Gobbolino at Sea
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Gobbolino left the Town Hall far behind him and trotted steadily southward towards the sea.
He passed through towns and villages, past cottages and farmhouses, and small lonely dwellings, but every hearth had its tabby and every farm its brood of sleek mousers. There was no welcome anywhere for Gobbolino.
He kept himself from starving by killing rats in a rickyard, or mice in the hedges. He drank from the streams, where he sometimes caught a little fish, smiling to think of his clumsiness when, as an ignorant kitten, he had fallen into the millrace and nearly drowned himself– oh – ever so long ago it seemed today!
Sometimes he met a passer-by, walking along the road with a bundle on his back, or a stray dog or cat trotting down the highway on his own business, but they offered little companionship to Gobbolino.
Travellers had no hearth to share with him– they gave him a friendly nod and tramped away. Dogs gave him one look of terror and ran for their lives, yelping madly till they reached their own kennels with their hair standing on end, while cats hissed savagely at him and would not answer the most civil greeting:
“Good morning, sister!”
“Hiss-ss!”
“It is a very fine morning, ma’am!”
“Hiss-ss-ss!”
“Can you tell me the way to the nearest village, my lady?”
“Hiss-ss-ss-ss! Ss!”
So that Gobbolino was lonely enough on his travels, and no wonder that his heart bounded to see the silver, sparkling sea, the ships lying at anchor with brown sails furled, distance making a pattern of their masts, and all the cheerful, busy life of the port.
Gobbolino trotted here and there among the boats, the bustling sailors, the women with their baskets, and the noisy, mischievous children, who were as eager as he to watch everything that was going on.
Nobody took any notice of a little cat, but there was a feeling of companionship in the stir and bustle, and Gobbolino did not hurry away, but sat on the quay in the yellow sunshine watching the ships and the gulls and the sailors on the decks below.
Presently a mouse ran out of a pile of ropes, and with a deft pat of his paw Gobbolino killed it. He was hungry, and his mother Grimalkin had taught him to be a good mouser.
“That was very neatly done, my friend!” said a voice behind him, and there was a pleasant-faced sailor boy standing and watching him with a kindly smile.
“There are plenty of mice on my ship, theMary Maud!” said the sailor. “And we have no kitten at present. Would you like to come and catch them for us?”
Gobbolino’s blue eyes shone with gratitude and joy.
“Oh, my goodness, my luck has changed at last!” he said to himself, while he thanked the sailor kindly and prepared to go with him. “Here is somebody who really wants me and needs me at last. I am sure I shall be very happy at sea – Gobbolino the sailor cat!”
When Johnnie Tar, the sailor, strode on board his ship, theMary Maud, with Gobbolino under his arm, he received a great welcome from his mates. The cat was passed from horny hand to horny hand, petted, and made so much of that his heart nearly overflowed with joy.
“What a lucky cat I am!” said Gobbolino. “There was I, two hours ago, homeless, unwanted, unloved, and here I am, fondled and cared for by all the crew, from the captain to the cabin-boy. I have only to kill all the mice in the ship, to show them how grateful I am, and I shall certainly be very happy at sea. Perhaps, after all, I shall end my days on board this good shipMary Maud!”
And indeed Gobbolino was as happy as any cat could be in the days which followed.
Though his heart sank somewhat when the ship put out to sea, and his beautiful blue eyes filled with tears at the thought of the miles of ocean that now lay between him and the little brothers he had come to love so dearly, yet the life was so free and pleasant, the sailors so kind and merry, and the whole atmosphere so full of goodwill and honest charity, that before many days had passed Gobbolino had come to look on theMary Maud as his own home, and everyone aboard her as his close companions.
He cleared the ship of mice before she was out of sight of land. Those that he did not destroy jumped overboard in terror at the sound of his paws on the deck above.
“Here comes Gobbolino the mouser!”
He ran a thousand errands for the sailors, and, when there was nothing better to do, shared the watches with the look-out man, or paced the bridge side by side with the Captain, listening to age-old tales of the seven seas. All these he learned by heart so that he could repeat them to the little brothers on the happy day when he would be united with them again.
So they sailed on through sunny oceans, past yellow islands covered with palms, past coral reefs and lagoons so clear that the coloured fishes seemed to be lying on the top of the water watching theMary Maud as, with her great brown sails spread to catch the breeze, she moved sedately past them on her journey round the world.
Happy, happy life for Gobbolino, who began to forget he had ever been born a witch’s cat.
One fine morning Gobbolino sat in the prow looking out to sea, when a sudden shadow came over the sun, and a ripple of wind sent a hundred catspaws chasing down the calm blue sea.
Gobbolino shivered a little and turned round; sure enough, the shadow of a sea witch was crossing the sun, and although Gobbolino had never seen a sea witch before something told him that she was looking for trouble.
None of the sailors saw her flying up the sky, but they looked uneasily at the horizon.
“The wind is changing!” they muttered and began to reef in the sails.
By nightfall a storm was raging, and the waves were mountains high. TheMary Maud plunged up and down, while the wind shrieked in her rigging, and her timbers creaked and groaned.
The seas rose like pinnacles, curled over, and crashed on the decks, so that twice Gobbolino was only saved by a sailor from being washed overboard, and presently they carried him downstairs and locked him in the bo’sun’s cabin, for none of them wanted to see their pet cat drowned.
It was safe and warm in the cabin and not unpleasant. Gobbolino curled up and went to sleep to the sound of the howling storm, the creaking and groaning of theMary Maud.
“It will soon be over,” said Gobbolino. “After all, one is bound to meet bad weather at sea, and the sooner I get used to it the better.”
So whenever one of the kindly crew found time to shout through the cabin door:
“Are you there alive and hearty, Gobbolino?”
He answered:
“Ay, ay, mate!” in as cheerful a tone as he could muster and, closing his eyes, tried to imagine himself back in the warm farmhouse, or in the little brothers’ nursery, or even sitting outside the witch’s cave with his sister Sootica, telling each other all that they meant to do when theygrew up.
The storm grew louder and fiercer, and the poor ship trembled as each wave struck her. Once there was a tremendous crash as though a mast had fallen on the deck and always there were the shouts of the sailors– too busy now to come and ask Gobbolino if he were still alive and hearty – the wail of the wind and the groan of the weary timbers.
“Oh, my goodness!” said Gobbolino as he was rolled from side to side. “Will it never come to an end, never? Surely when the morning comes the waves will die down, and the sea will be as calm and as beautiful as it was before.”
But the morning came with the storm still raging, and now Gobbolino heard a new noise, the song of the sea witch as she flew round and round the ship:
“I’ll send her down, theMary Maud,
And every man of her aboard,
For not a sailor here can tell
The way to break a witch’s spell!”
When he heard these words Gobbolino sat up suddenly with his ears a-prick.
An old, old memory had stirred in him with the sea witch’s words.
Long, long ago, as he lay in the gloom of the witch’s cave with his little sister Sootica beside him, their eyes scarcely opened, their paws still pink and flat, he had heard his mother Grimalkin and her mistress, the witch, talking together.