Billy Whiskers, Jr.

by Frances Trego Montgomery

Since starting they had made great pets of both Billy and Stubby and had often given them meat and apples, and got permission for them to run on deck once in a while. Otherwise they would have been shut below with the cattle and the trip would have been unendurable to the independent, free-roving Billy.

One dark night as the steamer was ploughing the waters and they were laying in a little sheltered nook on deck, they heard the captain say to the mate:

“We are getting pretty near Port Arthur now and it is going to be mighty ticklish sailing in these waters; with the two armies, the Russians and the Japanese, banging away at each other from their battleships and the waters under us filled with hidden mines and torpedo boats. I tell you, I don’t like these submarine things floating around. Who knows but one might get loose, float off and perhaps blow up the wrong boat.”

And that is just what did happen, for while the captain was talking, a terrific explosion was heard, louder than one hundred cannons going off at once, and for a second, the heavens were lit up with a weird light in which were seen huge pieces of debris flying in the air like the eruption from a volcano, while, almost in the same second, they began falling with a sissing sound into the waters beneath, and all that was left of the Russian’s battle ship was a few splinters of wood and the mangled bodies of her officers and men floating on top of the water.

It had all been so sudden and was over so quickly that it was hard to realize that such a terrible disaster could have occurred in so short a time.

“Now, what did I tell you about the danger of sailing along here? One of these submarine mines or torpedo boats caused the blowing up of that war-ship and I tell you what, we had better get out of here as fast as ever we can or we too may be blown sky high before we know it.”

Consequently, they cautiously and softly steamed away from Port Arthur and kept a sharp lookout for every Russian boat that might be sailing round looking for some boat of the enemies to capture, but they escaped them all.

When they landed, Billy’s and Stubby’s friends, the Japs, took them home with them where they were fed and nicely housed in their back yard, and while Billy and Stubby were making friends with the beautiful pheasants that were shut in the same yard, their Japanese friends went to military headquarters to join the army and when they came back they were dressed in their uniforms with orders in their pockets to report at headquarters the next morning.

For several days after this, Billy and Stubby saw nothing of them but they were fed and looked after by a pretty, rosy faced, little Jap girl who wore a pretty flowered kimona and wore her hair in funny looking, little, smooth puffs with toy fans sticking out of it.

They had been in the yard about a week and Billy was getting tired of such close quarters with nothing to see or do, when he heard a military band marching down the street on the other side of the high fence. The little Jap girl who had just brought them some water, when she heard this, dropped her pan and ran to the gate in the fence and looked out to see the soldiers go by. Of course Billy turned and was through the gate in a flash with Stubby close at his heels and down the street they ran in the direction the band had taken, while the poor little Jap girl ran after them wringing her hands in dismay and calling to them to come back, but they only ran the faster.