Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling

 

"Like many other unfortunate young people, Harvey had never in all his life received a direct order--never, at least, without long, and sometimes tearful, explanations of the advantages of obedience and the reasons for the request. Mrs. Cheyne lived in fear of breaking his spirit, which, perhaps, was the reason that she herself walked on the edge of nervous prostration."

"The answer came back in the deepest voice Harvey had ever heard from a human chest: 'Quit foolin', Dan, and send him to me.'"

"There was something in the tones on the deck that made the boy dissemble his extreme rage and console himself with the thought of gradually unfolding the tale of his own and his father's wealth on the voyage home."

"Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” Luke 14:34-35

Salt is for preserving dead fish!

'What's that for? It's all empty,' said Harvey. 'You an' me an' a few more hev got to fill it,' said Dan. 'That's where the fish goes.' 'Alive?' said Harvey. 'Well, no. They're so's to be ruther dead--an' flat--an' salt. There's a hundred hogshead o' salt in the bins; an' we hain't more'n covered our dunnage to now.' p.28

"At the end of an hour Harvey would have given the world to rest; for fresh, wet cod weigh more than you would think, and his back ached with the steady pitching. But he felt for the first time in his life that he was one of a working gang of men, took pride in the thought, and held on sullenly."  p.39

P. 57 One learns a great deal from a mere tone.

There is a brief history of sailing at the end of Captains Courageous and it ends it with the following thought. I agree with his observations but I don't share his pessimism. "By pitting the best in a boy--his wits, his courage, his strength--against the mightiest forces in nature--the wind and the sea--the boy soon is made a man. That journey into manhood is as lost to us today as are the men who were made that way. The mariner of old--with his great sailing skill and thorough knowledge of his craft, the water she rode on, the wind he harnessed to drive her--is gone forever. But we have preserved enough of his legacy that our respect for him continues to endure."