The Taking of Captain Ball

"The Taking of Captain Ball" by Sarah Orne Jewett is a short story that captures a moment in the life of a small coastal community in New England. The narrative revolves around the character of Captain Ball, a sea captain known for his adventurous spirit and leadership. The story explores themes of community, tradition, and the impact of change as the characters grapple with the evolving nature of their lives and relationships in the face of external challenges. Through vivid descriptions and rich characterizations, Jewett paints a portrait of life in a maritime town, highlighting the bonds that form within the community amid both struggles and triumphs.

• Short story

								
I.

There was a natural disinclination to the cares of housekeeping in the
mind of Captain Ball, and he would have left the sea much earlier in
life if he had not liked much better to live on board ship. A man was
his own master there, and meddlesome neighbors and parsons and tearful
women-folks could be made to keep their distance. But as years went
on, and the extremes of weather produced much affliction in the shape
of rheumatism, this, and the decline of the merchant service, and the
degeneracy of common seamen, forced Captain Ball to come ashore for
good. He regretted that he could no longer follow the sea, and, in
spite of many alleviations, grumbled at his hard fate. He might have
been condemned to an inland town, but in reality his house was within
sight of tide-water, and he found plenty of companionship in the
decayed seaport where he had been born and bred. There were several
retired shipmasters who closely approached his own rank and dignity.
They all gave other excuses than that of old age and infirmity for
being out of business, took a sober satisfaction in their eleven
o'clock bitters, and discussed the shipping list of the morning paper
with far more interest than the political or general news of the other
columns.

While Captain Asaph Ball was away on his long voyages he had left his
house in charge of an elder sister, who was joint owner. She was a
grim old person, very stern in matters of sectarian opinion, and the
captain recognized in his heart of hearts that she alone was his
superior officer. He endeavored to placate her with generous offerings
of tea and camel's-hair scarfs and East Indian sweetmeats, not to
speak of unnecessary and sometimes very beautiful china for the
parties that she never gave, and handsome dress patterns with which
she scorned to decorate her sinful shape of clay. She pinched herself
to the verge of want in order to send large sums of money to the
missionaries, but she saved the captain's money for him against the
time when his willful lavishness and improvidence might find him a
poor man. She was always looking forward to the days when he would be
aged and forlorn, that burly seafaring brother of hers. She loved to
remind him of his latter end, and in writing her long letters that
were to reach him in foreign ports, she told little of the
neighborhood news and results of voyages, but bewailed, in page after
page, his sad condition of impenitence and the shortness of time. The
captain would rather have faced a mutinous crew any day than his
sister's solemn statements of this sort, but he loyally read them
through with heavy sighs, and worked himself into his best broadcloth
suit, at least once while he lay in port, to go to church on Sunday,
out of good New England habit and respect to her opinions. It was not
his sister's principles but her phrases that the captain failed to
comprehend. Sometimes when he returned to his ship he took pains to
write a letter to dear sister Ann, and to casually mention the fact of
his attendance upon public worship, and even to recall the text and
purport of the sermon. He was apt to fall asleep in his humble place
at the very back of the church, and his report of the services would
have puzzled a far less keen theologian than Miss Ann Ball. In fact
these poor makeshifts of religious interest did not deceive her, and
the captain had an uneasy consciousness that, to use his own
expression, the thicker he laid on the words, the quicker she saw
through them. And somehow or other that manly straightforwardness and
honesty of his, that free-handed generosity, that true unselfishness
which made him stick by his ship when the crew had run away from a
poor black cook who was taken down with the yellow-fever, which made
him nurse the frightened beggar as tenderly as a woman, and bring him
back to life, and send him packing afterward with plenty of money in
his pocket--all these fine traits that made Captain Ball respected in
every port where his loud voice and clumsy figure and bronzed face
were known, seemed to count for nothing with the stern sister. At
least her younger brother thought so. But when, a few years after he
came ashore for good, she died and left him alone in the neat old
white house, which his instinctive good taste and his father's before
him had made a museum of East Indian treasures, he found all his
letters stored away with loving care after they had been read and
reread into tatters, and among her papers such touching expressions of
love and pride and longing for his soul's good, that poor Captain
Asaph broke down altogether and cried like a school-boy. She had saved
every line of newspaper which even mentioned his ships' names. She had
loved him deeply in the repressed New England fashion, that under a
gray and forbidding crust of manner, like a chilled lava bed, hides
glowing fires of loyalty and devotion.

Sister Ann was a princess among housekeepers, and for some time after
her death the captain was a piteous mourner indeed. No growing
school-boy could be more shy and miserable in the presence of women
than he, though nobody had a readier friendliness or more off-hand
sailor ways among men. The few intimate family friends who came to his
assistance at the time of his sister's illness and death added untold
misery to the gloomy situation. Yet he received the minister with
outspoken gratitude in spite of that worthy man's trepidation.
Everybody said that poor Captain Ball looked as if his heart was
broken. "I tell ye I feel as if I was tied in a bag of fleas," said
the distressed mariner, and his pastor turned away to cough, hoping to
hide the smile that would come. "Widders an' old maids, they're busier
than the divil in a gale o' wind," grumbled the captain. "Poor Ann,
she was worth every one of 'em lashed together, and here you find me
with a head-wind every way I try to steer." The minister was a man at
any rate; his very presence was a protection.

Some wretched days went by while Captain Ball tried to keep his lonely
house with the assistance of one Silas Jenkins, who had made several
voyages with him as cook, but they soon proved that the best of
sailors may make the worst of housekeepers. Life looked darker and
darker, and when, one morning, Silas inadvertently overheated and
warped the new cooking stove, which had been the pride of Miss Ball's
heart, the breakfastless captain dismissed him in a fit of blind rage.
The captain was first cross and then abject when he went hungry, and
in this latter stage was ready to abase himself enough to recall Widow
Sparks, his sister's lieutenant, who lived close by in Ropewalk Lane,
forgetting that he had driven her into calling him an old hog two days
after the funeral. He groaned aloud as he thought of her, but reached
for his hat and cane, when there came a gentle feminine rap at the
door.

"Let 'em knock!" grumbled the captain, angrily, but after a moment's
reflection, he scowled and went and lifted the latch.

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