As soon as I got on deck I began to glance eagerly about me.
The moon was shining very brightly, and the waves all the way to the
horizon were stippled with light, while the bright stars were reflected
and multiplied in the water like a myriad of diamonds.
There was a breeze blowing just then, so there was no need for the
present to keep steam up, as a sailor calls it.
Steam is not nice on board ship, Warlock. There is a terrible noise,
and everywhere the ship is shaken. You cannot help fancying you are
inside a mill all the time, with such a multitude of wheels rattling
round and round, that it quite bewilders one.
But to-night there was hardly a hush on deck, except now and then the
trampling of the sailors' feet, or a song borne aft from the forecastle.
I was not a ship's cat yet, you know, Warlock, and so didn't know the
names of things. But I soon found a guide, or rather the guide found
me. I was standing on the quarter-deck, as it is called, looking about
me in a very uncertain kind of way, when I heard soft footsteps stealing
up behind me, and, looking round, was rather startled to see standing
there in the moonlight, which made him look double the size, an immense
black Thomas cat, with yellow fiery eyes.
I was going to bolt down the stairs again at once, and ask my master to
come and shoot him, but there was a sort of music in his voice which
appealed to me the moment he spoke.
"Oh, you lovely, angelic pussy princess," he said; "be not afraid, I
pray you. Hurry not away, for if you leave the deck the moon will cease
to shine, and the stars will lose their radiance."
He advanced stealthily towards me as he spoke, singing aloud. But I
sprang upon the skylight at once, raised my back and growled, as much
probably in terror as in anger.
"Come but one step nearer," I cried, "and I will leap into the foaming
sea."
"Dear princess," he said, "I would rather lose my life. I would rather
throw my body to the sharks than any ill should happen to a hair of your
head."
"See," he continued, jumping on the top of a kind of wooden fence, which
sailors call the bulwarks, that ran round, what I then called the lid
(deck) of the ship. "See! speak the word, and I shall rid you for ever
of my hateful presence!"