Chapter Fifteen.
“When the Fur begins to Fly.”
Nobody had ever been heard to call Cracker a pretty dog or a bonnie dog. He was sturdy and strong, and nearly, if not quite, as large as a Collie. His legs were as straight as darts, and as strong as the sapling pine tree. Then his coat—ah! well, there is no way of describing that with pen and ink or in print either. It was rough though not shaggy, and every hair was as hard apparently as pin-wire.
In the matter of coats, in fact, Nature had, while dressing Cracker, adhered to the useful rather than the ornamental. He had apparently come in the afternoon for his coat, and nearly all the other dogs had been before him. Collie had been fitted with his flowing toga, the Poodle with his cords and tassels, the Yorkshire terrier with his doublet of silk, and many others with coats as soft and smooth as that of a carriage horse, and poor Cracker, the Airedale terrier, had almost been forgotten.
“Your coat, Cracker?” Nature had said. “Oh, certainly. I’m really afraid, however, that you have come rather late in the day to be dressed with anything like elegance.”
“Oh!” Cracker had put in, “I ain’t a bit particular. Anything’ll do for Cracker, so as it is thick enough to keep out a shower with a shake.”
So Nature had simply gathered up the sweepings of the shop, the cabbage and clippings, so to speak, and mixed them all up into a kind of shoddy, and dabbed Cracker all over with that, going in, however, for a few finishing touches of gold about the muzzle, the chest, and legs.
And good honest Cracker had given himself a shake, and said, “This’ll do famous,” then trotted off to do his duty and his work, which, to his credit be it said, every dog of this breed knows well how to get through.
Well, one sunshiny day, when the old friends, including even Chammy, who was lying in the limb of a dwarf holly, were assembled on Uncle Ben’s lawn, Ben himself and the Colonel blowing clouds in their straw chairs, and Lizzie lying with a book in Ben’s hammock, who should come through the gateway but towsy Cracker himself.
He was a brave dog this, and just as modest as brave, for the two good qualities always go hand-in-hand. So he advanced in a bashful, hesitating kind of way, as if he felt he ought to apologise for his presence on the lawn at all, but didn’t know exactly how to begin. He was smiling too, a very broad smile that seemed to extend halfway down both sides.
Vee-Vee and Warlock jumped up at once growling and barking, and ready to defend the family circle with their lives if there was any occasion, but seeing it was only Cracker, they ran to meet him, and give him a hearty welcome.
Then Cracker advanced, shaking his droll old stump of a tail, and Shireen herself arose and rubbed her back against his legs.
“No,” she said, “you certainly don’t intrude, Cracker, and we only wish you would come oftener than you do.”
“Well, seeing as that’s the case,” said Cracker, “I’ll make one this afternoon at your little garden party. But I’m not much used to refined society, I bet you. More at home in a stable than in a drawing-room; the riverside and moor or the forest is more in old Cracker’s way than fountain, lawn, and shrubbery. But, la! Shireen, whatever is that lying along that branch? It isn’t a big snail and it ain’t a large slug, sometimes grey and sometimes green. Well, of all the ugly—”
“It’s a friend of ours,” said Shireen, interrupting Cracker, “and, I assure you, Chammy won’t hurt anything or anybody except the flies and mealworms.”
“Well, well,” said Cracker, “wonders ’ll never cease, but if I had met a beast like that in the woods, I’d have bolted quick, you bet, and never turned tail till safe in my kennel again.”
“And now, Mother Shireen, let us have some more of your story,” said Vee-Vee.
“Ah! yes,” said Tabby; “but what a pity Cracker didn’t hear the first part.”
Well, said Shireen, we arrived at Portsmouth, I and my master as safe as anything, and after dinner proceeded on board.
The Hydra was the name of the war ship on which we were to sail for India’s distant shore. She was a fine craft of the kind human beings call a corvette. I was not long in perceiving that she carried many long black guns, but was glad to learn soon after my arrival, that as we were going to make a very quick passage out to Bombay, these awful guns would hardly ever be fired.
The Hydra was much larger than the old Venom, had fine open decks, and tall, raking masts, with a low, wide funnel of jet, up which went the crimson copper steampipe. Her decks were as white as ivory, and I could see my face in the polished woodwork, to say nothing of the brass that shone like gold.
I trotted along by my master’s side towards the quarter-deck.
Captain Beecroft in uniform, and looking young and happy, came forward with a smile to bid us welcome.
“So you haven’t parted with your beautiful cat?” said the captain, as we walked to the companion.
“No, Beecroft, nothing, I hope, will ever part me from her.”
“I wonder,” said Beecroft, “if she’ll remember her old pal, the hero, Tom Brandy.”
“What? Have you still got Tom?”
“Yes. It isn’t likely I’d sail without black Tom. That would be to throw away my luck, you know, and I’d never become an Admiral.”
“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed master; “but how superstitious sailors are!”
“And some soldiers too, ain’t they? ha, ha!”
Then both laughed, and Beecroft led the way to his quarters, a sentry at the door saluting as we passed by.
I declare to you, children, when I saw honest Tom Brandy lying there on a skin rug in front of the stove—for it was almost winter now, and very cold—you could have knocked me down with a sledge hammer.
I felt all over in a whirl with joy, and for a moment I didn’t know whether my top or my toes were uppermost.
Tom jumped up with a fond cry, and ran to meet me, and the two of us ran round and round the table in order to allay our feelings, like a pair of three-month-old kittens.
But we both settled down on the skin in a few minutes, and commenced singing a duet together, to the accompaniment of a coffee-urn that simmered above the stove.
“Just like old times, isn’t it, soldier?” said Beecroft, looking down at me and Tom.
“Just like old times, sailor,” said master.
Then the two shook hands once more.
And down they sat to talk and smoke.
The ship sailed in a day or two, heading away down channel on a beam wind. Tom told me it was a beam wind, else I wouldn’t have known, for it was just the same colour as any other wind. Tom also told me we were under close-reefed topsails and storm jib, and that if it came on to blow a bit more, we should be scudding under bare poles.
I said, “Oh, indeed!” But I didn’t know in the least what Tom meant.
You will observe, children, that Tom was dreadfully learned and nautical.
He was looking far more respectable and beautiful than when I saw him last. He had a new coat of jetty black, and there wasn’t a single burnt hole in it. He was rounder in the face, too, and more brilliant in eye.
When I remarked upon these improvements.
“Oh,” he said, “it is like this, Shireen, I have been living in the bosom of the Captain’s own family on shore, and on the fat of the land, as you might say.
“I’ve turned over a new leaf too,” he added, looking pensively at the blazing, caking coal, and swaying to and fro with the motion of the ship. “When I came on board the old Venom I wasn’t what you might have called strictly honest. I would have laid hands on a herring at any time; and I once tried to eat the cook’s canary, and was beautifully basted in consequence. But I’ve seen the error of my ways, and now that I am the Captain’s cat, I consider it is more honourable to beg than to steal. But my eyes, Shireen, how beautiful you’re looking! And to think I’ve got you back again. Won’t we have some jolly larks, and won’t we catch some flying fish. A few, eh? But mind you, Shireen, no going to sleep on the bulwarks and tumbling into the sea, this cruise.”
“Oh, it makes me shudder to think of that wild adventure, Tom,” I said.
“Yes, those sharks pretty nearly had us, hadn’t they, Shireen? If they hadn’t set to quarrelling among themselves as to which would have the white cat and which the black, they’d have eaten us both.”
“Heigho!” I sighed, and looked at Tom.
“Heigho!” sighed Tom, and looked at me.
Then we went on with the duet.
The weather soon grew so warm and balmy, and beautiful, that there was no longer any need for a fire in the stove, and the captain’s steward took away the skin, and put down a clean straw mat, and covered the sofa with coolest white and blue chintz, and the ports were carried open all day long, so that we could feel the breeze, and see the dark rippling ocean rushing past us, all bespangled with splashes of sunshine.
I was of course quite an old sailor, though I couldn’t speak nautical like Tom, and I enjoyed this cruise even more than the last.
So I ought to. Was not every day taking me nearer and nearer to my dear little mistress Beebee? And the shorter the time, the more I seemed to love her.
“Instead of going away from home,” said dear master to me one day in the cabin, “I seem to be going to my home, and going to happiness. Oh, I do hope, Shireen, that something will turn up for our good. The fortunes of war are so changeable, you know, Shireen, and we may see Beebee, may be able even to save her from her fate; but alas! we may not.”
We rounded the Cape in wild weather. The waves were mountains high, children; thunder roared and shook the ship, and lightning flash, quickly following flash, played around us, till all the ocean looked like a vast sea of fire. I was almost as much afraid of the thunder as I had been of the great guns on board the saucy Venom.
But soon we got out of this region of storms, and went north and away, the weather getting warmer day after day.
We were soon in the delightful regions of the flying fish; but I took great care not to fall asleep again on the bulwarks.
Everything looked the same in this great turquoisine sea; the bonitoes, the flying fish, the dancing, cooing dolphins, and even those terrible sly-eyed tigers of the sea—the sharks.
On and on and north and north we went. Sometimes we passed a green island, that seemed to hang in the air, rather than float on the ocean; and sometimes the surface of the water was patched here and there with glass-green or pearl-grey, and I knew, or rather Tom told me, that we were sailing over shoals, and at night extra look-outs had to be set, lest we should strike the coral rocks, and the ship break up, when we should all be drowned, and I should never see my mistress more.
It was what they call the cool season when we reached Bombay at last. But such a bustling, busy scene, never did I see before in all my life!
It was baggage and stores here, there, and everywhere, and soldiers all about, and boats skimming the water in every direction; and drums beating, bugles blowing, and great Highland bagpipes screaming, till I declare to you, children, it made me quite dizzy. The worst of it was, that for some days now I didn’t see so much of my master, though you may be sure I took good care to be at his side whenever I could.
I was sorry when the time came to part with Tom again, but we plighted our troth, and promised never to forget the happy cruise in the Hydra.
When it was all over and we were once more at sea, en route for the Persian Gulf, I gave a great sigh of relief. But I did feel a little lonely without Tom Brandy, and kept all the more closely to my master in consequence.
I was now to become a soldier’s cat in downright earnest, and know something about the horrors of war. Shireen paused for a moment. “Cracker,” she said, “do you like the story?”
“It’s a beauty,” said Cracker, “and I’ll like it still better when the fighting commences and the fur begins to fly.”