Meets His Match:
A Yarn of the Sea
Perching on the edge of the fruit bowl, he cocked his head, surveyed the wreckage of breakfast, then looked up at us and said "preep?" as if demanding, "well, here I am, where's mine?"
He was just a wraith of a bird, a little wrenlike wisp of dun-colored feathers with a pencil-lead beak, stubby tail, eyes like two drops of glistening black tar, and he was entirely at ease among his new-found shipmates. One of the watch cautiously held out a bit of ship's biscuit; the bird looked at the biscuit, then at the man, decided he was no threat, and took a healthy bite.
Then, his appetite apparently sated, he flew up in the general direction of the fore-top.
It didn't take him long to settle into the ship's daily routine. As the crew would gather for meals, the bird would flutter down from the rigging and perch on top of the deckhouse, surveying the repast set out on the hatch cover below, as though deciding, "Hmmm, what to have today?" Once all had been served, he would hop down among the bowls and pans, taking his turn at mess along with the rest of the crew.
Now, ours was not a large ship, and it was inevitable that Cat and the bird would one day cross paths.
Cat -- that was all we ever called him -- Cat had been with the ship since long before I shipped; indeed, he had been aboard as long as anyone on the crew could remember.
He was a battered and seaworn hulk of a cat, one ear half-bitten off in some long-ago dockside brawl, one eye useless and filmy-white.
But he did his job -- or jobs, actually; although his primary purpose was to keep the rat population in the hold manageable, he also considered himself chief harbor pilot, stationing himself proudly atop the bowsprit whenever the ship left or entered a new port.
The showdown happened, appropriately enough, at lunchtime -- high noon. The bird was at his usual mealtime perch, on the edge of the deckhouse roof. Cat had just hauled himself up onto the same roof for a nap in the sun, and the bird, sensing the movement behind him, looked over his shoulder and greeted the new arrival with a cheery "Preep!"
Cat froze and glared at the insolent intruder with his one good eye. His tail twitched once, twice, thrice, and then he crept toward the tiny bird.
The bird would not be intimidated. After all, it was lunchtime, and he was hungry. As Cat crept almost within a paw's reach, the bird cocked his head again, said "preep!" and flew. But not to the safety of the rigging. No, he fluttered for a moment an inch or two above Cat's head -- and then landed there, just between the bewildered old feline's ears.
Before Cat could puzzle out how to deal with this assault on his dignity, the bird had grabbed a healthy hunk of grey fur in his little beak, and with a mighty shake, he wrenched it out and flew away.
"Yowwwwwww-WOW!" Cat leapt at least two feet straight up, then jumped off the deckhouse roof and landed in a sprawling heap of injured feline pride at the feet of the hysterical crew. Slowly picking himself up, he slunk down the hatch scuttle and was conspicuously absent for the rest of the voyage.
The bird, too, vanished -- for a while. Then, one of the riggers reported that he had spotted him -- or her, apparently -- sitting on a nest, cradled in a brass porthole up in the foc's'le, a nest most unusual in its construction.
Rather than the usual grass and twigs, it was made of shreds of old sailcloth, bits of cast-off manila cordage, and other odds and ends as might be found aboard a ship.
And, oh, yes -- a large swatch of grey fur.
