The Navigator

Long ago, in the morning of the world, the Spirit Above breathed out the universe. Everything that exists was breathed out and given reality, from the farthest star, to the smallest grain of sand.

Within the universe was the good green earth, turning beneath its warm yellow sun. The Spirit Above set the Clans of the Folk upon the earth, to live and grow upon it: the Clan of Man, and beside them the Clan of Cat, and with them all the multitudes of others. For Cat, nine life Walks were decreed, while Man would live but once, in the world that turns beneath the sun.

The Cat walked with the Man in those days, for despite Man’s flaws, Cat preferred his companionship to all others. So it has been sung, and so it has been remembered, upon the earth and under the sun.

There were seas upon the earth: blue, salty, breathtaking expanses, broad and deep, stretching unimaginably far into the distance. If one could only travel upon them, he might reach distant and wondrous lands, never before seen by the eyes of his kind.

It was not long before the Clan of Man began to wonder what lay beyond the small existence that trammeled them in, and to dream of these far realms. They began to build tall ships then, upon the earth and under the sun.

Cat is not a builder; we accept the earth as it has been given to us, content to exist as a part of it. It has seemed to us good to be so, all the summers that our Clan and our kind have walked amid its splendor.

But the Clan of Man was born to build. They gather the stones of the earth and pile one upon the other, and so build a house. They fell the trees and saw them into planks, and with them roof the houses against the rain. Taking other stones, they pave a street, to run before all of their doors.

When enough houses have been built, and streets paved, they give the city a name, and the smoke of its chimneys blots out the sky. Such is Man the builder.

Far and away the most majestic things the Clan of Man have ever built are their ships, the great floating artworks they have made, to finally go and see what was only dreamt of before. It is in their ships that their creative abilities have reached a zenith.

Their hulls are made from smooth wooden planks, cunningly fitted together, so that the sea cannot find its way inside. They are made long, and lean, and full of grace. Sleek and sure they are, after the manner of the sharks and other great fishes that swim in the sea.

Upon their decks, masts made from whole trees reach toward the heavens. From them they spread sails, broad white wings of canvas, to embrace the wind, and steal its power.

They are beautiful, these tall ships of the Clan of Man. As their knife-sharp prows slice through choppy seas toward uncrossed horizons, as they steer close to the wind, and cast aloft the crystal spray, they are the most beautiful things to which Man ever put his hand.

I am “Looks Far,” of the Folk and of the Clan of Cat, we who walk nine times, upon the earth and under the sun. I am Ship’s Cat of the most beautiful of all the ships the Clan of Man has made, the Clipper Flying Cloud.

I am the companion of the human woman Eleanor, she who finds safe paths for the ship. Ellen, for so she is most often called by her kinsmen, has given me the name “Dante.” It is a strong naming, full of life and power, and I am well satisfied to answer to it.

It is Ellen who reads the sun, the stars, the wind and the sea, to guide the Flying Cloud safely into port.

It is not her mate Josiah, though he commands the crew, and his word is law for them. It is not the helmsman, though his is the hand upon the wheel that steers the ship. It is my friend Ellen, and she alone, who chooses our path. And so it is that her Clan gives her a second name: she is “The Navigator.”

I too have given Ellen a special naming: in my heart she is “Sees Clearly.” The naming of names is of great importance to my kind: names define a person’s place, upon the earth and under the sun. They must be carefully chosen, and never bestowed lightly.

I met Ellen one day at the South Street Seaport, while literally running for my life. I had lived but ten weeks of my second Walk, and would have made my journey then and there, if not for Ellen and Josiah.

None of the unbelievable adventures I have since experienced with her, would ever have happened, had she and Josiah not rescued me. The wonders I have beheld with my eyes would still be unseen.

Life paused that day, and then set a completely unexpected course. Fate, or a kind Spirit Above? None living can know, and no shade will tell.

I was born in Mulberry Bend, a curving street in the Five Points area of New York. It is a difficult enough home for the humans who live there; still more so for the Clan of Cat, small enough to be subject to the random cruelties humans are prone to.

I had been caught by members of one of the human gangs who rule that part of the city, and flung into a yard full of huge mastiffs. I do not know what became of my mother and siblings; we scattered in all directions when set upon by the humans. I was simply the one unlucky enough to be caught.

I sprang immediately to the top of the high fence and leapt to freedom, but the owner of the dogs was not satisfied. He threw open the gate and sent them after me, with him and his human friends in hot and howling pursuit.

I fled south, dodging between shanties and houses, cutting through yards, and beneath clotheslines, until I came to the waterfront. I could go no further in this direction, so I turned southwest, along South Street, where the tall ships were tied at their piers to be loaded.

I was almost spent, for I had run almost a mile, with the mastiffs and their owners howling and snapping after me. I prepared to turn at bay, and sell my life as dearly as a ten week old kitten could. I knew my Walk was almost done.

A woman’s hands scooped me up, inches from their jaws, and held me high over her head, as they leaped and snarled about her.

“Call off your dogs, sir!” shouted a man’s voice, loudly, and clearly accustomed to command. “I will shoot you dead where you stand, if my wife receives a single scratch! You may rest assured of that.” I saw that he was brandishing a heavy revolver, which had been hidden beneath his seaman’s coat.

Given little choice, the owner reluctantly brought the animals under control, snarling almost as loudly as his mastiffs. “The Bowery Club will deal with you,” he spat. “You dasn’t interfere with us! We will find you!”

“Then look for me upon the open sea,” the mariner retorted. “Or else in San Francisco, one hundred days from now! I am Captain Josiah Perkins Creesy, and not difficult to find, here or there!”

The man and his companions backed away, muttering more imprecations and threats; the Captain clearly meant precisely what he’d said.

“Go aboard, Ellen,” he said. “Take the animal with you. It cannot be released here. I shall join you momentarily.”

I faded from awareness then. I was, after all, only a new weaned kitten, who had just run a mile before a pack of dogs and violent men, bent on my destruction. I was at that moment more dead than alive. If I had made my Journey then and there, I would not have been surprised.

When I did awaken, still in the world under the sun, it was moving beneath me. I was lying on a narrow bed made for humans, and I sunk my claws into the woolen blanket which covered it, instinctively trying to stop the rolling and pitching motion.

I suffered momentary nausea, but it passed; my kind are gifted with excellent balance. Though we are more accustomed to having the earth remain stationary beneath our feet, we adapt quickly.

I was in a room with a low ceiling and an odd shape, filled with the smell of new wood and varnish. There were windows along one canted wall, so I leapt to a table closer to them, thinking of possible escape.

There was nothing outside except the sea. I had seen the wide blue waters before, but only with all four paws firmly on the land. So much water in one place was a terrifying sight. I knew nothing of ships at that time, or of travel in them. I realized I was afloat and moving, that was all.

I was afraid, and I panicked, thinking only of escape. The door of the odd room was open, and I ran through it into another, larger room where several humans stood and sat talking to one another, under a large skylight.

They turned with some astonishment, to see a black kitten appear in their midst, but an attractive woman smiled down at me and reached to pick me up. I was still terrified, but I knew her scent; it was she who had lifted me out of reach of the dog-pack. I allowed her touch, and she brought me near her face.

My kind, the Clan of Cat, are able to know the hearts of others. We know immediately who is favorable to us and who is not. This human woman radiated a gentle kindness, as the sun radiates warmth. Everything within her was open and good.

“So you are awake at last, little Dante!”

“That’s an odd name for a kitten,” commented a man in an ornate vest and bowler hat. “Does the Captain know he is aboard?” I learned later that he was one of eleven passengers aboard, for the trip to San Francisco.

“Yes he does!” the woman laughed. “Josiah has authorized the hiring of a Ship’s Cat for the maiden voyage of the Flying Cloud. As to his name, he was fleeing from all the imps and demons of perdition when first I saw him. He is definitely ‘Dante’.”

Thus it was that I met my lifelong human friend, Eleanor Prentiss Creesy, whom I call in my heart, “Sees Clearly.”

When life changes, it does so swiftly, and without warning. There is no going back. We follow the paths we are given. How we walk them, what we make of them, must come from within each one of us, upon the earth and under the sun.

Since that day I have spent many summers with Ellen. All my memories of her are good ones, made upon the sea and in places far beyond the horizon. Together we have seen wonders you cannot imagine, and done things you would not dare. I shall never leave her, until life departs me and I journey on.

On that first day, in the great cabin of Flying Cloud, the person I love above all others named me “Dante,” and for her, “Dante” I would be.

From my Clan, I will always be “Looks Far.” That naming came from my own kind, and it will follow me through all of my nine Walks, upon the earth and under the sun. Now I had a new name, and life had tacked one hundred eighty degrees, onto an entirely new course.

I did not think all of that through at the time; it came to me gradually, and I realized that it had always been meant to be so. The ways of the Spirit Above are mysterious, not for the folk of the earth to know. But they are good ways.

At that moment, my greatest concern was that the Clipper Flying Cloud cease trying to move out from under me. The ship never did quite cease her movement, but after a time I did become accustomed to her ways.

Flying Cloud was Ellen’s true home, no matter where on the seas or in port she might be. Now the ship was my home, as well. My small world had just become immeasurably wider.

It must be understood from the first, that a ship is not an inanimate object. The Cloud, and all her sisters upon the sea, are living entities. They are not of the Clans, but they do possess a living spirit. I know that, because the Clan of Cat was created with the ability to sense and to touch other life about us, upon the earth and under the sun.

The life of a ship is born in the imagination of the gifted human engineer, who first conceives of her as pure thought. It germinates and begins to grow, as he commits his thought to paper. That life grows in strength, through all the days of her construction.

By the time the last plank of wood is lovingly shaped and fastened in its place, the ship is a living, aware creature. When the last knot is tied in the tarred hemp of her rigging, she is eager for the sea.

Flying Cloud was fully aware, when we left New York Harbor behind us, and set our course for new horizons. She was ready to steal the power of the wind, and crest the waves with her graceful prow. She was greeted by the Sprites of the sea, and welcomed into her rightful place.

I heard her singing for joy, in the wild chords of the wind in her rigging. The chanties, of the seamen at their tasks, were counterpoint to her song, as the living heart of our ship awoke. Flying Cloud was glorious that day, in her vibrant new life.

My own true destiny was before me, as well. My Life Walk with Ellen would be like no other that I could experience, upon the earth and under the sun. There would be much to learn, as I strove to be a proper companion for the human woman, who had snatched me back from certain death.

This I would do, and such would I be. I would do it for love, and for the honor of the Clan of Cat. This was my vow, as Ellen and I made for the freedom of the open sea, aboard the newborn clipper ship, Flying Cloud.

From that moment on, I followed Ellen about the ship, whenever I was allowed. My kind understand much more of what humans say to one another than they suppose, and we learn about human activities by watching and listening to them. It may take much thought to put together the pieces of what we hear and see, but we do learn about their daily lives.

All the seamen were at first afraid of me. They were superstitious, and shied away, until Ellen showed them that my coat was not entirely black. Once they saw the patch of white fur on my chest, they smiled and became very friendly to me. They began to call me by name, and gift me with bits of fish and other tidbits of their own food.

They treated my friend, Ellen, with the greatest of respect. I saw their hearts, and knew they regarded her as almost a divine being. They felt honored to have her walk among them, and any of them would, without hesitation, have died for her.

My friend was the most gifted human I had ever met. Every morning, she would begin her day by holding a complicated brass device to her eye, and gazing through it at the stars, just as the dawn began to dim them. She would repeat this with the sun at midday, and again just after sunset, when all the stars were beginning to appear.

Then she would return to the small cabin she shared with Josiah, and labor over sheets of paper, on which she made intricate marks. When the marks met her satisfaction, she would smile and unroll a larger, blue paper, and carefully measure out a place to mark it.

From overheard conversations between Ellen and Josiah, I deduced that the blue paper was, to them, the sea and the earth. Her careful markings were the position of the ship, which she had somehow seen in the stars. Thus the blue paper told the story of our voyage, after the way of the Clan of Man.

I gazed at the same stars, and at the sun, until I was half blinded, but I could see nothing at all that helped me locate myself upon the earth.

I did know where I was, as all of my kind do. That is a virtue given to my kind by the Spirit Above, in the morning of the world. The Clans of the Birds have this ability as well, though it is perceived and used differently.

What Ellen saw in the heavens was another gift, one I did not possess. It was then I named her “Sees Clearly.” Ellen was far and away the most important human aboard the Flying Cloud: she was the Navigator.

I helped her as I could; sometimes I would make a tiny claw puncture in the blue paper, at the ship’s real position, when she had missed by some small distance.

I never let Ellen see me do this, for she had a great pride in herself, very like that felt by the Clan of Cat. I avoided injuring her feelings at all costs, just as I knew she did for me.

Five days out from New York, we were racing swiftly eastward toward the place only Ellen and I could find, where we must turn south for Brazil. Our course must pass by Cape Sâo Roque, at the easternmost point of that land. There we would pick up the currents most favorable to our voyage south to Cape Horn.

With the freshening wind abaft her beam, and all canvas set, Flying Cloud was a wild magical unicorn of the sea. Her bowsprit was her ivory horn, and her figurehead, an angel with a golden trumpet, was her virgin rider. Cloud was a myth made real, and given great white wings.

Her knife-edge prow struck the spray from every crested wave, transformed by the sun into a million fiery rainbows, that fled past in an instant of time. Then they were replaced by a million more, as swiftly as thought. Nothing could have been more beautiful, upon the earth and under the sun.

I loved to accompany Ellen to the very bow of the ship, where I would stand upon the rearing bowsprit, while behind me, she made her observations of the sun and stars.

The flying diamond droplets gathered upon my fur and whiskers, and the wind swept them away. The crystalline air, with its tang of salt, was pure and clean, as unlike that of New York, as the sea itself is unlike the land.

Sometimes, Ellen softly sang as she worked there. I had never before felt such exhilaration, such a sense of rightness to my existence, and I knew Ellen felt it too.

It was near noon on the fifth day, when the accident occurred. I was dining in the great cabin with Ellen, Josiah, and the ship’s passengers. Without warning, a great calamitous bang, like summer lightning, shook our dishes, and was followed by terrible splintering sounds. All my fur stood on end as I heard the ship scream in pain, as from a grievous injury.

Josiah leapt up from the table and flung his napkin away. “Keep everyone below, Ellen!” he shouted over his shoulder, as he ran for the companionway to the deck. Some of the passengers, and not just the women, were clearly terrified, but Ellen began immediately to calm them.

I disobeyed the Captain’s orders, running after him down the companionway. I needed to see what had happened to hurt our beautiful ship so badly. I jumped the remaining few steps up to the weather deck, and beheld a scene of chaos and terror.

It was immediately apparent what had befallen, even to my inexperienced eyes. The topmost section of the high mainmast had torn free of its mountings, overpowered by the force of the wind.

Weighing many tons, it now hung perilously, between the main and foremasts, supported only by the upper rigging and torn sails. Its wild swinging threatened yet more damage to the remaining spars and rigging, and the wind howled through it all.

It was as if a galloping horse had suddenly broken its leg; our beautiful ship was maimed, deprived of her power, and in mortal danger. Flying Cloud slewed around, now nearly out of control.

The men were already swarming into the high rigging; the tons of swinging mast and yards were a mortal danger, and must be freed and lowered to the deck as quickly as possible. Josiah shouted orders from the deck, as he directed each man’s actions.

Sailors I knew, men who called me by name, risked their lives moment by moment, high above the deck. Flying Cloud, thus wounded, could take a life in an instant, yet saving her was more important than any single life, or dozen of them. She held all our lives, and was our only safety. A ship lost this far from land in such weather left no survivors.

Ellen scooped me off the heaving deck from behind, and ran carrying me back into the great cabin. “That’s no place for you right now, Dante. There’s nothing you can do out there.”

More softly she said, “I want you to take care of Mrs. Bowman. She’s more afraid than the others, and if she panics, they all will.”

I could see what Ellen meant, as she set me gently on Sarah Bowman’s knees. The woman’s eyes looked wildly about her, and she wrung her hands in her lap. There were beads of sweat on her brow.

I locked eye contact with her as she looked down at me, and began to purr as loudly as I could. Her hands soon stilled their restless movement, and she began to slowly stroke my fur. The other passengers in the great cabin began to edge closer.

My kind were gifted, in the morning of the world, with the power to calm and to comfort others. This is part of what it means to be of the Clan of Cat, and the Spirit Above intended that we use it at need.

I did so now, with all of my power. I had seen this poor woman’s heart, and she was good. There was no need for her to feel such terror. She calmed more as I applied my gift, and knew a measure of peace. The beginnings of a smile flickered at the corners of her lips. “Oh, dear little Dante,” she murmured.

There was no magic in it, not like that of the Shades and the Fey of the Sacred Isle, where my kind journey, when our lives are done. This was just life reaching out to life, a touching in the darkness, an awareness that one is not alone. This was how my Clan and my kind were meant to be, and to do, upon the earth and under the sun.

There was nothing I could do in aid of our injured ship, outside upon the deck. My task would be here, among the souls who depended on her for our lives.

I saw Ellen smile, as she went to get out her instruments and books, and the blue paper which told the story of our journey. I knew she would use her talents to find a course, through the currents and the winds that would relieve the strain upon the wounded Flying Cloud. If that could be done, then the work of the seamen striving to repair her would be made immeasurably easier.

That was Ellen’s task; it was how she was meant to be, and to do. We each have the gifts we were given, I thought. None of them is greater, or of more importance, than any other.

It took almost three full days of unremitting labor to repair the ship. The damaged spars had to be freed from the rigging, and lowered to the deck by block and tackle, where they could be mended. Then, they had to be hoisted back up, more than a hundred feet above the deck.

Ellen did find, and take to Josiah, a course that would lessen the pressure upon the ship’s remaining spars and rigging, while losing a minimum of distance and time. Once this was done, the men’s dangerous work went much more swiftly.

The most perilous job of all was bringing the main topmast, with its enormous weight, back to the vertical and lowering it into the fittings which held it at the head of the mainmast itself. One mistake, while this was being done, might cost a dozen lives, as tons of wood swung out of control.

It is a testimony to the organization and skills of the crew, that it was accomplished at all. That it was done, without the loss of a single life, must have been the intervention of the kind Spirit Above.

But it was done; Flying Cloud was restored to seaworthiness, having relearned the oldest mariners’ lesson: “Tempt not the sea, for she is vengeful.” Thus chastened by her power, we resumed our course southward.

As if she were eager to make up for lost time, Cloud’s prow cut the waves at speeds little short of magical. More than once, I heard a grinning seaman report that her log line had paid out almost twenty knots, in the days afterward.

We were soon past Cape Sâo Roque; ahead of us lay the landward passage of the Falkland Islands, and then fearsome Cape Horn, of which the sailors were often heard to speak in awe, as the days came and went.

I knew we would round the Horn safely, and come to our journey’s end; the ship had too much life and joy in her to be lost in its fabled storms. There were too many adventures left to be had, too many wondrous sights yet to be seen. Some things are simply ordained.

And it was so. All the world remembers the run made by Flying Cloud in the year eighteen fifty-one, when she sailed from New York to San Francisco in just eighty-nine days. I, Looks Far, was there. I was her Ship’s Cat.

I am a very old cat now, as I look back on all these events, and upon a Life-Walk as glorious as any ever granted to one of my Clan and my kind. I am nearing the time of my Journey home to the Sacred Isle, where such as I rest between our nine Walks, upon the earth and under the sun.

But oh, Spirit Above, the lives we two lived in those days! The memories we made, my friend Ellen and I!

More than once, we together covered more than three hundred miles in a single glorious day, and saw the log line pay out twenty-one knots.

We watched as the blue Djinn that live in the storm clouds, the ones humans call Saint Elmo’s fire, ran through the rigging, and sat leering at the tips of every spar, while the crew cowered below.

We clung together to the rigging, while storm winds heeled Flying Cloud so far to leeward that the ends of her yards cut through the tops of the waves.

We tacked the Cloud so far to the south, that we neared the great land of ice, and saw the snow drifted upon the decks. On the selfsame voyage, we found places where the sun shone straight down at noon, and the tar melted from the rigging in the heat.

There have been many who have walked together, from the Clans of Cat and of Man, since the morning of the world. I wonder how many have really lived, as we did, upon the earth and under the sun. Only a few, I think. There cannot have been many.

Ellen and I no longer go to sea; instead, we now live on a farm, far from the shore. Most days, I lie in my place by the fire, while my friend reads in her chair. Life is a quieter progression of days, now.

Sometimes I think she has fallen asleep there, with her book in her hands, but then she will catch my eye, and smile her old smile. With twinkling eye, my friend Ellen will sigh and softly say, “We lived it all, Dante! We lived every day and every mile of it!”

END