hing as they know you _will_ throw. Before you're
ready to heave it, there won't be a cat within aim.

"'Then as to judgment and knowledge of the world, why dogs are babies to
'em. Have you ever tried telling a yarn before a cat, sir?'

"I replied that cats had often been present during anecdotal recitals of
mine, but that, hitherto, I had paid no particular attention to their
demeanour.

"'Ah, well, you take an opportunity of doing so one day, sir,' answered
the old fellow; 'it's worth the experiment. If you're telling a story
before a cat, and she don't get uneasy during any part of the narrative,
you can reckon you've got hold of a thing as it will be safe for you to
tell to the Lord Chief Justice of England.

"'I've got a messmate,' he continued; 'William Cooley is his name. We
call him Truthful Billy. He's as good a seaman as ever trod
quarter-deck; but when he gets spinning yarns he ain't the sort of man as
I could advise you to rely upon. Well, Billy, he's got a dog, and I've
seen him sit and tell yarns before that dog that would make a cat squirm
out of its skin, and that dog's taken 'em in and believed 'em. One
night, up at his old woman's, Bill told us a yarn by the side of which
salt junk two voyages old would pass for spring chicken. I watched the
dog, to see how he would take it. He listened to it from beginning to
end with cocked ears, and never so much as blinked. Every now and then
he would look round with an expression of astonishment or delight that
seemed to say: "Wonderful, isn't it!" "Dear me, just think of it!" "Did
you ever!" "Well, if that don't beat everything!" He was a
chuckle-headed dog; you could have told him anything.

"'It irritated me that Bill should have such an animal about him to
encourage him, and when he had finished I said to him, "I wish you'd tell
that yarn round at my quarters one evening."

"'Why?' said Bill.

"'Oh, it's just a fancy of mine,' I says. I didn't tell him I was
wanting my old cat to hear it.

"'Oh, all right,' says Bill, 'you remind me.' He loved yarning, Billy
did.

"'Next night but one he slings himself up in my cabin, and I does so.
Nothing loth, off he starts. There was about half-a-dozen of us
stretched round, and the cat was sitting before the fire fussing itself
up. Before Bill had got fairly under weigh, she stops washing and looks
up at me, puzzled like, as much as to say, "What have we got here, a
missionary?" I signalled t