But the priest’s last words as he held Edgar’s hand were these: “If it be in my power to prevent it, my friend, depend upon it Beebee shall never enter the palace of the Shah!”
“May Heaven bless you,” said the soldier. He said no more. I do not think he could have done so had he tried, for tears seemed to rise and choke him.
Well, the next thing I distinctly remember, is being taken on board a man-o’-war ship from a boat that left the Apollo Bunder at Bombay.
I had one regret just then, for my thoughts reverted to Beebee in her turret chamber. I imagined her sitting there all alone with Miss Morgan, and gazing dreamily over the sea, the sea she so longed to float upon.
But once on board the ship I had little time to think very much, at first at all events. Everything was very new and very strange to me; and it would take me some time to get up to the ropes, you know, Warlock.
“Oh!” said Warlock, “we dogs don’t bother about ropes. When we come to a new home or house we just settle down there. All we want to know is where the door is.”
Ah! Warlock, yes, that I know is true. But think how different a dog’s life is from that of a poor cat. We cats have got to be wise, Warlock, and we’ve got to be wily, for though we have not got the brand of Cain upon our brows, still almost everybody who meets us wants to kill us.
It was on this very subject that only last Sunday I was conversing with the parson’s big tom-cat.
“I’m so much used to traveling now, Tom,” I said, “having had a spell of over twenty years of it, that I don’t mind where I go; but if I were not a traveling cat I should feel very much from home in a new house, not knowing the outs and ins of it, the upstairs and the down, and where to get food, where to watch for mice, and the drains to run into when the school children come past; or the trees to run up when the butcher’s dog comes round the corner.”
“Well, for many reasons,” said Tom in answer, “I like dogs well enough. But I wouldn’t like to be a dog, mind you, Shireen. Now look at me for example. I am the parson’s cat to be sure, and being a parson’s cat people might think I was under some restrictions. Not a bit of it, Shireen. I’m my own master.
“Now, look for example, at the Saint Bernard dog Dumpling—an honest contented great fellow he is—but bless you, Shireen, he isn’t free. But I am. Dumpling can’t do what he pleases—I can. I can go to bed when I like, rise when I like, and eat and drink when, where, and what I choose. Dumpling can’t. Really, Shireen, my old friend, I can forgive Dumpling for chasing me into the apple tree last Sunday, when I think of the dull life a dog leads, and how few are his joys compared to mine. Poor Dumpling needs the servants to wait upon him. He can’t walk a couple of miles by himself and be sure of finding his way back, or sure of not getting into a row, getting stolen, or some other accident equally ridiculous.
“The other day, Shireen, if you’ll take my word for it, Dumpling actually sat on the doorstep for two hours in the pouring, pitiless rain till his great shaggy coat was soaked to the skin, because, forsooth, he didn’t know how to get the door opened. Would a cat have done that? No, a cat would have walked politely up to the first kind-faced passenger that came along and asked him to be good enough to ring the bell, and the thing would have been done. Could Dumpling unlatch a door or catch a mouse? Not to save his life. Could he climb a tree and examine a sparrow’s nest? Not he. Could he find his way home over the tiles on a dark night? A pretty figure he would cut if he were only going to try. No, Shireen, dogs have their uses, but they’re not in the same standard with cats.”
Well, Warlock, mind these are Tom’s views and not mine: but as I was telling you all, I found myself safe on board the Venom at last, and that same afternoon we sailed away to the south.
Master being still somewhat of an invalid, the doctor had given him and me the use of his cabin, he himself sleeping at night inside a canvas screen on the main deck.
The Venom, I must tell you, wasn’t a very large ship, and she was engaged in what fighting human-sailors called the suppression of the slave trade. Not that I meant to trouble my head very much about any such nonsense, only in one way it appealed to us; it would make our passage down to the far-off Cape of Good Hope and so home to England a very much longer one.
“You see,” the captain said to my soldier Edgar on the quarter-deck the first day, “we are awfully glad to have you with us, but we can’t hurry even on your account.”
“I wouldn’t wish you to do so, Captain Beecroft. The long voyage will do me a wonderful deal of good; besides I don’t really long to be home. I’d rather be back in Persia again.”
The captain looked at him somewhat searchingly and smiled.
I was walking up and down with the pair of them, with my tail in the air and looking very contented and pleased, because the sun was shining so brightly, and the ocean, which I could catch peeps at through the port-holes, was as blue as lapis lazuli.
“I say,” said the captain, “did you lose your heart out there?”
“I did,” was the reply. “Oh, I am ten years older than Beebee, and perhaps more, and nothing may ever come of it. Put, sir, she saved my life.”
“Do you see this cat?” he continued, taking me up in his arms. “Well, this is Shireen. The girl who so bravely saved my life gave Shireen to me.”
“Wait a minute,” said Captain Beecroft. “Come into my cabin here. Now sit down and just tell me all the story.”
Edgar did so, and I think that from that moment these two men were fast friends.
My master also showed the captain the beautiful little ruby that was set in my tooth.
“A strange notion!” said the latter.
“It is not an uncommon one among eastern ladies,” said the soldier. “Anyhow,” he added, “I should always know Shireen again if I happened to lose her, and she returned even ten years after.”
Somehow, my children, those words, simple though they were, had an ominous ring in them, and I thought of them long, long after, in far less happy times.
Well, Warlock, after I had been a few days at sea, I determined to get up to the ropes. I must see everything there was to be seen, for as far as I had yet noticed, there was nothing to be very greatly afraid of.
But I resolved to make my first excursion round the ship by night.
So soon after sunset I went quietly upstairs, and immediately found myself under the stars on deck.
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Ship’s Cat on Board the Venom
As soon as I got on deck I began to glance eagerly about me.
The moon was shining very brightly, and the waves all the way to the horizon were stippled with light, while the bright stars were reflected and multiplied in the water like a myriad of diamonds.
There was a breeze blowing just then, so there was no need for the present to keep steam up, as a sailor calls it.
Steam is not nice on board ship, Warlock. There is a terrible noise, and everywhere the ship is shaken. You cannot help fancying you are inside a mill all the time, with such a multitude of wheels rattling round and round, that it quite bewilders one.
But tonight there was hardly a hush on deck, except now and then the trampling of the sailors’ feet, or a song borne aft from the forecastle.
I was not a ship’s cat yet, you know, Warlock, and so didn’t know the names of things. But I soon found a guide, or rather the guide found me. I was standing on the quarter-deck, as it is called, looking about me in a very uncertain kind of way, when I heard soft footsteps stealing up behind me, and, looking round, was rather startled to see standing there in the moonlight, which made him look double the size, an immense black Thomas cat, with yellow fiery eyes.
I was going to bolt down the stairs again at once, and ask my master to come and shoot him, but there was a sort of music in his voice which appealed to me the moment he spoke.
“Oh, you lovely, angelic pussy princess,” he said; “be not afraid, I pray you. Hurry not away, for if you leave the deck the moon will cease to sh
ine, and the stars will lose their radiance.”
He advanced stealthily towards me as he spoke, singing aloud. But I sprang upon the skylight at once, raised my back and growled, as much probably in terror as in anger.
“Come but one step nearer,” I cried, “and I will leap into the foaming sea.”
“Dear princess,” he said, “I would rather lose my life. I would rather throw my body to the sharks than any ill should happen to a hair of your head.”
“See,” he continued, jumping on the top of a kind of wooden fence, which sailors call the bulwarks, that ran round, what I then called the lid (deck) of the ship. “See! Speak the word, and I shall rid you forever of my hateful presence!”
I was very much afraid then.
I did not want to see this Thomas cat drowned before my eyes, for although he was very black, I could not help noticing that he was comely.
“Oh,” I cried, “come down from off that fearful fence and I will forgive you, perhaps even take you into favor.”
Well, Warlock, strange though it may appear, in three minutes’ time this Thomas cat and I were as good friends as if we had known each other for years.
“You are very lovely,” he said. “Strange how extremes meet, for I have been told that I am quite ugly. Your coat is snow-white, mine is like the raven’s wing. Your fur is long and soft and silky, my hair is short and rough, and there are brown holes burned in it here and there, where sailors have dropped the ashes from their pipes. You are doubtless as spotless in character as you are in coat; but—well, Shireen, the cook has sometimes hinted to me that as far as my ethics are concerned I—I am not strictly honest. Sometimes the cook has hinted that to me by word of mouth, at other times, Shireen, with a wooden ladle.”
“But come,” he added, “let me show you round the ship.”
“May I ask your name,” I said; “you already know mine?”
“My name is Tom.”
“A very uncommon name, I daresay.”
“Well—yaas. But there are a few English cats of that name, as you may yet find out. My last name is Brandy. Tom Brandy (Tom Brandy is a sketch from the life), there you have it all complete. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?”
“It does, indeed. Has it any meaning attached to it?”
“Well, then, it has. Brandy is a kind of fluid that some sailors swallow when they go on shore. They have often tried to make me take some, but I never would with my free will. It turns men into fiends, Shireen. For in a short time after they swallow it they appear to be excellent fellows, and they sing songs and shake hands, and vow to each other vows of undying love and affection. But soon after that they quarrel and fight most fiercely, and often take each other’s lives, as I have known them to do in the camps among the miners out in Australia, where I was born.”
“Oh, have you been in a real mine, Tom?”
“Yes, I first opened my eyes at the diggings.”
“Oh, how lovely! Was it at Golconda. I have heard Beebee, my mistress, read about Golconda in a book. And were there rubies and diamonds and amethysts all lying about, and gold and silver?”
“Not much of that, Shireen. My bed was a grimy old coat, belonging to one of the miners. My home was a wet and dark slimy hole, and the miners were not very romantic. They were as rough as rough could be. Any sailor you see here would look like a prince beside a miner. But though as rough as any of them, my master, a tall red man, with a long red beard, was kind-hearted, and for his sake I stayed in camp longer than I would otherwise have done.
“When I was old enough to catch my first rat the miners crowded round me, and said they would baptize me in aguardiente; that was the fiery stuff they were drinking, and so they did. Some of it got into my eyes and hurt them very much. That is how I was called Tom Brandy.
“Another day, when I was grown up, they forced some spoonfuls of brandy and water down my throat, and by-and-bye I seemed to get out of my mind. I walked round the camp and challenged every other he cat in the place, and fought almost as bad as a miner.
“I was always death on dogs, Shireen, but that night there wasn’t a dog anywhere about that I did not try to swallow alive, for I believed myself to be as big as an elephant. My master found me at last, and kindly took me home and laid me on his old coat in the corner, and I soon fell sound asleep, but, oh, Shireen, when I awoke next day my head and eyes were fit to burst with pain.
“Then, by-and-bye, there came a parson to our camp, and my master would walk miles to hear the preaching, and I always went with him. When there were many dogs about master used to lead me with a string, but he never chained me up in his house, as some miners did with their big cats. It is cruel to chain a dog even, but much more cruel to chain a cat.
“Well, master was what they call a rolling stone; one of the sort that don’t gather moss, you know. So he often changed camp. It took us two days and nights sometimes to get to the new camp, and I traveled all the way in an old gin case.
“Poor master!”
“Did he die?” said I.
“Well, it was like this. Often and often on lovely moonlit nights, Shireen, master and I would sit in the door of the hut where he lived out among the bush and scrub, and he would speak to me of his far-off home in England, and of his young wife and children that he was trying to dig gold for.
“‘It is that,’ he told me once, ‘which makes me so restless, Tom. I want to get money. I want to get home to them, pussy, and I’ll take you with me and we’ll be so happy.’
“And he would smooth my head and sing to me of the happy time that was coming when we should get home with wealth and riches.
“‘When the wild wintry wind
Idly raves round our dwelling,
And the roar of the linn
On the night breeze is swelling;
So merrily we’ll sing,
As the storm rattles o’er us,
Till the dear shieling (a cottage) ring
With the light lilting chorus.’”
“But, ah! Shireen, that happy time never came, for one sad night, at the stores, a quarrel arose about something, and next moment the noise of pistol-shooting rang out high above the din of voices.
“There was a moment or two of intense stillness, and my master fell back into the arms of a friend.
“‘Oh, my dear wife and bairns!’ That was all master had breath to say before his death-blood rose and choked him.
“They told me I nearly went wild with grief, that I jumped upon his breast and cried and howled. Well, perhaps I did. I forget most of what happened. Only I know they buried him next day, and I sat on the grave for days, refusing to leave it. Then I wandered off to Melbourne. I thought if I could only get home and find master’s wife, and children, I might be a comfort to them. But this was impossible.
“Well, I stayed for some months in Melbourne, just a waif and a stray, you know, begging my bread from door to door. Then the Venom, the very ship we are now on, Shireen, lay in, and when walking one night near the docks, a sailor came singing along the street. He looked so good and so brown and so jolly that my heart went out to him at once, and I spoke to him.
“‘Hullo!’ he cried, ‘what a fine lump of a cat. Why, you are thin though, Tom.’”
“How did he know your name?” said I.
“Oh, just guessed it, I suppose.
“‘How thin you are!’ he says. ‘Well, on board you goes with me, and you shall be our ship’s cat, and if any man Jack bullies you, why they’ll have to fight Bill Bobstay.’ And that is how I came to be a ship’s cat, my lovely Shireen.”
“Nobody objected to your being on board, I suppose,” said I.
“Well, I don’t know, for you see, next day was Sunday, and seeing they were rigging up a church on the main deck, I went and sat down by the parson very demure-like, as I had sat beside poor master in the miners’ camp.
“Then, after church, the first lieutenant asked the men, who brought the cat on board. But of course nobody knew.
“‘Throw him overboard,’ cried the lieutenant.
“‘No, no,’ said the captain. ‘That will never do, Mr. Jones. The poor cat is welcome to his bite and sup as long as he likes to stop with us, whoever brought him on board.’
“Then a man in the ranks saluted.
“‘Did you want to say anything?’ said Captain Beecroft.
“‘Well, sir,’ said the man, ‘I wouldn’t like any of my pals to be blamed for a-bringing of Tom from shore, ’cause I did, and you may flog me if you like.’
“‘No, no, my man, instead of flogging you I’ll forgive you. I like my men to be bold and outspoken just as you are.’
“And from that day to this, three long years, Shireen, I’ve been ship’s cat to the saucy Venom, and, what is more, I like it.
“Now, if you please, I’ll take you forward, and you can see the men’s quarters.”
“What are those three trees growing on the lid of the ship for, Tom?” I asked.
“Those are not trees, Shireen,” he answered; “those are what they call ship’s masts, and you must not say the lid of the ship, but the deck.”
“Thank you, Tom. And are those sheets hung up yonder to dry, Tom?”
“Oh, no, those are the ship’s sails. They carry the vessel along before the wind when the steam isn’t up. Look down into that hole, Shireen. Take care you don’t fall. Do you see all those clear glittering shafts and cranks and things? Well, those are the engines. Keep well away from them when they begin to move, else you might tumble in and be killed in a moment.”
“How strange and terrible!” I said.
Well, children, Tom took me everywhere all over the ship, and even introduced me to the men.
“My eyes, Bill,” said one man, “here’s a beauty. Did you ever see the like of her before? White’s the snow; long coat and eyes like a forget-me-not. Stand well back, Bill. Don’t smoke over her. She belongs to that soldier officer, and I’ll warrant he wouldn’t like a hole burned in that beautiful jacket she wears.”
But oh, children, for many weeks I thought ship-life was about the most awkward thing out, for when it isn’t blowing enough to send the vessel on through the water, then, you know, they start the mill and the rattling wheels, and your poor life is nearly shaken out of you, while the blacks keep falling all about, and if a lady has a white coat like mine, why—why it won’t bear thinking about. And if it does blow, Warlock, well, then it is too awkward for anything, and sometimes it was about all Tom Brandy could do to hang out, although his claws were sharper and stronger far than mine.
The Second Cat Megapack: Frisky Feline Tales, Old and New Page 35
