by Cylin Busby
“Please bow your heads,” the captain said, his voice strong and clear despite the fact that his face was blanched white, his brow wet with perspiration.
I stood fast beside my mother’s basket and looked down at my white front paws. I was overwhelmed with a sudden grief: my mother had loved me despite all my shortcomings—my small size, my four mittens, my wobbly sea legs—but would anyone else in my life ever be so forgiving? Melissa had been right—that was what it was to have a mother, and now mine was gone.
“John Slattery, aged nineteen years. This was his third journey across the Atlantic, the second aboard the Melissa Rae. He was an honorable sailor, and is survived by his wife and infant son, who shares his name. We commit his body to the sea, in God’s name, and his soul to heaven. Amen.”
“Amen,” the sailors all murmured in response. Then Chippy and Sean each took up a side of the hammock and gently lifted it to the railing. The captain made the sign of the cross over the body just as the two sailors released it over the side. A second of silence, then a splash.
“Mrs. Tibbs, a captain’s cat who knows no equal. She sailed countless journeys with me aboard the Melissa Rae. She is survived by the many litters of healthy kittens she bore in her lifetime, and by Master Jacob Tibbs.” The captain paused to look at me, and I saw tears well in his eyes, almost spilling down his pale cheeks. His voice broke as he continued, “We commit her body to the sea, in God’s name, and her soul to heaven. Amen.”
I heard Sean sniffle as he leaned down to grasp my mother’s basket by one handle; Chippy’s eyes were bloodshot but his face a stone, his jaw clenched as he reached down for the other handle. I realized all at once what they meant to do—to throw my mother into the sea, as they had done with Slattery! Was I never to see my mother again? Without a second thought I leapt up into the basket as they lifted it, and I nestled against my mother’s body—now gone very cold and unyielding. I breathed in her scent and shut my eyes, trying to block out the sailors, the sea, and the hard knowledge that she was truly gone.
“Now, kitten,” Sean said, still sniffling, “you’re to stay here with us. Where your Mrs. Tibbs goes now, you cannot follow.” He tried to lift me gently from the basket with one hand, but I held fast to the cloth with my claws, scrabbling to cling to my spot, and the calico that had been around my mother came up with me. Sean placed me back on the deck, the cloth still under my paws.
The two sailors carried the basket to the railing, where Captain Natick made the sign of the cross over her. “Godspeed, my truest friend,” the captain whispered. In an instant the basket disappeared over the side of the ship, and a splash was heard. I paced the deck where the basket had been, circling, smelling the wood for a scent of my mother. Then I meowed and kneaded the cloth with my paws in agony. I knew not what to do now, so I crouched where her basket had been, just moments before, and I cried a mournful mewing. I curled into a tight ball, barely aware of the sailors around me as they quietly dispersed and went back to their jobs.
“Let him alone,” the captain ordered when Chippy went to move me out of the way. “He’ll come around; he’s a Tibbs, after all.” I heard the captain shuffle back to his cabin with Chippy’s help. As Sean leaned down to move the chair, he ran his hand over my small back and whispered to me, “There, there, little one. There, there.”
And then I was alone. The sailors were all occupied on the damaged ship, some getting their first sleep in many hours, others tackling the much-needed repairs. I lay on the cloth in a tight ball, feeling sorry for myself in my hunger and sadness until I drifted off to sleep, lulled by the sound and the rocking of the ocean, knowing that my mother was now part of this huge body of water that we floated upon, though I would never lay eyes on her again.
When I woke, all was dark. I stood and quickly knocked my head on something hard—and hot! I yelped and lay on my belly—I was trapped!
“You’re awake, then, are you?” I heard Moses, the ship’s cook, call to me.
As my eyes adjusted to the murky scene I saw Moses’s face looming large and close to mine; a golden loop that I’d not noticed before dangled from one of his earlobes. “Come on, then, let’s try a bit of grub.”
He reached toward me with one tattooed hand and grabbed my front paws, dragging me out into the galley. I had been tucked in under the stout stove that he used for cooking. “You’ve slept for almost two days, Master Jacob. Thought we’d lost you as well.” Moses plopped me down on the galley’s wooden sideboard and petted my back. “You look a sight, you do,” he laughed. “And I’ll barter that you’re in need of this.” Moses slid a thick wooden bowl under my nose and leaned back on the counter to watch me. “Well, have a go, then,” he urged. I looked down into the bowl and saw another cat staring up at me. I leapt back with a cry. Was it one of my brothers, also on board the ship? Perhaps I wasn’t alone after all.
“My lands!” Moses laughed. “That’s just you, Jacob; that’s your reflection there in the broth,” he said, pushing the bowl close to my front paws again. I gazed in and saw a tiny cat face looking up at me—my own—my fur and whiskers all askew from my sleep under the stove. I knew at once what my mother would think of my appearance, and she would not be pleased.
Before I could set to cleaning myself, my head was pushed down, my nose and mouth deep in the bowl of liquid. I came up, gasping for air and shaking my face. “That’s how it’s done, lad. Have a taste,” Moses urged. He had always seemed so kind; I had no idea why now he had suddenly taken a harsh turn—pushing my head into the broth.
I licked my nose clean and tried to back away from the bowl, but Moses held me firm and again pushed my head into the broth. “Just have a bit of it, kitty, come on, then,” he urged. I struggled and made to lick my face clean. The taste of the broth was salty…and good. My stomach lurched in hunger. This time I stepped to the bowl and put my own face down, trying to get a bit more into my mouth. At first I wanted to put my mouth into the bowl and drink it like I had done with my mother’s milk, but I soon got the idea that my tongue would bring the delicious fish broth to my mouth for me, and that my nose didn’t even need to touch the surface. When the soup was gone, I licked the bottom of the wooden bowl with my tongue, collecting every last drop. It was then that I noticed I had an audience, a few sailors who had come into the galley.
“Care for a bit more?” Sean asked. He ladled another slop of soup into the bowl, and I dunked my face low, to lap it up as fast as I could.
“Not so fast, lad, you’ll make yourself sick,” Moses said.
But Sean was elated. “A good omen, that,” he said, slapping Moses on the back.
When I finished the second bowl of soup, I mewed for still more. “Your belly’s dragging the floor, mate!” Moses laughed and poked my very rounded midsection. “Let’s see how that sits before you have extra servings.” He put me down on the floor beside the warm stove. I could see that Moses had tucked my bit of the calico from Mother’s basket behind the stove, and I dragged myself there now, curling up on the cloth, listening as the other sailors from the forenoon watch came into the galley for their grub.
“The runt’s well, then, is he?” I heard Chippy growl, after being told of my soup-eating success. He shoved a piece of hardtack biscuit into his mouth after using it to sop up the rest of his own bowl of soup. “So be it, but if you’ve a mind to share any of our grub with that cat, think again,” he cautioned Moses. “Mrs. Tibbs made her diet of rats and vermin, not fish soup. Sooner that runt learns his place on this ship, the better.” He pushed his chair back and left the galley, grabbing another of the flat biscuits on his way out the door.
“Chippy’s right, sadly,” Sean admitted. “We’ve barely enough grub on board to keep ourselves for this trip, not a bit to spare.”
“That’s the doing of Archer’s Shipping—tightest-fisted company I’ve ever sailed under.” Moses nodded. “One extra bag of flour and he threatened to have me put off the ship—told me I’d not find work on the Liverpool d
ocks again anytime soon, as well. He’s a strict runner, that one.”
“I don’t fancy this soup much myself,” one of the younger sailors said. “The wee cat can have what’s left.” He pushed his wooden bowl to the middle of the table.
“And mine as well,” Dougherty said, also pushing in his bowl. I noticed that his arm was still held fast to his chest in a tight white sling, but from his face he looked his old self again.
“We’ll make do until Jacob can fend for himself,” Sean agreed. “And if Archer’s none the wiser, no harm done.”
“Aye,” the young sailor agreed. “That cat makes the captain happy, and it’s good luck to have him aboard. He can share my grub until he’s fit.”
Dougherty nodded. “We’ve all got our jobs to do. Jacob will learn his in time.”
The sailors’ words washed over me as my limbs grew heavy. I longed to purr in Dougherty’s ear, to let him know how I appreciated his kindness, but my eyes closed, my head nodded, and I was asleep before the sailors were done with their conversation.
Later I woke to laughing and a great banging and sloshing sound. Moses was serving first dogwatch their grub and washing up the pots and pans in seawater and lye soap. Hours and hours had passed, and as I peered out from under the stove, I could see that the lanterns were now lit.
“How’d you get her hands off you, lad?” I heard Moses ask.
“I says to the miss, ‘You’ll have a new one, luv, but not off me!’ ” A dark-haired sailor laughed as he told his story.
“You’ll not visit that port again!” Chippy’s deep voice boomed through the small galley. “Now, ’ave I told you all of the time I found myself in Wales?” he asked, leaning back in his chair and putting his boots on the table.
Suddenly Moses stomped hard with his peg leg, interrupting Chippy’s tale and scaring a little dark shadow off a bag of flour. “Go, you! Scat!” Moses waved his arms. “These vermin, it’s as if they’ve a mind to the fact that Mrs. Tibbs has left us. A bite of food out and they’re up on the sideboard and climbing over me face in my sleep.”
The sailors went quiet for a moment, and I wondered why. “On with your story, then, Chippy,” Moses said, looking back to the men at the table. He seemed to know all at once that he’d said too much—especially with Chippy in earshot.
Chippy put his chair legs on the floor with a loud thud and stood. “Where is he? Where’s that wee kitty you’re keeping, Moses?” I scooted back under the stove, hiding myself as best I could, but it was no use. Chippy reached beneath the stove and caught me. Fast as lightning, he grabbed me by my middle and plunked me on the bag of flour. “Earn your keep, runt. There’s rats all through this ship, and I, for one, have grown weary of being woken by a vermin bite in my hammock.” Chippy stood looming over me, waiting for what, I did not know. I looked to Moses, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes—just busied himself with the washing. The room was quiet except for the sound of Moses’s soggy rag, sloshing over the pots.
Chippy moved to the sideboard and caught up a large knife by its handle. He stood and looked at me with such venom, my breathing all but stopped.
“It’s not as bad as all that—come now, Chip, have some brandy.” Moses stepped between Chippy and myself, putting his hands up to protect me, but he was a much smaller man, and I knew that if Chippy had a mind to do me harm, no one in the room would be able to stop him.
Chippy pushed Moses aside and brought the knife down hard on the counter—slicing a bite of cheese from the block that was sitting there. “I’ve no mind to hurt your little pet,” Chippy said, his voice sounding a bit sore, as if the mere insinuation had insulted him. “But I will teach him a lesson.”
He took the piece of cheese and placed it beside me on the bag of flour. “Here, rat, here’s your grub—come and at it,” he called out. The room was quiet again as everyone watched and waited.
“D’ya remember how Misshus Tibbs would leave a line of ratsh outshide the cap’sh door in the morning?” Smyth said. “She was a hunter, that one, and always made the man shmile, she did.” He shook his head and took a long swig from a brown bottle the sailors were passing around. “It’d be a pleasure to shee the cap happy like that again.”
“She had seven there one dawn, didn’t she?” Dougherty asked the others. “Seven rats, lined up and bloodied. I think we didn’t see another whisker of vermin for the rest of that trip out.” The sailors laughed at the happy memory, but I felt sad. Though warmed by their kind words about my mother, picturing her in the heroic way they described made me miss her all the more. But the moment did not last long. Suddenly I was aware that I was no longer alone atop the bag: a dark, furry creature had joined me.
This was not a fellow cat. He was almost as big as I was, but his face was different. He had whiskers, but they were small and bent. He was dirty, his fur a matted gray, and his eyes! Oh, the eyes of a rat are a terrible thing the first time you behold them! Small and yellow, his eyes told me all that he was in an instant—a terrible creature, a sworn enemy. Worse yet were his teeth: big and sharp, they stood out from his mouth even when it was closed. And when he opened his jaws at me and hissed…! I jumped down from the bag and ran, quick as I could, back to my calico cloth behind the stove. From there I watched as the creature pounced upon the cheese and, with one more hiss in my direction, disappeared down behind the bags of flour.
“That rat’s about as big as our ship’s cat!” Bobby Doyle laughed.
“It’s not a matter for laughing,” Chippy cut in, and all the sailors went quiet. “Moses, you’ll not give that cat any more fish-head soup, or anything to eat, for that matter. You’ll make him soft—why should he work for his meals if he knows he can always find something from you?”
Moses kept his eyes on his scrubbing and mumbled a reply that I couldn’t hear.
“We all work aboard the Melissa Rae to earn our keep,” Chippy went on, “and this cat will earn his grub, too, or he’ll be put overboard.” With that he picked up his hat and stormed out of the galley. Even the rattle of the floorboards under his boots was terrifying to me—he was right: I was nothing more than a coward, and a freeloader at that.
“What do you s’pose has gotten him so off about poor Jacob?” Doyle asked the others. “Jacob’s but a baby cat.”
Smyth shrugged. “He’s more off about Archer, but he can’t rightly hit ’im in the gob, now can ’e?”
“ ’Tis easier to blame a wee kitty for all our problems aboard,” Moses agreed, looking up from his scrub work, “but he almost scared the little lad from his wits there!”
The other sailors gathered up their things and thanked Moses for the meal as they left the galley. But even after they were gone, the tension remained thick and silent. When it was just Moses and myself, Moses stopped his scrubbing for a moment and came to pet my back. “Jacob, the boys are right. Chippy is angry, but not at you, lad. You take your time and get well; then we’ll learn you how to catch a rat or two. Sleep now, and there will be more broth for you when you wake.”
I took Moses’s words to heart and did rest as much as I could. Though the sailors usually slept only a few hours at a time, I found that I could sleep soundly in my spot behind the stove for hours on end, especially when Chippy was not to be found in the galley. Sometimes the men would call me out and bring me a bit of string for play when they were in for meals. Sean tied a knot on the end of untwined rope and attached it to a stool leg so I had something to bat at. It was my only toy, and as I was still a kitten, I could play with that ball of frayed rope for ages until I grew tired and napped again. Unlike the sailors, I was not ever called to the deck in the middle of my sleep, and so the days passed in a uniform fashion for me: drinking up fish-head soup until I was fat and sleepy, visiting with the still-wounded captain in his quarters, and making my way around the ship, learning its every nook and cranny, but all the while wary of the vermin that shared this space with me. Occasionally I would see a flash of gray, a shadow of a long, thin tail, a
nd I would turn and run straight back to my hiding spot beneath the stove.
When the bells rang out for afternoon watch, I would wait outside the captain’s quarters. This was when Moses would bring the captain his midday meal, and I could scoot in the open door and visit for a while. Afternoon watch was usually when the captain was at his best, too. For as the night came on and the bell rang for first watch, I would find him sleeping and feverish, in a fretful slumber that would last until the dawn broke. The captain was so delirious at times that he would confuse me for my mother. “Ah, Mrs. Tibbs, come sit with me,” he would say, petting my head and scratching me roughly behind the ears, the way he had done with my mother. It made me sad to see the captain in such poor health, as he had always appeared so strong; now he was forgetful and constantly fraught with the pain that his broken and infected limb had brought on.
Moses, the only sailor on board with any doctoring skills, attended to him as best he could, but still I would hear the sailors in the galley talk of horrible, impossible things.
“And the good captain today, is he well?” Sean asked.
“His fever comes on every night,” Moses said. “And the wound on his leg smells foul; even cleaning it with brine makes no difference.”
“If to cut it off saves the man, what’s the wait?” Archer asked one night. “Chippy has a saw in his tools—let’s be done with it!”
I saw a few of the men shift uncomfortably at Archer’s harsh words. He was first mate, and in the captain’s absence he was to be the chief officer of the ship. But the sailors had little respect for him, and his bluster often went ignored. On this night, Moses responded.
“As one who has been through the pain of a limb off,” he said, “I hope we can keep the captain from it. It’s no life for a man such as him.”
