by Cylin Busby
The captain and Chippy hollered from the beach. “Good on you, mate!” Chippy said. I raced out to the rock to escort Moses and his catch back to land, wanting to take some credit for his good luck. I had, in fact, gone away as he had asked, and that must have been what brought the fish.
I peered down over the rocks to look for more fish, and my reflection in the water below startled me: Was that my mother? No—it was me, and yet I was her spit and image. I was growing, and taking on the shape of a real cat now, not a kitten. When I put my face down to the water, I saw her reflection looking back at me, the same high M in the fur on my forehead, the same white whiskers and green eyes. Aside from my white paws, I was a miniature of her.
Moses quickly cut and gutted the fish, roasting it over the fire on a stick. He tossed me some bits from the fish’s belly, which I found most delicious. Why the men chose not to eat these parts, I will never know, but they pleased me more than their precious shelled creatures, and I ate them quickly off the rocks and meowed for more. “You’ll have more, Tibbs, if you stop that racket!” Chippy barked at me, taking a hunk of now-white cooked fish meat from Moses and stuffing it into his mouth.
“If I can smoke a stack of these before the winds change, we should be right set,” Moses said to the captain, handing him a piece of the fish.
“Aye,” the captain agreed. “Those breakers will be the devil to cross unless the wind is with us. And even then…” He glanced over at Chippy.
The big man looked out over the ocean, which was beautiful and blue. “I think she can weather it, Captain. With sails and three men to weigh her down.”
“And one cat,” Moses added with a wink.
“Yes, what of this lazy oaf?” Chippy scooped me up and rolled me over in his hands. “What’s this, a belly on our skinny little runt?” He ran his hand roughly over my stomach, now full with fish, and I purred, trying to catch his fingers with my paws. “He’s grown fat and sassy!” Chippy rarely showed me any affection, so to be tousled by him meant the men were in good spirits indeed!
It soon became clear to me that, while we were living well and happy on our island, the men still longed for Liverpool, for home, and planned to fashion their small ship into a proper sailing vessel. As the men continued to talk, I understood that they were waiting now not only for the captain to be well again, but for the winds to change, as without the wind at our backs, the breakers that protected our pretty reef would also keep us trapped here on this island.
While awaiting the winds—which could take days, or weeks, to change direction—the men busied themselves. Chippy set to building a mast from a long, thin tree trunk. Moses had managed to create a sewing needle from one of the spikes on the vicious plant I’d encountered in the greenery. The men worked the afternoon away, Moses sewing as he sat with his fishing rod out on the far rock, a makeshift hat of palm leaves atop his burned-brown head. And Chippy used the small knife to cut branches from the tree trunk, making the mast smooth and strong.
As they worked, the men told yarns and talked of their loved ones at home—their wives, especially, who were both described in such a way that made me believe they were very lovely indeed. The captain rarely spoke of his deceased wife, who I understood had passed away from a terrible sickness, but he did mention Melissa, and sent up an occasional prayer that her health was holding, and that the summer months in Liverpool would restore her. To be a sailor meant spending long spells away from loved ones—this I learned early on—and my duty as a ship’s cat was to bring comfort to my mates when they grew lonely or ached for home.
In the evening Moses again changed the captain’s dressing on his leg, and lo! What a wondrous miracle had occurred there—the leg was turning from purple to red in some parts, and Moses decreed that this was good. “It’s healing, Captain; the poison is going. ’Ave a look,” he implored, but the captain would not look down.
“Do what you must, Mr. Moses, but do not ask me to look upon the waste I’ve wrought,” he said sadly, then returned to his task of braiding vines into a thick, strong rope.
That night we ate several fish, and Moses set some to smoking over the fire when it got low. These we could take aboard our newly fashioned vessel and have as food for the journey home to Liverpool, along with some fruits that Moses was drying, spread on leaves out on the rocks where they could gather sun.
I cozied in against my mates by the fire as they laughed and sang songs after the sun had set. It felt much like being in the galley on the Melissa Rae, with the captain well again. Chippy told a terrifying yarn about a ghost ship that arrived in port with only one body aboard: a skeleton still dressed in captain’s clothes, tied to the wheel, clutching a silver cross. All other bodies had been lost, who knows where, at sea. “Dead men tell no tales,” Chippy said in a deep growl, his dark eye patch a black shadow in the night. A shiver went down my back at the details, and I tried not to listen as the men told stories of other voyages gone wrong, of strange events at sea.
I looked out over the ocean, at the breakers cresting white in the moonlight—that was my true home and always would be. The island life was a good one, but it was not for me, and I longed to be back on the waves, guiding my captain and his sailors homeward.
As soon as our survival on the island seemed assured, and the days passed in an orderly fashion, the men began to talk of revenge. They all worked hard, even the captain, setting our vessel to right and stockpiling supplies and food for the journey home. The captain sat in the morning sun, braiding vines into thick rope, for what I did not know, but with his experience at sea, I was sure it would serve some purpose. On one such morning that dawned clear and bright, the talk was decidedly dark.
“If we dock in Liverpool before they’ve a chance to return from New York Harbor, we’ll have our day before the judge,” Moses exclaimed.
But the captain shook his head sadly. “It was within rights, what Archer did. Though it pains me to speak it, I’m afraid I have no standing—I fear I’ve lost the Melissa Rae and, along with her, my crew and life’s income as well.”
“The ship is owned by Archer and his father, so they’ve the right to do what they please; there’s no way around that, to be sure,” Chippy agreed with him. “But I’ve my own form of justice, which will be administered swiftly when I lay eyes on that yellow-bellied fool,” he grumbled, holding up both fists in a boxer’s stance.
“Aye, I think you’ve given him a taste of that before!” Moses joked, and I remembered the storm, when Chippy had almost slapped Archer across the face. I didn’t much like to remember that night, so I moved away from the men and their angry talk, toward the edge of the trees. The men were working so hard, I felt somewhat useless and underfoot. There was no ship’s hold for me to patrol, no rats for me to catch. I was not, on the island, earning my keep in any way—and I was eating a good portion of the men’s fish while at my leisure!
As I sniffed along the edge of the rocky coast, I remembered Chippy rubbing my tummy, noting that I’d gone a bit soft around the middle. He was right; I had become “fat and sassy,” as he’d said. I nosed my way under the low leaves of a plant and a thought came to me. The greenery of the island grew quite thick, and the men had to cut their path through, even to gather more vines near the stream. But for me, traversing the place was easy, as I could slink low, below the thick foliage, and walk stealthily in the cool shade close to the ground. I decided to go into the woods past the stream, to have a look about and see what I could bring back for the men. Moses had been having a hard time locating enough of the reddish-green plant to make the medicine for the captain’s leg—perhaps I could discover a bit of it and lead one of the men there? I had to try, as lying in the sun across a warm rock on my round belly was hardly respectable for a sea cat. What would my mother make of my current laziness and lack of duty?
I passed the stream, stepping gingerly over the water on small rocks, balancing carefully, and stopped to have a quick drink on the other side. This was my first time
crossing over the stream, as usually my daily journeys stopped once I’d reached water. Here the plants and vegetation grew thick and tangled, almost down to the ground, and getting beneath them was a task even for me. As I slunk low and crawled along, I kept my eyes open for the small red-and-green leaves that Moses would want. I found that the beetles had discovered the place before me and populated the base of several plants, families of all sizes, bobbing about and doing whatever was their work. I stopped to watch a few larger ones making their way and batted at them with my paw, but they seemed uninterested in me, slowly returning along their plodding way, and so I left them be.
After a few more paces, all at once sunlight shone through, and I found myself coming into a small clearing. Here the ground looked as though it had been tidied. A charred black spot surrounded by rocks smelled as if a fire had been there, long ago. Grasses and some smaller plants filled the space, but not the taller plants I had just traversed, and no vines crossed. I had a clear view of the sky. I nosed around the perimeter a bit, looking for clues, then went to lie, just for a moment’s rest, in a sunny spot dead center.
There was a pile of little white sticks on the ground, and when I moved them with my paw I saw that they were attached to a longer white stick. And that stick was oddly attached to more pieces of white, larger now, one a round ball shape. I batted at the ball and it rolled over in the short grass, revealing dark circles upon the other side and…teeth! I leapt back, horrified to realize I was looking at a human being, much like my mates, only with his skin off! The white sticks were bones, skeleton bones. I stared, shivering and thinking only of Chippy’s horrible story. Was this a ghost, a sailor lost at sea? I moved carefully toward the skull and pawed it again. It rolled over, the white teeth smiling up at me in an endless grimace.
As I nosed around the bones, I caught no scent of man, only of the outdoors and plants. But when I reached his other side, I noted, with a sickening dread, that there was some bit of rope attached to him, where his arms would once have been. It looked as though his hands had been bound, as if the rope, though now quite disintegrated, had been tied many times.
A stick snapped somewhere behind me, and I spun around, claws out and ready to fight. I scanned the dark, shadowy woods for movement and prowled low. We had assumed we were alone on the island, but perhaps that was not the case. I growled to let my watcher know that I, too, was watching. But no one stepped from the woods, and there was no sound except those I made. I backed away from the clearing, leaving the bones and ropes where they were. As soon as I was under the shadowy cover of the plants and trees, I turned and ran as fast as my paws could carry me, leaping over the stream when I reached it. I had no time to search for Moses’s plants, instead racing back to the men on the beach.
When I collapsed, panting, at Moses’s feet, he took little notice of me, continuing to play some kind of tile game that Chippy had carved from shells. I looked around our small shelter and realized that the captain was missing—he was not in his usual spot. I leapt to my feet and set to crying, nosing his makeshift pillow and taking in his scent. He could not go into the woods alone! What if he were to end up like that pile of bones I had seen? I could not bear it!
“Stop that racket! Your master’s down to the sea; he’s having a soak,” Chippy growled, motioning toward the cove as he turned over a white tile.
I raced to the black rocks and found the captain, without a stitch of clothing on, sitting in a small pool of seawater. Chippy and Moses must have carried him all this way, as he could not yet stand on his own. His bandage was off, and his leg looked fine indeed, much changed, the color almost back to normal again. He scrubbed his skin with a bit of cloth and looked up at me, his eyes bright and sparkling. “Mr. Jacob Tibbs, it’s a fine day for island life, is it not? We will sail as soon as this wind changes—are you ready to set to?” He reached up with a wet hand and petted my head. Though I didn’t care for the drops of water, his hand was always welcome on my back, and I purred my approval of the plan.
“Soon we will be home again, with Melissa and safe as houses, with a proper tub for baths. Though I may miss this paradise. I’ve grown quite fond of it.” He looked back over his shoulder at the green gem of an island.
When I think back to the island and our time there, what I remember most is the clear, cool water that tumbled down from the green mountain, and how well the men grew while drinking from it. How the captain’s leg healed, after weeks of festering and infection. And how, once we left the island, our fortunes changed so quickly.
How many weeks of fair weather passed while we lived on the island, I’ve no way of knowing. Moses kept marks on a gray rock, leaving a line for each day, but I took little notice of how many accumulated there. Instead, I busied myself helping my mates capture crabs, fish, and generally remain merry, which, on the beautiful green-cloaked island, was easy to do. Then one morning we woke with gray clouds hanging low, but surprisingly, this change in the weather meant good fortune for us as sailors. Captain Natick took a nearby palm leaf and secured it to a twig like a flag, then stuck it into the rocks.
“The wind is with us,” he declared, watching the green leaf blow in the breeze. “We’ll need every lick of it to get over those breakers.”
Moses was wrapping dried fish in palm fronds and securing them into bundles at the bottom of our boat. “And what if it’s not enough, Captain?”
“Then we’ll be dashed on the rocks,” Chippy mumbled in his gruff voice as he rigged our makeshift sail to its mast. He lifted his eye patch and rubbed the closed lid beneath. “But try we must, eh, Captain?”
The captain motioned for Chippy to help him stand. Moses had carved him a sturdy crutch from a large branch, and once he was pulled up, he could lean upon it. “I’ve a way that may work, but we’ll need both of you and that sail on the wind to do it.” He looked with a wary face at the wooden mast and the sail that Moses had sewn, now lying in the bottom of our boat.
I finished up the breakfast that Moses had tossed me—a last meal of crabmeat, roasted over the open fire—then drank water from my bowl, which was really just an overturned seashell. I paced the rocky shoreline, back and forth, looking out over the waves, waiting for a sign, but none came. I had no ill feeling in my gut, no twitching of my whiskers. The sky was gray and the wind had changed course, but there was no storm to be seen or felt, at least not a great enough one to worry us.
When the men were ready, they doused the fire with seawater, and Moses and Chippy carried the boat down to the water’s edge. Moses lifted me gently and placed me inside on a bench; then both men helped the captain aboard before climbing in. No one spoke as the men rowed us out from the island. I looked from face to face but saw only tension and scowls. I would soon learn why.
As we neared the place in the ocean where our quiet, calm cove turned into a reef of black rock and white-crested waves, the captain spoke: “Here’s where, men; this is the place”—and at those words Moses and Chippy dashed their oars and jumped into the water! They each held a side of the boat and put their boots down on the black rocks, jagged and sharp. How Moses was able to secure himself on his peg, I’ve no idea The waves became larger here, lifting the bow of the boat and tipping it almost upright with each roll. I found myself tossed and tumbled, scratching along the length of the boat as I tried to find footing with my paws. The men held the boat steady and paced themselves with beats to time the passage of the waves, waiting until just the right moment to push her forward. Then they both leapt, soaked to the bones, back into the boat, grabbed the oars, and rowed furiously.
At the next set of breakers, I had no idea how we would get over the crest of the waves—some looked to be over twenty feet high. The captain held fast to the side, his knuckles white, and I scooted between his feet, my claws digging into the bottom of the wooden longboat. The front of the boat rode up, up, and finally over the wave just before the set of breakers.
“Now!” the captain yelled over the sound of the crashin
g waves. Moses handed his oars to the captain and leapt over the side again, his head going under for a moment. Chippy was already over the other side and holding to as the biggest wave I’d seen yet came to bear down on us. The captain reached forward and pulled a rope from the bottom of the boat, yanking it to him—with it, up came the mast and sail that Moses and Chippy had rigged. As the sail came up, the fabric quickly filled with air, thrusting us forward. The men pushed off the rock with their legs, then leapt back into the boat, hunching low. I saw, from my hiding spot beneath the captain’s bench, that Moses’s arms were outstretched over our supplies, holding the braided vines that kept them tied down in the bottom.
The boat seemed to stand on end in the water, pushed back so far that we were almost flipped over. I felt my claws start to give way, and I moved slowly face-first to the back of the boat. Then I turned about and scrambled the other way, up the boat as she climbed the wave! Somehow the gust in our sail and the push and the captain’s oars were enough—we went straight up and over the huge wave, splashing down on the other side with a loud thunk that rattled the teeth in my head and left me crouching under the captain’s bench, shaking and soaked to the skin.
“We’ve done it!” the captain cheered. “Men, we’ve done it.”
Moses and Chippy looked waterlogged and exhausted, and I noticed that Chippy’s eye patch was off. I’d never had a good look at what lay beneath, and now I couldn’t resist creeping closer to him to have a view. The men laughed and slapped each other on the backs, breathing hard and shaking off the water.
Moses motioned to Chippy quietly, saying, “You’ve lost your patch.”
