James Baquet Fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne Jr. was a spoiled brat. But all that changed when his father, a railroad magnate, sent him on a transatlantic crossing — and he was washed overboard! This is the beginning of “Captains Courageous,” Rudyard Kipling’s only book entirely set in North America. The ship was near the Grand Banks, off Newfoundland, an area famed for its fisheries, and when Harvey went over, he was rescued by a fishing dory and placed aboard a fishing schooner with the unusual name “We’re Here,” with a captain who had an equally odd name: Disko Troop. Disko’s son, young Dan, was also working aboard the ship, and befriended Harvey. Harvey tried to convince the captain to sail to New York and drop him off — “where his father would pay anything any one chose to name.” The captain didn’t believe him, and was loath to lose any time fishing at this season. New York was a thousand miles away, and time is money. And so Harvey — the “heir to 30 millions” — was hired at US$10.5 a month to be “second boy on the schooner,” along with food and lodging, of course. And — no surprise to the reader, but somewhat unexpected by the characters — it made a man out of him. Kipling works hard (some would say “strains”) to capture the diverse speaking styles of his characters: the nasal twang of the Gloucester fishermen; the accents of a German (“efer” for “ever”); an Irishman (“meself” for “myself”); a Portuguese (“dreeft” for “drift”); and so on. The best part of the book, in my opinion, is the “yarns” the various sailors tell in the evening. In this way Kipling incorporates a lot of “sea lore.” In the end, the “We’re Here” put in at Gloucester (after winning a fishing competition against the other boats) and Harvey sent a telegram to his father. The elder Cheyne took his private train car from California to retrieve him. The Cheynes were overjoyed to learn that that their son was alive, and, what’s more, that he had matured so thoroughly. Dan Troop went to work in a fleet owned by Mr. Cheyne, and the boat’s cook became Harvey’s bodyguard. Disko and the crew would take nothing for helping young Harvey. Vocabulary: Which word above means: 1. a kind of rowboat 2. off of a boat or ship 3. an exaggerated sound through the nose 4. a child who behaves badly because he/she is allowed to do anything 5. a place to stay 6. reluctant, unwilling 7. a rich businessperson 8. fishing grounds 9. a type of smallish sailing ship 10. tries too hard | 