[Illustration:  THE FORE-PEAK YARN.—­Marryat, Vol.  X., p. 211.]

“And sure enough the brute, which was about as big as two common cats, was just as savage as a tiger.  When the first mate called the man on deck, the fellow left his cat behind him in the fore-peak, just as if it were now here, and it got into a dark corner, growling and humping its back, with its eyes flashing fire at every one of us as we came anigh it.  ‘Oh!’ says we, ’this here won’t never do; wait till the captain comes on board, that’s all.’  Well, the hatches were off, and we were busy, re-stowing the upper tier of the cargo, which we had thrown in very carelessly in our hurry to get down the river; just putting the bales in order (it wasn’t breaking bulk, you see), and we were at it all day.  At last, toward evening, the captain comes on board with the gentleman passenger, a mighty timorsome sort of young chap he appeared for to be, and had never before set his foot upon the plank of a vessel.  So as soon as the captain was on deck we all broke off our work, and went to him to tell him about this cat, and the captain he gets into a great rage as soon as he hears on it, and orders the man to send the cat on shore, or else he’d throw it overboard.  Well, the man, who was a sulky, saucy sort of chap, and no seaman, I’ve a notion, gives cheek, and says he won’t send his cat on shore for no man, whereupon the captain orders the cat to be caught, that he might send it in the boat; but nobody dared to catch it, for it was so fierce to everybody but its master.  The second mate tried, and he got a devil of a bite, and came up from the fore-peak without the cat, looking very blue indeed.  And then the first mate went down, and he tried; but the cat flew at him, and he came up as white as a sheet.  And then the cat became so savage that it stood at the foot of the ladder, all ready to attack whoever should come down, and the man laughed heartily, and told us to fetch the cat.  ‘Well,’ says the first mate, ’I can’t touch the cat, but I can you, you beggar, and I will too, if it costs me twenty pounds;’ so he ups with a handspike and knocks the fellow down senseless on the deck, and there he laid.  And it sarved him right.

“Well, then the captain thought to shoot the cat, for it was for all the world like a wild beast, and one proposed one thing and one another.  At last Jim, the cabin-boy, comes forward with some brimstone matches in a pan, and he lights them and lowers them down into the fore-peak by a rope-yarn to smother it out.  And so it did sure enough, for all of a sudden the cat made a spring up to the deck, and then we all chased it here and there, until at last it got out to the end of the flying jib-boom, and then Jim, the cabin-boy, followed it out with a handspike, and poked at it as hard as he could, until at last it lost its hold, and down it went into the water, and Jim and the handspike went along with it, for Jim, in his last poke at the cat, lost his balance,