Old or New Basin and the seemingly endless Dock area, Peter would gaze up at the wondrous, alluring names lettered in gold beneath the taffrail, with their home ports, and read them off to Jennie.
'Raimona—Lisbon,' he read.
`Lisbon is full of cats—my type,' Jennie commented.
`Vilhialmar—Helsinki …'
'No more dried fish, thank you,' Jennie remarked, a little acidly.
`Isis—Alexandria …'
Jennie went all dreamy, and even appeared to hesitate for a moment as though on the verge of changing her mind, but then said, `Some day, perhaps, but not now. When we come hack, maybe. Alexandria, Cairo, then up the River Nile. Bubastis is where I want to get to. We really were sacred there . . .'
Ship after ship they inspected whose home ports were dotted all over the globe from Suez to Calcutta, from Singapore to Colon, and from Bangor, Maine, to Jamaica, West Indies and Tampico, Mexico. And then, right at the end of the largest basin, almost at the entrance to St. Catherine's Docks, they came upon a little one squatting low and lumpy alongside its berth, and its letters weren't in gold, but plain white, and that so smudged and dirty from smoke and grime that Peter could hardly make them out and had to squint up a second time through the growing darkness, but when he did read it his heart gave a jump of excitement.
'Jennie! It says: 'Countess of Greenock—Glasgow'!'
'Lumme!' Jennie whooped, a little inelegantly, `that's our ship. There's your new home for the next few weeks or so, Peter.'
Peter's enthusiasm cooled somewhat as he looked her over, for she was far from a thing of beauty. Her hull was black and rusted red in spots, squat and ugly, with a stubby bow from which rose a short mast with an enormous cargo boom that was engaged at the very moment lifting crates and packing-cases and huge nets filled with barrels and drums from the dockside and lowering them into her interior.
She had an island bridge amidships with a wheelhouse a-top in several different shades of brown, that reminded Peter of a large slice of chocolate layer cake. Another mast and busy boom stuck up behind this, and then back of the second cargo hold rose the brief cabin section with quarters, two lifeboats fastened on either side, and to cap it a long, thin, dirty smokestack in part buff topped with black. Thick smoke was pouring from this funnel, and from it there came a soft-coal smell so raw, acrid and pungent that Peter sneezed violently several times.
`Bless you,' Jennie said, and then added with feeling: 'It's going to be a job to keep ourselves clean aboard her. But of course you know what it means when she's smoking like that. Probably getting up steam to sail to-night. We're just in time. You see they're loading as fast as they can.'
Jennie studied the situation for a moment and then observed: 'Looks to me like they're loading general cargo. Which means plenty of work for us, especially since there'll be foodstuffs. Well, Peter, are you ready to go aboard? We might as well, while they're busy and pick ourselves a spot to stow away until they cast off.'
Peter could hardly keep his teeth from chattering from pure excitement. But he said to Jennie, 'What if when they find us they are angry and decide to throw us overboard?' For he remembered reading that it went hard very often with stowaways found aboard ship after sailing.
'What?' said Jennie, a little scornfully, `sailors? Throw us overboard? You forget that we are cats and they are superstitious. Now then! We shan't want to risk getting stepped on where they're loading. There ought to be a third gangway aft to the officers' quarters.' The mere sight of the vessel had been sufficient to turn Jennie's speech quite nautical. She continued: 'If I know anything about the discipline aboard, the way this tramp seems to be kept, there won't be any watch on it. The crew is probably mostly ashore having a last fling. Come along, we'll have a look.'
They crept around the darkened portion of the pier to the stern of the Countess of Greenock, where, sure, enough, a small gangway led up from the dock to the head of a narrow companionway on the lower deck. And as Jennie had prophesied, there was no sailor on watch duty at either end, in fact there wasn't so much as a soul about.
'No time like the present,' said Jennie cheerfully, having inspected the set-up thoroughly. She took a few more cautious sniffs all around, and then, without further ado, trotted up the gangplank with Peter following her close behind.
CHAPTER TEN: Price of Two Tickets to Glasgow
ONCE aboard, Jennie's experience and knowledge of ships stood her in good stead. She called for the point- to-point method of procedure again, for she was particularly anxious not to encounter any humans before the ship had cast off, and while she herself could melt and blend with the shadows in corners and behind things, she was worried over the conspicuousness of Peter's snow-white coat. But she followed her nose and her instincts as well as her memory of the other steamships on which she had served, and soon was leading Peter down a narrow companionway that led to a small dining saloon and thence to the galley.
Tea was long since over, all of the crew and officers were on deck engaged with the cargo and preparations for leaving, and Jennie counted on finding that part of the ship deserted. She was right. The galley fires were out and there was no immediate sign of cook or scullery-man. Also no doors were shut anywhere, which gave Jennie further indication as to what kind of a craft it was, and she led him from the galley through the pantry to the small storeroom where the immediate supplies were kept. At the end of this room was a doorway, and a narrow iron staircase that descended to another passageway, on one side of which was the refrigeration room and on the other a large dry-stores enclosure where the ship's supplies in bulk were kept sacks of flour and beans and dried peas, tins of fruit and vegetables, boxes of biscuits, tea, coffee, etc.
The slatted door to this also stood wide open. It was dark, but an electric light burning far down the passageway shed sufficient light so that with their acute vision they soon accustomed themselves and could see their way about the boxes and cartons and barrels as well as though it were broad daylight.
And it was there in the storeroom, well concealed behind a case of tinned tomatoes, that Peter saw and missed his first mouse, revealing what might have been a fatal weakness in their plans. It had never dawned on him, and Jennie too had quite neglected to think about it and take into consideration that for all his looking like and appearing to be, and learning to behave like a cat, Peter had not the faintest idea how to go about the difficult and important business of catching a mouse.
Indeed, it was only through the lucky break that in the last moment more cargo arrived and the Countess of Greenock did not sail that night, nor the next night either, that they were able to remedy this deficiency at least partly, for superstition or no, a cat that proved itself wholly unable to catch marauding rodents might have received short shrift aboard such a craft.
The awkward discovery came when Jennie called his attention to the little scratching, nibbling sort of noise from the other side of the storeroom, whispering—`Ssh! Mouse! There he is over by the biscuit box. Let's see you get him.'
Peter concentrated, staring through the gloom, —and there indeed he was, just edging around the corner of the large tin marked HUNTLEY & PALMER LTD., READING, a long, greyish chap with a greedy face, impertinent whiskers and beady black eyes.
Peter was so anxious to show off to Jennie what he could do as a cat if given the chance, that he hardly even set himself to spring, or paused to measure the distance, the obstacles and the possible avenues of escape open to the mouse. Without a moment's thought or plan, he launched himself through the air in one terrific pounce, paws spread wide, jaws open to snatch him.
There was, of course, no mouse there when Peter landed.
And not only that, but his teeth clicked together on empty air, there was nothing beneath his paws and, in addition, having miscalculated his distance, or rather not calculated it at all, he gave himself a nasty knock on the head against the side of the tin box, all of which did not help the feeling that he had made a perfect fool of himself.
But while the mouse had saved itself momentarily, it also committed a fatal error by failing to dodge back behind the tin. Instead, gripped by panic, it emitted a squeak and went the other way, and the next instant, like a
