Home From the Sea

by KENNETH ROBERTS

1

THE ship’s clock in the kitchen of Cap’n Gould’s Arundel home struck seven times, and the gray cat in the rocking-chair beside the kitchen stove half-opened one eye so that the September sun was tremblingly reflected from it as from a drop of ink.

The Cap’n looked at her appraisingly. “Not like Sime, that cat ain’t,” he said. “Siamese cat, Sime was, given to us in Hong Kong. He had eyes as blue as a chiny saucer, and just about as round, and he always had ‘em open, looking for something to fight. Man or beast; fish, flesh, or fowl: they was all the same to Sime. Licked everything in Formosa, he did, the time the Mary L. Stone was wrecked; licked everything in San Francisco when we got home; licked the president of the railroad, and licked all the dogs in Arundel when we got back here. People used to come from miles around, just to look at Sime sitting on the front steps and staring at nothing out of those chiny-blue eyes.”

“How’d you happen to pile up the Mary L. Stone on Formosa, Cap’n?” I asked.

Cap’n Gould heaved himself about on his chair cushions and rolled an imaginary crumb of tobacco between his lips. “I had a mate,” he said. “Edgar Ward — you know Edgar Ward over on the Cape Porpoise road? Worth about as much as a mate as that kitchen stove over there, Edgar was. We was headed up past the eastern end of Formosa in the Mary L. Stone, and I had neuralgia bad, all around my face, up and down and everywhere, so I had to keep out of the wind or pretty near go crazy. I stood in till I saw the land: then I said to the mate, ‘Tack her and take her out fifty miles; then call me.’

“Well, he called me, and f come up the companion and looked around and said to him, ‘Did you take her out fifty miles?’

“He said, ‘Aes, sir,’ and I said, ‘You sure you took her out fifty miles?’ and he said, ‘Yes, sir.'

“I said, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘if you’re sure, put her around on the other tack and we’ll be all right.’

“Then I went back in the cabin and doctored my neuralgia some more. Well, pretty soon I got to feeling something was wrong, so I went on deck, neuralgia or no neuralgia, and by Gorry I heard breakers! I hollered ‘About ship!’ and then I said to the mate, ‘You never logged that fifty miles! You went ten miles; that’s what you went!’ But before I more than got the words out of my mouth we banged up on a reef. Then the stern settled down, and that was the end of the Mary L. Stone.

“There wa’n’t much of a sea running, so we stayed aboard her that night, and next morning we piled ourselves and some food into boats and set out to row forty miles to the next settlement that showed on the chart.”

“How many of you were there?” I asked.

“How many?” The Cap’n squinted at the kitchen range. “There was eighteen men before the mast, the first mate, second mate, carpenter, cook, and of course there was Mother and Aggie and Will and Harold and Sime and the cockatoo. That cockatoo! When he’d holler ‘Cap’n!' at me, you’d think it was my wife. Imitate anything, that cockatoo could! He’d sit up on that door there, and chew pieces out of it, and make noises you couldn’t tell from a hod full of coal going into the stove, or the teakettle coming to a boil, so’t everybody in the house would come running into the kitchen. Why I’ve seen him —”

“Sime was the cat,” I said, “but who—”

“Siamese cat from Hong Kong,” the Cap’n said. “And fight! Why, he didn’t care what he fought. Fight a horse or a cow — Did I ever tell you about winning the bet on the cow’s upper teeth? We were in Hong Kong —”

“I’d like to get this shipwreck straight, Cap’n,” I said. “ ‘Mother,’ I take it, was Mrs. Gould.”

“Certainly,” the Cap’n said. “Will was my son, and so was Harold — the redheaded one.” He pointed to a window beyond which a redheaded young man was doing something to the interior of an automobile with enormous vigor. “That’s him — that one — that one right there! Born in Shanghai, he was. Did I ever tell you about the time he took the two candles out of the room Napoleon died in? Yes, sir; that one with the red hair! Picked up those two candles and marched right out with ‘em, and both lighted! Why, in Hong Kong once —”

“Getting back to that shipwreck,” I said, “who was Aggie?”

The Cap’n looked hurt. “Aggie?” he asked. “Why, Ag’s my daughter: the one that was born in Iquique. She’s the one that got the holiday declared for her in Hong Kong harbor when she was ten years old.” He eyed me glassily. “I never think of that without having to laff. Yes, sir! That was as good a joke as ever I —”

“And did you get safely ashore on Formosa?” I asked.

“Safely?” the Cap’n asked. “Why, Mother saved a red kimono when we left the ship; and when the folks on Formosa saw that red kimono, there wa’n’t enough they could do for us! Gave us all the best food they had, and made us sit up beside the minister whenever they had services, and handed around their young women pretty freely. Even gave us houses to live in. Why, the way those young women would crowd up around the window of my house to look at me and Mother’s red kimono was a caution. Why, I put my hand out of the window and felt of one of those young women, and she just laffed and came closer, so I said to Mother, ‘You turn your back: I’m going to feel this young woman’; but she said, ‘Don’t you do it!’

“Well, I felt of her anyway, and she only laffed and laffed, and damned if she didn’t go get another one to come up and be felt! Oh, my gracious!” The Cap’n wagged his head at the delightful memory. “Before the ship broke up, we took off the ship’s bell and hung it in the belfry of the church, and gave them all the soap we had aboard — do anything for a cake of soap, those people would: anything! Stole a set of chiny out of my ship and used it for a communion service in their church, they did; but they was real friendly people at heart. Yes, sir, we had a real pleasant time getting shipwrecked, and we all got home safe, including Sime and the cockatoo and the red kimono. When we got back to San Francisco the owner wrote me out a check for a hundred and fifty dollars extra, on account of the hardships we’d gone through being shipwrecked!” Again the Cap’n eyed me coldly.

“We took Sime along when we went up to the owner’s house to have dinner, on account of his getting fretty when left alone; and when we went in, Mr. Sprague said, ‘You better not bring that Sime cat in here, because this old cat of mine, he’s death on young cats. There ain’t a cat for miles around that he ain’t licked.’

“ ‘Oh,’ I says, ‘I guess he won’t do Sime no damage to speak of’; but Mr. Sprague, he put his tomcat outdoors so Sime wouldn’t get hurt. Well, sir, that tomcat jumped up on the window ledge and kept glaring in at Sime as if he couldn’t make up his mind which end to start on first. Pretty soon another caller came in to see Mr. Sprague, and that cat jumped down out of the window and sneaked in between the caller’s legs. He went straight for Sime, and Sime just reared up on his hind legs and kind of welcomed that tomcat with every tooth and every claw sticking right straight out. In about two minutes those cats tore that sitting room to pieces. You’d think two tigers had been in there instead of two cats. They rolled out into the dining room, spitting and howling and swearing and shedding fur all around, and that tomcat of Sprague’s jumped up on the dining-room table, and Sime caught him by the tail and pulled him back off it, and the tablecloth came with him, and all the glass and chiny-ware, and it sounded like a tug ramming a ferryboat.

“I sat them and said nothin’, but Mrs. Sprague screamed; and the guest, he said, ‘Here, I’ll separate ‘em.’ He reached down to take hold of Sime, and Sime let go of the tomcat just long enough to bite pretty near through his wrist; and then Mr. Sprague’s daughter, she ran past to get out of the way and Sime turned quick as a wink and bit her on the ankle. Why, he’d bite anything, that Sime would!

2

THE next day we went down to get our tickets to go home, and the ticket man said, ‘You can’t take that cat in the railroad train with you.’ Mother, she said, ‘Young man, that cat’s been with us too long to be separated from us by a railroad train, and you can just hand over a ticket for that cat or I’ll take steps.’

“ ‘Well, ma’am,’the ticket seller said, ‘you’d have to have permission from the president of this railroad before you could carry that cat on this railroad train!’

“Mother turned around and walked out of that station without a word, and me after her, and I said, ‘Where you going?’

“ ‘Going?’ she said. ‘I’m going to see the president of this railroad! That’s where I’m going!’

“Well, sir, that’s just where she went. She went, down to his office, and she went upstairs, and she walked right past the people that tried to stop her. Me, I wouldn’t go in and bother a railroad president about a cat, so I waited outside.

“She went right up to the president, and she said, ‘This cat traveled all the way from Hong Kong with us,’she said, ‘and whipped every cat that came anywhere near us,’ she said; ‘so I’ll thank you for permission to take this cat home on your railroad.’

“The president looked at Mother, and looked at Sime, and then he reached for a piece of paper and wrote a pass for one Siamese cat answering to the name of Sime to travel wherever he wanted to on his railroad.

“The next day when we went down to get aboard the train, the conductor looked at Sime and said, ‘What’s that?’

“ ‘That’s a cat,’ Mother said.

“ ‘Well,’ the conductor said, ‘don’t you know cats ain’t allowed to travel on this railroad?’

“ ‘Oh, indeed!’ Mother said. ‘I’ll thank you to look at this!’ With that she hands him the president’s pass, and the conductor looked at it front and back, and he says, ‘Well, sir, I’ve seen many a strange thing on this railroad; but I never see nothin’ to beat this! We’ll do everything we can for this cat of yours, ma’am, and there’s one favor I’d like to ask of you. I’d like to be allowed to keep this pass, because there ain’t never been nothin’ like it!’ Well, we gave it to him, and everybody on that train did everything he could to keep Sime peaceful and happy.

“After we got home he had a little trouble with a dog up the street that had a reputation for killing cats. The neighbors all warned me I’d better keep Sime locked up; but I said, ‘Oh, Sime’s got along all right so far, and I guess he’ll get along somehow.'

“Well, sir, it wa’n’t long before that dog came in to ‘tend to Sime and polish him off the way he had all the other cats. Sime watched him coming, and just when the dog was about ready to clamp down on Sime’s back, Sime jumped up in the air and lit on top of him, digging with his claws, and chawing with those long teeth of his.

“Well, sir, that dog went kiting down the street, traveling all of twenty knots, and letting out howls that made your blood run cold. When he got to the corner, Sime got off and come back home; but the dog kept right on going the rest of that day; and after that Sime wa’n’t bothered by nothin’.”

“Ag’s birthday,”the Cap’n said, “was the 8th of February, and the day she was ten years old we was lying in Hong Kong harbor. It was kind of a gray day, and I thought it might cheer Ag up if I dressed ship for her, so I gave orders to break out all flags and dress her up and down. Well, they done so, and it brightened things considerable for Ag, and she was real pleased. There was a couple of American barques lying near us, and we see ‘em bring out their flags and run ‘em all up. Then some British tea clippers, they hoisted flags, and pretty quick the whole harbor was dressed up, same as the emperor’s birthday.

“ ‘Long about dinnertime one of those official boats came rowing out, stopping at this ship and that ship, and finally it come up to us, and the feller in the stern, he hollered: ‘Cap’n, what holiday you got your ship dressed for?’

“ ‘Why,’ I says, ‘what are all those other fellers dressed up for?’

“ ‘Well,’ the feller says, ‘they all say it’s an American holiday, but they say you hoisted your flags first and prob’ly know more about it than they do. What holiday is it, Cap’n? They want to know on shore, so they can ‘tend to hoisting the flags on the post office.’

“‘Holiday,’ I said, ‘holiday? Why, it’s my daughter Ag’s birthday, that’s what it is. Ag’s ten years old today!’ Laff? I thought I’d die!”

“Between a couple of my father’s voyages,” Captain Gould said, “he got into his buggy and drove across the river and bought a cow from Will Gooch. He came driving back with her and put her in the barn. We all went out to look at her; and by Gorry, she didn’t have an upper tooth in her head!

“ ‘Look here, Father,’ I said, ‘how old is this

cow? ‘

“ ‘How old?’ my father said. ‘Why, she’s a young cow ! ‘

“ ‘She can’t be so all-fired young,’ I said, ‘because she’s got a lot of teeth missing. Look at her upper jaw,’ I said. ‘There ain’t a tooth in it.’

“ ‘By Gorry,’ my father said, ‘Will Gooch told me she was a young cow! I guess I been cheated! We ll go right back to see Will, because that’s one thing I can’t endure — having a landsman cheat a mariner.'

“We got into the buggy, and I took the cow by the halter and we went back across the river to Will Gooch’s. Will come out and looked at the cow, but before he could say anything, my father said, ‘Will, you told me this cow was a young cow; but she’s lost pretty near all her teeth.’

“ ‘How’s that?’ Will says.

“‘Not an upper tooth has she got,’ my father said, ‘and I want you to understand you can’t palm off a toothless critter like that as a young cow! ‘

“Will snorted and said: ‘Cap’n Gould, just step into my cow barn a minute.’

“We stepped into the cow barn, and Will reached out to the first cow and pulled up her upper lip, and she didn’t have a tooth in her upper jaw. He went right down the barn, pulling up upper lips, and there wa’n’t one of them that had an upper tooth. My father never said a word, and we got back into the buggy and took our cow and went home with her, and it was near two days before my father said much of anything to anybody.

“Well, after I got to be a captain myself, I was out in Hong Kong one time, having a bite to eat with a few sea captain friends, when Cap’n Rogers came in, just arrived from Australia, and sat down with us. He was bragging about some cows he had aboard that he was taking back to San Francisco for some feller that raised extra-fine cattle.

“ ‘If they’re so fine,’ I said, ‘how do you account for their not having teeth in their upper jaws?’

“ ‘What you talking about?’ Rogers said. ‘Those cows are perfect cows! Of course they got teeth in their upper jaws.’

“ ‘Well,’ I said, ‘they ain’t, as you’d well know if you’d spent any time on a farm.’

“ ‘T’ain’t so,’ Rogers said. ‘I bet you ten dollars t’ain’t so!’

“ ‘I’ll take that bet,’ I said, ‘and as many more like it as anyone wants to make.’

“Cap’n Rogers quieted down, not wanting to let on he’d caught me, but one of the other sea captains said he’d seen cows all his life, and they was always chewing, which they couldn’t ‘a’ done unless they had teeth in their upper jaw. He said he’d bet ten dollars; so three other captains, they spoke up and said they’d bet ten dollars too. Well, sir, we finished our dinner, and had a little mite of something to drink; then we got a few of those rickshaws, and drove right out to a dairy farm on the edge of town, everybody singing and happy over the money I was going to lose.

“Well, sir, when we got to that dairy farm and those five captains started looking for cows’ upper teeth, they couldn’t find a one in the place. They must have pulled the upper lips nearly off two hundred cows, but it was just as I’d told them: not a one of ‘em had upper teeth, by Gorry!” The Cap’n ejected a tobacco fragment from his upper lip and considered me tranquilly. “So I collected myself fifty dollars, and Mother got herself a new silk dress. Laff? I thought I’d bust!”