THE NOVELIST

Observer, Volume 2, Issue 52, 10 September 1881, Page 615

THE NOVELIST

BEWITCHED IN MID-OCEAN:

By J. Maclabex Cobban,

Author of " Plague Smitten," <Sfc CHAPTER I.

" Thrice the brindled cat hatli rnew'd."

Old superstitions, like old religions, take si .'great deal of killing. About no four-footed creature have religious beliefs or superstitions clung more tenaciously than about the cat, iron feline deity of Egypt and the gaunt grimalkin oJ the witches, to the tame tubby of our fireside II is difficult, however, to believe that, in this quarter of the nineteenth century and among sane English-men pussy should ever be an object of fear and foreboding. Yet hear the story oj my friend, the captain of the ' Seamew,' recentb come into port after an unusually stormy and .strange passage from Baltimore : — "We had a capital run for several days. Af tei dropping down the river, we gave her sheet accross the cold belt of water that lies along the coast, and out we " swished" into the Stream and away silong it. • Jack.' says I to my mate, who has sailed witli me in the '"Seamew" a many years, 'home ir thirty days. Eh?' 'Humph,' said Jack, 'maybe.' Jack was f Scotchman, and cautious about an opinion. "Well, on March 14 (I have reason to remenv her the date), a little after twelve o'clock, ir lat. 41 dcg. north and long. 53 cleg, west (I hac! just taken our bearings and remember 'em), I was sweeping round with my glass ■careless-like when I sighted a ship on •our starboard bow. I had a good look ; she was a barque, and was -nying signals of distress. I called Jack. 'Jack,' said I, when he had looked, 'what do you think? We must bear ■down on her, I suppose ?' ' Humph,' said Jack. 'Ay, I suppose' "We shortened sail and bore down. We came within hail, but nobody answered from the barque. Presently, though, a boat was launched and pulled towards us ; but their pulling was •weak and " dippy." Then a man stood up in the middle of the boat, tugged his coat off and waved it, and sang out, "Ahoy! Ahoy!" in a half -cracked kind of voice. This was odd, and I tramped up and down, impatient to hear what they wanted. 'Wo are starving!' That's what the captain that stood up in the middle said. 'We are starving,' says he. ' The * Lily ' of Plymouth, outward bound for .Baltimore' "We got 'em up the side. I took the master into the cabin, and sent the men for'ard. Lord ! to see that man drink and eat ! With delirious eagerness, as you might say, and yet afraid to eat too 'fast or too much. He knew he must keep in his awful appetite, and still it would keep a-breaking from him. He told xis his story in scraps between : — They had been' provisioned for throe months, and that was their 125 th day out ! The weather they had experienced had been most peculiar ; not stormy, but playful and perverse like; sometimes blowing this way, sometimes that, often not blowing at all. Near eleven weeks had gone by before they sighted Cape Henry, and when they did, down came a furious, sprawling nor'wester, and drove 'em out to sea again. And so they had beaten about in adverse winds, of course, ever since. Their last drop of water and their last scrap of biscuit went five days ago. Then they came to cooking their boots, and sucking the oil from the lamps — even from the binnacle. 'We ate my dog last !' And the poor fellow burst into tears. 'As sure as fate ' said he, looking oddly at me, 'we have been bewitched.' ' Betwitchcd !' said I. 'What, now — what makes you think of such a thing ?' ' Ah; well,' said he, ' I don't know. But we'll see.' "After that he was in a hurry toreturn to his ship. We filled their boat and a boat of our own with all the provisions we thought we could spare (and there ■were tlurteen of 'em, an awkward number to feed). Jack went with our boat, and when he came back says he to me :

" Tliat skipper's not a bad sort, though I lie be a Cardiff man. He's sent re this ieg o' spirits — and it maybe as well out o' their -way now — and, what d'ye think ? four bottles o' champagne in the basket here ! They had thought o' saving them for land-sight, but he's sent them to you.' "We looked at the basket of champagne at once. The bottles lay sloped in, with their heads out. Underneath was a little packing-straw, and underneath that — oh, Jack's face and language when he saw it ! — a tabby, a brindled cat, lying curled up asleep ! ' Oli !' cried Jack. ' Oh, the sly, and ungrateful devil ! This is your Welshman, your Taffy ! This is what he thought he was bewitched wi' ! And he's been afraid to make away Avi' it ! So he sends the witchcraft here ! The coward he is ! But we'll play Jonah's trick, and chance the whale.' "So he seized the c:it and swung out his arm to toss it over-board ; when my little Maggie, that sailed with me this voyage, and that scarce understood his words, but understood his action, caught his wrist and cried : ' Oh, no, please, Jack ! G-ive it to mo!' " Now, Jack was very fond of her, so he arrested his act at her bidding at once ; but he said, " It's betwitched, though, Maggie lass. If I don't believe in that sort o' thing, there's them here that do,' with a glance at the men for'ai'd. ' Ay, sh - , there be,' said Dick Sandys, an old seaman who had been standing by all the while helping to haul up the boat by the davit line, and keeping, as I had observed, a sidelong eye on the basket- ' There's them aboard this here ' Sea-

mew,' and T don't say as Avhat I ain't one on 'cm myself, as '11 straight off begin to think the rare luck of this here present vVagc is gone. But they'll dread Avorser luck, sir, if ye throw overboard a brindled eat as has been carried aboard across water.' ' Is that so ?' asked Jack. 'Yes,' said lin a low voice. 'I've heard that before. 'But,' said I aloud, and looking at Dick, and trying to work off my uneasiness in a. joke, ' how can you have a 'sea ' or any other , mow ' ■without a cat ?' ' This cat,' said Jack, ' scarcely looks as if she would mew again. Just look at her — skin and bones.' "My little Maggie had waked her up with stroking, and the wretched creature tried to stand and walk, rubbing against Maggie's leg. But she fell over again and again. Jack caught the animal up and sniffed her breath, while she gave him an averted look, which to me seemed almost human. ' S'lp me !' cried Jack. 'If they haven't made her drunk, so that she would come here q_uiet ! Did ye ever see a cat like her ! ' " When Maggie carried the cat into the cabin, I tramped up and down the deck, more uneasy than 1 cared to let myself know. It was not (as I told Jack) that I was a believer in the superstitions about cats which many sailors still encourage, but because I knew what desperate work it would me, if anything should happen, to keep in hand a crew that had given themselves up. " It was getting on in the afternoon, and I was still tramping to and fro, when that ear rushed on deck, witli Maggie after it- ■ It jumped up on the bulwarks, and, looking and poking its nose over the water, meaw?d. It leaped back to the

deck, and ran along towards the foVsle and round the caboose, and stopped and meawed again. It ran back towards me, tmd looked round and meawed a third time ; and its meowing was loud and distressful, as if it Avanted to be let out or let in. Maggie followed, calling ' Puss, puss ! poor pussy !' And there was I, and Jack, and farther off all the crew looking on and -wondering at the creatures movements and cries. There •were peculiar one-sided glances and head-shakes, I saw, exchanged, by the men. To discourage any notion there might be that I also felt concern, I turned away to -walk up and down as before, having first lit my pipe. What did that cat do but trot off at my heels, looking up and meaioinr/ with a kind of bitter greediness, as if I were the cat's-meat man ! ' Catch it, Maggie,' I said, ' and give it something to eat.' ' I've given it something, farther,' said Maggie, ' and ifc won't eat it- But maybe it Avill now; and she managed to seize and carry it off. " jS t ow, standing still, I notice that the smoke of my pipe, instead of being blown away, was curling slowly about my head, rising a little and forming a bit of cloud and then melting away straight up. I did not like these signs. There ■was a change working round in the weather ; of which, let me tell you, the glass had given no warning. " We had been having a clear sky and a fresh breeze ; the breeze fell slack, our sails flapped and ' bilged,' like as if in disgust, snd tlie most cur-

ions dimness and thickness came clown round the ship. lam too old a sailor to make a note of every odd change in the look of the sea or the sky, but that was the oddest change I ever saw in mid-ocean. I have read a deal of poetry at sea, and I used to write home pieces to Maggie's mother, when she was alive, God bless her ! and so I have always by me a sort of taste and oye for what you would call ' poetic effects.' Weil, the effect that day as the nor'west breeze fell dead, and the sun began to go down, I shall never forget. It became very cold, and a mysteriouslooking haze gathered about the ship in a circle that got always narrower and narrower, till we had not a hundred feet of clear view all round. The sea lost its briskness and ripple ; it took on a dull, steely, oily look, and glided and slid about, as if it were the back of a monstrous snake. We j seemed at the bottom of a pit of darkness and devilry ; and the bottom we rested upon was the fathomless Atlantic! All around us the encroaching haze, and rising behind and above it a douse, dark wall of cloud, touched, in the west, at its lofty broken edges with the dim glory of the setting sun, and showing a little space of pale, pure blue above, and in the east and south appearing like an inaccessible grey cliff. From the depths of this cliff seemed to come by-and-by faint laboured sighs, which gradually became wilder and prolonged themselves into Avails of distress and pain. We shortened sail at once down to the lower top-sails. " Between nine and ten I tucked my little Maggie safe into her berth, and turned in myself, though I knew it would only be for a little while. That cat T did not see anywhere abou*:. " I was waked suddenly by my head being

bumped against the side of my berth. There was a loud report, like the going off of twenty muskets; I felt a sudden spasm as of choking ; I caught at my breath and sprang to my feet. You have never been in a hurricane, I dare say ? Well, when it first swoops down, it seems to shut you and the ship up with too much breath. In another minute I was on deck ; the report had been the noise of a sheet blown to pieces. Jack was roaring through the trumpet, the men were shortening sail — you eonld just hear the sharp creak of ropes and pulleys through the wind— and that wretched cat was hid somewhere about, meawiiir/ its very worst. It was two in the morning ; hurricane from the north-east with bitter rain, and we lay-to with the lee clew of the lower maintopsail. All on till dawn and through the day it blew and shrieked its loudest. Two men were at the wheel to keep her head iip, but I knew that for all that we were driving rapidly back on our track. The drift in the air was so dense that we could not see five yards beyond the ship ; and by five o'clock it was dark. About six o'clock a great sea struck our bows, carried away our head, and let a. rush of water like a mill-race over our decks. We recoiled a great distance, and settled heavily in the trough of the sea. But we rose again with a shudder. " On the second day, after daylight, the Irurricane abated, though it still blew a stiff gale. But we were able to slacken something of the grim tenacity of our vigilance, and to look at each other again. * I liked not the looks I met. We had

passed -with comparatively little damage through a terrible danger ; and' that would, hare been enough, you would have thought, to lead the sailors to think that both weather and ship were under altogether different and better guidance than the witchery of a tabby cat. Yet they looked 6ullen and hopeless. I could see from the way they eyed the creature, and drew off from it and its dismal meowings, that they were still bound by a dread of what it might bring upon them. I must confess that I myself disliked the cat, though it seemed moved to wander up and down the deck and into the cabin, and to lament as it did more by some kind of distress than from spite. Maggie was the only one who took any notice of it ; and she fed it and followed it about with an unwearied devotion to which the creature did not at all respond. "Next day, though the gale continued to abate, our plight was little improved. The ' Seamew ' carried herself . heavily, though we could not discover she was making water. The Mind was still north-east, against which she not only made no head, but kept losing way. I was, therefore, not surprised when Jack came to nic in the cabin and said, ' There's something going on for'ard — no end o' talk and tobacco-juice.' " We went on deck. ' Look at them,' continued Jack, ' there by the chains. See liow they shove their shoulders into each other. When a sailor does that, and pulls his own ear as Dick Sandys is doing, there's something up. And they half look this way. Ahj here they come.'

" There were three of them, headed by Dick Sandys, shyly shouldering their way aft. Dick came pretty straight, pulling at Ms ear, with his eyes cast down, but with his round, ruddy face sinning steadily forward ; his comrades lurched about, look? ing from side to side, and touching things as they passed. ' Well, Dick,' said I, ' you want to speak to me, I suppose, you and your mates ?' ' Ay, ay, sir ; if you will kindly give us a word. Me and them, sir ' — jerking his thumb over his shoulder — ' come as a deppysation from the fo'c'sle. We ain't got no notion o' dictating to the capting, but Are want to put ye in possession, sir, of what we'are a-thinking about, Eh ? mates ?'

'Ay, ay.' 'We see how it's going to be : — This here v'yagc '11 never come to no good end. The ' Sea-mew ' '11 never get into no harbour ; and some day one on them big steamers '11 come across her all a-rot-ting, Avi' noa a sign o' life aboard but cursed striped cat in the rigging. It's bound to live somehow ; — eh, mates ? Well, sir, avc ain't a-blaming nobody. It's our luck, and the damned trick o' that " Lilly." That's bound to be our luck wi' that there cat aboard ; but it's not to be expected as how we'll take it meek and mild. Well, ye see, sir, they say " worscr luck if ye throw her overboard." Jest so. But now this is what we were a-thinking : — Stijjjpos we set her adrift in cm old tub' " This dark suggestion lie conveyed in a, low voice, with his hand to the side of his mouthaf fcer a glance round to make sure the cat was not Avithin hearing. Then he looked at me with a steady -wistful eye ; his mates fidgeted and looked over the ship's sides, as though they felt half-ashamed, of the plot to which they had given their adherence. " I considered a moment. I had, o£ course, no real belief that getting rid of the cat thus ■would giA'e us a fair wind. ; yet still it was worth trying ; it involved only the sacrifice of the cat, and if it did not change the wind, it would at least change the looks of my crew. But what would my little Maggie say? HowcA r er, I turned at once and spoke to Dick. ' You can try it,' said I. ' I give yoxx full leave — though, mark you, I don't belioA'c in the non-sense. But get hold of it without my little girl seeing you.' 'Ay, ay, sir.' "All, it Avas a bad night. The wind whistled in ropes and cords, and spars and rigging creaked wearily. The broken water eA'ery iioav and then came smash on our bulwarks, and swirling and liissing over us. Ah, my hearties, believe me its better ashore than at sea ! The cat was got and put into the tub, and over she went into the darkne63 and the rush and hiss of the mighty ■waters Avith a dreadful memo that made our flesh creep.

'I was glad I did see the men's faces. I felt — I don't know what. Then I went aft a step or two till I was close to the wheel and looking astern. I had stood 'maybe a minute or more, when, lo add behold ! I saw just where the glimmer of the binnacle light fell on the bulwarks, the head and the staring eyes of the cat ! I dashed forward juss on the impulse. It Avas clambering on board again. (To he continued.)