We looked at each other. Each made up a face; all were grave, or appeared so; and Joey, with great earnestness of manner, and a voice husky with emotion, commenced the narrative of THE MONKEY AND THE CAT. "While I was serving on board the East India Company's cruiser the Jackal, we were one time employed surveying in the Persian Gulf. Being infested with rats, we one day requested our interpreter, when he went ashore, to bring off with him a cat from the nearest village. He returned, bearing in his arms, gentlemen, such an extraordinary specimen of feline beauty as, I will venture to say, has never graced a British menagerie, or sat upon any hearth-rug in the United Empire. Her elegance, her gentleness, her symmetry, I will not wrong, by attempting to describe: I should feel the poverty of the English language. Her two eyes had each a charm peculiar to itself. One was a pure celestial blue, the other green as an emerald. It was at once felt, by every officer on board, that a creature so superb was not to be employed in the vulgar office of catching rats. Our only thought was, to treat her with the care and tenderness which her beauty merited. As she was unquestionably the princess of cats, and as her coat was a soft tawny, in hue somewhat resembling the odoriferous powder of which our friend Mr Capsicum makes such copious use--combining the two circumstances, we agreed to call her Princeza. Princeza at once established herself as the pet of the ship. What wonder? We had no other domestic animal on board, save one solitary monkey--his name Jocko, his character, I grieve to say, a revolting compound of artifice, egotism, and low malignity.