Last issue, we braved the enchanted forest in A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare. This issue, readers sail with a small fishing boat and a tough crew in Rudyard Kipling’s Captains Courageous.

When fifteen-year-old Harvey Cheyne first puffs an enormous black cigar, he embarks on a fantastic adventure. By the time he is reunited with his fami­ly, he has almost drowned, worked till he collapsed from exhaus­tion, encountered a “haunting” corpse, and learned to pull his own weight on a fishing boat.  And yet none of these feats have anything to do with the real adventure!

On the surface, Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling is a story about a millionaire’s spoiled son who tumbles into a different, dangerous world and fights to survive there for a season. But the currents below it run deep.

As the adventure begins, we find a “dandy” child swaggering in the lounge of a luxury ocean liner. The dandy—Harvey—is dressed to the hilt, including a cherry-colored blazer and red stockings, and is trying desperately to impress the adults on the cruise. In a calculated effort to be rid of Harvey, one of the men offers him a large black cigar. A few puffs on the cigar render the pampered boy green and helpless.

Harvey staggers from the lounge and, in his pride, seeks a quiet spot where he can be sick. As sickness overtakes him, he is simultaneously overtaken by a wave, and swept overboard. He gasps, swallows the heavy, salty water, and goes under. When he awakes, he finds himself neither aboard the ocean liner nor before the judgment seat, but instead lying face up on a pile of cod. He is taken aboard the We’re Here, a tiny fishing boat gov­erned by a stern and just captain named Disko.

Who can blame Disko for believing that Harvey is crazy? Almost as soon as he can talk, Harvey begins giving orders, demanding that the fishing boat turn around and take him to shore. He guar­antees that his father can pay the crew of the We’re Here much more than they could ever hope to make fishing. He brags of untold millions and private cars. Disko, a man rarely “mistook in his jedg­ments,” decides that Harvey’s story can’t possibly be true, and lays down the law: Harvey must work alongside the crew, earn his keep, and reconcile himself to the fact that they will be at sea for many months. When Harvey’s protests grow insulting, Disko calmly knocks him down with a precise jab.

The crew of the We’re Here reflects the fact that they were hand-picked by a man as conscientious as Disko. From Manuel to Long Jack, the men are hard-working, sincere, honest, and—in their own way—kind. Each takes a turn helping Harvey learn the ropes, and each pro-vides him with a certain amount of camaraderie. His closest friend among the crew, naturally, is the boy closest to his age: Dan Troop, son of Disko.

Together, Harvey and the crew brave storms and bad luck, and catch and clean a ton of cod. The physical challenges teach Harvey something new almost every day. But the physical challenges don’t comprise the real adventure; the real adventure is spiritual.

Yes, Harvey moves from near-drowning to Gloucester Harbor in an uncertain craft on a journey fraught with danger. But this voyage is far less dramatic than his inner journey—from friendless boy to trustworthy friend. In life, the greatest adventures are rarely physical (there are far too few dragons threatening maidens in distress). The greatest adventures are our “pilgrim’s progress” toward a life more pleasing to our Maker. “This adventure,” says Christian author William Kilpatrick, “will take the form of a journey, but it will most likely be an interior journey. There will be a desire to tell the story, but the audience for it will be small: perhaps only one or two others will know, perhaps only God. The most common form this adventure takes is marrying and raising a family—although there are certainly other forms.”

The particular form that Harvey’s “interior journey” takes is that of learning friendship. As he is befriended by Dan and the rest of the crew, he pro-gresses down a path that too few men ever walk. In chancing this dangerous path—a place where disappointment looms near and he must constantly risk giving up part of himself—Harvey learns a few things about friendship. They are lessons we, too, should take to heart—if we dare risk such a daunting road.

Lesson #1: He who walks with the wise grows wise (Proverbs 13:20). If you run with the right crowd, they will be more likely to lead you down the right path. As C.S. Lewis says, “The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.” Falling in with Disko and his crew was the best thing that could happen to Harvey.

Wait a minute, you say. Didn’t Disko and his crew run the risk of corrupting themselves when they took in the spoiled rich boy? After all, the rest of Proverbs 13:20 warns that “a companion of fools suffers harm.” Quite true. The equation is balanced, it seems, by numbers: too many fools spoil the mix—but an occa­sional fool now and then can benefit from associating with a lot of wise men. In other words, you may choose a few non-Christians as friends, and work faith-fully to help them trust Christ. But if you surround yourself with non-Christian friends, and abandon the fellowship of the Body, you will most likely suffer harm. There’s strength in numbers; Christians do well to make sure the majority they spend their time with are wise.

Lesson #2: Friends speak the truth in love. Does the true friend tell you when you have spinach in your teeth? Of course. The people we really count as friends, that we know we can depend on, are more interested in seeing us live right than in seeing us feel vaguely comfort-able. It may initially embarrass us to hear about the spinach in our teeth—but it saves us much more pain than if we find out about it later. Likewise, hearing that we’ve adopted a sinful attitude hurts, no matter who tells us that truth—but real friends will hurt us in that way to save us the pain of reaping the harvest of that sinful attitude. Loving others sometimes means hurting them—gently, and with the truth.

We find Dan teaching Harvey this lesson on Harvey’s first watch. The spoiled rich boy has little interest in staying alert; things seem calm, and he is sleepy. But Dan knows the dangers of shirking duty—he has heard the stories of fishing boats cut in two by wayward ocean lin­ers. And because Dan knows the danger, he gently reminds his friend of his duty:

The moon, who sees many strange things on the Banks, looked down on a slim youth in knickerbockers and a red jersey, staggering around the cluttered decks of a seventy-ton schooner, while behind him, waving a knotted rope, walked, after the manner of an executioner, a boy who yawned and nodded between the blows he dealt.

True friends will help us live dutifully, even if reminding us occasionally means using the rope.

Lesson #3: True friends are more interested in giving than taking. How many times have you heard someone complain that they don’t have enough friends? The complaint itself betrays a mindset that disallows real friendship. By focusing on their need for more friends, people reveal that their greatest concern is themselves. They need more friends to feel more fulfilled. They are more interested in taking than in giving.

As the old saying goes, “To have a friend, be a friend.” People who constantly give of themselves never want for friends, because they practice the art of friendship each day. This is the hardest lesson to learn, but it is also the most valuable.

Harvey learns it slowly. It begins with the realization that both he and Dan have something to offer to each other. Harvey has seen the world; he can tell Dan about faraway places and the miracles of technology. Dan, on the other hand, under-stands life. In discussing their areas of expertise, both boys discover the benefits of sharing. This first step on the adventure of friendship leads, in turn, to a much greater sacrifice: Dan buys the knife of a dead sailor—a knife made all the more attractive because it is rumored to have killed a man—and willingly turns over this most prized possession to Harvey. Though he may never find another treasure like it, Dan gives the knife away because—well, because that’s what friendship is about. The friend who cannot give cannot long remain a friend.

On the other hand, the friend who gives—who goes so far as to die to himself (John 15:13)—is to be esteemed among all men. “There is a friend,” says Proverbs 18:24, “who sticks closer than a brother.” According to C.S. Lewis, natural life “has no better gift to give. Who could have deserved it?”

Serious students should read Othello by William Shakespeare before the next issue of New Attitude arrives.