard? We’ll fix a ladder for her.’

      ‘I should very much, indeed. ’Twon’t hurt you, mamma, and you’ll be able to see for yourself.’

      The woman who could not lift her head a week ago scrambled down the ladder, and stood aghast amid the mess and tangle aft.

      ‘Be you anyways interested in Harve?’ said Disko.

      ‘Well, ye-es.’

      ‘He’s a good boy, an’ ketches right hold jest as he’s bid. You’ve heard haow we found him? He was sufferin’ from nervous prostration, I guess, ’r else his head had hit somethin’, when we hauled him aboard. He’s all over that naow. Yes, this is the cabin. ’Tain’t anyways in order, but you’re quite welcome to look around. Those are his figures on the stove pipe, where we keep the reckonin’ mostly.’

      ‘Did he sleep here?’ said Mrs. Cheyne, sitting on a yellow locker and surveying the disorderly bunks.

      ‘No. He berthed forward, madam, an’ only fer him an’ my boy hookin’ fried pies an’ muggin’ up when they ought to ha’ been asleep, I dunno as I’ve any special fault to find with him.’

      ‘There weren’t nothin’ wrong with Harve,’ said Uncle Salters, descending the steps. ‘He hung my boots on the main-truck, and he ain’t over an’ above respectful to such as knows more’n he do, ’specially about farmin’; but he were mostly misled by Dan.’

      Dan in the meantime, profiting by dark hints from Harvey early that morning, was executing a war-dance on deck. ‘Tom, Tom!’ he whispered down the hatch. ‘His folks has come, an’ dad hain’t caught on yet, an’ they’re pow-wowin’ in the cabin. She’s a daisy, an’ he’s all Harve claimed he was, by the looks of him.’

      ‘Howly Smoke!’ said Long Jack, climbing out covered with salt and fish-skin. ‘D’ye belave his tale av the kid an’ the little four-horse rig was thrue?’

      ‘I knew it all along,’ said Dan. ‘Come an’ see dad mistook in his judgments.’

      They came delightedly, just in time to hear Cheyne say, ‘I’m glad he has a good character, because—he’s my son.’

      Disko’s jaw fell—Long Jack always vowed that he heard the click of it,—and he stared alternately at the man and the woman.

      ‘I got his telegram in San Diego four days ago, and we came over.’

      ‘In a private car?’ said Dan. ‘He said ye might.’

      ‘In a private car, of course.’

      Dan looked at his father with a hurricane of irreverent winks.

      ‘There was a tale he tould us av drivin’ four little ponies in a rig av his own,’ said Long Jack. ‘Was that thrue now?’

      ‘Very likely,’ said Cheyne. ‘Was it, mamma?’

      ‘He had a little drag when we were in Toledo, I think,’ said the mother.

      Long Jack whistled. ‘Oh, Disko,’ said he, and that was all.

      ‘I wuz—I am mistook in my jedgments—worse’n the men o’ Marblehead,’ said Disko, as though the words were being windlassed out of him. ‘I don’t mind ownin’ to you, Mister Cheyne, as I mistrusted the boy to be crazy. He talked kinder odd about money.’

      ‘So he told me.’

      ‘Did he tell ye anything else? ’Cause I pounded him once.’ This with a somewhat anxious glance at Mrs. Cheyne.

      ‘Oh yes,’ Cheyne replied. ‘I should say it probably did him more good than anything else in the world.’

      ‘I jedged ’twuz necessary, er I wouldn’t ha’ done it. I don’t want you to think we abuse our boys any on this packet.’

      ‘I don’t think you do, Mr. Troop.’

      Mrs. Cheyne had been looking at the faces—Disko’s ivory-yellow, hairless, iron countenance; Uncle Salters’s, with its rim of agricultural hair; Penn’s bewildered simplicity; Manuel’s quiet smile; Long Jack’s grin of delight, and Tom Platt’s scar. Rough, by her standards, they certainly were; but she had a mother’s wits in her eyes, and she rose with outstretched hands.

      ‘Oh, tell me, which is who,’ said she, half sobbing. ‘I want to thank you and bless you—all of you.’

      ‘Faith, that pays me a hunder time,’ said Long Jack.

      Disko introduced them all in due form. The captain of an old-time Chinaman could have done no better, and Mrs. Cheyne babbled incoherently. She nearly threw herself into Manuel’s arms when she understood that he had first found Harvey.

      ‘But how shall I leave him dreeft?’ said poor Manuel. ‘What do you yourself if you find him so? Eh, wha-at? We are in one good boy, and I am ever so pleased he come to be your son.’

      ‘And he told me Dan was his partner!’ she cried. Dan was already sufficiently pink, but he turned a rich crimson when Mrs. Cheyne kissed him on both cheeks before the assembly. Then they led her forward to show her the foc’sle, at which she wept again, and must needs go down to see Harvey’s identical bunk, and there she found the nigger cook cleaning up the stove, and he nodded as though she were some one he had expected to meet for years. They tried, two at a time, to explain the boat’s daily life to her, and she sat by the pawl-post, her gloved hands on the greasy table, laughing with trembling lips and crying with dancing eyes.

      ‘And who’s ever to use the We’re Here after this?’ said Long Jack to Tom Platt. ‘I feel it as if she’d made a cathedral av ut all.’

      ‘Cathedral!’ sneered Tom Platt. ‘Oh, ef it had bin even the Fish C’mmission boat instid o’ this bally-hoo o’ blazes. Ef we only hed some decency an’ order an’ side-boys when she goes over. She’ll have to climb that ladder like a hen, an’ we—we ought to be mannin’ the yards!’

      ‘Then Harvey was not mad,’ said Penn slowly to Cheyne.

      ‘No, indeed—thank God,’ the big millionaire replied, stooping down tenderly.

      ‘It must be terrible to be mad. Except to lose your child, I do not know anything more terrible. But your child has come back? Let us thank God for that.’

      ‘Hello!’ said Harvey, looking down upon them benignly from the wharf.

      ‘I wuz mistook, Harve. I wuz mistook,’ said Disko swiftly, holding up a hand. ‘I wuz mistook in my jedgments. Ye needn’t rub it in any more.’

      ‘Guess I’ll take care o’ that,’ said Dan, under his breath.

      ‘You’ll be goin’ off naow, won’t ye?’

      ‘Well, not without the balance of my wages ’less you want to have the We’re Here attached.’

      ‘Thet’s so; I’d clean forgot,’ and he counted out the remaining dollars. ‘You done all you contracted to do, Harve; and you done it baout’s well as ef you’d been brought up——’ Here Disko brought himself up. He did not quite see where the sentence was going to end.

      ‘Outside of a private car?’ suggested Dan wickedly.

      ‘Come on, and I’ll show her to you,’ said Harvey.