Uncaged Read Free Page A

hair.
                  “Who was last on watch?” the captain yelled.
                  Not one foot shuffled on deck. The only sounds were the cry of a lone sea gull passing overhead and the lapping of the waves on the sides of the ship.
                  The captain paced, eyeing his men. “Speak up, you bloody fools! A damn lion doesn’t just disappear from his cage!”
                  The lanky sailor Bruce had seen last night stepped forward. “Aye, it was me, Cap’n.”
                  With two slits for eyes, furrowed beneath bushy white brows, the captain stalked toward the sailor who already held his head down as if preparing for a tongue lashing. “Look at me, lad!”
                  The young man’s head snapped up. Bruce thought he saw him shaking as he clasped both  hands around the barrel of his rifle. The poor sailor was only dressed in skivvies, long red skivvies only buttoned half way. “Did you check in on the beast last night?”
                  The man looked from the captain to the deck.
                  “Look at me!” the captain bellowed.
                  The sailor kept his head down, but raised his eyes. Bruce was now positively certain that the lad was shaking. His rifle was knocking against the deck.
                  “Pray tell me you checked on the bloody beast!”
    The sailor shook his head. Bruce thought the captain’s head might blo w off. He’d never seen a face so beet red. He looked more like a purple onion than a man with such a mess of scr aggly white hair blowing about.
                  “Step forward if you were on watch last night!”
                  Not one soul moved.
                  “Now!”
                  Four men stepped forward, all of them just as frightened as the previous sailor.
                  “Which of you checked in on the beast while on watch?”
                  None of them answered.
                  “None of you? Do I have a crew of complete bloody fools? Who saw the cage loaded?”
                  One sailor spoke up. “I saw the beast as it was being hauled on deck.”
                  “Did you help load it?”
                  “No, Cap’n. Some slaves hauled him on board.”
                  “Has anyone checked in on the cat since we set sail?”
                  Bruce enjoyed the show, particularly since the beast was himself and had outsmarted everyone on board. No one answered the captain. Not one person had checked on the cat and only one claimed to see him carried on deck.
                  “Well there’s no sense in prolonging this any further. Clearly, the cat was left behind. I don’t know what you saw, bloke but it wasn’t a caged beast. It was likely an empty cage. We’d have known by now if the cat was loose.”
                  The captain paced, stopping only to scratch his head and to eye the ocean as if he were looking for something out in the vast, blue waters. The half dressed sailors watched and waited as the ship rocked to and fro.
                  The captain broke the silence, twirling around to face his men. “I wouldn’t put it past the scoundrels to load ’im and then replace ’im with an empty cage the night before we set sail. I’ll take part of the blame but not bloody all of it! We hunted that beast down and caught ’im fair and square. They stole ’im from under our noses and now they’ll get more than a shilling for their efforts. We don’t have enough rations to go back, but we’ll return soon. We’ll get the cat back and the head of the men who took ‘im, mark me words!”
                  Bruce seethed. They would never cage him again and if he had anything to do with it, they would never touch