The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise
Fenn George Manville
English
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Below is a summary of The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise
The Ocean Cat's Paw, the Story of a Strange Cruise, By George Manville
Fenn.
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Here we have a full-length book by an excellent author at the very top
of his powers. The time is set at the end of the Napoleonic War, and
continues into the ensuing peace.
The young hero is first found fishing in a Dartmoor stream, when he is
interrupted by the arrival of a young Frenchman, who, it turns out, has
just escaped from Dartmoor, where the prisoners-of-war were being kept.
Rodd helps him to hide from pursuit.
Rodd is living with his uncle, who is a doctor, but who also is a
researcher in Natural History. He receives a Government grant to buy a
ship and travel about in it collecting specimens. On the first trip the
weather turns nasty and they have to take shelter in a French port.
Later in the voyage they meet up with a strange brig, which they realise
they had seen while in France. But she is in difficulty, having been
holed below the waterline in an engagement. At this point they discover
that her officers include the boy we met in Chapter One, and his father,
the Count. The hole is repaired by the skill of the British seamen.
There's lots more to the story, and we won't spoil it for you, but we do
full-heartedly recommend it to you. The problem in transcribing the
book was tearing oneself away from it, for meals, rest, and other
duties.
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THE OCEAN CAT'S PAW, THE STORY OF A STRANGE CRUISE, BY GEORGE MANVILLE
FENN.
CHAPTER ONE.
RODD THE PICKLE.
"Here's another, uncle."
This was shouted cheerily, and the reply thereto was a low muttering,
ending with a grunt.
It was a glorious day on Dartmoor, high up in the wildest part amongst
the rugged tors, where a bright little river came flashing and sparkling
along, and sending the bright beams of the sun in every direction from
the disturbed water, as an eager-looking boy busily played the trout he
had hooked, one which darted here and there in its wild rush for
freedom, but all in vain, for after its little mad career it was safely
brought to bank, and landed. There was no need to use the light net
which hung diagonally and unnecessarily across its owner's back, for the
glittering little speckled trout was only about the size of a small
dace, though it fought and kicked as hardily as if it had weighed a
pound, and indulged in a series of active leaps as it was slipped
through the hole in the lid of a creel, to drop into companionship with
half-a-score of its fellows, which welcomed the new prisoner with a
number of leaps almost as wild as its own.
The utterer of the grunt, a stoutly-built man who might have been of any
age, though he could not have been very young, judging from his bristly
greyish whiskers, was also busily occupied, but in a calmer, more
deliberate way.
He had no creel slung from his shoulder, but a coarse clean wallet that
was rather bulgy, its appearance suggesting that it was carried because
it contained something to eat, while its owner held in one hand, slung
by a stoutish lanyard, a big, wide-mouthed glass bottle half full of
water, and in the other hand a little yellow canvas net attached to a
brass ring at the end of a stick, the sort of implement that little boys
use when bound upon the chase and capture of the mighty "tittlebat."
And as his younger companion shouted and landed his little mountain
trout, the net was being carefully passed under water, drawn out and
emptied upon the fine lawn-like grass, and what looked like a little
scrap of opalescent jelly was popped into the wide-mouthed bottle.
"You got one too, uncle?" shouted the boy, who was higher up the stream.
"Yes; some very nice specimens down here. Are you getting plenty of
sport, Rodd?"
"Yes, uncle," replied the boy, who was carefully examining his tiny
artificial gnat before beginning to whip the stream again. "They are
rising famously; but they are awfully small. I shall get a dish,
though, for supper."
"Uncle," as he was called, grunted again, and went on searching amongst
the water-weeds with his net, his tendency being with the stream, while
the boy, who did not scruple about stepping into the shallows from time
to time, went on whipping away upward towards where one of the tors rose
in a chaotic mass of broken, lichen-covered, fragmentary granite,
apparently hiding in the distance the source of the little bubbling and
sparkling stream.
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