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nydus/Captains CourageousPublic

A spoiled teenager falls overboard an ocean liner and is rescued by a fishing schooner, where the crew forces him to work.

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Table of Contents

I

screw, but you dreeft⁠—dreeft to me, and I make a big fish of you. So you shall not die this time.”

“Where am I?” said Harvey, who could not see that life was particularly safe where he lay.

“You are with me in the dory⁠—Manuel my name, and I come from schooner We’re Here of Gloucester. I live to Gloucester. By-and-by we get supper. Eh, wha‑at?”

He seemed to have two pairs of hands and a head of cast-iron, for, not content with blowing through a big conch-shell, 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. How long this entertainment lasted, Harvey could not remember, for he lay back terrified at the sight of the smoking swells. He fancied he heard a gun and a horn and shouting. Something bigger than the dory, but quite as lively, loomed alongside. Several voices talked at once; he was dropped into a dark, heaving hole, where men in oilskins gave him a hot drink and took off his clothes, and he fell asleep.

When he waked he listened for the first breakfast-bell on the steamer, wondering why his stateroom 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 footwear, 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 flavor of their own which made a sort of background to the smells of fried fish,

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