Judy: The Unforgettable Story of the Dog Who Went to War and Became a True Hero by Damien Lewis Page A

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