Anton and Cecil Cats at Sea Part 1

Anton and Cecil Cats at Sea.

By LISA MARTIN and VALERIE MARTIN.

For our dearest s.h.i.+pmates, Cole, Cabot, and Calliope.

Anchors aweigh!

CHAPTER 1.

The Harbor at Lunenburg.

The herring slapped onto the wooden dock as the men shook the nets to free the last of them. Anton and Cecil watched from the shadows between stacks of crates. This was the crucial moment, before the men began scooping the fish into containers and hauling them away. One of the catch, larger than most, flopping helplessly, slithered from the top and careened down the side of the quivering pile of fish. Cecil s.h.i.+fted his weight to his back paws, his muscles tensed.

Anton moved slightly to block him. "Not yet," he breathed, but Cecil sprang from the crates and in two long bounds reached the fish. He clamped its tail between his jaws and turned sharply, dragging the squirming weight, skidding on the slippery wood. A fisherman grunted and lunged for the fish. He caught its slick gills for a moment before it slid through his fingers. Cecil pulled hard, breaking into a run as the man turned to give chase.

Now Anton darted from the hiding place, eyes wide and intent upon a smaller herring at the bottom of the pile. A fat rubber boot stomped the dock behind him, narrowly missing his tail. He leaped across the pile, scrambling wildly over the churning fish, finally bolting through the closing circle of boots, empty-jawed.

Crouched behind the nearest tower of coiled ropes, Anton listened for pursuers but heard only rough laughter as the men returned to the catch. He trotted along a dirt path lined with scrub weeds, arriving at an old lighthouse perched on the edge of a jumble of flat rocks overlooking the ocean. Slipping between two loose boards on the lighthouse's foundation, he let his eyes adjust to the dim light inside, carefully stepped around the weathered wooden posts, and stopped, looking at Cecil.

Cecil glanced up, motionless, then returned to cleaning his back paw. The herring lay stiff on the dry stone at his side. "So," he said, his voice slightly mocking, "where's yours?"

Anton crouched on the rock slab and folded his tail neatly alongside him. "Hmph," he snorted. "After the scene you made, there wasn't much chance for me to get one, was there? So much for sneaking. Next time, I go first!" He lowered his eyelids as if he were bored.

Cecil finished cleaning his paw and turned to his catch, chuckling. "If you'd gone first we'd still be waiting for you to choose one." With his sharp teeth and claws, he ripped a chunk of flesh from the fish and tossed it to his brother. Anton sniffed the fish carefully, then began to chew small mouthfuls. "It's like I always tell you, little kit," said Cecil, his cheeks bursting with herring. "Don't be a chicken, be a cat! Be adventurous!"

Anton scooped up the last morsel and rose to leave. "Thanks for lunch," he called as he slipped back out between the boards. But not for the advice, he thought, narrowing his eyes. Cecil was good at many things-hunting and stealing and muscling his way through. But every cat couldn't be like Cecil. And every cat didn't need to hear about it.

As Anton rounded the bend in the lighthouse path, he looked out upon the busy port of his home village. The harbor, full of stately tall s.h.i.+ps resting at anchor, resembled a forest of leafless trees. s.h.i.+ps with masts as tall as houses, their spars stretching like arms out past the ma.s.sive hulls, bobbed at anchor as far as the eye could see. The big brigs and three-masted barques in which humans sailed the world plowed toward the docks from the open sea, slow and ponderous as elephants, while the smaller fis.h.i.+ng schooners, quick as rabbits, darted into the harbor at dawn, returning in the evening loaded down with hills of s.h.i.+vering silver fish, lobsters as big as platters, nets heaped with oysters, mussels, and clams. The brightly painted shops and houses of the town, built in tiers on a steep slope, looked down upon the waterfront like an audience eager to see a show. And what a show it was, from dawn to dusk.

When the tall s.h.i.+ps sailed into the harbor, past the breakwater and up to the docks, many interesting things were disgorged. First came the sailors, intriguing in their own right, with their colorful scarves and sashes and boisterous manners. Then they unloaded the s.h.i.+p's deep hold. Out came great sacks of flour, metal pipes, wooden carriage wheels, crates of miniature trees with odd-shaped leaves, cows, goats, and sheep, roped together, balking at the gangway, mooing and bleating. There were wooden barrels of all sizes, pallets laden with bales of cotton and wool, skids of bricks and lumber, cages of chickens, huge blocks of ice.

All of it was in constant motion, pushed and pulled by the bustling stevedores who plied their barrows and carts through the ranks of horse-drawn carriages on the docks, past the shouting sailors and the occasional bevy of weeping ladies there to welcome their husbands and their sons. A ceaseless chorus of noise accompanied the mayhem: shouting men, rollicking children, the joyful barking of aimless dogs, the cries of the seagulls rising in squads to circle the town or dive into the harbor, the screech of osprey, the yowling of the town's resident cats.

Some of the sailors scoffed at the cats, while others gave them a kind word, or even tossed a fish too small or too bony for their own uses. The sailors were not surprised to see the cats, nor were the cats perturbed by the sailors, though they were wary of them, for good reason. But where there are sailors and s.h.i.+ps and the sea, there are fish and mice and rats, and where there are fish and mice and rats, there are cats. It has always been so. Humans long to cross the sea, to visit strange lands and see wonders undreamed of. Cats-well, most cats-do not.

Anton and Cecil were brothers born in a cozy recess beneath the old lighthouse perched on the rocky breakwater that curves out from the harbor. Their mother, Sonya, was young when her sons were born; they were her first litter. Like her, Anton was svelte, elegant, and gray as a storm cloud. He was cautious and sensitive by nature, and picky about food. He liked to plan ahead.

Cecil was black with white forepaws, a paintbrush of white at the end of his tail, and startling white whiskers (their father was a stylish tuxedo cat from the town). He was big, beefy, goofy, and omnivorous. Cecil was curious about everything, but especially about s.h.i.+ps and the sea. The sailors never saw enough of Anton to give him a name, but Cecil, who liked to sit on the dock in the sun, gazing at the sea like a pensive jack of spades, they called "Blackjack."

As kittens the brothers were of a size, but Cecil had big paws and his fur was longer and silkier than Anton's gray coat, which took no time at all for Sonya to clean. Cecil grew taller and heavier, outstripping his brother and then his mother, and then every other cat on the wharf. He was always hungry, and there was nothing he wouldn't eat. Often a river of mice streamed from the s.h.i.+ps looking for new haunts after their journey. Cecil devoured any he could manage to pounce on, even if they made his belly ache for hours afterward. Anton was nimble enough to trap mice in his paws, to let them go and trap them again, but he did it for sport. He simply had no taste for mice. Another treat Cecil enjoyed, to his fastidious brother's horror, was water beetles.

"They're good," Cecil claimed. "They're crunchy."

"Ugh," said Anton. "I'd rather wait for a fish."

Sonya was a loving mother, and having only two sons meant she had more time to teach them everything she knew about life in the lighthouse, in the town, and on the wharf. The brothers were both fascinated by the bustle of sailors on the waterfront, but Sonya warned them of the dangers of being impressed into service on a s.h.i.+p. "They come on the dock at night, and if they see a cat, they tempt him with fish and then scoop him up and throw him in the hold until the s.h.i.+p is out to sea. Some are never seen again. I knew an old fellow who came back and said he'd seen the world."

"And what did he see?" asked Cecil.

"Horrible sights. Humans had fur and swung in trees."

"Frightening," Anton agreed.

"Interesting," said Cecil, wide-eyed. "I'd like to see that."

"And he'd seen a country made of nothing but sand."

"Flat or hilly?" asked Cecil.

"Who cares?" said Anton. "Right here is the best place in the world for a cat to live. Everybody says that."

"That's true," agreed Sonya. "Everyone says that. Even those who have gone away and come back again."

During the day, Anton, the more thoughtful brother, preferred to spend his nap times close to Sonya in the lighthouse, snuggled on the old quilt where he'd been born. In the evenings, though, the music from the saloon in town drew him out of hiding to slip quietly through the chill alleys, following the trail of marvelous sounds. He'd found a broken board in the wall of the saloon storeroom, with just enough s.p.a.ce to squeeze through. The door into the bar was usually left ajar, and he discovered that he could sit behind it and hear the instruments and the singing well enough. Closing his eyes and curling his paws, he often purred loudly with pleasure as the music rumbled in his rib cage.

One evening, Anton said to Cecil, "You could come with me tonight to hear some music," but Cecil smiled and shook his head.

"Nope, I've got more exciting things to do," he said as he stalked off, disappearing into the dark. Anton s.h.i.+vered looking after him, hardly daring to think of the mischief he might be up to.

While Anton was out salooning, Cecil climbed the dusty wooden stairs to the top of the lighthouse and sat by the railing, gazing out at the ocean. The bitterly cold wind blew his fur and stung his eyes, but he was content to stay there for hours, smelling the scents of the sea, watching the waves. Sometimes he could see the sails of tall s.h.i.+ps moving slowly, mysteriously along the horizon. Tonight, the moon was bright, and he glimpsed a pod of whales playing far from sh.o.r.e. He watched until they faded silently from his view.

A white cat, pale and ghostly in the moonlight, sat on a low wharf near the sh.o.r.e looking down at the silvery shapes in the water. Black fur masked her eyes and ears, a pet.i.te thief in the dark night. The high tide pooled within a ring of rocks, presenting a deep bowl of darting fish, quite catchable in her estimation, though admittedly she was young and optimistic in these matters. She crouched low and stretched one pearly paw slowly over the water, extending her claws, c.o.c.king her head in an effort to track the path of the swirling fish. A steady breeze off the harbor rustled the leaves in the scrub bushes, waves lapped up on the rocky sh.o.r.eline, and wooden dock planks creaked and sighed behind her.

She focused on the fish, so near, and tensed for the strike. A wisp of a scent pa.s.sed under her nose-it seemed out of place. Was it . . . rubber? She twisted sharply around in time to glimpse a short, grubby sailor throw something through the air toward her. She sprang away from him with a shriek, but too late; the fish net landed heavily over her. Rising up on hind legs she struggled, tearing at the netting with her teeth and claws as the sailor rushed to her. A small hole opened in the mesh, big enough to jam a paw through, but the sailor swiftly gathered the edges and scooped her up, grinning through yellowed teeth as he held the net bag high enough to peer at her.

The trapped cat howled frantically as she swung in the netting alongside the sailor's heavy boots. Whistling a tune as though pleased with himself, the sailor walked down the length of the dock and up a gangway toward a waiting s.h.i.+p. The cat scrambled desperately to right herself in the net, pivoting around her paw, which was still awkwardly thrust through the netting. She s.h.i.+fted her weight to her hindquarters, pushed her free foreleg out as far as it would go, and slashed at the sailor's leg. The sailor yelped and cursed as her claws ripped through his dungarees into the skin below. Instead of dropping the net as she had hoped, however, he thumped it savagely against a railing, leaving her dazed and mewling in pain and anger.

Up on deck the sailor approached a wide hatchway. The cat heard the click and whine of a door unlatched and opened. The fish net was loosened, her ghost-white body dumped onto a dusty floor. The door slammed shut, then blackness. Silence.

CHAPTER 2.

A Cat at Sea Aye! 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 s.h.i.+ps went out to sea and sometimes never came back, but Cecil knew that the fis.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+p 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 fis.h.i.+ng gear and trawl lines swerved to avoid tromping on him, and the s.h.i.+p's bobbing made the plank sway unnervingly. From over the side of the s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p. One of the pa.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+p 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 ap.r.o.n 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 suns.h.i.+ne warmed the bricks. Moving on to his ears, Anton glanced up at the pa.s.sing gulls and over at a fis.h.i.+ng 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 Cecil! 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+ps' 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 s.h.i.+ps, 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sembled 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sing, thought of her as s.p.u.n.ky but naive. She concentrated so intently while fis.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+fted, the older ones shaking their heads, the young ones chattering shrilly.

Old Billy raised his thin voice above the commotion. "Remember, friends, you know what is said." He spoke slowly and many in the crowd nodded gravely. "Where the eye sees the eye, the lost shall be found."

Anton sighed and turned away. He had indeed heard the saying before, but he had no idea what it meant.

As he began to join the fis.h.i.+ng crews more often, Cecil loved telling Anton his seafaring tales, exaggerating some and drawing them out in the recounting, and Anton grudgingly listened, outwardly skeptical though inwardly curious. Whether drenched and battered in a sudden storm, accidentally trapped in a bait barrel, or nipped painfully by a vicious lobster, Cecil told of his adventures with exuberance. But there was one story that Cecil kept to himself, in part because he thought it might frighten Anton, and in part because even he didn't fully understand what had happened.

Every now and again, when the boat was far from land and the sailors were whiling away the slow hours between duties, someone spotted a great whale swimming a long way off in the sea. The whales often breached the water's surface, slowly rolling like huge logs or surging straight up and splas.h.i.+ng thunderously back down. The men knew what kinds of whales they were and pointed and shouted their names: "Humpback!" or "Fin!" or, rarely, "Right one, there!" These whales were closer than any Cecil had seen from the lighthouse, and their enormity intrigued and terrified him.

One sunny day as a thin breeze left the sails slack, Cecil sat on a crate near the starboard railing waiting for the catch to be hauled in. A shout from one of the men drew the others to look over the port side of the s.h.i.+p down at the trawl nets. A large school of cod had swum frantically into the nets from underneath, tugging on the boat with their effort, which was odd. Cecil sat watching, front paws folded under his chest, when out of the corner of his eye he saw a shadow darken the water far out on the starboard side, away from where the crewmen were grouped. He turned, looking for a pa.s.sing cloud, but the sky was clear. The shadow disappeared, then reappeared much closer, and Cecil realized with a thud in his stomach that it was something dark in the water, something as big as the schooner.

Cecil cautiously peered over the side and saw hundreds of small fish scattering in every direction, and then suddenly the shadow was right next to the boat and growing. As he watched, the sea began to spill away from a single spot, smooth and black, expanding down the length of the s.h.i.+p until Cecil understood he was looking at one whole side of a huge finback whale.

The whale made no sound and smelled like the brine of ancient oceans. Its skin was blue-gray with crusty yellow patches, and an immense white jaw wrapped around its wide mouth. Cecil jumped up with his back arched and tail straight as a broom handle, but could not make himself run away. The whale floated gently and Cecil saw its eye, dark blue and big as the round lantern in the lighthouse, pa.s.sing over the s.h.i.+p, up to the sails and down the tall mast, coming to rest on Cecil. A pattern of ivory barnacles curved above the eye like a long wizened eyebrow on an old man. The whale's eye surveyed Cecil, as if curiously taking his measure. Cecil was transfixed, and as the eye opened a bit more he felt that the whale was going to tell him a secret, share a piece of wisdom. Cecil felt that he was falling into the depths of that eye and the knowledge that lay behind it, and he held his breath.

"Finny on starboard!" bellowed the captain, almost in Cecil's ear. "All hands to starboard!" he shouted as every fisherman rushed across the deck, their combined weight causing the s.h.i.+p to pitch into the whale with an echoing thunk. The whale's eye released Cecil and flickered toward the men. Its powerful tail pushed against the boat, and Cecil nearly tumbled overboard but managed to cling to the crate with his claws. The men were hysterical with fear that the whale would upend the s.h.i.+p. "Drive him off!" some of them screamed. There were no weapons to hand, and in their terror the men began throwing anything available: ropes, boxes, hooks, barrels. These thumped and smashed across the whale's head and broad back. With a final glance at Cecil the whale arched its ma.s.sive back and dived into the sea, rocking the s.h.i.+p violently in its wake.

For some time afterward the men prayed to the heavens, thanked the stars, told and retold the story of their escape among themselves. They were sure the whale had been an omen, an evil spirit, a test that had been pa.s.sed. Though the great finback was not seen again that day, every pair of eyes on the s.h.i.+p scanned the ocean for any sign of its return. Only one pair belonged to a creature who actually wished for it.

CHAPTER 3.

Brother Cats The sailors who frequented the saloon had a favorite song, and it was Anton's favorite as well. It had a refrain he waited for, his ears alert, his eyes unblinking, as he gazed through the smoke from his place behind the door. He recognized the words without knowing their meaning. He could run them through his head and pick them out sometimes in the speech of the men on the wharf: "Windy weather boys, stormy weather boys." And then followed by "When the wind blows, we're all together boys." Anton, crouched in his corner, felt his fur lift along his spine.

One chilly night, as the crowd took up this refrain, Anton was so enraptured that he peeked out from his hiding place. He wanted to be part of the music, and he looked at the people in the room for something that might explain to him why he was so drawn to it. How curious these faces were. Why were their noses the same color as their faces? Why was all the fur attached at either end of the head or, in some cases, only one end? Their movements were clumsy, and they made a lot of noise everywhere they went; they could be dangerous, as Sonya had warned, but this singing together brought out something that made Anton feel bold. Unthinking, he stuck his head out a little farther. He could see the singer and a man playing an instrument that whined like a tuneful wind.

Just then the barman shoved the door aside, knocking Anton flat on his back, but only for a moment. Anton surged up, gathering his feet beneath him for a leap past the grumbling man to the top of a barrel. Worse luck, it was the barrel the barman was after and the sight of Anton balanced precariously upon it made him shout.

"Out!" he commanded, waving his hand toward the bar. "Out with you, you sneaking creature."

Anton dived from the barrel, scrambling across the floor into the bar. Two men leaning against the high counter gave a shout of delight as he cleared the edge in one powerful jump. The wood was slippery and Anton skidded against the rail, but as the men made encouraging comments, he recovered his footing and leaped into the bustling room. The women laughed, the men taunted with what they thought were cat sounds. The barman came out and shouted something that made everyone laugh. Anton could see the door just ahead, but it was closed tight against the chill night. Boots were everywhere between him and his destination, and hands reached out to catch him, but he eluded them. The thought that he might be touched by these giant, rough, loud creatures made his throat feel tight. His eyes darted this way and that, and his ears rotated front to back, listening for a sound that would lead him to safety.