THE PANTHER.
Clare scrambled to his feet, and surveyed the man who had thus roused
him. He had a vague sense of having seen him before, but could not
remember where. Feeling faint, and finding himself beside a gun, he
leaned upon it.
The sailor regarded him with an insolent look.
“Wake up,” he said, “an’ come along to the cap’n. What’s the service a
comin’ to, I should like to know, when a beggarly shaver like you has
the cheek to stow hisself away on board one o’ his majesty’s frigates!
Wouldn’ nothin’ less suit your highness than a berth on the Panther?”
“Is that the name of the ship?” asked Clare.
“Yes, that’s the name of the ship!” returned the man, mimicking
him. “You’ll have the Panther, his mark, on the back o’ _you_
presently! Come along, I say, to the cap’n! We ha’ got to ask _him_,
what’s to be done wi’ rascals as rob their masters, an’ then stow
theirselves away on board his majesty’s ships!”
“Take me to the captain,” said Clare.
The man seemed for a moment to doubt whether there might not be some
mistake: he had expected to see him cringe. But he took him by the
collar behind, and pushed him along to the quarter-deck, where an
elderly officer was pacing up and down alone.
“Well, Tom,” said the captain, stopping in his walk, “what’s the
matter? Who’s that you’ve got?”
“Please yer honour,” answered the boatswain, giving Clare a shove,
“this here’s a stowaway in his majesty’s ship, Panther. I found him
snug in the cable-tier.--Salute the captain, you beggar!”
Clare had no cap to lift, but he bowed like the gentleman he was. The
captain stood looking at him. Clare returned his gaze, and smiled. A
sort of tremble, much like that in the level air on a hot summer day,
went over the captain’s face, and he looked harder at Clare.
A sound arose like the purring of an enormous cat, and, sure enough,
it was nothing else: chained to the foot of the forward binnacle stood
a panther, a dark yellow creature with black spots, bigger than Pummy,
swinging his tail. Clare turned at the noise he made. The panther made
a bound and a leap to the height and length of his chain, and uttered
a cry like a musical yawn. Clare stretched out his arms, and staggered
toward him. The next moment the animal had him. The captain darted to
the rescue. But the beast was only licking him wherever there was a
bare spot to lick; and Clare wondered to find how many such spots
there were: he was in rags! The panther kept tossing him over and over
as if he were a baby, licking as he tossed, and in his vibrating body
and his whole behaviour manifested an exceeding joy. The captain stood
staring “like one that hath been stunned.”
The boatswain was not astonished: he had seen Clare at home among wild
animals, and thought the panther was taken with the wild-beast smell
about him.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Clare, rolling himself out of the
panther’s reach, and rising to his feet, “but wild things like me,
somehow! I slept with a puma last night. He and this panther, sir,
would have a terrible fight if they met!”
The captain threw a look of disappointment at the panther.
“Go forward, Tom,” he said.
The man did not like the turn things had taken, and as he went wore
something of the look of one doomed to make the acquaintance of
another kind of cat.
“What made you come on board this ship, my lad?” asked the captain, in
a voice so quiet that it sounded almost kind.
“I did not come on board, sir.”
“Don’t trifle with _me_,” returned the captain sternly.
Clare looked straight at him, and said--
“I have done nothing wrong, sir. I know you will help me. I fell
asleep last night, as I told you, sir, in the cage of a puma. I knew
him, of course! How I came awake on board your ship, I know no more
than you do, sir.”
The smile of Clare’s childhood had scarcely altered, and it now shone
full on the captain. He turned away, and made a tack or two on the
quarter-deck. He was a tall, thin man, with a graceful carriage, and a
little stoop in the shoulders. He had a handsome, sad face, growing
old. His hair was more than half way to gray, and he seemed somewhere
about fifty. He had the sternness of a man used to command, but under
the sternness Clare saw the sadness.
The attention of the boy was now somewhat divided between the captain
and his panther, which seemed possessed with a fierce desire to get at
him, though plainly with no inimical intent. The attention of the
captain seemed divided between the boy and the panther; his eyes now
rested for a moment on the animal, now turned again to the boy. Two
officers on the port side of the quarter-deck stole glances at the
strange group--the stately, solemn, still man; the ragged creature
before him, who looked in his face without fear or anxiety, and with
just as little presumption; and the wildly excited panther, whose
fierce bounding alternated with cringing abasement of his beautiful
person, accompanied by loving sweeps of his most expressive tail.
The captain made a tack or two more on the quarter-deck, then turned
sharp on the boy.
“What is your name?” he asked.
“I don’t quite know, sir,” answered Clare.
“Come with me,” said the captain.
To the surprise of the officers, he led the way to his state-room, and
the boy followed. The panther gave a howl as Clare disappeared. The
officers remarked that the captain looked strange. His lips were
compressed as if with vengeance, but the muscles of his face were
twitching.