Tom and I, continued Shireen, weren’t the only pets on board the Venom. There was a monkey though, and a very large one he was. When he stood up he was as big as a second-class boy. The sailors had dressed him as a marine, and given him a wooden gun, and taught him to shake hands and salute. His name was Joe; but I’m sure he wasn’t happy, I often saw tears in his eyes, or thought I did. Perhaps he had been taken from his home, far away in the beautiful forests of Africa, and had left a wife and children behind him.
We had a mongoose too—a sly old grey creature that the men petted. But Tom never took to him, and used sometimes to whack him when nobody was looking.
We had a large chameleon just like Chammy,—and I wonder where Chammy is—our ship’s chameleon lived in an old coffee-pot that was turned down on its side like a kennel in the corner of the doctor’s cabin. He was chained to this just like a doggie, and used to catch little cockroaches and hammer-legged flies for himself all day.
In another part of the doctor’s cabin was a lizard four feet long, that looked terribly fierce and dangerous, he was also secured with a chain. In a hatbox, in the doctor’s cabin, lived a beautiful bronze-winged pigeon, who purred like a cat. Tom said he must be awfully good to eat, but he wouldn’t venture into the cabin for anything, owing to the dragon that was chained in the corner.
We had in the wardroom a grey parrot with a red tail that he was very proud of. And all the week through the parrot was allowed to go on deck if he liked, but not on Sundays, because once when he came to church in the middle of the service he set everybody laughing by calling the parson “Old Boots.”
The sailors now began to teach me tricks, and seeing that it pleased them very much, I tried to learn my lessons as quickly as possible.
On fine evenings then at smoking time, the men would call me forward, and a ring would be formed near to the winch and between the bows.
Jumping backwards and forwards over a stick, or over a man’s clasped hands, was nothing. Heigho! my dear children, this happened twenty years ago, although I remember it as if it were but yesterday. Well, I was supple and strong, and lithe of limb in those dear days, being little more than a kitten, and a man could hardly hold a stick so high that I couldn’t spring over it.
As soon as I was fairly well accomplished at this work, a piece of iron wire, bent in a half hoop, was used instead of the stick, and every night the sailor who was teaching me brought the two ends of the wire nearer and nearer, until at last it was a whole hoop and nothing else.