One of Rudyard Kipling's most endearingly popular works, Captains Courageous is both a stirring tale of the sea and a fable of a boy's initiation into the world of men. The boy in question is Harvey Cheyne, pampered son of an American millionaire; his initiation commences when he is saved from drowning by a New England fishing schooner and forced to prove his worth in the only way the captain and crew will accept: through the slow and arduous master of skills upon which common survival depends. Depicted with what C.A. Bodelsen terms "Kipling's brilliant impressionism...his almost infallible sense of the right word,: the voyage of the We're here is one of both physical and moral adventure; it serves to give memorable, dramatic definition to the author's rigorous concept of the laws governing human existence.