Anton and Cecil (2 page)

CHAPTER 2

A Cat at Sea

A
ye! It's Blackjack, there's our boy!” The fishermen called to Cecil as he made his way along the docks to his favorite sunning spot, though the sun had only just risen over the horizon. Cecil settled himself next to a pier post to block the wind off the harbor and looked around at the scene.

The three-masted schooners rode high in the water while the men wound up the nets and ropes and prepared to set the sails. Cecil had seen many of the sailors before and knew them by their clothes and the sounds of their gruff voices. The short one with wide shoulders always wore a headscarf the color of the sky on a clear day, while another was tall with a threadbare red wool cap that had seen many voyages. The headscarf man called out instructions to the hustling deckhands, and from time to time he glanced over at Cecil.

“Our Blackjack there, he seems a lazy one, don't he?” he said to his companion, who grunted.

“A nice life, looks like to me,” the red cap man answered, stopping for a moment to gaze at the black cat.

Cecil saw them looking at him, though he understood nothing they said, and a tickle of excitement ran through him.
Were they talking about him?
He stood and stretched his back into a high arch.
What were they saying?
He looked into their faces and over at the schooner. The big ships went out to sea and sometimes never came back, but Cecil knew that the fishing schooners returned every day; the crewmen wouldn't impress cats on those.
They might be saying, “That cat would make an excellent sailor, he would.”
The thought was thrilling. He took a few steps toward the men and uttered a short, questioning mew at them.

“Oh, ho, Ben Fox!” said the red cap man. “Looks as if the cat is wantin' somethin' from us.”

Cecil approached the ship haltingly, tail and head low, until he reached the long wooden plank, which stretched from the dock to the deck of the schooner. Tentatively he put his paw on the edge and looked back at the two men. Sailors carrying fishing gear and trawl lines swerved to avoid tromping on him, and the ship's bobbing made the plank sway unnervingly. From over the side of the ship there suddenly appeared another man's face, with light green eyes that reminded Cecil of Anton's, and a thin triangle of fur on his chin.

“Well, mates!” he bellowed down to the other two men, who jumped and ran forward. “Quit your yappin'! We're burnin' daylight!” He caught sight of Cecil and his green eyes narrowed. “Keepin' pets now are we, Mr. Fox?”

This yelling man didn't seem to be a fan of his, and Cecil crouched, immobile, ready to bolt but still desperate to get on the ship. One of the passing seamen swung his boot to kick Cecil off the plank, but Ben blocked him.

“Cap'n, sir!” Ben called up. “Permission to bring aboard this excellent mouser.” The captain's eyebrows shot up and he opened his mouth to retort, but Ben quickly added, “and black as he is, he's bound to bring us good luck.” This was a clever point to make, since sailors always liked to have a black cat aboard to ensure a safe voyage—“unlucky on land, lucky at sea” was the saying—and ship captains were especially concerned with omens and luck. The bustling fishermen paused and all eyes appraised Cecil, who was still poised with his paw on the plank.

The captain pressed his lips together for a silent moment, then barked out, “Mr. Fox, give the creature a trial if you must, but if he steals as much as an eyeball of my catch, you'll be answerin' for him, you will!” And he withdrew his head from the deck rail.

Ben beamed at Cecil and stood to one side of the plank, gesturing upward. “Got yer chance, Blackjack. Let's get to boardin' now. Step lively.” Shaking with excitement, Cecil gave Ben a long look and slunk up the plank with quick paws, turning sharply into the nearest shadow when he reached the deck. The deck smelled deliciously fishy; the wooden timbers creaked under the weight of the busy crew.
I'm here!
thought Cecil, astonished.
I'm sailing!

Rough hands pushed the heavy plank out to the dock and others untied the thick mooring ropes. Cecil felt the ship shudder and then move freely. From behind the barrels he rose up on his hind legs, reaching with his front paws until he could just peek over the side through a gap under the blackened railing. There was the dock, sliding away, then the breakwater gliding past, as Cecil's golden eyes flicked left and right at the sights. High above him the sailors dropped the thick white sails and they began to catch the breeze. Cecil scrambled onto a low barrel for a better view. Exhilarated and strangely calm, he felt the wind pull on his fur, and he could see it filling the sails stretched across the masts. The push of the schooner against the waves made a rhythm deep in his belly.

As they rounded the tip of the land and the ocean spread out in front of them, Ben stomped up with folded lengths of netting draped across his shoulders.

“Now Blackie my lad, eat the rats, not the catch, got that?” He shook his thick finger at Cecil, who watched him seriously. Ben gave him a heavy pat on the back and stomped off again. Cecil decided this meant that things were settled for now and returned to gazing at the widening sea before him.

Anton sat on the brick apron of the lighthouse with his tail curled around and over his back feet and began to clean his face. He squeezed his eyes shut as he dragged his wet paw across them and then licked the paw again, enjoying the morning ritual as the sunshine warmed the bricks. Moving on to his ears, Anton glanced up at the passing gulls and over at a fishing schooner in the harbor. With one ear pinned flat against his forehead under his cleaning paw, he stopped and stared. There was a cat sitting on a barrel on the deck of the boat. Anton dropped his paw. The cat was huge and jet black . . . Anton stretched his neck forward. The cat on the boat turned his head to look at one of the fishermen. It was
Ceci
l
! Sailing away! Anton rushed to the edge of the rock wall. Oh
no
! Cecil had been captured and forced out to sea! Anton dashed back and forth along the wall, crying out in frustration. The ship was moving rapidly, leaving no way for him to call out or signal to Cecil. He mewed brokenly and stood still, watching the tall sails of the schooner billowing in the distance.

Late in the afternoon
,
when Cecil, reeking of fish, strode smugly down the plank and onto the dock, Anton was furious.

“Where have you been?” he howled at Cecil, who trotted past the mooring posts, examining the size of other ships' catches for the day. “What were you thinking? You could have been drowned or stolen!” Anton insisted, running in little bursts to keep up with Cecil. “I've been worried to death!”

Cecil turned for a last glance at “his” schooner, flicked his tail, and sat down to face Anton, who plowed directly into him. “I wasn't stolen. I was invited aboard,” explained Cecil, placing his paw squarely against his brother's nose to back him up a bit. “Don't you even want to know how it was?” he asked.

“No,” huffed Anton, circling around Cecil to check that he was intact, licking his slimed fur in a few places. He finally sat down and gave in. “Okay,” he said with a sigh. “How was it?”

“Glad you asked!” said Cecil happily, and he began by explaining how the captain had rolled out the welcome mat for him.

Old Billy, the harbormaster's cat, relished his reputation at the docks as the one who knew all about ships, sailors, and the wide world. True, he had never gone to sea; he'd gone soft in the belly and was no longer a mouser of any distinction. But in his years of service to the harbormaster he had heard many tales of foreign lands and cats, some delightful, some dark and dreadful. One of his duties, he felt, was to pass on news of import to his fellow felines, and it was for this reason that he sat resolutely on the dock that evening and relayed again and again the story of what he had seen to any who stopped by. Anton was standing toward the back of the crowd.

Billy had been awakened the night before from his bed in the master's small house by a yowling outside, and had scrambled to the windowsill in time to see a dismaying scene. A sailor unknown to Billy was climbing a gangplank carrying a sack of gathered netting, and in the sack appeared to be (and here he paused meaningfully) a small cat. The assembled crowd groaned; this was not at all unheard of, but always distressing. Billy described in vivid terms how the cat bravely thrust its paw through the mesh to slash at the sailor, and how it was cruelly repaid.

Anton shuddered. Even though his brother had gone willingly, even happily, on one of the daily fishing jaunts, Anton still felt a deep worry in his bones about these other disappearances. Sonya had called it being
impressed
into service, stolen right off the docks. Anton felt a little ill thinking of how it might happen to any cat, at any time.

“Well for goodness' sake, Bill, who was it, could you tell?” asked an older female anxiously.

“I couldn't see a face, I'm afraid.” Billy shook his head gravely.

“What color was the fur?” shouted a small kit down front.

“The leg I could see was white, all white, and slim, as I recall.” Billy wondered if he remembered clearly; it was so quick and dreamlike. The listening cats stirred and murmured to one another: who was it?

“I bet it was Gretchen,” wailed the kit. “She's mostly white like that, with black around her eyes.”

Anton remembered. He knew her in passing, thought of her as spunky but naïve. She concentrated so intently while fishing that once he had stood right next to her without her noticing. When he cleared his throat, she startled so severely that she fell in the pool. Anton smiled briefly at the memory.

“Anybody seen her today?” asked the older female, looking around fearfully. Anton recognized her now—her name was Mildred; she was Gretchen's grandmother.

No one had seen Gretchen. The gathering shifted, the older ones shaking their heads, the young ones chattering shrilly.