Judy: The Unforgettable Story of the Dog Who Went to War and Became a True Hero (6 page)

But Judy's powers of scent detection were even more advanced than that. Because humans navigate largely by sight, we have a large element of the brain for processing visual information. In dogs, the olfactory (smell) center in the brain is forty times more developed than in humans. Scents are even picked up by a dog's whiskers, which channel them to the brain. Plus, dogs have a scent-detecting organ—the vomeronasal, situated in the roof of the mouth—that is completely lacking in humans and one that we as yet little understand.

To Judy, smell was her universe, the first sense by which she interpreted the world around her. Out here on the Yangtze, her nose was the filter through which she would sift all the scent-related
information coming to her to better understand and deal with this new and exotic—and sometimes life-threatening—environment. Detecting a cess ship on the Yangtze at a mile's distance was no trouble to a dog equipped with such acute powers of smell.

This time, Judy's canine senses had saved the ship's crew from nothing more than a few hours of sickening and suffocating stench.

But the time was fast approaching when Judy would need to use her incredible canine powers to save the lives of all aboard the
Gnat
.

Chapter Four

Continuing upriver, the
Gnat
steamed past four Japanese warships, each trailing the distinctive bright-red rising-sun flag in her wake. It was ominous, the way in which Imperial Japan, China's age-old adversary, was making her presence increasingly felt this far inland. It was clear that trouble was brewing. The crew of the
Gnat
could feel it in their bones.

On November 20 the British gunboat reached Nanking, then China's sprawling capital, pausing only to pick up a sailor who was able to rejoin the ship, having been treated for an ailment in hospital in Shanghai. That done, the
Gnat
pressed onward until she reached the smaller settlement of Wuhu, where she rendezvoused with her sister ship, the
Ladybird
.

The
Gnat
pulled in to moor alongside her—the two gunboats with their tall twin funnels and long canvas awnings running from stem to stern resembling a mirror image of each other. They were also remarkably similar in another key respect: both the
Ladybird
and now the
Gnat
had dogs serving as their mascot.

Officers and men from the
Ladybird
were invited aboard the
Gnat
, and ship's rum was served and intelligence swapped between the two parties. This was an ideal opportunity for the captain of the
Gnat
to glean information about any dangers that might lie ahead, for
Ladybird
was en route to Shanghai after a long sojourn upriver.

But one member of the
Ladybird
's crew was decidedly not welcome. Bonzo, their ship's dog, had started acting very strangely
just as soon as the
Gnat
had steamed onto the horizon. A large boxer-terrier cross, Bonzo had started to dash about the deck like a crazy thing, tearing back and forth ceaselessly. With Bonzo's nose glued to the
Gnat
, it didn't take the brains of an archbishop to work out what was up. He had sensed the presence of a beautiful and glamorous young lady dog aboard their sister ship and had amorous designs upon her.

On being alerted to the threat, Captain Waldegrave ordered Tankey, as Keeper of the Ship's Dog, to maintain Judy under strict lock and key. The last thing they wanted right now was a brood of boxer–terrier–English pointer crosses. Judy of Sussex wasn't particularly happy at being so constrained. She'd always enjoyed free run of the ship, but little did she know it was being done for her own good. She remained safely locked away until the
Ladybird
departed downriver and Bonzo's dishonorable intentions toward her had been well and truly thwarted.

With Bonzo gone, Judy was free to join the
Gnat
's crew on expeditions ashore. There was a navy canteen on the Wuhu docks where—joy of joys—the beer flowed freely. For some reason the place also seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of something that Judy proved very partial to—ice cream. As soon as the ship's crew entered the canteen Judy would adopt a suitably regal pose, nose pointed directly at the trunk that contained the delicious treat.

One evening the men forgot to provide her with her customary plateful. Finally losing her patience, she sneaked behind the canteen bar, grabbed the handle of the ice cream trunk in her jaws, and dragged it out into the center of the room. She turned to the astonished drinkers, barked once in command, and demanded that her ice cream be duly served.

Above Wuhu the Yangtze narrows considerably as the flatlands of the delta give way to a series of dramatic, sweeping valleys. Three chokepoints—the Xling, Wu, and Qutang gorges—funnel the river waters through towering rock faces and knife-cut cliffs that rear up hundreds of feet to either side. Such terrain offered the perfect territory for the kind of piracy for which the Yangtze was
infamous—although the
Ladybird
had been able to give no specific warnings of any such threats lying ahead.

Two days out from Wuhu the
Gnat
entered the steep-sided, echoing Xling Gorge, sparsely vegetated slopes sweeping down into the fast-flowing water. With dusk approaching the captain decided to anchor for the night. As thick smoke from the
Gnat
's funnels drifted across this valley that dwarfed the ship, he maneuvered his vessel into shallower water before ordering the anchor dropped.

With the
Gnat
safely moored Captain Waldegrave declared, “Ship secure—hands to tea.” It was time for a refreshing brew after a long day's steaming on the Yangtze.

This being wilder, less-populated terrain, the crew was instinctively more alert. But as the slash of sky above them turned a velvety purple with the setting sun, there was little sign of any danger lurking out there on the darkening river. All was apparently peaceful until around 0300 hours, when Judy sat bolt upright in her box-cum-bed on the
Gnat
's bridge. Throwing aside her ship's blanket, she pricked up her ears. Moments later she'd leaped onto her four paws and made a mad dash for the open wing of the bridge.

Barely pausing to fix the direction of the approaching threat, she began to bark wildly at a point somewhere in the darkness. For a moment the officer on watch wondered whether it mightn't be another stinking cess ship that had dragged Judy out of her slumber, but it was quickly clear that her attitude and demeanor were entirely different this time. There was an aggression and ferocity in her barking the likes of which he'd never heard before.

The crew of the
Gnat
were learning by now to pay all due attention to their dog. The officer on watch took immediate action. He grabbed the nearest Aldis lamp—a powerful handheld light more normally used for signaling from ship to ship—switched it on, and turned it toward the point at which Judy was directing her fury. Immediately the reason for her behavior became apparent: two large junks were drifting silently toward the
Gnat
—though not quietly enough to have avoided detection by a dog's hypersensitive hearing.

Wasting not a second, the officer on watch drew his pistol and fired a single shot into the dark sky, the hollow crack of the low-velocity bullet reverberating around the sleeping ship and bringing the crew instantly awake. From all directions pajama-clad men tumbled out of hatches and doorways, rifles, pistols, and an assortment of other weapons held at the ready as they hurried to their predetermined stations to repel boarders.

The watch officer, meanwhile, had ordered Judy to be quiet. Now they knew what threat they faced, her early warning had given the ship's crew a perfect opportunity to get one over on their foremost adversaries—two large vessels packed full of fearsome Yangtze River pirates.

The pirates were making their attack approach in typical fashion—a pair of junks drifting silently abreast with a thick bamboo hawser slung between them. Once the rope snagged on the
Gnat
's bows it would pull the pirate ships in toward her, and upon contact the waiting men would leap aboard the still-sleeping vessel, decimate the crew, and loot to their hearts' content. At least that had been their intention until Judy had caught wind of their coming on the chill night air.

The tension aboard the
Gnat
was palpable as the seconds ticked by. Then there was a faint, barely audible thunk as the bamboo rope made contact with the
Gnat
's prow. By then Captain Waldegrave was directing operations with gusto from the bridge. As the two pirate vessels swung in toward his ship, the river gurgling under their bulging wooden hulls, he had his men positioned at the ready. One of them, a stoker, only had time to don his scarlet pajama top before grabbing a fire ax with which to set about the approaching threat.

Before the first vessel had even made contact with the
Gnat
, the captain ordered those manning the Maxim machine guns mounted on a platform to the rear of the twin funnels to open fire. They let rip with ten-second bursts, raking the flanks of the pirate vessels, splinters of wood being blasted into the river. The Maxims were mounted three to each side of the ship, chiefly for antiaircraft use,
but they were also the perfect weapons with which to signal the
Gnat
's intent.

The river pirates knew for sure now that their target was forewarned, not to mention heavily armed, but there was no stopping the drift of their vessels as the rope dragged them in. The first craft bumped alongside. Shadowy figures reared up and attempted to board the
Gnat
. But they were met with a fusillade of gunfire—plus one roaring stoker with his manhood on show swinging an ax above his head and one ship's dog barking and snarling furiously.

Battle had most surely been joined.

Two of the
Gnat
's crewmen were stationed in the prow, and they were chopping furiously at the pirate's hawser. As the final strands of the bamboo rope were sliced through, the pair of junks were dragged free by the current and slipped into the darkness. The last of the pirates turned tail and took a leap into the void in a desperate effort to rejoin their fast-disappearing ships.

Those who failed to make that jump faced a long swim in the rough waters churning through the Xling Gorge, a christening far more fraught with risk than the one suffered by Judy of Sussex a few days previously. As the pirate junks drifted away into the gloom, triumphant cheers rang out from the deck of the
Gnat
. The feeling aboard was unanimous: it was the early warning provided by their intrepid ship's dog that had enabled them to vanquish their enemy so comprehensively.

Whether Judy would be of any use on the hunt no one yet knew, but tonight she had proved her worth ten times over—for her actions had been truly those of a lifesaver.

Prior to domestication dogs used their acute sense of hearing to track both prey and predators in the wild. They can hear a far greater range of frequencies than humans, they can do so over far greater distances, and they can pinpoint accurately the direction the sound is coming from—just as Judy had done. In fact, a dog's hearing is ten times more effective than ours: a sound a human might hear at 20 meters they can hear at 200. Had there been a mouse living
aboard the
Gnat
, Judy would have been able to hear it squeak from many meters away.

Using their large, movable ears, they can pinpoint the source of a sound pretty much instantaneously—in one six-hundredth of a second—hence Judy's rapid-fire actions aboard the
Gnat
, which had allowed the ship's crew to repel the river pirates without injury or loss of life. In the fight of the Xling Gorge, Judy's canine senses truly had saved the day.

Over the coming week the diminutive British warship—the gunboats were among the smallest vessels in the Royal Navy's fleet—pushed onward through the Wu and Qutang gorges and moved into the complex system of lakes, marshes, and tributaries of the Hunan province beyond. Prior to reaching her first major stopover and possible turn-around point—the bustling treaty port of Hankow (now Wuhan), some 900 kilometers inland—the
Gnat
was set to rendezvous with the flagship of the British gunboat flotilla, the
Bee
.

Being the flagship of the fleet, the
Bee
had lost some of her main guns so that more space could be given over to officers' accommodation. In spite of this, on several patrols the illustrious
Bee
had pushed as far inland on the Yangtze as Yichang in the west and Changsha in the south, both approaching 1,500 kilometers from Shanghai and the sea. Those had been truly voyages into the wild and the unknown.

Unusually for Royal Navy ships, the Yangtze gunboats tended to sail—and to fight—as lone operators, cruising the river many days or weeks apart. Mostly, their commanders and crew had few if any senior officers watching over them. This tended to lead to a tight-knit familial atmosphere aboard ship and to a degree of independence of action rarely seen in the Royal Navy.

But without firmly enforced procedures to keep the gunboats shipshape, long weeks spent in isolation upriver could render such busy, crowded vessels decidedly unpleasant places to be. As with all gunboat commanders, Captain Waldegrave had a strict routine in place for keeping the
Gnat
spick and span. Hands were ordered
daily to clean—sluicing down the decks, polishing brass, making good the paintwork, generally clearing up the decks, stowing gear, refreshing brightworks (the polished metal parts of the vessel), and servicing the Maxim machine guns.

As the captain of the
Gnat
knew well, a biannual Admiralty inspection could be sprung on any Yangtze gunboat at any time. Rear Admiral Reginald Holt, the senior naval officer (SNO) Yangtze Fleet, happened to be aboard the
Bee
when the
Gnat
docked alongside her, and he must have decided there was no time like the present to put the newly arrived gunboat through her paces. Needless to say, this would be the
Gnat
's first such formal ship's inspection with her new crew member, Judy of Sussex, aboard.

It was the crack of dawn when the rear admiral came aboard the
Gnat
, complete with his aide, to announce the surprise inspection. The ship's officers and crew knew instantly what they were in for. The rear admiral would scour the vessel from stem to stern for the slightest infraction of ship's rules. He'd put every man and ship's department through its paces to ensure the
Gnat
was operating at peak performance and ready to wage war should such be necessary.

Or as Judy's keeper, Tankey Cooper, put it, he'd come aboard to put them through “the works!”

First off came the inspection of the crew. The men were lined up on the main deck in two ranks, at so-called divisions. The rear admiral proceeded to check over their kit and bedding, all of which was supposed to be neatly laid out, each item labeled with the owner's name. In due course he came to the newest crew member . . . Judy. She was positioned between Tankey Cooper and her ammunition box of a bed, ship's blanket neatly folded before her.

The rear admiral stared down at the seated dog with a gimlet eye. She in turn gazed up at him, tongue lolling and with the signature silly grin that she seemed to reserve for any formal occasion aboard ship. At her feet were coiled two spare leashes, plus an extra collar displaying her name clearly—“Judy.” All appeared to be present and correct, so without a word or a twitch in his deadpan expression the rear admiral moved on, shadowed by his aide.