Отважные капитаны

"Captains Courageous": A Story of the Grand Banks

Редьярд Киплинг (Rudyard Kipling)

The Project Gutenberg EBook of "Captains Courageous", by Rudyard Kipling

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net


Title: "Captains Courageous"

Author: Rudyard Kipling

Posting Date: October 30, 2009 [EBook #2186]
Release Date: May, 2000

Language: English







Produced by David Reed and Bill Stoddard.  HTML version by Al Haines.







"CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS"

A STORY OF THE GRAND BANKS


by

Rudyard Kipling



TO
JAMES CONLAND, M.D.,
Brattleboro, Vermont


I ploughed the land with horses,
But my heart was ill at ease,
For the old sea-faring men
Came to me now and then,
With their sagas of the seas.

Longfellow.




CHAPTER ICHAPTER IICHAPTER IIICHAPTER IVCHAPTER V
CHAPTER VICHAPTER VIICHAPTER VIIICHAPTER IXCHAPTER X




CHAPTER I

The weather door of the smoking-room had been left open to the North Atlantic fog, as the big liner rolled and lifted, whistling to warn the fishing-fleet.

"That Cheyne boy's the biggest nuisance aboard," said a man in a frieze overcoat, shutting the door with a bang. "He isn't wanted here. He's too fresh."

A white-haired German reached for a sandwich, and grunted between bites: "I know der breed. Ameriga is full of dot kind. I dell you you should imbort ropes' ends free under your dariff."

"Pshaw! There isn't any real harm to him. He's more to be pitied than anything," a man from New York drawled, as he lay at full length along the cushions under the wet skylight. "They've dragged him around from hotel to hotel ever since he was a kid. I was talking to his mother this morning. She's a lovely lady, but she don't pretend to manage him. He's going to Europe to finish his education."

"Education isn't begun yet." This was a Philadelphian, curled up in a corner. "That boy gets two hundred a month pocket-money, he told me. He isn't sixteen either."

"Railroads, his father, aind't it" said the German.

"Yep. That and mines and lumber and shipping. Built one place at San Diego, the old man has; another at Los Angeles; owns half a dozen railroads, half the lumber on the Pacific slope, and lets his wife spend the money," the Philadelphian went on lazily. "The West don't suit her, she says. She just tracks around with the boy and her nerves, trying to find out what'll amuse him, I guess. Florida, Adirondacks, Lakewood, Hot Springs, New York, and round again. He isn't much more than a second-hand hotel clerk now. When he's finished in Europe he'll be a holy terror."