“Who is missing, and how did it happen?” he asked hurriedly at the man who had seen the whole affair.
“The monkeys sprang on her, sir, and walloped her into the briny.”
“It is a woman, then. Good Heavens! not Teenie, surely, nor Miss Leona?”
“No, sir, no. ’Twas honly the cat, sir.”
Antonio laughed now.
“But you were perfectly right, James,” he said, “and I hope they’ll save her.”
They did. They found Muffie clinging to the little mast that supported the beacon-light. She had had a narrow shave, for the sea appeared alive with sharks. I believe they all wanted to know how a cat would taste.
. . . . . .
Rounding the Horn had been for the officers and crew of the Zingara a weary and dangerous experience. It was in July, and this is the deadest, darkest month of winter in these regions. The days were short; the cold was bitter and piercing. Sometimes a snowstorm was raging on the deck itself, and the drift blowing as suffocatingly fierce as ever it does on a Highland mountain. The deck, too, was slippery with ice, and the bows so clogged with it that men had to be lowered with iron jumpers to dig it off.
Then contrary winds delayed them too, and once a gale of such fierceness raged, that although they lay to with very little canvas indeed, they were drifted far south, till they came in touch with the Antarctic ice.