文档介绍：CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS
"CAPTAINS
COURAGEOUS"
A STORY OF THE GRAND BANKS
by Rudyard Kipling
1
CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS
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 deli 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."
"What's the matter with the old man attending to him personally'?"
said a voice from the frieze ulster.
"Old man's piling up the rocks. 'Don't wan