re
already, standing on the farther side of the table. After a moment or so
the cat followed and sat on her haunches at the foot of the ladder and
stared at us without winking.

"I think she wants something to eat," I said to McCord.

He lit a lantern and went out into the galley. Returning with a chunk of
salt beef, he threw it into the farther corner. The cat went over and
began to tear at it, her muscles playing with convulsive shadow-lines
under the sagging yellow hide.

And now it was she who listened, to something beyond the reach of even
McCord's faculties, her neck stiff and her ears flattened. I looked at
McCord and found him brooding at the animal with a sort of listless
malevolence. "_Quick!_ She has kittens somewhere about." I shook his
elbow sharply. "When she starts, now--"

"You don't seem to understand," he mumbled. "It wouldn't be any use."

She had turned now and was making for the ladder with the soundless
agility of her race. I grasped McCord's wrist and dragged him after me,
the lantern banging against his knees. When we came up the cat was
already amidships, a scarcely discernible shadow at the margin of our
lantern's ring. She stopped and looked back at us with her luminous
eyes, appeared to hesitate, uneasy at our pursuit of her, shifted here
and there with quick, soft bounds, and stopped to fawn with her back
arched at the foot of the mast. Then she was off with an amazing
suddenness into the shadows forward.

"Lively now!" I yelled at McCord. He came pounding along behind me,
still protesting that it was of no use. Abreast of the foremast I took
the lantern from him to hold above my head.

"You see," he complained, peering here and there over the illuminated
deck. "I tell you, Ridgeway, this thing--" But my eyes were in another
quarter, and I slapped him on the shoulder.

"An engineer--an engineer to the core," I cried at him. "Look aloft,
man."

Our quarry was almost to the cross-trees, clambering up the shrouds
with a smartness no sailor has ever come to, her yellow body, cut by the
moving shadows of the ratlines, a queer sight against the mat of the
night. McCord closed his mouth and opened it again for two words: "By
gracious!" The following instant he had the lantern and was after her. I
watched him go up above my head--a ponderous, swaying climber into the
sky--come to the cross-trees, and squat there with his knees clamped
around the mast. The clear star of the lantern shot th