n for the biscuit and flour as was sarving out.

"Well, sir, when this rascal of a steward leaves the ship, he had no
natural affection for his cat, and he leaves him on board, belonging to
nobody; and the steward as comes in his place turns him out of the
steward's room; so the poor jury-rigged little devil had to take care of
itself.

"We all tried to coax it into one berth or the other, but the poor brute
wouldn't take to nobody. You know, sir, a cat doesn't like to change so
he wandered about the ship, mewing all day, and thieving all night. At
last, he takes to the master's cabin, and makes a dirt there, and the
master gets very savage, and swears that he'll kill him, if ever he
comes athwart him.

"Now, sir, you knows it's the natur of cats always to make a dirt in the
same place,--reason why, God only knows; and so this poor black devil
always returns to the master's cabin, and makes it, as it were, his
head-quarters. At last the master, who was as even-tempered an officer
as ever I sailed with, finds one day that his sextant case is all of a
smudge: so being touched in a sore place, he gets into a great rage, and
orders all the boys of the ship to catch the cat; and after much ado,
the poor cat was catched, and brought aft into the gun-room. `Now,
then, P---,' said the master to the first-lieutenant, `will you help
kill the dirty beast?'--and the first-lieutenant, who cared more about
his lower deck being clean than fifty human beings' lives, said he
would; so they called the sargant o' marines, and orders him to bring up
two ship's muskets and some ball cartridge, and they goes on deck with
the cat in their arms.

"Well, sir, when the men saw the cat brought up on deck, and hears that
he was to be hove overboard, they all congregates together upon the lee
gangway, and gives their opinions on the subject,--and one says, `Let's
go and speak to the first-lieutenant;' and another says, `He'll put you
on the black list;' and so they don't do nothing--all except Jenkins,
the boatswain's mate, who calls to a waterman out of the main-deck port,
and says, `Waterman,' says he, `when they heaves that cat overboard, do
you pick him up, and I'll give you a shilling;' and the waterman says as
how he would, for you see, sir, the men didn't know that the muskets had
been ordered up to shoot the poor beast.

"Well, sir, the waterman laid off on his oars, and the men, knowing what
Jenkins had done, were content. But wh