A ship’s length from the reef theMary Maud lay becalmed, as if at anchor. The last storm clouds raced northward while the sun shone out of a hot blue sky.
The sea sparkled like a still lagoon, and far below, Gobbolino could see brown weed moored to rock terraces, pretty fishes, crabs, and eels, as clearly as if they swam in an aquarium.
All traces of the storm were gone.
Gobbolino looked about him in bewilderment. The sailors too seemed dazed and uncertain– they gathered in little groups, talking uneasily and peeping at Gobbolino.
“It was no seabird, I tell you!” he heard them whisper. “It was a witch!”
“He was talking to her! I heard him plainly!”
“He said he was a witch’s kitten! Can you believe it?”
“No wonder she followed the ship and would not let us alone! We mighty nearly perished, I can tell you!”
“The cat bargained with her to stop the storm, and who knows what he may have offered her in exchange?”
“He cried, ‘Fiddlesticks to you, ma’am!’ or some such rubbish!”
“Ah! Who knows what that may mean to a witch’s cat!”
So they stared suspiciously at Gobbolino, and when he walked towards them none of them stooped to pick him up, or stroked his head.
All night long the ship lay becalmed under a silver moon.
Gobbolino sat on the deck, lonely and sad, for the sailors were awkward with him, and nobody invited him to share their meal.
In the morning a little breeze sprang up, but not a sailor appeared on deck, or made any attempt to unfurl the sails.
At midday the Captain came up alone.
“Gobbolino, my little cat,” he said kindly, but with great solemnity, “I am afraid the time has come when we must part. My sailors refuse to put to sea until you leave the ship. They are afraid of fresh troubles coming upon them or the sea witch revenging herself upon the ship for your sake. There are captains, and there are ships, Gobbolino, who will not have a cat aboard, they think it is unlucky. TheMary Maud is not one of these. But awitch’s cat– oh, no! That is quite a different thing!”
Gobbolino nodded and answered,“Ay, ay, Cap’n!” though his eyes filled with tears at the thought of leaving his kind friends and the ship he had come to look on as his home.
11
The Little Princess
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Gobbolino was very touched when the Captain himself rowed him ashore in theMary Maud’s lifeboat.
The sailors, watching from the ship’s side, gave him a friendly cheer as the boat ran on the silver sands and the little cat jumped out, but he could not look back and see theMary Maud setting sail without him.
So he hurried bravely along, never once turning his head, and taking very little notice of where he was going, because he was so busy trying not to cry, until he found himself in what must have been a very large town indeed, for the streets were so full and so busy that there wasn’t room even for a kitten as neat and agile as himself to walk in peace.
For a time he dodged in and out of legs and leapt from in front of wheels until at last, after an extra hard kick had landed on his ribs, he decided that it would be safer to continue his journey overhead.
With one leap he was on top of a high wall, another leap and he was among the chimneys. With a sigh of relief he set out to continue his journey along the housetops.
When he came to the very end of the town he popped down what he took for a drainpipe.
“This will take me down again!” said Gobbolino. “And once I am on the ground I can run off into the open country and find somewhere where I shall be more welcome than in this place.”
But what he had taken for a rainwater pipe was really a royal chimney.
Gobbolino did not know it, but he had popped down one of the chimneys in the king’s palace.
Down, down, down the dark and narrow chimney fell Gobbolino, like a round ball that became blacker and blacker as he swept away the soot.
Bump! He landed at the bottom, and shot out into an open room, in time to hear a little voice like silver bells saying:
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Whatever can be coming down the chimney?”
Gobbolino opened his beautiful blue eyes and looked about him. He was in the prettiest room he had ever seen, all white lace and pink ribbons.
Watching him from a white bed in the middle of the room was a little girl with golden curls upon which rested a tiny crown. Her pink quilt was littered with toys and dolls. There were games and books on her satin pillows, flowers in great clusters round her bed, but her little face was pale and sad, even when her blue eyes opened wide in surprise at seeing Gobbolino.
He knew in a moment that she must be a princess.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” said the little princess. “It’s a cat! It is a lovely cat with the most beautiful blue eyes I ever saw! Oh, dear little cat! Pretty little cat! Do come nearer so I can speak to you and stroke your soft fur! Come and tell me your name and how you came to fall down my nursery chimney!”
Her voice was so kind and so charming that Gobbolino jumped upon her bed at once, quite forgetting the sooty black paw-marks he left wherever he went.
“The town children were chasing me, Your Highness!” he exclaimed. “My name is Gobbolino!” And then, her little hand was so kind, and her voice so gentle, while his own heart was so lonely, that he began to tell her his whole story from beginning to end, and all the while the princess gently stroked his fur, saying “Oh!” and “Ah!” whenever he paused, till the tale was over, when she said:
“Oh,poor little Gobbolino! How could people be so stupid and cruel? I can’t understand it at all! But you mustn’t be lonely and sad any longer, because I want you to live with me now for ever and ever – you shall be Gobbolino the royal cat!”
At that moment the door opened and the princess’s nurse came into the room.
She threw up her hands in horror at the sight of Gobbolino.
“Your Royal Highness! Your Royal Highness! However did that dirty little cat get on your bed?” she exclaimed. “I thought I shut all the doors! I thought I shut all the windows! And he can’t possibly have come down the chimney!”
“Hedid come down the chimney!” said the little princess. “He is Gobbolino, and he is going to stay with me and be my cat for ever and ever.”
“We’ll see what your doctor says about that!” said the nurse tartly, whisking away the pink satin cover which was all covered with Gobbolino’s paw-marks. “He is just on his way to see you now. I can hear him coming up the stairs.”
The princess’s doctor was round and rosy. He came into the room smiling like the sun, and in less than no time the little princess had persuaded him to allow Gobbolino to stay for ever and ever.
“I feel better already, with him beside me!” she told him. “But if you send him away I shall certainly be worse.”
“What about all those pretty toys, those dolls and games and picture books I ordered for you instead of medicine?” said the doctor. “Those didn’t make you better.”
“They weren’t alive,” said the little princess. “I was just as lonely all the time they were there as before they came!”
So Gobbolino stayed in the little princess’s room day in and day out, and which of them was the happier it would be difficult to say.
“Oh, my goodness!” Gobbolino said to himself sometimes, as he sat in the window looking down on the busy street below. “Here am I, born in a witch’s cave, shunned and despised by everyone, about to live for ever and ever in a royal palace! What would my mother say? And my sister Sootica? Oh, my goodness! Whoever would have believed it?”
He did all in his power to amuse the little princess and keep her happy, for she had lain ill so many weary years that she had almost forgotten how to feel well again, but now, as Gobbolino talked to her, told her stories, and went through his tricks for her, the colour began to creep back into her pale cheeks once more.