“‘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.