Judy: The Unforgettable Story of the Dog Who Went to War and Became a True Hero (5 page)

A ragged volley of cheers echoed across the water from the deck of the
Gnat
, where what seemed like the entire ship's company had gathered to watch the drama. Acknowledging them with a wave, Oliver got the launch under way once more, heading back toward the
Gnat
. Something of a natural-born showman, he gripped the tiller between his knees and sent a short message of confirmation, using the boat's semaphore—a system of flags held at arm's length in various positions, each corresponding to a letter of the alphabet—to do so.

“CHRISTENING COMPLETE” was the short but entirely appropriate message transmitted.

Bedraggled and with thick Yangtze river mud in hair, eyes, and ears, Judy and Wugle were the first to be lifted back aboard the ship. They were rushed below for a good hot bath. The scrubbing that Judy received was at the hands of Chief Petty Officer Jefferey himself, who was fast becoming one of her foremost protectors. The bath was laced with disinfectant on the orders of the ship's surgeon, for the Yangtze wasn't just laden with silt and mud—it was also thick with sewage from the many towns and cities that lined her banks.

Jefferey rubbed Judy dry with his own towel before deciding to give her a walk around the vessel, pointing out all the obvious dangers. It was like learning to ride a horse, being aboard ship: if you fell off—or overboard—you just had to get right back on again. At first Judy was noticeably scared to be out on deck. She shivered with fright and gave the ship's rails the widest berth possible. As the
Gnat
steamed ahead, she was reluctant even to take a peek at the frothing water surging past to either side of the hull.

At that Jefferey allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction. At least she seemed to have learned her lesson.

Captain Waldegrave recorded their near loss in the ship's log at 1800 hours that day: “a man accidentally overboard and retrieved by the lifeboat crew.” The fact that Judy's “accident” was officially
recorded as happening to a
human
crew member reflected just how those aboard the
Gnat
had begun to view their ship's dog. But while the crewmen were growing to cherish their newest shipmate, many had begun to question if she really would satisfy the third quality they had demanded of her—that of
usefulness
.

The night of the accident a shaken Judy
did
sleep in the officers' quarters, lying close by Jefferey's bunk for extra comfort. Usually in life a man will choose his dog. Just occasionally a dog gets to choose her man. After her near-death experience in the Yangtze, Judy was in need of real comfort. But she remained the kind of dog who'd make her own choice of master—or better still life companion—very much in her own good time. There were plenty of ready candidates aboard the
Gnat
: the ship's captain, CPO Jefferey, and Tankey Cooper to name but a few. Yet as far as Judy of Sussex was concerned, Mr. Right hadn't stepped onto her deck just yet.

Thankfully, tonight was a night of comparative quiet aboard the
Gnat
, devoid of the roar of tortured water rushing past the hull, or ship's screws thrashing, or engines thumping away belowdecks. As with all Yangtze gunboats, the
Gnat
steamed only during the hours of daylight, when her crew could see properly to defend themselves against the dangers that lurked along the river's length. Come nightfall, she'd either anchor in the shallows or pull into one of the many wharfs and jetties that dotted the river's course.

By any standards the Yangtze was a busy thoroughfare, and most of the local sampans and junks that plied her waters—traditional wood-hulled sailing ships—did so all hours of day and night. Few if any carried any warning lamps—customarily a red light to port and a green to starboard—as vessels are supposed to during hours of darkness. The dangers of having a collision with an unseen craft were legion.

But there were other, more malevolent forces that menaced the waters during the night hours—which was why the Yangtze gunboat captains always preferred to find a riverside dock come sundown. Even there danger still lurked. Armed bandits roamed the
fertile lands of the Yangtze River delta, a vast maze of waterways, marshlands, and rice paddies that it would take the
Gnat
a week or more to navigate. Farther inland the plains, valleys, and lake lands would eventually give way to the dramatic mountains and rugged forests of the interior, all of which were plagued by warlords and the ruthless gangs under their control.

Even when moored up at night, the crew of the
Gnat
had to be ready to rouse themselves in an instant. The piercing blow of the ship's whistle and the yelled order of “Repel boarders! Repel boarders!” would mean trouble was at hand. China's nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek was locked in a struggle with a relatively new adversary—the Soviet-backed Chinese communist revolutionaries. Parts of the country were in a state of virtual civil war, and amid the conflict and insecurity warlords and banditry thrived.

The communist rebels resented the foreign “imperialist” powers that plied the Yangtze, and they were yet another force to be reckoned with. At the order of “Repel boarders,” carbines would be broken out of the ship's armory and the Maxim machine guns brought to bear as men lined whichever side of the ship the threat was coming from. But the first line of defense was to use the ship's steam hose—the scalding hot water being a nonlethal means to drive back any aggressors.

As with all British gunboats, the captain of the
Gnat
was under orders to minimize casualties wherever possible. China was a powder keg waiting to blow, and a massacre of locals could prove the spark that would light the fuse. If there was an “incident”—and there were always incidents when out on the Yangtze—Lieutenant Commander Waldegrave was to avoid deaths wherever possible unless Her Majesty's subjects or property were directly threatened.

Thankfully, the night of Judy's shock christening in the Yangtze proved entirely peaceful, which was just what she needed to aid her recovery. At the crack of dawn—the start of day two of their journey upriver—the ship's bugler blew a sharp blast to awaken the crew. It was 0600 hours and time to ready the vessel for another day's journey up the Yangtze.

In the officers' quarters, set in the bows forward of the galley and the ship's bridge, Chief Petty Officer Jefferey was woken by one of the Chinese boat boys bringing him a mug of tea. Sharing a little of the hot, sweet brew with the handsome beast curled up at his side, Jefferey wondered what the day might bring. There would, he hoped, be no further misadventures by one thoroughly irrepressible ship's dog.

As soon as he opened his cabin door a crack Judy pushed through and scampered onto the deck, head down and nose sniffing as she caught the scent of food from the galley.
Ah, eggs. Scrambled to perfection, just as I like them
.

She padded past the caged chickens, giving them a good long sniff as she went. Jefferey hoped that Judy's keen interest in the ship's poultry—taken aboard at Shanghai to provide some fresh meat for the journey—reflected the natural affinity she had for game and the performance of her duties as a gundog in the weeks ahead.

Tankey Cooper, Official Keeper of the Ship's Dog, took early morning custody of Judy so that he could serve her breakfast. Like Jefferey, Tankey was a keen huntsman, and once Judy was fed he decided to give her hunting prowess its first real test. Getting down to eye level with the lithe dog, he proceeded to explain to her in great detail and with seemingly boundless patience what was required of an English pointer when out on the hunt.

Gazing into her eyes—which under the dawn light filtering through the canvas awning seemed less coal-like and more asparkle with eager fire—he felt as if she understood his every word. With her long, floppy ears framing her face, there seemed to be something slightly mournful and intensely serious about her expression—and then she'd ruin it all by curling one lip in a lopsided smile or flopping out that long pink tongue of hers for a goofy bout of panting.

Still, she wasn't yet fully grown, and Tankey reckoned she had plenty of time to prove her worth as a gundog. Deciding a spot of practical demonstration was in order, he proceeded to “point” at the caged chickens, which were the nearest thing to game aboard the
Gnat
.

Judy stared at him for a long second, head cocked quizzically to one side. She knew from Tankey's body language that he was up to something of real import, but she couldn't for the life of her imagine what. Tankey held the pose for as long as he could—
see, like this
—before Judy gave a rigorous shake of her head, blew a snort through her nostrils seemingly in derision, and turned her nose toward the tantalizing smells wafting from the ship's galley. Her meaning was crystal clear:
message neither received nor understood!

Undeterred, Tankey resolved to repeat the demonstration every morning after breakfast until Judy got it. But part of him wondered whether Judy hadn't been having a good laugh at his expense as he swayed about on one leg trying to show an English pointer how to point.

Once things were shipshape, the
Gnat
was untied from her mooring and she pulled into the main flow of the river. The pitch of her engines rose to their familiar throb as she got under way. Making sure to keep well back from the rail, Judy stood on the ship's raised prow, nose into the wind. They had barely made a mile's progress, but already the mascot of the
Gnat
could smell trouble on the river up ahead.

Just after midday—at 1203 hours to be precise—the
Gnat
passed by a gunboat of the Imperial Japanese Navy steaming in the opposite direction. Just an hour later, the French gunboat
Francis Garnier
followed, also bound for Shanghai. And shortly a third foreign warship, the French gunboat
Balny
, passed the
Gnat
, but this time heading upriver into the Chinese interior. No doubt about it, the Yangtze was getting busy as rival world powers vied for control over the rich trade plied along these waters.

But right now the
Gnat
was about to be menaced by another threat entirely. From her position up front Judy was first to give voice to the danger. She raised her head, took an extralong sniff, and began barking into the far distance. A vessel could just about be made out drifting lazily downriver. Twin-masted, with gray- and dun-colored square-cut sails set over a high prow, the wooden junk looked like a throwback to the Dark Ages compared with the modern steel-hulled gunboats.

This was the kind of vessel that the
Gnat
's crew had seen hauled up the worst of the Yangtze's rapids by gangs of human coolies. Using dozens of ropes slung from the banks and attached to the hull of the ship, bare-chested men would bend to the strain as they waded through the shallows, dragging the boat behind them step by exhausting step—and all to the rhythmic cry of the gang master who hired his men out to passing vessels. The
Gnat
's crew had grown used to such archaic scenes, but the boat ahead of them had a look that none of them liked very much.

The ancient-looking wooden vessel was lying low in the water, which meant it was laden with some seriously heavy cargo. None of the crew could be sure, but as Judy pranced about on the
Gnat
's prow and barked excitedly, they knew something untoward was bearing down on them. Their dog had never behaved like this before, not even after tumbling into the cold and churning maw of the Yangtze. Something about that vessel had her spooked.

Straining his eyes to get a proper look at the distant ship, Captain Waldegrave turned to his chief petty officer. He had a curl to his lips that betrayed just the slightest hint of repulsion. Jefferey whipped out a pair of binoculars to take a closer look. Through the 8× magnification he could make out the distant boat in more detail. It had a dark hold lying open to the elements, and Jefferey was 90 percent certain what lay inside.

Approaching the
Gnat
was one of the dreaded “cess ships,” and Judy seemed to have sensed it long before any of the crew had the slightest inkling what was coming. The ship's captain altered course, and orders were relayed from the bridge to batten down all hatches, close all portholes, and make the ship as airtight as possible—after which all crew members were to get themselves belowdecks as quickly as possible.

The Yangtze River cess ships carried human waste—invariably well decomposed and stinking to high heaven—down the great river to where it could be dumped away from the major towns and cities. More often than not it was used to fertilize the verdant green rice paddies that lay to either side of the river. The
Gnat
was
approaching the riverside city of Zhanjiang, and no doubt the vessel full of rotting human ordure had emanated from there.

Thanks to Judy's barking, by the time the sickening stench was upon them most crew members were sealed inside the vessel—including one ship's dog who'd just demonstrated her unexpected usefulness. The cess ships were a constant hazard on the lower reaches of the Yangtze. If the stench got inside the vessel, it would linger in hair, clothes, and furnishings for days. Judy had just proved herself to be the
Gnat
's onboard early-warning system.

She'd done so using her extraordinary sense of smell. A dog's world, unlike a human's, is almost entirely defined by odor. Their scent-detecting powers are so superior to our own, it's almost as if they experience an entirely different dimension—a world defined by innumerable layers of scent.

Whereas humans possess 5 million scent detectors, a gundog like Judy has something approaching 300 million. Such a dog can differentiate between over a million different aromas, as opposed to our mere thousand, and can do so at far tinier concentrations. With her wet muzzle—caused by tear ducts that ran all the way to the tip of the nose—Judy could feel the way the wind was blowing, so isolating the direction from which the smell was coming. Moisture on the nose would then dissolve the tiny scent molecules so that receptor cells could identify them.