than Jennie. `Soon,' she said with satisfaction, `you'll be cat through and through.'
And yet when the tragedy happened it was just as well that Peter was not all cat.
In a way it began when Peter caught his first rat. The Countess of Greenock was ploughing the Irish Sea 'twixt the Isle of Man and the Cumberland coast, close enough inshore that one could see the peaks of the Cumbrian mountains inland, shining in the sun. The ocean was flat, calm and glassy, and the only cloud in the sky was the one made by the black smoke poured forth by the Countess and which, due to a following breeze over the surface, she carried along with her over her head like an untidy old charwoman shielding herself from the sun with an old black cotton umbrella. They were on the reach between Liverpool and Port Carlisle on the Scottish border and Captain Sourlies was in a great hurry to make it before nightfall, which was why the Countess was under forced draught, emitting volumes of soft-coal smoke and shuddering from the vibrations of her hurrying engines.
Peter had an appointment with Jennie on the after-deck at six bells of the early afternoon watch, or three o'clock, for he had quickly learned to tell the ship's time from the strokes of the bell struck by the look-out on the bridge. This was always a kind of do-as-you-please time aboard the Countess, for then Captain Sourlies would be taking his afternoon nap in his cabin, Mr. Carluke, torn from his latest literary composition, which he was calling The Bandit of Golden Gulch, was on duty on the bridge, and everybody else followed his hobby or loafed by the rail or snoozed in the sun. And since Mr. Strachan, the first mate, still had a badly aching arm from the stitches taken in it, his dummy lurked in a corner in disgrace and the red-haired mate on this day was yarning with Mr. Box, the carpenter, about an episode that had happened to him in Gibraltar during the war, and as proof produced an 1890 Queen Victoria copper penny that he had happened to be carrying on his person at the time of the adventure.
Jennie was already dozing in the soft spring sunshine, squatted down atop the stern rail. She like to perch there because it was fairly high and gave her an overall view and also to show her superiority, for every one was always prophesying that some day she would be knocked or fall off from there into the sea. But of course there never was a cat more certain or surefooted than Jennie Baldrin.
Peter awoke promptly at ten minutes to three—he found that he could now awake at exactly any time he desired—and made a rough toilet with his tongue. He stretched and strolled casually from the lower storeroom which was his quarters and which it was also his job to keep clear of vermin. Up to that moment there had been only mice, which Peter had kept down quite handily.
He should have smelled the rat long before he saw it, but then, although his smell senses were feline and quite sharp, his mind was still human and he had been thinking that he must tell Jennie about a member of the black gang, a stoker who fed the furnace, who was such an admirer of Winston Churchill that he had a picture of him tattoed on his chest, cigar and all. And so he had not been alert. When he saw the rat, he was in a very bad position.
The beast was almost as large as a fox terrier and it was cornered in a small alcove made by some piled– up wooden cases of tinned baked beans from which several boxes had been removed from the centre. Also it was daylight, Peter wasn't stalking, and the rat saw Peter at the same time that Peter saw him, and uttered an ugly squeal of rage and bared long yellow teeth, teeth that Peter knew were so unclean that a single scratch from them might well poison him beyond help. And for the first time he really understood what people meant by the expression `fight like a cornered rat,' or rather he was about to understand. For in spite of the fact that Jennie had warned him never to go after a rat except when it was out in the open, he meant to attack this one and prove himself.
He was surprised to find that now in this moment of danger he was not thinking of lessons he had learned, or what he had seen or heard or what Jennie had said, but that his mind seemed to be extraordinarily calm and clear and that, almost as though it had always been there ready and waiting, his plan unfolded itself in his mind. It was only much later he found out that this was the result of discipline, study, patience and practice that he had put behind him at Jennie's behest.
His spring, seemingly launched directly at the foe, appeared to be sheer folly, and the rat rose up on his hind legs to meet him head on, slashing at him viciously. But not for nothing had Peter learned and practised the secret of continuing up on a smooth wall from a single leap from the floor. A split-second faster than the rat, his fore and hind legs touched the slippery sides of one of the piles of cases for an instant and propelled him high into the air so that the flashing incisors of the rodent like two hideously curved Yataghans whizzed between his legs, missing him by the proverbial hair's breadth.
The extra impetus upwards now gave Peter the speed and energy to twist not half but the whole way around in a complete reverse and drop on to the back of the rat, to sink his own teeth deep into its spine just behind the ears.
For one dreadful moment Peter felt that he might yet be beaten, for the rat gave such a mighty heave and surge, and lashed so desperately to and fro, that Peter was thumped and banged up against the sides of the boxes until he felt himself growing sick and dizzy and no longer certain whether he could hold on. And if once he let go, the big fellow would turn on him and cut him to ribbons.
In desperation he set his teeth with all his might, and bit one, two, three times hard, and at the third felt the rat suddenly stiffen. The swaying and banging stopped. The rodent kicked twice with its hind legs and then was still. It never moved again. Peter unclamped his aching jaws and sat down quickly and did some washing. He was badly shaken and most emphatically needed to recover his composure.
Nevertheless it was exactly at six bells that he came trotting on to the after-deck carrying the rat in his mouth, or rather dragging it, because it was so large that when he held it in the middle, its head and tail hung down to the deck. It was so heavy that he could barely lift it. But of course he managed because he simply had to show it off to Jennie and anyone else who happened to be around.
It was Mr. Box who saw him first and let out a yell `Blimey, looka there! The white un's caught a bloomin' Helephant.'
Mr. Strachan also gave a shout, for Peter passed quite close to him and the rat dragged over his foot causing him to jump as though he had been stung. The cries brought several deckhands over on the run to see. They also woke up Jennie Baldrin.
She had not meant to fall so soundly asleep, but the peaceful sea and the warm afternoon sun had lulled her deeper than she had intended, and now the sudden cries sent alarms tingling down her spine. And when she opened her eyes they fell on Peter and his rat, and in the first confusion she was not certain whether the rat was carrying Peter or vice versa, whether it was alive or dead, whether Peter was still engaged in fighting it. The sound of running feet added to her confusion and she recoiled from the unknown and the uncertain and the thought of possible danger to Peter.
But there was no place to recoil to from her precarious perch on the ship's rail, and with an awful cry, her four paws widespread, and turning over once in the air, she fell into the sea and was swept away in the white salt froth of propeller wash.
`Cat overboard!' a deckhand cried, and then laughed.
'Good-bye, Pussy,' said Mr. Box. 'Arskin' for it, she was, perched up there loike that.'
Mr. Strachan stared with his mouth open.
The sailor who had been a hermit said to Peter: `There goes yer pal, Whitey. Ye'll no see Coptain Sourlies tairnen his ship aboot to rrrrrrescue a wee puss baldrin.'
But Peter was no longer there. There was only a white streak of fur as he dropped the rat, leaped to the rail, and from it, long and low, shot straight into the sea after Jennie.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Mr. Strachan Furnishes the Proof
SPLASH! Into the water Peter went!
It was roiling and boiling and full of sizzle and foam, surges, lifts, thrusts and undertows from the powerful strokes of the Countess' propeller just beneath the surface. Also it was shockingly cold.
Peter felt himself caught in the grip of an irresistible whirlpool; he was pulled down, rolled over, thrust head over heels, then shot to the surface, and before he could gasp his lungs full of air, sucked down again into the green depths. With his chest near to bursting from want of air, he fought and struggled to rise, swimming with all four feet, and at last reached the surface sufficiently far behind in the wake of the ship to be no longer subject to the
