Shireen and her Friends Part 15

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 pa.s.sage 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 mult.i.tude of wheels rattling round and round, that it quite bewilders one.

But to-night 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 p.u.s.s.y princess," he said; "be not afraid, I pray you. Hurry not away, for if you leave the deck the moon will cease to shine, 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 for ever 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 favour."

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 sh.o.r.e. 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 baptise 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.