Captains Courageous quotes

“Shut the door, Harvey,” said the New Yorker. “Shut the door and stay outside. You’re not wanted here.”

“Who’ll stop me?” he answered, deliberately. “Did you pay for my passage, Mister Martin? Guess I’ve as good right here as the next man.”

He picked up some dice from a checkerboard and began throwing, right hand against left.

“Mebbe I do, an’ mebbe I don’t.

Take a reef in your stummick, young feller. It’s full o’ my vittles.

”

“Ten dollars! Why, see here, I—” Harvey dived into his pocket for the wad of bills. All he brought up was a soggy packet of cigarettes.

“Not lawful currency; an’ bad for the lungs. Heave ’em overboard, young feller, and try agin.”

“It’s been stolen!” cried Harvey, hotly.

“I didn’t mean that way. I heard what Dad said.

When Dad allows he don’t think the worse of any man, Dad’s give himself away.

He hates to be mistook in his jedgments too. Ho! ho! Onct Dad has a jedgment, he’d sooner dip his colours to the British than change it. I’m glad it’s settled right eend up. Dad’s right when he says he can’t take you back.

Yesterday’s catch—did ye notice it?—was all big fish an’ no halibut. Dad he’d read them signs right off. Dad says everythin’ on the Banks is signs, an’ can be read wrong er right.

Dad’s deeper’n the Whale-hole.

”

Nick Brady’s her skipper, the meanest man on the Banks. We’ll tell him so when we strike the Main Ledge. ’Way off yonder’s the Day’s Eye. The two Jeraulds own her. She’s from Harwich; fastish, too, an’ hez good luck; but

Dad he’d find fish in a graveyard.

Them other three, side along, they’re the Margie Smith, Rose, and Edith S. Walen, all from home. ’Guess we’ll see the Abbie M. Deering to-morrer, Dad, won’t we? They’re all slippin’ over from the shaol o’ ’Oueereau.”

“

A Jonah’s anything that spoils the luck. Sometimes it’s a man⁠—sometimes it’s a boy⁠—or a bucket.

I’ve known a splittin’-knife Jonah two trips till we was on to her,” said Tom Platt. “There’s all sorts o’ Jonahs. Jim Bourke was one till he was drowned on Georges. I’d never ship with Jim Bourke, not if I was starvin’.

… and no engineer of thirty years’ service could have assumed one half of the ancient-mariner air with which Harvey, first careful to spit over the side, made public the schooner’s position for that day, and then and not till then relieved Disko of the quadrant.

There is an etiquette in all these things.

The said “hog-yoke,” an Eldridge chart, the farming almanac, Blunt’s Coast Pilot, and Bowditch’s Navigator were all the weapons Disko needed to guide him, except the deep-sea lead that was his spare eye.

“That’s the way we all begin,” said Tom Platt. “

The boys they make believe all the time till they’ve cheated ’emselves into bein’ men, an’ so till they die⁠—pretendin’ an’ pretendin’.

I done it on the old Ohio, I know. Stood my first watch—harbor-watch—feelin’ finer’n Farragut. Dan’s full o’ the same kind o’ notions. See ’em now, actin’ to be genewine mossbacks—very hair a rope-yarn an’ blood Stockholm tar.” He spoke down the cabin stairs.

somebody waked with a grunt, threw them a rope, and they made fast to a silent wharf flanked with great iron-roofed sheds fall of warm emptiness, and lay there without a sound.

Then Harvey sat down by the wheel, and sobbed and sobbed as though his heart would break

, and a tall woman who had been sitting on a weigh-scale dropped down into the schooner and kissed Dan once on the cheek; for she was his mother, and she had seen the We’re Here by the lightning flashes.

Cheyne was flying to meet the only son, so miraculously restored to him.

The bear was seeking his cub, not the bulls.

Hard men who had their knives drawn to fight for their financial lives put away the weapons and wished him Godspeed, while half a dozen panic-smitten tinpot toads perked up their heads and spoke of the wonderful things they would have done had not Cheyne …

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

“What for, Mama? 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 stateroom, and Harvey curled up beside his father, explaining his indebtedness.

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.”

“I should very much, indeed. ’Twon’t hurt you, Mama, 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.

“Invested, Harve. Invested, I hope.”

“Making it only thirty thousand, the thirty I’ve earned is about ten cents on the hundred. That’s a mighty poor catch.”

Harvey wagged his head solemnly.