Gobbolino had to cling with all his might to the ropes and sails to avoid being washed into the sea, but at last he found a more sheltered spot where the wind and water could not reach him, though showers of spray still drenched his fur and stung his eyes, alert to watch the passing of the sea witch.
Oh, joy! Oh, joy for Gobbolino, when all of a sudden the clouds rolled back, and the sun moved into a rift of clear blue sky that flooded the deck and bathed the battered ship in glory.
The sea witch circled out to sea, sweeping angrily past the Mary Maud as if the cheering light annoyed her. Gobbolino was afraid she meant to fly away altogether, for the ship was bound for the rocks and nothing could save her.
And the sailors had suddenly caught sight of the little cat crouching in his corner.
“Save the cat! Save the cat!” they cried. “Put him in a basket, and if we strike the rocks he may float to shore!”
They left the ropes and six or seven of them ran to seize Gobbolino but he slipped out of their hands and leapt on to the cookhouse roof.
The cook, still busy with his pans in spite of the ship’s rolling, put out a hand to pull him inside, but Gobbolino made a leap and gained the Captain’s bridge. The Captain clutched him by the scruff of his neck. Gobbolino gave a wriggle, the ship plunged again, and they fell to the ground in a heap.
Gobbolino found his feet first and sprang up the remaining mast, up, up, up to the cross-trees, and there was not a man reckless enough to follow him there in such a tempest.
The sailors stood below wringing their hands, for they felt sure that at any moment their kitten would be flung into the sea, while the sea witch flew round the ship in ever-widening circles, and the next bank of storm clouds moved up to swallow the sun.
Even if the sea witch saw him crouching there in the rigging, it meant nothing to her that a small dark cat had been foolish enough to climb the mast with the ship breaking to pieces beneath him.
But Gobbolino could not let her vanish in this fashion:
“Mistress! Oh, mistress!” he cried above the storm. “Don’t you know me? Have you never met Grimalkin my mother, nor Sootica my little sister, nor my mistress the witch who lived in the cavern under the Hurricane Mountains? Oh, mistress! Oh, mistress! It is Gobbolino, the witch’s kitten, who is calling to you! For my mother’s sake, don’t leave me to drown on this miserable ship! Have mercy! Have mercy!”
The sea witch heard his pitiful cries and wheeled suddenly, just as she was preparing to fly away out of sight.
“Is it true what you say?” she cried above the storm. “If you are really a witch’s kitten, what are you doing on board this ship?”
“The sailors took me aboard!” piped Gobbolino. “I couldn’t escape – how could I, so far from the shore?”
“Witch’s kittens swim like seals!” said the sea witch suspiciously, creeping nearer and nearer the ship, but careful not to let her shadow fall upon the deck.
“It was so far to the shore, mistress, that I was afraid!” said Gobbolino, anxiously watching the bank of cloud drawing nearer and nearer the sun. “Oh, take me on your broomstick, kind mistress, and carry me back to the cave in the Hurricane Mountains! You would not let a witch’s kitten die, kind mistress?”
“Jump into the sea and swim!” said the sea witch. “When the ship is gone down I will pick you up on my broomstick and take you home again.”
“It is so far and so deep!” sobbed Gobbolino. “I am afraid! I am afraid!”
“And, oh, my goodness!” he thought to himself. “In one more minute the sun will be gone, and then nothing that I can do will save us!”
So he clung to the rigging with all his might and main, sobbing:
“Oh! Oh! Oh! The wind is pulling me off! I shall fall on the deck and be smashed into a thousand pieces, and what will my mother Grimalkin say, and my little sister Sootica, and my mistress the witch? I am falling! I am falling!”
“I will save you! Be ready to spring upon my broomstick as I pass!” cried the sea witch angrily as the ship wallowed once more into the depths of a wave, and the rim of the sun touched the bank of cloud.
Gobbolino crouched on the mast as the ship rose again, watching, watching the deck.
The anxious sailors, who had heard his pitiful mewing, but could not understand all that he said, stood watching too, each one ready to plunge into the sea to save him if he should fall.
The sunlight began to fade.
“Oh, my goodness, if it is already too late!” said Gobbolino, and now he saw the cruel reef of rocks rearing to the ship’s bows.
“Be ready!” shrieked the sea witch almost in his ear. “Spring!”
But as she passed him like a streak of summer lightning her shadow fell for one moment on the deck, and in that moment Gobbolino sprang, not on her broomstick, but right on to the shadow of her head, crying loudly:
“Fiddlesticks to you, ma’am!” – and with a shriek of rage the sea witch was gone.
“Traitor! Traitor!” she cried, as the wind swallowed her up and then a dead calm fell on the sea.
A ship’s length from the reef the Mary Maud lay becalmed, as if at anchor. The last storm clouds raced northward while the sun shone out of a hot blue sky.
The sea sparkled like a still lagoon, and far below, Gobbolino could see brown weed moored to rock terraces, pretty fishes, crabs, and eels, as clearly as if they swam in an aquarium.
All traces of the storm were gone.
Gobbolino looked about him in bewilderment. The sailors too seemed dazed and uncertain – they gathered in little groups, talking uneasily and peeping at Gobbolino.
“It was no seabird, I tell you!” he heard them whisper. “It was a witch!”
“He was talking to her! I heard him plainly!”
“He said he was a witch’s kitten! Can you believe it?”
“No wonder she followed the ship and would not let us alone! We mighty nearly perished, I can tell you!”
“The cat bargained with her to stop the storm, and who knows what he may have offered her in exchange?”
“He cried, ‘Fiddlesticks to you, ma’am!’ or some such rubbish!”
“Ah! Who knows what that may mean to a witch’s cat!”
So they stared suspiciously at Gobbolino, and when he walked towards them none of them stooped to pick him up, or stroked his head.
All night long the ship lay becalmed under a silver moon.
Gobbolino sat on the deck, lonely and sad, for the sailors were awkward with him, and nobody invited him to share their meal.
In the morning a little breeze sprang up, but not a sailor appeared on deck, or made any attempt to unfurl the sails.
At midday the Captain came up alone.
“Gobbolino, my little cat,” he said kindly, but with great solemnity, “I am afraid the time has come when we must part. My sailors refuse to put to sea until you leave the ship. They are afraid of fresh troubles coming upon them or the sea witch revenging herself upon the ship for your sake. There are captains, and there are ships, Gobbolino, who will not have a cat aboard, they think it is unlucky. The Mary Maud is not one of these. But a witch’s cat – oh, no! That is quite a different thing!”
Gobbolino nodded and answered, “Ay, ay, Cap’n!” though his eyes filled with tears at the thought of leaving his kind friends and the ship he had come to look on as his home.
11
The Little Princess
Gobbolino was very touched when the Captain himself rowed him ashore in the Mary Maud’s lifeboat.
The sailors, watching from the ship’s side, gave him a friendly cheer as the boat ran on the silver sands and the little cat jumped out, but he could not look back and see the Mary Maud setting sail without him.
So he hurried bravely along, never once turning his head, and taking very little notice of where he was going, because he was so busy trying not to cry, until he found himself in what must have been a very large town indeed, for the streets were so full and so busy th
at there wasn’t room even for a kitten as neat and agile as himself to walk in peace.
For a time he dodged in and out of legs and leapt from in front of wheels until at last, after an extra hard kick had landed on his ribs, he decided that it would be safer to continue his journey overhead.
With one leap he was on top of a high wall, another leap and he was among the chimneys. With a sigh of relief he set out to continue his journey along the housetops.
When he came to the very end of the town he popped down what he took for a drainpipe.
“This will take me down again!” said Gobbolino. “And once I am on the ground I can run off into the open country and find somewhere where I shall be more welcome than in this place.”
But what he had taken for a rainwater pipe was really a royal chimney.
Gobbolino did not know it, but he had popped down one of the chimneys in the king’s palace.
Down, down, down the dark and narrow chimney fell Gobbolino, like a round ball that became blacker and blacker as he swept away the soot.
Bump! He landed at the bottom, and shot out into an open room, in time to hear a little voice like silver bells saying:
“Oh! Oh! Oh! Whatever can be coming down the chimney?”
Gobbolino opened his beautiful blue eyes and looked about him. He was in the prettiest room he had ever seen, all white lace and pink ribbons.
Watching him from a white bed in the middle of the room was a little girl with golden curls upon which rested a tiny crown. Her pink quilt was littered with toys and dolls. There were games and books on her satin pillows, flowers in great clusters round her bed, but her little face was pale and sad, even when her blue eyes opened wide in surprise at seeing Gobbolino.
He knew in a moment that she must be a princess.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” said the little princess. “It’s a cat! It is a lovely cat with the most beautiful blue eyes I ever saw! Oh, dear little cat! Pretty little cat! Do come nearer so I can speak to you and stroke your soft fur! Come and tell me your name and how you came to fall down my nursery chimney!”
Her voice was so kind and so charming that Gobbolino jumped upon her bed at once, quite forgetting the sooty black paw-marks he left wherever he went.
“The town children were chasing me, Your Highness!” he exclaimed. “My name is Gobbolino!” And then, her little hand was so kind, and her voice so gentle, while his own heart was so lonely, that he began to tell her his whole story from beginning to end, and all the while the princess gently stroked his fur, saying “Oh!” and “Ah!” whenever he paused, till the tale was over, when she said:
“Oh, poor little Gobbolino! How could people be so stupid and cruel? I can’t understand it at all! But you mustn’t be lonely and sad any longer, because I want you to live with me now for ever and ever – you shall be Gobbolino the royal cat!”
At that moment the door opened and the princess’s nurse came into the room.
She threw up her hands in horror at the sight of Gobbolino.
“Your Royal Highness! Your Royal Highness! However did that dirty little cat get on your bed?” she exclaimed. “I thought I shut all the doors! I thought I shut all the windows! And he can’t possibly have come down the chimney!”
“He did come down the chimney!” said the little princess. “He is Gobbolino, and he is going to stay with me and be my cat for ever and ever.”
“We’ll see what your doctor says about that!” said the nurse tartly, whisking away the pink satin cover which was all covered with Gobbolino’s paw-marks. “He is just on his way to see you now. I can hear him coming up the stairs.”
The princess’s doctor was round and rosy. He came into the room smiling like the sun, and in less than no time the little princess had persuaded him to allow Gobbolino to stay for ever and ever.
“I feel better already, with him beside me!” she told him. “But if you send him away I shall certainly be worse.”
“What about all those pretty toys, those dolls and games and picture books I ordered for you instead of medicine?” said the doctor. “Those didn’t make you better.”
“They weren’t alive,” said the little princess. “I was just as lonely all the time they were there as before they came!”
So Gobbolino stayed in the little princess’s room day in and day out, and which of them was the happier it would be difficult to say.
“Oh, my goodness!” Gobbolino said to himself sometimes, as he sat in the window looking down on the busy street below. “Here am I, born in a witch’s cave, shunned and despised by everyone, about to live for ever and ever in a royal palace! What would my mother say? And my sister Sootica? Oh, my goodness! Whoever would have believed it?”
He did all in his power to amuse the little princess and keep her happy, for she had lain ill so many weary years that she had almost forgotten how to feel well again, but now, as Gobbolino talked to her, told her stories, and went through his tricks for her, the colour began to creep back into her pale cheeks once more.
When he told her of the adventure of the little brothers in the Lord Mayor’s coach:
“One day I shall ride in a coach again!” she cried.
When he told her of his friends, the crew of the Mary Maud:
“One day I too shall go to sea!” she said.
Gobbolino would sit long hours on the windowsill telling her about what went on in the street below.
Sometimes musicians came round the corner, and when Gobbolino had described how well they played and how the crowds gathered to hear them, the little princess had them brought up to her nursery, where they played her the sweetest airs they knew.
Another day a performing bear came down the street, so clumsy and droll, and playing such merry pranks that Gobbolino nearly fell off the windowsill with laughter, and the little princess would not rest until the bear too, and its master, were brought up the stairs to her room, though her parents, the nurse, the servants, and even the doctor, did all in their power to prevent it.
Sometimes it was a flower-seller, with a basket of yellow, pink, heliotrope, blue, all the colours of the rainbow, who was brought to the little princess’s bedside, and sometimes an acrobat who stood on his hands and walked about the room, or a juggler that tossed a dozen balls in the air at once, and balanced dishes on his nose.
The days were never dull for the little princess now. The roses bloomed in her cheeks and her eyes sparkled.
Her doctor, her nurse, and her parents were delighted with her.
“Soon she will be running about again, and then she will be able to go to boarding-school like the other princesses,” they said.
“Can I take Gobbolino with me when I go to school?” the little princess asked.
“Oh, no, of course not!” said her parents, her nurse, and her doctor, looking quite shocked. “You will have so much to do there you will have no time to play with your cat!”
“Then I don’t want to get better and go to school!” sobbed the little princess when she and Gobbolino were left together again. “I want to stay here in my nursery with you, and have fun together! I shan’t get well after all!”
So the little princess refused her meals and lay on her back looking up at the ceiling.
She no longer asked for the singers, the performing animals, the acrobats and the jugglers to be brought up to her room as before. She wanted everyone to think she was very ill, or they would send her to school immediately.
But when her parents, the doctor, and the nurse were out of the room, the little princess sat up on her satin pillows and asked:
“What can you see in the street, Gobbolino?” and Gobbolino would reply:
“I can see a procession, Your Highness!” or “I can see a farmer going to market!” or “A circus!” or “A fair!” and the little princess would cry:
“Tell me all about it!”
But one day Gobbolino cried out all by himself:
“Oh! Oh! Oh! I can see a Punch and Judy show coming round the corner!�
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“Tell me all about it! Tell me all about it!” cried the little princess, but Gobbolino was so doubled up with laughter at the antics of the cherry-nosed Punch, the policeman, and the dog Toby that he could not speak fast enough to please her, and at last the little princess skipped out of bed, ran across the room, and knelt on the window seat beside him where she began to split her sides, crying:
“Oh! Oh! Oh! I’d rather belong to a Punch and Judy show than anything in the world!”
Gobbolino and the little princess were so busy clapping their hands at the Punch and Judy show, shouting:
“Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!” and bouncing up and down, that they did not hear the door open behind them, until a whole chorus of voices exclaimed:
“Princess! Princess! Your Highness! Your Highness! What is the meaning of all this?” and there on the threshold stood the princess’s parents, her nurse, her doctor, and all the palace servants, staring with astonishment into the room.
The little princess skipped back to bed and drew the bedclothes over her head.
“Did you see that?” said her parents.
“She is perfectly well!” said her nurse.
“There is nothing whatever wrong with her!” said the doctor, and they all added:
“She must go to boarding-school at once!”
“I don’t feel well at all!” sobbed the little princess, but nobody believed her any longer.
The very next morning she was packed into her father’s coach and galloped away to boarding-school with a dozen or so other princesses, where I feel bound to tell you she was very happy indeed.
She had only time to fling her arms round Gobbolino’s neck before she went.
“Goodbye, my dear, darling, little cat!” she said. “How lucky you are, Gobbolino! You can go anywhere in the wide world that you please, but look at me!”
“I don’t know where to go,” said Gobbolino, with tears standing in his beautiful blue eyes at the thought of being alone in the world once more.
Gobbolino the Witch's Cat Page 5