mes on board with the gentleman
passenger, a mighty timorsome sort of young chap he appeared for to be,
and had never before set his foot upon the plank of a vessel. So as
soon as the captain was on deck we all broke off our work, and went to
him to tell him about this cat, and the captain he gets into a great
rage as soon as he hears on it, and orders the man to send the cat on
shore, or else he'd threw it overboard. Well, the luau, who was a
sulky, saucy sort of chap, and no seaman, I've a notion, gives cheek,
and says he won't send his cat on shore for no man, whereupon the
captain orders the cat to be caught, that he might send it in the boat;
but nobody dared to catch it, for it was so fierce to everybody but its
master. The second mate tried, and he got a devil of a bite, and came
up from the fore-peak without the cat, looking very blue indeed. And
then the first mate went down, and he tried; but the cat flew at him,
and he came up as white as a sheet. And then the cat became so savage
that it stood at the foot of the ladder, all ready to attack whoever
should come down, and the man laughed heartily, and told us to fetch the
cat. `Well,' says the first mate, `I can't touch the cat, but I can
you, you beggar, and I will too, if it costs me twenty pounds;' so he
ups with a handspike and knocks the fellow down senseless on the deck,
and there he laid. And it sarved him right.

"Well, then the captain thought to shoot the cat, for it was for all the
world like a wild beast, and one proposed one thing and one another; at
last Jim, the cabin-boy, comes forward with some brimstone matches in a
pan, and he lights them and lowers them down into the fore-peak by a
rope-yarn, to smother it out. And so it did sure enough, for all of a
sudden the cat made a spring up to the deck, and then we all chased it
here and there, until at last it got out to the end of the flying
jib-boom, and then Jim, the cabin-boy, followed it out with a handspike,
and poked at it as hard as he could, until at last it lost its hold, and
down it went into the water, and Jim and the handspike went along with
it, for Jim, in his last poke at the cat, lost his balance, so away they
went together. Well, there was a great hurry in manning the boat, and
picking up poor Jim and the handspike; but the cat we saw no more, for
it was just dark at the time. Well, when it was all over, we began to
think what we had done, and as soon as we had put on the