Darkness fell, lights sprang up in the other cabins of the lumbering Countess, but Mr. Strachan remained at his desk with his head buried in his arms, without moving, and Peter washed and washed.
He massaged her shoulders and neck, and the thin bony chest beneath which the stilled heart lay, her lean sides and long flanks, her soft white muzzle, the eyes and behind the ears, stroke after stroke, in a kind of hypnotic rhythm that he felt he could not have left off even had he wished to do so.
Wash, wash, wash. There was no sound in the darkened cabin but the even breathing of Mr. Strachan and the rasping of Peter's tongue over Jennie's coat.
Until someone sneezed.
Peter thought his own heart would stop. For he was quite certain that it had not been his sneeze, and it was by no means a large enough one for Mr. Strachan to be the author of it.
Wildly hoping, yet not really daring, Peter redoubled his efforts, rasping, scraping, massaging, working around under Jennie's shoulders and over the breast-from beneath which now came a small flutter. And then there were two more quite distinct sneezes, and Jennie in a faint voice called-'Peter . . . Are you there? Am I alive or dead?'
With a glad shout that rang through the cabin and caused Mr. Strachan to raise his head from his arms with a start, Peter called-`Jennie! Jennie dear! You are alive! Oh I'm so glad. Jennie, they all thought you were dead, but I knew you weren't, that you couldn't be.'
At the noise, Mr. Strachan leaped up from his desk and switched on the cabin light, and there on the mat where he had dumped her lifeless form was Jennie, blinking in the light, sneezing a few more times to clear her lungs of the last remaining drops of the salt sea, and even managing to stagger weakly to her legs for a moment and give herself a few licks. And at her side was the big white cat still washing and ministering to her.
Making a queer kind of noise in his throat, Mr. Strachan bent over Jennie, stroked her and said, `For a' the siller in the National Bonk o' Scotland, I wouldna ha believed it. 'Tis the last and final meeracle and the grrrand finish to the yarn. Now will they nae believe the proof that's before their eyes?' and scooping Jennie up into his arms he ran out of the cabin with Peter after him.
Up the passageway, down the steps, across the after cargo hatch, up the iron steps, and on to the bridge ran Mr. Strachan with Jennie clutched to his broad chest where she lay quietly, being yet too weak to struggle against such close contact with a human, and when he arrived there he shouted, 'Coptain! Coptain Sourlies, look here, sor' just as though nothing had ever happened between them.
And when the captain stepped out of his cabin, prepared to quiver once more with rage, Mr. Strachan solemnly showed him Jennie, now stretching and making small sounds of protest and craning her head around to try to see Peter who was right at his feet. And in the voice of one who is discussing Higher things, the mate said:
`What sae ye now that I nae ha proof? Raised from the dead she has been by the tender meenistrations of her mate, in my cobin before my verra eyes, and here's the proof, yawning and stretching before ye, and whoever else says it did not hoppen, there's the proof in the twa of them for him too …'
Strangely, Captain Sourlies no longer found it possible in his heart to be angry with Mr. Strachan, since it was obvious that he was never going to be able to grasp the simple idea that an object was not and rarely could be proof of a happening long after the happening was over, but remembering how Jennie had looked hanging head down in the mate's grasp earlier, with the water running out of her, and how she appeared now with the sparkle back in her eyes, her nose pink once more and her whiskers standing out stiff and straight, he suddenly felt better than he had in a long time, and besides, the lights of Port Carlisle were just ahead and they were going to make the tide after all.
And strangely, too, word had got around the ship that Jennie was not dead, but alive, and there was a kind of gathering of the men in the forward cargo well just beneath the chocolate layer-cake bridge, and when Mr. Strachan came out and showed them Jennie there was a big cheer went up, and everybody suddenly grew lighthearted and began slapping his fellow on the back and shouting, `Well, well,' and ' 'Tis woonderful,' just as though something splendid had happened to them.
The sailor who had been a hermit called for three cheers and a hip-hip-hooray for the white `un, to which Mr. Box said, Ear, 'ear,' and they were given with a will, and Peter had never felt quite so proud and happy in all his life.
And the captain forgave Mr. Strachan and said no more about turning in his papers and leaving the ship, and after the mate had ordered Mealie to open a tin of condensed milk and gave Jennie a big dish of it, he put her to bed in his cabin on his own bunk and resumed his duties on the bridge of the Countess with Peter happily purring at his feet. And that is where the Carlisle pilot found them when he came aboard to steer the ship into port.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Mr. Strachan's Proof Leads to Difficulties
BY the time the Countess of Greenock had been warped into her berth at the foot of Warroch Street in Glasgow, Jennie had quite recovered from her experience and was in fact, Peter thought, looking better than she ever had before. The sea air, the regular hours, the lack of worry as to where the next meal was to come from had agreed with her.
She had filled out so that her ribs and flanks were no longer as lamentably lean and close together, her face was rounder and more full, which diminished the size of her ears somehow and gave her a more pleasing aspect, and of course what with the daily cleanings she bestowed upon herself, her coat was now in much better condition, softer even than velvet and with a fine sheen and glisten to it.
Had Peter been asked now, he would most certainly have called her beautiful, with her oriental eyes slightly slanted, the long, aristocratic dip of her head from ears to muzzle, the sweet pink of the delicate little triangle of her nose matching the translucent rose of her ears. While her head might appear too small to some, it fitted now in better proportion to her body, and when she stood straight, with her tail nicely curving away from her, she looked not only lovable but handsome and distinguished, with breeding evident in her long, graceful lines.
Jennie had prepared Peter and briefed him for their arrival in Glasgow as they sailed up the Firth of Clyde and turned the corner into the River Clyde, past the grimy red-brick towns of Gourock and Greenock scattered over the south bank, and the round green hills rising to the north. They were to lie low together until the Countess made fast and put out her gangways. Then, in the confusion attendant to unloading, they would seize the first moment when nobody was watching them or the gangplank to whisk ashore and run off. In a way, Peter was sorry at the anticipation of leaving the ship and those aboard her, but the prospect of seeing new places and encountering new and exciting adventures quite made up for any regrets, and as the river narrowed and they passed the great factories on its banks and the famous shipyards and the big grey city drew near, he could hardly contain himself, and asked Jennie a dozen times when they should find the first opportunity to get ashore unnoticed.
Mr. Strachan, however, had other ideas, for just before the Countess approached within shouting distance of the dockside, he came down from the bridge for a moment, seized both Peter and Jennie, and shut them up in his cabin and thus they were forced to view the fascinations of the entire landing operation, as performed with the usual inefficiency and raffish style by the crew, from the somewhat limited vantage point of the porthole.
However, they were able to see that no sooner had the gangplank been raised from the pier to the side of the Countess when Captain Sourlies was upon it and running down, making it sway, bounce and clatter with his weight and the speed of his descent. Once ashore, he immediately hailed a passing taxi, jumped into it causing it to sag heavily on one side and proceed slantwise on two wheels, as it were, and drove off without another backward glance at the Countess of Greenock or anything or anyone aboard her.