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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/1730-h.zip b/1730-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..1a67095 --- /dev/null +++ b/1730-h.zip diff --git a/1730-h/1730-h.htm b/1730-h/1730-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..999d83a --- /dev/null +++ b/1730-h/1730-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,9614 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Michael, Brother of Jerry</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">Michael, Brother of Jerry, by Jack London</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Michael, Brother of Jerry, by Jack London + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Michael, Brother of Jerry + + +Author: Jack London + +Release Date: April 28, 2005 [eBook #1730] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1917 Mills & Boon edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY</h1> +<h2>FOREWORD</h2> +<p>Very early in my life, possibly because of the insatiable curiosity +that was born in me, I came to dislike the performances of trained animals. +It was my curiosity that spoiled for me this form of amusement, for +I was led to seek behind the performance in order to learn how the performance +was achieved. And what I found behind the brave show and glitter +of performance was not nice. It was a body of cruelty so horrible +that I am confident no normal person exists who, once aware of it, could +ever enjoy looking on at any trained-animal turn.</p> +<p>Now I am not a namby-pamby. By the book reviewers and the namby-pambys +I am esteemed a sort of primitive beast that delights in the spilled +blood of violence and horror. Without arguing this matter of my +general reputation, accepting it at its current face value, let me add +that I have indeed lived life in a very rough school and have seen more +than the average man’s share of inhumanity and cruelty, from the +forecastle and the prison, the slum and the desert, the execution-chamber +and the lazar-house, to the battlefield and the military hospital. +I have seen horrible deaths and mutilations. I have seen imbeciles +hanged, because, being imbeciles, they did not possess the hire of lawyers. +I have seen the hearts and stamina of strong men broken, and I have +seen other men, by ill-treatment, driven to permanent and howling madness. +I have witnessed the deaths of old and young, and even infants, from +sheer starvation. I have seen men and women beaten by whips and +clubs and fists, and I have seen the rhinoceros-hide whips laid around +the naked torsos of black boys so heartily that each stroke stripped +away the skin in full circle. And yet, let me add finally, never +have I been so appalled and shocked by the world’s cruelty as +have I been appalled and shocked in the midst of happy, laughing, and +applauding audiences when trained-animal turns were being performed +on the stage.</p> +<p>One with a strong stomach and a hard head may be able to tolerate +much of the unconscious and undeliberate cruelty and torture of the +world that is perpetrated in hot blood and stupidity. I have such +a stomach and head. But what turns my head and makes my gorge +rise, is the cold-blooded, conscious, deliberate cruelty and torment +that is manifest behind ninety-nine of every hundred trained-animal +turns. Cruelty, as a fine art, has attained its perfect flower +in the trained-animal world.</p> +<p>Possessed myself of a strong stomach and a hard head, inured to hardship, +cruelty, and brutality, nevertheless I found, as I came to manhood, +that I unconsciously protected myself from the hurt of the trained-animal +turn by getting up and leaving the theatre whenever such turns came +on the stage. I say “unconsciously.” By this +I mean it never entered my mind that this was a programme by which the +possible death-blow might be given to trained-animal turns. I +was merely protecting myself from the pain of witnessing what it would +hurt me to witness.</p> +<p>But of recent years my understanding of human nature has become such +that I realize that no normal healthy human would tolerate such performances +did he or she know the terrible cruelty that lies behind them and makes +them possible. So I am emboldened to suggest, here and now, three +things:</p> +<p>First, let all humans inform themselves of the inevitable and eternal +cruelty by the means of which only can animals be compelled to perform +before revenue-paying audiences. Second, I suggest that all men +and women, and boys and girls, who have so acquainted themselves with +the essentials of the fine art of animal-training, should become members +of, and ally themselves with, the local and national organizations of +humane societies and societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals.</p> +<p>And the third suggestion I cannot state until I have made a preamble. +Like hundreds of thousands of others, I have worked in other fields, +striving to organize the mass of mankind into movements for the purpose +of ameliorating its own wretchedness and misery. Difficult as +this is to accomplish, it is still more difficult to persuade the human +into any organised effort to alleviate the ill conditions of the lesser +animals.</p> +<p>Practically all of us will weep red tears and sweat bloody sweats +as we come to knowledge of the unavoidable cruelty and brutality on +which the trained-animal world rests and has its being. But not +one-tenth of one per cent. of us will join any organization for the +prevention of cruelty to animals, and by our words and acts and contributions +work to prevent the perpetration of cruelties on animals. This +is a weakness of our own human nature. We must recognize it as +we recognize heat and cold, the opaqueness of the non-transparent, and +the everlasting down-pull of gravity.</p> +<p>And still for us, for the ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent. of +us, under the easy circumstance of our own weakness, remains another +way most easily to express ourselves for the purpose of eliminating +from the world the cruelty that is practised by some few of us, for +the entertainment of the rest of us, on the trained animals, who, after +all, are only lesser animals than we on the round world’s surface. +It is so easy. We will not have to think of dues or corresponding +secretaries. We will not have to think of anything, save when, +in any theatre or place of entertainment, a trained-animal turn is presented +before us. Then, without premeditation, we may express our disapproval +of such a turn by getting up from our seats and leaving the theatre +for a promenade and a breath of fresh air outside, coming back, when +the turn is over, to enjoy the rest of the programme. All we have +to do is just that to eliminate the trained-animal turn from all public +places of entertainment. Show the management that such turns are +unpopular, and in a day, in an instant, the management will cease catering +such turns to its audiences.</p> +<p>JACK LONDON</p> +<p>GLEN ELLEN, SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA,</p> +<p>December 8, 1915</p> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> +<p>But Michael never sailed out of Tulagi, nigger-chaser on the <i>Eugénie</i>. +Once in five weeks the steamer <i>Makambo</i> made Tulagi its port of +call on the way from New Guinea and the Shortlands to Australia. +And on the night of her belated arrival Captain Kellar forgot Michael +on the beach. In itself, this was nothing, for, at midnight, Captain +Kellar was back on the beach, himself climbing the high hill to the +Commissioner’s bungalow while the boat’s crew vainly rummaged +the landscape and canoe houses.</p> +<p>In fact, an hour earlier, as the <i>Makambo’s</i> anchor was +heaving out and while Captain Kellar was descending the port gang-plank, +Michael was coming on board through a starboard port-hole. This +was because Michael was inexperienced in the world, because he was expecting +to meet Jerry on board this boat since the last he had seen of him was +on a boat, and because he had made a friend.</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry was a steward on the <i>Makambo</i>, who should have +known better and who would have known better and done better had he +not been fascinated by his own particular and peculiar reputation. +By luck of birth possessed of a genial but soft disposition and a splendid +constitution, his reputation was that for twenty years he had never +missed his day’s work nor his six daily quarts of bottled beer, +even, as he bragged, when in the German islands, where each bottle of +beer carried ten grains of quinine in solution as a specific against +malaria.</p> +<p>The captain of the <i>Makambo</i> (and, before that, the captains +of the <i>Moresby</i>, the <i>Masena</i>, the <i>Sir Edward Grace</i>, +and various others of the queerly named Burns Philp Company steamers +had done the same) was used to pointing him out proudly to the passengers +as a man-thing novel and unique in the annals of the sea. And +at such times Dag Daughtry, below on the for’ard deck, feigning +unawareness as he went about his work, would steal side-glances up at +the bridge where the captain and his passengers stared down on him, +and his breast would swell pridefully, because he knew that the captain +was saying: “See him! that’s Dag Daughtry, the human tank. +Never’s been drunk or sober in twenty years, and has never missed +his six quarts of beer per diem. You wouldn’t think it, +to look at him, but I assure you it’s so. I can’t +understand. Gets my admiration. Always does his time, his +time-and-a-half and his double-time over time. Why, a single glass +of beer would give me heartburn and spoil my next good meal. But +he flourishes on it. Look at him! Look at him!”</p> +<p>And so, knowing his captain’s speech, swollen with pride in +his own prowess, Dag Daughtry would continue his ship-work with extra +vigour and punish a seventh quart for the day in advertisement of his +remarkable constitution. It was a queer sort of fame, as queer +as some men are; and Dag Daughtry found in it his justification of existence.</p> +<p>Wherefore he devoted his energy and the soul of him to the maintenance +of his reputation as a six-quart man. That was why he made, in +odd moments of off-duty, turtle-shell combs and hair ornaments for profit, +and was prettily crooked in such a matter as stealing another man’s +dog. Somebody had to pay for the six quarts, which, multiplied +by thirty, amounted to a tidy sum in the course of the month; and, since +that man was Dag Daughtry, he found it necessary to pass Michael inboard +on the <i>Makambo</i> through a starboard port-hole.</p> +<p>On the beach, that night at Tulagi, vainly wondering what had become +of the whaleboat, Michael had met the squat, thick, hair-grizzled ship’s +steward. The friendship between them was established almost instantly, +for Michael, from a merry puppy, had matured into a merry dog. +Far beyond Jerry, was he a sociable good fellow, and this, despite the +fact that he had known very few white men. First, there had been +Mister Haggin, Derby and Bob, of Meringe; next, Captain Kellar and Captain +Kellar’s mate of the <i>Eugénie</i>; and, finally, Harley +Kennan and the officers of the <i>Ariel</i>. Without exception, +he had found them all different, and delightfully different, from the +hordes of blacks he had been taught to despise and to lord it over.</p> +<p>And Dag Daughtry had proved no exception from his first greeting +of “Hello, you white man’s dog, what ’r’ you +doin’ herein nigger country?” Michael had responded +coyly with an assumption of dignified aloofness that was given the lie +by the eager tilt of his ears and the good-humour that shone in his +eyes. Nothing of this was missed by Dag Daughtry, who knew a dog +when he saw one, as he studied Michael in the light of the lanterns +held by black boys where the whaleboats were landing cargo.</p> +<p>Two estimates the steward quickly made of Michael: he was a likable +dog, genial-natured on the face of it, and he was a valuable dog. +Because of those estimates Dag Daughtry glanced about him quickly. +No one was observing. For the moment, only blacks stood about, +and their eyes were turned seaward where the sound of oars out of the +darkness warned them to stand ready to receive the next cargo-laden +boat. Off to the right, under another lantern, he could make out +the Resident Commissioner’s clerk and the <i>Makambo’s</i> +super-cargo heatedly discussing some error in the bill of lading.</p> +<p>The steward flung another quick glance over Michael and made up his +mind. He turned away casually and strolled along the beach out +of the circle of lantern light. A hundred yards away he sat down +in the sand and waited.</p> +<p>“Worth twenty pounds if a penny,” he muttered to himself. +“If I couldn’t get ten pounds for him, just like that, with +a thank-you-ma’am, I’m a sucker that don’t know a +terrier from a greyhound.—Sure, ten pounds, in any pub on Sydney +beach.”</p> +<p>And ten pounds, metamorphosed into quart bottles of beer, reared +an immense and radiant vision, very like a brewery, inside his head.</p> +<p>A scurry of feet in the sand, and low sniffings, stiffened him to +alertness. It was as he had hoped. The dog had liked him +from the start, and had followed him.</p> +<p>For Dag Daughtry had a way with him, as Michael was quickly to learn, +when the man’s hand reached out and clutched him, half by the +jowl, half by the slack of the neck under the ear. There was no +threat in that reach, nothing tentative nor timorous. It was hearty, +all-confident, and it produced confidence in Michael. It was roughness +without hurt, assertion without threat, surety without seduction. +To him it was the most natural thing in the world thus to be familiarly +seized and shaken about by a total stranger, while a jovial voice muttered: +“That’s right, dog. Stick around, stick around, and +you’ll wear diamonds, maybe.”</p> +<p>Certainly, Michael had never met a man so immediately likable. +Dag Daughtry knew, instinctively to be sure, how to get on with dogs. +By nature there was no cruelty in him. He never exceeded in peremptoriness, +nor in petting. He did not overbid for Michael’s friendliness. +He did bid, but in a manner that conveyed no sense of bidding. +Scarcely had he given Michael that introductory jowl-shake, when he +released him and apparently forgot all about him.</p> +<p>He proceeded to light his pipe, using several matches as if the wind +blew them out. But while they burned close up to his fingers, +and while he made a simulation of prodigious puffing, his keen little +blue eyes, under shaggy, grizzled brows, intently studied Michael. +And Michael, ears cocked and eyes intent, gazed at this stranger who +seemed never to have been a stranger at all.</p> +<p>If anything, it was disappointment Michael experienced, in that this +delightful, two-legged god took no further notice of him. He even +challenged him to closer acquaintance with an invitation to play, with +an abrupt movement lifting his paws from the ground and striking them +down, stretched out well before, his body bent down from the rump in +such a curve that almost his chest touched the sand, his stump of a +tail waving signals of good nature while he uttered a sharp, inviting +bark. And the man was uninterested, pulling stolidly away at his +pipe, in the darkness following upon the third match.</p> +<p>Never was there a more consummate love-making, with all the base +intent of betrayal, than this cavalier seduction of Michael by the elderly, +six-quart ship’s steward. When Michael, not entirely unwitting +of the snub of the man’s lack of interest, stirred restlessly +with a threat to depart, he had flung at him gruffly:</p> +<p>“Stick around, dog, stick around.”</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry chuckled to himself, as Michael, advancing, sniffed +his trousers’ legs long and earnestly. And the man took +advantage of his nearness to study him some more, lighting his pipe +and running over the dog’s excellent lines.</p> +<p>“Some dog, some points,” he said aloud approvingly. +“Say, dog, you could pull down ribbons like a candy-kid in any +bench show anywheres. Only thing against you is that ear, and +I could almost iron it out myself. A vet. could do it.”</p> +<p>Carelessly he dropped a hand to Michael’s ear, and, with tips +of fingers instinct with sensuous sympathy, began to manipulate the +base of the ear where its roots bedded in the tightness of skin-stretch +over the skull. And Michael liked it. Never had a man’s +hand been so intimate with his ear without hurting it. But these +fingers were provocative only of physical pleasure so keen that he twisted +and writhed his whole body in acknowledgment.</p> +<p>Next came a long, steady, upward pull of the ear, the ear slipping +slowly through the fingers to the very tip of it while it tingled exquisitely +down to its roots. Now to one ear, now to the other, this happened, +and all the while the man uttered low words that Michael did not understand +but which he accepted as addressed to him.</p> +<p>“Head all right, good ’n’ flat,” Dag Daughtry +murmured, first sliding his fingers over it, and then lighting a match. +“An’ no wrinkles, ’n’ some jaw, good ’n’ +punishing, an’ not a shade too full in the cheek or too empty.”</p> +<p>He ran his fingers inside Michael’s mouth and noted the strength +and evenness of the teeth, measured the breadth of shoulders and depth +of chest, and picked up a foot. In the light of another match +he examined all four feet.</p> +<p>“Black, all black, every nail of them,” said Daughtry, +“an’ as clean feet as ever a dog walked on, straight-out +toes with the proper arch ’n’ small ’n’ not +too small. I bet your daddy and your mother cantered away with +the ribbons in their day.”</p> +<p>Michael was for growing restless at such searching examination, but +Daughtry, in the midst of feeling out the lines and build of the thighs +and hocks, paused and took Michael’s tail in his magic fingers, +exploring the muscles among which it rooted, pressing and prodding the +adjacent spinal column from which it sprang, and twisting it about in +a most daringly intimate way. And Michael was in an ecstasy, bracing +his hindquarters to one side or the other against the caressing fingers. +With open hands laid along his sides and partly under him, the man suddenly +lifted him from the ground. But before he could feel alarm he +was back on the ground again.</p> +<p>“Twenty-six or -seven—you’re over twenty-five right +now, I’ll bet you on it, shillings to ha’pennies, and you’ll +make thirty when you get your full weight,” Dag Daughtry told +him. “But what of it? Lots of the judges fancy the +thirty-mark. An’ you could always train off a few ounces. +You’re all dog n’ all correct conformation. You’ve +got the racing build and the fighting weight, an’ there ain’t +no feathers on your legs.”</p> +<p>“No, sir, Mr. Dog, your weight’s to the good, and that +ear can be ironed out by any respectable dog—doctor. I bet +there’s a hundred men in Sydney right now that would fork over +twenty quid for the right of calling you his.”</p> +<p>And then, just that Michael should not make the mistake of thinking +he was being much made over, Daughtry leaned back, relighted his pipe, +and apparently forgot his existence. Instead of bidding for good +will, he was bent on making Michael do the bidding.</p> +<p>And Michael did, bumping his flanks against Daughtry’s knee; +nudging his head against Daughtry’s hand, in solicitation for +more of the blissful ear-rubbing and tail-twisting. Daughtry caught +him by the jowl instead and slowly moved his head back and forth as +he addressed him:</p> +<p>“What man’s dog are you? Maybe you’re a nigger’s +dog, an’ that ain’t right. Maybe some nigger’s +stole you, an’ that’d be awful. Think of the cruel +fates that sometimes happens to dogs. It’s a damn shame. +No white man’s stand for a nigger ownin’ the likes of you, +an’ here’s one white man that ain’t goin’ to +stand for it. The idea! A nigger ownin’ you an’ +not knowin’ how to train you. Of course a nigger stole you. +If I laid eyes on him right now I’d up and knock seven bells and +the Saint Paul chimes out of ’m. Sure thing I would. +Just show ’m to me, that’s all, an’ see what I’d +do to him. The idea of you takin’ orders from a nigger an’ +fetchin’ ’n’ carryin’ for him! No, sir, +dog, you ain’t goin’ to do it any more. You’re +comin’ along of me, an’ I reckon I won’t have to urge +you.”</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry stood up and turned carelessly along the beach. +Michael looked after him, but did not follow. He was eager to, +but had received no invitation. At last Daughtry made a low kissing +sound with his lips. So low was it that he scarcely heard it himself +and almost took it on faith, or on the testimony of his lips rather +than of his ears, that he had made it. No human being could have +heard it across the distance to Michael; but Michael heard it, and sprang +away after in a great delighted rush.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> +<p>Dag Daughtry strolled along the beach, Michael at his heels or running +circles of delight around him at every repetition of that strange low +lip-noise, and paused just outside the circle of lantern light where +dusky forms laboured with landing cargo from the whaleboats and where +the Commissioner’s clerk and the <i>Makambo’s</i> super-cargo +still wrangled over the bill of lading. When Michael would have +gone forward, the man withstrained him with the same inarticulate, almost +inaudible kiss.</p> +<p>For Daughtry did not care to be seen on such dog-stealing enterprises +and was planning how to get on board the steamer unobserved. He +edged around outside the lantern shine and went on along the beach to +the native village. As he had foreseen, all the able-bodied men +were down at the boat-landing working cargo. The grass houses +seemed lifeless, but at last, from one of them, came a challenge in +the querulous, high-pitched tones of age:</p> +<p>“What name?”</p> +<p>“Me walk about plenty too much,” he replied in the bêche-de-mer +English of the west South Pacific. “Me belong along steamer. +Suppose ’m you take ’m me along canoe, washee-washee, me +give ’m you fella boy two stick tobacco.”</p> +<p>“Suppose ’m you give ’m me ten stick, all right +along me,” came the reply.</p> +<p>“Me give ’m five stick,” the six-quart steward +bargained. “Suppose ’m you no like ’m five stick +then you fella boy go to hell close up.”</p> +<p>There was a silence.</p> +<p>“You like ’m five stick?” Daughtry insisted of +the dark interior.</p> +<p>“Me like ’m,” the darkness answered, and through +the darkness the body that owned the voice approached with such strange +sounds that the steward lighted a match to see.</p> +<p>A blear-eyed ancient stood before him, balancing on a single crutch. +His eyes were half-filmed over by a growth of morbid membrane, and what +was not yet covered shone red and irritated. His hair was mangy, +standing out in isolated patches of wispy grey. His skin was scarred +and wrinkled and mottled, and in colour was a purplish blue surfaced +with a grey coating that might have been painted there had it not indubitably +grown there and been part and parcel of him.</p> +<p>A blighted leper—was Daughtry’s thought as his quick +eyes leapt from hands to feet in quest of missing toe- and finger-joints. +But in those items the ancient was intact, although one leg ceased midway +between knee and thigh.</p> +<p>“My word! What place stop ’m that fella leg?” +quoth Daughtry, pointing to the space which the member would have occupied +had it not been absent.</p> +<p>“Big fella shark-fish, that fella leg stop ’m along him,” +the ancient grinned, exposing a horrible aperture of toothlessness for +a mouth.</p> +<p>“Me old fella boy too much,” the one-legged Methuselah +quavered. “Long time too much no smoke ’m tobacco. +Suppose ’m you big fella white marster give ’m me one fella +stick, close up me washee-washee you that fella steamer.”</p> +<p>“Suppose ’m me no give?” the steward impatiently +temporized.</p> +<p>For reply, the old man half-turned, and, on his crutch, swinging +his stump of leg in the air, began sidling hippity-hop into the grass +hut.</p> +<p>“All right,” Daughtry cried hastily. “Me +give ’m you smoke ’m quick fella.”</p> +<p>He dipped into a side coat-pocket for the mintage of the Solomons +and stripped off a stick from the handful of pressed sticks. The +old man was transfigured as he reached avidly for the stick and received +it. He uttered little crooning noises, alternating with sharp +cries akin to pain, half-ecstatic, half-petulant, as he drew a black +clay pipe from a hole in his ear-lobe, and into the bowl of it, with +trembling fingers, untwisted and crumbled the cheap leaf of spoiled +Virginia crop.</p> +<p>Pressing down the contents of the full bowl with his thumb, he suddenly +plumped upon the ground, the crutch beside him, the one limb under him +so that he had the seeming of a legless torso. From a small bag +of twisted coconut hanging from his neck upon his withered and sunken +chest, he drew out flint and steel and tinder, and, even while the impatient +steward was proffering him a box of matches, struck a spark, caught +it in the tinder, blew it into strength and quantity, and lighted his +pipe from it.</p> +<p>With the first full puff of the smoke he gave over his moans and +yelps, the agitation began to fade out of him, and Daughtry, appreciatively +waiting, saw the trembling go out of his hands, the pendulous lip-quivering +cease, the saliva stop flowing from the corners of his mouth, and placidity +come into the fiery remnants of his eyes.</p> +<p>What the old man visioned in the silence that fell, Daughtry did +not try to guess. He was too occupied with his own vision, and +vividly burned before him the sordid barrenness of a poor-house ward, +where an ancient, very like what he himself would become, maundered +and gibbered and drooled for a crumb of tobacco for his old clay pipe, +and where, of all horrors, no sip of beer ever obtained, much less six +quarts of it.</p> +<p>And Michael, by the dim glows of the pipe surveying the scene of +the two old men, one squatted in the dark, the other standing, knew +naught of the tragedy of age, and was only aware, and overwhelmingly +aware, of the immense likableness of this two-legged white god, who, +with fingers of magic, through ear-roots and tail-roots and spinal column, +had won to the heart of him.</p> +<p>The clay pipe smoked utterly out, the old black, by aid of the crutch, +with amazing celerity raised himself upstanding on his one leg and hobbled, +with his hippity-hop, to the beach. Daughtry was compelled to +lend his strength to the hauling down from the sand into the water of +the tiny canoe. It was a dug-out, as ancient and dilapidated as +its owner, and, in order to get into it without capsizing, Daughtry +wet one leg to the ankle and the other leg to the knee. The old +man contorted himself aboard, rolling his body across the gunwale so +quickly, that, even while it started to capsize, his weight was across +the danger-point and counterbalancing the canoe to its proper equilibrium.</p> +<p>Michael remained on the beach, waiting invitation, his mind not quite +made up, but so nearly so that all that was required was that lip-noise. +Dag Daughtry made the lip-noise so low that the old man did not hear, +and Michael, springing clear from sand to canoe, was on board without +wetting his feet. Using Daughtry’s shoulder for a stepping-place, +he passed over him and down into the bottom of the canoe. Daughtry +kissed with his lips again, and Michael turned around so as to face +him, sat down, and rested his head on the steward’s knees.</p> +<p>“I reckon I can take my affydavy on a stack of Bibles that +the dog just up an’ followed me,” he grinned in Michael’s +ear.</p> +<p>“Washee-washee quick fella,” he commanded.</p> +<p>The ancient obediently dipped his paddle and started pottering an +erratic course in the general direction of the cluster of lights that +marked the <i>Makambo</i>. But he was too feeble, panting and +wheezing continually from the exertion and pausing to rest off strokes +between strokes. The steward impatiently took the paddle away +from him and bent to the work.</p> +<p>Half-way to the steamer the ancient ceased wheezing and spoke, nodding +his head at Michael.</p> +<p>“That fella dog he belong big white marster along schooner +. . . You give ’m me ten stick tobacco,” he added after +due pause to let the information sink in.</p> +<p>“I give ’m you bang alongside head,” Daughtry assured +him cheerfully. “White marster along schooner plenty friend +along me too much. Just now he stop ’m along <i>Makambo</i>. +Me take ’m dog along him along <i>Makambo</i>.”</p> +<p>There was no further conversation from the ancient, and though he +lived long years after, he never mentioned the midnight passenger in +the canoe who carried Michael away with him. When he saw and heard +the confusion and uproar on the beach later that night when Captain +Kellar turned Tulagi upside-down in his search for Michael, the old +one-legged one remained discreetly silent. Who was he to seek +trouble with the strange ones, the white masters who came and went and +roved and ruled?</p> +<p>In this the ancient was in nowise unlike the rest of his dark-skinned +Melanesian race. The whites were possessed of unguessed and unthinkable +ways and purposes. They constituted another world and were as +a play of superior beings on an exalted stage where was no reality such +as black men might know as reality, where, like the phantoms of a dream, +the white men moved and were as shadows cast upon the vast and mysterious +curtain of the Cosmos.</p> +<p>The gang-plank being on the port side, Dag Daughtry paddled around +to the starboard and brought the canoe to a stop under a certain open +port.</p> +<p>“Kwaque!” he called softly, once, and twice.</p> +<p>At the second call the light of the port was obscured apparently +by a head that piped down in a thin squeak.</p> +<p>“Me stop ’m, marster.”</p> +<p>“One fella dog stop ’m along you,” the steward +whispered up. “Keep ’m door shut. You wait along +me. Stand by! Now!”</p> +<p>With a quick catch and lift, he passed Michael up and into unseen +hands outstretched from the iron wall of the ship, and paddled ahead +to an open cargo port. Dipping into his tobacco pocket, he thrust +a loose handful of sticks into the ancient’s hand and shoved the +canoe adrift with no thought of how its helpless occupant would ever +reach shore.</p> +<p>The old man did not touch the paddle, and he was unregardless of +the lofty-sided steamer as the canoe slipped down the length of it into +the darkness astern. He was too occupied in counting the wealth +of tobacco showered upon him. No easy task, his counting. +Five was the limit of his numerals. When he had counted five, +he began over again and counted a second five. Three fives he +found in all, and two sticks over; and thus, at the end of it, he possessed +as definite a knowledge of the number of sticks as would be possessed +by the average white man by means of the single number <i>seventeen</i>.</p> +<p>More it was, far more, than his avarice had demanded. Yet he +was unsurprised. Nothing white men did could surprise. Had +it been two sticks instead of seventeen, he would have been equally +unsurprised. Since all acts of white men were surprises, the only +surprise of action they could achieve for a black man would be the doing +of an unsurprising thing.</p> +<p>Paddling, wheezing, resting, oblivious of the shadow-world of the +white men, knowing only the reality of Tulagi Mountain cutting its crest-line +blackly across the dim radiance of the star-sprinkled sky, the reality +of the sea and of the canoe he so feebly urged across it, and the reality +of his fading strength and of the death into which he would surely end, +the ancient black man slowly made his shoreward way.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> +<p>In the meanwhile, Michael. Lifted through the air, exchanged +into invisible hands that drew him through a narrow diameter of brass +into a lighted room, Michael looked about him in expectancy of Jerry. +But Jerry, at that moment, lay cuddled beside Villa Kennan’s sleeping-cot +on the slant deck of the <i>Ariel</i>, as that trim craft, the Shortlands +astern and New Guinea dead ahead, heeled her scuppers a-whisper and +garrulous to the sea-welter alongside as she logged her eleven knots +under the press of the freshening trades. Instead of Jerry, from +whom he had last parted on board a boat, Michael saw Kwaque.</p> +<p>Kwaque? Well, Kwaque was Kwaque, an individual, more unlike +all other men than most men are unlike one another. No queerer +estray ever drifted along the stream of life. Seventeen years +old he was, as men measure time; but a century was measured in his lean-lined +face, his wrinkled forehead, his hollowed temples, and his deep-sunk +eyes. From his thin legs, fragile-looking as windstraws, the bones +of which were sheathed in withered skin with apparently no muscle padding +in between—from such frail stems sprouted the torso of a fat man. +The huge and protuberant stomach was amply supported by wide and massive +hips, and the shoulders were broad as those of a Hercules. But, +beheld sidewise, there was no depth to those shoulders and the top of +the chest. Almost, at that part of his anatomy, he seemed builded +in two dimensions. Thin his arms were as his legs, and, as Michael +first beheld him, he had all the seeming of a big-bellied black spider.</p> +<p>He proceeded to dress, a matter of moments, slipping into duck trousers +and blouse, dirty and frayed from long usage. Two fingers of his +left hand were doubled into a permanent bend, and, to an expert, would +have advertised that he was a leper. Although he belonged to Dag +Daughtry just as much as if the steward possessed a chattel bill of +sale of him, his owner did not know that his anæsthetic twist +of ravaged nerves tokened the dread disease.</p> +<p>The manner of the ownership was simple. At King William Island, +in the Admiralties, Kwaque had made, in the parlance of the South Pacific, +a pier-head jump. So to speak, leprosy and all, he had jumped +into Dag Daughtry’s arms. Strolling along the native runways +in the fringe of jungle just beyond the beach, as was his custom, to +see whatever he might pick up, the steward had picked up Kwaque. +And he had picked him up in extremity.</p> +<p>Pursued by two very active young men armed with fire-hardened spears, +tottering along with incredible swiftness on his two spindle legs, Kwaque +had fallen exhausted at Daughtry’s feet and looked up at him with +the beseeching eyes of a deer fleeing from the hounds. Daughtry +had inquired into the matter, and the inquiry was violent; for he had +a wholesome fear of germs and bacilli, and when the two active young +men tried to run him through with their filth-corroded spears, he caught +the spear of one young man under his arm and put the other young man +to sleep with a left hook to the jaw. A moment later the young +man whose spear he held had joined the other in slumber.</p> +<p>The elderly steward was not satisfied with the mere spears. +While the rescued Kwaque continued to moan and slubber thankfulness +at his feet, he proceeded to strip them that were naked. Nothing +they wore in the way of clothing, but from around each of their necks +he removed a necklace of porpoise teeth that was worth a gold sovereign +in mere exchange value. From the kinky locks of one of the naked +young men he drew a hand-carved, fine-toothed comb, the lofty back of +which was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which he later sold in Sydney +to a curio shop for eight shillings. Nose and ear ornaments of +bone and turtle-shell he also rifled, as well as a chest-crescent of +pearl shell, fourteen inches across, worth fifteen shillings anywhere. +The two spears ultimately fetched him five shillings each from the tourists +at Port Moresby. Not lightly may a ship steward undertake to maintain +a six-quart reputation.</p> +<p>When he turned to depart from the active young men, who, back to +consciousness, were observing him with bright, quick, wild-animal eyes, +Kwaque followed so close at his heels as to step upon them and make +him stumble. Whereupon he loaded Kwaque with his trove and put +him in front to lead along the runway to the beach. And for the +rest of the way to the steamer, Dag Daughtry grinned and chuckled at +sight of his plunder and at sight of Kwaque, who fantastically titubated +and ambled along, barrel-like, on his pipe-stems.</p> +<p>On board the steamer, which happened to be the <i>Cockspur</i>, Daughtry +persuaded the captain to enter Kwaque on the ship’s articles as +steward’s helper with a rating of ten shillings a month. +Also, he learned Kwaque’s story.</p> +<p>It was all an account of a pig. The two active young men were +brothers who lived in the next village to his, and the pig had been +theirs—so Kwaque narrated in atrocious bêche-de-mer English. +He, Kwaque, had never seen the pig. He had never known of its +existence until after it was dead. The two young men had loved +the pig. But what of that? It did not concern Kwaque, who +was as unaware of their love for the pig as he was unaware of the pig +itself.</p> +<p>The first he knew, he averred, was the gossip of the village that +the pig was dead, and that somebody would have to die for it. +It was all right, he said, in reply to a query from the steward. +It was the custom. Whenever a loved pig died its owners were in +custom bound to go out and kill somebody, anybody. Of course, +it was better if they killed the one whose magic had made the pig sick. +But, failing that one, any one would do. Hence Kwaque was selected +for the blood-atonement.</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry drank a seventh quart as he listened, so carried away +was he by the sombre sense of romance of this dark jungle event wherein +men killed even strangers because a pig was dead.</p> +<p>Scouts out on the runways, Kwaque continued, brought word of the +coming of the two bereaved pig-owners, and the village had fled into +the jungle and climbed trees—all except Kwaque, who was unable +to climb trees.</p> +<p>“My word,” Kwaque concluded, “me no make ’m +that fella pig sick.”</p> +<p>“My word,” quoth Dag Daughtry, “you devil-devil +along that fella pig too much. You look ’m like hell. +You make ’m any fella thing sick look along you. You make +’m me sick too much.”</p> +<p>It became quite a custom for the steward, as he finished his sixth +bottle before turning in, to call upon Kwaque for his story. It +carried him back to his boyhood when he had been excited by tales of +wild cannibals in far lands and dreamed some day to see them for himself. +And here he was, he would chuckle to himself, with a real true cannibal +for a slave.</p> +<p>A slave Kwaque was, as much as if Daughtry had bought him on the +auction-block. Whenever the steward transferred from ship to ship +of the Burns Philp fleet, he always stipulated that Kwaque should accompany +him and be duly rated at ten shillings. Kwaque had no say in the +matter. Even had he desired to escape in Australian ports, there +was no need for Daughtry to watch him. Australia, with her “all-white” +policy, attended to that. No dark-skinned human, whether Malay, +Japanese, or Polynesian, could land on her shore without putting into +the Government’s hand a cash security of one hundred pounds.</p> +<p>Nor at the other islands visited by the <i>Makambo</i> had Kwaque +any desire to cut and run for it. King William Island, which was +the only land he had ever trod, was his yard-stick by which he measured +all other islands. And since King William Island was cannibalistic, +he could only conclude that the other islands were given to similar +dietary practice.</p> +<p>As for King William Island, the <i>Makambo</i>, on the former run +of the <i>Cockspur</i>, stopped there every ten weeks; but the direst +threat Daughtry ever held over him was the putting ashore of him at +the place where the two active young men still mourned their pig. +In fact, it was their regular programme, each trip, to paddle out and +around the <i>Makambo</i> and make ferocious grimaces up at Kwaque, +who grimaced back at them from over the rail. Daughtry even encouraged +this exchange of facial amenities for the purpose of deterring him from +ever hoping to win ashore to the village of his birth.</p> +<p>For that matter, Kwaque had little desire to leave his master, who, +after all, was kindly and just, and never lifted a hand to him. +Having survived sea-sickness at the first, and never setting foot upon +the land so that he never again knew sea-sickness, Kwaque was certain +he lived in an earthly paradise. He never had to regret his inability +to climb trees, because danger never threatened him. He had food +regularly, and all he wanted, and it was such food! No one in +his village could have dreamed of any delicacy of the many delicacies +which he consumed all the time. Because of these matters he even +pulled through a light attack of home-sickness, and was as contented +a human as ever sailed the seas.</p> +<p>And Kwaque it was who pulled Michael through the port-hole into Dag +Daughtry’s stateroom and waited for that worthy to arrive by the +roundabout way of the door. After a quick look around the room +and a sniff of the bunk and under the bunk which informed him that Jerry +was not present, Michael turned his attention to Kwaque.</p> +<p>Kwaque tried to be friendly. He uttered a clucking noise in +advertisement of his friendliness, and Michael snarled at this black +who had dared to lay hands upon him—a contamination, according +to Michael’s training—and who now dared to address him who +associated only with white gods.</p> +<p>Kwaque passed off the rebuff with a silly gibbering laugh and started +to step nearer the door to be in readiness to open it at his master’s +coming. But at first lift of his leg, Michael flew at it. +Kwaque immediately put it down, and Michael subsided, though he kept +a watchful guard. What did he know of this strange black, save +that he was a black and that, in the absence of a white master, all +blacks required watching? Kwaque tried slowly sliding his foot +along the floor, but Michael knew the trick and with bristle and growl +put a stop to it.</p> +<p>It was upon this tableau that Daughtry entered, and, while he admired +Michael much under the bright electric light, he realized the situation.</p> +<p>“Kwaque, you make ’m walk about leg belong you,” +he commanded, in order to make sure.</p> +<p>Kwaque’s glance of apprehension at Michael was convincing enough, +but the steward insisted. Kwaque gingerly obeyed, but scarcely +had his foot moved an inch when Michael’s was upon him. +The foot and leg petrified, while Michael stiff-leggedly drew a half-circle +of intimidation about him.</p> +<p>“Got you nailed to the floor, eh?” Daughtry chuckled. +“Some nigger-chaser, my word, any amount.”</p> +<p>“Hey, you, Kwaque, go fetch ’m two fella bottle of beer +stop ’m along icey-chestis,” he commanded in his most peremptory +manner.</p> +<p>Kwaque looked beseechingly, but did not stir. Nor did he stir +at a harsher repetition of the order.</p> +<p>“My word!” the steward bullied. “Suppose +’m you no fetch ’m beer close up, I knock ’m eight +bells ’n ’a dog-watch onta you. Suppose ’m you +no fetch ’m close up, me make ’m you go ashore ’n’ +walk about along King William Island.”</p> +<p>“No can,” Kwaque murmured timidly. “Eye belong +dog look along me too much. Me no like ’m dog kai-kai along +me.”</p> +<p>“You fright along dog?” his master demanded.</p> +<p>“My word, me fright along dog any amount.”</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry was delighted. Also, he was thirsty from his trip +ashore and did not prolong the situation.</p> +<p>“Hey, you, dog,” he addressed Michael. “This +fella boy he all right. Savvee? He all right.”</p> +<p>Michael bobbed his tail and flattened his ears in token that he was +trying to understand. When the steward patted the black on the +shoulder, Michael advanced and sniffed both the legs he had kept nailed +to the floor.</p> +<p>“Walk about,” Daughtry commanded. “Walk about +slow fella,” he cautioned, though there was little need.</p> +<p>Michael bristled, but permitted the first timid step. At the +second he glanced up at Daughtry to make certain.</p> +<p>“That’s right,” he was reassured. “That +fella boy belong me. He all right, you bet.”</p> +<p>Michael smiled with his eyes that he understood, and turned casually +aside to investigate an open box on the floor which contained plates +of turtle-shell, hack-saws, and emery paper.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>“And now,” Dag Daughtry muttered weightily aloud, as, +bottle in hand, he leaned back in his arm-chair while Kwaque knelt at +his feet to unlace his shoes, “now to consider a name for you, +Mister Dog, that will be just to your breeding and fair to my powers +of invention.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> +<p>Irish terriers, when they have gained maturity, are notable, not +alone for their courage, fidelity, and capacity for love, but for their +cool-headedness and power of self-control and restraint. They +are less easily excited off their balance; they can recognize and obey +their master’s voice in the scuffle and rage of battle; and they +never fly into nervous hysterics such as are common, say, with fox-terriers.</p> +<p>Michael possessed no trace of hysteria, though he was more temperamentally +excitable and explosive than his blood-brother Jerry, while his father +and mother were a sedate old couple indeed compared with him. +Far more than mature Jerry, was mature Michael playful and rowdyish. +His ebullient spirits were always on tap to spill over on the slightest +provocation, and, as he was afterwards to demonstrate, he could weary +a puppy with play. In short, Michael was a merry soul.</p> +<p>“Soul” is used advisedly. Whatever the human soul +may be—informing spirit, identity, personality, consciousness—that +intangible thing Michael certainly possessed. His soul, differing +only in degree, partook of the same attributes as the human soul. +He knew love, sorrow, joy, wrath, pride, self-consciousness, humour. +Three cardinal attributes of the human soul are memory, will, and understanding; +and memory, will, and understanding were Michael’s.</p> +<p>Just like a human, with his five senses he contacted with the world +exterior to him. Just like a human, the results to him of these +contacts were sensations. Just like a human, these sensations +on occasion culminated in emotions. Still further, like a human, +he could and did perceive, and such perceptions did flower in his brain +as concepts, certainly not so wide and deep and recondite as those of +humans, but concepts nevertheless.</p> +<p>Perhaps, to let the human down a trifle from such disgraceful identity +of the highest life-attributes, it would be well to admit that Michael’s +sensations were not quite so poignant, say in the matter of a needle-thrust +through his foot as compared with a needle-thrust through the palm of +a hand. Also, it is admitted, when consciousness suffused his +brain with a thought, that the thought was dimmer, vaguer than a similar +thought in a human brain. Furthermore, it is admitted that never, +never, in a million lifetimes, could Michael have demonstrated a proposition +in Euclid or solved a quadratic equation. Yet he was capable of +knowing beyond all peradventure of a doubt that three bones are more +than two bones, and that ten dogs compose a more redoubtable host than +do two dogs.</p> +<p>One admission, however, will not be made, namely, that Michael could +not love as devotedly, as wholeheartedly, unselfishly, madly, self-sacrificingly +as a human. He did so love—not because he was Michael, but +because he was a dog.</p> +<p>Michael had loved Captain Kellar more than he loved his own life. +No more than Jerry for Skipper, would he have hesitated to risk his +life for Captain Kellar. And he was destined, as time went by +and the conviction that Captain Kellar had passed into the inevitable +nothingness along with Meringe and the Solomons, to love just as absolutely +this six-quart steward with the understanding ways and the fascinating +lip-caress. Kwaque, no; for Kwaque was black. Kwaque he +merely accepted, as an appurtenance, as a part of the human landscape, +as a chattel of Dag Daughtry.</p> +<p>But he did not know this new god as Dag Daughtry. Kwaque called +him “marster”; but Michael heard other white men so addressed +by the blacks. Many blacks had he heard call Captain Kellar “marster.” +It was Captain Duncan who called the steward “Steward.” +Michael came to hear him, and his officers, and all the passengers, +so call him; and thus, to Michael, his god’s name was Steward, +and for ever after he was to know him and think of him as Steward.</p> +<p>There was the question of his own name. The next evening after +he came on board, Dag Daughtry talked it over with him. Michael +sat on his haunches, the length of his lower jaw resting on Daughtry’s +knee, the while his eyes dilated, contracted and glowed, his ears ever +pricking and repricking to listen, his stump tail thumping ecstatically +on the floor.</p> +<p>“It’s this way, son,” the steward told him. +“Your father and mother were Irish. Now don’t be denying +it, you rascal—”</p> +<p>This, as Michael, encouraged by the unmistakable geniality and kindness +in the voice, wriggled his whole body and thumped double knocks of delight +with his tail. Not that he understood a word of it, but that he +did understand the something behind the speech that informed the string +of sounds with all the mysterious likeableness that white gods possessed.</p> +<p>“Never be ashamed of your ancestry. An’ remember, +God loves the Irish—Kwaque! Go fetch ’m two bottle +beer fella stop ’m along icey-chestis!—Why, the very mug +of you, my lad, sticks out Irish all over it.” (Michael’s +tail beat a tattoo.) “Now don’t be blarneyin’ +me. ’Tis well I’m wise to your insidyous, snugglin’, +heart-stealin’ ways. I’ll have ye know my heart’s +impervious. ’Tis soaked too long this many a day in beer. +I stole you to sell you, not to be lovin’ you. I could’ve +loved you once; but that was before me and beer was introduced. +I’d sell you for twenty quid right now, coin down, if the chance +offered. An’ I ain’t goin’ to love you, so you +can put that in your pipe ’n’ smoke it.”</p> +<p>“But as I was about to say when so rudely interrupted by your +’fectionate ways—”</p> +<p>Here he broke off to tilt to his mouth the opened bottle Kwaque handed +him. He sighed, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and +proceeded.</p> +<p>“’Tis a strange thing, son, this silly matter of beer. +Kwaque, the Methusalem-faced ape grinnin’ there, belongs to me. +But by my faith do I belong to beer, bottles ’n’ bottles +of it ’n’ mountains of bottles of it enough to sink the +ship. Dog, truly I envy you, settin’ there comfortable-like +inside your body that’s untainted of alcohol. I may own +you, and the man that gives me twenty quid will own you, but never will +a mountain of bottles own you. You’re a freer man than I +am, Mister Dog, though I don’t know your name. Which reminds +me—”</p> +<p>He drained the bottle, tossed it to Kwaque, and made signs for him +to open the remaining one.</p> +<p>“The namin’ of you, son, is not lightly to be considered. +Irish, of course, but what shall it be? Paddy? Well may +you shake your head. There’s no smack of distinction to +it. Who’d mistake you for a hod-carrier? Ballymena +might do, but it sounds much like a lady, my boy. Ay, boy you +are. ’Tis an idea. Boy! Let’s see. +Banshee Boy? Rotten. Lad of Erin!”</p> +<p>He nodded approbation and reached for the second bottle. He +drank and meditated, and drank again.</p> +<p>“I’ve got you,” he announced solemnly. “Killeny +is a lovely name, and it’s Killeny Boy for you. How’s +that strike your honourableness?—high-soundin’, dignified +as a earl or . . . or a retired brewer. Many’s the one of +that gentry I’ve helped to retire in my day.”</p> +<p>He finished his bottle, caught Michael suddenly by both jowls, and, +leaning forward, rubbed noses with him. As suddenly released, +with thumping tail and dancing eyes, Michael gazed up into the god’s +face. A definite soul, or entity, or spirit-thing glimmered behind +his dog’s eyes, already fond with affection for this hair-grizzled +god who talked with him he knew not what, but whose very talking carried +delicious and unguessable messages to his heart.</p> +<p>“Hey! Kwaque, you!”</p> +<p>Kwaque, squatted on the floor, his hams on his heels, paused from +the rough-polishing of a shell comb designed and cut out by his master, +and looked up, eager to receive command and serve.</p> +<p>“Kwaque, you fella this time now savvee name stop along this +fella dog. His name belong ’m him, Killeny Boy. You +make ’m name stop ’m inside head belong you. All the +time you speak ’m this fella dog, you speak ’m Killeny Boy. +Savvee? Suppose ’m you no savvee, I knock ’m block +off belong you. Killeny Boy, savvee! Killeny Boy. +Killeny Boy.”</p> +<p>As Kwaque removed his shoes and helped him undress, Daughtry regarded +Michael with sleepy eyes.</p> +<p>“I’ve got you, laddy,” he announced, as he stood +up and swayed toward bed. “I’ve got your name, an’ +here’s your number—I got that, too: <i>high-strung but reasonable</i>. +It fits you like the paper on the wall.</p> +<p>“High-strung but reasonable, that’s what you are, Killeny +Boy, high-strung but reasonable,” he continued to mumble as Kwaque +helped to roll him into his bunk.</p> +<p>Kwaque returned to his polishing. His lips stammered and halted +in the making of noiseless whispers, as, with corrugated brows of puzzlement, +he addressed the steward:</p> +<p>“Marster, what name stop ’m along that fella dog?”</p> +<p>“Killeny Boy, you kinky-head man-eater, Killeny Boy, Killeny +Boy,” Dag Daughtry murmured drowsily. “Kwaque, you +black blood-drinker, run n’ fetch ’m one fella bottle stop +’m along icey-chestis.”</p> +<p>“No stop ’m, marster,” the black quavered, with +eyes alert for something to be thrown at him. “Six fella +bottle he finish altogether.”</p> +<p>The steward’s sole reply was a snore.</p> +<p>The black, with the twisted hand of leprosy and with a barely perceptible +infiltration of the same disease thickening the skin of the forehead +between the eyes, bent over his polishing, and ever his lips moved, +repeating over and over, “Killeny Boy.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> +<p>For a number of days Michael saw only Steward and Kwaque. This +was because he was confined to the steward’s stateroom. +Nobody else knew that he was on board, and Dag Daughtry, thoroughly +aware that he had stolen a white man’s dog, hoped to keep his +presence secret and smuggle him ashore when the <i>Makambo</i> docked +in Sydney.</p> +<p>Quickly the steward learned Michael’s pre-eminent teachableness. +In the course of his careful feeding of him, he gave him an occasional +chicken bone. Two lessons, which would scarcely be called lessons, +since both of them occurred within five minutes and each was not over +half a minute in duration, sufficed to teach Michael that only on the +floor of the room in the corner nearest the door could he chew chicken +bones. Thereafter, without prompting, as a matter of course when +handed a bone, he carried it to the corner.</p> +<p>And why not? He had the wit to grasp what Steward desired of +him; he had the heart that made it a happiness for him to serve. +Steward was a god who was kind, who loved him with voice and lip, who +loved him with touch of hand, rub of nose, or enfolding arm. As +all service flourishes in the soil of love, so with Michael. Had +Steward commanded him to forego the chicken bone after it was in the +corner, he would have served him by foregoing. Which is the way +of the dog, the only animal that will cheerfully and gladly, with leaping +body of joy, leave its food uneaten in order to accompany or to serve +its human master.</p> +<p>Practically all his waking time off duty, Dag Daughtry spent with +the imprisoned Michael, who, at command, had quickly learned to refrain +from whining and barking. And during these hours of companionship +Michael learned many things. Daughtry found that he already understood +and obeyed simple things such as “no,” “yes,” +“get up,” and “lie down,” and he improved on +them, teaching him, “Go into the bunk and lie down,” “Go +under the bunk,” “Bring one shoe,” “Bring two +shoes.” And almost without any work at all, he taught him +to roll over, to say his prayers, to play dead, to sit up and smoke +a pipe with a hat on his head, and not merely to stand up on his hind +legs but to walk on them.</p> +<p>Then, too, was the trick of “no can and can do.” +Placing a savoury, nose-tantalising bit of meat or cheese on the edge +of the bunk on a level with Michael’s nose, Daughtry would simply +say, “No can.” Nor would Michael touch the food till +he received the welcome, “Can do.” Daughtry, with +the “no can” still in force, would leave the stateroom, +and, though he remained away half an hour or half a dozen hours, on +his return he would find the food untouched and Michael, perhaps, asleep +in the corner at the head of the bunk which had been allotted him for +a bed. Early in this trick once when the steward had left the +room and Michael’s eager nose was within an inch of the prohibited +morsel, Kwaque, playfully inclined, reached for the morsel himself and +received a lacerated hand from the quick flash and clip of Michael’s +jaws.</p> +<p>None of the tricks that he was ever eager to do for Steward, would +Michael do for Kwaque, despite the fact that Kwaque had no touch of +meanness or viciousness in him. The point was that Michael had +been trained, from his first dawn of consciousness, to differentiate +between black men and white men. Black men were always the servants +of white men—or such had been his experience; and always they +were objects of suspicion, ever bent on wreaking mischief and requiring +careful watching. The cardinal duty of a dog was to serve his +white god by keeping a vigilant eye on all blacks that came about.</p> +<p>Yet Michael permitted Kwaque to serve him in matters of food, water, +and other offices, at first in the absence of Steward attending to his +ship duties, and, later, at any time. For he realized, without +thinking about it at all, that whatever Kwaque did for him, whatever +food Kwaque spread for him, really proceeded, not from Kwaque, but from +Kwaque’s master who was also his master. Yet Kwaque bore +no grudge against Michael, and was himself so interested in his lord’s +welfare and comfort—this lord who had saved his life that terrible +day on King William Island from the two grief-stricken pig-owners—that +he cherished Michael for his lord’s sake. Seeing the dog +growing into his master’s affection, Kwaque himself developed +a genuine affection for Michael—much in the same way that he worshipped +anything of the steward’s, whether the shoes he polished for him, +the clothes he brushed and cleaned for him, or the six bottles of beer +he put into the ice-chest each day for him.</p> +<p>In truth, there was nothing of the master-quality in Kwaque, while +Michael was a natural aristocrat. Michael, out of love, would +serve Steward, but Michael lorded it over the kinky-head. Kwaque +possessed overwhelmingly the slave-nature, while in Michael there was +little more of the slave-nature than was found in the North American +Indians when the vain attempt was made to make them into slaves on the +plantations of Cuba. All of which was no personal vice of Kwaque +or virtue of Michael. Michael’s heredity, rigidly selected +for ages by man, was chiefly composed of fierceness and faithfulness. +And fierceness and faithfulness, together, invariably produce pride. +And pride cannot exist without honour, nor can honour without poise.</p> +<p>Michael’s crowning achievement, under Daughtry’s tutelage, +in the first days in the stateroom, was to learn to count up to five. +Many hours of work were required, however, in spite of his unusual high +endowment of intelligence. For he had to learn, first, the spoken +numerals; second, to see with his eyes and in his brain differentiate +between one object, and all other groups of objects up to and including +the group of five; and, third, in his mind, to relate an object, or +any group of objects, with its numerical name as uttered by Steward.</p> +<p>In the training Dag Daughtry used balls of paper tied about with +twine. He would toss the five balls under the bunk and tell Michael +to fetch three, and neither two, nor four, but three would Michael bring +forth and deliver into his hand. When Daughtry threw three under +the bunk and demanded four, Michael would deliver the three, search +about vainly for the fourth, then dance pleadingly with bobs of tail +and half-leaps about Steward, and finally leap into the bed and secure +the fourth from under the pillow or among the blankets.</p> +<p>It was the same with other known objects. Up to five, whether +shoes or shirts or pillow-slips, Michael would fetch the number requested. +And between the mathematical mind of Michael, who counted to five, and +the mind of the ancient black at Tulagi, who counted sticks of tobacco +in units of five, was a distance shorter than that between Michael and +Dag Daughtry who could do multiplication and long division. In +the same manner, up the same ladder of mathematical ability, a still +greater distance separated Dag Daughtry from Captain Duncan, who by +mathematics navigated the <i>Makambo</i>. Greatest mathematical +distance of all was that between Captain Duncan’s mind and the +mind of an astronomer who charted the heavens and navigated a thousand +million miles away among the stars and who tossed, a mere morsel of +his mathematical knowledge, the few shreds of information to Captain +Duncan that enabled him to know from day to day the place of the <i>Makambo</i> +on the sea.</p> +<p>In one thing only could Kwaque rule Michael. Kwaque possessed +a jews’ harp, and, whenever the world of the <i>Makambo</i> and +the servitude to the steward grew wearisome, he could transport himself +to King William Island by thrusting the primitive instrument between +his jaws and fanning weird rhythms from it with his hand, and when he +thus crossed space and time, Michael sang—or howled, rather, though +his howl possessed the same soft mellowness as Jerry’s. +Michael did not want to howl, but the chemistry of his being was such +that he reacted to music as compulsively as elements react on one another +in the laboratory.</p> +<p>While he lay perdu in Steward’s stateroom, his voice was the +one thing that was not to be heard, so Kwaque was forced to seek the +solace of his jews’ harp in the sweltering heat of the gratings +over the fire-room. But this did not continue long, for, either +according to blind chance, or to the lines of fate written in the book +of life ere ever the foundations of the world were laid, Michael was +scheduled for an adventure that was profoundly to affect, not alone +his own destiny, but the destinies of Kwaque and Dag Daughtry and determine +the very place of their death and burial.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> +<p>The adventure that was so to alter the future occurred when Michael, +in no uncertain manner, announced to all and sundry his presence on +the <i>Makambo</i>. It was due to Kwaque’s carelessness, +to commence with, for Kwaque left the stateroom without tight-closing +the door. As the <i>Makambo</i> rolled on an easy sea the door +swung back and forth, remaining wide open for intervals and banging +shut but not banging hard enough to latch itself.</p> +<p>Michael crossed the high threshold with the innocent intention of +exploring no farther than the immediate vicinity. But scarcely +was he through, when a heavier roll slammed the door and latched it. +And immediately Michael wanted to get back. Obedience was strong +in him, for it was his heart’s desire to serve his lord’s +will, and from the few days’ confinement he sensed, or guessed, +or divined, without thinking about it, that it was Steward’s will +for him to stay in the stateroom.</p> +<p>For a long time he sat down before the closed door, regarding it +wistfully but being too wise to bark or speak to such inanimate object. +It had been part of his early puppyhood education to learn that only +live things could be moved by plea or threat, and that while things +not alive did move, as the door had moved, they never moved of themselves, +and were deaf to anything life might have to say to them. Occasionally +he trotted down the short cross-hall upon which the stateroom opened, +and gazed up and down the long hall that ran fore and aft.</p> +<p>For the better part of an hour he did this, returning always to the +door that would not open. Then he achieved a definite idea. +Since the door would not open, and since Steward and Kwaque did not +return, he would go in search of them. Once with this concept +of action clear in his brain, without timidities of hesitation and irresolution, +he trotted aft down the long hall. Going around the right angle +in which it ended, he encountered a narrow flight of steps. Among +many scents, he recognized those of Kwaque and Steward and knew they +had passed that way.</p> +<p>Up the stairs and on the main deck, he began to meet passengers. +Being white gods, he did not resent their addresses to him, though he +did not linger and went out on the open deck where more of the favoured +gods reclined in steamer-chairs. Still no Kwaque or Steward. +Another flight of narrow, steep stairs invited, and he came out on the +boat-deck. Here, under the wide awnings, were many more of the +gods—many times more than he had that far seen in his life.</p> +<p>The for’ard end of the boat-deck terminated in the bridge, +which, instead of being raised above it, was part of it. Trotting +around the wheel-house to the shady lee-side of it, he came upon his +fate; for be it known that Captain Duncan possessed on board in addition +to two fox-terriers, a big Persian cat, and that cat possessed a litter +of kittens. Her chosen nursery was the wheel-house, and Captain +Duncan had humoured her, giving her a box for her kittens and threatening +the quartermasters with all manner of dire fates did they so much as +step on one of the kittens.</p> +<p>But Michael knew nothing of this. And the big Persian knew +of his existence before he did of hers. In fact, the first he +knew was when she launched herself upon him out of the open wheel-house +doorway. Even as he glimpsed this abrupt danger, and before he +could know what it was, he leaped sideways and saved himself. +From his point of view, the assault was unprovoked. He was staring +at her with bristling hair, recognizing her for what she was, a cat, +when she sprang again, her tail the size of a large man’s arm, +all claws and spitting fury and vindictiveness.</p> +<p>This was too much for a self-respecting Irish terrier. His +wrath was immediate with her second leap, and he sprang to the side +to avoid her claws, and in from the side to meet her, his jaws clamping +together on her spinal column with a jerk while she was still in mid-air. +The next moment she lay sprawling and struggling on the deck with a +broken back.</p> +<p>But for Michael this was only the beginning. A shrill yelling, +rather than yelping, of more enemies made him whirl half about, but +not quick enough. Struck in flank by two full-grown fox-terriers, +he was slashed and rolled on the deck. The two, by the way, had +long before made their first appearance on the <i>Makambo</i> as little +puppies in Dag Daughtry’s coat pockets—Daughtry, in his +usual fashion, having appropriated them ashore in Sydney and sold them +to Captain Duncan for a guinea apiece.</p> +<p>By this time, scrambling to his feet, Michael was really angry. +In truth, it was raining cats and dogs, such belligerent shower all +unprovoked by him who had picked no quarrels nor even been aware of +his enemies until they assailed him. Brave the fox-terriers were, +despite the hysterical rage they were in, and they were upon him as +he got his legs under him. The fangs of one clashed with his, +cutting the lips of both of them, and the lighter dog recoiled from +the impact. The other succeeded in taking Michael in flank, fetching +blood and hurt with his teeth. With an instant curve, that was +almost spasmodic, of his body, Michael flung his flank clear, leaving +the other’s mouth full of his hair, and at the same moment drove +his teeth through an ear till they met. The fox-terrier, with +a shrill yelp of pain, sprang back so impetuously as to ribbon its ear +as Michael’s teeth combed through it.</p> +<p>The first terrier was back upon him, and he was whirling to meet +it, when a new and equally unprovoked assault was made upon him. +This time it was Captain Duncan, in a rage at sight of his slain cat. +The instep of his foot caught Michael squarely under the chest, half +knocking the breath out of him and wholly lifting him into the air, +so that he fell heavily on his side. The two terriers were upon +him, filling their mouths with his straight, wiry hair as they sank +their teeth in. Still on his side, as he was beginning to struggle +to his feet, he clipped his jaws together on a leg of one, who screamed +with pain and retreated on three legs, holding up the fourth, a fore +leg, the bone of which Michael’s teeth had all but crushed.</p> +<p>Twice Michael slashed the other four-footed foe and then pursued +him in a circle with Captain Duncan pursuing him in turn. Shortening +the distance by leaping across a chord of the arc of the other’s +flight, Michael closed his jaws on the back and side of the neck. +Such abrupt arrest in mid-flight by the heavier dog brought the fox-terrier +down on deck with, a heavy thump. Simultaneous with this, Captain +Duncan’s second kick landed, communicating such propulsion to +Michael as to tear his clenched teeth through the flesh and out of the +flesh of the fox-terrier.</p> +<p>And Michael turned on the Captain. What if he were a white +god? In his rage at so many assaults of so many enemies, Michael, +who had been peacefully looking for Kwaque and Steward, did not stop +to reckon. Besides, it was a strange white god upon whom he had +never before laid eyes.</p> +<p>At the beginning he had snarled and growled. But it was a more +serious affair to attack a god, and no sound came from him as he leaped +to meet the leg flying toward him in another kick. As with the +cat, he did not leap straight at it. To the side to avoid, and +in with a curve of body as it passed, was his way. He had learned +the trick with many blacks at Meringe and on board the <i>Eugénie</i>, +so that as often he succeeded as failed at it. His teeth came +together in the slack of the white duck trousers. The consequent +jerk on Captain Duncan’s leg made that infuriated mariner lose +his balance. Almost he fell forward on his face, part recovered +himself with a violent effort, stumbled over Michael who was in for +another bite, tottered wildly around, and sat down on the deck.</p> +<p>How long he might have sat there to recover his breath is problematical, +for he rose as rapidly as his stoutness would permit, spurred on by +Michael’s teeth already sunk into the fleshy part of his shoulder. +Michael missed his calf as he uprose, but tore the other leg of the +trousers to shreds and received a kick that lifted him a yard above +the deck in a half-somersault and landed him on his back on deck.</p> +<p>Up to this time the Captain had been on the ferocious offensive, +and he was in the act of following up the kick when Michael regained +his feet and soared up in the air, not for leg or thigh, but for the +throat. Too high it was for him to reach it, but his teeth closed +on the flowing black scarf and tore it to tatters as his weight drew +him back to deck.</p> +<p>It was not this so much that turned Captain Duncan to the pure defensive +and started him retreating backward, as it was the silence of Michael. +Ominous as death it was. There were no snarls nor throat-threats. +With eyes straight-looking and unblinking, he sprang and sprang again. +Neither did he growl when he attacked nor yelp when he was kicked. +Fear of the blow was not in him. As Tom Haggin had so often bragged +of Biddy and Terrence, they bred true in Jerry and Michael in the matter +of not wincing at a blow. Always—they were so made—they +sprang to meet the blow and to encounter the creature who delivered +the blow. With a silence that was invested with the seriousness +of death, they were wont to attack and to continue to attack.</p> +<p>And so Michael. As the Captain retreated kicking, he attacked, +leaping and slashing. What saved Captain Duncan was a sailor with +a deck mop on the end of a stick. Intervening, he managed to thrust +it into Michael’s mouth and shove him away. This first time +his teeth closed automatically upon it. But, spitting it out, +he declined thereafter to bite it, knowing it for what it was, an inanimate +thing upon which his teeth could inflict no hurt.</p> +<p>Nor, beyond trying to avoid him, was he interested in the sailor. +It was Captain Duncan, leaning his back against the rail, breathing +heavily, and wiping the streaming sweat from his face, who was Michael’s +meat. Long as it has taken to tell the battle, beginning with +the slaying of the Persian cat to the thrusting of the mop into Michael’s +jaws, so swift had been the rush of events that the passengers, springing +from their deck-chairs and hurrying to the scene, were just arriving +when Michael eluded the mop of the sailor by a successful dodge and +plunged in on Captain Duncan, this time sinking his teeth so savagely +into a rotund calf as to cause its owner to splutter an incoherent curse +and howl of wrathful surprise.</p> +<p>A fortunate kick hurled Michael away and enabled the sailor to intervene +once again with the mop. And upon the scene came Dag Daughtry, +to behold his captain, frayed and bleeding and breathing apoplectically, +Michael raging in ghastly silence at the end of a mop, and a large Persian +mother-cat writhing with a broken back.</p> +<p>“Killeny Boy!” the steward cried imperatively.</p> +<p>Through no matter what indignation and rage that possessed him, his +lord’s voice penetrated his consciousness, so that, cooling almost +instantly, Michael’s ears flattened, his bristling hair lay down, +and his lips covered his fangs as he turned his head to look acknowledgment.</p> +<p>“Come here, Killeny!”</p> +<p>Michael obeyed—not crouching cringingly, but trotting eagerly, +gladly, to Steward’s feet.</p> +<p>“Lie down, Boy.”</p> +<p>He turned half around as he flumped himself down with a sigh of relief, +and, with a red flash of tongue, kissed Steward’s foot.</p> +<p>“Your dog, Steward?” Captain Duncan demanded in a smothered +voice wherein struggled anger and shortness of breath.</p> +<p>“Yes, sir. My dog. What’s he been up to, +sir?”</p> +<p>The totality of what Michael had been up to choked the Captain completely. +He could only gesture around from the dying cat to his torn clothes +and bleeding wounds and the fox-terriers licking their injuries and +whimpering at his feet.</p> +<p>“It’s too bad, sir . . . ” Daughtry began.</p> +<p>“Too bad, hell!” the captain shut him off. “Bo’s’n! +Throw that dog overboard.”</p> +<p>“Throw the dog overboard, sir, yes, sir,” the boatswain +repeated, but hesitated.</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry’s face hardened unconsciously with the stiffening +of his will to dogged opposition, which, in its own slow quiet way, +would go to any length to have its way. But he answered respectfully +enough, his features, by a shrewd effort, relaxing into a seeming of +his customary good-nature.</p> +<p>“He’s a good dog, sir, and an unoffending dog. +I can’t imagine what could a-made ’m break loose this way. +He must a-had cause, sir—”</p> +<p>“He had,” one of the passengers, a coconut planter from +the Shortlands, interjected.</p> +<p>The steward threw him a grateful glance and continued.</p> +<p>“He’s a good dog, sir, a most obedient dog, sir—look +at the way he minded me right in the thick of the scrap an’ come +’n’ lay down. He’s smart as chain-lightnin’, +sir; do anything I tell him. I’ll make him make friends. +See. . . ”</p> +<p>Stepping over to the two hysterical terriers, Daughtry called Michael +to him.</p> +<p>“He’s all right, savvee, Killeny, he all right,” +he crooned, at the same time resting one hand on a terrier and the other +on Michael.</p> +<p>The terrier whimpered and backed solidly against Captain Duncan’s +legs, but Michael, with a slow bob of tail and unbelligerent ears, advanced +to him, looked up to Steward to make sure, then sniffed his late antagonist, +and even ran out his tongue in a caress to the side of the other’s +ear.</p> +<p>“See, sir, no bad feelings,” Daughtry exulted. +“He plays the game, sir. He’s a proper dog, he’s +a man-dog.—Here, Killeny! The other one. He all right. +Kiss and make up. That’s the stuff.”</p> +<p>The other fox-terrier, the one with the injured foreleg, endured +Michael’s sniff with no more than hysterical growls deep in the +throat; but the flipping out of Michael’s tongue was too much. +The wounded terrier exploded in a futile snap at Michael’s tongue +and nose.</p> +<p>“He all right, Killeny, he all right, sure,” Steward +warned quickly.</p> +<p>With a bob of his tail in token of understanding, without a shade +of resentment, Michael lifted a paw and with a playful casual stroke, +dab-like, brought its weight on the other’s neck and rolled him, +head-downward, over on the deck. Though he snarled wrathily, Michael +turned away composedly and looked up into Steward’s face for approval.</p> +<p>A roar of laughter from the passengers greeted the capsizing of the +fox-terrier and the good-natured gravity of Michael. But not alone +at this did they laugh, for at the moment of the snap and the turning +over, Captain Duncan’s unstrung nerves had exploded, causing him +to jump as he tensed his whole body.</p> +<p>“Why, sir,” the steward went on with growing confidence, +“I bet I can make him friends with you, too, by this time to-morrow +. . . ”</p> +<p>“By this time five minutes he’ll be overboard,” +the captain answered. “Bo’s’n! Over with +him!”</p> +<p>The boatswain advanced a tentative step, while murmurs of protest +arose from the passengers.</p> +<p>“Look at my cat, and look at me,” Captain Duncan defended +his action.</p> +<p>The boatswain made another step, and Dag Daughtry glared a threat +at him.</p> +<p>“Go on!” the Captain commanded.</p> +<p>“Hold on!” spoke up the Shortlands planter. “Give +the dog a square deal. I saw the whole thing. He wasn’t +looking for trouble. First the cat jumped him. She had to +jump twice before he turned loose. She’d have scratched +his eyes out. Then the two dogs jumped him. He hadn’t +bothered them. Then you jumped him. He hadn’t bothered +you. And then came that sailor with the mop. And now you +want the bo’s’n to jump him and throw him overboard. +Give him a square deal. He’s only been defending himself. +What do you expect any dog that is a dog to do?—lie down and be +walked over by every strange dog and cat that comes along? Play +the game, Skipper. You gave him some mighty hard kicks. +He only defended himself.”</p> +<p>“He’s some defender,” Captain Duncan grinned, with +a hint of the return of his ordinary geniality, at the same time tenderly +pressing his bleeding shoulder and looking woefully down at his tattered +duck trousers. “All right, Steward. If you can make +him friends with me in five minutes, he stays on board. But you’ll +have to make it up to me with a new pair of trousers.”</p> +<p>“And gladly, sir, thank you, sir,” Daughtry cried. +“And I’ll make it up with a new cat as well, sir—Come +on, Killeny Boy. This big fella marster he all right, you bet.”</p> +<p>And Michael listened. Not with the smouldering, smothering, +choking hysteria that still worked in the fox-terriers did he listen, +nor with quivering of muscles and jumps of over-wrought nerves, but +coolly, composedly, as if no battle royal had just taken place and no +rips of teeth and kicks of feet still burned and ached his body.</p> +<p>He could not help bristling, however, when first he sniffed a trousers’ +leg into which his teeth had so recently torn.</p> +<p>“Put your hand down on him, sir,” Daughtry begged.</p> +<p>And Captain Duncan, his own good self once more, bent and rested +a firm, unhesitating hand on Michael’s head. Nay, more; +he even caressed the ears and rubbed about the roots of them. +And Michael the merry-hearted, who fought like a lion and forgave and +forgot like a man, laid his neck hair smoothly down, wagged his stump +tail, smiled with his eyes and ears and mouth, and kissed with his tongue +the hand with which a short time before he had been at war.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> +<p>For the rest of the voyage Michael had the run of the ship. +Friendly to all, he reserved his love for Steward alone, though he was +not above many an undignified romp with the fox-terriers.</p> +<p>“The most playful-minded dog, without being silly, I ever saw,” +was Dag Daughtry’s verdict to the Shortlands planter, to whom +he had just sold one of his turtle-shell combs. “You see, +some dogs never get over the play-idea, an’ they’re never +good for anything else. But not Killeny Boy. He can come +down to seriousness in a second. I’ll show you, and I’ll +show you he’s got a brain that counts to five an’ knows +wireless telegraphy. You just watch.”</p> +<p>At the moment the steward made his faint lip-noise—so faint +that he could not hear it himself and was almost for wondering whether +or not he had made it; so faint that the Shortlands planter did not +dream that he was making it. At that moment Michael was lying +squirming on his back a dozen feet away, his legs straight up in the +air, both fox-terriers worrying with well-stimulated ferociousness. +With a quick out-thrust of his four legs, he rolled over on his side +and with questioning eyes and pricked ears looked and listened. +Again Daughtry made the lip-noise; again the Shortlands planter did +not hear nor guess; and Michael bounded to his feet and to his lord’s +side.</p> +<p>“Some dog, eh?” the steward boasted.</p> +<p>“But how did he know you wanted him?” the planter queried. +“You never called him.”</p> +<p>“Mental telepathy, the affinity of souls pitched in the same +whatever-you-call-it harmony,” the steward mystified. “You +see, Killeny an’ me are made of the same kind of stuff, only run +into different moulds. He might a-been my full brother, or me +his, only for some mistake in the creation factory somewhere. +Now I’ll show you he knows his bit of arithmetic.”</p> +<p>And, drawing the paper balls from his pocket, Dag Daughtry demonstrated +to the amazement and satisfaction of the ring of passengers Michael’s +ability to count to five.</p> +<p>“Why, sir,” Daughtry concluded the performance, “if +I was to order four glasses of beer in a public-house ashore, an’ +if I was absent-minded an’ didn’t notice the waiter ’d +only brought three, Killeny Boy there ’d raise a row instanter.”</p> +<p>Kwaque was no longer compelled to enjoy his jews’ harp on the +gratings over the fire-room, now that Michael’s presence on the +<i>Makambo</i> was known, and, in the stateroom, on stolen occasions, +he made experiments of his own with Michael. Once the jews’ +harp began emitting its barbaric rhythms, Michael was helpless. +He needs must open his mouth and pour forth an unwilling, gushing howl. +But, as with Jerry, it was not mere howl. It was more akin to +a mellow singing; and it was not long before Kwaque could lead his voice +up and down, in rough time and tune, within a definite register.</p> +<p>Michael never liked these lessons, for, looking down upon Kwaque, +he hated in any way to be under the black’s compulsion. +But all this was changed when Dag Daughtry surprised them at a singing +lesson. He resurrected the harmonica with which it was his wont, +ashore in public-houses, to while away the time between bottles. +The quickest way to start Michael singing, he discovered, was with minors; +and, once started, he would sing on and on for as long as the music +played. Also, in the absence of an instrument, Michael would sing +to the prompting and accompaniment of Steward’s voice, who would +begin by wailing “kow-kow” long and sadly, and then branch +out on some old song or ballad. Michael had hated to sing with +Kwaque, but he loved to do it with Steward, even when Steward brought +him on deck to perform before the laughter-shrieking passengers.</p> +<p>Two serious conversations were held by the steward toward the close +of the voyage: one with Captain Duncan and one with Michael.</p> +<p>“It’s this way, Killeny,” Daughtry began, one evening, +Michael’s head resting on his lord’s knees as he gazed adoringly +up into his lord’s face, understanding no whit of what was spoken +but loving the intimacy the sounds betokened. “I stole you +for beer money, an’ when I saw you there on the beach that night +I knew you’d bring ten quid anywheres. Ten quid’s +a horrible lot of money. Fifty dollars in the way the Yankees +reckon it, an’ a hundred Mex in China fashion.</p> +<p>“Now, fifty dollars gold ’d buy beer to beat the band—enough +to drown me if I fell in head first. Yet I want to ask you one +question. Can you see me takin’ ten quid for you? . . . +Go on. Speak up. Can you?”</p> +<p>And Michael, with thumps of tail to the floor and a high sharp bark, +showed that he was in entire agreement with whatever had been propounded.</p> +<p>“Or say twenty quid, now. That’s a fair offer. +Would I? Eh! Would I? Not on your life. What +d’ye say to fifty quid? That might begin to interest me, +but a hundred quid would interest me more. Why, a hundred quid +all in beer ’d come pretty close to floatin’ this old hooker. +But who in Sam Hill’d offer a hundred quid? I’d like +to clap eyes on him once, that’s all, just once. D’ye +want to know what for? All right. I’ll whisper it. +So as I could tell him to go to hell. Sure, Killeny Boy, just +like that—oh, most polite, of course, just a kindly directin’ +of his steps where he’d never suffer from frigid extremities.”</p> +<p>Michael’s love for Steward was so profound as almost to be +a mad but enduring infatuation. What the steward’s regard +for Michael was coming to be was best evidenced by his conversation +with Captain Duncan.</p> +<p>“Sure, sir, he must ’ve followed me on board,” +Daughtry finished his unveracious recital. “An’ I +never knew it. Last I seen of ’m was on the beach. +Next I seen of ’m there, he was fast asleep in my bunk. +Now how’d he get there, sir? How’d he pick out my +room? I leave it to you, sir. I call it marvellous, just +plain marvellous.”</p> +<p>“With a quartermaster at the head of the gangway!” Captain +Duncan snorted. “As if I didn’t know your tricks, +Steward. There’s nothing marvellous about it. Just +a plain case of steal. Followed you on board? That dog never +came over the side. He came through a port-hole, and he never +came through by himself. That nigger of yours, I’ll wager, +had a hand in the helping. But let’s have done with beating +about the bush. Give me the dog, and I’ll say no more about +the cat.”</p> +<p>“Seein’ you believe what you believe, then you’d +be for compoundin’ the felony,” Daughtry retorted, the habitual +obstinate tightening of his brows showing which way his will set. +“Me, sir, I’m only a ship’s steward, an’ it +wouldn’t mean nothin’ at all bein’ arrested for dog-stealin’; +but you, sir, a captain of a fine steamer, how’d it sound for +you, sir? No, sir; it’d be much wiser for me to keep the +dog that followed me aboard.”</p> +<p>“I’ll give ten pounds in the bargain,” the captain +proffered.</p> +<p>“No, it wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do at all, sir, +an’ you a captain,” the steward continued to reiterate, +rolling his head sombrely. “Besides, I know where’s +a peach of an Angora in Sydney. The owner is gone to the country +an’ has no further use of it, an’ it’d be a kindness +to the cat, air to give it a good regular home like the <i>Makambo</i>.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER VIIII</h2> +<p>Another trick Dag Daughtry succeeded in teaching Michael so enhanced +him in Captain Duncan’s eyes as to impel him to offer fifty pounds, +“and never mind the cat.” At first, Daughtry practised +the trick in private with the chief engineer and the Shortlands planter. +Not until thoroughly satisfied did he make a public performance of it.</p> +<p>“Now just suppose you’re policemen, or detectives,” +Daughtry told the first and third officers, “an’ suppose +I’m guilty of some horrible crime. An’ suppose Killeny +is the only clue, an’ you’ve got Killeny. When he +recognizes his master—me, of course—you’ve got your +man. You go down the deck with him, leadin’ by the rope. +Then you come back this way with him, makin’ believe this is the +street, an’ when he recognizes me you arrest me. But if +he don’t realize me, you can’t arrest me. See?”</p> +<p>The two officers led Michael away, and after several minutes returned +along the deck, Michael stretched out ahead on the taut rope seeking +Steward.</p> +<p>“What’ll you take for the dog?” Daughtry demanded, +as they drew near—this the cue he had trained Michael to know.</p> +<p>And Michael, straining at the rope, went by, without so much as a +wag of tail to Steward or a glance of eye. The officers stopped +before Daughtry and drew Michael back into the group.</p> +<p>“He’s a lost dog,” said the first officer.</p> +<p>“We’re trying to find his owner,” supplemented +the third.</p> +<p>“Some dog that—what’ll you take for ’m?” +Daughtry asked, studying Michael with critical eyes of interest. +“What kind of a temper’s he got?”</p> +<p>“Try him,” was the answer.</p> +<p>The steward put out his hand to pat him on the head, but withdrew +it hastily as Michael, with bristle and growl, viciously bared his teeth.</p> +<p>“Go on, go on, he won’t hurt you,” the delighted +passengers urged.</p> +<p>This time the steward’s hand was barely missed by a snap, and +he leaped back as Michael ferociously sprang the length of the rope +at him.</p> +<p>“Take ’m away!” Dag Daughtry roared angrily. +“The treacherous beast! I wouldn’t take ’m for +gift!”</p> +<p>And as they obeyed, Michael strained backward in a paroxysm of rage, +making fierce short jumps to the end of the tether as he snarled and +growled with utmost fierceness at the steward.</p> +<p>“Eh? Who’d say he ever seen me in his life?” +Daughtry demanded triumphantly. “It’s a trick I never +seen played myself, but I’ve heard tell about it. The old-time +poachers in England used to do it with their lurcher dogs. If +they did get the dog of a strange poacher, no gamekeeper or constable +could identify ’m by the dog—mum was the word.”</p> +<p>“Tell you what, he knows things, that Killeny. He knows +English. Right now, in my room, with the door open, an’ +so as he can find ’m, is shoes, slippers, cap, towel, hair-brush, +an’ tobacco pouch. What’ll it be? Name it an’ +he’ll fetch it.”</p> +<p>So immediately and variously did the passengers respond that every +article was called for.</p> +<p>“Just one of you choose,” the steward advised. +“The rest of you pick ’m out.”</p> +<p>“Slipper,” said Captain Duncan, selected by acclamation.</p> +<p>“One or both?” Daughtry asked.</p> +<p>“Both.”</p> +<p>“Come here, Killeny,” Daughtry began, bending toward +him but leaping back from the snap of jaws that clipped together close +to his nose.</p> +<p>“My mistake,” he apologized. “I ain’t +told him the other game was over. Now just listen an, watch. +’n’ see if you can catch on to the tip I’m goin’ +to give ’m.”</p> +<p>No one saw anything, heard anything, yet Michael, with a whine of +eagerness and joy, with laughing mouth and wriggling body, was upon +the steward, licking his hands madly, squirming and twisting in the +embrace of the loved hands he had so recently threatened, making attempts +at short upward leaps as he flashed his tongue upward toward his lord’s +face. For hard it was on Michael, a nerve and mental strain of +the severest for him so to control himself as to play-act anger and +threat of hurt to his beloved Steward.</p> +<p>“Takes him a little time to get over a thing like that,” +Daughtry explained, as he soothed Michael down.</p> +<p>“Now, Killeny! Go fetch ’m slipper! Wait! +Fetch ’m <i>one</i> slipper. Fetch ’m <i>two</i> slipper.”</p> +<p>Michael looked up with pricked ears, and with eyes filled with query +as all his intelligent consciousness suffused them.</p> +<p>“<i>Two</i> slipper! Fetch ’m quick!”</p> +<p>He was off and away in a scurry of speed that seemed to flatten him +close to the deck, and that, as he turned the corner of the deck-house +to the stairs, made his hind feet slip and slide across the smooth planks.</p> +<p>Almost in a trice he was back, both slippers in his mouth, which +he deposited at the steward’s feet.</p> +<p>“The more I know dogs the more amazin’ marvellous they +are to me,” Dag Daughtry, after he had compassed his fourth bottle, +confided in monologue to the Shortlands planter that night just before +bedtime. “Take Killeny Boy. He don’t do things +for me mechanically, just because he’s learned to do ’m. +There’s more to it. He does ’m because he likes me. +I can’t give you the hang of it, but I feel it, I <i>know</i> +it.</p> +<p>“Maybe, this is what I’m drivin’ at. Killeny +can’t talk, as you ’n’ me talk, I mean; so he can’t +tell me how he loves me, an’ he’s all love, every last hair +of ’m. An’ actions speakin’ louder ’n’ +words, he tells me how he loves me by doin’ these things for me. +Tricks? Sure. But they make human speeches of eloquence +cheaper ’n dirt. Sure it’s speech. Dog-talk +that’s tongue-tied. Don’t I know? Sure as I’m +a livin’ man born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, just as +sure am I that it makes ’m happy to do tricks for me . . . just +as it makes a man happy to lend a hand to a pal in a ticklish place, +or a lover happy to put his coat around the girl he loves to keep her +warm. I tell you . . . ”</p> +<p>Here, Dag Daughtry broke down from inability to express the concepts +fluttering in his beer-excited, beer-sodden brain, and, with a stutter +or two, made a fresh start.</p> +<p>“You know, it’s all in the matter of talkin’, an’ +Killeny can’t talk. He’s got thoughts inside that +head of his—you can see ’m shinin’ in his lovely brown +eyes—but he can’t get ’em across to me. Why, +I see ’m tryin’ to tell me sometimes so hard that he almost +busts. There’s a big hole between him an’ me, an’ +language is about the only bridge, and he can’t get over the hole, +though he’s got all kinds of ideas an’ feelings just like +mine.</p> +<p>“But, say! The time we get closest together is when I +play the harmonica an’ he yow-yows. Music comes closest +to makin’ the bridge. It’s a regular song without +words. And . . . I can’t explain how . . . but just the +same, when we’ve finished our song, I know we’ve passed +a lot over to each other that don’t need words for the passin’.”</p> +<p>“Why, d’ye know, when I’m playin’ an’ +he’s singin’, it’s a regular duet of what the sky-pilots +’d call religion an’ knowin’ God. Sure, when +we sing together I’m absorbin’ religion an’ gettin’ +pretty close up to God. An’ it’s big, I tell you. +Big as the earth an’ ocean an’ sky an’ all the stars. +I just seem to get hold of a sense that we’re all the same stuff +after all—you, me, Killeny Boy, mountains, sand, salt water, worms, +mosquitoes, suns, an’ shootin’ stars an’ blazin comets +. . . ”</p> +<p>Day Daughtry left his flight as beyond his own grasp of speech, and +concluded, his half embarrassment masked by braggadocio over Michael:</p> +<p>“Oh, believe me, they don’t make dogs like him every +day in the week. Sure, I stole ’m. He looked good +to me. An’ if I had it over, knowin’ as I do known +’m now, I’d steal ’m again if I lost a leg doin’ +it. That’s the kind of a dog <i>he</i> is.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> +<p>The morning the <i>Makambo</i> entered Sydney harbour, Captain Duncan +had another try for Michael. The port doctor’s launch was +coming alongside, when he nodded up to Daughtry, who was passing along +the deck:</p> +<p>“Steward, I’ll give you twenty pounds.”</p> +<p>“No, sir, thank you, sir,” was Dag Daughtry’s answer. +“I couldn’t bear to part with him.”</p> +<p>“Twenty-five pounds, then. I can’t go beyond that. +Besides, there are plenty more Irish terriers in the world.”</p> +<p>“That’s what I’m thinkin’, sir. An’ +I’ll get one for you. Right here in Sydney. An’ +it won’t cost you a penny, sir.”</p> +<p>“But I want Killeny Boy,” the captain persisted.</p> +<p>“An’ so do I, which is the worst of it, sir. Besides, +I got him first.”</p> +<p>“Twenty-five sovereigns is a lot of money . . . for a dog,” +Captain Duncan said.</p> +<p>“An’ Killeny Boy’s a lot of dog . . . for the money,” +the steward retorted. “Why, sir, cuttin’ out all sentiment, +his tricks is worth more ’n that. Him not recognizing me +when I don’t want ’m to is worth fifty pounds of itself. +An’ there’s his countin’ an’ his singin’, +an’ all the rest of his tricks. Now, no matter how I got +him, he didn’t have them tricks. Them tricks are mine. +I taught him them. He ain’t the dog he was when he come +on board. He’s a whole lot of me now, an’ sellin’ +him would be like sellin’ a piece of myself.”</p> +<p>“Thirty pounds,” said the captain with finality.</p> +<p>“No, sir, thankin’ you just the same, sir,” was +Daughtry’s refusal.</p> +<p>And Captain Duncan was forced to turn away in order to greet the +port doctor coming over the side.</p> +<p>Scarcely had the <i>Makambo</i> passed quarantine, and while on her +way up harbour to dock, when a trim man-of-war launch darted in to her +side and a trim lieutenant mounted the <i>Makambo’s</i> boarding-ladder. +His mission was quickly explained. The <i>Albatross</i>, British +cruiser of the second class, of which he was fourth lieutenant, had +called in at Tulagi with dispatches from the High Commissioner of the +English South Seas. A scant twelve hours having intervened between +her arrival and the <i>Makambo’s</i> departure, the Commissioner +of the Solomons and Captain Kellar had been of the opinion that the +missing dog had been carried away on the steamer. Knowing that +the <i>Albatross</i> would beat her to Sydney, the captain of the <i>Albatross</i> +had undertaken to look up the dog. Was the dog, an Irish terrier +answering to the name of Michael, on board?</p> +<p>Captain Duncan truthfully admitted that it was, though he most unveraciously +shielded Dag Daughtry by repeating his yarn of the dog coming on board +of itself. How to return the dog to Captain Kellar?—was +the next question; for the <i>Albatross</i> was bound on to New Zealand. +Captain Duncan settled the matter.</p> +<p>“The <i>Makambo</i> will be back in Tulagi in eight weeks,” +he told the lieutenant, “and I’ll undertake personally to +deliver the dog to its owner. In the meantime we’ll take +good care of it. Our steward has sort of adopted it, so it will +be in good hands.”</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>“Seems we don’t either of us get the dog,” Daughtry +commented resignedly, when Captain Duncan had explained the situation.</p> +<p>But when Daughtry turned his back and started off along the deck, +his constitutional obstinacy tightened his brows so that the Shortlands +planter, observing it, wondered what the captain had been rowing him +about.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>Despite his six quarts a day and all his easy-goingness of disposition, +Dag Daughtry possessed certain integrities. Though he could steal +a dog, or a cat, without a twinge of conscience, he could not but be +faithful to his salt, being so made. He could not draw wages for +being a ship steward without faithfully performing the functions of +ship steward. Though his mind was firmly made up, during the several +days of the <i>Makambo</i> in Sydney, lying alongside the Burns Philp +Dock, he saw to every detail of the cleaning up after the last crowd +of outgoing passengers, and to every detail of preparation for the next +crowd of incoming passengers who had tickets bought for the passage +far away to the coral seas and the cannibal isles.</p> +<p>In the midst of this devotion to his duty, he took a night off and +part of two afternoons. The night off was devoted to the public-houses +which sailors frequent, and where can be learned the latest gossip and +news of ships and of men who sail upon the sea. Such information +did he gather, over many bottles of beer, that the next afternoon, hiring +a small launch at a cost of ten shillings, he journeyed up the harbour +to Jackson Bay, where lay the lofty-poled, sweet-lined, three-topmast +American schooner, the <i>Mary Turner</i>.</p> +<p>Once on board, explaining his errand, he was taken below into the +main cabin, where he interviewed, and was interviewed by, a quartette +of men whom Daughtry qualified to himself as “a rum bunch.”</p> +<p>It was because he had talked long with the steward who had left the +ship, that Dag Daughtry recognized and identified each of the four men. +That, surely, was the “Ancient Mariner,” sitting back and +apart with washed eyes of such palest blue that they seemed a faded +white. Long thin wisps of silvery, unkempt hair framed his face +like an aureole. He was slender to emaciation, cavernously checked, +roll after roll of skin, no longer encasing flesh or muscle, hanging +grotesquely down his neck and swathing the Adam’s apple so that +only occasionally, with queer swallowing motions, did it peep out of +the mummy-wrappings of skin and sink back again from view.</p> +<p>A proper ancient mariner, thought Daughtry. Might be seventy-five, +might just as well be a hundred and five, or a hundred and seventy-five.</p> +<p>Beginning at the right temple, a ghastly scar split the cheek-bone, +sank into the depths of the hollow cheek, notched across the lower jaw, +and plunged to disappearance among the prodigious skin-folds of the +neck. The withered lobes of both ears were perforated by tiny +gypsy-like circles of gold. On the skeleton fingers of his right +hand were no less than five rings—not men’s rings, nor women’s, +but foppish rings—“that would fetch a price,” Daughtry +adjudged. On the left hand were no rings, for there were no fingers +to wear them. Only was there a thumb; and, for that matter, most +of the hand was missing as well, as if it had been cut off by the same +slicing edge that had cleaved him from temple to jaw and heaven alone +knew how far down that skin-draped neck.</p> +<p>The Ancient Mariner’s washed eyes seemed to bore right through +Daughtry (or at least so Daughtry felt), and rendered him so uncomfortable +as to make him casually step to the side for the matter of a yard. +This was possible, because, a servant seeking a servant’s billet, +he was expected to stand and face the four seated ones as if they were +judges on the bench and he the felon in the dock. Nevertheless, +the gaze of the ancient one pursued him, until, studying it more closely, +he decided that it did not reach to him at all. He got the impression +that those washed pale eyes were filmed with dreams, and that the intelligence, +the <i>thing</i>, that dwelt within the skull, fluttered and beat against +the dream-films and no farther.</p> +<p>“How much would you expect?” the captain was asking,—a +most unsealike captain, in Daughtry’s opinion; rather, a spick-and-span, +brisk little business-man or floor-walker just out of a bandbox.</p> +<p>“He shall not share,” spoke up another of the four, huge, +raw-boned, middle-aged, whom Daughtry identified by his ham-like hands +as the California wheat-farmer described by the departed steward.</p> +<p>“Plenty for all,” the Ancient Mariner startled Daughtry +by cackling shrilly. “Oodles and oodles of it, my gentlemen, +in cask and chest, in cask and chest, a fathom under the sand.”</p> +<p>“Share—<i>what</i>, sir?” Daughtry queried, though +well he knew, the other steward having cursed to him the day he sailed +from San Francisco on a blind lay instead of straight wages. “Not +that it matters, sir,” he hastened to add. “I spent +a whalin’ voyage once, three years of it, an’ paid off with +a dollar. Wages for mine, an’ sixty gold a month, seein’ +there’s only four of you.”</p> +<p>“And a mate,” the captain added.</p> +<p>“And a mate,” Daughtry repeated. “Very good, +sir. An’ no share.”</p> +<p>“But yourself?” spoke up the fourth man, a huge-bulking, +colossal-bodied, greasy-seeming grossness of flesh—the Armenian +Jew and San Francisco pawnbroker the previous steward had warned Daughtry +about. “Have you papers—letters of recommendation, +the documents you receive when you are paid off before the shipping +commissioners?”</p> +<p>“I might ask, sir,” Dag Daughtry brazened it, “for +your own papers. This ain’t no regular cargo-carrier or +passenger-carrier, no more than you gentlemen are a regular company +of ship-owners, with regular offices, doin’ business in a regular +way. How do I know if you own the ship even, or that the charter +ain’t busted long ago, or that you’re being libelled ashore +right now, or that you won’t dump me on any old beach anywheres +without a soo-markee of what’s comin’ to me? Howsoever”—he +anticipated by a bluff of his own the show of wrath from the Jew that +he knew would be wind and bluff—“howsoever, here’s +my papers . . . ”</p> +<p>With a swift dip of his hand into his inside coat-pocket he scattered +out in a wealth of profusion on the cabin table all the papers, sealed +and stamped, that he had collected in forty-five years of voyaging, +the latest date of which was five years back.</p> +<p>“I don’t ask your papers,” he went on. “What +I ask is, cash payment in full the first of each month, sixty dollars +a month gold—”</p> +<p>“Oodles and oodles of it, gold and gold and better than gold, +in cask and chest, in cask and chest, a fathom under the sand,” +the Ancient Mariner assured him in beneficent cackles. “Kings, +principalities and powers!—all of us, the least of us. And +plenty more, my gentlemen, plenty more. The latitude and longitude +are mine, and the bearings from the oak ribs on the shoal to Lion’s +Head, and the cross-bearings from the points unnamable, I only know. +I only still live of all that brave, mad, scallywag ship’s company +. . . ”</p> +<p>“Will you sign the articles to that?” the Jew demanded, +cutting in on the ancient’s maunderings.</p> +<p>“What port do you wind up the cruise in?” Daughtry asked.</p> +<p>“San Francisco.”</p> +<p>“I’ll sign the articles that I’m to sign off in +San Francisco then.”</p> +<p>The Jew, the captain, and the farmer nodded.</p> +<p>“But there’s several other things to be agreed upon,” +Daughtry continued. “In the first place, I want my six quarts +a day. I’m used to it, and I’m too old a stager to +change my habits.”</p> +<p>“Of spirits, I suppose?” the Jew asked sarcastically.</p> +<p>“No; of beer, good English beer. It must be understood +beforehand, no matter what long stretches we may be at sea, that a sufficient +supply is taken along.”</p> +<p>“Anything else?” the captain queried.</p> +<p>“Yes, sir,” Daughtry answered. “I got a dog +that must come along.”</p> +<p>“Anything else?—a wife or family maybe?” the farmer +asked.</p> +<p>“No wife or family, sir. But I got a nigger, a perfectly +good nigger, that’s got to come along. He can sign on for +ten dollars a month if he works for the ship all his time. But +if he works for me all the time, I’ll let him sign on for two +an’ a half a month.”</p> +<p>“Eighteen days in the longboat,” the Ancient Mariner +shrilled, to Daughtry’s startlement. “Eighteen days +in the longboat, eighteen days of scorching hell.”</p> +<p>“My word,” quoth Daughtry, “the old gentleman’d +give one the jumps. There’ll sure have to be plenty of beer.”</p> +<p>“Sea stewards put on some style, I must say,” commented +the wheat-farmer, oblivious to the Ancient Mariner, who still declaimed +of the heat of the longboat.</p> +<p>“Suppose we don’t see our way to signing on a steward +who travels in such style?” the Jew asked, mopping the inside +of his collar-band with a coloured silk handkerchief.</p> +<p>“Then you’ll never know what a good steward you’ve +missed, sir,” Daughtry responded airily.</p> +<p>“I guess there’s plenty more stewards on Sydney beach,” +the captain said briskly. “And I guess I haven’t forgotten +old days, when I hired them like so much dirt, yes, by Jinks, so much +dirt, there were so many of them.”</p> +<p>“Thank you, Mr. Steward, for looking us up,” the Jew +took up the idea with insulting oiliness. “We very much +regret our inability to meet your wishes in the matter—”</p> +<p>“And I saw it go under the sand, a fathom under the sand, on +cross-bearings unnamable, where the mangroves fade away, and the coconuts +grow, and the rise of land lifts from the beach to the Lion’s +Head.”</p> +<p>“Hold your horses,” the wheat-farmer said, with a flare +of irritation, directed, not at the Ancient Mariner, but at the captain +and the Jew. “Who’s putting up for this expedition? +Don’t I get no say so? Ain’t my opinion ever to be +asked? I like this steward. Strikes me he’s the real +goods. I notice he’s as polite as all get-out, and I can +see he can take an order without arguing. And he ain’t no +fool by a long shot.”</p> +<p>“That’s the very point, Grimshaw,” the Jew answered +soothingly. “Considering the unusualness of our . . . of +the expedition, we’d be better served by a steward who is more +of a fool. Another point, which I’d esteem a real favour +from you, is not to forget that you haven’t put a red copper more +into this trip than I have—”</p> +<p>“And where’d either of you be, if it wasn’t for +me with my knowledge of the sea?” the captain demanded aggrievedly. +“To say nothing of the mortgage on my house and on the nicest +little best paying flat building in San Francisco since the earthquake.”</p> +<p>“But who’s still putting up?—all of you, I ask +you.” The wheat-farmer leaned forward, resting the heels +of his hands on his knees so that the fingers hung down his long shins, +in Daughtry’s appraisal, half-way to his feet. “You, +Captain Doane, can’t raise another penny on your properties. +My land still grows the wheat that brings the ready. You, Simon +Nishikanta, won’t put up another penny—yet your loan-shark +offices are doing business at the same old stands at God knows what +per cent. to drunken sailors. And you hang the expedition up here +in this hole-in-the-wall waiting for my agent to cable more wheat-money. +Well, I guess we’ll just sign on this steward at sixty a month +and all he asks, or I’ll just naturally quit you cold on the next +fast steamer to San Francisco.”</p> +<p>He stood up abruptly, towering to such height that Daughtry looked +to see the crown of his head collide with the deck above.</p> +<p>“I’m sick and tired of you all, yes, I am,” he +continued. “Get busy! Well, let’s get busy. +My money’s coming. It’ll be here by to-morrow. +Let’s be ready to start by hiring a steward that is a steward. +I don’t care if he brings two families along.”</p> +<p>“I guess you’re right, Grimshaw,” Simon Nishikanta +said appeasingly. “The trip is beginning to get on all our +nerves. Forget it if I fly off the handle. Of course we’ll +take this steward if you want him. I thought he was too stylish +for you.”</p> +<p>He turned to Daughtry.</p> +<p>“Naturally, the least said ashore about us the better.”</p> +<p>“That’s all right, sir. I can keep my mouth shut, +though I might as well tell you there’s some pretty tales about +you drifting around the beach right now.”</p> +<p>“The object of our expedition?” the Jew queried quickly.</p> +<p>Daughtry nodded.</p> +<p>“Is that why you want to come?” was demanded equally +quickly.</p> +<p>Daughtry shook his head.</p> +<p>“As long as you give me my beer each day, sir, I ain’t +goin’ to be interested in your treasure-huntin’. It +ain’t no new tale to me. The South Seas is populous with +treasure-hunters—” Almost could Daughtry have sworn +that he had seen a flash of anxiety break through the dream-films that +bleared the Ancient Mariner’s eyes. “And I must say, +sir,” he went on easily, though saying what he would not have +said had it not been for what he was almost certain he sensed of the +ancient’s anxiousness, “that the South Seas is just naturally +lousy with buried treasure. There’s Keeling-Cocos, millions +’n’ millions of it, pounds sterling, I mean, waiting for +the lucky one with the right steer.”</p> +<p>This time Daughtry could have sworn to having sensed a change toward +relief in the Ancient Mariner, whose eyes were again filmy with dreams.</p> +<p>“But I ain’t interested in treasure, sir,” Daughtry +concluded. “It’s beer I’m interested in. +You can chase your treasure, an’ I don’t care how long, +just as long as I’ve got six quarts to open each day. But +I give you fair warning, sir, before I sign on: if the beer dries up, +I’m goin’ to get interested in what you’re after. +Fair play is my motto.”</p> +<p>“Do you expect us to pay for your beer in addition?” +Simon Nishikanta demanded.</p> +<p>To Daughtry it was too good to be true. Here, with the Jew +healing the breach with the wheat-farmer whose agents still cabled money, +was the time to take advantage.</p> +<p>“Sure, it’s one of our agreements, sir. What time +would it suit you, sir, to-morrow afternoon, for me to sign on at the +shipping commissioner’s?”</p> +<p>“Casks and chests of it, casks and chests of it, oodles and +oodles, a fathom under the sand,” chattered the Ancient Mariner.</p> +<p>“You’re all touched up under the roof,” Daughtry +grinned. “Which ain’t got nothing to do with me as +long as you furnish the beer, pay me due an’ proper what’s +comin’ to me the first of each an’ every month, an’ +pay me off final in San Francisco. As long as you keep up your +end, I’ll sail with you to the Pit ’n’ back an’ +watch you sweatin’ the casks ’n’ chests out of the +sand. What I want is to sail with you if you want me to sail with +you enough to satisfy me.”</p> +<p>Simon Nishikanta glanced about. Grimshaw and Captain Doane +nodded.</p> +<p>“At three o’clock to-morrow afternoon, at the shipping +commissioner’s,” the Jew agreed. “When will +you report for duty?”</p> +<p>“When will you sail, sir?” Daughtry countered.</p> +<p>“Bright and early next morning.”</p> +<p>“Then I’ll be on board and on duty some time to-morrow +night, sir.”</p> +<p>And as he went up the cabin companion, he could hear the Ancient +Mariner maundering: “Eighteen days in the longboat, eighteen days +of scorching hell . . . ”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> +<p>Michael left the <i>Makambo</i> as he had come on board, through +a port-hole. Likewise, the affair occurred at night, and it was +Kwaque’s hands that received him. It had been quick work, +and daring, in the dark of early evening. From the boat-deck, +with a bowline under Kwaque’s arms and a turn of the rope around +a pin, Dag Daughtry had lowered his leprous servitor into the waiting +launch.</p> +<p>On his way below, he encountered Captain Duncan, who saw fit to warn +him:</p> +<p>“No shannigan with Killeny Boy, Steward. He must go back +to Tulagi with us.”</p> +<p>“Yes, sir,” the steward agreed. “An’ +I’m keepin’ him tight in my room to make safe. Want +to see him, sir?”</p> +<p>The very frankness of the invitation made the captain suspicious, +and the thought flashed through his mind that perhaps Killeny Boy was +already hidden ashore somewhere by the dog-stealing steward.</p> +<p>“Yes, indeed I’d like to say how-do-you-do to him,” +Captain Duncan answered.</p> +<p>And his was genuine surprise, on entering the steward’s room, +to behold Michael just rousing from his curled-up sleep on the floor. +But when he left, his surprise would have been shocking could he have +seen through the closed door what immediately began to take place. +Out through the open port-hole, in a steady stream, Daughtry was passing +the contents of the room. Everything went that belonged to him, +including the turtle-shell and the photographs and calendars on the +wall. Michael, with the command of silence laid upon him, went +last. Remained only a sea-chest and two suit-cases, themselves +too large for the port-hole but bare of contents.</p> +<p>When Daughtry sauntered along the main deck a few minutes later and +paused for a gossip with the customs officer and a quartermaster at +the head of the gang-plank, Captain Duncan little dreamed that his casual +glance was resting on his steward for the last time. He watched +him go down the gang-plank empty-handed, with no dog at his heels, and +stroll off along the wharf under the electric lights.</p> +<p>Ten minutes after Captain Duncan saw the last of his broad back, +Daughtry, in the launch with his belongings and heading for Jackson +Bay, was hunched over Michael and caressing him, while Kwaque, crooning +with joy under his breath that he was with all that was precious to +him in the world, felt once again in the side-pocket of his flimsy coat +to make sure that his beloved jews’ harp had not been left behind.</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry was paying for Michael, and paying well. Among +other things, he had not cared to arouse suspicion by drawing his wages +from Burns Philp. The twenty pounds due him he had abandoned, +and this was the very sum, that night on the beach at Tulagi, he had +decided he could realize from the sale of Michael. He had stolen +him to sell. He was paying for him the sales price that had tempted +him.</p> +<p>For, as one has well said: the horse abases the base, ennobles the +noble. Likewise the dog. The theft of a dog to sell for +a price had been the abasement worked by Michael on Dag Daughtry. +To pay the price out of sheer heart-love that could recognize no price +too great to pay, had been the ennoblement of Dag Daughtry which Michael +had worked. And as the launch chug-chugged across the quiet harbour +under the southern stars, Dag Daughtry would have risked and tossed +his life into the bargain in a battle to continue to have and to hold +the dog he had originally conceived of as being interchangeable for +so many dozens of beer.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>The <i>Mary Turner</i>, towed out by a tug, sailed shortly after +daybreak, and Daughtry, Kwaque, and Michael looked their last for ever +on Sydney Harbour.</p> +<p>“Once again these old eyes have seen this fair haven,” +the Ancient Mariner, beside them gazing, babbled; and Daughtry could +not help but notice the way the wheat-farmer and the pawnbroker pricked +their ears to listen and glanced each to the other with scant eyes. +“It was in ’52, in 1852, on such a day as this, all drinking +and singing along the decks, we cleared from Sydney in the <i>Wide Awake</i>. +A pretty craft, oh sirs, a most clever and pretty craft. A crew, +a brave crew, all youngsters, all of us, fore and aft, no man was forty, +a mad, gay crew. The captain was an elderly gentleman of twenty-eight, +the third officer another of eighteen, the down, untouched of steel, +like so much young velvet on his cheek. He, too, died in the longboat. +And the captain gasped out his last under the palm trees of the isle +unnamable while the brown maidens wept about him and fanned the air +to his parching lungs.”</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry heard no more, for he turned below to take up his new +routine of duty. But while he made up bunks with fresh linen and +directed Kwaque’s efforts to cleaning long-neglected floors, he +shook his head to himself and muttered, “He’s a keen ’un. +He’s a keen ’un. All ain’t fools that look it.”</p> +<p>The fine lines of the <i>Mary Turner</i> were explained by the fact +that she had been built for seal-hunting; and for the same reason on +board of her was room and to spare. The forecastle with bunk-space +for twelve, bedded but eight Scandinavian seamen. The five staterooms +of the cabin accommodated the three treasure-hunters, the Ancient Mariner, +and the mate—the latter a large-bodied, gentle-souled Russian-Finn, +known as Mr. Jackson through inability of his shipmates to pronounce +the name he had signed on the ship’s articles.</p> +<p>Remained the steerage, just for’ard of the cabin, separated +from it by a stout bulkhead and entered by a companionway on the main +deck. On this deck, between the break of the poop and the steerage +companion, stood the galley. In the steerage itself, which possessed +a far larger living-space than the cabin, were six capacious bunks, +each double the width of the forecastle bunks, and each curtained and +with no bunk above it.</p> +<p>“Some fella glory-hole, eh, Kwaque?” Daughtry told his +seventeen-years-old brown-skinned Papuan with the withered ancient face +of a centenarian, the legs of a living skeleton, and the huge-stomached +torso of an elderly Japanese wrestler. “Eh, Kwaque! +What you fella think?”</p> +<p>And Kwaque, too awed by the spaciousness to speak, eloquently rolled +his eyes in agreement.</p> +<p>“You likee this piecee bunk?” the cook, a little old +Chinaman, asked the steward with eager humility, inviting the white +man’s acceptance of his own bunk with a wave of arm.</p> +<p>Daughtry shook his head. He had early learned that it was wise +to get along well with sea-cooks, since sea-cocks were notoriously given +to going suddenly lunatic and slicing and hacking up their shipmates +with butcher knives and meat cleavers on the slightest remembered provocation. +Besides, there was an equally good bunk all the way across the width +of the steerage from the Chinaman’s. The bunk next on the +port side to the cook’s and abaft of it Daughtry allotted to Kwaque. +Thus he retained for himself and Michael the entire starboard side with +its three bunks. The next one abaft of his own he named “Killeny +Boy’s,” and called on Kwaque and the cook to take notice. +Daughtry had a sense that the cook, whose name had been quickly volunteered +as Ah Moy, was not entirely satisfied with the arrangement; but it affected +him no more than a momentary curiosity about a Chinaman who drew the +line at a dog taking a bunk in the same apartment with him.</p> +<p>Half an hour later, returning, from setting the cabin aright, to +the steerage for Kwaque to serve him with a bottle of beer, Daughtry +observed that Ah Moy had moved his entire bunk belongings across the +steerage to the third bunk on the starboard side. This had put +him with Daughtry and Michael and left Kwaque with half the steerage +to himself. Daughtry’s curiosity recrudesced.</p> +<p>“What name along that fella Chink?” he demanded of Kwaque. +“He no like ’m you fella boy stop ’m along same fella +side along him. What for? My word! What name? +That fella Chink make ’m me cross along him too much!”</p> +<p>“Suppose ’m that fella Chink maybe he think ’m +me kai-kai along him,” Kwaque grinned in one of his rare jokes.</p> +<p>“All right,” the steward concluded. “We find +out. You move ’m along my bunk, I move ’m along that +fella Chink’s bunk.”</p> +<p>This accomplished, so that Kwaque, Michael, and Ah Moy occupied the +starboard side and Daughtry alone bunked on the port side, he went on +deck and aft to his duties. On his next return he found Ah Moy +had transferred back to the port side, but this time into the last bunk +aft.</p> +<p>“Seems the beggar’s taken a fancy to me,” the steward +smiled to himself.</p> +<p>Nor was he capable of guessing Ah Moy’s reason for bunking +always on the opposite side from Kwaque.</p> +<p>“I changee,” the little old cook explained, with anxious +eyes to please and placate, in response to Daughtry’s direct question. +“All the time like that, changee, plentee changee. You savvee?”</p> +<p>Daughtry did not savvee, and shook his head, while Ah Moy’s +slant eyes betrayed none of the anxiety and fear with which he privily +gazed on Kwaque’s two permanently bent fingers of the left hand +and on Kwaque’s forehead, between the eyes, where the skin appeared +a shade darker, a trifle thicker, and was marked by the first beginning +of three short vertical lines or creases that were already giving him +the lion-like appearance, the leonine face so named by the experts and +technicians of the fell disease.</p> +<p>As the days passed, the steward took facetious occasions, when he +had drunk five quarts of his daily allowance, to shift his and Kwaque’s +bunks about. And invariably Ah Moy shifted, though Daughtry failed +to notice that he never shifted into a bunk which Kwaque had occupied. +Nor did he notice that it was when the time came that Kwaque had variously +occupied all the six bunks that Ah Moy made himself a canvas hammock, +suspended it from the deck beams above and thereafter swung clear in +space and unmolested.</p> +<p>Daughtry dismissed the matter from his thoughts as no more than a +thing in keeping with the general inscrutability of the Chinese mind. +He did notice, however, that Kwaque was never permitted to enter the +galley. Another thing he noticed, which, expressed in his own +words, was: “That’s the all-dangdest cleanest Chink I’ve +ever clapped my lamps on. Clean in galley, clean in steerage, +clean in everything. He’s always washing the dishes in boiling +water, when he isn’t washing himself or his clothes or bedding. +My word, he actually boils his blankets once a week!”</p> +<p>For there were other things to occupy the steward’s mind. +Getting acquainted with the five men aft in the cabin, and lining up +the whole situation and the relations of each of the five to that situation +and to one another, consumed much time. Then there was the path +of the <i>Mary Turner</i> across the sea. No old sailor breathes +who does not desire to know the casual course of his ship and the next +port-of-call.</p> +<p>“We ought to be moving along a line that’ll cross somewhere +northard of New Zealand,” Daughtry guessed to himself, after a +hundred stolen glances into the binnacle. But that was all the +information concerning the ship’s navigation he could steal; for +Captain Doane took the observations and worked them out, to the exclusion +of the mate, and Captain Doane always methodically locked up his chart +and log. That there were heated discussions in the cabin, in which +terms of latitude and longitude were bandied back and forth, Daughtry +did know; but more than that he could not know, because it was early +impressed upon him that the one place for him never to be, at such times +of council, was the cabin. Also, he could not but conclude that +these councils were real battles wherein Messrs. Doane, Nishikanta, +and Grimahaw screamed at each other and pounded the table at each other, +when they were not patiently and most politely interrogating the Ancient +Mariner.</p> +<p>“He’s got their goat,” the steward early concluded +to himself; but, thereafter, try as he would, he failed to get the Ancient +Mariner’s goat.</p> +<p>Charles Stough Greenleaf was the Ancient Mariner’s name. +This, Daughtry got from him, and nothing else did he get save maunderings +and ravings about the heat of the longboat and the treasure a fathom +deep under the sand.</p> +<p>“There’s some of us plays games, an’ some of us +as looks on an’ admires the games they see,” the steward +made his bid one day. “And I’m sure these days lookin’ +on at a pretty game. The more I see it the more I got to admire.”</p> +<p>The Ancient Mariner dreamed back into the steward’s eyes with +a blank, unseeing gaze.</p> +<p>“On the <i>Wide Awake</i> all the stewards were young, mere +boys,” he murmured.</p> +<p>“Yes, sir,” Daughtry agreed pleasantly. “From +all you say, the <i>Wide Awake</i>, with all its youngsters, was sure +some craft. Not like the crowd of old ’uns on this here +hooker. But I doubt, sir, that them youngsters ever played as +clever games as is being played aboard us right now. I just got +to admire the fine way it’s being done, sir.”</p> +<p>“I’ll tell you something,” the Ancient Mariner +replied, with such confidential air that almost Daughtry leaned to hear. +“No steward on the <i>Wide Awake</i> could mix a highball in just +the way I like, as well as you. We didn’t know cocktails +in those days, but we had sherry and bitters. A good appetizer, +too, a most excellent appetizer.”</p> +<p>“I’ll tell you something more,” he continued, just +as it seemed he had finished, and just in time to interrupt Daughtry +away from his third attempt to ferret out the true inwardness of the +situation on the <i>Mary Turner</i> and of the Ancient Mariner’s +part in it. “It is mighty nigh five bells, and I should +be very pleased to have one of your delicious cocktails ere I go down +to dine.”</p> +<p>More suspicious than ever of him was Daughtry after this episode. +But, as the days went by, he came more and more to the conclusion that +Charles Stough Greenleaf was a senile old man who sincerely believed +in the abiding of a buried treasure somewhere in the South Seas.</p> +<p>Once, polishing the brass-work on the hand-rails of the cabin companionway, +Daughtry overheard the ancient one explaining his terrible scar and +missing fingers to Grimshaw and the Armenian Jew. The pair of +them had plied him with extra drinks in the hope of getting more out +of him by way of his loosened tongue.</p> +<p>“It was in the longboat,” the aged voice cackled up the +companion. “On the eleventh day it was that the mutiny broke. +We in the sternsheets stood together against them. It was all +a madness. We were starved sore, but we were mad for water. +It was over the water it began. For, see you, it was our custom +to lick the dew from the oar-blades, the gunwales, the thwarts, and +the inside planking. And each man of us had developed property +in the dew-collecting surfaces. Thus, the tiller and the rudder-head +and half of the plank of the starboard stern-sheet had become the property +of the second officer. No one of us lacked the honour to respect +his property. The third officer was a lad, only eighteen, a brave +and charming boy. He shared with the second officer the starboard +stern-sheet plank. They drew a line to mark the division, and +neither, lapping up what scant moisture fell during the night-hours, +ever dreamed of trespassing across the line. They were too honourable.</p> +<p>“But the sailors—no. They squabbled amongst themselves +over the dew-surfaces, and only the night before one of them was knifed +because he so stole. But on this night, waiting for the dew, a +little of it, to become more, on the surfaces that were mine, I heard +the noises of a dew-lapper moving aft along the port-gunwale—which +was my property aft of the stroke-thwart clear to the stern. I +emerged from a nightmare dream of crystal springs and swollen rivers +to listen to this night-drinker that I feared might encroach upon what +was mine.</p> +<p>“Nearer he came to the line of my property, and I could hear +him making little moaning, whimpering noises as he licked the damp wood. +It was like listening to an animal grazing pasture-grass at night and +ever grazing nearer.</p> +<p>“It chanced I was holding a boat-stretcher in my hand—to +catch what little dew might fall upon it. I did not know who it +was, but when he lapped across the line and moaned and whimpered as +he licked up my precious drops of dew, I struck out. The boat-stretcher +caught him fairly on the nose—it was the bo’s’n—and +the mutiny began. It was the bo’s’n’s knife +that sliced down my face and sliced away my fingers. The third +officer, the eighteen-year-old lad, fought well beside me, and saved +me, so that, just before I fainted, he and I, between us, hove the bo’s’n’s +carcass overside.”</p> +<p>A shifting of feet and changing of positions of those in the cabin +plunged Daughtry back into his polishing, which he had for the time +forgotten. And, as he rubbed the brass-work, he told himself under +his breath: “The old party’s sure been through the mill. +Such things just got to happen.”</p> +<p>“No,” the Ancient Mariner was continuing, in his thin +falsetto, in reply to a query. “It wasn’t the wounds +that made me faint. It was the exertion I made in the struggle. +I was too weak. No; so little moisture was there in my system +that I didn’t bleed much. And the amazing thing, under the +circumstances, was the quickness with which I healed. The second +officer sewed me up next day with a needle he’d made out of an +ivory toothpick and with twine he twisted out of the threads from a +frayed tarpaulin.”</p> +<p>“Might I ask, Mr. Greenleaf, if there were rings at the time +on the fingers that were cut off?” Daughtry heard Simon Nishikanta +ask.</p> +<p>“Yes, and one beauty. I found it afterward in the boat +bottom and presented it to the sandalwood trader who rescued me. +It was a large diamond. I paid one hundred and eighty guineas +for it to an English sailor in the Barbadoes. He’d stolen +it, and of course it was worth more. It was a beautiful gem. +The sandalwood man did not merely save my life for it. In addition, +he spent fully a hundred pounds in outfitting me and buying me a passage +from Thursday Island to Shanghai.”</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>“There’s no getting away from them rings he wears,” +Daughtry overheard Simon Nishikanta that evening telling Grimshaw in +the dark on the weather poop. “You don’t see that +kind nowadays. They’re old, real old. They’re +not men’s rings so much as what you’d call, in the old-fashioned +days, gentlemen’s rings. Real gentlemen, I mean, grand gentlemen, +wore rings like them. I wish collateral like them came into my +loan offices these days. They’re worth big money.”</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>“I just want to tell you, Killeny Boy, that maybe I’ll +be wishin’ before the voyage is over that I’d gone on a +lay of the treasure instead of straight wages,” Dag Daughtry confided +to Michael that night at turning-in time as Kwaque removed his shoes +and as he paused midway in the draining of his sixth bottle. “Take +it from me, Killeny, that old gentleman knows what he’s talkin’ +about, an’ has been some hummer in his days. Men don’t +lose the fingers off their hands and get their faces chopped open just +for nothing—nor sport rings that makes a Jew pawnbroker’s +mouth water.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> +<p>Before the voyage of the <i>Mary Turner</i> came to an end, Dag Daughtry, +sitting down between the rows of water-casks in the main-hold, with +a great laugh rechristened the schooner “the Ship of Fools.” +But that was some weeks after. In the meantime he so fulfilled +his duties that not even Captain Doane could conjure a shadow of complaint.</p> +<p>Especially did the steward attend upon the Ancient Mariner, for whom +he had come to conceive a strong admiration, if not affection. +The old fellow was different from his cabin-mates. They were money-lovers; +everything in them had narrowed down to the pursuit of dollars. +Daughtry, himself moulded on generously careless lines, could not but +appreciate the spaciousness of the Ancient Mariner, who had evidently +lived spaciously and who was ever for sharing the treasure they sought.</p> +<p>“You’ll get your whack, steward, if it comes out of my +share,” he frequently assured Daughtry at times of special kindness +on the latter’s part. “There’s oodles of it, +and oodles of it, and, without kith or kin, I have so little time longer +to live that I shall not need it much or much of it.”</p> +<p>And so the Ship of Fools sailed on, all aft fooling and befouling, +from the guileless-eyed, gentle-souled Finnish mate, who, with the scent +of treasure pungent in his nostrils, with a duplicate key stole the +ship’s daily position from Captain Doane’s locked desk, +to Ah Moy, the cook, who kept Kwaque at a distance and never whispered +warning to the others of the risk they ran from continual contact with +the carrier of the terrible disease.</p> +<p>Kwaque himself had neither thought nor worry of the matter. +He knew the thing as a thing that occasionally happened to human creatures. +It bothered him, from the pain standpoint, scarcely at all, and it never +entered his kinky head that his master did not know about it. +For the same reason he never suspected why Ah Moy kept him so at a distance. +Nor had Kwaque other worries. His god, over all gods of sea and +jungle, he worshipped, and, himself ever intimately allowed in the presence, +paradise was wherever he and his god, the steward, might be.</p> +<p>And so Michael. Much in the same way that Kwaque loved and +worshipped did he love and worship the six-quart man. To Michael +and Kwaque, the daily, even hourly, recognition and consideration of +Dag Daughtry was tantamount to resting continuously in the bosom of +Abraham. The god of Messrs. Doane, Nishikanta, and Grimshaw was +a graven god whose name was Gold. The god of Kwaque and Michael +was a living god, whose voice could be always heard, whose arms could +be always warm, the pulse of whose heart could be always felt throbbing +in a myriad acts and touches.</p> +<p>No greater joy was Michael’s than to sit by the hour with Steward +and sing with him all songs and tunes he sang or hummed. With +a quantity or pitch even more of genius or unusualness in him than in +Jerry, Michael learned more quickly, and since the way of his education +was singing, he came to sing far beyond the best Villa Kennan ever taught +Jerry.</p> +<p>Michael could howl, or sing, rather (because his howling was so mellow +and so controlled), any air that was not beyond his register that Steward +elected to sing with him. In addition, he could sing by himself, +and unmistakably, such simple airs as “Home, Sweet Home,” +“God save the King,” and “The Sweet By and By.” +Even alone, prompted by Steward a score of feet away from him, could +he lift up his muzzle and sing “Shenandoah” and “Roll +me down to Rio.”</p> +<p>Kwaque, on stolen occasions when Steward was not around, would get +out his Jews’ harp and by the sheer compellingness of the primitive +instrument make Michael sing with him the barbaric and devil-devil rhythms +of King William Island. Another master of song, but one in whom +Michael delighted, came to rule over him. This master’s +name was Cocky. He so introduced himself to Michael at their first +meeting.</p> +<p>“Cocky,” he said bravely, without a quiver of fear or +flight, when Michael had charged upon him at sight to destroy him. +And the human voice, the voice of a god, issuing from the throat of +the tiny, snow-white bird, had made Michael go back on his haunches, +while, with eyes and nostrils, he quested the steerage for the human +who had spoken. And there was no human . . . only a small cockatoo +that twisted his head impudently and sidewise at him and repeated, “Cocky.”</p> +<p>The taboo of the chicken Michael had been well taught in his earliest +days at Meringe. Chickens, esteemed by <i>Mister</i> Haggin and +his white-god fellows, were things that dogs must even defend instead +of ever attack. But this thing, itself no chicken, with the seeming +of a wild feathered thing of the jungle that was fair game for any dog, +talked to him with the voice of a god.</p> +<p>“Get off your foot,” it commanded so peremptorily, so +humanly, as again to startle Michael and made him quest about the steerage +for the god-throat that had uttered it.</p> +<p>“Get off your foot, or I’ll throw the leg of Moses at +you,” was the next command from the tiny feathered thing.</p> +<p>After that came a farrago of Chinese, so like the voice of Ah Moy, +that again, though for the last time, Michael sought about the steerage +for the utterer.</p> +<p>At this Cocky burst into such wild and fantastic shrieks of laughter +that Michael, ears pricked, head cocked to one side, identified in the +fibres of the laughter the fibres of the various voices he had just +previously heard.</p> +<p>And Cocky, only a few ounces in weight, less than half a pound, a +tiny framework of fragile bone covered with a handful of feathers and +incasing a heart that was as big in pluck as any heart on the <i>Mary +Turner</i>, became almost immediately Michael’s friend and comrade, +as well as ruler. Minute morsel of daring and courage that Cocky +was, he commanded Michael’s respect from the first. And +Michael, who with a single careless paw-stroke could have broken Cocky’s +slender neck and put out for ever the brave brightness of Cocky’s +eyes, was careful of him from the first. And he permitted him +a myriad liberties that he would never have permitted Kwaque.</p> +<p>Ingrained in Michael’s heredity, from the very beginning of +four-legged dogs on earth, was the <i>defence of the meat</i>. +He never reasoned it. Automatic and involuntary as his heart-beating +and air-breathing, was his defence of his meat once he had his paw on +it, his teeth in it. Only to Steward, by an extreme effort of +will and control, could he accord the right to touch his meat once he +had himself touched it. Even Kwaque, who most usually fed him +under Steward’s instructions, knew that the safety of fingers +and flesh resided in having nothing further whatever to do with anything +of food once in Michael’s possession. But Cocky, a bit of +feathery down, a morsel-flash of light and life with the throat of a +god, violated with sheer impudence and daring Michael’s taboo, +the defence of the meat.</p> +<p>Perched on the rim of Michael’s pannikin, this inconsiderable +adventurer from out of the dark into the sun of life, a mere spark and +mote between the darks, by a ruffing of his salmon-pink crest, a swift +and enormous dilation of his bead-black pupils, and a raucous imperative +cry, as of all the gods, in his throat, could make Michael give back +and permit the fastidious selection of the choicest tidbits of his dish.</p> +<p>For Cocky had a way with him, and ways and ways. He, who was +sheer bladed steel in the imperious flashing of his will, could swashbuckle +and bully like any over-seas roisterer, or wheedle as wickedly winningly +as the first woman out of Eden or the last woman of that descent. +When Cocky, balanced on one leg, the other leg in the air as the foot +of it held the scruff of Michael’s neck, leaned to Michael’s +ear and wheedled, Michael could only lay down silkily the bristly hair-waves +of his neck, and with silly half-idiotic eyes of bliss agree to whatever +was Cocky’s will or whimsey so delivered.</p> +<p>Cocky became more intimately Michael’s because, very early, +Ah Moy washed his hands of the bird. Ah Moy had bought him in +Sydney from a sailor for eighteen shillings and chaffered an hour over +the bargain. And when he saw Cocky, one day, perched and voluble, +on the twisted fingers of Kwaque’s left hand, Ah Moy discovered +such instant distaste for the bird that not even eighteen shillings, +coupled with possession of Cocky and possible contact, had any value +to him.</p> +<p>“You likee him? You wanchee?” he proffered.</p> +<p>“Changee for changee!” Kwaque queried back, taking for +granted that it was an offer to exchange and wondering whether the little +old cook had become enamoured of his precious jews’ harp.</p> +<p>“No changee for changee,” Ah Moy answered. “You +wanchee him, all right, can do.”</p> +<p>“How fashion can do?” Kwaque demanded, who to his bêche-de-mer +English was already adding pidgin English. “Suppose ’m +me fella no got ’m what you fella likee?”</p> +<p>“No fashion changee,” Ah Moy reiterated. “You +wanchee, you likee he stop along you fella all right, my word.”</p> +<p>And so did pass the brave bit of feathered life with the heart of +pluck, called of men, and of himself, “Cocky,” who had been +birthed in the jungle roof of the island of Santo, in the New Hebrides, +who had been netted by a two-legged black man-eater and sold for six +sticks of tobacco and a shingle hatchet to a Scotch trader dying of +malaria, and in turn had been traded from hand to hand, for four shillings +to a blackbirder, for a turtle-shell comb made by an English coal-passer +after an old Spanish design, for the appraised value of six shillings +and sixpence in a poker game in the firemen’s forecastle, for +a second-hand accordion worth at least twenty shillings, and on for +eighteen shillings cash to a little old withered Chinaman—so did +pass Cocky, as mortal or as immortal as any brave sparkle of life on +the planet, from the possession of one, Ah Moy, a sea-cock who, forty +years before, had slain his young wife in Macao for cause and fled away +to sea, to Kwaque, a leprous Black Papuan who was slave to one, Dag +Daughtry, himself a servant of other men to whom he humbly admitted +“Yes, sir,” and “No, sir,” and “Thank +you, sir.”</p> +<p>One other comrade Michael found, although Cocky was no party to the +friendship. This was Scraps, the awkward young Newfoundland puppy, +who was the property of no one, unless of the schooner <i>Mary Turner</i> +herself, for no man, fore or aft, claimed ownership, while every man +disclaimed having brought him on board. So he was called Scraps, +and, since he was nobody’s dog, was everybody’s dog—so +much so, that Mr. Jackson promised to knock Ah Moy’s block off +if he did not feed the puppy well, while Sigurd Halvorsen, in the forecastle, +did his best to knock off Henrik Gjertsen’s block when the latter +was guilty of kicking Scraps out of his way. Yea, even more. +When Simon Nishikanta, huge and gross as in the flesh he was and for +ever painting delicate, insipid, feministic water-colours, when he threw +his deck-chair at Scraps for clumsily knocking over his easel, he found +the ham-like hand of Grimshaw so instant and heavy on his shoulder as +to whirl him half about, almost fling him to the deck, and leave him +lame-muscled and black-and-blued for days.</p> +<p>Michael, full grown, mature, was so merry-hearted an individual that +he found all delight in interminable romps with Scraps. So strong +was the play-instinct in him, as well as was his constitution strong, +that he continually outplayed Scraps to abject weariness, so that he +could only lie on the deck and pant and laugh through air-draughty lips +and dab futilely in the air with weak forepaws at Michael’s continued +ferocious-acted onslaughts. And this, despite the fact that Scraps +out-bullied him and out-scaled him at least three times, and was as +careless and unwitting of the weight of his legs or shoulders as a baby +elephant on a lawn of daisies. Given his breath back again, Scraps +was as ripe as ever for another frolic, and Michael was just as ripe +to meet him. All of which was splendid training for Michael, keeping +him in the tiptop of physical condition and mental wholesomeness.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> +<p>So sailed the Ship of Fools—Michael playing with Scraps, respecting +Cocky and by Cocky being bullied and wheedled, singing with Steward +and worshipping him; Daughtry drinking his six quarts of beer each day, +collecting his wages the first of each month, and admiring Charles Stough +Greenleaf as the finest man on board; Kwaque serving and loving his +master and thickening and darkening and creasing his brow with the growing +leprous infiltration; Ah Moy avoiding the Black Papuan as the very plague, +washing himself continuously and boiling his blankets once a week; Captain +Doane doing the navigating and worrying about his flat-building in San +Francisco; Grimshaw resting his ham-hands on his colossal knees and +girding at the pawnbroker to contribute as much to the adventure as +he was contributing from his wheat-ranches; Simon Nishikanta wiping +his sweaty neck with the greasy silk handkerchief and painting endless +water-colours; the mate patiently stealing the ship’s latitude +and longitude with his duplicate key; and the Ancient Mariner, solacing +himself with Scotch highballs, smoking fragrant three-for-a-dollar Havanas +that were charged to the adventure, and for ever maundering about the +hell of the longboat, the cross-bearings unnamable, and the treasure +a fathom under the sand.</p> +<p>Came a stretch of ocean that to Daughtry was like all other stretches +of ocean and unidentifiable from them. No land broke the sea-rim. +The ship the centre, the horizon was the invariable and eternal circle +of the world. The magnetic needle in the binnacle was the point +on which the <i>Mary Turner</i> ever pivoted. The sun rose in +the undoubted east and set in the undoubted west, corrected and proved, +of course, by declination, deviation, and variation; and the nightly +march of the stars and constellations proceeded across the sky.</p> +<p>And in this stretch of ocean, lookouts were mastheaded at day-dawn +and kept mastheaded until twilight of evening, when the <i>Mary Turner</i> +was hove-to, to hold her position through the night. As time went +by, and the scent, according to the Ancient Mariner, grow hotter, all +three of the investors in the adventure came to going aloft. Grimshaw +contented himself with standing on the main crosstrees. Captain +Doane climbed even higher, seating himself on the stump of the foremast +with legs a-straddle of the butt of the fore-topmast. And Simon +Nishikanta tore himself away from his everlasting painting of all colour-delicacies +of sea and sky such as are painted by seminary maidens, to be helped +and hoisted up the ratlines of the mizzen rigging, the huge bulk of +him, by two grinning, slim-waisted sailors, until they lashed him squarely +on the crosstrees and left him to stare with eyes of golden desire, +across the sun-washed sea through the finest pair of unredeemed binoculars +that had ever been pledged in his pawnshops.</p> +<p>“Strange,” the Ancient Mariner would mutter, “strange, +and most strange. This is the very place. There can be no +mistake. I’d have trusted that youngster of a third officer +anywhere. He was only eighteen, but he could navigate better than +the captain. Didn’t he fetch the atoll after eighteen days +in the longboat? No standard compasses, and you know what a small-boat +horizon is, with a big sea, for a sextant. He died, but the dying +course he gave me held good, so that I fetched the atoll the very next +day after I hove his body overboard.”</p> +<p>Captain Doane would shrug his shoulders and defiantly meet the mistrustful +eyes of the Armenian Jew.</p> +<p>“It cannot have sunk, surely,” the Ancient Mariner would +tactfully carry across the forbidding pause. “The island +was no mere shoal or reef. The Lion’s Head was thirty-eight +hundred and thirty-five feet. I saw the captain and the third +officer triangulate it.”</p> +<p>“I’ve raked and combed the sea,” Captain Doane +would then break out, “and the teeth of my comb are not so wide +apart as to let slip through a four-thousand-foot peak.”</p> +<p>“Strange, strange,” the Ancient Mariner would next mutter, +half to his cogitating soul, half aloud to the treasure-seekers. +Then, with a sudden brightening, he would add:</p> +<p>“But, of course, the variation has changed, Captain Doane. +Have you allowed for the change in variation for half a century! +That should make a grave difference. Why, as I understand it, +who am no navigator, the variation was not so definitely and accurately +known in those days as now.”</p> +<p>“Latitude was latitude, and longitude was longitude,” +would be the captain’s retort. “Variation and deviation +are used in setting courses and estimating dead reckoning.”</p> +<p>All of which was Greek to Simon Nishikanta, who would promptly take +the Ancient Mariner’s side of the discussion.</p> +<p>But the Ancient Mariner was fair-minded. What advantage he +gave the Jew one moment, he balanced the next moment with an advantage +to the skipper.</p> +<p>“It’s a pity,” he would suggest to Captain Doane, +“that you have only one chronometer. The entire fault may +be with the chronometer. Why did you sail with only one chronometer?”</p> +<p>“But I <i>was</i> willing for two,” the Jew would defend. +“You know that, Grimshaw?”</p> +<p>The wheat-farmer would nod reluctantly and Captain would snap:</p> +<p>“But not for three chronometers.”</p> +<p>“But if two was no better than one, as you said so yourself +and as Grimshaw will bear witness, then three was no better than two +except for an expense.”</p> +<p>“But if you only have two chronometers, how can you tell which +has gone wrong?” Captain Doane would demand.</p> +<p>“Search me,” would come the pawnbroker’s retort, +accompanied by an incredulous shrug of the shoulders. “If +you can’t tell which is wrong of two, then how much harder must +it be to tell which is wrong of two dozen? With only two, it’s +a fifty-fifty split that one or the other is wrong.”</p> +<p>“But don’t you realize—”</p> +<p>“I realize that it’s all a great foolishness, all this +highbrow stuff about navigation. I’ve got clerks fourteen +years old in my offices that can figure circles all around you and your +navigation. Ask them that if two chronometers ain’t better +than one, then how can two thousand be better than one? And they’d +answer quick, snap, like that, that if two dollars ain’t any better +than one dollar, then two thousand dollars ain’t any better than +one dollar. That’s common sense.”</p> +<p>“Just the same, you’re wrong on general principle,” +Grimshaw would oar in. “I said at the time that the only +reason we took Captain Doane in with us on the deal was because we needed +a navigator and because you and me didn’t know the first thing +about it. You said, ‘Yes, sure’; and right away knew +more about it than him when you wouldn’t stand for buying three +chronometers. What was the matter with you was that the expense +hurt you. That’s about as big an idea as your mind ever +had room for. You go around looking for to dig out ten million +dollars with a second-hand spade you call buy for sixty-eight cents.”</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry could not fail to overhear some of these conversations, +which were altercations rather than councils. The invariable ending, +for Simon Nishikanta, would be what sailors name “the sea-grouch.” +For hours afterward the sulky Jew would speak to no one nor acknowledge +speech from any one. Vainly striving to paint, he would suddenly +burst into violent rage, tear up his attempt, stamp it into the deck, +then get out his large-calibred automatic rifle, perch himself on the +forecastle-head, and try to shoot any stray porpoise, albacore, or dolphin. +It seemed to give him great relief to send a bullet home into the body +of some surging, gorgeous-hued fish, arrest its glorious flashing motion +for ever, and turn it on its side slowly to sink down into the death +and depth of the sea.</p> +<p>On occasion, when a school of blackfish disported by, each one of +them a whale of respectable size, Nishikanta would be beside himself +in the ecstasy of inflicting pain. Out of the school perhaps he +would reach a score of the leviathans, his bullets biting into them +like whip-lashes, so that each, like a colt surprised by the stock-whip, +would leap in the air, or with a flirt of tail dive under the surface, +and then charge madly across the ocean and away from sight in a foam-churn +of speed.</p> +<p>The Ancient Mariner would shake his head sadly; and Daughtry, who +likewise was hurt by the infliction of hurt on unoffending animals, +would sympathize with him and fetch him unbidden another of the expensive +three-for-a-dollar cigars so that his feelings might be soothed. +Grimshaw would curl his lip in a sneer and mutter: “The cheap +skate. The skunk. No man with half the backbone of a man +would take it out of the harmless creatures. He’s that kind +that if he didn’t like you, or if you criticised his grammar or +arithmetic, he’d kick your dog to get even . . . or poison it. +In the good old days up in Colusa we used to hang men like him just +to keep the air we breathed clean and wholesome.”</p> +<p>But it was Captain Doane who protested outright.</p> +<p>“Look at here, Nishikanta,” he would say, his face white +and his lips trembling with anger. “That’s rough stuff, +and all you can get back for it is rough stuff. I know what I’m +talking about. You’ve got no right to risk our lives that +way. Wasn’t the pilot boat <i>Annie Mine</i> sunk by a whale +right in the Golden Gate? Didn’t I sail in as a youngster, +second mate on the brig <i>Berncastle</i>, into Hakodate, pumping double +watches to keep afloat just because a whale took a smash at us? +Didn’t the full-rigged ship, the whaler <i>Essex</i>, sink off +the west coast of South America, twelve hundred miles from the nearest +land for the small boats to cover, and all because of a big cow whale +that butted her into kindling-wood?”</p> +<p>And Simon Nishikanta, in his grouch, disdaining to reply, would continue +to pepper the last whale into flight beyond the circle of the sea their +vision commanded.</p> +<p>“I remember the whaleship <i>Essex</i>,” the Ancient +Mariner told Dag Daughtry. “It was a cow with a calf that +did for her. Her barrels were two-thirds full, too. She +went down in less than an hour. One of the boats never was heard +of.”</p> +<p>“And didn’t another one of her boats get to Hawaii, sir?” +Daughtry queried with all due humility of respect. “Leastwise, +thirty years ago, when I was in Honolulu, I met a man, an old geezer, +who claimed he’d been a harpooner on a whaleship sunk by a whale +off the coast of South America. That was the first and last I +heard of it, until right now you speaking of it, sir. It must +a-been the same ship, sir, don’t you think?”</p> +<p>“Unless two different ships were whale-sunk off the west coast,” +the Ancient Mariner replied. “And of the one ship, the <i>Essex</i>, +there is no discussion. It is historical. The chance is +likely, steward, that the man you mentioned was from the <i>Essex</i>.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2> +<p>Captain Doane worked hard, pursuing the sun in its daily course through +the sky, by the equation of time correcting its aberrations due to the +earth’s swinging around the great circle of its orbit, and charting +Sumner lines innumerable, working assumed latitudes for position until +his head grew dizzy.</p> +<p>Simon Nishikanta sneered openly at what he considered the captain’s +inefficient navigation, and continued to paint water-colours when he +was serene, and to shoot at whales, sea-birds, and all things hurtable +when he was downhearted and sea-sore with disappointment at not sighting +the Lion’s Head peak of the Ancient Mariner’s treasure island.</p> +<p>“I’ll show I ain’t a pincher,” Nishikanta +announced one day, after having broiled at the mast-head for five hours +of sea-searching. “Captain Doane, how much could we have +bought extra chronometers for in San Francisco—good second-hand +ones, I mean?”</p> +<p>“Say a hundred dollars,” the captain answered.</p> +<p>“Very well. And this ain’t a piker’s proposition. +The cost of such a chronometer would have been divided between the three +of us. I stand for its total cost. You just tell the sailors +that I, Simon Nishikanta, will pay one hundred dollars gold money for +the first one that sights land on Mr. Greenleaf’s latitude and +longitude.”</p> +<p>But the sailors who swarmed the mast-heads were doomed to disappointment, +in that for only two days did they have opportunity to stare the ocean +surface for the reward. Nor was this due entirely to Dag Daughtry, +despite the fact that his own intention and act would have been sufficient +to spoil their chance for longer staring.</p> +<p>Down in the lazarette, under the main-cabin floor, it chanced that +he took toll of the cases of beer which had been shipped for his especial +benefit. He counted the cases, doubted the verdict of his senses, +lighted more matches, counted again, then vainly searched the entire +lazarette in the hope of finding more cases of beer stored elsewhere.</p> +<p>He sat down under the trap door of the main-cabin floor and thought +for a solid hour. It was the Jew again, he concluded—the +Jew who had been willing to equip the <i>Mary Turner</i> with two chronometers, +but not with three; the Jew who had ratified the agreement of a sufficient +supply to permit Daughtry his daily six quarts. Once again the +steward counted the cases to make sure. There were three. +And since each case contained two dozen quarts, and since his whack +each day was half a dozen quarts, it was patent that, the supply that +stared him in the face would last him only twelve days. And twelve +days were none too long to sail from this unidentifiable naked sea-stretch +to the nearest possible port where beer could be purchased.</p> +<p>The steward, once his mind was made up, wasted no time. The +clock marked a quarter before twelve when he climbed up out of the lazarette, +replaced the trapdoor, and hurried to set the table. He served +the company through the noon meal, although it was all he could do to +refrain from capsizing the big tureen of split-pea soup over the head +of Simon Nishikanta. What did effectually withstrain him was the +knowledge of the act which in the lazarette he had already determined +to perform that afternoon down in the main hold where the water-casks +were stored.</p> +<p>At three o’clock, while the Ancient Mariner supposedly drowned +in his room, and while Captain Doane, Grimshaw, and half the watch on +deck clustered at the mast-heads to try to raise the Lion’s Head +from out the sapphire sea, Dag Daughtry dropped down the ladder of the +open hatchway into the main hold. Here, in long tiers, with alleyways +between, the water-casks were chocked safely on their sides.</p> +<p>From inside his shirt the steward drew a brace, and to it fitted +a half-inch bit from his hip-pocket. On his knees, he bored through +the head of the first cask until the water rushed out upon the deck +and flowed down into the bilge. He worked quickly, boring cask +after cask down the alleyway that led to deeper twilight. When +he had reached the end of the first row of casks he paused a moment +to listen to the gurglings of the many half-inch streams running to +waste. His quick ears caught a similar gurgling from the right +in the direction of the next alleyway. Listening closely, he could +have sworn he heard the sounds of a bit biting into hard wood.</p> +<p>A minute later, his own brace and bit carefully secreted, his hand +was descending on the shoulder of a man he could not recognize in the +gloom, but who, on his knees and wheezing, was steadily boring into +the head of a cask. The culprit made no effort to escape, and +when Daughtry struck a match he gazed down into the upturned face of +the Ancient Mariner.</p> +<p>“My word!” the steward muttered his amazement softly. +“What in hell are you running water out for?”</p> +<p>He could feel the old man’s form trembling with violent nervousness, +and his own heart smote him for gentleness.</p> +<p>“It’s all right,” he whispered. “Don’t +mind me. How many have you bored?”</p> +<p>“All in this tier,” came the whispered answer. +“You will not inform on me to the . . . the others?”</p> +<p>“Inform?” Daughtry laughed softly. “I don’t +mind telling you that we’re playing the same game, though I don’t +know why you should play it. I’ve just finished boring all +of the starboard row. Now I tell you, sir, you skin out right +now, quietly, while the goin’ is good. Everybody’s +aloft, and you won’t be noticed. I’ll go ahead and +finish this job . . . all but enough water to last us say a dozen days.”</p> +<p>“I should like to talk with you . . . to explain matters,” +the Ancient Mariner whispered.</p> +<p>“Sure, sir, an’ I don’t mind sayin’, sir, +that I’m just plain mad curious to hear. I’ll join +you down in the cabin, say in ten minutes, and we can have a real gam. +But anyway, whatever your game is, I’m with you. Because +it happens to be my game to get quick into port, and because, sir, I +have a great liking and respect for you. Now shoot along. +I’ll be with you inside ten minutes.”</p> +<p>“I like you, steward, very much,” the old man quavered.</p> +<p>“And I like you, sir—and a damn sight more than them +money-sharks aft. But we’ll just postpone this. You +beat it out of here, while I finish scuppering the rest of the water.”</p> +<p>A quarter of an hour later, with the three money-sharks still at +the mast-heads, Charles Stough Greenleaf was seated in the cabin and +sipping a highball, and Dag Daughtry was standing across the table from +him, drinking directly from a quart bottle of beer.</p> +<p>“Maybe you haven’t guessed it,” the Ancient Mariner +said; “but this is my fourth voyage after this treasure.”</p> +<p>“You mean . . . ?” Daughtry asked.</p> +<p>“Just that. There isn’t any treasure. There +never was one—any more than the Lion’s Head, the longboat, +or the bearings unnamable.”’</p> +<p>Daughtry rumpled his grizzled thatch of hair in his perplexity, as +he admitted:</p> +<p>“Well, you got me, sir. You sure got me to believin’ +in that treasure.”</p> +<p>“And I acknowledge, steward, that I am pleased to hear it. +It shows that I have not lost my cunning when I can deceive a man like +you. It is easy to deceive men whose souls know only money. +But you are different. You don’t live and breathe for money. +I’ve watched you with your dog. I’ve watched you with +your nigger boy. I’ve watched you with your beer. +And just because your heart isn’t set on a great buried treasure +of gold, you are harder to deceive. Those whose hearts are set, +are most astonishingly easy to fool. They are of cheap kidney. +Offer them a proposition of one hundred dollars for one, and they are +like hungry pike snapping at the bait. Offer a thousand dollars +for one, or ten thousand for one, and they become sheer lunatic. +I am an old man, a very old man. I like to live until I die—I +mean, to live decently, comfortably, respectably.”</p> +<p>“And you like the voyages long? I begin to see, sir. +Just as they’re getting near to where the treasure ain’t, +a little accident like the loss of their water-supply sends them into +port and out again to start hunting all over.”</p> +<p>The Ancient Mariner nodded, and his sun-washed eyes twinkled.</p> +<p>“There was the <i>Emma Louisa</i>. I kept her on the +long voyage over eighteen months with water accidents and similar accidents. +And, besides, they kept me in one of the best hotels in New Orleans +for over four months before the voyage began, and advanced to me handsomely, +yes, bravely, handsomely.”</p> +<p>“But tell me more, sir; I am most interested,” Dag Daughtry +concluded his simple matter of the beer. “It’s +a good game. I might learn it for my old age, though I give you +my word, sir, I won’t butt in on your game. I wouldn’t +tackle it until you are gone, sir, good game that it is.”</p> +<p>“First of all, you must pick out men with money—with +plenty of money, so that any loss will not hurt them. Also, they +are easier to interest—”</p> +<p>“Because they are more hoggish,” the steward interrupted. +“The more money they’ve got the more they want.”</p> +<p>“Precisely,” the Ancient Mariner continued. “And, +at least, they are repaid. Such sea-voyages are excellent for +their health. After all, I do them neither hurt nor harm, but +only good, and add to their health.”</p> +<p>“But them scars—that gouge out of your face—all +them fingers missing on your hand? You never got them in the fight +in the longboat when the bo’s’n carved you up. Then +where in Sam Hill did you get the them? Wait a minute, sir. +Let me fill your glass first.” And with a fresh-brimmed +glass, Charles Stough Greanleaf narrated the history of his scars.</p> +<p>“First, you must know, steward, that I am—well, a gentleman. +My name has its place in the pages of the history of the United States, +even back before the time when they were the United States. I +graduated second in my class in a university that it is not necessary +to name. For that matter, the name I am known by is not my name. +I carefully compounded it out of names of other families. I have +had misfortunes. I trod the quarter-deck when I was a young man, +though never the deck of the <i>Wide Awake</i>, which is the ship of +my fancy—and of my livelihood in these latter days.</p> +<p>“The scars you asked about, and the missing fingers? +Thus it chanced. It was the morning, at late getting-up times +in a Pullman, when the accident happened. The car being crowded, +I had been forced to accept an upper berth. It was only the other +day. A few years ago. I was an old man then. We were +coming up from Florida. It was a collision on a high trestle. +The train crumpled up, and some of the cars fell over sideways and fell +off, ninety feet into the bottom of a dry creek. It was dry, though +there was a pool of water just ten feet in diameter and eighteen inches +deep. All the rest was dry boulders, and I bull’s-eyed that +pool.</p> +<p>“This is the way it was. I had just got on my shoes and +pants and shirt, and had started to get out of the bunk. There +I was, sitting on the edge of the bunk, my legs dangling down, when +the locomotives came together. The berths, upper and lower, on +the opposite side had already been made up by the porter.</p> +<p>“And there I was, sitting, legs dangling, not knowing where +I was, on a trestle or a flat, when the thing happened. I just +naturally left that upper berth, soared like a bird across the aisle, +went through the glass of the window on the opposite side clean head-first, +turned over and over through the ninety feet of fall more times than +I like to remember, and by some sort of miracle was mostly flat-out +in the air when I bull’s-eyed that pool of water. It was +only eighteen inches deep. But I hit it flat, and I hit it so +hard that it must have cushioned me. I was the only survivor of +my car. It struck forty feet away from me, off to the side. +And they took only the dead out of it. When they took me out of +the pool I wasn’t dead by any means. And when the surgeons +got done with me, there were the fingers gone from my hand, that scar +down the side of my face . . . and, though you’d never guess it, +I’ve been three ribs short of the regular complement ever since.</p> +<p>“Oh, I had no complaint coming. Think of the others in +that car—all dead. Unfortunately, I was riding on a pass, +and so could not sue the railroad company. But here I am, the +only man who ever dived ninety feet into eighteen inches of water and +lived to tell the tale.—Steward, if you don’t mind replenishing +my glass . . . ”</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry complied and in his excitement of interest pulled off +the top of another quart of beer for himself.</p> +<p>“Go on, go on, sir,” he murmured huskily, wiping his +lips, “and the treasure-hunting graft. I’m straight +dying to hear. Sir, I salute you.”</p> +<p>“I may say, steward,” the Ancient Mariner resumed, “that +I was born with a silver spoon that melted in my mouth and left me a +proper prodigal son. Also, that I was born with a backbone of +pride that would not melt. Not for a paltry railroad accident, +but for things long before as well as after, my family let me die, and +I . . . I let it live. That is the story. I let my family +live. Furthermore, it was not my family’s fault. I +never whimpered. I never let on. I melted the last of my +silver spoon—South Sea cotton, an’ it please you, cacao +in Tonga, rubber and mahogany in Yucatan. And do you know, at +the end, I slept in Bowery lodging-houses and ate scrapple in East-Side +feeding-dens, and, on more than one occasion, stood in the bread-line +at midnight and pondered whether or not I should faint before I fed.”</p> +<p>“And you never squealed to your family,” Dag Daughtry +murmured admiringly in the pause.</p> +<p>The Ancient Mariner straightened up his shoulders, threw his head +back, then bowed it and repeated, “No, I never squealed. +I went into the poor-house, or the county poor-farm as they call it. +I lived sordidly. I lived like a beast. For six months I +lived like a beast, and then I saw my way out. I set about building +the <i>Wide Awake</i>. I built her plank by plank, and copper-fastened +her, selected her masts and every timber of her, and personally signed +on her full ship’s complement fore-and-aft, and outfitted her +amongst the Jews, and sailed with her to the South Seas and the treasure +buried a fathom under the sand.</p> +<p>“You see,” he explained, “all this I did in my +mind, for all the time I was a hostage in the poor-farm of broken men.”</p> +<p>The Ancient Mariner’s face grew suddenly bleak and fierce, +and his right hand flashed out to Daughtry’s wrist, prisoning +it in withered fingers of steel.</p> +<p>“It was a long, hard way to get out of the poor-farm and finance +my miserable little, pitiful little, adventure of the <i>Wide Awake</i>. +Do you know that I worked in the poor-farm laundry for two years, for +one dollar and a half a week, with my one available hand and what little +I could do with the other, sorting dirty clothes and folding sheets +and pillow-slips until I thought a thousand times my poor old back would +break in two, and until I knew a million times the location in my chest +of every fraction of an inch of my missing ribs.”</p> +<p>“You are a young man yet—”</p> +<p>Daughtry grinned denial as he rubbed his grizzled mat of hair.</p> +<p>“You are a young man yet, steward,” the Ancient Mariner +insisted with a show of irritation. “You have never been +shut out from life. In the poor-farm one is shut out from life. +There is no respect—no, not for age alone, but for human life +in the poor-house. How shall I say it? One is not dead. +Nor is one alive. One is what once was alive and is in process +of becoming dead. Lepers are treated that way. So are the +insane. I know it. When I was young and on the sea, a brother-lieutenant +went mad. Sometimes he was violent, and we struggled with him, +twisting his arms, bruising his flesh, tying him helpless while we sat +and panted on him that he might not do harm to us, himself, or the ship. +And he, who still lived, died to us. Don’t you understand? +He was no longer of us, like us. He was something other. +That is it—<i>other</i>. And so, in the poor-farm, we, who +are yet unburied, are <i>other</i>. You have heard me chatter +about the hell of the longboat. That is a pleasant diversion in +life compared with the poor-farm. The food, the filth, the abuse, +the bullying, the—the sheer animalness of it!</p> +<p>“For two years I worked for a dollar and a half a week in the +laundry. And imagine me, who had melted a silver spoon in my mouth—a +sizable silver spoon steward—imagine me, my old sore bones, my +old belly reminiscent of youth’s delights, my old palate ticklish +yet and not all withered of the deviltries of taste learned in younger +days—as I say, steward, imagine me, who had ever been free-handed, +lavish, saving that dollar and a half intact like a miser, never spending +a penny of it on tobacco, never mitigating by purchase of any little +delicacy the sad condition of my stomach that protested against the +harshness and indigestibility of our poor fare. I cadged tobacco, +poor cheap tobacco, from poor doddering old chaps trembling on the edge +of dissolution. Ay, and when Samuel Merrivale I found dead in +the morning, next cot to mine, I first rummaged his poor old trousers’ +pocket for the half-plug of tobacco I knew was the total estate he left, +then announced the news.</p> +<p>“Oh, steward, I was careful of that dollar and a half. +Don’t you see?—I was a prisoner sawing my way out with a +tiny steel saw. And I sawed out!” His voice rose in +a shrill cackle of triumph. “Steward, I sawed out!”</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry held forth and up his beer-bottle as he said gravely +and sincerely:</p> +<p>“Sir, I salute you.”</p> +<p>“And I thank you, sir—you understand,” the Ancient +Mariner replied with simple dignity to the toast, touching his glass +to the bottle and drinking with the steward eyes to eyes.</p> +<p>“I should have had one hundred and fifty-six dollars when I +left the poor-farm,” the ancient one continued. “But +there were the two weeks I lost, with influenza, and the one week from +a confounded pleurisy, so that I emerged from that place of the living +dead with but one hundred and fifty-one dollars and fifty cents.”</p> +<p>“I see, sir,” Daughtry interrupted with honest admiration. +“The tiny saw had become a crowbar, and with it you were going +back to break into life again.”</p> +<p>All the scarred face and washed eyes of Charles Stough Greenleaf +beamed as he held his glass up.</p> +<p>“Steward, I salute you. You understand. And you +have said it well. I was going back to break into the house of +life. It was a crowbar, that pitiful sum of money accumulated +by two years of crucifixion. Think of it! A sum that in +the days ere the silver spoon had melted, I staked in careless moods +of an instant on a turn of the cards. But as you say, a burglar, +I came back to break into life, and I came to Boston. You have +a fine turn for a figure of speech, steward, and I salute you.”</p> +<p>Again bottle and glass tinkled together, and both men drank eyes +to eyes and each was aware that the eyes he gazed into were honest and +understanding.</p> +<p>“But it was a thin crowbar, steward. I dared not put +my weight on it for a proper pry. I took a room in a small but +respectable hotel, European plan. It was in Boston, I think I +said. Oh, how careful I was of my crowbar! I scarcely ate +enough to keep my frame inhabited. But I bought drinks for others, +most carefully selected—bought drinks with an air of prosperity +that was as a credential to my story; and in my cups (my apparent cups, +steward), spun an old man’s yarn of the <i>Wide Awake</i>, the +longboat, the bearings unnamable, and the treasure under the sand.—A +fathom under the sand; that was literary; it was psychological; it smacked +of the salt sea, and daring rovers, and the loot of the Spanish Main.</p> +<p>“You have noticed this nugget I wear on my watch-chain, steward? +I could not afford it at that time, but I talked golden instead, California +gold, nuggets and nuggets, oodles and oodles, from the diggings of forty-nine +and fifty. That was literary. That was colour. Later, +after my first voyage out of Boston I was financially able to buy a +nugget. It was so much bait to which men rose like fishes. +And like fishes they nibbled. These rings, also—bait. +You never see such rings now. After I got in funds, I purchased +them, too. Take this nugget: I am talking. I toy with it +absently as I am telling of the great gold treasure we buried under +the sand. Suddenly the nugget flashes fresh recollection into +my mind. I speak of the longboat, of our thirst and hunger, and +of the third officer, the fair lad with cheeks virgin of the razor, +and that he it was who used it as a sinker when we strove to catch fish.</p> +<p>“But back in Boston. Yarns and yarns, when seemingly +I was gone in drink, I told my apparent cronies—men whom I despised, +stupid dolts of creatures that they were. But the word spread, +until one day, a young man, a reporter, tried to interview me about +the treasure and the <i>Wide Awake</i>. I was indignant, angry.—Oh, +softly, steward, softly; in my heart was great joy as I denied that +young reporter, knowing that from my cronies he already had a sufficiency +of the details.</p> +<p>“And the morning paper gave two whole columns and headlines +to the tale. I began to have callers. I studied them out +well. Many were for adventuring after the treasure who themselves +had no money. I baffled and avoided them, and waited on, eating +even less as my little capital dwindled away.</p> +<p>“And then he came, my gay young doctor—doctor of philosophy +he was, for he was very wealthy. My heart sang when I saw him. +But twenty-eight dollars remained to me—after it was gone, the +poor-house, or death. I had already resolved upon death as my +choice rather than go back to be of that dolorous company, the living +dead of the poor-farm. But I did not go back, nor did I die. +The gay young doctor’s blood ran warm at thought of the South +Seas, and in his nostrils I distilled all the scents of the flower-drenched +air of that far-off land, and in his eyes I builded him the fairy visions +of the tradewind clouds, the monsoon skies, the palm isles and the coral +seas.</p> +<p>“He was a gay, mad young dog, grandly careless of his largess, +fearless as a lion’s whelp, lithe and beautiful as a leopard, +and mad, a trifle mad of the deviltries and whimsies that tickled in +that fine brain of his. Look you, steward. Before we sailed +in the <i>Gloucester</i> fishing-schooner, purchased by the doctor, +and that was like a yacht and showed her heels to most yachts, he had +me to his house to advise about personal equipment. We were overhauling +in a gear-room, when suddenly he spoke:</p> +<p>“‘I wonder how my lady will take my long absence. +What say you? Shall she go along?’</p> +<p>“And I had not known that he had any wife or lady. And +I looked my surprise and incredulity.</p> +<p>“‘Just that you do not believe I shall take her on the +cruise,’ he laughed, wickedly, madly, in my astonished face. +‘Come, you shall meet her.’</p> +<p>“Straight to his bedroom and his bed he led me, and, turning +down the covers, showed there to me, asleep as she had slept for many +a thousand years, the mummy of a slender Egyptian maid.</p> +<p>“And she sailed with us on the long vain voyage to the South +Seas and back again, and, steward, on my honour, I grew quite fond of +the dear maid myself.”</p> +<p>The Ancient Mariner gazed dreamily into his glass, and Dag Daughtry +took advantage of the pause to ask:</p> +<p>“But the young doctor? How did he take the failure to +find the treasure?”</p> +<p>The Ancient Mariner’s face lighted with joy.</p> +<p>“He called me a delectable old fraud, with his arm on my shoulder +while he did it. Why, steward, I had come to love that young man +like a splendid son. And with his arm on my shoulder, and I know +there was more than mere kindness in it, he told me we had barely reached +the River Plate when he discovered me. With laughter, and with +more than one slap of his hand on my shoulder that was more caress than +jollity, he pointed out the discrepancies in my tale (which I have since +amended, steward, thanks to him, and amended well), and told me that +the voyage had been a grand success, making him eternally my debtor.</p> +<p>“What could I do? I told him the truth. To him +even did I tell my family name, and the shame I had saved it from by +forswearing it.</p> +<p>“He put his arm on my shoulder, I tell you, and . . . ”</p> +<p>The Ancient Mariner ceased talking because of a huskiness in his +throat, and a moisture from his eyes trickled down both cheeks.</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry pledged him silently, and in the draught from his glass +he recovered himself.</p> +<p>“He told me that I should come and live with him, and, to his +great lonely house he took me the very day we landed in Boston. +Also, he told me he would make arrangements with his lawyers—the +idea tickled his fancy—‘I shall adopt you,’ he said. +‘I shall adopt you along with Isthar’—Isthar was the +little maid’s name, the little mummy’s name.</p> +<p>“Here was I, back in life, steward, and legally to be adopted. +But life is a fond betrayer. Eighteen hours afterward, in the +morning, we found him dead in his bed, the little mummy maid beside +him. Heart-failure, the burst of some blood-vessel in the brain—I +never learned.</p> +<p>“I prayed and pleaded with them for the pair to be buried together. +But they were a hard, cold, New England lot, his cousins and his aunts, +and they presented Isthar to the museum, and me they gave a week to +be quit of the house. I left in an hour, and they searched my +small baggage before they would let me depart.</p> +<p>“I went to New York. It was the same game there, only +that I had more money and could play it properly. It was the same +in New Orleans, in Galveston. I came to California. This +is my fifth voyage. I had a hard time getting these three interested, +and spent all my little store of money before they signed the agreement. +They were very mean. Advance any money to me! The very idea +of it was preposterous. Though I bided my time, ran up a comfortable +hotel bill, and, at the very last, ordered my own generous assortment +of liquors and cigars and charged the bill to the schooner. Such +a to-do! All three of them raged and all but tore their hair . +. . and mime. They said it could not be. I fell promptly +sick. I told them they got on my nerves and made me sick. +The more they raged, the sicker I got. Then they gave in. +As promptly I grew better. And here we are, out of water and heading +soon most likely for the Marquesas to fill our barrels. Then they +will return and try for it again!”</p> +<p>“You think so, sir?”</p> +<p>“I shall remember even more important data, steward,” +the Ancient Mariner smiled. “Without doubt they will return. +Oh, I know them well. They are meagre, narrow, grasping fools.”</p> +<p>“Fools! all fools! a ship of fools!” Dag Daughtry exulted; +repeating what he had expressed in the hold, as he bored the last barrel, +listened to the good water gurgling away into the bilge, and chuckled +over his discovery of the Ancient Mariner on the same lay as his own.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2> +<p>Early next morning, the morning watch of sailors, whose custom was +to fetch the day’s supply of water for the galley and cabin, discovered +that the barrels were empty. Mr. Jackson was so alarmed that he +immediately called Captain Doane, and not many minutes elapsed ere Captain +Doane had routed out Grimshaw and Nishikanta to tell them the disaster.</p> +<p>Breakfast was an excitement shared in peculiarly by the Ancient Mariner +and Dag Daughtry, while the trio of partners raged and bewailed. +Captain Doane particularly wailed. Simon Nishikanta was fiendish +in his descriptions of whatever miscreant had done the deed and of how +he should be made to suffer for it, while Grimshaw clenched and repeatedly +clenched his great hands as if throttling some throat.</p> +<p>“I remember, it was in forty-seven—nay, forty-six—yes, +forty-six,” the Ancient Mariner chattered. “It was +a similar and worse predicament. It was in the longboat, sixteen +of us. We ran on Glister Reef. So named it was after our +pretty little craft discovered it one dark night and left her bones +upon it. The reef is on the Admiralty charts. Captain Doane +will verify me . . . ”</p> +<p>No one listened, save Dag Daughtry, serving hot cakes and admiring. +But Simon Nishikanta, becoming suddenly aware that the old man was babbling, +bellowed out ferociously:</p> +<p>“Oh, shut up! Close your jaw! You make me tired +with your everlasting ‘I remember.’”</p> +<p>The Ancient Mariner was guilelessly surprised, as if he had slipped +somewhere in his narrative.</p> +<p>“No, I assure you,” he continued. “It must +have been some error of my poor old tongue. It was not the <i>Wide +Awake</i>, but the brig <i>Glister</i>. Did I say <i>Wide Awake</i>? +It was the <i>Glister</i>, a smart little brig, almost a toy brig in +fact, copper-bottomed, lines like a dolphin, a sea-cutter and a wind-eater. +Handled like a top. On my honour, gentlemen, it was lively work +for both watches when she went about. I was super-cargo. +We sailed out of New York, ostensibly for the north-west coast, with +sealed orders—”</p> +<p>“In the name of God, peace, peace! You drive me mad with +your drivel!” So Nishikanta cried out in nervous pain that +was real and quivering. “Old man, have a heart. What +do I care to know of your <i>Glister</i> and your sealed orders!”</p> +<p>“Ah, sealed orders,” the Ancient Mariner went on beamingly. +“A magic phrase, sealed orders.” He rolled it off +his tongue with unction. “Those were the days, gentlemen, +when ships did sail with sealed orders. And as super-cargo, with +my trifle invested in the adventure and my share in the gains, I commanded +the captain. Not in him, but in me were reposed the sealed orders. +I assure you I did not know myself what they were. Not until we +were around old Cape Stiff, fifty to fifty, and in fifty in the Pacific, +did I break the seal and learn we were bound for Van Dieman’s +Land. They called it Van Dieman’s Land in those days . . +. ”</p> +<p>It was a day of discoveries. Captain Doane caught the mate +stealing the ship’s position from his desk with the duplicate +key. There was a scene, but no more, for the Finn was too huge +a man to invite personal encounter, and Captain Dome could only stigmatize +his conduct to a running reiteration of “Yes, sir,” and +“No, sir,” and “Sorry, sir.”</p> +<p>Perhaps the most important discovery, although he did not know it +at the time, was that of Dag Daughtry. It was after the course +had been changed and all sail set, and after the Ancient Mariner had +privily informed him that Taiohae, in the Marquesas, was their objective, +that Daughtry gaily proceeded to shave. But one trouble was on +his mind. He was not quite sure, in such an out-of-the-way place +as Taiohae, that good beer could be procured.</p> +<p>As he prepared to make the first stroke of the razor, most of his +face white with lather, he noticed a dark patch of skin on his forehead +just between the eyebrows and above. When he had finished shaving +he touched the dark patch, wondering how he had been sunburned in such +a spot. But he did not know he had touched it in so far as there +was any response of sensation. The dark place was numb.</p> +<p>“Curious,” he thought, wiped his face, and forgot all +about it.</p> +<p>No more than he knew what horror that dark spot represented, did +he know that Ah Moy’s slant eyes had long since noticed it and +were continuing to notice it, day by day, with secret growing terror.</p> +<p>Close-hauled on the south-east trades, the <i>Mary Turner</i> began +her long slant toward the Marquesas. For’ard, all were happy. +Being only seamen, on seamen’s wages, they hailed with delight +the news that they were bound in for a tropic isle to fill their water-barrels. +Aft, the three partners were in bad temper, and Nishikanta openly sneered +at Captain Doane and doubted his ability to find the Marquesas. +In the steerage everybody was happy—Dag Daughtry because his wages +were running on and a further supply of beer was certain; Kwaque because +he was happy whenever his master was happy; and Ah Moy because he would +soon have opportunity to desert away from the schooner and the two lepers +with whom he was domiciled.</p> +<p>Michael shared in the general happiness of the steerage, and joined +eagerly with Steward in learning by heart a fifth song. This was +“Lead, kindly Light.” In his singing, which was no +more than trained howling after all, Michael sought for something he +knew not what. In truth, it was the <i>lost pack</i>, the pack +of the primeval world before the dog ever came in to the fires of men, +and, for that matter, before men built fires and before men were men.</p> +<p>He had been born only the other day and had lived but two years in +the world, so that, of himself, he had no knowledge of the lost pack. +For many thousands of generations he had been away from it; yet, deep +down in the crypts of being, tied about and wrapped up in every muscle +and nerve of him, was the indelible record of the days in the wild when +dim ancestors had run with the pack and at the same time developed the +pack and themselves. When Michael was asleep, then it was that +pack-memories sometimes arose to the surface of his subconscious mind. +These dreams were real while they lasted, but when he was awake he remembered +them little if at all. But asleep, or singing with Steward, he +sensed and yearned for the lost pack and was impelled to seek the forgotten +way to it.</p> +<p>Waking, Michael had another and real pack. This was composed +of Steward, Kwaque, Cocky, and Scraps, and he ran with it as ancient +forbears had ran with their own kind in the hunting. The steerage +was the lair of this pack, and, out of the steerage, it ranged the whole +world, which was the <i>Mary Turner</i> ever rocking, heeling, reeling +on the surface of the unstable sea.</p> +<p>But the steerage and its company meant more to Michael than the mere +pack. It was heaven as well, where dwelt God. Man early +invented God, often of stone, or clod, or fire, and placed him in trees +and mountains and among the stars. This was because man observed +that man passed and was lost out of the tribe, or family, or whatever +name he gave to his group, which was, after all, the human pack. +And man did not want to be lost out of the pack. So, of his imagination, +he devised a new pack that would be eternal and with which he might +for ever run. Fearing the dark, into which he observed all men +passed, he built beyond the dark a fairer region, a happier hunting-ground, +a jollier and robuster feasting-hall and wassailing-place, and called +it variously “heaven.”</p> +<p>Like some of the earliest and lowest of primitive men, Michael never +dreamed of throwing the shadow of himself across his mind and worshipping +it as God. He did not worship shadows. He worshipped a real +and indubitable god, not fashioned in his own four-legged, hair-covered +image, but in the flesh-and-blood image, two-legged, hairless, upstanding, +of Steward.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2> +<p>Had the trade wind not failed on the second day after laying the +course for the Marquesas; had Captain Doane, at the mid-day meal, not +grumbled once again at being equipped with only one chronometer; had +Simon Nishikanta not become viciously angry thereat and gone on deck +with his rifle to find some sea-denizen to kill; and had the sea-denizen +that appeared close alongside been a bonita, a dolphin, a porpoise, +an albacore, or anything else than a great, eighty-foot cow whale accompanied +by her nursing calf—had any link been missing from this chain +of events, the <i>Mary Turner</i> would have undoubtedly reached the +Marquesas, filled her water-barrels, and returned to the treasure-hunting; +and the destinies of Michael, Daughtry, Kwaque, and Cocky would have +been quite different and possibly less terrible.</p> +<p>But every link was present for the occasion. The schooner, +in a dead calm, was rolling over the huge, smooth seas, her boom sheets +and tackles crashing to the hollow thunder of her great sails, when +Simon Nishikanta put a bullet into the body of the little whale calf. +By an almost miracle of chance, the shot killed the calf. It was +equivalent to killing an elephant with a pea-rifle. Not at once +did the calf die. It merely immediately ceased its gambols and +for a while lay quivering on the surface of the ocean. The mother +was beside it the moment after it was struck, and to those on board, +looking almost directly down upon her, her dismay and alarm were very +patent. She would nudge the calf with her huge shoulder, circle +around and around it, then range up alongside and repeat her nudgings +and shoulderings.</p> +<p>All on the <i>Mary Turner</i>, fore and aft, lined the rail and stared +down apprehensively at the leviathan that was as long as the schooner.</p> +<p>“If she should do to us, sir, what that other one did to the +<i>Essex</i>,” Dag Daughtry observed to the Ancient Mariner.</p> +<p>“It would be no more than we deserve,” was the response. +“It was uncalled-for—a wanton, cruel act.”</p> +<p>Michael, aware of the excitement overside but unable to see because +of the rail, leaped on top of the cabin and at sight of the monster +barked defiantly. Every eye turned on him in startlement and fear, +and Steward hushed him with a whispered command.</p> +<p>“This is the last time,” Grimshaw muttered in a low voice, +tense with anger, to Nishikanta. “If ever again, on this +voyage, you take a shot at a whale, I’ll wring your dirty neck +for you. Get me. I mean it. I’ll choke your +eye-balls out of you.”</p> +<p>The Jew smiled in a sickly way and whined, “There ain’t +nothing going to happen. I don’t believe that <i>Essex</i> +ever was sunk by a whale.”</p> +<p>Urged on by its mother, the dying calf made spasmodic efforts to +swim that were futile and caused it to veer and wallow from side to +side.</p> +<p>In the course of circling about it, the mother accidentally brushed +her shoulder under the port quarter of the <i>Mary Turner</i>, and the +<i>Mary Turner</i> listed to starboard as her stern was lifted a yard +or more. Nor was this unintentional, gentle impact all. +The instant after her shoulder had touched, startled by the contact, +she flailed out with her tail. The blow smote the rail just for’ard +of the fore-shrouds, splintering a gap through it as if it were no more +than a cigar-box and cracking the covering board.</p> +<p>That was all, and an entire ship’s company stared down in silence +and fear at a sea-monster grief-stricken over its dying progeny.</p> +<p>Several times, in the course of an hour, during which the schooner +and the two whales drifted farther and farther apart, the calf strove +vainly to swim. Then it set up a great quivering, which culminated +in a wild wallowing and lashing about of its tail.</p> +<p>“It is the death-flurry,” said the Ancient Mariner softly.</p> +<p>“By damn, it’s dead,” was Captain Doane’s +comment five minutes later. “Who’d believe it? +A rifle bullet! I wish to heaven we could get half an hour’s +breeze of wind to get us out of this neighbourhood.”</p> +<p>“A close squeak,” said Grimshaw,</p> +<p>Captain Doane shook his head, as his anxious eyes cast aloft to the +empty canvas and quested on over the sea in the hope of wind-ruffles +on the water. But all was glassy calm, each great sea, of all +the orderly procession of great seas, heaving up, round-topped and mountainous, +like so much quicksilver.</p> +<p>“It’s all right,” Grimahaw encouraged. “There +she goes now, beating it away from us.”</p> +<p>“Of course it’s all right, always was all right,” +Nishikanta bragged, as he wiped the sweat from his face and neck and +looked with the others after the departing whale. “You’re +a fine brave lot, you are, losing your goat to a fish.”</p> +<p>“I noticed your face was less yellow than usual,” Grimshaw +sneered. “It must have gone to your heart.”</p> +<p>Captain Doane breathed a great sigh. His relief was too strong +to permit him to join in the squabbling.</p> +<p>“You’re yellow,” Grimshaw went on, “yellow +clean through.” He nodded his head toward the Ancient Mariner. +“Now there’s the real thing as a man. No yellow in +him. He never batted an eye, and I reckon he knew more about the +danger than you did. If I was to choose being wrecked on a desert +island with him or you, I’d take him a thousand times first. +If—”</p> +<p>But a cry from the sailors interrupted him.</p> +<p>“Merciful God!” Captain Doane breathed aloud.</p> +<p>The great cow whale had turned about, and, on the surface, was charging +straight back at them. Such was her speed that a bore was raised +by her nose like that which a Dreadnought or an Atlantic liner raises +on the sea.</p> +<p>“Hold fast, all!” Captain Doane roared.</p> +<p>Every man braced himself for the shock. Henrik Gjertsen, the +sailor at the wheel, spread his legs, crouched down, and stiffened his +shoulders and arms to hand-grips on opposite spokes of the wheel. +Several of the crew fled from the waist to the poop, and others of them +sprang into the main-rigging. Daughtry, one hand on the rail, +with his free arm clasped the Ancient Mariner around the waist.</p> +<p>All held. The whale struck the <i>Mary Turner</i> just aft +of the fore-shroud. A score of things, which no eye could take +in simultaneously, happened. A sailor, in the main rigging, carried +away a ratline in both hands, fell head-downward, and was clutched by +an ankle and saved head-downward by a comrade, as the schooner cracked +and shuddered, uplifted on the port side, and was flung down on her +starboard side till the ocean poured level over her rail. Michael, +on the smooth roof of the cabin, slithered down the steep slope to starboard +and disappeared, clawing and snarling, into the runway. The port +shrouds of the foremast carried away at the chain-plates, and the fore-topmast +leaned over drunkenly to starboard.</p> +<p>“My word,” quoth the Ancient Mariner. “We +certainly felt that.”</p> +<p>“Mr. Jackson,” Captain Doane commanded the mate, “will +you sound the well.”</p> +<p>The mate obeyed, although he kept an anxious eye on the whale, which +had gone off at a tangent and was smoking away to the eastward.</p> +<p>“You see, that’s what you get,” Grimshaw snarled +at Nishikanta.</p> +<p>Nishikanta nodded, as he wiped the sweat away, and muttered, “And +I’m satisfied. I got all I want. I didn’t think +a whale had it in it. I’ll never do it again.”</p> +<p>“Maybe you’ll never have the chance,” the captain +retorted. “We’re not done with this one yet. +The one that charged the <i>Essex</i> made charge after charge, and +I guess whale nature hasn’t changed any in the last few years.”</p> +<p>“Dry as a bone, sir,” Mr. Jackson reported the result +of his sounding.</p> +<p>“There she turns,” Daughtry called out.</p> +<p>Half a mile away, the whale circled about sharply and charged back.</p> +<p>“Stand from under for’ard there!” Captain Doane +shouted to one of the sailors who had just emerged from the forecastle +scuttle, sea-bag in hand, and over whom the fore-topmast was swaying +giddily.</p> +<p>“He’s packed for the get-away,” Daughtry murmured +to the Ancient Mariner. “Like a rat leaving a ship.”</p> +<p>“We’re all rats,” was the reply. “I +learned just that when I was a rat among the mangy rats of the poor-farm.”</p> +<p>By this time, all men on board had communicated to Michael their +contagion of excitement and fear. Back on top of the cabin so +that he might see, he snarled at the cow whale when the men seized fresh +grips against the impending shock and when he saw her close at hand +and oncoming.</p> +<p>The <i>Mary Turner</i> was struck aft of the mizzen shrouds. +As she was hurled down to starboard, whither Michael was ignominiously +flung, the crack of shattered timbers was plainly heard. Henrik +Gjertsen, at the wheel, clutching the wheel with all his strength, was +spun through the air as the wheel was spun by the fling of the rudder. +He fetched up against Captain Doane, whose grip had been torn loose +from the rail. Both men crumpled down on deck with the wind knocked +out of them. Nishikanta leaned cursing against the side of the +cabin, the nails of both hands torn off at the quick by the breaking +of his grip on the rail.</p> +<p>While Daughtry was passing a turn of rope around the Ancient Mariner +and the mizzen rigging and giving the turn to him to hold, Captain Doane +crawled gasping to the rail and dragged himself erect.</p> +<p>“That fetched her,” he whispered huskily to the mate, +hand pressed to his side to control his pain. “Sound the +well again, and keep on sounding.”</p> +<p>More of the sailors took advantage of the interval to rush for’ard +under the toppling fore-topmast, dive into the forecastle, and hastily +pack their sea-bags. As Ah Moy emerged from the steerage with +his own rotund sea-bag, Daughtry dispatched Kwaque to pack the belongings +of both of them.</p> +<p>“Dry as a bone, sir,” came the mate’s report.</p> +<p>“Keep on sounding, Mr. Jackson,” the captain ordered, +his voice already stronger as he recovered from the shock of his collision +with the helmsman. “Keep right on sounding. Here she +comes again, and the schooner ain’t built that’d stand such +hammering.”</p> +<p>By this time Daughtry had Michael tucked under one arm, his free +arm ready to anticipate the next crash by swinging on to the rigging.</p> +<p>In making its circle to come back, the cow lost her bearings sufficiently +to miss the stern of the <i>Mary Turner</i> by twenty feet. Nevertheless, +the bore of her displacement lifted the schooner’s stern gently +and made her dip her bow to the sea in a stately curtsey.</p> +<p>“If she’d a-hit . . . ” Captain Doane murmured +and ceased.</p> +<p>“It’d a-ben good night,” Daughtry concluded for +him. “She’s a-knocked our stern clean off of us, sir.”</p> +<p>Again wheeling, this time at no more than two hundred yards, the +whale charged back, not completing her semi-circle sufficiently, so +that she bore down upon the schooner’s bow from starboard. +Her back hit the stem and seemed just barely to scrape the martingale, +yet the <i>Mary Turner</i> sat down till the sea washed level with her +stern-rail. Nor was this all. Martingale, bob-stays and +all parted, as well as all starboard stays to the bowsprit, so that +the bowsprit swung out to port at right angles and uplifted to the drag +of the remaining topmast stays. The topmast anticked high in the +air for a space, then crashed down to deck, permitting the bowsprit +to dip into the sea, go clear with the butt of it of the forecastle +head, and drag alongside.</p> +<p>“Shut up that dog!” Nishikanta ordered Daughtry savagery. +“If you don’t . . . ”</p> +<p>Michael, in Steward’s arms, was snarling and growling intimidatingly, +not merely at the cow whale but at all the hostile and menacing universe +that had thrown panic into the two-legged gods of his floating world.</p> +<p>“Just for that,” Daughtry snarled back, “I’ll +let ’m sing. You made this mess, and if you lift a hand +to my dog you’ll miss seeing the end of the mess you started, +you dirty pawnbroker, you.”</p> +<p>“Perfectly right, perfectly right,” the Ancient Mariner +nodded approbation. “Do you think, steward, you could get +a width of canvas, or a blanket, or something soft and broad with which +to replace this rope? It cuts me too sharply in the spot where +my three ribs are missing.”</p> +<p>Daughtry thrust Michael into the old man’s arm.</p> +<p>“Hold him, sir,” the steward said. “If that +pawnbroker makes a move against Killeny Boy, spit in his face, bite +him, anything. I’ll be back in a jiffy, sir, before he can +hurt you and before the whale can hit us again. And let Killeny +Boy make all the noise he wants. One hair of him’s worth +more than a world-full of skunks of money-lenders.”</p> +<p>Daughtry dashed into the cabin, came back with a pillow and three +sheets, and, using the first as a pad and knotting the last together +in swift weaver’s knots, he left the Ancient Mariner safe and +soft and took Michael back into his own arms.</p> +<p>“She’s making water, sir,” the mate called. +“Six inches—no, seven inches, sir.”</p> +<p>There was a rush of sailors across the wreckage of the fore-topmast +to the forecastle to pack their bags.</p> +<p>“Swing out that starboard boat, Mr. Jackson,” the captain +commanded, staring after the foaming course of the cow as she surged +away for a fresh onslaught. “But don’t lower it. +Hold it overside in the falls, or that damned fish’ll smash it. +Just swing it out, ready and waiting, let the men get their bags, then +stow food and water aboard of her.”</p> +<p>Lashings were cast off the boat and the falls attached, when the +men fled to holding-vantage just ere the whale arrived. She struck +the <i>Mary Turner</i> squarely amidships on the port beam, so that, +from the poop, one saw, as well as heard, her long side bend and spring +back like a limber fabric. The starboard rail buried under the +sea as the schooner heeled to the blow, and, as she righted with a violent +lurch, the water swashed across the deck to the knees of the sailors +about the boat and spouted out of the port scuppers.</p> +<p>“Heave away!” Captain Doane ordered from the poop. +“Up with her! Swing her out! Hold your turns! +Make fast!”</p> +<p>The boat was outboard, its gunwale resting against the <i>Mary Turner’s</i> +rail.</p> +<p>“Ten inches, sir, and making fast,” was the mate’s +information, as he gauged the sounding-rod.</p> +<p>“I’m going after my tools,” Captain Doane announced, +as he started for the cabin. Half into the scuttle, he paused +to add with a sneer for Nishikanta’s benefit, “And for my +one chronometer.”</p> +<p>“A foot and a half, and making,” the mate shouted aft +to him.</p> +<p>“We’d better do some packing ourselves,” Grimshaw, +following on the captain, said to Nishikanta.</p> +<p>“Steward,” Nishikanta said, “go below and pack +my bedding. I’ll take care of the rest.”</p> +<p>“Mr. Nishikanta, you can go to hell, sir, and all the rest +as well,” was Daughtry’s quiet response, although in the +same breath he was saying, respectfully and assuringly, to the Ancient +Mariner: “You hold Killeny, sir. I’ll take care of +your dunnage. Is there anything special you want to save, sir?”</p> +<p>Jackson joined the four men below, and as the five of them, in haste +and trepidation, packed articles of worth and comfort, the <i>Mary Turner</i> +was struck again. Caught below without warning, all were flung +fiercely to port and from Simon Nishikanta’s room came wailing +curses of announcement of the hurt to his ribs against his bunk-rail. +But this was drowned by a prodigious smashing and crashing on deck.</p> +<p>“Kindling wood—there won’t be anything else left +of her,” Captain Doane commented in the ensuing calm, as he crept +gingerly up the companionway with his chronometer cuddled on an even +keel to his breast.</p> +<p>Placing it in the custody of a sailor, he returned below and was +helped up with his sea-chest by the steward. In turn, he helped +the steward up with the Ancient Mariner’s sea-chest. Next, +aided by anxious sailors, he and Daughtry dropped into the lazarette +through the cabin floor, and began breaking out and passing up a stream +of supplies—cases of salmon and beef, of marmalade and biscuit, +of butter and preserved milk, and of all sorts of the tinned, desiccated, +evaporated, and condensed stuff that of modern times goes down to the +sea in ships for the nourishment of men.</p> +<p>Daughtry and the captain emerged last from the cabin, and both stared +upward for a moment at the gaps in the slender, sky-scraping top-hamper, +where, only minutes before, the main- and mizzen-topmasts had been. +A second moment they devoted to the wreckage of the same on deck—the +mizzen-topmast, thrust through the spanker and supported vertically +by the stout canvas, thrashing back and forth with each thrash of the +sail, the main-topmast squarely across the ruined companionway to the +steerage.</p> +<p>While the mother-whale expressing her bereavement in terms of violence +and destruction, was withdrawing the necessary distance for another +charge, all hands of the <i>Mary Turner</i> gathered about the starboard +boat swung outboard ready for lowering. A respectable hill of +case goods, water-kegs, and personal dunnage was piled on the deck alongside. +A glance at this, and at the many men of fore and aft, demonstrated +that it was to be a perilously overloaded boat.</p> +<p>“We want the sailors with us, at any rate—they can row,” +said Simon Nishikanta.</p> +<p>“But do we want you?” Grimshaw queried gloomily. +“You take up too much room, for your size, and you’re a +beast anyway.”</p> +<p>“I guess I’ll be wanted,” the pawnbroker observed, +as he jerked open his shirt, tearing out the four buttons in his impetuousness +and showing a Colt’s .44 automatic, strapped in its holster against +the bare skin of his side under his left arm, the butt of the weapon +most readily accessible to any hasty dip of his right hand. “I +guess I’ll be wanted. But just the same we can dispense +with the undesirables.”</p> +<p>“If you will have your will,” the wheat-farmer conceded +sardonically, although his big hand clenched involuntarily as if throttling +a throat. “Besides, if we should run short of food you will +prove desirable—for the quantity of you, I mean, and not otherwise. +Now just who would you consider undesirable?—the black nigger? +He ain’t got a gun.”</p> +<p>But his pleasantries were cut short by the whale’s next attack—another +smash at the stern that carried away the rudder and destroyed the steering +gear.</p> +<p>“How much water?” Captain Doane queried of the mate.</p> +<p>“Three feet, sir—I just sounded,” came the answer. +“I think, sir, it would be advisable to part-load the boat; then, +right after the next time the whale hits us, lower away on the run, +chuck the rest of the dunnage in, and ourselves, and get clear.”</p> +<p>Captain Doane nodded.</p> +<p>“It will be lively work,” he said. “Stand +ready, all of you. Steward, you jump aboard first and I’ll +pass the chronometer to you.”</p> +<p>Nishikanta bellicosely shouldered his vast bulk up to the captain, +opened his shirt, and exposed his revolver.</p> +<p>“There’s too many for the boat,” he said, “and +the steward’s one of ’em that don’t go along. +Get that. Hold it in your head. The steward’s one +of ’em that don’t go along.”</p> +<p>Captain Doane coolly surveyed the big automatic, while at the fore +of his consciousness burned a vision of his flat buildings in San Francisco.</p> +<p>He shrugged his shoulders. “The boat would be overloaded, +with all this truck, anyway. Go ahead, if you want to make it +your party, but just bear in mind that I’m the navigator, and +that, if you ever want to lay eyes on your string of pawnshops, you’d +better see that gentle care is taken of me.—Steward!”</p> +<p>Daughtry stepped close.</p> +<p>“There won’t be room for you . . . and for one or two +others, I’m sorry to say.”</p> +<p>“Glory be!” said Daughtry. “I was just fearin’ +you’d be wantin’ me along, sir.—Kwaque, you take ’m +my fella dunnage belong me, put ’m in other fella boat along other +side.”</p> +<p>While Kwaque obeyed, the mate sounded the well for the last time, +reporting three feet and a half, and the lighter freightage of the starboard +boat was tossed in by the sailors.</p> +<p>A rangy, gangly, Scandinavian youth of a sailor, droop-shouldered, +six feet six and slender as a lath, with pallid eyes of palest blue +and skin and hair attuned to the same colour scheme, joined Kwaque in +his work.</p> +<p>“Here, you Big John,” the mate interfered. “This +is your boat. You work here.”</p> +<p>The lanky one smiled in embarrassment as he haltingly explained: +“I tank I lak go along cooky.”</p> +<p>“Sure, let him go, the more the easier,” Nishikanta took +charge of the situation. “Anybody else?”</p> +<p>“Sure,” Dag Daughtry sneered to his face. “I +reckon what’s left of the beer goes with my boat . . . unless +you want to argue the matter.”</p> +<p>“For two cents—” Nishikanta spluttered in affected +rage.</p> +<p>“Not for two billion cents would you risk a scrap with me, +you money-sweater, you,” was Daughtry’s retort. “You’ve +got their goats, but I’ve got your number. Not for two billion +billion cents would you excite me into callin’ it right now.—Big +John! Just carry that case of beer across, an’ that half +case, and store in my boat.—Nishikanta, just start something, +if you’ve got the nerve.”</p> +<p>Simon Nishikanta did not dare, nor did he know what to do; but he +was saved from his perplexity by the shout:</p> +<p>“Here she comes!”</p> +<p>All rushed to holding-ground, and held, while the whale broke more +timbers and the <i>Mary Turner</i> rolled sluggishly down and back again.</p> +<p>“Lower away! On the run! Lively!”</p> +<p>Captain Doane’s orders were swiftly obeyed. The starboard +boat, fended off by sailors, rose and fell in the water alongside while +the remainder of the dunnage and provisions showered into her.</p> +<p>“Might as well lend a hand, sir, seein’ you’re +bent on leaving in such a hurry,” said Daughtry, taking the chronometer +from Captain Doane’s hand and standing ready to pass it down to +him as soon as he was in the boat.</p> +<p>“Come on, Greenleaf,” Grimshaw called up to the Ancient +Mariner.</p> +<p>“No, thanking you very kindly, sir,” came the reply. +“I think there’ll be more room in the other boat.”</p> +<p>“We want the cook!” Nishikanta cried out from the stern +sheets. “Come on, you yellow monkey! Jump in!”</p> +<p>Little old shrivelled Ah Moy debated. He visibly thought, although +none knew the intrinsicness of his thinking as he stared at the gun +of the fat pawnbroker and at the leprosy of Kwaque and Daughtry, and +weighed the one against the other and tossed the light and heavy loads +of the two boats into the balance.</p> +<p>“Me go other boat,” said Ah Moy, starting to drag his +bag away across the deck.</p> +<p>“Cast off,” Captain Doane commanded.</p> +<p>Scraps, the big Newfoundland puppy, who had played and pranced about +through all the excitement, seeing so many of the <i>Mary Turner’s</i> +humans in the boat alongside, sprang over the rail, low and close to +the water, and landed sprawling on the mass of sea-bags and goods cases.</p> +<p>The boot rocked, and Nishikanta, his automatic in his hand, cried +out:</p> +<p>“Back with him! Throw him on board!”</p> +<p>The sailors obeyed, and the astounded Scraps, after a brief flight +through the air, found himself arriving on his back on the <i>Mary Turner’s</i> +deck. At any rate, he took it for no more than a rough joke, and +rolled about ecstatically, squirming vermicularly, in anticipation of +what new delights of play were to be visited upon him. He reached +out, with an enticing growl of good fellowship, for Michael, who was +now free on deck, and received in return a forbidding and crusty snarl.</p> +<p>“Guess we’ll have to add him to our collection, eh, sir?” +Daughtry observed, sparing a moment to pat reassurance on the big puppy’s +head and being rewarded with a caressing lick on his hand from the puppy’s +blissful tongue.</p> +<p>No first-class ship’s steward can exist without possessing +a more than average measure of executive ability. Dag Daughtry +was a first-class ship’s steward. Placing the Ancient Mariner +in a nook of safety, and setting Big John to unlashing the remaining +boat and hooking on the falls, he sent Kwaque into the hold to fill +kegs of water from the scant remnant of supply, and Ah Moy to clear +out the food in the galley.</p> +<p>The starboard boat, cluttered with men, provisions, and property +and being rapidly rowed away from the danger centre, which was the <i>Mary +Turner</i>, was scarcely a hundred yards away, when the whale, missing +the schooner clean, turned at full speed and close range, churning the +water, and all but collided with the boat. So near did she come +that the rowers on the side next to her pulled in their oars. +The surge she raised, heeled the loaded boat gunwale under, so that +a degree of water was shipped ere it righted. Nishikanta, automatic +still in hand, standing up in the sternsheets by the comfortable seat +he had selected for himself, was staggered by the lurch of the boat. +In his instinctive, spasmodic effort to maintain balance, he relaxed +his clutch on the pistol, which fell into the sea.</p> +<p>“<i>Ha-ah</i>!” Daughtry girded. “What price +Nishikanta? I got his number, and he’s lost you fellows’ +goats. He’s your meat now. Easy meat? I should +say! And when it comes to the eating, eat him first. Sure, +he’s a skunk, and will taste like one, but many’s the honest +man that’s eaten skunk and pulled through a tight place. +But you’d better soak ’im all night in salt water, first.”</p> +<p>Grimshaw, whose seat in the sternsheets was none of the best, grasped +the situation simultaneously with Daughtry, and, with a quick upstanding, +and hooking out-reach of hand, caught the fat pawnbroker around the +back of the neck, and with anything but gentle suasion jerked him half +into the air and flung him face downward on the bottom boards.</p> +<p>“Ha-ah!” said Daughtry across the hundred yards of ocean.</p> +<p>Next, and without hurry, Grimshaw took the more comfortable seat +for himself.</p> +<p>“Want to come along?” he called to Daughtry.</p> +<p>“No, thank you, sir,” was the latter’s reply. +“There’s too many of us, an’ we’ll make out +better in the other boat.”</p> +<p>With some bailing, and with others bending to the oars, the boat +rowed frantically away, while Daughtry took Ah Moy with him down into +the lazarette beneath the cabin floor and broke out and passed up more +provisions.</p> +<p>It was when he was thus below that the cow grazed the schooner just +for’ard of amidships on the port side, lashed out with her mighty +tail as she sounded, and ripped clean away the chain plates and rail +of the mizzen-shrouds. In the next roll of the huge, glassy sea, +the mizzen-mast fell overside.</p> +<p>“My word, some whale,” Daughtry said to Ah Moy, as they +emerged from the cabin companionway and gazed at this latest wreckage.</p> +<p>Ah Moy found need to get more food from the galley, when Daughtry, +Kwaque, and Big John swung their weight on the falls, one at a time, +and hoisted the port boat, one end at a time, over the rail and swung +her out.</p> +<p>“We’ll wait till the next smash, then lower away, throw +everything in, an’ get outa this,” the steward told the +Ancient Mariner. “Lots of time. The schooner’ll +sink no faster when she’s awash than she’s sinkin’ +now.”</p> +<p>Even as he spoke, the scuppers were nearly level with the ocean, +and her rolling in the big sea was sluggish.</p> +<p>“Hey!” he called with sudden forethought across the widening +stretch of sea to Captain Doane. “What’s the course +to the Marquesas? Right now? And how far away, sir?”</p> +<p>“Nor’-nor’-east-quarter-east!” came the faint +reply. “Will fetch Nuka-Hiva! About two hundred miles! +Haul on the south-east trade with a good full and you’ll make +it!”</p> +<p>“Thank you, sir,” was the steward’s acknowledgment, +ere he ran aft, disrupted the binnacle, and carried the steering compass +back to the boat.</p> +<p>Almost, from the whale’s delay in renewing her charging, did +they think she had given over. And while they waited and watched +her rolling on the sea an eighth of a mile away, the <i>Mary Turner</i> +steadily sank.</p> +<p>“We might almost chance it,” Daughtry was debating aloud +to Big John, when a new voice entered the discussion.</p> +<p>“Cocky!—Cocky!” came plaintive tones from below +out of the steerage companion.</p> +<p>“Devil be damned!” was the next, uttered in irritation +and anger. “Devil be damned! Devil be damned!”</p> +<p>“Of course not,” was Daughtry’s judgment, as he +dashed across the deck, crawled through the confusion of the main-topmast +and its many stays that blocked the way, and found the tiny, white morsel +of life perched on a bunk-edge, ruffling its feathers, erecting and +flattening its rosy crest, and cursing in honest human speech the waywardness +of the world and of ships and humans upon the sea.</p> +<p>The cockatoo stepped upon Daughtry’s inviting index finger, +swiftly ascended his shirt sleeve, and, on his shoulder, claws sunk +into the flimsy shirt fabric till they hurt the flesh beneath, leaned +head to ear and uttered in gratitude and relief, and in self-identification: +“Cocky. Cocky.”</p> +<p>“You son of a gun,” Daughtry crooned.</p> +<p>“Glory be!” Cooky replied, in tones so like Daughtry’s +as to startle him.</p> +<p>“You son of a gun,” Daughtry repeated, cuddling his cheek +and ear against the cockatoo’s feathered and crested head. +“And some folks thinks it’s only folks that count in this +world.”</p> +<p>Still the whale delayed, and, with the ocean washing their toes on +the level deck, Daughtry ordered the boat lowered away. Ah Moy +was eager in his haste to leap into the bow. Nor was Daughtry’s +judgment correct that the little Chinaman’s haste was due to fear +of the sinking ship. What Ah Moy sought was the place in the boat +remotest from Kwaque and the steward.</p> +<p>Shoving clear, they roughly stored the supplies and dunnage out of +the way of the thwarts and took their places, Ah Moy pulling bow-oar, +next in order Big John and Kwaque, with Daughtry (Cocky still perched +on his shoulder) at stroke. On top of the dunnage, in the sternsheets, +Michael gazed wistfully at the <i>Mary Turner</i> and continued to snarl +crustily at Scraps who idiotically wanted to start a romp. The +Ancient Mariner stood up at the steering sweep and gave the order, when +all was ready, for the first dip of the oars.</p> +<p>A growl and a bristle from Michael warned them that the whale was +not only coming but was close upon them. But it was not charging. +Instead, it circled slowly about the schooner as if examining its antagonist.</p> +<p>“I’ll bet it’s head’s sore from all that +banging, an’ it’s beginnin’ to feel it,” Daughtry +grinned, chiefly for the purpose of keeping his comrades unafraid.</p> +<p>Barely had they rowed a dozen strokes, when an exclamation from Big +John led them to follow his gaze to the schooners forecastle-head, where +the forecastle cat flashed across in pursuit of a big rat. Other +rats they saw, evidently driven out of their lairs by the rising water.</p> +<p>“We just can’t leave that cat behind,” Daughtry +soliloquized in suggestive tones.</p> +<p>“Certainly not,” the Ancient Mariner responded swinging +his weight on the steering-sweep and heading the boat back.</p> +<p>Twice the whale gently rolled them in the course of its leisurely +circling, ere they bent to their oars again and pulled away. Of +them the whale seemed to take no notice. It was from the huge +thing, the schooner, that death had been wreaked upon her calf; and +it was upon the schooner that she vented the wrath of her grief.</p> +<p>Even as they pulled away, the whale turned and headed across the +ocean. At a half-mile distance she curved about and charged back.</p> +<p>“With all that water in her, the schooner’ll have a real +kick-back in her when she’s hit,” Daughtry said. “Lordy +me, rest on your oars an’ watch.”</p> +<p>Delivered squarely amidships, it was the hardest blow the <i>Mary +Turner</i> had received. Stays and splinters of rail flew in the +air as she rolled so far over as to expose half her copper wet-glistening +in the sun. As she righted sluggishly, the mainmast swayed drunkenly +in the air but did not fall.</p> +<p>“A knock-out!” Daughtry cried, at sight of the whale +flurrying the water with aimless, gigantic splashings. “It +must a-smashed both of ’em.”</p> +<p>“Schooner he finish close up altogether,” Kwaque observed, +as the <i>Mary Turner’s</i> rail disappeared.</p> +<p>Swiftly she sank, and no more than a matter of moments was it when +the stump of her mainmast was gone. Remained only the whale, floating +and floundering, on the surface of the sea.</p> +<p>“It’s nothing to brag about,” Daughtry delivered +himself of the <i>Mary Turner’s</i> epitaph. “Nobody’d +believe us. A stout little craft like that sunk, deliberately +sunk, by an old cow-whale! No, sir. I never believed that +old moss-back in Honolulu, when he claimed he was a survivor of the +sinkin’ of the <i>Essex</i>, an’ no more will anybody believe +me.”</p> +<p>“The pretty schooner, the pretty clever craft,” mourned +the Ancient Mariner. “Never were there more dainty and lovable +topmasts on a three-masted schooner, and never was there a three-masted +schooner that worked like the witch she was to windward.”</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry, who had kept always footloose and never married, surveyed +the boat-load of his responsibilities to which he was anchored—Kwaque, +the Black Papuan monstrosity whom he had saved from the bellies of his +fellows; Ah Moy, the little old sea-cook whose age was problematical +only by decades; the Ancient Mariner, the dignified, the beloved, and +the respected; gangly Big John, the youthful Scandinavian with the inches +of a giant and the mind of a child; Killeny Boy, the wonder of dogs; +Scraps, the outrageously silly and fat-rolling puppy; Cocky, the white-feathered +mite of life, imperious as a steel-blade and wheedlingly seductive as +a charming child; and even the forecastle cat, the lithe and tawny slayer +of rats, sheltering between the legs of Ah Moy. And the Marquesas +were two hundred miles distant full-hauled on the tradewind which had +ceased but which was as sure to live again as the morning sun in the +sky.</p> +<p>The steward heaved a sigh, and whimsically shot into his mind the +memory-picture in his nursery-book of the old woman who lived in a shoe. +He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, and +was dimly aware of the area of the numbness that bordered the centre +that was sensationless between his eyebrows, as he said:</p> +<p>“Well, children, rowing won’t fetch us to the Marquesas. +We’ll need a stretch of wind for that. But it’s up +to us, right now, to put a mile or so between us an’ that peevish +old cow. Maybe she’ll revive, and maybe she won’t, +but just the same I can’t help feelin’ leary about her.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2> +<p>Two days later, as the steamer <i>Mariposa</i> plied her customary +route between Tahiti and San Francisco, the passengers ceased playing +deck quoits, abandoned their card games in the smoker, their novels +and deck chairs, and crowded the rail to stare at the small boat that +skimmed to them across the sea before a light following breeze. +When Big John, aided by Ah Moy and Kwaque, lowered the sail and unstepped +the mast, titters and laughter arose from the passengers. It was +contrary to all their preconceptions of mid-ocean rescue of ship-wrecked +mariners from the open boat.</p> +<p>It caught their fancy that this boat was the Ark, what of its freightage +of bedding, dry goods boxes, beer-cases, a cat, two dogs, a white cockatoo, +a Chinaman, a kinky-headed black, a gangly pallid-haired giant, a grizzled +Dag Daughtry, and an Ancient Mariner who looked every inch the part. +Him a facetious, vacationing architect’s clerk dubbed Noah, and +so greeted him.</p> +<p>“I say, Noah,” he called. “Some flood, eh? +Located Ararat yet?”</p> +<p>“Catch any fish?” bawled another youngster down over +the rail.</p> +<p>“Gracious! Look at the beer! Good English beer! +Put me down for a case!”</p> +<p>Never was a more popular wrecked crew more merrily rescued at sea. +The young blades would have it that none other than old Noah himself +had come on board with the remnants of the Lost Tribes, and to elderly +female passengers spun hair-raising accounts of the sinking of an entire +tropic island by volcanic and earthquake action.</p> +<p>“I’m a steward,” Dag Daughtry told the <i>Mariposa’s</i> +captain, “and I’ll be glad and grateful to berth along with +your stewards in the glory-hole. Big John there’s a sailorman, +an’ the fo’c’s’le ’ll do him. The +Chink is a ship’s cook, and the nigger belongs to me. But +Mr. Greenleaf, sir, is a gentleman, and the best of cabin fare and staterooms’ll +be none too good for him, sir.”</p> +<p>And when the news went around that these were part of the survivors +of the three-masted schooner, <i>Mary Turner</i>, smashed into kindling +wood and sunk by a whale, the elderly females no more believed than +had they the yarn of the sunken island.</p> +<p>“Captain Hayward,” one of them demanded of the steamer’s +skipper, “could a whale sink the <i>Mariposa</i>?”</p> +<p>“She has never been so sunk,” was his reply.</p> +<p>“I knew it!” she declared emphatically. “It’s +not the way of ships to go around being sunk by whales, is it, captain?”</p> +<p>“No, madam, I assure you it is not,” was his response. +“Nevertheless, all the five men insist upon it.”</p> +<p>“Sailors are notorious for their unveracity, are they not?” +the lady voiced her flat conclusion in the form of a tentative query.</p> +<p>“Worst liars I ever saw, madam. Do you know, after forty +years at sea, I couldn’t believe myself under oath.”</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>Nine days later the <i>Mariposa</i> threaded the Golden Gate and +docked at San Francisco. Humorous half-columns in the local papers, +written in the customary silly way by unlicked cub reporters just out +of grammar school, tickled the fancy of San Francisco for a fleeting +moment in that the steamship <i>Mariposa</i> had rescued some sea-waifs +possessed of a cock-and-bull story that not even the reporters believed. +Thus, silly reportorial unveracity usually proves extraordinary truth +a liar. It is the way of cub reporters, city newspapers, and flat-floor +populations which get their thrills from moving pictures and for which +the real world and all its spaciousness does not exist.</p> +<p>“Sunk by a whale!” demanded the average flat-floor person. +“Nonsense, that’s all. Just plain rotten nonsense. +Now, in the ‘Adventures of Eleanor,’ which is some film, +believe me, I’ll tell you what I saw happen . . . ”</p> +<p>So Daughtry and his crew went ashore into ’Frisco Town uheralded +and unsung, the second following morning’s lucubrations of the +sea reporters being varied disportations upon the attack on an Italian +crab fisherman by an enormous jellyfish. Big John promptly sank +out of sight in a sailors’ boarding-house, and, within the week, +joined the Sailors’ Union and shipped on a steam schooner to load +redwood ties at Bandon, Oregon. Ah Moy got no farther ashore than +the detention sheds of the Federal Immigration Board, whence he was +deported to China on the next Pacific Mail steamer. The <i>Mary +Turner’s</i> cat was adopted by the sailors’ forecastle +of the <i>Mariposa</i>, and on the <i>Mariposa</i> sailed away on the +back trip to Tahiti. Scraps was taken ashore by a quartermaster +and left in the bosom of his family.</p> +<p>And ashore went Dag Daughtry, with his small savings, to rent two +cheap rooms for himself and his remaining responsibilities, namely, +Charles Stough Greenleaf, Kwaque, Michael, and, not least, Cocky. +But not for long did he permit the Ancient Mariner to live with him.</p> +<p>“It’s not playing the game, sir,” he told him. +“What we need is capital. We’ve got to interest capital, +and you’ve got to do the interesting. Now this very day +you’ve got to buy a couple of suit-cases, hire a taxicab, go sailing +up to the front door of the Bronx Hotel like good pay and be damned. +She’s a real stylish hotel, but reasonable if you want to make +it so. A little room, an inside room, European plan, of course, +and then you can economise by eatin’ out.”</p> +<p>“But, steward, I have no money,” the Ancient Mariner +protested.</p> +<p>“That’s all right, sir; I’ll back you for all I +can.”</p> +<p>“But, my dear man, you know I’m an old impostor. +I can’t stick you up like the others. You . . . why . . +. why, you’re a friend, don’t you see?”</p> +<p>“Sure I do, and I thank you for sayin’ it, sir. +And that’s why I’m with you. And when you’ve +nailed another crowd of treasure-hunters and got the ship ready, you’ll +just ship me along as steward, with Kwaque, and Killeny Boy, and the +rest of our family. You’ve adopted me, now, an’ I’m +your grown-up son, an’ you’ve got to listen to me. +The Bronx is the hotel for you—fine-soundin’ name, ain’t +it? That’s atmosphere. Folk’ll listen half to +you an’ more to your hotel. I tell you, you leaning back +in a big leather chair talkin’ treasure with a two-bit cigar in +your mouth an’ a twenty-cent drink beside you, why that’s +like treasure. They just got to believe. An’ if you’ll +come along now, sir, we’ll trot out an’ buy them suit-cases.”</p> +<p>Right bravely the Ancient Mariner drove to the Bronx in a taxi, registered +his “Charles Stough Greenleaf” in an old-fashioned hand, +and took up anew the activities which for years had kept him free of +the poor-farm. No less bravely did Dag Daughtry set out to seek +work. This was most necessary, because he was a man of expensive +luxuries. His family of Kwaque, Michael, and Cocky required food +and shelter; more costly than that was maintenance of the Ancient Mariner +in the high-class hotel; and, in addition, was his six-quart thirst.</p> +<p>But it was a time of industrial depression. The unemployed +problem was bulking bigger than usual to the citizens of San Francisco. +And, as regarded steamships and sailing vessels, there were three stewards +for every Steward’s position. Nothing steady could Daughtry +procure, while his occasional odd jobs did not balance his various running +expenses. Even did he do pick-and-shovel work, for the municipality, +for three days, when he had to give way, according to the impartial +procedure, to another needy one whom three days’ work would keep +afloat a little longer.</p> +<p>Daughtry would have put Kwaque to work, except that Kwaque was impossible. +The black, who had only seen Sydney from steamers’ decks, had +never been in a city in his life. All he knew of the world was +steamers, far-outlying south-sea isles, and his own island of King William +in Melanesia. So Kwaque remained in the two rooms, cooking and +housekeeping for his master and caring for Michael and Cocky. +All of which was prison for Michael, who had been used to the run of +ships, of coral beaches and plantations.</p> +<p>But in the evenings, sometimes accompanied a few steps in the rear +by Kwaque, Michael strolled out with Steward. The multiplicity +of man-gods on the teeming sidewalks became a real bore to Michael, +so that man-gods, in general, underwent a sharp depreciation. +But Steward, the particular god of his fealty and worship, appreciated. +Amongst so many gods Michael felt bewildered, while Steward’s +Abrahamic bosom became more than ever the one sure haven where harshness +and danger never troubled.</p> +<p>“Mind your step,” is the last word and warning of twentieth-century +city life. Michael was not slow to learn it, as he conserved his +own feet among the countless thousands of leather-shod feet of men, +ever hurrying, always unregarding of the existence and right of way +of a lowly, four-legged Irish terrier.</p> +<p>The evening outings with Steward invariably led from saloon to saloon, +where, at long bars, standing on sawdust floors, or seated at tables, +men drank and talked. Much of both did men do, and also did Steward +do, ere, his daily six-quart stint accomplished, he turned homeward +for bed. Many were the acquaintances he made, and Michael with +him. Coasting seamen and bay sailors they mostly were, although +there were many ’longshoremen and waterfront workmen among them.</p> +<p>From one of these, a scow-schooner captain who plied up and down +the bay and the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, Daughtry had the +promise of being engaged as cook and sailor on the schooner <i>Howard</i>. +Eighty tons of freight, including deckload, she carried, and in all +democracy Captain Jorgensen, the cook, and the two other sailors, loaded +and unloaded her at all hours, and sailed her night and day on all times +and tides, one man steering while three slept and recuperated. +It was time, and double-time, and over-time beyond that, but the feeding +was generous and the wages ran from forty-five to sixty dollars a month.</p> +<p>“Sure, you bet,” said Captain Jorgensen. “This +cook-feller, Hanson, pretty quick I smash him up an’ fire him, +then you can come along . . . and the bow-wow, too.” Here +he dropped a hearty, wholesome hand of toil down to a caress of Michael’s +head. “That’s one fine bow-wow. A bow-wow is +good on a scow when all hands sleep alongside the dock or in an anchor +watch.”</p> +<p>“Fire Hanson now,” Dag Daughtry urged.</p> +<p>But Captain Jorgensen shook his slow head slowly. “First +I smash him up.”</p> +<p>“Then smash him now and fire him,” Daughtry persisted. +“There he is right now at the corner of the bar.”</p> +<p>“No. He must give me reason. I got plenty of reason. +But I want reason all hands can see. I want him make me smash +him, so that all hands say, ‘Hurrah, Captain, you done right.’ +Then you get the job, Daughtry.”</p> +<p>Had Captain Jorgensen not been dilatory in his contemplated smashing, +and had not Hanson delayed in giving sufficient provocation for a smashing, +Michael would have accompanied Steward upon the schooner, <i>Howard</i>, +and all Michael’s subsequent experiences would have been totally +different from what they were destined to be. But destined they +were, by chance and by combinations of chance events over which Michael +had no control and of which he had no more awareness than had Steward +himself. At that period, the subsequent stage career and nightmare +of cruelty for Michael was beyond any wildest forecast or apprehension. +And as to forecasting Dag Daughtry’s fate, along with Kwaque, +no maddest drug-dream could have approximated it.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2> +<p>One night Dag Daughtry sat at a table in the saloon called the Pile-drivers’ +Home. He was in a parlous predicament. Harder than ever +had it been to secure odd jobs, and he had reached the end of his savings. +Earlier in the evening he had had a telephone conference with the Ancient +Mariner, who had reported only progress with an exceptionally strong +nibble that very day from a retired quack doctor.</p> +<p>“Let me pawn my rings,” the Ancient Mariner had urged, +not for the first time, over the telephone.</p> +<p>“No, sir,” had been Daughtry’s reply. “We +need them in the business. They’re stock in trade. +They’re atmosphere. They’re what you call a figure +of speech. I’ll do some thinking to-night an’ see +you in the morning, sir. Hold on to them rings an’ don’t +be no more than casual in playin’ that doctor. Make ’m +come to you. It’s the only way. Now you’re all +right, an’ everything’s hunkydory an’ the goose hangs +high. Don’t you worry, sir. Dag Daughtry never fell +down yet.”</p> +<p>But, as he sat in the Pile-drivers’ Home, it looked as if his +fall-down was very near. In his pocket was precisely the room-rent +for the following week, the advance payment of which was already three +days overdue and clamorously demanded by the hard-faced landlady. +In the rooms, with care, was enough food with which to pinch through +for another day. The Ancient Mariner’s modest hotel bill +had not been paid for two weeks—a prodigious sum under the circumstances, +being a first-class hotel; while the Ancient Mariner had no more than +a couple of dollars in his pocket with which to make a sound like prosperity +in the ears of the retired doctor who wanted to go a-treasuring.</p> +<p>Most catastrophic of all, however, was the fact that Dag Daughtry +was three quarts short of his daily allowance and did not dare break +into the rent money which was all that stood between him and his family +and the street. This was why he sat at the beer table with Captain +Jorgensen, who was just returned with a schooner-load of hay from the +Petaluma Flats. He had already bought beer twice, and evinced +no further show of thirst. Instead, he was yawning from long hours +of work and waking and looking at his watch. And Daughtry was +three quarts short! Besides, Hanson had not yet been smashed, +so that the cook-job on the schooner still lay ahead an unknown distance +in the future.</p> +<p>In his desperation, Daughtry hit upon an idea with which to get another +schooner of steam beer. He did not like steam beer, but it was +cheaper than lager.</p> +<p>“Look here, Captain,” he said. “You don’t +know how smart that Killeny Boy is. Why, he can count just like +you and me.”</p> +<p>“Hoh!” rumbled Captain Jorgensen. “I seen +’em do it in side shows. It’s all tricks. Dogs +an’ horses can’t count.”</p> +<p>“This dog can,” Daughtry continued quietly. “You +can’t fool ’m. I bet you, right now, I can order two +beers, loud so he can hear and notice, and then whisper to the waiter +to bring one, an’, when the one comes, Killeny Boy’ll raise +a roar with the waiter.”</p> +<p>“Hoh! Hoh! How much will you bet?”</p> +<p>The steward fingered a dime in his pocket. If Killeny failed +him it meant that the rent-money would be broken in upon. But +Killeny couldn’t and wouldn’t fail him, he reasoned, as +he answered:</p> +<p>“I’ll bet you the price of two beers.”</p> +<p>The waiter was summoned, and, when he had received his secret instructions, +Michael was called over from where he lay at Kwaque’s feet in +a corner. When Steward placed a chair for him at the table and +invited him into it, he began to key up. Steward expected something +of him, wanted him to show off. And it was not because of the +showing off that he was eager, but because of his love for Steward. +Love and service were one in the simple processes of Michael’s +mind. Just as he would have leaped into fire for Steward’s +sake, so would he now serve Steward in any way Steward desired. +That was what love meant to him. It was all love meant to him—service.</p> +<p>“Waiter!” Steward called; and, when the waiter stood +close at hand: “Two beers.—Did you get that, Killeny? +<i>Two</i> beers.”</p> +<p>Michael squirmed in his chair, placed an impulsive paw on the table, +and impulsively flashed out his ribbon of tongue to Steward’s +close-bending face.</p> +<p>“He will remember,” Daughtry told the scow-schooner captain.</p> +<p>“Not if we talk,” was the reply. “Now we +will fool your bow-wow. I will say that the job is yours when +I smash Hanson. And you will say it is for me to smash Hanson +now. And I will say Hanson must give me reason first to smash +him. And then we will argue like two fools with mouths full of +much noise. Are you ready?”</p> +<p>Daughtry nodded, and thereupon ensued a loud-voiced discussion that +drew Michael’s earnest attention from one talker to the other.</p> +<p>“I got you,” Captain Jorgensen announced, as he saw the +waiter approaching with but a single schooner of beer. “The +bow-wow has forgot, if he ever remembered. He thinks you an’ +me is fighting. The place in his mind for <i>one</i> beer, and +<i>two</i>, is wiped out, like a wave on the beach wipes out the writing +in the sand.”</p> +<p>“I guess he ain’t goin’ to forget arithmetic no +matter how much noise you shouts,” Daughtry argued aloud against +his sinking spirits. “An’ I ain’t goin’ +to butt in,” he added hopefully. “You just watch ’m +for himself.”</p> +<p>The tall, schooner-glass of beer was placed before the captain, who +laid a swift, containing hand around it. And Michael, strung as +a taut string, knowing that something was expected of him, on his toes +to serve, remembered his ancient lessons on the <i>Makambo</i>, vainly +looked into the impassive face of Steward for a sign, then looked about +and saw, not <i>two</i> glasses, but <i>one</i> glass. So well +had he learned the difference between one and two that it came to him—how +the profoundest psychologist can no more state than can he state what +thought is in itself—that there was one glass only when two glasses +had been commanded. With an abrupt upspring, his throat half harsh +with anger, he placed both forepaws on the table and barked at the waiter.</p> +<p>Captain Jorgensen crashed his fist down.</p> +<p>“You win!” he roared. “I pay for the beer! +Waiter, bring one more.”</p> +<p>Michael looked to Steward for verification, and Steward’s hand +on his head gave adequate reply.</p> +<p>“We try again,” said the captain, very much awake and +interested, with the back of his hand wiping the beer-foam from his +moustache. “Maybe he knows one an’ two. How +about three? And four?”</p> +<p>“Just the same, Skipper. He counts up to five, and knows +more than five when it is more than five, though he don’t know +the figures by name after five.”</p> +<p>“Oh, Hanson!” Captain Jorgensen bellowed across the bar-room +to the cook of the <i>Howard</i>. “Hey, you square-head! +Come and have a drink!”</p> +<p>Hanson came over and pulled up a chair.</p> +<p>“I pay for the drinks,” said the captain; “but +you order, Daughtry. See, now, Hanson, this is a trick bow-wow. +He can count better than you. We are three. Daughtry is +ordering three beers. The bow-wow hears three. I hold up +two fingers like this to the waiter. He brings two. The +bow-wow raises hell with the waiter. You see.”</p> +<p>All of which came to pass, Michael blissfully unappeasable until +the order was filled properly.</p> +<p>“He can’t count,” was Hanson’s conclusion. +“He sees one man without beer. That’s all. He +knows every man should ought to have a glass. That’s why +he barks.”</p> +<p>“Better than that,” Daughtry boasted. “There +are three of us. We will order four. Then each man will +have his glass, but Killeny will talk to the waiter just the same.”</p> +<p>True enough, now thoroughly aware of the game, Michael made outcry +to the waiter till the fourth glass was brought. By this time +many men were about the table, all wanting to buy beer and test Michael.</p> +<p>“Glory be,” Dag Daughtry solloquized. “A +funny world. Thirsty one moment. The next moment they’d +fair drown you in beer.”</p> +<p>Several even wanted to buy Michael, offering ridiculous sums like +fifteen and twenty dollars.</p> +<p>“I tell you what,” Captain Jorgensen muttered to Daughtry, +whom he had drawn away into a corner. “You give me that +bow-wow, and I’ll smash Hanson right now, and you got the job +right away—come to work in the morning.”</p> +<p>Into another corner the proprietor of the Pile-drivers’ Home +drew Daughtry to whisper to him:</p> +<p>“You stick around here every night with that dog of yourn. +It makes trade. I’ll give you free beer any time and fifty +cents cash money a night.”</p> +<p>It was this proposition that started the big idea in Daughtry’s +mind. As he told Michael, back in the room, while Kwaque was unlacing +his shoes:</p> +<p>“It’s this way Killeny. If you’re worth fifty +cents a night and free beer to that saloon keeper, then you’re +worth that to me . . . and more, my son, more. ’Cause he’s +lookin’ for a profit. That’s why he sells beer instead +of buyin’ it. An’, Killeny, you won’t mind workin’ +for me, I know. We need the money. There’s Kwaque, +an’ Mr. Greenleaf, an’ Cocky, not even mentioning you an’ +me, an’ we eat an awful lot. An’ room-rent’s +hard to get, an’ jobs is harder. What d’ye say, son, +to-morrow night you an’ me hustle around an’ see how much +coin we can gather?”</p> +<p>And Michael, seated on Steward’s knees, eyes to eyes and nose +to nose, his jowls held in Steward’s hand’s wriggled and +squirmed with delight, flipping out his tongue and bobbing his tail +in the air. Whatever it was, it was good, for it was Steward who +spoke.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> +<p>The grizzled ship’s steward and the rough-coated Irish terrier +quickly became conspicuous figures in the night life of the Barbary +Coast of San Francisco. Daughtry elaborated on the counting trick +by bringing Cocky along. Thus, when a waiter did not fetch the +right number of glasses, Michael would remain quite still, until Cocky, +at a privy signal from Steward, standing on one leg, with the free claw +would clutch Michael’s neck and apparently talk into Michael’s +ear. Whereupon Michael would look about the glasses on the table +and begin his usual expostulation with the waiter.</p> +<p>But it was when Daughtry and Michael first sang “Roll me Down +to Rio” together, that the ten-strike was made. It occurred +in a sailors’ dance-hall on Pacific Street, and all dancing stopped +while the sailors clamoured for more of the singing dog. Nor did +the place lose money, for no one left, and the crowd increased to standing +room as Michael went through his repertoire of “God Save the King,” +“Sweet Bye and Bye,” “Lead, Kindly Light,” “Home, +Sweet Home,” and “Shenandoah.”</p> +<p>It meant more than free beer to Daughtry, for, when he started to +leave, the proprietor of the place thrust three silver dollars into +his hand and begged him to come around with the dog next night.</p> +<p>“For that?” Daughtry demanded, looking at the money as +if it were contemptible.</p> +<p>Hastily the proprietor added two more dollars, and Daughtry promised.</p> +<p>“Just the same, Killeny, my son,” he told Michael as +they went to bed, “I think you an’ me are worth more than +five dollars a turn. Why, the like of you has never been seen +before. A real singing dog that can carry ’most any air +with me, and that can carry half a dozen by himself. An’ +they say Caruso gets a thousand a night. Well, you ain’t +Caruso, but you’re the dog-Caruso of the entire world. Son, +I’m goin’ to be your business manager. If we can’t +make a twenty-dollar gold-piece a night—say, son, we’re +goin’ to move into better quarters. An’ the old gent +up at the Hotel de Bronx is goin’ to move into an outside room. +An’ Kwaque’s goin’ to get a real outfit of clothes. +Killeny, my boy, we’re goin’ to get so rich that if he can’t +snare a sucker we’ll put up the cash ourselves ’n’ +buy a schooner for ’m, ’n’ send him out a-treasure-huntin’ +on his own. We’ll be the suckers, eh, just you an’ +me, an’ love to.”</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>The Barbary Coast of San Francisco, once the old-time sailor-town +in the days when San Francisco was reckoned the toughest port of the +Seven Seas, had evolved with the city until it depended for at least +half of its earnings on the slumming parties that visited it and spent +liberally. It was quite the custom, after dinner, for many of +the better classes of society, especially when entertaining curious +Easterners, to spend an hour or several in motoring from dance-hall +to dance-hall and cheap cabaret to cheap cabaret. In short, the +“Coast” was as much a sight-seeing place as was Chinatown +and the Cliff House.</p> +<p>It was not long before Dag Daughtry was getting his twenty dollars +a night for two twenty-minute turns, and was declining more beer than +a dozen men with thirsts equal to his could have accommodated. +Never had he been so prosperous; nor can it be denied that Michael enjoyed +it. Enjoy it he did, but principally for Steward’s sake. +He was serving Steward, and so to serve was his highest heart’s +desire.</p> +<p>In truth, Michael was the bread-winner for quite a family, each member +of which fared well. Kwaque blossomed out resplendent in russet-brown +shoes, a derby hat, and a gray suit with trousers immaculately creased. +Also, he became a devotee of the moving-picture shows, spending as much +as twenty and thirty cents a day and resolutely sitting out every repetition +of programme. Little time was required of him in caring for Daughtry, +for they had come to eating in restaurants. Not only had the Ancient +Mariner moved into a more expensive outside room at the Bronx; but Daughtry +insisted on thrusting upon him more spending money, so that, on occasion, +he could invite a likely acquaintance to the theatre or a concert and +bring him home in a taxi.</p> +<p>“We won’t keep this up for ever, Killeny,” Steward +told Michael. “For just as long as it takes the old gent +to land another bunch of gold-pouched, retriever-snouted treasure-hunters, +and no longer. Then it’s hey for the ocean blue, my son, +an’ the roll of a good craft under our feet, an’ smash of +wet on the deck, an’ a spout now an’ again of the scuppers.</p> +<p>“We got to go rollin’ down to Rio as well as sing about +it to a lot of cheap skates. They can take their rotten cities. +The sea’s the life for us—you an’ me, Killeny, son, +an’ the old gent an’ Kwaque, an’ Cocky, too. +We ain’t made for city ways. It ain’t healthy. +Why, son, though you maybe won’t believe it, I’m losin’ +my spring. The rubber’s goin’ outa me. I’m +kind o’ languid, with all night in an’ nothin’ to +do but sit around. It makes me fair sick at the thought of hearin’ +the old gent say once again, ‘I think, steward, one of those prime +cocktails would be just the thing before dinner.’ We’ll +take a little ice-machine along next voyage, an’ give ’m +the best.</p> +<p>“An’ look at Kwaque, Killeny, my boy. This ain’t +his climate. He’s positively ailin’. If he sits +around them picture-shows much more he’ll develop the T.B. +For the good of his health, an’ mine an’ yours, an’ +all of us, we got to get up anchor pretty soon an’ hit out for +the home of the trade winds that kiss you through an’ through +with the salt an’ the life of the sea.”</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>In truth, Kwaque, who never complained, was ailing fast. A +swelling, slow and sensationless at first, under his right arm-pit, +had become a mild and unceasing pain. No longer could he sleep +a night through. Although he lay on his left side, never less +than twice, and often three and four times, the hurt of the swelling +woke him. Ah Moy, had he not long since been delivered back to +China by the immigration authorities, could have told him the meaning +of that swelling, just as he could have told Dag Daughtry the meaning +of the increasing area of numbness between his eyes where the tiny, +vertical, lion-lines were cutting more conspicuously. Also, could +he have told him what was wrong with the little finger on his left hand. +Daughtry had first diagnosed it as a sprain of a tendon. Later, +he had decided it was chronic rheumatism brought on by the damp and +foggy Sun Francisco climate. It was one of his reasons for desiring +to get away again to sea where the tropic sun would warm the rheumatism +out of him.</p> +<p>As a steward, Daughtry had been accustomed to contact with men and +women of the upper world. But for the first time in his life, +here in the underworld of San Francisco, in all equality he met such +persons from above. Nay, more, they were eager to meet him. +They sought him. They fawned upon him for an invitation to sit +at his table and buy beer for him in whatever garish cabaret Michael +was performing. They would have bought wine for him, at enormous +expense, had he not stubbornly stuck to his beer. They were, some +of them, for inviting him to their homes—“An’ bring +the wonderful dog along for a sing-song”; but Daughtry, proud +of Michael for being the cause of such invitations, explained that the +professional life was too arduous to permit of such diversions. +To Michael he explained that when they proffered a fee of fifty dollars, +the pair of them would “come a-runnin’.”</p> +<p>Among the host of acquaintances made in their cabaret-life, two were +destined, very immediately, to play important parts in the lives of +Daughtry and Michael. The first, a politician and a doctor, by +name Emory—Walter Merritt Emory—was several times at Daughtry’s +table, where Michael sat with them on a chair according to custom. +Among other things, in gratitude for such kindnesses from Daughtry, +Doctor Emory gave his office card and begged for the privilege of treating, +free of charge, either master or dog should they ever become sick. +In Daughtry’s opinion, Dr. Walter Merritt Emory was a keen, clever +man, undoubtedly able in his profession, but passionately selfish as +a hungry tiger. As he told him, in the brutal candour he could +afford under such changed conditions: “Doc, you’re a wonder. +Anybody can see it with half an eye. What you want you just go +and get. Nothing’d stop you except . . . ”</p> +<p>“Except?”</p> +<p>“Oh, except that it was nailed down, or locked up, or had a +policeman standing guard over it. I’d sure hate to have +anything you wanted.”</p> +<p>“Well, you have,” Doctor assured him, with a significant +nod at Michael on the chair between them.</p> +<p>“Br-r-r!” Daughtry shivered. “You give me +the creeps. If I thought you really meant it, San Francisco couldn’t +hold me two minutes.” He meditated into his beer-glass a +moment, then laughed with reassurance. “No man could get +that dog away from me. You see, I’d kill the man first. +I’d just up an’ tell ’m, as I’m tellin’ +you now, I’d kill ’m first. An’ he’d believe +me, as you’re believin’ me now. You know I mean it. +So’d he know I meant it. Why, that dog . . . ”</p> +<p>In sheer inability to express the profundity of his emotion, Dag +Daughtry broke off the sentence and drowned it in his beer-glass.</p> +<p>Of quite different type was the other person of destiny. Harry +Del Mar, he called himself; and Harry Del Mar was the name that appeared +on the programmes when he was doing Orpheum “time.” +Although Daughtry did not know it, because Del Mar was laying off for +a vacation, the man did trained-animal turns for a living. He, +too, bought drinks at Daughtry’s table. Young, not over +thirty, dark of complexion with large, long-lashed brown eyes that he +fondly believed were magnetic, cherubic of lip and feature, he belied +all his appearance by talking business in direct business fashion.</p> +<p>“But you ain’t got the money to buy ’m,” +Daughtry replied, when the other had increased his first offer of five +hundred dollars for Michael to a thousand.</p> +<p>“I’ve got the thousand, if that’s what you mean.”</p> +<p>“No,” Daughtry shook his head. “I mean he +ain’t for sale at any price. Besides, what do you want ’m +for?”</p> +<p>“I like him,” Del Mar answered. “Why do I +come to this joint? Why does the crowd come here? Why do +men buy wine, run horses, sport actresses, become priests or bookworms? +Because they like to. That’s the answer. We all do +what we like when we can, go after the thing we want whether we can +get it or not. Now I like your dog, I want him. I want him +a thousand dollars’ worth. See that big diamond on that +woman’s hand over there. I guess she just liked it, and +wanted it, and got it, never mind the price. The price didn’t +mean as much to her as the diamond. Now that dog of yours—”</p> +<p>“Don’t like you,” Dag Daughtry broke in. +“Which is strange. He likes most everybody without fussin’ +about it. But he bristled at you from the first. No man’d +want a dog that don’t like him.”</p> +<p>“Which isn’t the question,” Del Mar stated quietly. +“I like him. As for him liking or not liking me, that’s +my look-out, and I guess I can attend to that all right.”</p> +<p>It seemed to Daughtry that he glimpsed or sensed under the other’s +unfaltering cherubicness of expression a steelness of cruelty that was +abysmal in that it was of controlled intelligence. Not in such +terms did Daughtry think his impression. At the most, it was a +feeling, and feelings do not require words in order to be experienced +or comprehended.</p> +<p>“There’s an all-night bank,” the other went on. +“We can stroll over, I’ll cash a cheque, and in half an +hour the cash will be in your hand.”</p> +<p>Daughtry shook his head.</p> +<p>“Even as a business proposition, nothing doing,” he said. +“Look you. Here’s the dog earnin’ twenty dollars +a night. Say he works twenty-five days in the month. That’s +five hundred a month, or six thousand a year. Now say that’s +five per cent., because it’s easier to count, it represents the +interest on a capital value of one hundred an’ twenty thousand-dollars. +Then we’ll suppose expenses and salary for me is twenty thousand. +That leaves the dog worth a hundred thousand. Just to be fair, +cut it in half—a fifty-thousand dog. And you’re offerin’ +a thousand for him.”</p> +<p>“I suppose you think he’ll last for ever, like so much +land’,” Del Mar smiled quietly.</p> +<p>Daughtry saw the point instantly.</p> +<p>“Give ’m five years of work—that’s thirty +thousand. Give ’m one year of work—it’s six +thousand. An’ you’re offerin’ me one thousand +for six thousand. That ain’t no kind of business—for +me . . . an’ him. Besides, when he can’t work any +more, an’ ain’t worth a cent, he’ll be worth just +a plumb million to me, an’ if anybody offered it, I’d raise +the price.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2> +<p>“I’ll see you again,” Harry Del Mar told Daughtry, +at the end of his fourth conversation on the matter of Michael’s +sale.</p> +<p>Wherein Harry Del Mar was mistaken. He never saw Daughtry again, +because Daughtry saw Doctor Emory first.</p> +<p>Kwaque’s increasing restlessness at night, due to the swelling +under his right arm-pit, had began to wake Daughtry up. After +several such experiences, he had investigated and decided that Kwaque +was sufficiently sick to require a doctor. For which reason, one +morning at eleven, taking Kwaque along, he called at Walter Merritt +Emory’s office and waited his turn in the crowded reception-room.</p> +<p>“I think he’s got cancer, Doc.,” Daughtry said, +while Kwaque was pulling off his shirt and undershirt. “He +never squealed, you know, never peeped. That’s the way of +niggers. I didn’t find our till he got to wakin’ me +up nights with his tossin’ about an’ groanin’ in his +sleep.—There! What’d you call it? Cancer or +tumour—no two ways about it, eh?”</p> +<p>But the quick eye of Walter Merritt Emory had not missed, in passing, +the twisted fingers of Kwaque’s left hand. Not only was +his eye quick, but it was a “leper eye.” A volunteer +surgeon in the first days out in the Philippines, he had made a particular +study of leprosy, and had observed so many lepers that infallibly, except +in the incipient beginnings of the disease, he could pick out a leper +at a glance. From the twisted fingers, which was the anæsthetic +form, produced by nerve-disintegration, to the corrugated lion forehead +(again anæsthetic), his eyes flashed to the swelling under the +right arm-pit and his brain diagnosed it as the tubercular form.</p> +<p>Just as swiftly flashed through his brain two thoughts: the first, +the axiom, <i>whenever and wherever you find a leper, look for the other +leper</i>; the second, the desired Irish terrier, who was owned by Daughtry, +with whom Kwaque had been long associated. And here all swiftness +of eye-flashing ceased on the part of Walter Merritt Emory. He +did not know how much, if anything, the steward knew about leprosy, +and he did not care to arouse any suspicions. Casually drawing +his watch to see the time, he turned and addressed Daughtry.</p> +<p>“I should say his blood is out of order. He’s run +down. He’s not used to the recent life he’s been living, +nor to the food. To make certain, I shall examine for cancer and +tumour, although there’s little chance of anything like that.”</p> +<p>And as he talked, with just a waver for a moment, his gaze lifted +above Daughtry’s eyes to the area of forehead just above and between +the eyes. It was sufficient. His “leper-eye” +had seen the “lion” mark of the leper.</p> +<p>“You’re run down yourself,” he continued smoothly. +“You’re not up to snuff, I’ll wager. Eh?”</p> +<p>“Can’t say that I am,” Daughtry agreed. “I +guess I got to get back to the sea an’ the tropics and warm the +rheumatics outa me.”</p> +<p>“Where?” queried Doctor Emory, almost absently, so well +did he feign it, as if apparently on the verge of returning to a closer +examination, of Kwaque’s swelling.</p> +<p>Daughtry extended his left hand, with a little wiggle of the little +finger advertising the seat of the affliction. Walter Merritt +Emory saw, with seeming careless look out from under careless-drooping +eyelids, the little finger slightly swollen, slightly twisted, with +a smooth, almost shiny, silkiness of skin-texture. Again, in the +course of turning to look at Kwaque, his eyes rested an instant on the +lion-lines of Daughtry’s brow.</p> +<p>“Rheumatism is still the great mystery,” Doctor Emory +said, returning to Daughtry as if deflected by the thought. “It’s +almost individual, there are so many varieties of it. Each man +has a kind of his own. Any numbness?”</p> +<p>Daughtry laboriously wiggled his little finger.</p> +<p>“Yes, sir,” he answered. “It ain’t +as lively as it used to was.”</p> +<p>“Ah,” Walter Merritt Emory murmured, with a vastitude +of confidence and assurance. “Please sit down in that chair +there. Maybe I won’t be able to cure you, but I promise +you I can direct you to the best place to live for what’s the +matter with you.—Miss Judson!”</p> +<p>And while the trained-nurse-apparelled young woman seated Dag Daughtry +in the enamelled surgeon’s chair and leaned him back under direction, +and while Doctor Emory dipped his finger-tips into the strongest antiseptic +his office possessed, behind Doctor Emory’s eyes, in the midst +of his brain, burned the image of a desired Irish terrier who did turns +in sailor-town cabarets, was rough-coated, and answered to the full +name of Killeny Boy.</p> +<p>“You’ve got rheumatism in more places than your little +finger,” he assured Daughtry. “There’s a touch +right here, I’ll wager, on your forehead. One moment, please. +Move if I hurt you, Otherwise sit still, because I don’t intend +to hurt you. I merely want to see if my diagnosis is correct.—There, +that’s it. Move when you feel anything. Rheumatism +has strange freaks.—Watch this, Miss Judson, and I’ll wager +this form of rheumatism is new to you. See. He does not +resent. He thinks I have not begun yet . . . ”</p> +<p>And as he talked, steadily, interestingly, he was doing what Dag +Daughtry never dreamed he was doing, and what made Kwaque, looking on, +almost dream he was seeing because of the unrealness and impossibleness +of it. For, with a large needle, Doctor Emory was probing the +dark spot in the midst of the vertical lion-lines. Nor did he +merely probe the area. Thrusting into it from one side, under +the skin and parallel to it, he buried the length of the needle from +sight through the insensate infiltration. This Kwaque beheld with +bulging eyes; for his master betrayed no sign that the thing was being +done.</p> +<p>“Why don’t you begin?” Dag Daughtry questioned +impatiently. “Besides, my rheumatism don’t count. +It’s the nigger-boy’s swelling.”</p> +<p>“You need a course of treatment,” Doctor Emory assured +him. “Rheumatism is a tough proposition. It should +never be let grow chronic. I’ll fix up a course of treatment +for you. Now, if you’ll get out of the chair, we’ll +look at your black servant.”</p> +<p>But first, before Kwaque was leaned back, Doctor Emory threw over +the chair a sheet that smelled of having been roasted almost to the +scorching point. As he was about to examine Kwaque, he looked +with a slight start of recollection at his watch. When he saw +the time he startled more, and turned a reproachful face upon his assistant.</p> +<p>“Miss Judson,” he said, coldly emphatic, “you have +failed me. Here it is, twenty before twelve, and you knew I was +to confer with Doctor Hadley over that case at eleven-thirty sharp. +How he must be cursing me! You know how peevish he is.”</p> +<p>Miss Judson nodded, with a perfect expression of contrition and humility, +as if she knew all about it, although, in reality, she knew only all +about her employer and had never heard till that moment of his engagement +at eleven-thirty.</p> +<p>“Doctor Hadley’s just across the hall,” Doctor +Emory explained to Daughtry. “It won’t take me five +minutes. He and I have a disagreement. He has diagnosed +the case as chronic appendicitis and wants to operate. I have +diagnosed it as pyorrhea which has infected the stomach from the mouth, +and have suggested emetine treatment of the mouth as a cure for the +stomach disorder. Of course, you don’t understand, but the +point is that I’ve persuaded Doctor Hadley to bring in Doctor +Granville, who is a dentist and a pyorrhea expert. And they’re +all waiting for me these ten minutes! I must run.</p> +<p>“I’ll return inside five minutes,” he called back +as the door to the hall was closing upon him.—“Miss Judson, +please tell those people in the reception-room to be patient.”</p> +<p>He did enter Doctor Hadley’s office, although no sufferer from +pyorrhea or appendicitis awaited him. Instead, he used the telephone +for two calls: one to the president of the board of health; the other +to the chief of police. Fortunately, he caught both at their offices, +addressing them familiarly by their first names and talking to them +most emphatically and confidentially.</p> +<p>Back in his own quarters, he was patently elated.</p> +<p>“I told him so,” he assured Miss Judson, but embracing +Daughtry in the happy confidence. “Doctor Granville backed +me up. Straight pyorrhea, of course. That knocks the operation. +And right now they’re jolting his gums and the pus-sacs with emetine. +Whew! A fellow likes to be right. I deserve a smoke. +Do you mind, Mr. Daughtry?”</p> +<p>And while the steward shook his head, Doctor Emory lighted a big +Havana and continued audibly to luxuriate in his fictitious triumph +over the other doctor. As he talked, he forgot to smoke, and, +leaning quite casually against the chair, with arrant carelessness allowed +the live coal at the end of his cigar to rest against the tip of one +of Kwaque’s twisted fingers. A privy wink to Miss Judson, +who was the only one who observed his action, warned her against anything +that might happen.</p> +<p>“You know, Mr. Daughtry,” Walter Merritt Emory went on +enthusiastically, while he held the steward’s eyes with his and +while all the time the live end of the cigar continued to rest against +Kwaque’s finger, “the older I get the more convinced I am +that there are too many ill-advised and hasty operations.”</p> +<p>Still fire and flesh pressed together, and a tiny spiral of smoke +began to arise from Kwaque’s finger-end that was different in +colour from the smoke of a cigar-end.</p> +<p>“Now take that patient of Doctor Hadley’s. I’ve +saved him, not merely the risk of an operation for appendicitis, but +the cost of it, and the hospital expenses. I shall charge him +nothing for what I did. Hadley’s charge will be merely nominal. +Doctor Granville, at the outside, will cure his pyorrhea with emetine +for no more than a paltry fifty dollars. Yes, by George, besides +the risk to his life, and the discomfort, I’ve saved that man, +all told, a cold thousand dollars to surgeon, hospital, and nurses.”</p> +<p>And while he talked on, holding Daughtry’s eyes, a smell of +roast meat began to pervade the air. Doctor Emory smelled it eagerly. +So did Miss Judson smell it, but she had been warned and gave no notice. +Nor did she look at the juxtaposition of cigar and finger, although +she knew by the evidence of her nose that it still obtained.</p> +<p>“What’s burning?” Daughtry demanded suddenly, sniffing +the air and glancing around.</p> +<p>“Pretty rotten cigar,” Doctor Emory observed, having +removed it from contact with Kwaque’s finger and now examining +it with critical disapproval. He held it close to his nose, and +his face portrayed disgust. “I won’t say cabbage leaves. +I’ll merely say it’s something I don’t know and don’t +care to know. That’s the trouble. They get out a good, +new brand of cigar, advertise it, put the best of tobacco into it, and, +when it has taken with the public, put in inferior tobacco and ride +the popularity of it. No more in mine, thank you. This day +I change my brand.”</p> +<p>So speaking, he tossed the cigar into a cuspidor. And Kwaque, +leaning back in the queerest chair in which he had ever sat, was unaware +that the end of his finger had been burned and roasted half an inch +deep, and merely wondered when the medicine doctor would cease talking +and begin looking at the swelling that hurt his side under his arm.</p> +<p>And for the first time in his life, and for the ultimate time, Dag +Daughtry fell down. It was an irretrievable fall-down. Life, +in its freedom of come and go, by heaving sea and reeling deck, through +the home of the trade-winds, back and forth between the ports, ceased +there for him in Walter Merritt Emory’s office, while the calm-browed +Miss Judson looked on and marvelled that a man’s flesh should +roast and the man wince not from the roasting of it.</p> +<p>Doctor Emory continued to talk, and tried a fresh cigar, and, despite +the fact that his reception-room was overflowing, delivered, not merely +a long, but a live and interesting, dissertation on the subject of cigars +and of the tobacco leaf and filler as grown and prepared for cigars +in the tobacco-favoured regions of the earth.</p> +<p>“Now, as regards this swelling,” he was saying, as he +began a belated and distant examination of Kwaque’s affliction, +“I should say, at a glance, that it is neither tumour nor cancer, +nor is it even a boil. I should say . . . ”</p> +<p>A knock at the private door into the hall made him straighten up +with an eagerness that he did not attempt to mask. A nod to Miss +Judson sent her to open the door, and entered two policemen, a police +sergeant, and a professionally whiskered person in a business suit with +a carnation in his button-hole.</p> +<p>“Good morning, Doctor Masters,” Emory greeted the professional +one, and, to the others: “Howdy, Sergeant;” “Hello, +Tim;” “Hello, Johnson—when did they shift you off +the Chinatown squad?”</p> +<p>And then, continuing his suspended sentence, Walter Merritt Emory +held on, looking intently at Kwaque’s swelling:</p> +<p>“I should say, as I was saying, that it is the finest, ripest, +perforating ulcer of the <i>bacillus leprae</i> order, that any San +Francisco doctor has had the honour of presenting to the board of health.”</p> +<p>“Leprosy!” exclaimed Doctor Masters.</p> +<p>And all started at his pronouncement of the word. The sergeant +and the two policemen shied away from Kwaque; Miss Judson, with a smothered +cry, clapped her two hands over her heart; and Dag Daughtry, shocked +but sceptical, demanded:</p> +<p>“What are you givin’ us, Doc.?”</p> +<p>“Stand still! don’t move!” Walter Merritt Emory +said peremptorily to Daughtry. “I want you to take notice,” +he added to the others, as he gently touched the live-end of his fresh +cigar to the area of dark skin above and between the steward’s +eyes. “Don’t move,” he commanded Daughtry. +“Wait a moment. I am not ready yet.”</p> +<p>And while Daughtry waited, perplexed, confused, wondering why Doctor +Emory did not proceed, the coal of fire burned his skin and flesh, till +the smoke of it was apparent to all, as was the smell of it. With +a sharp laugh of triumph, Doctor Emory stepped back.</p> +<p>“Well, go ahead with what you was goin’ to do,” +Daughtry grumbled, the rush of events too swift and too hidden for him +to comprehend. “An’ when you’re done with that, +I just want you to explain what you said about leprosy an’ that +nigger-boy there. He’s my boy, an’ you can’t +pull anything like that off on him . . . or me.”</p> +<p>“Gentlemen, you have seen,” Doctor Emory said. +“Two undoubted cases of it, master and man, the man more advanced, +with the combination of both forms, the master with only the anæsthetic +form—he has a touch of it, too, on his little finger. Take +them away. I strongly advise, Doctor Masters, a thorough fumigation +of the ambulance afterward.”</p> +<p>“Look here . . . ” Dag Daughtry began belligerently.</p> +<p>Doctor Emory glanced warningly to Doctor Masters, and Doctor Masters +glanced authoritatively at the sergeant who glanced commandingly at +his two policemen. But they did not spring upon Daughtry. +Instead, they backed farther away, drew their clubs, and glared intimidatingly +at him. More convincing than anything else to Daughtry was the +conduct of the policemen. They were manifestly afraid of contact +with him. As he started forward, they poked the ends of their +extended clubs towards his ribs to ward him off.</p> +<p>“Don’t you come any closer,” one warned him, flourishing +his club with the advertisement of braining him. “You stay +right where you are until you get your orders.”</p> +<p>“Put on your shirt and stand over there alongside your master,” +Doctor Emory commanded Kwaque, having suddenly elevated the chair and +spilled him out on his feet on the floor.</p> +<p>“But what under the sun . . . ” Daughtry began, but was +ignored by his quondam friend, who was saying to Doctor Masters:</p> +<p>“The pest-house has been vacant since that Japanese died. +I know the gang of cowards in your department so I’d advise you +to give the dope to these here so that they can disinfect the premises +when they go in.”</p> +<p>“For the love of Mike,” Daughtry pleaded, all of stunned +belligerence gone from him in his state of stunned conviction that the +dread disease possessed him. He touched his finger to his sensationless +forehead, then smelled it and recognized the burnt flesh he had not +felt burning. “For the love of Mike, don’t be in such +a rush. If I’ve got it, I’ve got it. But that +ain’t no reason we can’t deal with each other like white +men. Give me two hours an’ I’ll get outa the city. +An’ in twenty-four I’ll be outa the country. I’ll +take ship—”</p> +<p>“And continue to be a menace to the public health wherever +you are,” Doctor Masters broke in, already visioning a column +in the evening papers, with scare-heads, in which he would appear the +hero, the St. George of San Francisco standing with poised lance between +the people and the dragon of leprosy.</p> +<p>“Take them away,” said Waiter Merritt Emory, avoiding +looking Daughtry in the eyes.</p> +<p>“Ready! March!” commanded the sergeant.</p> +<p>The two policemen advanced on Daughtry and Kwaque with extended clubs.</p> +<p>“Keep away, an’ keep movin’,” one of the +policemen growled fiercely. “An’ do what we say, or +get your head cracked. Out you go, now. Out the door with +you. Better tell that coon to stick right alongside you.”</p> +<p>“Doc., won’t you let me talk a moment?” Daughtry +begged of Emory.</p> +<p>“The time for talking is past,” was the reply. +“This is the time for segregation.—Doctor Masters, don’t +forget that ambulance when you’re quit of the load.”</p> +<p>So the procession, led by the board-of-heath doctor and the sergeant, +and brought up in the rear by the policemen with their protectively +extended clubs, started through the doorway.</p> +<p>Whirling about on the threshold, at the imminent risk of having his +skull cracked, Dag Daughtry called back:</p> +<p>“Doc! My dog! You know ’m.”</p> +<p>“I’ll get him for you,” Doctor Emory consented +quickly. “What’s the address?”</p> +<p>“Room eight-seven, Clay street, the Bowhead Lodging House, +you know the place, entrance just around the corner from the Bowhead +Saloon. Have ’m sent out to me wherever they put me—will +you?”</p> +<p>“Certainly I will,” said Doctor Emory, “and you’ve +got a cockatoo, too?”</p> +<p>“You bet, Cocky! Send ’m both along, please, sir.”</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>“My!” said Miss Judson, that evening, at dinner with +a certain young interne of St. Joseph’s Hospital. “That +Doctor Emory is a wizard. No wonder he’s successful. +Think of it! Two filthy lepers in our office to-day! One +was a coon. And he knew what was the matter the moment he laid +eyes on them. He’s a caution. When I tell you what +he did to them with his cigar! And he was cute about it! +He gave me the wink first. And they never dreamed what he was +doing. He took his cigar and . . . ”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XX</h2> +<p>The dog, like the horse, abases the base. Being base, Waiter +Merritt Emory was abased by his desire for the possession of Michael. +Had there been no Michael, his conduct would have been quite different. +He would have dealt with Daughtry as Daughtry had described, as between +white men. He would have warned Daughtry of his disease and enabled +him to take ship to the South Seas or to Japan, or to other countries +where lepers are not segregated. This would have worked no hardship +on those countries, since such was their law and procedure, while it +would have enabled Daughtry and Kwaque to escape the hell of the San +Francisco pest-house, to which, because of his baseness, he condemned +them for the rest of their lives.</p> +<p>Furthermore, when the expense of the maintenance of armed guards +over the pest-house, day and night, throughout the years, is considered, +Walter Merritt Emory could have saved many thousands of dollars to the +tax-payers of the city and county of San Francisco, which thousands +of dollars, had they been spent otherwise, could have been diverted +to the reduction of the notorious crowding in school-rooms, to purer +milk for the babies of the poor, or to an increase of breathing-space +in the park system for the people of the stifling ghetto. But +had Walter Merritt Emory been thus considerate, not only would Daughtry +and Kwaque have sailed out and away over the sea, but with them would +have sailed Michael.</p> +<p>Never was a reception-roomful of patients rushed through more expeditiously +than was Doctor Emory’s the moment the door had closed upon the +two policemen who brought up Daughtry’s rear. And before +he went to his late lunch, Doctor Emory was away in his machine and +down into the Barbary Coast to the door of the Bowhead Lodging House. +On the way, by virtue of his political affiliations, he had been able +to pick up a captain of detectives. The addition of the captain +proved necessary, for the landlady put up a stout argument against the +taking of the dog of her lodger. But Milliken, captain of detectives, +was too well known to her, and she yielded to the law of which he was +the symbol and of which she was credulously ignorant.</p> +<p>As Michael started out of the room on the end of a rope, a plaintive +call of reminder came from the window-sill, where perched a tiny, snow-white +cockatoo.</p> +<p>“Cocky,” he called. “Cocky.”</p> +<p>Walter Merritt Emory glanced back and for no more than a moment hesitated. +“We’ll send for the bird later,” he told the landlady, +who, still mildly expostulating as she followed them downstairs, failed +to notice that the captain of the detectives had carelessly left the +door to Daughtry’s rooms ajar.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>But Walter Merritt Emory was not the only base one abased by desire +of possession of Michael. In a deep leather chair, his feet resting +in another deep leather chair, at the Indoor Yacht Club, Harry Del Mar +yielded to the somniferous digestion of lunch, which was for him breakfast +as well, and glanced through the first of the early editions of the +afternoon papers. His eyes lighted on a big headline, with a brief +five lines under it. His feet were instantly drawn down off the +chair and under him as he stood up erect upon them. On swift second +thought, he sat down again, pressed the electric button, and, while +waiting for the club steward, reread the headline and the brief five +lines.</p> +<p>In a taxi, and away, heading for the Barbary Coast, Harry Del Mar +saw visions that were golden. They took on the semblance of yellow, +twenty-dollar gold pieces, of yellow-backed paper bills of the government +stamping of the United States, of bank books, and of rich coupons ripe +for the clipping—and all shot through the flashings of the form +of a rough-coated Irish terrier, on a galaxy of brilliantly-lighted +stages, mouth open, nose upward to the drops, singing, ever singing, +as no dog had ever been known to sing in the world before.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>Cocky himself was the first to discover that the door was ajar, and +was looking at it with speculation (if by “speculation” +may be described the mental processes of a bird, in some mysterious +way absorbing into its consciousness a fresh impression of its environment +and preparing to act, or not act, according to which way the fresh impression +modifies its conduct). Humans do this very thing, and some of +them call it “free will.” Cocky, staring at the open +door, was in just the stage of determining whether or not he should +more closely inspect that crack of exit to the wider world, which inspection, +in turn, would determine whether or not he should venture out through +the crack, when his eyes beheld the eyes of the second discoverer staring +in.</p> +<p>The eyes were bestial, yellow-green, the pupils dilating and narrowing +with sharp swiftness as they sought about among the lights and glooms +of the room. Cocky knew danger at the first glimpse—danger +to the uttermost of violent death. Yet Cocky did nothing. +No panic stirred his heart. Motionless, one eye only turned upon +the crack, he focused that one eye upon the head and eyes of the gaunt +gutter-cat whose head had erupted into the crack like an apparition.</p> +<p>Alert, dilating and contracting, as swift as cautious, and infinitely +apprehensive, the pupils vertically slitted in jet into the midmost +of amazing opals of greenish yellow, the eyes roved the room. +They alighted on Cocky. Instantly the head portrayed that the +cat had stiffened, crouched, and frozen. Almost imperceptibly +the eyes settled into a watching that was like to the stony stare of +a sphinx across aching and eternal desert sands. The eyes were +as if they had so stared for centuries and millenniums.</p> +<p>No less frozen was Cocky. He drew no film across his one eye +that showed his head cocked sideways, nor did the passion of apprehension +that whelmed him manifest itself in the quiver of a single feather. +Both creatures were petrified into the mutual stare that is of the hunter +and the hunted, the preyer and the prey, the meat-eater and the meat.</p> +<p>It was a matter of long minutes, that stare, until the head in the +doorway, with a slight turn, disappeared. Could a bird sigh, Cocky +would have sighed. But he made no movement as he listened to the +slow, dragging steps of a man go by and fade away down the hall.</p> +<p>Several minutes passed, and, just as abruptly the apparition reappeared—not +alone the head this time, but the entire sinuous form as it glided into +the room and came to rest in the middle of the floor. The eyes +brooded on Cocky, and the entire body was still save for the long tail, +which lashed from one side to the other and back again in an abrupt, +angry, but monotonous manner.</p> +<p>Never removing its eyes from Cocky, the cat advanced slowly until +it paused not six feet away. Only the tail lashed back and forth, +and only the eyes gleamed like jewels in the full light of the window +they faced, the vertical pupils contracting to scarcely perceptible +black slits.</p> +<p>And Cocky, who could not know death with the clearness of concept +of a human, nevertheless was not altogether unaware that the end of +all things was terribly impending. As he watched the cat deliberately +crouch for the spring, Cocky, gallant mote of life that he was, betrayed +his one and forgivable panic.</p> +<p>“Cocky! Cocky!” he called plaintively to the blind, +insensate walls.</p> +<p>It was his call to all the world, and all powers and things and two-legged +men-creatures, and Steward in particular, and Kwaque, and Michael. +The burden of his call was: “It is I, Cocky. I am very small +and very frail, and this is a monster to destroy me, and I love the +light, bright world, and I want to live and to continue to live in the +brightness, and I am so very small, and I’m a good little fellow, +with a good little heart, and I cannot battle with this huge, furry, +hungry thing that is going to devour me, and I want help, help, help. +I am Cocky. Everybody knows me. I am Cocky.”</p> +<p>This, and much more, was contained in his two calls of: “Cocky! +Cocky!”</p> +<p>And there was no answer from the blind walls, from the hall outside, +nor from all the world, and, his moment of panic over, Cocky was his +brave little self again. He sat motionless on the window-sill, +his head cocked to the side, with one unwavering eye regarding on the +floor, so perilously near, the eternal enemy of all his kind.</p> +<p>The human quality of his voice had startled the gutter-cat, causing +her to forgo her spring as she flattened down her ears and bellied closer +to the floor.</p> +<p>And in the silence that followed, a blue-bottle fly buzzed rowdily +against an adjacent window-pane, with occasional loud bumps against +the glass tokening that he too had his tragedy, a prisoner pent by baffling +transparency from the bright world that blazed so immediately beyond.</p> +<p>Nor was the gutter-cat without her ill and hurt of life. Hunger +hurt her, and hurt her meagre breasts that should have been full for +the seven feeble and mewing little ones, replicas of her save that their +eyes were not yet open and that they were grotesquely unsteady on their +soft, young legs. She remembered them by the hurt of her breasts +and the prod of her instinct; also she remembered them by vision, so +that, by the subtle chemistry of her brain, she could see them, by way +of the broken screen across the ventilator hole, down into the cellar +in the dark rubbish-corner under the stairway, where she had stolen +her lair and birthed her litter.</p> +<p>And the vision of them, and the hurt of her hunger stirred her afresh, +so that she gathered her body and measured the distance for the leap. +But Cocky was himself again.</p> +<p>“Devil be damned! Devil be damned!” he shouted +his loudest and most belligerent, as he ruffled like a bravo at the +gutter-cat beneath him, so that he sent her crouching, with startlement, +lower to the floor, her ears wilting rigidly flat and down, her tail +lashing, her head turning about the room so that her eyes might penetrate +its obscurest corners in quest of the human whose voice had so cried +out.</p> +<p>All of which the gutter-cat did, despite the positive evidence of +her senses that this human noise had proceeded from the white bird itself +on the window-sill.</p> +<p>The bottle fly bumped once again against its invisible prison wall +in the silence that ensued. The gutter-cat prepared and sprang +with sudden decision, landing where Cocky had perched the fraction of +a second before. Cocky had darted to the side, but, even as he +darted, and as the cat landed on the sill, the cat’s paw flashed +out sidewise and Cocky leaped straight up, beating the air with his +wings so little used to flying. The gutter-cat reared on her hind-legs, +smote upward with one paw as a child might strike with its hat at a +butterfly. But there was weight in the cat’s paw, and the +claws of it were outspread like so many hooks.</p> +<p>Struck in mid-air, a trifle of a flying machine, all its delicate +gears tangled and disrupted, Cocky fell to the floor in a shower of +white feathers, which, like snowflakes, eddied slowly down after, and +after the plummet-like descent of the cat, so that some of them came +to rest on her back, startling her tense nerves with their gentle impact +and making her crouch closer while she shot a swift glance around and +overhead for any danger that might threaten.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXI</h2> +<p>Harry Del Mar found only a few white feathers on the floor of Dag +Daughtry’s room in the Bowhead Lodging House, and from the landlady +learned what had happened to Michael. The first thing Harry Del +Mar did, still retaining his taxi, was to locate the residence of Doctor +Emory and make sure that Michael was confined in an outhouse in the +back yard. Next he engaged passage on the steamship <i>Umatilla</i>, +sailing for Seattle and Puget Sound ports at daylight. And next +he packed his luggage and paid his bills.</p> +<p>In the meantime, a wordy war was occurring in Walter Merritt Emory’s +office.</p> +<p>“The man’s yelling his head off,” Doctor Masters +was contending. “The police had to rap him with their clubs +in the ambulance. He was violent. He wanted his dog. +It can’t be done. It’s too raw. You can’t +steal his dog this way. He’ll make a howl in the papers.”</p> +<p>“Huh!” quoth Walter Merritt Emory. “I’d +like to see a reporter with backbone enough to go within talking distance +of a leper in the pest-house. And I’d like to see the editor +who wouldn’t send a pest-house letter (granting it’d been +smuggled past the guards) out to be burned the very second he became +aware of its source. Don’t you worry, Doc. There won’t +be any noise in the papers.”</p> +<p>“But leprosy! Public health! The dog has been exposed +to his master. The dog itself is a peripatetic source of infection.”</p> +<p>“Contagion is the better and more technical word, Doc.,” +Walter Merritt Emory soothed with the sting of superior knowledge.</p> +<p>“Contagion, then,” Doctor Masters took him up. +“The public must be considered. It must not run the risk +of being infected—”</p> +<p>“Of contracting the contagion,” the other corrected smoothly.</p> +<p>“Call it what you will. The public—”</p> +<p>“Poppycock,” said Walter Merritt Emory. “What +you don’t know about leprosy, and what the rest of the board of +health doesn’t know about leprosy, would fill more books than +have been compiled by the men who have expertly studied the disease. +The one thing they have eternally tried, and are eternally trying, is +to inoculate one animal outside man with the leprosy that is peculiar +to man. Horses, rabbits, rats, donkeys, monkeys, mice, and dogs—heavens, +they have tried it on them all, tens of thousands of times and a hundred +thousand times ten thousand times, and never a successful inoculation! +They have never succeeded in inoculating it on one man from another. +Here—let me show you.”</p> +<p>And from his shelves Waiter Merritt Emory began pulling down his +authorities.</p> +<p>“Amazing . . . most interesting . . . ” Doctor Masters +continued to emit from time to time as he followed the expert guidance +of the other through the books. “I never dreamed . . . the +amount of work they have done is astounding . . . ”</p> +<p>“But,” he said in conclusion, “there is no convincing +a layman of the matter contained on your shelves. Nor can I so +convince my public. Nor will I try to. Besides, the man +is consigned to the living death of life-long imprisonment in the pest-house. +You know the beastly hole it is. He loves the dog. He’s +mad over it. Let him have it. I tell you it’s rotten +unfair and cruel, and I won’t stand for it.”</p> +<p>“Yes, you will,” Walter Merritt Emory assured him coolly. +“And I’ll tell you why.”</p> +<p>He told him. He said things that no doctor should say to another, +but which a politician may well say, and has often said, to another +politician—things which cannot bear repeating, if, for no other +reason, because they are too humiliating and too little conducive to +pride for the average American citizen to know; things of the inside, +secret governments of imperial municipalities which the average American +citizen, voting free as a king at the polls, fondly thinks he manages; +things which are, on rare occasion, partly unburied and promptly reburied +in the tomes of reports of Lexow Committees and Federal Commissions.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>And Walter Merritt Emory won his desire of Michael against Doctor +Masters; had his wife dine with him at Jules’ that evening and +took her to see Margaret Anglin in celebration of the victory; returned +home at one in the morning, in his pyjamas went out to take a last look +at Michael, and found no Michael.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>The pest-house of San Francisco, as is naturally the case with pest-houses +in all American cities, was situated on the bleakest, remotest, forlornest, +cheapest space of land owned by the city. Poorly protected from +the Pacific Ocean, chill winds and dense fog-banks whistled and swirled +sadly across the sand-dunes. Picnicking parties never came there, +nor did small boys hunting birds’ nests or playing at being wild +Indians. The only class of frequenters was the suicides, who, +sad of life, sought the saddest landscape as a fitting scene in which +to end. And, because they so ended, they never repeated their +visits.</p> +<p>The outlook from the windows was not inspiriting. A quarter +of a mile in either direction, looking out along the shallow canyon +of the sand-hills, Dag Daughtry could see the sentry-boxes of the guards, +themselves armed and more prone to kill than to lay hands on any escaping +pest-man, much less persuavively discuss with him the advisability of +his return to the prison house.</p> +<p>On the opposing sides of the prospect from the windows of the four +walls of the pest-house were trees. Eucalyptus they were, but +not the royal monarchs that their brothers are in native habitats. +Poorly planted, by politics, illy attended, by politics, decimated and +many times repeatedly decimated by the hostile forces of their environment, +a straggling corporal’s guard of survivors, they thrust their +branches, twisted and distorted, as if writhing in agony, into the air. +Scrub of growth they were, expending the major portion of their meagre +nourishment in their roots that crawled seaward through the insufficient +sand for anchorage against the prevailing gales.</p> +<p>Not even so far as the sentry-boxes were Daughtry and Kwaque permitted +to stroll. A hundred yards inside was the dead-line. Here, +the guards came hastily to deposit food-supplies, medicines, and written +doctors’ instructions, retreating as hastily as they came. +Here, also, was a blackboard upon which Daughtry was instructed to chalk +up his needs and requests in letters of such size that they could be +read from a distance. And on this board, for many days, he wrote, +not demands for beer, although the six-quart daily custom had been broken +sharply off, but demands like:</p> +<blockquote><p>WHERE IS MY DOG?</p> +<p>HE IS AN IRISH TERRIER.</p> +<p>HE IS ROUGH-COATED.</p> +<p>HIS NAME IS KILLENY BOY.</p> +<p>I WANT MY DOG.</p> +<p>I WANT TO TALK TO DOC. EMORY.</p> +<p>TELL DOC. EMORY TO WRITE TO ME ABOUT MY DOG.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>One day, Dag Daughtry wrote:</p> +<blockquote><p>IF I DON’T GET MY DOG I WILL KILL DOC. EMORY.</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Whereupon the newspapers informed the public that the sad case of +the two lepers at the pest-house had become tragic, because the white +one had gone insane. Public-spirited citizens wrote to the papers, +declaiming against the maintenance of such a danger to the community, +and demanding that the United States government build a national leprosarium +on some remote island or isolated mountain peak. But this tiny +ripple of interest faded out in seventy-two hours, and the reporter-cubs +proceeded variously to interest the public in the Alaskan husky dog +that was half a bear, in the question whether or not Crispi Angelotti +was guilty of having cut the carcass of Giuseppe Bartholdi into small +portions and thrown it into the bay in a grain-sack off Fisherman’s +Wharf, and in the overt designs of Japan upon Hawaii, the Philippines, +and the Pacific Coast of North America.</p> +<p>And, outside of imprisonment, nothing happened of interest to Dag +Daughtry and Kwaque at the pest-house until one night in the late fall. +A gale was not merely brewing. It was coming on to blow. +Because, in a basket of fruit, stated to have been sent by the young +ladies of Miss Foote’s Seminary, Daughtry had read a note artfully +concealed in the heart of an apple, telling him on the forthcoming Friday +night to keep a light burning in his window. Daughtry received +a visitor at five in the morning.</p> +<p>It was Charles Stough Greenleaf, the Ancient Mariner himself. +Having wallowed for two hours through the deep sand of the eucalyptus +forest, he fell exhausted against the penthouse door. When Daughtry +opened it, the ancient one blew in upon him along with a gusty wet splatter +of the freshening gale. Daughtry caught him first and supported +him toward a chair. But, remembering his own affliction, he released +the old man so abruptly as to drop him violently into the chair.</p> +<p>“My word, sir,” said Daughtry. “You must +’a’ ben havin’ a time of it.—Here, you fella +Kwaque, this fella wringin’ wet. You fella take ’m +off shoe stop along him.”</p> +<p>But before Kwaque, immediately kneeling, could touch hand to the +shoelaces, Daughtry, remembering that Kwaque was likewise unclean, had +thrust him away.</p> +<p>“My word, I don’t know what to do,” Daughtry murmured, +staring about helplessly as he realised that it was a leper-house, that +the very chair in which the old man sat was a leper-chair, that the +very floor on which his exhausted feet rested was a leper-floor.</p> +<p>“I’m glad to see you, most exceeding glad,” the +Ancient Mariner panted, extending his hand in greeting.</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry avoided it.</p> +<p>“How goes the treasure-hunting?” he queried lightly. +“Any prospects in sight?”</p> +<p>The Ancient Mariner nodded, and with returning breath, at first whispering, +gasped out:</p> +<p>“We’re all cleared to sail on the first of the ebb at +seven this morning. She’s out in the stream now, a tidy +bit of a schooner, the <i>Bethlehem</i>, with good lines and hull and +large cabin accommodations. She used to be in the Tahiti trade, +before the steamers ran her out. Provisions are good. Everything +is most excellent. I saw to that. I cannot say I like the +captain. I’ve seen his type before. A splendid seaman, +I am certain, but a Bully Hayes grown old. A natural born pirate, +a very wicked old man indeed. Nor is the backer any better. +He is middle-aged, has a bad record, and is not in any sense of the +word a gentleman, but he has plenty of money—made it first in +California oil, then grub-staked a prospector in British Columbia, cheated +him out of his share of the big lode he discovered and doubled his own +wealth half a dozen times over. A very undesirable, unlikeable +sort of a man. But he believes in luck, and is confident that +he’ll make at least fifty millions out of our adventure and cheat +me out of my share. He’s as much a pirate as is the captain +he’s engaged.”</p> +<p>“Mr. Greenleaf, I congratulate you, sir,” Daughtry said. +“And you have touched me, sir, touched me to the heart, coming +all the way out here on such a night, and running such risks, just to +say good-bye to poor Dag Daughtry, who always meant somewhat well but +had bad luck.”</p> +<p>But while he talked so heartily, Daughtry saw, in a resplendent visioning, +all the freedom of a schooner in the great South Seas, and felt his +heart sink in realisation that remained for him only the pest-house, +the sand-dunes, and the sad eucalyptus trees.</p> +<p>The Ancient Mariner sat stiffly upright.</p> +<p>“Sir, you have hurt me. You have hurt me to the heart.”</p> +<p>“No offence, sir, no offence,” Daughtry stammered in +apology, although he wondered in what way he could have hurt the old +gentleman’s feelings.</p> +<p>“You are my friend, sir,” the other went on, gravely +censorious. “I am your friend, sir. And you give me +to understand that you think I have come out here to this hell-hole +to say good-bye. I came out here to get you, sir, and your nigger, +sir. The schooner is waiting for you. All is arranged. +You are signed on the articles before the shipping commissioner. +Both of you. Signed on yesterday by proxies I arranged for myself. +One was a Barbadoes nigger. I got him and the white man out of +a sailors’ boarding-house on Commercial Street and paid them five +dollars each to appear before the Commissioner and sign on.”</p> +<p>“But, my God, Mr. Greenleaf, you don’t seem to grasp +it that he and I are lepers.”</p> +<p>Almost with a galvanic spring, the Ancient Mariner was out of the +chair and on his feet, the anger of age and of a generous soul in his +face as he cried:</p> +<p>“My God, sir, what you don’t seem to grasp is that you +are my friend, and that I am your friend.”</p> +<p>Abruptly, still under the pressure of his wrath, he thrust out his +hand.</p> +<p>“Steward, Daughtry. Mr. Daughtry, friend, sir, or whatever +I may name you, this is no fairy-story of the open boat, the cross-bearings +unnamable, and the treasure a fathom under the sand. This is real. +I have a heart. That, sir”—here he waved his extended +hand under Daughtry’s nose—“is my hand. There +is only one thing you may do, must do, right now. You must take +that hand in your hand, and shake it, with your heart in your hand as +mine is in my hand.”</p> +<p>“But . . . but. . . ” Daughtry faltered.</p> +<p>“If you don’t, then I shall not depart from this place. +I shall remain here, die here. I know you are a leper. You +can’t tell me anything about that. There’s my hand. +Are you going to take it? My heart is there in the palm of it, +in the pulse in every finger-end of it. If you don’t take +it, I warn you I’ll sit right down here in this chair and die. +I want you to understand I am a man, sir, a gentleman. I am a +friend, a comrade. I am no poltroon of the flesh. I live +in my heart and in my head, sir—not in this feeble carcass I cursorily +inhabit. Take that hand. I want to talk with you afterward.”</p> +<p>Dag Daughtry extended his hand hesitantly, but the Ancient Mariner +seized it and pressed it so fiercely with his age-lean fingers as to +hurt.</p> +<p>“Now we can talk,” he said. “I have thought +the whole matter over. We sail on the <i>Bethlehem</i>. +When the wicked man discovers that he can never get a penny of my fabulous +treasure, we will leave him. He will be glad to be quit of us. +We, you and I and your nigger, will go ashore in the Marquesas. +Lepers roam about free there. There are no regulations. +I have seen them. We will be free. The land is a paradise. +And you and I will set up housekeeping. A thatched hut—no +more is needed. The work is trifling. The freedom of beach +and sea and mountain will be ours. For you there will be sailing, +swimming, fishing, hunting. There are mountain goats, wild chickens +and wild cattle. Bananas and plantains will ripen over our heads—avocados +and custard apples, also. The red peppers grow by the door, and +there will be fowls, and the eggs of fowls. Kwaque shall do the +cooking. And there will be beer. I have long noted your +thirst unquenchable. There will be beer, six quarts of it a day, +and more, more.</p> +<p>“Quick. We must start now. I am sorry to tell you +that I have vainly sought your dog. I have even paid detectives +who were robbers. Doctor Emory stole Killeny Boy from you, but +within a dozen hours he was stolen from Doctor Emory. I have left +no stone unturned. Killeny Boy is gone, as we shall be gone from +this detestable hole of a city.</p> +<p>“I have a machine waiting. The driver is paid well. +Also, I have promised to kill him if he defaults on me. It bears +just a bit north of east over the sandhill on the road that runs along +the other side of the funny forest . . . That is right. We will +start now. We can discuss afterward. Look! Daylight +is beginning to break. The guards must not see us . . . ”</p> +<p>Out into the storm they passed, Kwaque, with a heart wild with gladness, +bringing up the rear. At the beginning Daughtry strove to walk +aloof, but in a trice, in the first heavy gust that threatened to whisk +the frail old man away, Dag Daughtry’s hand was grasping the other’s +arm, his own weight behind and under, supporting and impelling forward +and up the hill through the heavy sand.</p> +<p>“Thank you, steward, thank you, my friend,” the Ancient +Mariner murmured in the first lull between the gusts.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2> +<p>Not altogether unwillingly, in the darkness of night, despite that +he disliked the man, did Michael go with Harry Del Mar. Like a +burglar the man came, with infinite caution of silence, to the outhouse +in Doctor Emory’s back yard where Michael was a prisoner. +Del Mar knew the theatre too well to venture any hackneyed melodramatic +effect such as an electric torch. He felt his way in the darkness +to the door of the outhouse, unlatched it, and entered softly, feeling +with his hands for the wire-haired coat.</p> +<p>And Michael, a man-dog and a lion-dog in all the stuff of him, bristled +at the instant of intrusion, but made no outcry. Instead, he smelled +out the intruder and recognised him. Disliking the man, nevertheless +he permitted the tying of the rope around his neck and silently followed +him out to the sidewalk, down to the corner, and into the waiting taxi.</p> +<p>His reasoning—unless reason be denied him—was simple. +This man he had met, more than once, in the company of Steward. +Amity had existed between him and Steward, for they had sat at table, +and drunk together. Steward was lost. Michael knew not where +to find him, and was himself a prisoner in the back yard of a strange +place. What had once happened, could again happen. It had +happened that Steward, Del Mar, and Michael had sat at table together +on divers occasions. It was probable that such a combination would +happen again, was going to happen now, and, once more, in the bright-lighted +cabaret, he would sit on a chair, Del Mar on one side, and on the other +side beloved Steward with a glass of beer before him—all of which +might be called “leaping to a conclusion”; for conclusion +there was, and upon the conclusion Michael acted.</p> +<p>Now Michael could not reason to this conclusion nor think to this +conclusion, in words. “Amity,” as an instance, was +no word in his consciousness. Whether or not he thought to the +conclusion in swift-related images and pictures and swift-welded composites +of images and pictures, is a problem that still waits human solution. +The point is: <i>he did think</i>. If this be denied him, then +must he have acted wholly by instinct—which would seem more marvellous +on the face of it than if, in dim ways, he had performed a vague thought-process.</p> +<p>However, into the taxi and away through the maze of San Francisco’s +streets, Michael lay alertly on the floor near Del Mar’s feet, +making no overtures of friendliness, by the same token making no demonstration +of the repulsion of the man’s personality engendered in him. +For Harry Del Mar, who was base, and who had been further abased by +his money-making desire for the possession of Michael, had had his baseness +sensed by Michael from the beginning. That first meeting in the +Barbary Coast cabaret, Michael had bristled at him, and stiffened belligerently, +when he laid his hand on Michael’s head. Nor had Michael +thought about the man at all, much less attempted any analysis of him. +Something had been wrong with that hand—the perfunctory way in +which it had touched him under a show of heartiness that could well +deceive the onlooker. The <i>feel</i> of it had not been right. +There had been no warmth in it, no heart, no communication of genuine +good approach from the brain and the soul of the man of which it was +the telegraphic tentacle and transmitter. In short, the message +or feel had not been a good message or feel, and Michael had bristled +and stiffened without thinking, but by mere <i>knowing</i>, which is +what men call “intuition.”</p> +<p>Electric lights, a shed-covered wharf, mountains of luggage and freight, +the noisy toil of ’longshoremen and sailors, the staccato snorts +of donkey engines and the whining sheaves as running lines ran through +the blocks, a crowd of white-coated stewards carrying hand-baggage, +the quartermaster at the gangway foot, the gangway sloping steeply up +to the <i>Umatilla’s</i> promenade deck, more quartermasters and +gold-laced ship’s officers at the head of the gangway, and more +crowd and confusion blocking the narrow deck—thus Michael knew, +beyond all peradventure, that he had come back to the sea and its ships, +where he had first met Steward, where he had been always with Steward, +save for the recent nightmare period in the great city. Nor was +there absent from the flashing visions of his consciousness the images +and memories of Kwaque and Cocky. Whining eagerly, he strained +at the leash, risking his tender toes among the many inconsiderate, +restless, leather-shod feet of the humans, as he quested and scented +for Cocky and Kwaque, and, most of all, for Steward.</p> +<p>Michael accepted his disappointment in not immediately meeting them, +for from the dawn of consciousness, the limitations and restrictions +of dogs in relation to humans had been hammered into him in the form +of concepts of patience. The patience of waiting, when he wanted +to go home and when Steward continued to sit at table and talk and drink +beer, was his, as was the patience of the rope around the neck, the +fence too high to scale, the narrowed-walled room with the closed door +which he could never unlatch but which humans unlatched so easily. +So that he permitted himself to be led away by the ship’s butcher, +who on the <i>Umatilla</i> had the charge of all dog passengers. +Immured in a tiny between-decks cubby which was filled mostly with boxes +and bales, tied as well by the rope around his neck, he waited from +moment to moment for the door to open and admit, realised in the flesh, +the resplendent vision of Steward which blazed through the totality +of his consciousness.</p> +<p>Instead, although Michael did not guess it then, and, only later, +divined it as a vague manifestation of power on the part of Del Mar, +the well-tipped ship’s butcher opened the door, untied him, and +turned him over to the well-tipped stateroom steward who led him to +Del Mar’s stateroom. Up to the last, Michael was convinced +that he was being led to Steward. Instead, in the stateroom, he +found only Del Mar. “No Steward,” might be described +as Michael’s thought; but by <i>patience</i>, as his mood and +key, might be described his acceptance of further delay in meeting up +with his god, his best beloved, his Steward who was his own human god +amidst the multitude of human gods he was encountering.</p> +<p>Michael wagged his tail, flattened his ears, even his crinkled ear, +a trifle, and smiled, all in a casual way of recognition, smelled out +the room to make doubly sure that there was no scent of Steward, and +lay down on the floor. When Del Mar spoke to him, he looked up +and gazed at him.</p> +<p>“Now, my boy, times have changed,” Del Mar addressed +him in cold, brittle tones. “I’m going to make an +actor out of you, and teach you what’s what. First of all, +come here . . . COME HERE!”</p> +<p>Michael obeyed, without haste, without lagging, and patently without +eagerness.</p> +<p>“You’ll get over that, my lad, and put pep into your +motions when I talk to you,” Del Mar assured him; and the very +manner of his utterance was a threat that Michael could not fail to +recognise. “Now we’ll just see if I can pull off the +trick. You listen to me, and sing like you did for that leper +guy.”</p> +<p>Drawing a harmonica from his vest pocket, he put it to his lips and +began to play “Marching through Georgia.”</p> +<p>“Sit down!” he commanded.</p> +<p>Again Michael obeyed, although all that was Michael was in protest. +He quivered as the shrill-sweet strains from the silver reeds ran through +him. All his throat and chest was in the impulse to sing; but +he mastered it, for he did not care to sing for this man. All +he wanted of him was Steward.</p> +<p>“Oh, you’re stubborn, eh?” Del Mar sneered at him. +“The matter with you is you’re thoroughbred. Well, +my boy, it just happens I know your kind and I reckon I can make you +get busy and work for me just as much as you did for that other guy. +Now get busy.”</p> +<p>He shifted the tune on into “Georgia Camp Meeting.” +But Michael was obdurate. Not until the melting strains of “Old +Kentucky Home” poured through him did he lose his self-control +and lift his mellow-throated howl that was the call for the lost pack +of the ancient millenniums. Under the prodding hypnosis of this +music he could not but yearn and burn for the vague, forgotten life +of the pack when the world was young and the pack was the pack ere it +was lost for ever through the endless centuries of domestication.</p> +<p>“Ah, ha,” Del Mar chuckled coldly, unaware of the profound +history and vast past he evoked by his silver reeds.</p> +<p>A loud knock on the partition wall warned him that some sleepy passenger +was objecting.</p> +<p>“That will do!” he said sharply, taking the harmonica +from his lips. And Michael ceased, and hated him. “I +guess I’ve got your number all right. And you needn’t +think you’re going to sleep here scratching fleas and disturbing +my sleep.”</p> +<p>He pressed the call-button, and, when his room-steward answered, +turned Michael over to him to be taken down below and tied up in the +crowded cubby-hole.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>During the several days and nights on the <i>Umatilla</i>, Michael +learned much of what manner of man Harry Del Mar was. Almost, +might it be said, he learned Del Mar’s pedigree without knowing +anything of his history. For instance he did not know that Del +Mar’s real name was Percival Grunsky, and that at grammar school +he had been called “Brownie” by the girls and “Blackie” +by the boys. No more did he know that he had gone from half-way-through +grammar school directly into the industrial reform school; nor that, +after serving two years, he had been paroled out by Harris Collins, +who made a living, and an excellent one, by training animals for the +stage. Much less could he know the training that for six years +Del Mar, as assistant, had been taught to give the animals, and, thereby, +had received for himself.</p> +<p>What Michael did know was that Del Mar had no pedigree and was a +scrub as compared with thoroughbreds such as Steward, Captain Kellar, +and <i>Mister</i> Haggin of Meringe. And he learned it swiftly +and simply. In the day-time, fetched by a steward, Michael would +be brought on deck to Del Mar, who was always surrounded by effusive +young ladies and matrons who lavished caresses and endearments upon +Michael. This he stood, although much bored; but what irked him +almost beyond standing were the feigned caresses and endearments Del +Mar lavished on him. He knew the cold-blooded insincerity of them, +for, at night, when he was brought to Del Mar’s room, he heard +only the cold brittle tones, sensed only the threat and the menace of +the other’s personality, felt, when touched by the other’s +hand, only a stiffness and sharpness of contact that was like to so +much steel or wood in so far as all subtle tenderness of heart and spirit +was absent.</p> +<p>This man was two-faced, two-mannered. No thoroughbred was anything +but single-faced and single-mannered. A thoroughbred, hot-blooded +as it might be, was always sincere. But in this scrub was no sincerity, +only a positive insincerity. A thoroughbred had passion, because +of its hot blood; but this scrub had no passion. Its blood was +cold as its deliberateness, and it did nothing save deliberately. +These things he did not think. He merely realized them, as any +creature realizes itself in <i>liking</i> and in not <i>liking</i>.</p> +<p>To cap it all, the last night on board, Michael lost his thoroughbred +temper with this man who had no temper. It came to a fight. +And Michael had no chance. He raged royally and fought royally, +leaping to the attack, after being knocked over twice by open-handed +blows under his ear. Quick as Michael was, slashing South Sea +niggers by virtue of his quickness and cleverness, he could not touch +his teeth to the flesh of this man, who had been trained for six years +with animals by Harris Collins. So that, when he leaped, open-mouthed, +for the bite, Del Mar’s right hand shot out, gripped his under-jaw +as he was in the air, and flipped him over in a somersaulting fall to +the floor on his back. Once again he leapt open-mouthed to the +attack, and was filliped to the floor so hard that almost the last particle +of breath was knocked out of him. The next leap was nearly his +last. He was clutched by the throat. Two thumbs pressed +into his neck on either side of the windpipe directly on the carotid +arteries, shutting off the blood to his brain and giving him most exquisite +agony, at the same time rendering him unconscious far more swiftly than +the swiftest anæsthetic. Darkness thrust itself upon him; +and, quivering on the floor, glimmeringly he came back to the light +of the room and to the man who was casually touching a match to a cigarette +and cautiously keeping an observant eye on him.</p> +<p>“Come on,” Del Mar challenged. “I know your +kind. You can’t get my goat, and maybe I can’t get +yours entirely, but I can keep you under my thumb to work for me. +Come on, you!”</p> +<p>And Michael came. Being a thoroughbred, despite that he knew +he was beaten by this two-legged thing which was not warm human but +was so alien and hard that he might as well attack the wall of a room +with his teeth, or a tree-trunk, or a cliff of rock, Michael leapt bare-fanged +for the throat. And all that he leapt against was training, formula. +The experience was repeated. His throat was gripped, the thumbs +shut off the blood from his brain, and darkness smote him. Had +he been more than a normal thoroughbred dog, he would have continued +to assail his impregnable enemy until he burst his heart or fell in +a fit. But he was normal. Here was something unassailable, +adamantine. As little might he win victory from it, as from the +cement-paved sidewalk of a city. The thing was a devil, with the +hardness and coldness, the wickedness and wisdom, of a devil. +It was as bad as Steward was good. Both were two-legged. +Both were gods. But this one was an evil god.</p> +<p>He did not reason all this, nor any of it. Yet, transmuted +into human terms of thought and understanding, it adequately describes +the fulness of his state of mind toward Del Mar. Had Michael been +entangled in a fight with a warm god, he could have raged and battled +blindly, inflicting and receiving hurt in the chaos of conflict, as +such a god, being warm, would have likewise received and given hurt, +being only a flesh-and-blood, living, breathing entity after all. +But this two-legged god-devil did not rage blindly and was incapable +of passional heat. He was like so much cunning, massive steel +machinery, and he did what Michael could never dream he did—and, +for that matter, which few humans do and which all animal trainers do: +<i>he kept one thought ahead of Michael’s thought all the time</i>, +and therefore, was able to have ready one action always in anticipation +of Michael’s next action. This was the training he had received +from Harris Collins, who, withal he was a sentimental and doting husband +and father, was the arch-devil when it came to animals other than human +ones, and who reigned in an animal hell which he had created and made +lucrative.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>Michael went ashore in Seattle all eagerness, straining at his leash +until he choked and coughed and was coldly cursed by Del Mar. +For Michael was mastered by his expectation that he would meet Steward, +and he looked for him around the first corner, and around all corners +with undiminished zeal. But amongst the multitudes of men there +was no Steward. Instead, down in the basement of the New Washington +Hotel, where electric lights burned always, under the care of the baggage +porter, he was tied securely by the neck in the midst of Alpine ranges +of trunks which were for ever being heaped up, sought over, taken down, +carried away, or added to.</p> +<p>Three days of this dolorous existence he passed. The porters +made friends with him and offered him prodigious quantities of cooked +meats from the leavings of the dining-room. Michael was too disappointed +and grief-stricken over Steward to overeat himself, while Del Mar, accompanied +by the manager of the hotel, raised a great row with the porters for +violating the feeding instructions.</p> +<p>“That guy’s no good,” said the head porter to assistant, +when Del Mar had departed. “He’s greasy. I never +liked greasy brunettes anyway. My wife’s a brunette, but +thank the Lord she ain’t greasy.”</p> +<p>“Sure,” agreed the assistant. “I know his +kind. Why, if you’d stick a knife into him he wouldn’t +bleed blood. It’d be straight liquid lard.”</p> +<p>Whereupon the pair of them immediately presented Michael with vaster +quantities of meat which he could not eat because the desire for Steward +was too much with him.</p> +<p>In the meantime Del Mar sent off two telegrams to New York, the first +to Harris Collins’ animal training school, where his troupe of +dogs was boarding through his vacation:</p> +<blockquote><p>“<i>Sell my dogs. You know what they can +do and what they are worth. Am done with them. Deduct the +board and hold the balance for me until I see you. I have the +limit here of a dog. Every turn I ever pulled is put in the shade +by this one. He’s a ten strike. Wait till you see +him</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>The second, to his booking agent:</p> +<blockquote><p>“<i>Get busy. Book me over the best. +Talk it up. I have the turn. A winner. Nothing like +it. Don’t talk up top price but way over top price. +Prepare them for the dog when I give them the chance for the once over. +You know me. I am giving it straight. This will head the +bill anywhere all the time</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<h2>CHAPTER XXIII</h2> +<p>Came the crate. Because Del Mar brought it into the baggage-room, +Michael was suspicious of it. A minute later his suspicion was +justified. Del Mar invited him to go into the crate, and he declined. +With a quick deft clutch on the collar at the back of his neck, Del +Mar jerked him off his footing and thrust him in, or partly in, rather, +because he had managed to get a hold on the edge of the crate with his +two forepaws. The animal trainer wasted no time. He brought +the clenched fist of his free hand down in two blows, rat-tat, on Michael’s +paws. And Michael, at the pain, relaxed both holds. The +next instant he was thrust inside, snarling his indignation and rage +as he vainly flung himself at the open bars, while Del Mar was locking +the stout door.</p> +<p>Next, the crate was carried out to an express wagon and loaded in +along with a number of trunks. Del Mar had disappeared the moment +he had locked the door, and the two men in the wagon, which was now +bouncing along over the cobblestones, were strangers. There was +just room in the crate for Michael to stand upright, although he could +not lift his head above the level of his shoulders. And so standing, +his head pressed against the top, a rut in the road, jolting the wagon +and its contents, caused his head to bump violently.</p> +<p>The crate was not quite so long as Michael, so that he was compelled +to stand with the end of his nose pressing against the end of the crate. +An automobile, darting out from a cross-street, caused the driver of +the wagon to pull in abruptly and apply the brake. With the crate +thus suddenly arrested, Michael’s body was precipitated forward. +There was no brake to stop him, unless the soft end of his nose be considered +the brake, for it was his nose that brought his body to rest inside +the crate.</p> +<p>He tried lying down, confined as the space was, and made out better, +although his lips were cut and bleeding by having been forced so sharply +against his teeth. But the worst was to come. One of his +forepaws slipped out through the slats or bars and rested on the bottom +of the wagon where the trunks were squeaking, screeching, and jigging. +A rut in the roadway made the nearest trunk tilt one edge in the air +and shift position, so that when it tilted back again it rested on Michael’s +paw. The unexpectedness of the crushing hurt of it caused him +to yelp and at the same time instinctively and spasmodically to pull +back with all his strength. This wrenched his shoulder and added +to the agony of the imprisoned foot.</p> +<p>And blind fear descended upon Michael, the fear that is implanted +in all animals and in man himself—<i>the fear of the trap</i>. +Utterly beside himself, though he no longer yelped, he flung himself +madly about, straining the tendons and muscles of his shoulder and leg +and further and severely injuring the crushed foot. He even attacked +the bars with his teeth in his agony to get at the monster thing outside +that had laid hold of him and would not let him go. Another rut +saved him, however, tilting the trunk just sufficiently to enable his +violent struggling to drag the foot clear.</p> +<p>At the railroad station, the crate was handled, not with deliberate +roughness, but with such carelessness that it half-slipped out of a +baggageman’s hands, capsized sidewise, and was caught when it +was past the man’s knees but before it struck the cement floor. +But, Michael, sliding helplessly down the perpendicular bottom of the +crate, fetched up with his full weight on the injured paw.</p> +<p>“Huh!” said Del Mar a little later to Michael, having +strolled down the platform to where the crate was piled on a truck with +other baggage destined for the train. “Got your foot smashed. +Well, it’ll teach you a lesson to keep your feet inside.”</p> +<p>“That claw is a goner,” one of the station baggage-men +said, straightening up from an examination of Michael through the bars.</p> +<p>Del Mar bent to a closer scrutiny.</p> +<p>“So’s the whole toe,” he said, drawing his pocket-knife +and opening a blade. “I’ll fix it in half a jiffy +if you’ll lend a hand.”</p> +<p>He unlocked the box and dipped Michael out with the customary strangle-hold +on the neck. He squirmed and struggled, dabbing at the air with +the injured as well as the uninjured forepaw and increasing his pain.</p> +<p>“You hold the leg,” Del Mar commanded. “He’s +safe with that grip. It won’t take a second.”</p> +<p>Nor did it take longer. And Michael, back in the box and raging, +was one toe short of the number which he had brought into the world. +The blood ran freely from the crude but effective surgery, and he lay +and licked the wound and was depressed with apprehension of he knew +not what terrible fate awaited him and was close at hand. Never, +in his experience of men, had he been so treated, while the confinement +of the box was maddening with its suggestion of the trap. Trapped +he was, and helpless, and the ultimate evil of life had happened to +Steward, who had evidently been swallowed up by the Nothingness which +had swallowed up Meringe, the <i>Eugénie</i>, the Solomon Islands, +the <i>Makambo</i>, Australia, and the <i>Mary Turner</i>.</p> +<p>Suddenly, from a distance, came a bedlam of noise that made Michael +prick up his ears and bristle with premonition of fresh disaster. +It was a confused yelping, howling, and barking of many dogs.</p> +<p>“Holy Smoke!—It’s them damned acting dogs,” +growled the baggageman to his mate. “There ought to be a +law against dog-acts. It ain’t decent.”</p> +<p>“It’s Peterson’s Troupe,” said the other. +“I was on when they come in last week. One of ’em +was dead in his box, and from what I could see of him it looked mighty +like he’d had the tar knocked outa him.”</p> +<p>“Got a wollopin’ from Peterson most likely in the last +town and then was shipped along with the bunch and left to die in the +baggage car.”</p> +<p>The bedlam increased as the animals were transferred from the wagon +to a platform truck, and when the truck rolled up and stopped alongside +Michael’s he made out that it was piled high with crated dogs. +In truth, there were thirty-five dogs, of every sort of breed and mostly +mongrel, and that they were far from happy was attested by their actions. +Some howled, some whimpered, others growled and raged at one another +through the slots, and many maintained a silence of misery. Several +licked and nursed bruised feet. Smaller dogs that did not fight +much were crammed two or more into single crates. Half a dozen +greyhounds were crammed into larger crates that were anything save large +enough.</p> +<p>“Them’s the high-jumpers,” said the first baggageman. +“An’ look at the way they’re packed. Peterson +ain’t going to pay any more excess baggage than he has to. +Not half room enough for them to stand up. It must be hell for +them from the time they leave one town till they arrive at the next.”</p> +<p>But what the baggageman did not know was that in the towns the hell +was not mitigated, that the dogs were still confined in their too-narrow +prisons, that, in fact, they were life-prisoners. Rarely, except +for their acts, were they taken out from their cages. From a business +standpoint, good care did not pay. Since mongrel dogs were cheap, +it was cheaper to replace them when they died than so to care for them +as to keep them from dying.</p> +<p>What the baggageman did not know, and what Peterson did know, was +that of these thirty-five dogs not one was a surviving original of the +troupe when it first started out four years before. Nor had there +been any originals discarded. The only way they left the troupe +and its cages was by dying. Nor did Michael know even as little +as the baggageman knew. He knew nothing save that here reigned +pain and woe and that it seemed he was destined to share the same fate.</p> +<p>Into the midst of them, when with more howlings and yelpings they +were loaded into the baggage car, was Michael’s cage piled. +And for a day and a part of two nights, travelling eastward, he remained +in the dog inferno. Then they were loaded off in some large city, +and Michael continued on in greater quietness and comfort, although +his injured foot still hurt and was bruised afresh whenever his crate +was moved about in the car.</p> +<p>What it was all about—why he was kept in his cramped prison +in the cramped car—he did not ask himself. He accepted it +as unhappiness and misery, and had no more explanation for it than for +the crushing of the paw. Such things happened. It was life, +and life had many evils. The <i>why</i> of things never entered +his head. He knew <i>things</i> and some small bit of the <i>how</i> +of things. What was, <i>was</i>. Water was wet, fire hot, +iron hard, meat good. He accepted such things as he accepted the +everlasting miracles of the light and of the dark, which were no miracles +to him any more than was his wire coat a miracle, or his beating heart, +or his thinking brain.</p> +<p>In Chicago, he was loaded upon a track, carted through the roaring +streets of the vast city, and put into another baggage-car which was +quickly in motion in continuation of the eastward journey. It +meant more strange men who handled baggage, as it meant in New York, +where, from railroad baggage-room to express wagon he was exchanged, +for ever a crated prisoner and dispatched to one, Harris Collins, on +Long Island.</p> +<p>First of all came Harris Collins and the animal hell over which he +ruled. But the second event must be stated first. Michael +never saw Harry Del Mar again. As the other men he had known had +stepped out of life, which was a way they had, so Harry Del Mar stepped +out of Michael’s purview of life as well as out of life itself. +And his stepping out was literal. A collision on the elevated, +a panic scramble of the uninjured out upon the trestle over the street, +a step on the third rail, and Harry Del Mar was engulfed in the Nothingness +which men know as death and which is nothingness in so far as such engulfed +ones never reappear nor walk the ways of life again.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXIV</h2> +<p>Harris Collins was fifty-two years of age. He was slender and +dapper, and in appearance and comportment was so sweet- and gentle-spirited +that the impression he radiated was almost of sissyness. He might +have taught a Sunday-school, presided over a girls’ seminary, +or been a president of a humane society.</p> +<p>His complexion was pink and white, his hands were as soft as the +hands of his daughters, and he weighed a hundred and twelve pounds. +Moreover, he was afraid of his wife, afraid of a policeman, afraid of +physical violence, and lived in constant dread of burglars. But +the one thing he was not afraid of was wild animals of the most ferocious +sorts, such as lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars. He knew the +game, and could conquer the most refractory lion with a broom-handle—not +outside the cage, but inside and locked in.</p> +<p>It was because he knew the game and had learned it from his father +before him, a man even smaller than himself and more fearful of all +things except animals. This father, Noel Collins, had been a successful +animal trainer in England, before emigrating to America, and in America +he had continued the success and laid the foundation of the big animal +training school at Cedarwild, which his son had developed and built +up after him. So well had Harris Collins built on his father’s +foundation that the place was considered a model of sanitation and kindness. +It entertained many visitors, who invariably went away with their souls +filled with ecstasy over the atmosphere of sweetness and light that +pervaded the place. Never, however, were they permitted to see +the actual training. On occasion, performances were given them +by the finished products which verified all their other delightful and +charming conclusions about the school. But had they seen the training +of raw novices, it would have been a different story. It might +even have been a riot. As it was, the place was a zoo, and free +at that; for, in addition to the animals he owned and trained and bought +and sold, a large portion of the business was devoted to boarding trained +animals and troupes of animals for owners who were out of engagements, +or for estates of such owners which were in process of settlement. +From mice and rats to camels and elephants, and even, on occasion, to +a rhinoceros or a pair of hippopotamuses, he could supply any animal +on demand.</p> +<p>When the Circling Brothers’ big three-ring show on a hard winter +went into the hands of the receivers, he boarded the menagerie and the +horses and in three months turned a profit of fifteen thousand dollars. +More—he mortgaged all he possessed against the day of the auction, +bought in the trained horses and ponies, the giraffe herd and the performing +elephants, and, in six months more was quit of an of them, save the +pony Repeater who turned air-springs, at another profit of fifteen thousand +dollars. As for Repeater, he sold the pony several months later +for a sheer profit of two thousand. While this bankruptcy of the +Circling Brothers had been the greatest financial achievement of Harris +Collin’s life, nevertheless he enjoyed no mean permanent income +from his plant, and, in addition, split fees with the owners of his +board animals when he sent them to the winter Hippodrome shows, and, +more often than not, failed to split any fee at all when he rented the +animals to moving-picture companies.</p> +<p>Animal men, the country over, acknowledged him to be, not only the +richest in the business, but the king of trainers and the grittiest +man who ever went into a cage. And those who from the inside had +seen him work were agreed that he had no soul. Yet his wife and +children, and those in his small social circle, thought otherwise. +They, never seeing him at work, were convinced that no softer-hearted, +more sentimental man had ever been born. His voice was low and +gentle, his gestures were delicate, his views on life, the world, religion +and politics, the mildest. A kind word melted him. A plea +won him. He gave to all local charities, and was gravely depressed +for a week when the Titanic went down. And yet—the men in +the trained-animal game acknowledged him the nerviest and most nerveless +of the profession. And yet—his greatest fear in the world +was that his large, stout wife, at table, should crown him with a plate +of hot soup. Twice, in a tantrum, she had done this during their +earlier married life. In addition to his fear that she might do +it again, he loved her sincerely and devotedly, as he loved his children, +seven of them, for whom nothing was too good or too expensive.</p> +<p>So well did he love them, that the four boys from the beginning he +forbade from seeing him <i>work</i>, and planned gentler careers for +them. John, the oldest, in Yale, had elected to become a man of +letters, and, in the meantime, ran his own automobile with the corresponding +standard of living such ownership connoted in the college town of New +Haven. Harold and Frederick were down at a millionaires’ +sons’ academy in Pennsylvania; and Clarence, the youngest, at +a prep. school in Massachusetts, was divided in his choice of career +between becoming a doctor or an aviator. The three girls, two +of them twins, were pledged to be cultured into ladies. Elsie +was on the verge of graduating from Vassar. Mary and Madeline, +the twins, in the most select and most expensive of seminaries, were +preparing for Vassar. All of which required money which Harris +Collins did not grudge, but which strained the earning capacity of his +animal-training school. It compelled him to work the harder, although +his wife and the four sons and three daughters did not dream that he +actually worked at all. Their idea was that by virtue of superior +wisdom he merely superintended, and they would have been terribly shocked +could they have seen him, club in hand, thrashing forty mongrel dogs, +in the process of training, which had become excited and out of hand.</p> +<p>A great deal of the work was done by his assistants, but it was Harris +Collins who taught them continually what to do and how to do it, and +who himself, on more important animals, did the work and showed them +how. His assistants were almost invariably youths from the reform +schools, and he picked them with skilful eye and intuition. Control +of them, under their paroles, with intelligence and coldness on their +part, were the conditions and qualities he sought, and such combination, +as a matter of course, carried with it cruelty. Hot blood, generous +impulses, sentimentality, were qualities he did not want for his business; +and the Cedarwild Animal School was business from the first tick of +the clock to the last bite of the lash. In short, Harris Collins, +in the totality of results, was guilty of causing more misery and pain +to animals than all laboratories of vivisection in Christendom.</p> +<p>And into this animal hell Michael descended—although his arrival +was horizontal, across three thousand five hundred miles, in the same +crate in which he had been placed at the New Washington Hotel in Seattle. +Never once had he been out of the crate during the entire journey, and +filthiness, as well as wretchedness, characterized his condition. +Thanks to his general good health, the wound of the amputated toe was +in the process of uneventful healing. But dirt clung to him, and +he was infested with fleas.</p> +<p>Cedarwild, to look at, was anything save a hell. Velvet lawns, +gravelled walks and drives, and flowers formally growing, led up to +the group of long low buildings, some of frame and some of concrete. +But Michael was not received by Harris Collins, who, at the moment, +sat in his private office, Harry Del Mar’s last telegram on his +desk, writing a memorandum to his secretary to query the railroad and +the express companies for the whereabouts of a dog, crated and shipped +by one, Harry Del Mar, from Seattle and consigned to Cedarwild. +It was a pallid-eyed youth of eighteen in overalls who received Michael, +receipted for him to the expressman, and carried his crate into a slope-floored +concrete room that smelled offensively and chemically clean.</p> +<p>Michael was impressed by his surroundings but not attracted by the +youth, who rolled up his sleeves and encased himself in large oilskin +apron before he opened the crate. Michael sprang out and staggered +about on legs which had not walked for days. This particular two-legged +god was uninteresting. He was as cold as the concrete floor, as +methodical as a machine; and in such fashion he went about the washing, +scrubbing, and disinfecting of Michael. For Harris Collins was +scientific and antiseptic to the last word in his handling of animals, +and Michael was scientifically made clean, without deliberate harshness, +but without any slightest hint of gentleness or consideration.</p> +<p>Naturally, he did not understand. On top of all he had already +experienced, not even knowing executioners and execution chambers, for +all he knew this bare room of cement and chemical smell might well be +the place of the ultimate life-disaster and this youth the god who was +to send him into the dark which had engulfed all he had known and loved. +What Michael did know beyond the shadow of any doubt was that it was +all coldly ominous and terribly strange. He endured the hand of +the youth-god on the scruff of his neck, after the collar had been unbuckled; +but when the hose was turned on him, he resented and resisted. +The youth, merely working by formula, tightened the safe grip on the +scruff of Michael’s neck and lifted him clear of the floor, at +the same time, with the other hand, directing the stream of water into +his mouth and increasing it to full force by the nozzle control. +Michael fought, and was well drowned for his pains, until he gasped +and strangled helplessly.</p> +<p>After that he resisted no more, and was washed out and scrubbed out +and cleansed out with the hose, a big bristly brush, and much carbolic +soap, the lather of which got into and stung his eyes and nose, causing +him to weep copiously and sneeze violently. Apprehensive of what +might at any moment happen to him, but by this time aware that the youth +was neither positive nor negative for kindness or harm, Michael continued +to endure without further battling, until, clean and comfortable, he +was put away into a pen, sweet and wholesome, where he slept and for +the time being forgot. The place was the hospital, or segregation +ward, and a week of imprisonment was spent therein, in which nothing +happened in the way of development of germ diseases, and nothing happened +to him except regular good food, pure drinking-water, and absolute isolation +from contact with all life save the youth-god who, like an automaton, +attended on him.</p> +<p>Michael had yet to meet Harris Collins, although, from a distance, +often he heard his voice, not loud, but very imperative. That +the owner of this voice was a high god, Michael knew from the first +sound of it. Only a high god, a master over ordinary gods, could +be so imperative. Will was in that voice, and accustomedness to +command. Any dog would have so decided as quickly as Michael did. +And any dog would have decided that there was no love nor lovableness +in the god behind the voice, nothing to warm one’s heart nor to +adore.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXV</h2> +<p>It was at eleven in the morning that the pale youth-god put collar +and chain on Michael, led him out of the segregation ward, and turned +him over to a dark youth-god who wasted no time of greeting on him and +manifested no friendliness. A captive at the end of a chain, on +the way Michael quickly encountered other captives going in his direction. +There were three of them, and never had he seen the like. Three +slouching, ambling monsters of bears they were, and at sight of them +Michael bristled and uttered the lowest of growls; for he knew them, +out of his heredity (as a domestic cow knows her first wolf), as immemorial +enemies from the wild. But he had travelled too far, seen too +much, and was altogether too sensible, to attack them. Instead, +walking stiff-legged and circumspectly, but smelling with all his nose +the strange scent of the creatures, he followed at the end of his chain +his own captor god.</p> +<p>Continually a multitude of strange scents invaded his nostrils. +Although he could not see through walls, he got the smells he was later +to identify of lions, leopards, monkeys, baboons, and seals and sea-lions. +All of which might have stunned an ordinary dog; but the effect on him +was to make him very alert and at the same time very subdued. +It was as if he walked in a new and monstrously populous jungle and +was unacquainted with its ways and denizens.</p> +<p>As he was entering the arena, he shied off to the side more stiff-leggedly +than ever, bristled all along his neck and back, and growled deep and +low in his throat. For, emerging from the arena, came five elephants. +Small elephants they were, but to him they were the hugest of monsters, +in his mind comparable only with the cow-whale of which he had caught +fleeting glimpses when she destroyed the schooner <i>Mary Turner</i>. +But the elephants took no notice of him, each with its trunk clutching +the tail of the one in front of it as it had been taught to do in making +an exit.</p> +<p>Into the arena, he came, the bears following on his heels. +It was a sawdust circle the size of a circus ring, contained inside +a square building that was roofed over with glass. But there were +no seats about the ring, since spectators were not tolerated. +Only Harris Collins and his assistants, and buyers and sellers of animals +and men in the profession, were ever permitted to behold how animals +were tormented into the performance of tricks to make the public open +its mouth in astonishment or laughter.</p> +<p>Michael forgot about the bears, who were quickly at work on the other +side of the circle from that to which he was taken. Some men, +rolling out stout bright-painted barrels which elephants could not crush +by sitting on, attracted his attention for a moment. Next, in +a pause on the part of the man who led him, he regarded with huge interest +a piebald Shetland pony. It lay on the ground. A man sat +on it. And ever and anon it lifted its head from the sawdust and +kissed the man. This was all Michael saw, yet he sensed something +wrong about it. He knew not why, had no evidence why, but he felt +cruelty and power and unfairness. What he did not see was the +long pin in the man’s hand. Each time he thrust this in +the pony’s shoulder, the pony, stung by the pain and reflex action, +lifted its head, and the man was deftly ready to meet the pony’s +mouth with his own mouth. To an audience the impression would +be that in such fashion the pony was expressing its affection for the +master.</p> +<p>Not a dozen feet away another Shetland, a coal-black one, was behaving +as peculiarly as it was being treated. Ropes were attached to +its forelegs, each rope held by an assistant, who jerked on the same +stoutly when a third man, standing in front of the pony, tapped it on +the knees with a short, stiff whip of rattan. Whereupon the pony +went down on its knees in the sawdust in a genuflection to the man with +the whip. The pony did not like it, sometimes so successfully +resisting with spread, taut legs and mutinous head-tossings, as to overcome +the jerk of the ropes, and, at the same time wheeling, to fall heavily +on its side or to uprear as the pull on the ropes was relaxed. +But always it was lined up again to face the man who rapped its knees +with the rattan. It was being taught merely how to kneel in the +way that is ever a delight to the audiences who see only the results +of the schooling and never dream of the manner of the schooling. +For, as Michael was quickly sensing, knowledge was here learned by pain. +In short, this was the college of pain, this Cedarwild Animal School.</p> +<p>Harris Collins himself nodded the dark youth-god up to him, and turned +an inquiring and estimating gaze on Michael.</p> +<p>“The Del Mar dog, sir,” said the youth-god.</p> +<p>Collins’s eyes brightened, and he looked Michael over more +carefully.</p> +<p>“Do you know what he can do?” he queried.</p> +<p>The youth shook his head.</p> +<p>“Harry was a keen one,” Collins went on, apparently to +the youth-god but mostly for his own benefit, being given to thinking +aloud. “He picked this dog as a winner. And now what +can he do? That’s the question. Poor Harry’s +gone, and we don’t know what he can do.—Take off the chain.”</p> +<p>Released Michael regarded the master-god and waited for what might +happen. A squall of pain from one of the bears across the ring +hinted to him what he might expect.</p> +<p>“Come here,” Collins commanded in his cold, hard tones.</p> +<p>Michael came and stood before him.</p> +<p>“Lie down!”</p> +<p>Michael lay down, although he did it slowly, with advertised reluctance.</p> +<p>“Damned thoroughbred!” Collins sneered at him. +“Won’t put any pep into your motions, eh? Well, we’ll +take care of that.—Get up!—Lie down!—Get up!—Lie +down!—Get up!”</p> +<p>His commands were staccato, like revolver shots or the cracks of +whips, and Michael obeyed them in his same slow, reluctant way.</p> +<p>“Understands English, at any rate,” said Collins.</p> +<p>“Wonder if he can turn the double flip,” he added, expressing +the golden dream of all dog-trainers. “Come on, we’ll +try him for a flip. Put the chain on him. Come over here, +Jimmy. Put another lead on him.”</p> +<p>Another reform-school graduate youth obeyed, snapping a girth about +Michael’s loins, to which was attached a thin rope.</p> +<p>“Line him up,” Collins commanded. “Ready?—Go!”</p> +<p>And the most amazing, astounding indignity was wreaked upon Michael. +At the word “Go!”, simultaneously, the chain on his collar +jerked him up and back in the air, the rope on his hindquarters jerked +that portion of him under, forward, and up, and the still short stick +in Collins’s hand hit him under the lower jaw. Had he had +any previous experience with the manoeuvre, he would have saved himself +part of the pain at least by springing and whirling backward in the +air. As it was, he felt as if being torn and wrenched apart while +at the same time the blow under his jaw stung him and almost dazed him. +And, at the same time, whirled violently into the air, he fell on the +back of his head in the sawdust.</p> +<p>Out of the sawdust he soared in rage, neck-hair erect, throat a-snarl, +teeth bared to bite, and he would have sunk his teeth into the flesh +of the master-god had he not been the slave of cunning formula. +The two youths knew their work. One tightened the lead ahead, +the other to the rear, and Michael snarled and bristled his impotent +wrath. Nothing could he do, neither advance, nor retreat, nor +whirl sideways. The youth in front by the chain prevented him +from attacking the youth behind, and the youth behind, with the rope, +prevented him from attacking the youth in front, and both prevented +him from attacking Collins, whom he knew incontrovertibly to be the +master of evil and hurt.</p> +<p>Michael’s wrath was as superlative as was his helplessness. +He could only bristle and tear his vocal chords with his rage. +But it was a very ancient and boresome experience to Collins. +He was even taking advantage of the moment to glance across the arena +and size up what the bears were doing.</p> +<p>“Oh, you thoroughbred,” he sneered at Michael, returning +his attention to him. “Slack him! Let go!”</p> +<p>The instant his bonds were released, Michael soared at Collins, and +Collins, timing and distancing with the accuracy of long years, kicked +him under the jaw and whirled him back and down into the sawdust.</p> +<p>“Hold him!” Collins ordered. “Line him out!”</p> +<p>And the two youths, pulling in opposite directions with chain and +rope, stretched him into helplessness.</p> +<p>Collins glanced across the ring to the entrance, where two teams +of heavy draft-horses were entering, followed by a woman dressed to +over-dressedness in the last word of a stylish street-costume.</p> +<p>“I fancy he’s never done any flipping,” Collins +remarked, coming back to the problem of Michael for a moment. +“Take off your lead, Jimmy, and go over and help Smith.—Johnny, +hold him to one side there and mind your legs. Here comes Miss +Marie for her first lesson, and that mutt of a husband of hers can’t +handle her.”</p> +<p>Michael did not understand the scene that followed, which he witnessed, +for the youth led him over to look on at the arranging of the woman +and the four horses. Yet, from her conduct, he sensed that she, +too, was captive and ill-treated. In truth, she was herself being +trained unwillingly to do a trick. She had carried herself bravely +right to the moment of the ordeal, but the sight of the four horses, +ranged two and two opposing her, with the thing patent that she was +to hold in her hands the hooks on the double-trees and form the link +that connected the two spans which were to pull in opposite directions—at +the sight of this her courage failed her and she shrank back, drooping +and cowering, her face buried in her hands.</p> +<p>“No, no, Billikens,” she pleaded to the stout though +youthful man who was her husband. “I can’t do it. +I’m afraid. I’m afraid.”</p> +<p>“Nonsense, madam,” Collins interposed. “The +trick is absolutely safe. And it’s a good one, a money-maker. +Straighten up a moment.” With his hands he began feeling +out her shoulders and back under her jacket. “The apparatus +is all right.” He ran his hands down her arms. “Now! +Drop the hooks.” He shook each arm, and from under each +of the fluffy lace cuffs fell out an iron hook fast to a thin cable +of steel that evidently ran up her sleeves. “Not that way! +Nobody must see. Put them back. Try it again. They +must come down hidden in your palms. Like this. See.—That’s +it. That’s the idea.”</p> +<p>She controlled herself and strove to obey, though ever and anon she +cast appealing glances to Billikens, who stood remote and aloof, his +brows wrinkled with displeasure.</p> +<p>Each of the men driving the harnessed spans lifted up the double-trees +so that the girl could grasp the hooks. She tried to take hold, +but broke down again.</p> +<p>“If anything breaks, my arms will be torn out of me,” +she protested.</p> +<p>“On the contrary,” Collins reassured her. “You +will lose merely most of your jacket. The worst that can happen +will be the exposure of the trick and the laugh on you. But the +apparatus isn’t going to break. Let me explain again. +The horses do not pull against you. They pull against each other. +The audience thinks that they are pulling against you.—Now try +once more. Take hold the double-trees, and at the same moment +slip down the hooks and connect.—Now!”</p> +<p>He spoke sharply. She shook the hooks down out of her sleeves, +but drew back from grasping the double-trees. Collins did not +betray his vexation. Instead, he glanced aside to where the kissing +pony and the kneeling pony were leaving the ring. But the husband +raged at her:</p> +<p>“By God, Julia, if you throw me down this way!”</p> +<p>“Oh, I’ll try, Billikens,” she whimpered. +“Honestly, I’ll try. See! I’m not afraid +now.”</p> +<p>She extended her hands and clasped the double-trees. With a +thin writhe of a smile, Collins investigated the insides of her clenched +hands to make sure that the hooks were connected.</p> +<p>“Now brace yourself! Spread your legs. And straighten +out.” With his hands he manipulated her arms and shoulders +into position. “Remember, you’ve got to meet the first +of the strain with your arms straight out. After the strain is +on, you couldn’t bend ’em if you wanted to. But if +the strain catches them bent, the wire’ll rip the hide off of +you. Remember, straight out, extended, so that they form a straight +line with each other and with the flat of your back and shoulders. +That’s it. Ready now.”</p> +<p>“Oh, wait a minute,” she begged, forsaking the position. +“I’ll do it—oh, I will do it, but, Billikens, kiss +me first, and then I won’t care if my arms are pulled out.”</p> +<p>The dark youth who held Michael, and others looking on, grinned. +Collins dissembled whatever grin might have troubled for expression, +and murmured:</p> +<p>“All the time in the world, madam. The point is, the +first time must come off right. After that you’ll have the +confidence.—Bill, you’d better love her up before she tackles +it.”</p> +<p>And Billikens, very angry, very disgusted, very embarrassed, obeyed, +putting his arms around his wife and kissing her neither too perfunctorily +nor very long. She was a pretty young thing of a woman, perhaps +twenty years old, with an exceedingly childish, girlish face and a slender-waisted, +generously moulded body of fully a hundred and forty pounds.</p> +<p>The embrace and kiss of her husband put courage into her. She +stiffened and steeled herself, and with compressed lips, as he stepped +clear of her, muttered, “Ready.”</p> +<p>“Go!” Collins commanded.</p> +<p>The four horses, under the urge of the drivers, pressed lazily into +their collars and began pulling.</p> +<p>“Give ’em the whip!” Collins barked, his eyes on +the girl and noting that the pull of the apparatus was straight across +her.</p> +<p>The lashes fell on the horses’ rumps, and they leaped, and +surged, and plunged, with their huge steel-shod hoofs, the size of soup-plates, +tearing up the sawdust into smoke.</p> +<p>And Billikens forgot himself. The terribleness of the sight +painted the honest anxiety for the woman on his face. And her +face was a kaleidoscope. At the first, tense and fearful, it was +like that of a Christian martyr meeting the lions, or of a felon falling +through the trap. Next, and quickly, came surprise and relief +in that there was no hurt. And, finally, her face was proudly +happy with a smile of triumph. She even smiled to Billikens her +pride at making good her love to him. And Billikens relaxed and +looked love and pride back, until, on the spur of the second, Harris +Collins broke in:</p> +<p>“This ain’t a smiling act! Get that smile off your +face. The audience has got to think you’re carrying the +pull. Show that you are. Make your face stiff till it cracks. +Show determination, will-power. Show great muscular effort. +Spread your legs more. Bring up the muscles through your skirt +just as if you was really working. Let ’em pull you this +way a bit and that way a bit. Give ’em to. Spread +your legs more. Make a noise on your face as if you was being +pulled to pieces an’ that all that holds you is will-power.—That’s +the idea! That’s the stuff! It’s a winner, Bill! +It’s a winner!—Throw the leather into ’em! Make +’m jump! Make ’m get right down and pull the daylights +out of each other!”</p> +<p>The whips fell on the horses, and the horses struggled in all their +hugeness and might to pull away from the pain of the punishment. +It was a spectacle to win approval from any audience. Each horse +averaged eighteen hundredweight; thus, to the eye of the onlooker, seven +thousand two hundred pounds of straining horse-flesh seemed wrenching +and dragging apart the slim-waisted, delicately bodied, hundred-and-forty +pound woman in her fancy street costume. It was a sight to make +women in circus audiences scream with terror and turn their faces away.</p> +<p>“Slack down!” Collins commanded the drivers.</p> +<p>“The lady wins,” he announced, after the manner of a +ringmaster.—“Bill, you’ve got a mint in that turn.—Unhook, +madam, unhook!”</p> +<p>Marie obeyed, and, the hooks still dangling from her sleeves, made +a short run to Billikens, into whose arms she threw herself, her own +arms folding him about the neck as she exclaimed before she kissed him:</p> +<p>“Oh, Billikens, I knew I could do it all the time! I +was brave, wasn’t I!”</p> +<p>“A give-away,” Collins’s dry voice broke in on +her ecstasy. “Letting all the audience see the hooks. +They must go up your sleeves the moment you let go.—Try it again. +And another thing. When you finish the turn, no chestiness. +No making out how easy it was. Make out it was the very devil. +Show yourself weak, just about to collapse from the strain. Give +at the knees. Make your shoulders cave in. The ringmaster +will half step forward to catch you before you faint. That’s +your cue. Beat him to it. Stiffen up and straighten up with +an effort of will-power—will-power’s the idea, gameness, +and all that, and kiss your hands to the audience and make a weak, pitiful +sort of a smile, as though your heart’s been pulled ’most +out of you and you’ll have to go to the hospital, but for right +then that you’re game an’ smiling and kissing your hands +to the audience that’s riping the seats up and loving you.—Get +me, madam? You, Bill, get the idea! And see she does it.—Now, +ready! Be a bit wistful as you look at the horses.—That’s +it! Nobody’d guess you’d palmed the hooks and connected +them.—Straight out!—Let her go!”</p> +<p>And again the thirty-six-hundredweight of horses on either side pitted +its strength against the similar weight on the other side, and the seeming +was that Marie was the link of woman-flesh being torn asunder.</p> +<p>A third and a fourth time the turn was rehearsed, and, between turns, +Collins sent a man to his office, for the Del Mar telegram.</p> +<p>“You take her now, Bill,” he told Marie’s husband, +as, telegram in hand, he returned to the problem of Michael. “Give +her half a dozen tries more. And don’t forget, any time +any jay farmer thinks he’s got a span that can pull, bet him on +the side your best span can beat him. That means advance advertising +and some paper. It’ll be worth it. The ringmaster’ll +favour you, and your span can get the first jump. If I was young +and footloose, I’d ask nothing better than to go out with your +turn.”</p> +<p>Harris Collins, in the pauses gazing down at Michael, read Del Mar’s +Seattle telegram:</p> +<blockquote><p>“<i>Sell my dogs. You know what they can +do and what they are worth. Am done with them. Deduct the +board and hold the balance until I see you. I have the limit of +a dog. Every turn I ever pulled is put in the shade by this one. +He’s a ten strike. Wait till you see him</i>.”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>Over to one side in the busy arena, Collins contemplated Michael.</p> +<p>“Del Mar was the limit himself,” he told Johnny, who +held Michael by the chain. “When he wired me to sell his +dogs it meant he had a better turn, and here’s only one dog to +show for it, a damned thoroughbred at that. He says it’s +the limit. It must be, but in heaven’s name, what is its +turn? It’s never done a flip in its life, much less a double +flip. What do you think, Johnny? Use your head. Suggest +something.”</p> +<p>“Maybe it can count,” Johnny advanced.</p> +<p>“And counting-dogs are a drug on the market. Well, anyway, +let’s try.”</p> +<p>And Michael, who knew unerringly how to count, refused to perform.</p> +<p>“If he was a regular dog, he could walk anyway,” was +Collins’ next idea. “We’ll try him.”</p> +<p>And Michael went through the humiliating ordeal of being jerked erect +on his hind legs by Johnny while Collins with the stick cracked him +under the jaw and across the knees. In his wrath, Michael tried +to bite the master-god, and was jerked away by the chain. When +he strove to retaliate on Johnny, that imperturbable youth, with extended +arm, merely lifted him into the air on his chain and strangled him.</p> +<p>“That’s off,” quoth Collins wearily. “If +he can’t stand on his hind legs he can’t barrel-jump—you’ve +heard about Ruth, Johnny. She was a winner. Jump in and +out of nail-kegs, on her hind legs, without ever touching with her front +ones. She used to do eight kegs, in one and out into the next. +Remember when she was boarded here and rehearsed. She was a gold-mine, +but Carson didn’t know how to treat her, and she croaked off with +penumonia at Cripple Creek.”</p> +<p>“Wonder if he can spin plates on his nose,” Johnny volunteered.</p> +<p>“Can’t stand up on hind legs,” Collins negatived. +“Besides, nothing like the limit in a turn like that. This +dog’s got a specially. He ain’t ordinary. He +does some unusual thing unusually well, and it’s up to us to locate +it. That comes of Harry dying so inconsiderately and leaving this +puzzle-box on my hands. I see I just got to devote myself to him. +Take him away, Johnny. Number Eighteen for him. Later on +we can put him in the single compartments.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXVI</h2> +<p>Number Eighteen was a big compartment or cage in the dog row, large +enough with due comfort for a dozen Irish terriers like Michael. +For Harris Collins was scientific. Dogs on vacation, boarding +at the Cedarwild Animal School, were given every opportunity to recuperate +from the hardships and wear and tear of from six months to a year and +more on the road. It was for this reason that the school was so +popular a boarding-place for performing animals when the owners were +on vacation or out of “time.” Harris Collins kept +his animals clean and comfortable and guarded from germ diseases. +In short, he renovated them against their next trips out on vaudeville +time or circus engagement.</p> +<p>To the left of Michael, in Number Seventeen, were five grotesquely +clipped French poodles. Michael could not see them, save when +he was being taken out or brought back, but he could smell them and +hear them, and, in his loneliness, he even started a feud of snarling +bickeringness with Pedro, the biggest of them who acted as clown in +their turn. They were aristocrats among performing animals, and +Michael’s feud with Pedro was not so much real as play-acted. +Had he and Pedro been brought together they would have made friends +in no time. But through the slow monotonous drag of the hours +they developed a fictitious excitement and interest in mouthing their +quarrel which each knew in his heart of hearts was no quarrel at all.</p> +<p>In Number Nineteen, on Michael’s right, was a sad and tragic +company. They were mongrels, kept spotlessly and germicidally +clean, who were unattached and untrained. They composed a sort +of reserve of raw material, to be worked into established troupes when +an extra one or a substitute was needed. This meant the hell of +the arena where the training went on. Also, in spare moments, +Collins, or his assistants, were for ever trying them out with all manner +of tricks in the quest of special aptitudes on their parts. Thus, +a mongrel semblance to a cooker spaniel of a dog was tried out for several +days as a pony-rider who would leap through paper hoops from the pony’s +back, and return upon the back again. After several falls and +painful injuries, it was rejected for the feat and tried out as a plate-balancer. +Failing in this, it was made into a see-saw dog who, for the rest of +the turn, filled into the background of a troupe of twenty dogs.</p> +<p>Number Nineteen was a place of perpetual quarrelling and pain. +Dogs, hurt in the training, licked their wounds, and moaned, or howled, +or were irritable to excess on the slightest provocation. Always, +when a new dog entered—and this was a regular happening, for others +were continually being taken away to hit the road—the cage was +vexed with quarrels and battles, until the new dog, by fighting or by +non resistance, had commanded or been taught its proper place.</p> +<p>Michael ignored the denizens of Number Nineteen. They could +sniff and snarl belligerently across at him, but he took no notice, +reserving his companionship for the play-acted and perennial quarrel +with Pedro. Also, Michael was out in the arena more often and +far longer hours than any of them.</p> +<p>“Trust Harry not to make a mistake on a dog,” was Collins’s +judgment; and constantly he strove to find in Michael what had made +Del Mar declare him a ten strike and the limit.</p> +<p>Every indignity, in the attempt to find out, was wreaked upon Michael. +They tried him at hurdle-jumping, at walking on forelegs, at pony-riding, +at forward flips, and at clowning with other dogs. They tried +him at waltzing, all his legs cord-fastened and dragged and jerked and +slacked under him. They spiked his collar in some of the attempted +tricks to keep him from lurching from side to side or from falling forward +or backward. They used the whip and the rattan stick; and twisted +his nose. They attempted to make a goal-keeper of him in a football +game between two teams of pain-driven and pain-bitten mongrels. +And they dragged him up ladders to make him dive into a tank of water.</p> +<p>Even they essayed to make him “loop the loop”—rushing +him down an inclined trough at so high speed of his legs, accelerated +by the slash of whips on his hindquarters, that, with such initial momentum, +had he put his heart and will into it, he could have successfully run +up the inside of the loop, and across the inside of the top of it, back-downward, +like a fly on the ceiling, and on and down and around and out of the +loop. But he refused the will and the heart, and every time, when +he was unable at the beginning to leap sideways out of the inclined +trough, he fell grievously from the inside of the loop, bruising and +injuring himself.</p> +<p>“It isn’t that I expect these things are what Harry had +in mind,” Collins would say, for always he was training his assistants; +“but that through them I may get a cue to his specially, whatever +in God’s name it is, that poor Harry must have known.”</p> +<p>Out of love, at the wish of his love-god, Steward, Michael would +have striven to learn these tricks and in most of them would have succeeded. +But here at Cedarwild was no love, and his own thoroughbred nature made +him stubbornly refuse to do under compulsion what he would gladly have +done out of love. As a result, since Collins was no thoroughbred +of a man, the clashes between them were for a time frequent and savage. +In this fighting Michael quickly learned he had no chance. He +was always doomed to defeat. He was beaten by stereotyped formula +before he began. Never once could he get his teeth into Collins +or Johnny. He was too common-sensed to keep up the battling in +which he would surely have broken his heart and his body and gone dumb +mad. Instead, he retired into himself, became sullen, undemonstrative, +and, though he never cowered in defeat, and though he was always ready +to snarl and bristle his hair in advertisement that inside he was himself +and unconquered, he no longer burst out in furious anger.</p> +<p>After a time, scarcely ever trying him out on a new trick, the chain +and Johnny were dispensed with, and with Collins he spent all Collins’s +hours in the arena. He learned, by bitter lessons, that he must +follow Collins around; and follow him he did, hating him perpetually +and in his own body slowly and subtly poisoning himself by the juices +of his glands that did not secrete and flow in quite their normal way +because of the pressure put upon them by his hatred.</p> +<p>The effect of this, on his body, was not perceptible. This +was because of his splendid constitution and health. Wherefore, +since the effect must be produced somewhere, it was his mind, or spirit, +or nature, or brain, or processes of consciousness, that received it. +He drew more and more within himself, became morose, and brooded much. +All of which was spiritually unhealthful. He, who had been so +merry-hearted, even merrier-hearted than his brother Jerry, began to +grow saturnine, and peevish, and ill-tempered. He no longer experienced +impulses to play, to romp around, to run about. His body became +as quiet and controlled as his brain. Human convicts, in prisons, +attain this quietude. He could stand by the hour, to heel to Collins, +uninterested, infinitely bored, while Collins tortured some mongrel +creature into the performance of a trick.</p> +<p>And much of this torturing Michael witnessed. There were the +greyhounds, the high-jumpers and wide-leapers. They were willing +to do their best, but Collins and his assistants achieved the miracle, +if miracle it may be called, of making them do better than their best. +Their best was natural. Their better than best was unnatural, +and it killed some and shortened the lives of all. Rushed to the +springboard and the leap, always, after the take-off, in mid-air, they +had to encounter an assistant who stood underneath, an extraordinarily +long buggy-whip in hand, and lashed them vigorously. This made +them leap from the springboard beyond their normal powers, hurting and +straining and injuring them in their desperate attempt to escape the +whip-lash, to beat the whip-lash in the air and be past ere it could +catch their flying flanks and sting them like a scorpion.</p> +<p>“Never will a jumping dog jump his hardest,” Collins +told his assistants, “unless he’s made to. That’s +your job. That’s the difference between the jumpers I turn +out and some of these dub amateur-jumping outfits that fail to make +good even on the bush circuits.”</p> +<p>Collins continually taught. A graduate from his school, an +assistant who received from him a letter of recommendation, carried +a high credential of a sheepskin into the trained-animal world.</p> +<p>“No dog walks naturally on its hind legs, much less on its +forelegs,” Collins would say. “Dogs ain’t built +that way. <i>They have to be made to</i>, that’s all. +That’s the secret of all animal training. They have to. +You’ve got to make them. That’s your job. Make +them. Anybody who can’t, can’t make good in this factory. +Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and get busy.”</p> +<p>Michael saw, without fully appreciating, the use of the spiked saddle +on the bucking mule. The mule was fat and good-natured the first +day of its appearance in the arena. It had been a pet mule in +a family of children until Collins’s keen eyes rested on it; and +it had known only love and kindness and much laughter for its foolish +mulishness. But Collins’s eyes had read health, vigour, +and long life, as well as laughableness of appearance and action in +the long-eared hybrid.</p> +<p>Barney Barnato he was renamed that first day in the arena, when, +also, he received the surprise of his life. He did not dream of +the spike in the saddle, nor, while the saddle was empty, did it press +against him. But the moment Samuel Bacon, a negro tumbler, got +into the saddle, the spike sank home. He knew about it and was +prepared. But Barney, taken by surprise, arched his back in the +first buck he had ever made. It was so prodigious a buck that +Collins eyes snapped with satisfaction, while Sam landed a dozen feet +away in the sawdust.</p> +<p>“Make good like that,” Collins approved, “and when +I sell the mule you’ll go along as part of the turn, or I miss +my guess. And it will be some turn. There’ll be at +least two more like you, who’ll have to be nervy and know how +to fall. Get busy. Try him again.”</p> +<p>And Barney entered into the hell of education that later won his +purchaser more time than he could deliver over the best vaudeville circuits +in Canada and the United States. Day after day Barney took his +torture. Not for long did he carry the spiked saddle. Instead, +bare-back, he received the negro on his back, and was spiked and set +bucking just the same; for the spike was now attached to Sam’s +palm by means of leather straps. In the end, Barney became so +“touchy” about his back that he almost began bucking if +a person as much as looked at it. Certainly, aware of the stab +of pain, he started bucking, whirling, and kicking whenever the first +signal was given of some one trying to mount him.</p> +<p>At the end of the fourth week, two other tumblers, white youths, +being secured, the complete, builded turn was performed for the benefit +of a slender, French-looking gentleman, with waxed moustaches. +In the end he bought Barney, without haggling, at Collins’s own +terms and engaged Sammy and the other two tumblers as well. Collins +staged the trick properly, as it would be staged in the theatre, even +had ready and set up all the necessary apparatus, and himself acted +as ringmaster while the prospective purchaser looked on.</p> +<p>Barney, fat as butter, humorous-looking, was led into the square +of cloth-covered steel cables and cloth-covered steel uprights. +The halter was removed and he was turned loose. Immediately he +became restless, the ears were laid back, and he was a picture of viciousness.</p> +<p>“Remember one thing,” Collins told the man who might +buy. “If you buy him, you’ll be ringmaster, and you +must never, never spike him. When he comes to know that, you can +always put your hands on him any time and control him. He’s +good-natured at heart, and he’s the gratefullest mule I’ve +ever seen in the business. He’s just got to love you, and +hate the other three. And one warning: if he goes real bad and +starts biting, you’ll have to pull out his teeth and feed him +soft mashes and crushed grain that’s steamed. I’ll +give you the recipe for the digestive dope you’ll have to put +in. Now—watch!”</p> +<p>Collins stopped into the ring and caressed Barney, who responded +in the best of tempers and tried affectionately to nudge and shove past +on the way out of the ropes to escape what he knew was coming.</p> +<p>“See,” Collins exposited. “He’s got +confidence in me. He trusts me. He knows I’ve never +spiked him and that I always save him in the end. I’m his +good Samaritan, and you’ll have to be the same to him if you buy +him.—Now I’ll give you your spiel. Of course, you +can improve on it to suit yourself.”</p> +<p>The master-trainer walked out of the rope square, stepped forward +to an imaginary line, and looked down and out and up as if he were gazing +at the pit of the orchestra beneath him, across at the body of the house, +and up into the galleries.</p> +<p>“Ladies and gentlemen,” he addressed the sawdust emptiness +before him as if it were a packed audience, “this is Barney Barnato, +the biggest joker of a mule ever born. He’s as affectionate +as a Newfoundland puppy—just watch—”</p> +<p>Stepping back to the ropes, Collins extended his hand across them, +saying: “Come here, Barney, and show all these people who you +love best.”</p> +<p>And Barney twinkled forward on his small hoofs, nozzled the open +hand, and came closer, nozzling up the arm, nudging Collins’s +shoulders with his nose, half-rearing as if to get across the ropes +and embrace him. What he was really doing was begging and entreating +Collins to take him away out of the squared ring from the torment he +knew awaited him.</p> +<p>“That’s what it means by never spiking him,” Collins +shot at the man with the waxed moustaches, as he stepped forward to +the imaginary line in the sawdust, above the imaginary pit of the orchestra, +and addressed the imaginary house.</p> +<p>“Ladies and gentlemen, Barney Barnato is a josher. He’s +got forty tricks up each of his four legs, and the man don’t live +that he’ll let stick on big back for sixty seconds. I’m +telling you this in fair warning, before I make my proposition. +Looks easy, doesn’t it?—one minute, the sixtieth part of +an hour, to be precise, sixty seconds, to stick on the back of an affectionate +josher mule like Barney. Well, come on you boys and broncho riders. +To anybody who sticks on for one minute I shall immediately pay the +sum of fifty dollars; for two whole, entire minutes, the sum of five +hundred dollars.”</p> +<p>This was the cue for Samuel Bacon, who advanced across the sawdust, +awkward and grinning and embarrassed, and apparently was helped up to +the stage by the extended hand of Collins.</p> +<p>“Is your life insured?” Collins demanded.</p> +<p>Sam shook his head and grinned.</p> +<p>“Then what are you tackling this for?”</p> +<p>“For the money,” said Sam. “I jes’ +naturally needs it in my business.”</p> +<p>“What is your business?”</p> +<p>“None of your business, mister.” Here Sam grinned +ingratiating apology for his impertinence and shuffled on his legs. +“I might be investin’ in lottery tickets, only I ain’t. +Do I get the money?—that’s <i>our</i> business.”</p> +<p>“Sure you do,” Collins replied. “When you +earn it. Stand over there to one side and wait a moment.—Ladies +and gentlemen, if you will forgive the delay, I must ask for more volunteers.—Any +more takers? Fifty dollars for sixty seconds. Almost a dollar +a second . . . if you win. Better! I’ll make it a +dollar a second. Sixty dollars to the boy, man, woman, or girl +who sticks on Barney’s back for one minute. Come on, ladies. +Remember this is the day of equal suffrage. Here’s where +you put it over on your husbands, brothers, sons, fathers, and grandfathers. +Age is no limit.—Grandma, do I get you?” he uttered directly +to what must have been a very elderly lady in a near front row.—“You +see,” (to the prospective buyer), “I’ve got the entire +patter for you. You could do it with two rehearsals, and you can +do them right here, free of charge, part of the purchase.”</p> +<p>The next two tumblers crossed the sawdust and were helped by Collins +up to the imaginary stage.</p> +<p>“You can change the patter according to the cities you’re +in,” he explained to the Frenchman. “It’s easy +to find out the names of the most despised and toughest neighbourhoods +or villages, and have the boys hail from them.”</p> +<p>Continuing the patter, Collins put the performance on. Sam’s +first attempt was brief. He was not half on when he was flung +to the ground. Half a dozen attempts, quickly repeated, were scarcely +better, the last one permitting him to remain on Barney’s back +nearly ten seconds, and culminating in a ludicrous fall over Barney’s +head. Sam withdrew from the ring, shaking his head dubiously and +holding his side as if in pain. The other lads followed. +Expert tumblers, they executed most amazing and side-splitting fails. +Sam recovered and came back. Toward the last, all three made a +combined attack on Barney, striving to mount him simultaneously from +different slants of approach. They were scattered and flung like +chaff, sometimes falling heaped together. Once, the two white +boys, standing apart as if recovering breath, were mowed down by Sam’s +flying body.</p> +<p>“Remember, this is a real mule,” Collins told the man +with the waxed moustaches. “If any outsiders butt in for +a hack at the money, all the better. They’ll get theirs +quick. The man don’t live who can stay on his back a minute +. . . if you keep him rehearsed with the spike. He must live in +fear of the spike. Never let him slow up on it. Never let +him forget it. If you lay off any time for a few days, rehearse +him with the spike a couple of times just before you begin again, or +else he might forget it and queer the turn by ambling around with the +first outside rube that mounts him.</p> +<p>“And just suppose some rube, all hooks of arms and legs and +hands, is managing to stick on anyway, and the minute is getting near +up. Just have Sam here, or any of your three, slide in and spike +him from the palm. That’ll be good night for Mr. Rube. +You can’t lose, and the audience’ll laugh its fool head +off.</p> +<p>“Now for the climax! Watch! This always brings +the house down. Get busy you two!—Sam! Ready!”</p> +<p>While the white boys threatened to mount Barney from either side +and kept his attention engaged, Sam, from outside, in a sudden fit of +rage and desperation, made a flying dive across the ropes and from in +front locked arms and legs about Barney’s neck, tucking his own +head close against Barney’s head. And Barney reared up on +his hind legs, as he had long since learned from the many palm-spikings +he had received on head and neck.</p> +<p>“It’s a corker,” Collins announced, as Barney, +on his hind legs, striking vainly with his fore, struggled about the +ring. “There’s no danger. He’ll never +fall over backwards. He’s a mule, and he’s too wise. +Besides, even if he does, all Sam has to do is let go and fall clear.”</p> +<p>The turn over, Barney gladly accepted the halter and was led out +of the square ring and up to the Frenchman.</p> +<p>“Long life there—look him over,” Collins continued +to sell. “It’s a full turn, including yourself, four +performers, besides the mule, and besides any suckers from the audience. +It’s all ready to put on the boards, and dirt cheap at five thousand.”</p> +<p>The Frenchman winced at the sum.</p> +<p>“Listen to arithmetic,” Collins went on. “You +can sell at twelve hundred a week at least, and you can net eight hundred +certain. Six weeks of the net pays for the turn, and you can book +a hundred weeks right off the bat and have them yelling for more. +Wish I was young and footloose. I’d take it out on the road +myself and coin a fortune.”</p> +<p>And Barney was sold, and passed out of the Cedarwild Animal School +to the slavery of the spike and to be provocative of much joy and laughter +in the pleasure-theatre of the world.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> +<p>“The thing is, Johnny, you can’t love dogs into doing +professional tricks, which is the difference between dogs and women,” +Collins told his assistant. “You know how it is with any +dog. You love it up into lying down and rolling over and playing +dead and all such dub tricks. And then one day you show him off +to your friends, and the conditions are changed, and he gets all excited +and foolish, and you can’t get him to do a thing. Children +are like that. Lose their heads in company, forget all their training, +and throw you down.”</p> +<p>“Now on the stage, they got real tricks to do, tricks they +don’t do, tricks they hate. And they mightn’t be feeling +good—got a touch of cold, or mange, or are sour-balled. +What are you going to do? Apologize to the audience? Besides, +on the stage, the programme runs like clockwork. Got to start +performing on the tick of the clock, and anywhere from one to seven +turns a day, all depending what kind of time you’ve got. +The point is, your dogs have got to get right up and perform. +No loving them, no begging them, no waiting on them. And there’s +only the one way. They’ve got to know when you start, you +mean it.”</p> +<p>“And dogs ain’t fools,” Johnny opined. “They +know when you mean anything, an’ when you don’t.”</p> +<p>“Sure thing,” Collins nodded approbation. “The +moment you slack up on them is the moment they slack up in their work. +You get soft, and see how quick they begin making mistakes in their +tricks. You’ve got to keep the fear of God over them. +If you don’t, they won’t, and you’ll find yourself +begging for spotted time on the bush circuits.”</p> +<p>Half an hour later, Michael heard, though he understood no word of +it, the master-trainer laying another law down to another assistant.</p> +<p>“Cross-breds and mongrels are what’s needed, Charles. +Not one thoroughbred in ten makes good, unless he’s got the heart +of a coward, and that’s just what distinguishes them from mongrels +and cross-breds. Like race-horses, they’re hot-blooded. +They’ve got sensitiveness, and pride. Pride’s the +worst. You listen to me. I was born into the business and +I’ve studied it all my life. I’m a success. +There’s only one reason I’m a success—I KNOW. +Get that. I KNOW.”</p> +<p>“Another thing is that cross-breds and mongrels are cheap. +You needn’t be afraid of losing them or working them out. +You can always get more, and cheap. And they ain’t the trouble +in teaching. You can throw the fear of God into them. That’s +what’s the matter with the thoroughbreds. You can’t +throw the fear of God into them.”</p> +<p>“Give a mongrel a real licking, and what’s he do? +He’ll kiss your hand, and be obedient, and crawl on his belly +to do what you want him to do. They’re slave dogs, that’s +what mongrels are. They ain’t got courage, and you don’t +want courage in a performing dog. You want fear. Now you +give a thoroughbred a licking and see what happens. Sometimes +they die. I’ve known them to die. And if they don’t +die, what do they do? Either they go stubborn, or vicious, or +both. Sometimes they just go to biting and foaming. You +can kill them, but you can’t keep them from biting and foaming. +Or they’ll go straight stubborn. They’re the worst. +They’re the passive resisters—that’s what I call them. +They won’t fight back. You can flog them to death, but it +won’t buy you anything. They’re like those Christians +that used to be burned at the stake or boiled in oil. They’ve +got their opinions, and nothing you can do will change them. They’ll +die first. . . . And they do. I’ve had them. I was +learning myself . . . and I learned to leave the thoroughbred alone. +They beat you out. They get your goat. You never get theirs. +And they’re time-wasters, and patience-wasters, and they’re +expensive.”</p> +<p>“Take this terrier here.” Collins nodded at Michael, +who stood several feet back of him, morosely regarding the various activities +of the arena. “He’s both kinds of a thoroughbred, +and therefore no good. I’ve never given him a real licking, +and I never will. It would be a waste of time. He’ll +fight if you press him too hard. And he’ll die fighting +you. He’s too sensible to fight if you don’t press +him too hard. And if you don’t press him too hard, he’ll +just stay as he is, and refuse to learn anything. I’d chuck +him right now, except Del Mar couldn’t make a mistake. Poor +Harry knew he had a specially, and a crackerjack, and it’s up +to me to find it.”</p> +<p>“Wonder if he’s a lion dog,” Charles suggested.</p> +<p>“He’s the kind that ain’t afraid of lions,” +Collins concurred. “But what sort of a specially trick could +he do with lions? Stick his head in their mouths? I never +heard of a dog doing that, and it’s an idea. But we can +try him. We’ve tried him at ’most everything else.”</p> +<p>“There’s old Hannibal,” said Charles. “He +used to take a woman’s head in his mouth with the old Sales-Sinker +shows.”</p> +<p>“But old Hannibal’s getting cranky,” Collins objected. +“I’ve been watching him and trying to get rid of him. +Any animal is liable to go off its nut any time, especially wild ones. +You see, the life ain’t natural. And when they do, it’s +good night. You lose your investment, and, if you don’t +know your business, maybe your life.”</p> +<p>And Michael might well have been tried out on Hannibal and have lost +his head inside that animal’s huge mouth, had not the good fortune +of apropos-ness intervened. For, the next moment, Collins was +listening to the hasty report of his lion-and-tiger keeper. The +man who reported was possibly forty years of age, although he looked +half as old again. He was a withered-faced man, whose face-lines, +deep and vertical, looked as if they had been clawed there by some beast +other than himself.</p> +<p>“Old Hannibal is going crazy,” was the burden of his +report.</p> +<p>“Nonsense,” said Harris Collins. “It’s +you that’s getting old. He’s got your goat, that’s +all. I’ll show it to you.—Come on along, all of you. +We’ll take fifteen minutes off of the work, and I’ll show +you a show never seen in the show-ring. It’d be worth ten +thousand a week anywhere . . . only it wouldn’t last. Old +Hannibal would turn up his toes out of sheer hurt feelings.—Come +on everybody! All hands! Fifteen minutes recess!”</p> +<p>And Michael followed at the heels of his latest and most terrible +master, the twain leading the procession of employees and visiting professional +animal men who trooped along behind. As was well known, when Harris +Collins performed he performed only for the élite, for the hoi-polloi +of the trained-animal world.</p> +<p>The lion-and-tiger man, who had clawed his own face with the beast-claws +of his nature, whimpered protest when he saw his employer’s preparation +to enter Hannibal’s cage; for the preparation consisted merely +in equipping himself with a broom-handle.</p> +<p>Hannibal was old, but he was reputed the largest lion in captivity, +and he had not lost his teeth. He was pacing up and down the length +of his cage, heavily and swaying, after the manner of captive animals, +when the unexpected audience erupted into the space before his cage. +Yet he took no notice whatever, merely continuing his pacing, swinging +his head from side to side, turning lithely at each end of his cage, +with all the air of being bent on some determined purpose.</p> +<p>“That’s the way he’s been goin’ on for two +days,” whimpered his keeper. “An’ when you go +near ’m, he just reaches for you. Look what he done to me.” +The man held up his right arm, the shirt and undershirt ripped to shreds, +and red parallel grooves, slightly clotted with blood, showing where +the claws had broken the skin. “An’ I wasn’t +inside. He did it through the bars, with one swipe, when I was +startin’ to clean his cage. Now if he’d only roar, +or something. But he never makes a sound, just keeps on goin’ +up an’ down.”</p> +<p>“Where’s the key?” Collins demanded. “Good. +Now let me in. And lock it afterward and take the key out. +Lose it, forget it, throw it away. I’ll have all the time +in the world to wait for you to find it to let me out.”</p> +<p>And Harris Collins, a sliver of a less than a light-weight man, who +lived in mortal fear that at table the mother of his children would +crown him with a plate of hot soup, went into the cage, before the critical +audience of his employees and professional visitors, armed only with +a broom-handle. Further, the door was locked behind him, and, +the moment he was in, keeping a casual but alert eye on the pacing Hannibal, +he reiterated his order to lock the door and remove the key.</p> +<p>Half a dozen times the lion paced up and down, declining to take +any notice of the intruder. And then, when his back was turned +as he went down the cage, Collins stepped directly in the way of his +return path and stood still. Coming back and finding his way blocked, +Hannibal did not roar. His muscular movements sliding each into +the next like so much silk of tawny hide, he struck at the obstacle +that confronted his way. But Collins, knowing ahead of the lion +what the lion was going to do, struck first, with the broom-handle rapping +the beast on its tender nose. Hannibal recoiled with a flash of +snarl and flashed back a second sweeping stroke of his mighty paw. +Again he was anticipated, and the rap on his nose sent him into recoil.</p> +<p>“Got to keep his head down—that way lies safety,” +the master-trainer muttered in a low, tense voice.</p> +<p>“Ah, would you? Take it, then.”</p> +<p>Hannibal, in wrath, crouching for a spring, had lifted his head. +The consequent blow on his nose forced his head down to the floor, and +the king of beasts, nose still to floor, backed away with mouth-snarls +and throat-and-chest noises.</p> +<p>“Follow up,” Collins enunciated, himself following, rapping +the nose again sharply and accelerating the lion’s backward retreat.</p> +<p>“Man is the boss because he’s got the head that thinks,” +Collins preached the lesson; “and he’s just got to make +his head boss his body, that’s all, so that he can think one thought +ahead of the animal, and act one act ahead. Watch me get his goat. +He ain’t the hard case he’s trying to make himself believe +he is. And that idea, which he’s just starting, has got +to be taken out of him. The broomstick will do it. Watch.”</p> +<p>He backed the animal down the length of the cage, continually rapping +at the nose and keeping it down to the floor.</p> +<p>“Now I’m going to pile him into the corner.”</p> +<p>And Hannibal, snarling, growling, and spitting, ducking his head +and with short paw-strokes trying to ward off the insistent broomstick, +backed obediently into the corner, crumpled up his hind-parts, and tried +to withdraw his corporeal body within itself in a pain-urged effort +to make it smaller. And always he kept his nose down and himself +harmless for a spring. In the thick of it he slowly raised his +nose and yawned. Nor, because it came up slowly, and because Collins +had anticipated the yawn by being one thought ahead of Hannibal in Hannibal’s +own brain, was the nose rapped.</p> +<p>“That’s the goat,” Collins announced, for the first +time speaking in a hearty voice in which was no vibration of strain. +“When a lion yawns in the thick of a fight, you know he ain’t +crazy. He’s sensible. He’s got to be sensible, +or he’d be springing or lashing out instead of yawning. +He knows he’s licked, and that yawn of his merely says: ‘I +quit. For the I love of Mike leave me alone. My nose is +awful sore. I’d like to get you, but I can’t. +I’ll do anything you want, and I’ll be dreadful good, but +don’t hit my poor sore nose.’</p> +<p>“But man is the boss, and he can’t afford to be so easy. +Drive the lesson home that you’re boss. Rub it in. +Don’t stop when he quits. Make him swallow the medicine +and lick the spoon. Make him kiss your foot on his neck holding +him down in the dirt. Make him kiss the stick that’s beaten +him.—Watch!”</p> +<p>And Hannibal, the largest lion in captivity, with all his teeth, +captured out of the jungle after he was full-grown, a veritable king +of beasts, before the menacing broomstick in the hand of a sliver of +a man, backed deeper and more crumpled together into the corner. +His back was bowed up, the very opposite muscular position to that for +a spring, while he drew his head more and more down and under his chest +in utter abjectness, resting his weight on his elbows and shielding +his poor nose with his massive paws, a single stroke of which could +have ripped the life of Collins quivering from his body.</p> +<p>“Now he might be tricky,” Collins announced, “but +he’s got to kiss my foot and the stick just the same. Watch!”</p> +<p>He lifted and advanced his left foot, not tentatively and hesitantly, +but quickly and firmly, bringing it to rest on the lion’s neck. +The stick was poised to strike, one act ahead of the lion’s next +possible act, as Collins’s mind was one thought ahead of the lion’s +next thought.</p> +<p>And Hannibal did the forecasted and predestined. His head flashed +up, huge jaws distended, fangs gleaming, to sink into the slender, silken-hosed +ankle above the tan low-cut shoes. But the fangs never sank. +They were scarcely started a fifth of the way of the distance, when +the waiting broomstick rapped on his nose and made him sink it in the +floor under his chest and cover it again with his paws.</p> +<p>“He ain’t crazy,” said Collins. “He +knows, from the little he knows, that I know more than him and that +I’ve got him licked to a fare-you-well. If he was crazy, +he wouldn’t know, and I wouldn’t know his mind either, and +I wouldn’t be that one jump ahead of him, and he’d get me +and mess the whole cage up with my insides.”</p> +<p>He prodded Hannibal with the end of the broom-handle, after each +prod poising it for a stroke. And the great lion lay and roared +in helplessness, and at each prod exposed his nose more and lifted it +higher, until, at the end, his red tongue ran out between his fangs +and licked the boot resting none too gently on his neck, and, after +that, licked the broomstick that had administered all the punishment.</p> +<p>“Going to be a good lion now?” Collins demanded, roughly +rubbing his foot back and forth on Hannibal’s neck.</p> +<p>Hannibal could not refrain from growling his hatred.</p> +<p>“Going to be a good lion?” Collins repeated, rubbing +his foot back and forth still more roughly.</p> +<p>And Hannibal exposed his nose and with his red tongue licked again +the tan shoe and the slender, tan-silken ankle that he could have destroyed +with one crunch.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2> +<p>One friend Michael made among the many animals he encountered in +the Cedarwild School, and a strange, sad friendship it was. Sara +she was called, a small, green monkey from South America, who seemed +to have been born hysterical and indignant, and with no appreciation +of humour. Sometimes, following Collins about the arena, Michael +would meet her while she waited to be tried out on some new turn. +For, unable or unwilling to try, she was for ever being tried out on +turns, or, with little herself to do, as a filler-in for more important +performers.</p> +<p>But she always caused confusion, either chattering and squealing +with fright or bickering at the other animals. Whenever they attempted +to make her do anything, she protested indignantly; and if they tried +force, her squalls and cries excited all the animals in the arena and +set the work back.</p> +<p>“Never mind,” said Collins finally. “She’ll +go into the next monkey band we make up.”</p> +<p>This was the last and most horrible fate that could befall a monkey +on the stage, to be a helpless marionette, compelled by unseen sticks +and wires, poked and jerked by concealed men, to move and act throughout +an entire turn.</p> +<p>But it was before this doom was passed upon her that Michael made +her acquaintance. Their first meeting, she sprang suddenly at +him, a screaming, chattering little demon, threatening him with nails +and teeth. And Michael, already deep-sunk in habitual moroseness +merely looked at her calmly, not a ripple to his neck-hair nor a prick +to his ears. The next moment, her fuss and fury quite ignored, +she saw him turn his head away. This gave her pause. Had +he sprung at her, or snarled, or shown any anger or resentment such +as did the other dogs when so treated by her, she would have screamed +and screeched and raised a hubbub of expostulation, crying for help +and calling all men to witness how she was being unwarrantably attacked.</p> +<p>As it was, Michael’s unusual behaviour seemed to fascinate +her. She approached him tentatively, without further racket; and +the boy who had her in charge slacked the thin chain that held her.</p> +<p>“Hope he breaks her back for her,” was his unholy wish; +for he hated Sara intensely, desiring to be with the lions or elephants +rather than dancing attendance on a cantankerous female monkey there +was no reasoning with.</p> +<p>And because Michael took no notice of her, she made up to him. +It was not long before she had her hands on him, and, quickly after +that, an arm around his neck and her head snuggled against his. +Then began her interminable tale. Day after day, catching him +at odd times in the ring, she would cling closely to him and in a low +voice, running on and on, never pausing for breath, tell him, for all +he knew, the story of her life. At any rate, it sounded like the +story of her woes and of all the indignities which had been wreaked +upon her. It was one long complaint, and some of it might have +been about her health, for she sniffed and coughed a great deal and +her chest seemed always to hurt her from the way she had of continually +and gingerly pressing the palm of her hand to it. Sometimes, however, +she would cease her complaining, and love and mother him, uttering occasional +series of gentle mellow sounds that were like croonings.</p> +<p>Hers was the only hand of affection that was laid on him at Cedarwild, +and she was ever gentle, never pinching him, never pulling his ears. +By the same token, he was the only friend she had; and he came to look +forward to meeting her in the course of the morning work—and this, +despite that every meeting always concluded in a scene, when she fought +with her keeper against being taken away. Her cries and protests +would give way to whimperings and wailings, while the men about laughed +at the strangeness of the love-affair between her and the Irish terrier.</p> +<p>But Harris Collins tolerated, even encouraged, their friendship.</p> +<p>“The two sour-balls get along best together,” he said. +“And it does them good. Gives them something to live for, +and that way lies health. But some day, mark my words, she’ll +turn on him and give him what for, and their friendship will get a terrible +smash.”</p> +<p>And half of it he spoke with the voice of prophecy, and, though she +never turned on Michael, the day in the world was written when their +friendship would truly receive a terrible smash.</p> +<p>“Now seals are too wise,” Collins explained one day, +in a sort of extempore lecture to several of his apprentice trainers. +“You’ve just got to toss fish to them when they perform. +If you don’t, they won’t, and there’s an end of it. +But you can’t depend on feeding dainties to dogs, for instance, +though you can make a young, untrained pig perform creditably by means +of a nursing bottle hidden up your sleeve.”</p> +<p>“All you have to do is think it over. Do you think you +can make those greyhounds extend themselves with the promise of a bite +of meat? It’s the whip that makes them extend.—Look +over there at Billy Green. There ain’t another way to teach +that dog that trick. You can’t love her into doing it. +You can’t pay her to do it. There’s only one way, +and that’s <i>make</i> her.”</p> +<p>Billy Green, at the moment, was training a tiny, nondescript, frizzly-haired +dog. Always, on the stage, he made a hit by drawing from his pocket +a tiny dog that would do this particular trick. The last one had +died from a wrenched back, and he was now breaking in a new one. +He was catching the little mite by the hind-legs and tossing it up in +the air, where, making a half-flip and descending head first, it was +supposed to alight with its forefeet on his hand and there balance itself, +its hind feet and body above it in the air. Again and again he +stooped, caught her hind-legs and flung her up into the half-turn. +Almost frozen with fear, she vainly strove to effect the trick. +Time after time, and every time, she failed to make the balance. +Sometimes she fell crumpled; several times she all but struck the ground: +and once, she did strike, on her side and so hard as to knock the breath +out of her. Her master, taking advantage of the moment to wipe +the sweat from his streaming face, nudged her about with his toe till +she staggered weakly to her feet.</p> +<p>“The dog was never born that’d learn that trick for the +promise of a bit of meat,” Collins went on. “Any more +than was the dog ever born that’d walk on its forelegs without +having its hind-legs rapped up in the air with the stick a thousand +times. Yet you take that trick there. It’s always +a winner, especially with the women—so cunning, you know, so adorable +cute, to be yanked out of its beloved master’s pocket and to have +such trust and confidence in him as to allow herself to be tossed around +that way. Trust and confidence hell! He’s put the +fear of God into her, that’s what.”</p> +<p>“Just the same, to dig a dainty out of your pocket once in +a while and give an animal a nibble, always makes a hit with the audience. +That’s about all it’s good for, yet it’s a good stunt. +Audiences like to believe that the animals enjoy doing their tricks, +and that they are treated like pampered darlings, and that they just +love their masters to death. But God help all of us and our meal +tickets if the audiences could see behind the scenes. Every trained-animal +turn would be taken off the stage instanter, and we’d be all hunting +for a job.”</p> +<p>“Yes, and there’s rough stuff no end pulled off on the +stage right before the audience’s eyes. The best fooler +I ever saw was Lottie’s. She had a bunch of trained cats. +She loved them to death right before everybody, especially if a trick +wasn’t going good. What’d she do? She’d +take that cat right up in her arms and kiss it. And when she put +it down it’d perform the trick all right all right, while the +audience applauded its silly head off for the kindness and humaneness +she’d shown. Kiss it? Did she? I’ll tell +you what she did. She bit its nose.”</p> +<p>“Eleanor Pavalo learned the trick from Lottie, and used it +herself on her toy dogs. And many a dog works on the stage in +a spiked collar, and a clever man can twist a dog’s nose and nobody +in the audience any the wiser. But it’s the fear that counts. +It’s what the dog knows he’ll get afterward when the turn’s +over that keeps most of them straight.”</p> +<p>“Remember Captain Roberts and his great Danes. They weren’t +pure-breds, though. He must have had a dozen of them—toughest +bunch of brutes I ever saw. He boarded them here twice. +You couldn’t go among them without a club in your hand. +I had a Mexican lad laid up by them. He was a tough one, too. +But they got him down and nearly ate him. The doctors took over +forty stitches in him and shot him full of that Pasteur dope for hydrophobia. +And he always will limp with his right leg from what the dogs did to +him. I tell you, they were the limit. And yet, every time +the curtain went up, Captain Roberts brought the house down with the +first stunt. Those dogs just flocked all over him, loving him +to death, from the looks of it. And were they loving him? +They hated him. I’ve seen him, right here in the cage at +Cedarwild, wade into them with a club and whale the stuffing impartially +out of all of them. Sure, they loved him not. Just a bit +of the same old aniseed was what he used. He’d soak small +pieces of meat in aniseed oil and stick them in his pockets. But +that stunt would only work with a bunch of giant dogs like his. +It was their size that got it across. Had they been a lot of ordinary +dogs it would have looked silly. And, besides, they didn’t +do their regular tricks for aniseed. They did it for Captain Roberts’s +club. He was a tough bird himself.”</p> +<p>“He used to say that the art of training animals was the art +of inspiring them with fear. One of his assistants told me a nasty +one about him afterwards. They had an off month in Los Angeles, +and Captain Roberts got it into his head he was going to make a dog +balance a silver dollar on the neck of a champagne bottle. Now +just think that over and try to see yourself loving a dog into doing +it. The assistant said he wore out about as many sticks as dogs, +and that he wore out half a dozen dogs. He used to get them from +the public pound at two and a half apiece, and every time one died he +had another ready and waiting. And he succeeded with the seventh +dog. I’m telling you, it learned to balance a dollar on +the neck of a bottle. And it died from the effects of the learning +within a week after he put it on the stage. Abscesses in the lungs, +from the stick.”</p> +<p>“There was an Englishman came over when I was a youngster. +He had ponies, monkeys, and dogs. He bit the monkey’s ears, +so that, on the stage, all he had to do was to make a move as if he +was going to bite and they’d quit their fooling and be good. +He had a big chimpanzee that was a winner. It could turn four +somersaults as fast as you could count on the back of a galloping pony, +and he used to have to give it a real licking about twice a week. +And sometimes the lickings were too stiff, and the monkey’d get +sick and have to lay off. But the owner solved the problem. +He got to giving him a little licking, a mere taste of the stick, regular, +just before the turn came on. And that did it in his case, though +with some other case the monkey most likely would have got sullen and +not acted at all.”</p> +<p>It was on that day that Harris Collins sold a valuable bit of information +to a lion man who needed it. It was off time for him, and his +three lions were boarding at Cedarwild. Their turn was an exciting +and even terrifying one, when viewed from the audience; for, jumping +about and roaring, they were made to appear as if about to destroy the +slender little lady who performed with them and seemed to hold them +in subjection only by her indomitable courage and a small riding-switch +in her hand.</p> +<p>“The trouble is they’re getting too used to it,” +the man complained. “Isadora can’t prod them up any +more. They just won’t make a showing.”</p> +<p>“I know them,” Collins nodded. “They’re +pretty old now, and they’re spirit-broken besides. Take +old Sark there. He’s had so many blank cartridges fired +into his ears that he’s stone deaf. And Selim—he lost +his heart with his teeth. A Portuguese fellow who was handling +him for the Barnum and Bailey show did that for him. You’ve +heard?”</p> +<p>“I’ve often wondered,” the man shook his head. +“It must have been a smash.”</p> +<p>“It was. The Portuguese did it with an iron bar. +Selim was sulky and took a swipe at him with his paw, and he whopped +it to him full in the mouth just as he opened it to let out a roar. +He told me about it himself. Said Selim’s teeth rattled +on the floor like dominoes. But he shouldn’t have done it. +It was destroying valuable property. Anyway, they fired him for +it.”</p> +<p>“Well, all three of them ain’t worth much to me now,” +said their owner. “They won’t play up to Isadora in +that roaring and rampaging at the end. It really made the turn. +It was our finale, and we always got a great hand for it. Say, +what am I going to do about it anyway? Ditch it? Or get +some young lions?”</p> +<p>“Isadora would be safer with the old ones,” Collins said.</p> +<p>“Too safe,” Isadora’s husband objected. “Of +course, with younger lions, the work and responsibility piles up on +me. But we’ve got to make our living, and this turn’s +about busted.”</p> +<p>Harris Collins shook his head.</p> +<p>“What d’ye mean?—what’s the idea?” +the man demanded eagerly.</p> +<p>“They’ll live for years yet, seeing how captivity has +agreed with them,” Collins elucidated. “If you invest +in young lions you run the risk of having them pass out on you. +And you can go right on pulling the trick off with what you’ve +got. All you’ve got to do is to take my advice . . . ”</p> +<p>The master-trainer paused, and the lion man opened his mouth to speak.</p> +<p>“Which will cost you,” Collins went on deliberately, +“say three hundred dollars.”</p> +<p>“Just for some advice?” the other asked quickly.</p> +<p>“Which I guarantee will work. What would you have to +pay for three new lions? Here’s where you make money at +three hundred. And it’s the simplest of advice. I +can tell it to you in three words, which is at the rate of a hundred +dollars a word, and one of the words is ‘the.’”</p> +<p>“Too steep for me,” the other objected. “I’ve +got a make a living.”</p> +<p>“So have I,” Collins assured him. “That’s +why I’m here. I’m a specialist, and you’re paying +a specialist’s fee. You’ll be as mad as a hornet when +I tell you, it’s that simple; and for the life of me I can’t +understand why you don’t already know it.”</p> +<p>“And if it don’t work?” was the dubious query.</p> +<p>“If it don’t work, you don’t pay.”</p> +<p>“Well, shoot it along,” the lion man surrendered.</p> +<p>“<i>Wire the cage</i>,” said Collins.</p> +<p>At first the man could not comprehend; then the light began to break +on him.</p> +<p>“You mean . . . ?”</p> +<p>“Just that,” Collins nodded. “And nobody +need be the wiser. Dry batteries will do it beautifully. +You can install them nicely under the cage floor. All Isadora +has to do when she’s ready is to step on the button; and when +the electricity shoots through their feet, if they don’t go up +in the air and rampage and roar around to beat the band, not only can +you keep the three hundred, but I’ll give you three hundred more. +I know. I’ve seen it done, and it never misses fire. +It’s just as though they were dancing on a red-hot stove. +Up they go, and every time they come down they burn their feet again.</p> +<p>“But you’ll have to put the juice into them slowly,” +Collins warned. “I’ll show you how to do the wiring. +Just a weak battery first, so as they can work up to it, and then stronger +and stronger to the curtain. And they never get used to it. +As long as they live they’ll dance just as lively as the first +time. What do you think of it?”</p> +<p>“It’s worth three hundred all right,” the man admitted. +“I wish I could make my money that easy.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXIX</h2> +<p>“Guess I’ll have to wash my hands of him,” Collins +told Johnny. “I know Del Mar must have been right when he +said he was the limit, but I can’t get a clue to it.”</p> +<p>This followed upon a fight between Michael and Collins. Michael, +more morose than ever, had become even crusty-tempered, and, scarcely +with provocation at all, had attacked the man he hated, failing, as +ever, to put his teeth into him, and receiving, in turn, a couple of +smashing kicks under his jaw.</p> +<p>“He’s like a gold-mine all right all right,” Collins +meditated, “but I’m hanged if I can crack it, and he’s +getting grouchier every day. Look at him. What’d he +want to jump me for? I wasn’t rough with him. He’s +piling up a sour-ball that’ll make him fight a policeman some +day.”</p> +<p>A few minutes later, one of his patrons, a tow-headed young man who +was boarding and rehearsing three performing leopards at Cedarwild, +was asking Collins for the loan of an Airedale.</p> +<p>“I’ve only got one left now,” he explained, “and +I ain’t safe without two.”</p> +<p>“What’s happened to the other one?” the master-trainer +queried.</p> +<p>“Alphonso—that’s the big buck leopard—got +nasty this morning and settled his hash. I had to put him out +of his misery. He was gutted like a horse in the bull-ring. +But he saved me all right. If it hadn’t been for him I’d +have got a mauling. Alphonso gets these bad streaks just about +every so often. That’s the second dog he’s killed +for me.”</p> +<p>Collins shook his head.</p> +<p>“Haven’t got an Airedale,” he said, and just then +his eyes chanced to fall on Michael. “Try out the Irish +terrier,” he suggested. “They’re like the Airedale +in disposition. Pretty close cousins, at any rate.”</p> +<p>“I pin my faith on the Airedale when it comes to lion dogs,” +the leopard man demurred.</p> +<p>“So’s an Irish terrier a lion dog. Take that one +there. Look at the size and weight of him. Also, take it +from me, he’s all spunk. He’ll stand up to anything. +Try him out. I’ll lend him to you. If he makes good +I’ll sell him to you cheap. An Irish terrier for a leopard +dog will be a novelty.”</p> +<p>“If he gets fresh with them cats he’ll find his finish,” +Johnny told Collins, as Michael was led away by the leopard man.</p> +<p>“Then, maybe, the stage will lose a star,” Collins answered, +with a shrug of shoulders. “But I’ll have him off +my chest anyway. When a dog gets a perpetual sour-ball like that +he’s finished. Never can do a thing with them. I’ve +had them on my hands before.”</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>And Michael went to make the acquaintance of Jack, the surviving +Airedale, and to do his daily turn with the leopards. In the big +spotted cats he recognized the hereditary enemy, and, even before he +was thrust into the cage, his neck was all a-prickle as the skin nervously +tightened and the hair uprose stiff-ended. It was a nervous moment +for all concerned, the introduction of a new dog into the cage. +The tow-headed leopard man, who was billed on the boards as Raoul Castlemon +and was called Ralph by his intimates, was already in the cage. +The Airedale was with him, while outside stood several men armed with +iron bars and long steel forks. These weapons, ready for immediate +use, were thrust between the bars as a menace to the leopards who were, +very much against their wills, to be made to perform.</p> +<p>They resented Michael’s intrusion on the instant, spitting, +lashing their long tails, and crouching to spring. At the same +instant the trainer spoke with sharp imperativeness and raised his whip, +while the men on the outside lifted their irons and advanced them intimidatingly +into the cage. And the leopards, bitter-wise of the taste of the +iron, remained crouched, although they still spat and whipped their +tails angrily.</p> +<p>Michael was no coward. He did not slink behind the man for +protection. On the other hand, he was too sensible to rush to +attack such formidable creatures. What he did do, with bristling +neck-hair, was to stalk stiff-leggedly across the cage, turn about with +his face toward the danger, and stalk stiffly back, coming to a pause +alongside of Jack, who gave him a good-natured sniff of greeting.</p> +<p>“He’s the stuff,” the trainer muttered in a curiously +tense voice. “They don’t get his goat.”</p> +<p>The situation was deservedly tense, and Ralph developed it with cautious +care, making no abrupt movements, his eyes playing everywhere over dogs +and leopards and the men outside with the prods and bars. He made +the savage cats come out of their crouch and separate from one another. +At his word of command, Jack walked about among them. Michael, +on his own initiative, followed. And, like Jack, he walked very +stiffly on his guard and very circumspectly.</p> +<p>One of them, Alphonso, spat suddenly at him. He did not startle, +though his hair rippled erect and he bared his fangs in a silent snarl. +At the same moment the nearest iron bar was shoved in threateningly +close to Alphonso, who shifted his yellow eyes from Michael to the bar +and back again and did not strike out.</p> +<p>The first day was the hardest. After that the leopards accepted +Michael as they accepted Jack. No love was lost on either side, +nor were friendly overtures ever offered. Michael was quick to +realize that it was the men and dogs against the cats and that the men +and does must stand together. Each day he spent from an hour to +two hours in the cage, watching the rehearsing, with nothing for him +and Jack to do save stand vigilantly on guard. Sometimes, when +the leopards seemed better natured, Ralph even encouraged the two dogs +to lie down. But, on bad mornings, he saw to it that they were +ever ready to spring in between him and any possible attack.</p> +<p>For the rest of the time Michael shared his large pen with Jack. +They were well cared for, as were all animals at Cedarwild, receiving +frequent scrubbings and being kept clean of vermin. For a dog +only three years old, Jack was very sedate. Either he had never +learned to play or had already forgotten how. On the other hand, +he was sweet-tempered and equable, and he did not resent the early shows +of crustiness which Michael made. And Michael quickly ceased from +being crusty and took pleasure in their quiet companionship. There +were no demonstrations. They were content to lie awake by the +hour, merely pleasantly aware of each other’s proximity.</p> +<p>Occasionally, Michael could hear Sara making a distant scene or sending +out calls which he knew were for him. Once she got away from her +keeper and located Michael coming out of the leopard cage. With +a shrill squeal of joy she was upon him, clinging to him and chattering +the hysterical tale of all her woes since they had been parted. +The leopard man looked on tolerantly and let her have her few minutes. +It was her keeper who tore her away in the end, cling as she would to +Michael, screaming all the while like a harridan. When her hold +was broken, she sprang at the man in a fury, and, before he could throttle +her to subjection, sank her teeth into his thumb and wrist. All +of which was provocative of great hilarity to the onlookers, while her +squalls and cries excited the leopards to spitting and leaping against +their bars. And, as she was borne away, she set up a soft wailing +like that of a heart-broken child.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>Although Michael proved a success with the leopards, Raoul Castlemon +never bought him from Collins. One morning, several days later, +the arena was vexed by uproar and commotion from the animal cages. +The excitement, starting with revolver shots, was communicated everywhere. +The various lions raised a great roaring, and the many dogs barked frantically. +All tricks in the arena stopped, the animals temporarily unstrung and +unable to continue. Several men, among them Collins, ran in the +direction of the cages. Sara’s keeper dropped her chain +in order to follow.</p> +<p>“It’s Alphonso—shillings to pence it is,” +Collins called to one of his assistants who was running beside him. +“He’ll get Ralph yet.”</p> +<p>The affair was all but over and leaping to its culmination when Collins +arrived. Castlemon was just being dragged out, and as Collins +ran he could see the two men drop him to the ground so that they might +slam the cage-door shut. Inside, in so wildly struggling a tangle +on the floor that it was difficult to discern what animals composed +it, were Alphonso, Jack, and Michael looked together. Men danced +about outside, thrusting in with iron bars and trying to separate them. +In the far end of the cage were the other two leopards, nursing their +wounds and snarling and striking at the iron rods that kept them out +of the combat.</p> +<p>Sara’s arrival and what followed was a matter of seconds. +Trailing her chain behind her, the little green monkey, the tailed female +who knew love and hysteria and was remote cousin to human women, flashed +up to the narrow cage-bars and squeezed through. Simultaneously +the tangle underwent a violent upheaval. Flung out with such force +as to be smashed against the near end of the cage, Michael fell to the +floor, tried to spring up, but crumpled and sank down, his right shoulder +streaming blood from a terrible mauling and crushing. To him Sara +leaped, throwing her arms around him and mothering him up to her flat +little hairy breast. She uttered solicitous cries, and, as Michael +strove to rise on his ruined foreleg, scolded him with sharp gentleness +and with her arms tried to hold him away from the battle. Also, +in an interval, her eyes malevolent in her rage, she chattered piercing +curses at Alphonso.</p> +<p>A crowbar, shoved into his side, distracted the big leopard. +He struck at the weapon with his paw, and, when it was poked into him +again, flung himself upon it, biting the naked iron with his teeth. +With a second fling he was against the cage bars, with a single slash +of paw ripping down the forearm of the man who had poked him. +The crowbar was dropped as the man leaped away. Alphonso flung +back on Jack, a sorry antagonist by this time, who could only pant and +quiver where he lay in the welter of what was left of him.</p> +<p>Michael had managed to get up on his three legs and was striving +to stumble forward against the restraining arms of Sara. The mad +leopard was on the verge of springing upon them when deflected by another +prod of the iron. This time he went straight at the man, fetching +up against the cage-bars with such fierceness as to shake the structure.</p> +<p>More men began thrusting with more rods, but Alphonso was not to +be balked. Sara saw him coming and screamed her shrillest and +savagest at him. Collins snatched a revolver from one of the men.</p> +<p>“Don’t kill him!” Castlemon cried, seizing Collins’s +arm.</p> +<p>The leopard man was in a bad way himself. One arm dangled helplessly +at his side, while his eyes, filling with blood from a scalp wound, +he wiped on the master-trainer’s shoulder so that he might see.</p> +<p>“He’s my property,” he protested. “And +he’s worth a hundred sick monkeys and sour-balled terriers. +Anyway, we’ll get them out all right. Give me a chance.—Somebody +mop my eyes out, please. I can’t see. I’ve used +up my blank cartridges. Has anybody any blanks?”</p> +<p>One moment Sara would interpose her body between Michael and the +leopard, which was still being delayed by the prodding irons; and the +next moment she would turn to screech at the fanged cat is if by very +advertisement of her malignancy she might intimidate him into keeping +back.</p> +<p>Michael, dragging her with him, growling and bristling, staggered +forward a couple of three-legged steps, gave at the ruined shoulder, +and collapsed. And then Sara did the great deed. With one +last scream of utmost fury, she sprang full into the face of the monstrous +cat, tearing and scratching with hands and feet, her mouth buried into +the roots of one of its stubby ears. The astounded leopard upreared, +with his forepaws striking and ripping at the little demon that would +not let go.</p> +<p>The fight and the life in the little green monkey lasted a short +ten seconds. But this was sufficient for Collins to get the door +ajar and with a quick clutch on Michael’s hind-leg jerk him out +and to the ground.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXX</h2> +<p>No rough-and-ready surgery of the Del Mar sort obtained at Cedarwild, +else Michael would not have lived. A real surgeon, skilful and +audacious, came very close to vivisecting him as he radically repaired +the ruin of a shoulder, doing things he would not have dared with a +human but which proved to be correct for Michael.</p> +<p>“He’ll always be lame,” the surgeon said, wiping +his hands and gazing down at Michael, who lay, for the most part of +him, a motionless prisoner set in plaster of Paris. “All +the healing, and there’s plenty of it, will have to be by first +intention. If his temperature shoots up we’ll have to put +him out of his misery. What’s he worth?”</p> +<p>“He has no tricks,” Collins answered. “Possibly +fifty dollars, and certainly not that now. Lame dogs are not worth +teaching tricks to.”</p> +<p>Time was to prove both men wrong. Michael was not destined +to permanent lameness, although in after-years his shoulder was always +tender, and, on occasion, when the weather was damp, he was compelled +to ease it with a slight limp. On the other hand, he was destined +to appreciate to a great price and to become the star performer Harry +Del Mar had predicted of him.</p> +<p>In the meantime he lay for many weary days in the plaster and abstained +from raising a dangerous temperature. The care taken of him was +excellent. But not out of love and affection was it given. +It was merely a part of the system at Cedarwild which made the institution +such a success. When he was taken out of the plaster, he was still +denied that instinctive pleasure which all animals take in licking their +wounds, for shrewdly arranged bandages were wrapped and buckled on him. +And when they were finally removed, there were no wounds to lick; though +deep in the shoulder was a pain that required months in which to die +out.</p> +<p>Harris Collins bothered him no more with trying to teach him tricks, +and, one day, loaned him as a filler-in to a man and woman who had lost +three of their dog-troupe by pneumonia.</p> +<p>“If he makes out you can have him for twenty dollars,” +Collins told the man, Wilton Davis.</p> +<p>“And if he croaks?” Davis queried.</p> +<p>Collins shrugged his shoulders. “I won’t sit up +nights worrying about him. He’s unteachable.”</p> +<p>And when Michael departed from Cedarwild in a crate on an express +wagon, he might well have never returned, for Wilton Davis was notorious +among trained-animal men for his cruelty to dogs. Some care he +might take of a particular dog with a particularly valuable trick, but +mere fillers-in came too cheaply. They cost from three to five +dollars apiece. Worse than that, so far as he was concerned, Michael +had cost nothing. And if he died it meant nothing to Davis except +the trouble of finding another dog.</p> +<p>The first stage of Michael’s new adventure involved no unusual +hardship, despite the fact that he was so cramped in his crate that +he could not stand up and that the jolting and handling of the crate +sent countless twinges of pain shooting through his shoulder. +The journey was only to Brooklyn, where he was duly delivered to a second-rate +theatre, Wilton Davis being so indifferent a second-rate animal man +that he could never succeed in getting time with the big circuits.</p> +<p>The hardship of the cramped crate began after Michael had been carried +into a big room above the stage and deposited with nearly a score of +similarly crated dogs. A sorry lot they were, all of them scrubs +and most of them spirit-broken and miserable. Several had bad +sores on their heads from being knocked about by Davis. No care +was taken of these sores, and they were not improved by the whitening +that was put on them for concealment whenever they performed. +Some of them howled lamentably at times, and every little while, as +if it were all that remained for them to do in their narrow cells, all +of them would break out into barking.</p> +<p>Michael was the only one who did not join in these choruses. +Long since, as one feature of his developing moroseness, he had ceased +from barking. He had become too unsociable for any such demonstrations; +nor did he pattern after the example of some of the sourer-tempered +dogs in the room, who were for ever bickering and snarling through the +slats of their cages. In fact, Michael’s sourness of temper +had become too profound even for quarrelling. All he desired was +to be let alone, and of this he had a surfeit for the first forty-eight +hours.</p> +<p>Wilton Davis had assembled his troupe ahead of time, so that the +change of programme was five days away. Having taken advantage +of this to go to see his wife’s people over in New Jersey, he +had hired one of the stage-hands to feed and water his dogs. This +the stage-hand would have done, had he not had the misfortune to get +into an altercation with a barkeeper which culminated in a fractured +skull and an ambulance ride to the receiving hospital. To make +the situation perfect for what followed, the theatre was closed for +three days in order to make certain alterations demanded by the Fire +Commissioners.</p> +<p>No one came near the room, and after several hours Michael grew aware +of hunger and thirst. The time passed, and the desire for food +was supplanted by the desire for water. By nightfall the barking +and yelping became continuous, changing through the long night hours +to whimpering and whining. Michael alone made no sound, suffering +dumbly in the bedlam of misery.</p> +<p>Morning of the second day dawned; the slow hours dragged by to the +second night; and the darkness of the second night drew down upon a +scene behind the scenes, sufficient of itself to condemn all trained-animal +acts in all theatres and show-tents of all the world. Whether +Michael dreamed or was in semi-delirium, there is no telling; but, whichever +it was, he lived most of his past life over again. Again he played +as a puppy on the broad verandas of <i>Mister</i> Haggin’s plantation +bungalow at Meringe; or, with Jerry, stalked the edges of the jungle +down by the river-bank to spy upon the crocodiles; or, learning from +<i>Mister</i> Haggin and Bob, and patterning after Biddy and Terrence, +to consider black men as lesser and despised gods who must for ever +be kept strictly in their places.</p> +<p>On the schooner <i>Eugénie</i> he sailed with Captain Kellar, +his second master, and on the beach at Tulagi lost his heart to Steward +of the magic fingers and sailed away with him and Kwaque on the steamer +<i>Makambo</i>. Steward was most in his visions, against a hazy +background of vessels, and of individuals like the Ancient Mariner, +Simon Nishikanta, Grimshaw, Captain Doane, and little old Ah Moy. +Nor least of all did Scraps appear, and Cocky, the valiant-hearted little +fluff of life gallantly bearing himself through his brief adventure +in the sun. And it would seem to Michael that on one side, clinging +to him, Cocky talked farrago in his ear, and on the other side Sara +clung to him and chattered an interminable and incommunicable tale. +And then, deep about the roots of his ears would seem to prod the magic, +caressing fingers of Steward the beloved.</p> +<p>“I just don’t I have no luck,” Wilton Davis mourned, +gazing about at his dogs, the air still vibrating with the string of +oaths he had at first ripped out.</p> +<p>“That comes of trusting a drunken stage-hand,” his wife +remarked placidly. “I wouldn’t be surprised if half +of them died on us now.”</p> +<p>“Well, this is no time for talk,” Davis snarled, proceeding +to take off his coat. “Get busy, my love, and learn the +worst. Water’s what they need. I’ll give them +a tub of it.”</p> +<p>Bucketful by bucketful, from the tap at the sink in the corner, he +filled a large galvanized-iron tub. At sound of the running water +the dogs began whimpering and yelping and moaning. Some tried +to lick his hands with their swollen tongues as he dragged them roughly +out of their cages. The weaker ones crawled and bellied toward +the tub, and were over-trod by the stronger ones. There was not +room for all, and the stronger ones drank first, with much fighting +and squabbling and slashing of fangs. Into the foremost of this +was Michael, slashing and being slashed, but managing to get hasty gulps +of the life-saving fluid. Davis danced about among them, kicking +right and left, so that all might have a chance. His wife took +a hand, laying about her with a mop. It was a pandemonium of pain, +for, their parched throats softened by the water, they were again able +to yelp and cry out loudly all their hurt and woe.</p> +<p>Several were too weak to get to the water, so it was carried to them +and doused and splashed into their mouths. It seemed that they +would never be satisfied. They lay in collapse all about the room, +but every little while one or another would crawl over to the tub and +try to drink more. In the meantime Davis had started a fire and +filled a caldron with potatoes.</p> +<p>“The place stinks like a den of skunks,” Mrs. Davis observed, +pausing from dabbing the end of her nose with a powder-puff. “Dearest, +we’ll just have to wash them.”</p> +<p>“All right, sweetheart,” her husband agreed. “And +the quicker the better. We can get through with it while the potatoes +are boiling and cooling. I’ll scrub them and you dry them. +Remember that pneumonia, and do it thoroughly.”</p> +<p>It was quick, rough bathing. Reaching out for the dogs nearest +him, he flung them in turn into the tub from which they had drunk. +When they were frightened, or when they objected in any way, he rapped +them on the head with the scrubbing brush or the bar of yellow laundry +soap with which he was lathering them. Several minutes sufficed +for a dog.</p> +<p>“Drink, damn you, drink—have some more,” he would +say, as he shoved their heads down and under the dirty, soapy water.</p> +<p>He seemed to hold them responsible for their horrible condition, +to look upon their filthiness as a personal affront.</p> +<p>Michael yielded to being flung into the tub. He recognized +that baths were necessary and compulsory, although they were administered +in much better fashion at Cedarwild, while Kwaque and Steward had made +a sort of love function of it when they bathed him. So he did +his best to endure the scrubbing, and all might have been well had not +Davis soused him under. Michael jerked his head up with a warning +growl. Davis suspended half-way the blow he was delivering with +the heavy brush, and emitted a low whistle of surprise.</p> +<p>“Hello!” he said. “And look who’s here!—Lovey, +this is the Irish terrier I got from Collins. He’s no good. +Collins said so. Just a fill-in.—Get out!” he commanded +Michael. “That’s all you get now, Mr. Fresh Dog. +But take it from me pretty soon you’ll be getting it fast enough +to make you dizzy.”</p> +<p>While the potatoes were cooling, Mrs. Davis kept the hungry dogs +warned away by sharp cries. Michael lay down sullenly to one side, +and took no part in the rush for the trough when permission was given. +Again Davis danced among them, kicking away the stronger and the more +eager.</p> +<p>“If they get to fighting after all we’ve done for them, +kick in their ribs, lovey,” he told his wife.</p> +<p>“There! You would, would you?”—this to a +large black dog, accompanied by a savage kick in the side. The +animal yelped its pain as it fled away, and, from a safe distance, looked +on piteously at the steaming food.</p> +<p>“Well, after this they can’t say I don’t never +give my dogs a bath,” Davis remarked from the sink, where he was +rinsing his arms. “What d’ye say we call it a day’s +work, my dear?” Mrs. Davis nodded agreement. “We +can rehearse them to-morrow and next day. That will be plenty +of time. I’ll run in to-night and boil them some bran. +They’ll need an extra meal after fasting two days.”</p> +<p>The potatoes finished, the dogs were put back in their cages for +another twenty-four hours of close confinement. Water was poured +into their drinking-tins, and, in the evening, still in their cages, +they were served liberally with boiled bran and dog-biscuit. This +was Michael’s first food, for he had sulkily refused to go near +the potatoes.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>The rehearsing took place on the stage, and for Michael trouble came +at the very start. The drop-curtain was supposed to go up and +reveal the twenty dogs seated on chairs in a semi-circle. Because, +while they were being thus arranged, the preceding turn was taking place +in front of the drop-curtain, it was imperative that rigid silence should +be kept. Next, when the curtain rose on full stage, the dogs were +trained to make a great barking.</p> +<p>As a filler-in, Michael had nothing to do but sit on a chair. +But he had to get upon the chair, first, and when Davis so ordered him +he accompanied the order with a clout on the side of the head. +Michael growled warningly.</p> +<p>“Oh, ho, eh?” the man sneered. “It’s +Fresh Dog looking for trouble. Well, you might as well get it +over with now so your name can be changed to Good Dog.—My dear, +just keep the rest of them in order while I teach Fresh Dog lesson number +one.”</p> +<p>Of the beating that followed, the least said the better. Michael +put up a fight that was hopeless, and was thoroughly beaten in return. +Bruised and bleeding, he sat on the chair, taking no part in the performance +and only sullenly engendering a deeper and bitterer sourness. +To keep silent before the curtain went up was no hardship for him. +But when the curtain did go up, he declined to join the rest of the +dogs in their frantic barking and yelping.</p> +<p>The dogs, sometimes alone and sometimes in couples and trios and +groups, left their chairs at command and performed the conventional +dog tricks such as walking on hind-legs, hopping, limping, waltzing, +and throwing somersaults. Wilton Davis’s temper was short +and his hand heavy throughout the rehearsal, as the shrill yelps of +pain from the lagging and stupid attested.</p> +<p>In all, during that day and the forenoon of the next, three long +rehearsals took place. Michael’s troubles ceased for the +time being. At command, he silently got on the chair and silently +sat there. “Which shows, dearest, what a bit of the stick +will do,” Davis bragged to his wife. Nor did the pair of +them dream of the scandalizing part Michael was going to play in their +first performance.</p> +<p>Behind the curtain all was ready on the full stage. The dogs +sat on their chairs in abject silence with Davis and his wife menacing +them to remain silent, while, in front of the curtain, Dick and Daisy +Bell delighted the matinée audience with their singing and dancing. +And all went well, and no one in the audience would have suspected the +full stage of dogs behind the curtain had not Dick and Daisy, accompanied +by the orchestra, begun to sing “Roll Me Down to Rio.”</p> +<p>Michael could not help it. Even as Kwaque had long before mastered +him by the jews’ harp, and Steward by love, and Harry Del Mar +by the harmonica, so now was he mastered by the strains of the orchestra +and the voices of the man and woman lifting the old familiar rhythm, +taught him by Steward, of “Roll Me Down to Rio.” Despite +himself, despite his sullenness, the forces compulsive opened his jaws +and set all his throat vibrating in accompaniment.</p> +<p>From beyond the curtain came a titter of children and women that +grew into a roar and drowned out the voices of Dick and Daisy. +Wilton Davis cursed unbelievably as he sprang down the stage to Michael. +But Michael howled on, and the audience laughed on. Michael was +still howling when the short club smote him. The shock and hurt +of it made him break off and yelp an involuntary cry of pain.</p> +<p>“Knock his block off, dearest,” Mrs. Davis counselled.</p> +<p>And then ensued battle royal. Davis struck shrewd blows that +could be heard, as were heard the snarls and growls of Michael. +The audience, under the sway of the comic, ignored Dick and Daisy Bell. +Their turn was spoiled. The Davis turn was “queered,” +as Wilton impressed it. Michael’s block was knocked off +within the meaning of the term. And the audience, on the other +side of the curtain, was edified and delighted.</p> +<p>Dick and Daisy could not continue. The audience wanted what +was behind the curtain, not in front of it. Michael was taken +off stage thoroughly throttled by one of the stage-hands, and the curtain +arose on the full set—full, save for the one empty chair. +The boys in the audience first realized the connection between the empty +chair and the previous uproar, and began clamouring for the absent dog. +The audience took up the cry, the dogs barked more excitedly, and five +minutes of hilarity delayed the turn which, when at last started, was +marked by rustiness and erraticness on the part of the dogs and by great +peevishness on the part of Wilton Davis.</p> +<p>“Never mind, honey,” his imperturbable wife assured him +in a stage whisper. “We’ll just ditch that dog and +get a regular one. And, anyway, we’ve put one over on that +Daisy Bell. I ain’t told you yet what she said about me, +only last week, to some of my friends.”</p> +<p>Several minutes later, still on the stage and handling his animals, +the husband managed a chance to mutter to his wife: “It’s +the dog. It’s him I’m after. I’m going +to lay him out.”</p> +<p>“Yes, dearest,” she agreed.</p> +<p>The curtain down, with a gleeful audience in front and with the dogs +back in the room over the stage, Wilton Davis descended to look for +Michael, who, instead of cowering in some corner, stood between the +legs of the stage-hand, quivering yet from his mishandling and threatening +to fight as hard as ever if attacked. On his way, Davis encountered +the song-and-dance couple. The woman was in a tearful rage, the +man in a dry one.</p> +<p>“You’re a peach of a dog man, you are,” he announced +belligerently. “Here’s where you get yours.”</p> +<p>“You keep away from me, or I’ll lay you out,” Wilton +Davis responded desperately, brandishing a short iron bar in his right +hand. “Besides, you just wait if you want to, and I’ll +lay you out afterward. But first of all I’m going to lay +out that dog. Come on along and see—damn him! How +was I to know? He was a new one. He never peeped in rehearsal. +How was I to know he was going to yap when we arranged the set behind +you?”</p> +<p>“You’ve raised hell,” the manager of the theatre +greeted Davis, as the latter, trailed by Dick Bell, came upon Michael +bristling from between the legs of the stage-hand.</p> +<p>“Nothing to what I’m going to raise,” Davis retorted, +shortening his grip on the iron bar and raising it. “I’m +going to kill ’m. I’m going to beat the life out of +him. You just watch.”</p> +<p>Michael snarled acknowledgment of the threat, crouched to spring, +and kept his eyes on the iron weapon.</p> +<p>“I just guess you ain’t goin’ to do anything of +the sort,” the stage-hand assured Davis.</p> +<p>“It’s my property,” the latter asserted with an +air of legal convincingness.</p> +<p>“And against it I’m goin’ to stack up my common +sense,” was the stage-hand’s reply. “You tap +him once, and see what you’ll get. Dogs is dogs, and men +is men, but I’m damned if I know what you are. You can’t +pull off rough stuff on that dog. First time he was on a stage +in his life, after being starved and thirsted for two days. Oh, +I know, Mr. Manager.”</p> +<p>“If you kill the dog it’ll cost you a dollar to the garbage +man to get rid of the carcass,” the manager took up.</p> +<p>“I’ll pay it gladly,” Davis said, again lifting +the iron bar. “I’ve got some come-back, ain’t +I?”</p> +<p>“You animal guys make me sick,” the stage-hand uttered. +“You just make me draw the line somewheres. And here it +is: you tap him once with that baby crowbar, and I’ll tap you +hard enough to lose me my job and to send you to hospital.”</p> +<p>“Now look here, Jackson . . . ” the manager began threateningly.</p> +<p>“You can’t say nothin’ to me,” was the retort. +“My mind’s made up. If that cheap guy lays a finger +on that dog I’m just sure goin’ to lose my job. I’m +gettin tired anyway of seein’ these skates beatin’ up their +animals. They’ve made me sick clean through.”</p> +<p>The manager looked to Davis and shrugged his shoulders helplessly.</p> +<p>“There’s no use pulling off a rough-house,” he +counselled. “I don’t want to lose Jackson and he’ll +put you into hospital if he ever gets started. Send the dog back +where you got him. Your wife’s told me about him. +Stick him into a box and send him back collect. Collins won’t +mind. He’ll take the singing out of him and work him into +something.”</p> +<p>Davis, with another glance at the truculent Jackson, wavered.</p> +<p>“I’ll tell you what,” the manager went on persuasively. +“Jackson will attend to the whole thing, box him up, ship him, +everything—won’t you, Jackson?”</p> +<p>The stage-hand nodded curtly, then reached down and gently caressed +Michael’s bruised head.</p> +<p>“Well,” Davis gave in, turning on his heel, “they +can make fools of themselves over dogs, them that wants to. But +when they’ve been in the business as long as I have . . . ”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXXI</h2> +<p>A post card from Davis to Collins explained the reasons for Michael’s +return. “He sings too much to suit my fancy,” was +Davis’s way of putting it, thereby unwittingly giving the clue +to what Collins had vainly sought, and which Collins as unwittingly +failed to grasp. As he told Johnny:</p> +<p>“From the looks of the beatings he’s got no wonder he’s +been singing. That’s the trouble with these animal people. +They don’t know how to take care of their property. They +hammer its head off and get grouched because it ain’t an angel +of obedience.—Put him away, Johnny. Wash him clean, and +put on the regular dressing wherever the skin’s broken. +I give him up myself, but I’ll find some place for him in the +next bunch of dogs.”</p> +<p>Two weeks later, by sheerest accident, Harris Collins made the discovery +for himself of what Michael was good for. In a spare moment in +the arena, he had sent for him to be tried out by a dog man who needed +several fillers-in. Beyond what he knew, such as at command to +stand up, to lie down, to come here and go there, Michael had done nothing. +He had refused to learn the most elementary things a show-dog should +know, and Collins had left him to go over to another part of the arena +where a monkey band, on a sort of mimic stage, was being arranged and +broken in.</p> +<p>Frightened and mutinous, nevertheless the monkeys were compelled +to perform by being tied to their seats and instruments and by being +pulled and jerked from off stage by wires fastened to their bodies. +The leader of the orchestra, an irascible elderly monkey, sat on a revolving +stool to which he was securely attached. When poked from off the +stage by means of long poles, he flew into ecstasies of rage. +At the same time, by a rope arrangement, his chair was whirled around +and around. To an audience the effect would be that he was angered +by the blunders of his fellow-musicians. And to an audience such +anger would be highly ludicrous. As Collins said:</p> +<p>“A monkey band is always a winner. It fetches the laugh, +and the money’s in the laugh. Humans just have to laugh +at monkeys because they’re so similar and because the human has +the advantage and feels himself superior. Suppose we’re +walking along the street, you and me, and you slip and fall down. +Of course I laugh. That’s because I’m superior to +you. I didn’t fall down. Same thing if your hat blows +off. I laugh while you chase it down the street. I’m +superior. My hat’s still on my head. Same thing with +the monkey band. All the fool things of it make us feel so superior. +We don’t see ourselves as foolish. That’s why we pay +to see the monkeys behave foolish.”</p> +<p>It was scarcely a matter of training the monkeys. Rather was +it the training of the men who operated the concealed mechanisms that +made the monkeys perform. To this Harris Collins was devoting +his effort.</p> +<p>“There isn’t any reason why you fellows can’t make +them play a real tune. It’s up to you, just according to +how you pull the wires. Come on. It’s worth going +in for. Let’s try something you all know. And remember, +the regular orchestra will always help you out. Now, what do you +all know? Something simple, and something the audience’ll +know, too?”</p> +<p>He became absorbed in trying out the idea, and even borrowed a circus +rider whose act was to play the violin while standing on the back of +a galloping horse and to throw somersaults on such precarious platform +while still playing the violin. This man he got merely to play +simple airs in slow time, so that the assistants could keep the time +and the air and pull the wires accordingly.</p> +<p>“Of course, if you make a howling mistake,” Collins told +them, “that’s when you all pull the wires like mad and poke +the leader and whirl him around. That always brings down the house. +They think he’s got a real musical ear and is mad at his orchestra +for the discord.”</p> +<p>In the midst of the work, Johnny and Michael came along.</p> +<p>“That guy says he wouldn’t take him for a gift,” +Johnny reported to his employer.</p> +<p>“All right, all right, put him back in the kennels,” +Collins ordered hurriedly.—“Now, you fellows, all ready! +‘Home, Sweet Home!’ Go to it, Fisher! Now keep +the time the rest of you! . . . That’s it. With a full orchestra +you’re making motions like the tune.—Faster, you, Simmons. +You drag behind all the time.”</p> +<p>And the accident happened. Johnny, instead of immediately obeying +the order and taking Michael back to the kennels, lingered in the hope +of seeing the orchestra leader whirled chattering around on his stool. +The violinist, within a yard of where Michael sat squatted on his haunches, +played the notes of “Home, Sweet Home” with loud slow exactitude +and emphasis.</p> +<p>And Michael could not help it. No more could he help it than +could he help responding with a snarl when threatened by a club; no +more could he help it than when he had spoiled the turn of Dick and +Daisy Bell when swept by the strains of “Roll Me Down to Rio”; +no more could he help it than could Jerry, on the deck of the <i>Ariel</i>, +help singing when Villa Kennan put her arms around him, smothered him +deliciously in her cloud of hair, and sang his memory back into time +and the fellowship of the ancient pack. As with Jerry, was it +with Michael. Music was a drug of dream. He, too, remembered +the lost pack and sought it, seeing the bare hills of snow and the stars +glimmering overhead through the frosty darkness of night, hearing the +faint answering howls from other hills as the pack assembled. +Lost the pack was, through the thousands of years Michael’s ancestors +had lived by the fires of men; yet remembered always it was when the +magic of rhythm poured through him and flooded his being with visions +and sensations of that Otherwhere which in his own life he had never +known.</p> +<p>Compounded with the waking dream of Otherwhere, was the memory of +Steward and the love of Steward, with whom he had learned to sing the +very series of notes that now were being reproduced by the circus-rider +violinist. And Michael’s jaw dropped down, his throat vibrated, +his forefeet made restless little movements as if in the body he were +running, as truly he was running in the mind, back to Steward, back +through all the ages to the lost pack, and with the shadowy lost pack +itself across the snowy wastes and through the forest aisles in the +hunt of the meat.</p> +<p>The spectral forms of the lost pack were all about him as he sang +and ran in open-eyed dream; the violinist paused in surprise; the men +poked the monkey leader of the monkey orchestra and whirled him about +wildly raging on his revolving stool; and Johnny laughed. But +Harris Collins took note. He had heard Michael accurately follow +the air. He had heard him sing—not merely howl, but <i>sing</i>.</p> +<p>Silence fell. The monkey leader ceased revolving and chattering. +The men who had poked him held poles and wires suspended in their hands. +The rest of the monkey orchestra merely shivered in apprehension of +what next atrocity should be perpetrated. The violinist stared. +Johnny still heaved from his laughter. But Harris Collins pondered, +scratched his head, and continued to ponder.</p> +<p>“You can’t tell me . . . ” he began vaguely. +“I know it. I heard it. That dog carried the tune. +Didn’t he now? I leave it to all of you. Didn’t +he? The damned dog sang. I’ll stake my life on it.—Hold +on, you fellows; rest the monkeys off. This is worth following +up.—Mr. Violinist, play that over again, now, ‘Home, Sweet +Home,’—let her go. Press her strong, and loud, and +slow.—Now watch, all of you, and listen, and tell me if I’m +crazy, or if that dog ain’t carrying the tune.—There! +What d’ye call it? Ain’t it?”</p> +<p>There was no discussion. Michael’s jaw dropped and his +forefeet began their restless lifting after several measures had been +played. And Harris Collins stepped close to him and sang with +him and in accord.</p> +<p>“Harry Del Mar was right when he said that dog was the limit +and sold his troupe. He knew. The dog’s a dog Caruso. +No howling chorus of mutts such as Kingman used to carry around with +him, but a real singer, a soloist. No wonder he wouldn’t +learn tricks. He had his specially all the time. And just +to think of it! I as good as gave him away to that dog-killing +Wilton Davis. Only he came back.—Johnny, take extra care +of him after this. Bring him up to the house this afternoon, and +I’ll give him a real try-out. My daughter plays the violin. +We’ll see what music he’ll sing with her. There’s +a mint of money in him, take it from me.”</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>Thus was Michael discovered. The afternoon’s try-out +was partially successful. After vainly attempting strange music +on him, Collins found that he could sing, and would sing, “God +Save the King” and “Sweet Bye and Bye.” Many +hours of many days were spent in the quest. Vainly he tried to +teach Michael new airs. Michael put no heart of love in the effort +and sullenly abstained. But whenever one of the songs he had learned +from Steward was played, he responded. He could not help responding. +The magic was stronger than he. In the end, Collins discovered +five of the six songs he knew: “God Save the King,” “Sweet +Bye and Bye,” “Lead, Kindly Light,” “Home, Sweet +Home,” and “Roll Me Down to Rio.” Michael never +sang “Shenandoah,” because Collins and Collins’s daughter +did not know the old sea-chanty and therefore were unable to suggest +it to him.</p> +<p>“Five songs are enough, if he won’t never learn another +note,” Collins concluded. “They’ll make him +a bill-topper anywhere. There’s a mint in him. Hang +me if I wouldn’t take him out on the road myself if only I was +young and footloose.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXXII</h2> +<p>And so Michael was ultimately sold to one Jacob Henderson for two +thousand dollars. “And I’m giving him away to you +at that,” said Collins. “If you don’t refuse +five thousand for him before six months, I don’t know anything +about the show game. He’ll skin that last arithmetic dog +of yours to a finish and you won’t have to show yourself and work +every minute of the turn. And if you don’t insure him for +fifty thousand as soon as he’s made good you’ll be a fool. +Why, I wouldn’t ask anything better, if I was young and footloose, +than to take him out on the road myself.”</p> +<p>Henderson proved totally different from any master Michael had had. +The man was a neutral sort of creature. He was neither good nor +evil. He neither drank, smoked, nor swore; nor did he go to church +or belong to the Y.M.C.A. He was a vegetarian without being a +bigoted one, liked moving pictures when they were concerned with travel, +and spent most of his spare time in reading Swedenborg. He had +no temper whatever. Nobody had ever witnessed anger in him, and +all said he had the patience of Job. He was even timid of policemen, +freight agents, and conductors, though he was not afraid of them. +He was not afraid of anything, any more than was he enamoured of anything +save Swedenborg. He was as colourless of character as the neutral-coloured +clothes he wore, as the neutral-coloured hair that sprawled upon his +crown, as the neutral-coloured eyes with which he observed the world. +Nor was he a fool any more than was he a wise man or a scholar. +He gave little to life, asked little of life, and, in the show business, +was a recluse in the very heart of life.</p> +<p>Michael neither liked nor disliked him, but, rather, merely accepted +him. They travelled the United States over together, and they +never had a quarrel. Not once did Henderson raise his voice sharply +to Michael, and not once did Michael snarl a warning at him. They +simply endured together, existed together, because the currents of life +had drifted them together. Of course, there was no heart-bond +between them. Henderson was master. Michael was Henderson’s +chattel. Michael was as dead to him as he was himself dead to +all things.</p> +<p>Yet Jacob Henderson was fair and square, business-like and methodical. +Once each day, when not travelling on the interminable trains, he gave +Michael a thorough bath and thoroughly dried him afterward. He +was never harsh nor hasty in the bathing. Michael never was aware +whether he liked or disliked the bathing function. It was all +one, part of his own fate in the world as it was part of Henderson’s +fate to bathe him every so often.</p> +<p>Michael’s own work was tolerably easy, though monotonous. +Leaving out the eternal travelling, the never-ending jumps from town +to town and from city to city, he appeared on the stage once each night +for seven nights in the week and for two afternoon performances in the +week. The curtain went up, leaving him alone on the stage in the +full set that befitted a bill-topper. Henderson stood in the wings, +unseen by the audience, and looked on. The orchestra played four +of the pieces Michael had been taught by Steward, and Michael sang them, +for his modulated howling was truly singing. He never responded +to more than one encore, which was always “Home, Sweet Home.” +After that, while the audience clapped and stamped its approval and +delight of the dog Caruso, Jacob Henderson would appear on the stage, +bowing and smiling in stereotyped gladness and gratefulness, rest his +right hand on Michael’s shoulders with a play-acted assumption +of comradeliness, whereupon both Henderson and Michael would bow ere +the final curtain went down.</p> +<p>And yet Michael was a prisoner, a life-prisoner. Fed well, +bathed well, exercised well, he never knew a moment of freedom. +When travelling, days and nights he spent in the cage, which, however, +was generous enough to allow him to stand at full height and to turn +around without too uncomfortable squirming. Sometimes, in hotels +in country towns, out of the crate he shared Henderson’s room +with him. Otherwise, unless other animals were hewing on the same +circuit time, he had, outside his cage, the freedom of the animal room +attached to the particular theatre where he performed for from three +days to a week.</p> +<p>But there was never a chance, never a moment, when he might run free +of a cage about him, of the walls of a room restricting him, of a chain +shackled to the collar about his throat. In good weather, in the +afternoons, Henderson often took him for a walk. But always it +was at the end of a chain. And almost always the way led to some +park, where Henderson fastened the other end of the chain to the bench +on which he sat and browsed Swedenborg. Not one act of free agency +was left to Michael. Other dogs ran free, playing with one another, +or behaving bellicosely. If they approached him for purposes of +investigation or acquaintance, Henderson invariably ceased from his +reading long enough to drive them away.</p> +<p>A life prisoner to a lifeless gaoler, life was all grey to Michael. +His moroseness changed to a deep-seated melancholy. He ceased +to be interested in life and in the freedom of life. Not that +he regarded the play of life about him with a jaundiced eye, but, rather, +that his eyes became unseeing. Debarred from life, he ignored +life. He permitted himself to become a sheer puppet slave, eating, +taking his baths, travelling in his cage, performing regularly, and +sleeping much.</p> +<p>He had pride—the pride of the thoroughbred; the pride of the +North American Indian enslaved on the plantations of the West Indies +who died uncomplaining and unbroken. So Michael. He submitted +to the cage and the iron of the chain because they were too strong for +his muscles and teeth. He did his slave-task of performance and +rendered obedience to Jacob Henderson; but he neither loved nor feared +that master. And because of this his spirit turned in on itself. +He slept much, brooded much, and suffered unprotestingly a great loneliness. +Had Henderson made a bid for his heart, he would surely have responded; +but Henderson had a heart only for the fantastic mental gyrations of +Swedenborg, and merely made his living out of Michael.</p> +<p>Sometimes there were hardships. Michael accepted them. +Especially hard did he find railroad travel in winter-time, when, on +occasion, fresh from the last night’s performance in a town, he +remained for hours in his crate on a truck waiting for the train that +would take him to the next town of performance. There was a night +on a station platform in Minnesota, when two dogs of a troupe, on the +next truck to his, froze to death. He was himself well frosted, +and the cold bit abominably into his shoulder wounded by the leopard; +but a better constitution and better general care of him enabled him +to survive.</p> +<p>Compared with other show animals, he was well treated. And +much of the ill-treatment accorded other animals on the same turn with +him he did not comprehend or guess. One turn, with which he played +for three months, was a scandal amongst all vaudeville performers. +Even the hardiest of them heartily disliked the turn and the man, although +Duckworth, and Duckworth’s Trained Cats and Rats, were an invariable +popular success.</p> +<p>“Trained cats!” sniffed dainty little Pearl La Pearle, +the bicyclist. “Crushed cats, that’s what they are. +All the cat has been beaten out of their blood, and they’ve become +rats. You can’t tell me. I know.”</p> +<p>“Trained rats!” Manuel Fonseca, the contortionist, exploded +in the bar-room of the Hotel Annandale, after refusing to drink with +Duckworth. “Doped rats, believe me. Why don’t +they jump off when they crawl along the tight rope with a cat in front +and a cat behind? Because they ain’t got the life in ’m +to jump. They’re doped, straight doped when they’re +fresh, and starved afterward so as to making a saving on the dope. +They never are fed. You can’t tell me. I know. +Else why does he use up anywhere to forty or fifty rats a week! +I know his express shipments, when he can’t buy ’m in the +towns.”</p> +<p>“My Gawd!” protested Miss Merle Merryweather, the Accordion +Girl, who looked like sixteen on the stage, but who, in private life +among her grand-children, acknowledged forty-eight. “My +Gawd, how the public can fall for it gets my honest-to-Gawd goat. +I looked myself yesterday morning early. Out of thirty rats there +were seven dead,—starved to death. He never feeds them. +They’re dying rats, dying of starvation, when they crawl along +that rope. That’s why they crawl. If they had a bit +of bread and cheese in their tummies they’d jump and run to get +away from the cats. They’re dying, they’re dying right +there on the rope, trying to crawl as a dying man would try to crawl +away from a tiger that was eating him. And my Gawd! The +bonehead audience sits there and applauds the show as an educational +act!”</p> +<p>But the audience! “Wonderful things kindness will do +with animals,” said a member of one, a banker and a deacon. +“Even human love can be taught to them by kindness. The +cat and the rat have been enemies since the world began. Yet here, +to-night, we have seen them doing highly trained feats together, and +neither a cat committed one hostile or overt act against a rat, nor +ever a rat showed it was afraid of a cat. Human kindness! +The power of human kindness!”</p> +<p>“The lion and the lamb,” said another. “We +have it that when the millennium comes the lion and the lamb will lie +down together—and outside each other, my dear, outside each other. +And this is a forecast, a proving up, by man, ahead of the day. +Cats and rats! Think of it. And it shows conclusively the +power of kindness. I shall see to it at once that we get pets +for our own children, our palm branches. They shall learn kindness +early, to the dog, the cat, yes, even the rat, and the pretty linnet +in its cage.”</p> +<p>“But,” said his dear, beside him, “you remember +what Blake said:</p> +<blockquote><p>“‘A Robin Redbreast in a cage<br /> +Puts all heaven in a rage.’”</p> +</blockquote> +<p>“Ah—but not when it is treated truly with kindness, my +dear. I shall immediately order some rabbits, and a canary or +two, and—what sort of a dog would you prefer our dear little ones +to have to play with, my sweet?”</p> +<p>And his dear looked at him in all his imperturbable, complacent self-consciousness +of kindness, and saw herself the little rural school-teacher who, with +Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Lord Byron as her idols, and with the dream +of herself writing “Poems of Passion,” had come up to Topeka +Town to be beaten by the game into marrying the solid, substantial business +man beside her, who enjoyed delight in the spectacle of cats and rats +walking the tight-rope in amity, and who was blissfully unaware that +she was the Robin Redbreast in a cage that put all heaven in a rage.</p> +<p>“The rats are bad enough,” said Miss Merle Merryweather. +“But look how he uses up the cats. He’s had three +die on him in the last two weeks to my certain knowledge. They’re +only alley-cats, but they’ve got feelings. It’s that +boxing match that does for them.”</p> +<p>The boxing match, sure always of a great hand from the audience, +invariably concluded Duckworth’s turn. Two cats, with small +boxing-gloves, were put on a table for a friendly bout. Naturally, +the cats that performed with the rats were too cowed for this. +It was the fresh cats he used, the ones with spunk and spirit . . . +until they lost all spunk and spirit or sickened and died. To +the audience it was a side-splitting, playful encounter between four-legged +creatures who thus displayed a ridiculous resemblance to superior, two-legged +man. But it was not playful to the cats. They were always +excited into starting a real fight with each other off stage just before +they were brought on. In the blows they struck were anger and +pain and bewilderment and fear. And the gloves just would come +off, so that they were ripping and tearing at each other, biting as +well as making the fur fly, like furies, when the curtain went down. +In the eyes of the audience this apparent impromptu was always the ultimate +scream, and the laughter and applause would compel the curtain up again +to reveal Duckworth and an assistant stage-hand, as if caught by surprise, +fanning the two belligerents with towels.</p> +<p>But the cats themselves were so continually torn and scratched that +the wounds never had a chance to heal and became infected until they +were a mass of sores. On occasion they died, or, when they had +become too abjectly spiritless to attack even a rat, were set to work +on the tight-rope with the doped starved rats that were too near dead +to run away from them. And, as Miss Merle Merryweather said: the +bonehead audiences, tickled to death, applauded Duckworth’s Trained +Cats and Rats as an educational act!</p> +<p>A big chimpanzee that covered one of the circuits with Michael had +an antipathy for clothes. Like a horse that fights the putting +on of the bridle, and, after it is on, takes no further notice of it, +so the big chimpanzee fought the putting on the clothes. Once +on, it was ready to go out on the stage and through its turn. +But the rub was in putting on the clothes. It took the owner and +two stage-hands, pulling him up to a ring in the wall and throttling +him, to dress him—and this, despite the fact that the owner had +long since knocked out his incisors.</p> +<p>All this cruelty Michael sensed without knowing. And he accepted +it as the way of life, as he accepted the daylight and the dark, the +bite of the frost on bleak and windy station platforms, the mysterious +land of Otherwhere that he knew in dreams and song, the equally mysterious +Nothingness into which had vanished Meringe Plantation and ships and +oceans and men and Steward.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2> +<p>For two years Michael sang his way over the United States, to fame +for himself and to fortune for Jacob Henderson. There was never +any time off. So great was his success, that Henderson refused +flattering offers to cross the Atlantic to show in Europe. But +off-time did come to Michael when Henderson fell ill of typhoid in Chicago.</p> +<p>It was a three-months’ vacation for Michael, who, well treated +but still a prisoner, spent it in a caged kennel in Mulcachy’s +Animal Home. Mulcachy, one of Harris Collins’s brightest +graduates, had emulated his master by setting up in business in Chicago, +where he ran everything with the same rigid cleanliness, sanitation, +and scientific cruelty. Michael received nothing but the excellent +food and the cleanliness; but, a solitary and brooding prisoner in his +cage, he could not help but sense the atmosphere of pain and terror +about him of the animals being broken for the delight of men.</p> +<p>Mulcachy had originated aphorisms of his own which he continually +enunciated, among which were:</p> +<p>“Take it from me, when an animal won’t give way to pain, +it can’t be broke. Pain is the only school-teacher.”</p> +<p>“Just as you got to take the buck out of a broncho, you’ve +got to take the bite out of a lion.”</p> +<p>“You can’t break animals with a feather duster. +The thicker the skull the thicker the crowbar.”</p> +<p>“They’ll always beat you in argument. First thing +is to club the argument out of them.”</p> +<p>“Heart-bonds between trainers and animals! Son, that’s +dope for the newspaper interviewer. The only heart-bond I know +is a stout stick with some iron on the end of it.”</p> +<p>“Sure you can make ’m eat outa your hand. But the +thing to watch out for is that they don’t eat your hand. +A blank cartridge in the nose just about that time is the best preventive +I know.”</p> +<p>There were days when all the air was vexed with roars and squalls +of ferocity and agony from the arena, until the last animal in the cages +was excited and ill at ease. In truth, since it was Mulcachy’s +boast that he could break the best animal living, no end of the hardest +cases fell to his hand. He had built a reputation for succeeding +where others failed, and, endowed with fearlessness, callousness, and +cunning, he never let his reputation wane. There was nothing he +dared not tackle, and, when he gave up an animal, the last word was +said. For it, remained nothing but to be a cage-animal, in solitary +confinement, pacing ever up and down, embittered with all the world +of man and roaring its bitterness to the most delicious enthrillment +of the pay-spectators.</p> +<p>During the three months spent by Michael in Mulcachy’s Animal +Home, occurred two especially hard cases. Of course, the daily +chant of ordinary pain of training went on all the time through the +working hours, such as of “good” bears and lions and tigers +that were made amenable under stress, and of elephants derricked and +gaffed into making the head-stand or into the beating of a bass drum. +But the two cases that were exceptional, put a mood of depression and +fear into all the listening animals, such as humans might experience +in an ante-room of hell, listening to the flailing and the flaying of +their fellows who had preceded them into the torture-chamber.</p> +<p>The first was of the big Indian tiger. Free-born in the jungle, +and free all his days, master, according to his nature and prowess, +of all other living creatures including his fellow-tigers, he had come +to grief in the end; and, from the trap to the cramped cage, by elephant-back +and railroad and steamship, ever in the cramped cage, he had journeyed +across seas and continents to Mulcachy’s Animal Home. Prospective +buyers had examined but not dared to purchase. But Mulcachy had +been undeterred. His own fighting blood leapt hot at sight of +the magnificent striped cat. It was a challenge of the brute in +him to excel. And, two weeks of hell, for the great tiger and +for all the other animals, were required to teach him his first lesson.</p> +<p>Ben Bolt he had been named, and he arrived indomitable and irreconcilable, +though almost paralysed from eight weeks of cramp in his narrow cage +which had restricted all movement. Mulcachy should have undertaken +the job immediately, but two weeks were lost by the fact that he had +got married and honeymooned for that length of time. And in that +time, in a large cage of concrete and iron, Ben Bolt had exercised and +recovered the use of his muscles, and added to his hatred of the two-legged +things, puny against him in themselves, who by trick and wile had so +helplessly imprisoned him.</p> +<p>So, on this morning when hell yawned for him, he was ready and eager +to meet all comers. They came, equipped with formulas, nooses, +and forked iron bars. Five of them tossed nooses in through the +bars upon the floor of his cage. He snarled and struck at the +curling ropes, and for ten minutes was a grand and impossible wild creature, +lacking in nothing save the wit and the patience possessed by the miserable +two-legged things. And then, impatient and careless of the inanimate +ropes, he paused, snarling at the men, with one hind foot resting inside +a noose. The next moment, craftily lifted up about the girth of +his leg by an iron fork, the noose tightened and the bite of it sank +home into his flesh and pride. He leaped, he roared, he was a +maniac of ferocity. Again and again, almost burning their palms, +he tore the rope smoking through their hands. But ever they took +in the slack and paid it out again, until, ere he was aware, a similar +noose tightened on his foreleg. What he had done was nothing to +what he now did. But he was stupid and impatient. The man-creatures +were wise and patient, and a third leg and a fourth leg were finally +noosed, so that, with many men tailing on to the ropes, he was dragged +ignominiously on his side to the bars, and, ignominiously, through the +bars were hauled his four legs, his chiefest weapons of offence after +his terribly fanged jaws.</p> +<p>And then a puny man-creature, Mulcachy himself, dared openly and +brazenly to enter the cage and approach him. He sprang to be at +him, or, rather, strove so to spring, but was withstrained by his four +legs through the bars which he could not draw back and get under him. +And Mulcachy knelt beside him, dared kneel beside him, and helped the +fifth noose over his head and round his neck. Then his head was +drawn to the bars as helplessly as his legs had been drawn through. +Next, Mulcachy laid hands on him, on his head, on his ears, on his very +nose within an inch of his fangs; and he could do nothing but snarl +and roar and pant for breath as the noose shut off his breathing.</p> +<p>Quivering, not with fear but with rage, Ben Bolt perforce endured +the buckling around his throat of a thick, broad collar of leather to +which was attached a very stout and a very long trailing rope. +After that, when Mulcachy had left the cage, one by one the five nooses +were artfully manipulated off his legs and his neck. Again, after +this prodigious indignity, he was free—within his cage. +He went up into the air. With returning breath he roared his rage. +He struck at the trailing rope that offended his nerves, clawed at the +trap of the collar that encased his neck, fell, rolled over, offended +his body-nerves more and more by entangling contacts with the rope, +and for half an hour exhausted himself in the futile battle with the +inanimate thing. Thus tigers are broken.</p> +<p>At the last, wearied, even with sensations of sickness from the nervous +strain put upon himself by his own anger, he lay down in the middle +of the floor, lashing his tail, hating with his eyes, and accepting +the clinging thing about his neck which he had learned he could not +get rid of.</p> +<p>To his amazement, if such a thing be possible in the mental processes +of a tiger, the rear door to his cage was thrown open and left open. +He regarded the aperture with belligerent suspicion. No one and +no threatening danger appeared in the doorway. But his suspicion +grew. Always, among these man-animals, occurred what he did not +know and could not comprehend. His preference was to remain where +he was, but from behind, through the bars of the cage, came shouts and +yells, the lash of whips, and the painful thrusts of the long iron forks. +Dragging the rope behind him, with no thought of escape, but in the +hope that he would get at his tormentors, he leaped into the rear passage +that ran behind the circle of permanent cages. The passage way +was deserted and dark, but ahead he saw light. With great leaps +and roars, he rushed in that direction, arousing a pandemonium of roars +and screams from the animals in the cages.</p> +<p>He bounded through the light, and into the light, dazzled by the +brightness of it, and crouched down, with long, lashing tail, to orient +himself to the situation. But it was only another and larger cage +that he was in, a very large cage, a big, bright performing-arena that +was all cage. Save for himself, the arena was deserted, although, +overhead, suspended from the roof-bars, were block-and-tackle and seven +strong iron chairs that drew his instant suspicion and caused him to +roar at them.</p> +<p>For half an hour he roamed the arena, which was the greatest area +of restricted freedom he had known in the ten weeks of his captivity. +Then, a hooked iron rod, thrust through the bars, caught and drew the +bight of his trailing rope into the hands of the men outside. +Immediately ten of them had hold of it, and he would have charged up +to the bars at them had not, at that moment, Mulcachy entered the arena +through a door on the opposite side. No bars stood between Ben +Bolt and this creature, and Ben Bolt charged him. Even as he charged +he was aware of suspicion in that the small, fragile man-creature before +him did not flee or crouch down, but stood awaiting him.</p> +<p>Ben Bolt never reached him. First, with an access of caution, +he craftily ceased from his charge, and, crouching, with lashing tail, +studied the man who seemed so easily his. Mulcachy was equipped +with a long-lashed whip and a sharp-pronged fork of iron.</p> +<p>In his belt, loaded with blank cartridges, was a revolver.</p> +<p>Bellying closer to the ground, Ben Bolt advanced upon him, creeping +slowly like a cat stalking a mouse. When he came to his next pause, +which was within certain leaping distance, he crouched lower, gathered +himself for the leap, then turned his head to regard the men at his +back outside the cage. The trailing rope in their hands, to his +neck, he had forgotten.</p> +<p>“Now you might as well be good, old man,” Mulcachy addressed +him in soft, caressing tones, taking a step toward him and holding in +advance the iron fork.</p> +<p>This merely incensed the huge, magnificent creature. He rumbled +a low, tense growl, flattened his ears back, and soared into the air, +his paws spread so that the claws stood out like talons, his tail behind +him as stiff and straight as a rod. Neither did the man crouch +or flee, nor did the beast attain to him. At the height of his +leap the rope tightened taut on his neck, causing him to describe a +somersault and fall heavily to the floor on his side.</p> +<p>Before he could regain his feet, Mulcachy was upon him, shouting +to his small audience: “Here’s where we pound the argument +out of him!” And pound he did, on the nose with the butt +of the whip, and jab he did, with the iron fork to the ribs. He +rained a hurricane of blows and jabs on the animal’s most sensitive +parts. Ever Ben Bolt leaped to retaliate, but was thrown by the +ten men tailed on to the rope, and, each time, even as he struck the +floor on his side, Mulcachy was upon him, pounding, smashing, jabbing. +His pain was exquisite, especially that of his tender nose. And +the creature who inflicted the pain was as fierce and terrible as he, +even more so because he was more intelligent. In but few minutes, +dazed by the pain, appalled by his inability to rend and destroy the +man who inflicted it, Ben Bolt lost his courage. He fled ignominiously +before the little, two-legged creature who was more terrible than himself +who was a full-grown Royal Bengal tiger. He leaped high in the +air in sheer panic; he ran here and there, with lowered head, to avoid +the rain of pain. He even charged the sides of the arena, springing +up and vainly trying to climb the slippery vertical bars.</p> +<p>Ever, like an avenging devil, Mulcachy pursued and smashed and jabbed, +gritting through his teeth: “You will argue, will you? I’ll +teach you what argument is! There! Take that! And +that! And that!”</p> +<p>“Now I’ve got him afraid of me, and the rest ought to +be easy,” he announced, resting off and panting hard from his +exertions, while the great tiger crouched and quivered and shrank back +from him against the base of the arena-bars. “Take a five-minute +spell, you fellows, and we’ll got our breaths.”</p> +<p>Lowering one of the iron chairs, and attaching it firmly in its place +on the floor, Mulcachy prepared for the teaching of the first trick. +Ben Bolt, jungle-born and jungle-reared, was to be compelled to sit +in the chair in ludicrous and tragic imitation of man-creatures. +But Mulcachy was not quite ready. The first lesson of fear of +him must be reiterated and driven home.</p> +<p>Stepping to a near safe distance, he lashed Ben Bolt on the nose. +He repeated it. He did it a score of times, and scores of times. +Turn his head as he would, ever Ben Bolt received the bite of the whip +on his fearfully bruised nose; for Mulcachy was as expert as a stage-driver +in his manipulation of the whip, and unerringly the lash snapped and +cracked and stung Ben Bolt’s nose wherever Ben Bolt at the moment +might have it.</p> +<p>When it became maddeningly unendurable, he sprang, only to be jerked +back by the ten strong men who held the rope to his neck. And +wrath, and ferocity, and intent to destroy, passed out utterly from +the tiger’s inflamed brain, until he knew fear, again and again, +always fear and only fear, utter and abject fear, of this human mite +who searched him with such pain.</p> +<p>Then the lesson of the first trick was taken up. Mulcachy tapped +the chair sharply with the butt of the whip to draw the animal’s +attention to it, then flicked the whip-lash sharply on his nose. +At the same moment, an attendant, through the bars behind, drove an +iron fork into his ribs to force him away from the bars and toward the +chair. He crouched forward, then shrank back against the side-bars. +Again the chair was rapped, his nose was lashed, his ribs were jabbed, +and he was forced by pain toward the chair. This went on interminably—for +a quarter of an hour, for half an hour, for an hour; for the men-animals +had the patience of gods while he was only a jungle-brute. Thus +tigers are broken. And the verb means just what it means. +A performing animal is <i>broken</i>. Something <i>breaks</i> +in an animal of the wild ere such an animal submits to do tricks before +pay-audiences.</p> +<p>Mulcachy ordered an assistant to enter the arena with him. +Since he could not compel the tiger directly to sit in the chair, he +must employ other means. The rope about Ben Bolt’s neck +was passed up through the bars and rove through the block-and-tackle. +At signal from Mulcachy, the ten men hauled away. Snarling, struggling, +choking, in a fresh madness of terror at this new outrage, Ben Bolt +was slowly hoisted by his neck up from the floor, until, quite clear +of it, whirling, squirming, battling, suspended by his neck like a man +being hanged, his wind was shut off and he began to suffocate. +He coiled and twisted, the splendid muscles of his body enabling him +almost to tie knots in it.</p> +<p>The block-and-tackle, running like a trolley on the overhead track, +made it possible for the assistant to seize his tail and drag him through +the air till he was above the chair. His helpless body guided +thus by the tail, his chest jabbed by the iron fork in Mulcachy’s +hands, the rope was suddenly lowered, and Ben Bolt, with swimming brain, +found himself seated in the chair. On the instant he leaped for +the floor, received a blow on the nose from the heavy whip-handle, and +had a blank cartridge fired straight into his nostril. His madness +of pain and fear was multiplied. He sprang away in flight, but +Mulcachy’s voice rang out, “Hoist him!” and he slowly +rose in the air again, hanging by his neck, and began to strangle.</p> +<p>Once more he was swung into position by his tail, jabbed in the chest, +and lowered suddenly on the run—but so suddenly, with a frantic +twist of his body on his part, that he fell violently across the chair +on his belly. What little wind was left him from the strangling, +seemed to have been ruined out of him by the violence of the fall. +The glare in his eyes was maniacal and swimming. He panted frightfully, +and his head rolled back and forth. Slaver dripped from his mouth, +blood ran from his nose.</p> +<p>“Hoist away!” Mulcachy shouted.</p> +<p>And again, struggling frantically as the tightening collar shut off +his wind, Ben Bolt was slowly lifted into the air. So wildly did +he struggle that, ere his hind feet were off the floor, he pranced back +and forth, so that when he was heaved clear his body swung like a huge +pendulum. Over the chair, he was dropped, and for a fraction of +a second the posture was his of a man sitting in a chair. Then +he uttered a terrible cry and sprang.</p> +<p>It was neither snarl, nor growl, nor roar, that cry, but a sheer +scream, as if something had broken inside of him. He missed Mulcachy +by inches, as another blank cartridge exploded up his other nostril +and as the men with the rope snapped him back so abruptly as almost +to break his neck.</p> +<p>This time, lowered quickly, he sank into the chair like a half-empty +sack of meal, and continued so to sink, until, crumpling at the middle, +his great tawny head falling forward, he lay on the floor unconscious. +His tongue, black and swollen, lolled out of his mouth. As buckets +of water were poured on him he groaned and moaned. And here ended +the first lesson.</p> +<p>“It’s all right,” Mulcachy said, day after day, +as the teaching went on. “Patience and hard work will pull +off the trick. I’ve got his goat. He’s afraid +of me. All that’s required is time, and time adds to value +with an animal like him.”</p> +<p>Not on that first day, nor on the second, nor on the third, did the +requisite something really break inside Ben Bolt. But at the end +of a fortnight it did break. For the day came when Mulcachy rapped +the chair with his whip-butt, when the attendant through the bars jabbed +the iron fork into Ben Bolt’s ribs, and when Ben Bolt, anything +but royal, slinking like a beaten alley-cat, in pitiable terror, crawled +over to the chair and sat down in it like a man. He now was an +“educated” tiger. The sight of him, so sitting, tragically +travestying man, has been considered, and is considered, “educative” +by multitudinous audiences.</p> +<p>The second case, that of St. Elias, was a harder one, and it was +marked down against Mulcachy as one of his rare failures, though all +admitted that it was an unavoidable failure. St. Elias was a huge +monster of an Alaskan bear, who was good-natured and even facetious +and humorous after the way of bears. But he had a will of his +own that was correspondingly as stubborn as his bulk. He could +be persuaded to do things, but he would not tolerate being compelled +to do things. And in the trained-animal world, where turns must +go off like clockwork, is little or no space for persuasion. An +animal must do its turn, and do it promptly. Audiences will not +brook the delay of waiting while a trainer tries to persuade a crusty +or roguish beast to do what the audience has paid to see it do.</p> +<p>So St. Elias received his first lesson in compulsion. It was +also his last lesson, and it never progressed so far as the training-arena, +for it took place in his own cage.</p> +<p>Noosed in the customary way, his four legs dragged through the bars, +and his head, by means of a “choke” collar, drawn against +the bars, he was first of all manicured. Each one of his great +claws was cut off flush with his flesh. The men outside did this. +Then Mulcachy, on the inside, punched his nose. Not lightly as +it sounds was this operation. The punch was a perforation. +Thrusting the instrument into the huge bear’s nostril, Mulcachy +cut a clean round chunk of living meat out of one side of it. +Mulcachy knew the bear business. At all times, to make an untrained +bear obey, one must be fast to some sensitive portion of the bear. +The ears, the nose, and the eyes are the accessible sensitive parts, +and, the eyes being out of the question, remain the nose and the ears +as the parts to which to make fast.</p> +<p>Through the perforation Mulcachy immediately clamped a metal ring. +To the ring he fastened a long “lunge”-rope, which was well +named. Any unruly lunge, at any time during all the subsequent +life of St. Elias, could thus be checked by the man who held the lunge-rope. +His destiny was patent and ordained. For ever, as long as he lived +and breathed, would he be a prisoner and slave to the rope in the ring +in his nostril.</p> +<p>The nooses were slipped, and St. Elias was at liberty, within the +confines of his cage, to get acquainted with the ring in his nose. +With his powerful forepaws, standing erect and roaring, he proceeded +to get acquainted with the ring. It certainly was not a thing +persuasible. It was living fire. And he tore at it with +his paws as he would have torn at the stings of bees when raiding a +honey-tree. He tore the thing out, ripping the ring clear through +the flesh and transforming the round perforation into a ragged chasm +of pain.</p> +<p>Mulcachy cursed. “Here’s where hell coughs,” +he said. The nooses were introduced again. Again St. Elias, +helpless on his side against and partly through the bars, had his nose +punched. This time it was the other nostril. And hell coughed. +As before, the moment he was released, he tore the ring out through +his flesh.</p> +<p>Mulcachy was disgusted. “Listen to reason, won’t +you?” he objurgated, as, this time, the reason he referred to +was the introduction of the ring clear through both nostrils, higher +up, and through the central dividing wall of cartilage. But St. +Elias was unreasonable. Unlike Ben Bolt, there was nothing inside +of him weak enough, or nervous enough, or high-strung enough, to break. +The moment he was free he ripped the ring away with half of his nose +along with it. Mulcachy punched St. Elias’s right ear. +St. Elias tore his right ear to shreds. Mulcachy punched his left +ear. He tore his left ear to shreds. And Mulcachy gave in. +He had to. As he said plaintively:</p> +<p>“We’re beaten. There ain’t nothing left to +make fast to.”</p> +<p>Later, when St. Elias was condemned to be a “cage-animal” +all his days, Mulcachy was wont to grumble:</p> +<p>“He was the most unreasonable animal! Couldn’t +do a thing with him. Couldn’t ever get anything to make +fast to.”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2> +<p>It was in the Orpheum Theatre, of Oakland, California; and Harley +Kennan was in the act of reaching under his seat for his hat, when his +wife said:</p> +<p>“Why, this isn’t the interval. There’s one +more turn yet.”</p> +<p>“A dog turn,” he answered, and thereby explained; for +it was his practice to leave a theatre during the period of the performance +of an animal-act.</p> +<p>Villa Kennan glanced hastily at the programme.</p> +<p>“Of course,” she said, then added: “But it’s +a singing dog. A dog Caruso. And it points out that there +is no one on the stage with the dog. Let us stay for once, and +see how he compares with Jerry.”</p> +<p>“Some poor brute tormented into howling,” Harley grumbled.</p> +<p>“But it has the stage to itself,” Villa urged. +“Besides, if it is painful, then we can go out. I’ll +go out with you. But I just would like to see how much better +Jerry sings than does he. And it says an Irish terrier, too.”</p> +<p>So Harley Kennan remained. The two burnt-cork comedians finished +their turn and their three encores, and the curtain behind them went +up on a full set of an empty stage. A rough-coated Irish terrier +entered at a sedate walk, sedately walked forward to the centre, nearly +to the footlights, and faced the leader of the orchestra. As the +programme had stated, he had the stage to himself.</p> +<p>The orchestra played the opening strains of “Sweet Bye and +Bye.” The dog yawned and sat down. But the orchestra +was thoroughly instructed to play the opening strains over and over, +until the dog responded, and then to follow on with him. By the +third time, the dog opened his mouth and began. It was not a mere +howling. For that matter, it was too mellow to be classified as +a howl at all. Nor was it merely rhythmic. The notes the +dog sang were of the air, and they were correct.</p> +<p>But Villa Kennan scarcely heard.</p> +<p>“He has Jerry beaten a mile,” Harley muttered to her.</p> +<p>“Listen,” she replied, in tense whispers. “Did +you ever see that dog before?”</p> +<p>Harley shook his head.</p> +<p>“You have seen him before,” she insisted. “Look +at that crinkled ear. Think! Think back! Remember!”</p> +<p>Still her husband shook his head.</p> +<p>“Remember the Solomons,” she pressed. “Remember +the <i>Ariel</i>. Remember when we came back from Malaita, where +we picked Jerry up, to Tulagi, that he had a brother there, a nigger-chaser +on a schooner.”</p> +<p>“And his name was Michael—go on.”</p> +<p>“And he had that self-same crinkled ear,” she hurried. +“And he was rough-coated. And he was full brother to Jerry. +And their father and mother were Terrence and Biddy of Meringe. +And Jerry is our Sing Song Silly. And this dog sings. And +he has a crinkled ear. And his name is Michael.”</p> +<p>“Impossible,” said Harley.</p> +<p>“It is when the impossible comes true that life proves worth +while,” she retorted. “And this is one of those worth-whiles +of impossibles. I know it.”</p> +<p>Still the man of him said impossible, and still the woman of her +insisted that this was an impossible come true. By this time the +dog on the stage was singing “God Save the King.”</p> +<p>“That shows I am right,” Villa contended. “No +American, in America, would teach a dog ‘God Save the King.’ +An Englishman originally owned that dog and taught it. The Solomons +are British.”</p> +<p>“That’s a far cry,” he smiled. “But +what gets me is that ear. I remember it now. I remember +the day when we were on the beach at Tulagi with Jerry, and when his +brother came ashore from the <i>Eugénie</i> in a whaleboat. +And his brother had that self-same, loppy, crinkled ear.”</p> +<p>“And more,” Villa argued. “How many singing +dogs have we ever known! Only one—Jerry. Evidently +such a type occurs rarely. The same family would more likely produce +similar types than different families. The family of Terrence +and Biddy produced Jerry. And this is Michael.”</p> +<p>“He <i>was</i> rough-coated, along with a crinkly ear,” +Harley meditated back. “I see him distinctly as he stood +up in the bow of the whaleboat and as he ran along the beach side by +side with Jerry.”</p> +<p>“If Jerry should to-morrow run side by side with him you would +be convinced?” she queried.</p> +<p>“It was their trick, and the trick of Terrence and Biddy before +them,” he agreed. “But it’s a far cry from the +Solomons to the United States.”</p> +<p>“Jerry is such a far cry,” she replied. “And +if Jerry won from the Solomons to California, then is there anything +more remarkable in Michael so winning?—Oh, listen!”</p> +<p>For the dog on the stage, now responding to its one encore, was singing +“Home, Sweet Home.” This finished, Jacob Henderson, +to tumultuous applause, came on the stage from the wings and joined +the dog in bowing. Villa and Harley sat in silence for a moment. +Then Villa said, apropos of nothing:</p> +<p>“I have been sitting here and feeling very grateful for one +particular thing.”</p> +<p>He waited.</p> +<p>“It is that we are so abominably wealthy,” she concluded.</p> +<p>“Which means that you want the dog, must have him, and are +going to got him, just because I can afford to do it for you,” +he teased.</p> +<p>“Because you can’t afford not to,” she answered. +“You must know he is Jerry’s brother. At least, you +must have a sneaking suspicion . . . ?”</p> +<p>“I have,” he nodded. “The thing that can’t +sometimes does, and there is a chance that this may be one of those +times. Of course, it isn’t Michael; but, on the other hand, +what’s to prevent it from being Michael? Let us go behind +and find out.”</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>“More agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to +Animals,” was Jacob Henderson’s thought, as the man and +woman, accompanied by the manager of the theatre, were shown into his +tiny dressing-room. Michael, on a chair and half asleep, took +no notice of them. While Harley talked with Henderson, Villa investigated +Michael; and Michael scarcely opened his eyes ere he closed them again. +Too sour on the human world, and too glum in his own soured nature, +he was anything save his old courtly self to chance humans who broke +in upon him to pat his head, and say silly things, and go their way +never to be seen by him again.</p> +<p>Villa Kennan, with a pang of disappointment at such rebuff, forwent +her overtures for the moment, and listened to what tale Jacob Henderson +could tell of his dog. Harry Del Mar, a trained-animal man, had +picked the dog up somewhere on the Pacific Coast, most probably in San +Francisco, she learned; but, having taken the dog east with him, Harry +Del Mar had died by accident in New York before telling anybody anything +about the animal. That was all, except that Henderson had paid +two thousand dollars to one Harris Collins, and had found the investment +the finest he had ever made.</p> +<p>Villa turned back to the dog.</p> +<p>“Michael,” she called, caressingly, almost in a whisper.</p> +<p>And Michael’s eyes partly opened, the base-muscles of his ears +stiffened, and his body quivered.</p> +<p>“Michael,” she repeated.</p> +<p>This time raising his head, the eyes open and the ears stiffly erect, +Michael looked at her. Not since on the beach at Tulagi had he +heard that name uttered. Across the years and the seas the word +came to him out of the past. Its effect was electrical, for on +the instant all the connotations of “Michael” flooded his +consciousness. He saw again Captain Kellar, of the <i>Eugénie</i>, +who had last called him it, and <i>Mister</i> Haggin, and Derby, and +Bob of Meringe Plantation, and Biddy and Terrence, and, not least among +these shades of the vanished past, his brother Jerry.</p> +<p>But was it the vanished past? The name which had ceased for +years, had come back. It had entered the room along with this +man and woman. All this he did not reason; but indubitably, as +if he had so reasoned, he acted upon it.</p> +<p>He jumped from the chair and ran to the woman. He smelled her +hand, and smelled her as she patted him. Then, as he recognized +her, he went wild. He sprang away, dashing around and around the +room, sniffing under the washstand and smelling out the corners. +As in a frenzy he was back to the woman, whimpering eagerly as she strove +to pet him. The next moment, stiff in a frenzy, he was away again, +scurrying about the room and still whimpering.</p> +<p>Jacob Henderson looked on with mild disapproval.</p> +<p>“He never cuts up that way,” he said. “He +is a very quiet dog. Maybe it is a fit he is going to have, though +he never has fits.”</p> +<p>No one understood, not even Villa Kennan. But Michael understood. +He was looking for that vanished world which had rushed back upon him +at sound of his old-time name. If this name could come to him +out of the Nothingness, as this woman had whom once he had seen treading +the beach at Tulagi, then could all other things of Tulagi and the Nothingness +come to him. As she was there, before him in the living flesh, +uttering his name, so might Captain Kellar, and <i>Mister</i> Haggin, +and Jerry be there, somewhere in the very room or just outside the door.</p> +<p>He ran to the door, whimpering as he scratched at it.</p> +<p>“Maybe he thinks there is something outside,” said Jacob +Henderson, opening the door for him.</p> +<p>And Michael did so think. As a matter of course, through that +open door, he was prepared to have the South-Pacific Ocean flow in, +bearing on its bosom schooners and ships, islands and reefs, and all +men and animals and things he once had known and still remembered.</p> +<p>But no past flowed in through the door. Outside was the usual +present. He came back dejectedly to the woman, who still called +him Michael as she petted him. She, at any rate, was real. +Next he carefully smelled and identified the man with the beach of Tulagi +and the deck of the <i>Ariel</i>, and again his excitement began to +mount.</p> +<p>“Oh, Harley, I know it is he!” Villa cried. “Can’t +you test him? Can’t you prove him?”</p> +<p>“But how?” Harley pondered. “He seems to +recognize his name. It excites him. And though he never +knew us very well, he seems to remember us and to be excited by us, +too. If only he could talk . . . ”</p> +<p>“Oh, talk! Talk!” Villa pleaded with Michael, catching +both sides of his head and jaws in her hands and swaying him back and +forth.</p> +<p>“Be careful, madam,” Jacob Henderson warned. “He +is a very sour dog; and he don’t let people take such liberties.”</p> +<p>“He does me,” she laughed, half-hysterically. “Because +he knows me. . . . Harley!” She broke off as the great idea +dawned on her. “I have a test. Listen! Remember, +Jerry was a nigger-chaser before we got him. And Michael was a +nigger-chaser. You talk in bêche-de-mer. Appear angry +with some black boy, and see how it will affect him.”</p> +<p>“I’ll have to remember hard to resurrect any bêche-de-mer,” +Harley said, nodding approval of the suggestion.</p> +<p>“At the same time I’ll distract him,” she rushed +on.</p> +<p>Sitting down and bending forward to Michael so that his head was +buried in her arms and breast, she began swaying him and crooning to +him as was her wont with Jerry. Nor did he resent the liberty +she took, and, like Jerry, he yielded to her crooning and softly began +to croon with her. She signalled Harley with her eyes.</p> +<p>“My word!” he began in tones of wrath. “What +name you fella boy stop ’m along this fella place? You make +’m me cross along you any amount!”</p> +<p>And at the words Michael bristled, dragged himself clear of the woman’s +detaining hands, and, with a snarl, whirled about to get a look at the +black boy who must have just then entered the room and aroused the white +god’s ire. But there was no black boy. He looked on, +still bristling, to the door. Harley transferred his own gaze +to the door, and Michael knew, beyond all doubt, that outside the door +was standing a Solomons nigger.</p> +<p>“Hey! Michael!” Harley shouted. “Chase +’m that black fella boy overside!”</p> +<p>With a roaring snarl, Michael flung himself at the door. Such +was the fury and weight of his onslaught that the latch flew loose and +the door swung open. The emptiness of the space which he had expected +to see occupied, was appalling, and he shrank down, sick and dizzy with +the baffling apparitional past that thus vexed his consciousness.</p> +<p>“And now,” said Harley to Jacob Henderson, “we +will talk business . . . ”</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXXV</h2> +<p>When the train arrived at Glen Ellen, in the Valley of the Moon, +it was Harley Kennan himself, at the side-door of the baggage-car, who +caught hold of Michael and swung him to the ground. For the first +time Michael had performed a railroad journey uncrated. Merely +with collar and chain had he travelled up from Oakland. In the +waiting automobile he found Villa Kennan, and, chain removed, sat beside +her and between her and Harley</p> +<p>As the machine purred along the two miles of road that wound up the +side of Sonoma Mountain, Michael scarcely looked at the forest-trees +and vistas of wandering glades. He had been in the United States +three years, during which time he had been kept a close prisoner. +Cage and crate and chain had been his portion, and narrow rooms, baggage +cars, and station platforms. The nearest he had come to the country +was when chained to benches in the various parks while Jacob Henderson +studied Swedenborg. So that trees and hills and fields had ceased +to mean anything. They were something inaccessible, as inaccessible +as the blue of the sky or the drifting cloud-fleeces. Thus did +he regard the trees and hills and fields, if the negative act of not +regarding a thing at all can be considered a state of mind.</p> +<p>“Don’t seem to be enthusiastic over the ranch, eh, Michael?” +Harley remarked.</p> +<p>He looked up at sound of his old name, and made acknowledgment by +flattening his ears a quivering trifle and by touching his nose against +Harley’s shoulder.</p> +<p>“Nor does he seem demonstrative,” was Villa’s judgment. +“At least, nothing like Jerry,”</p> +<p>“Wait till they meet,” Harley smiled in anticipation. +“Jerry will furnish enough excitement for both of them.”</p> +<p>“If they remember each other after all this time,” said +Villa. “I wonder if they will.”</p> +<p>“They did at Tulagi,” he reminded her. “And +they were full grown and hadn’t seen each other since they were +puppies. Remember how they barked and scampered all about the +beach. Michael was the hurly-burly one. At least he made +twice as much noise.”</p> +<p>“But he seems dreadfully grown-up and subdued now.”</p> +<p>“Three years ought to have subdued him,” Harley insisted.</p> +<p>But Villa shook her head.</p> +<p>As the machine drew up at the house and Kennan first stepped out, +a dog’s whimperingly joyous bark of welcome struck Michael as +not altogether unfamiliar. The joyous bark turned to a suspicious +and jealous snarl as Jerry scented the other dog’s presence from +Harley’s caressing hand. The next moment he had traced the +original source of the scent into the limousine and sprung in after +it. With snarl and forward leap Michael met the snarling rush +less than half-way, and was rolled over on the bottom of the car.</p> +<p>The Irish terrier, under all circumstances amenable to the control +of the master as are few breeds of dogs, was instantly manifest in Jerry +and Michael an Harley Kennan’s voice rang out. They separated, +and, despite the rumbling of low growling in their throats, refrained +from attacking each other as they plunged out to the ground. The +little set-to had occurred in so few seconds, or fractions of seconds, +that they had not begun to betray recognition of each other until they +were out of the machine. They were still comically stiff-legged +and bristly as they aloofly sniffed noses.</p> +<p>“They know each other!” Villa cried. “Let’s +wait and see what they will do.”</p> +<p>As for Michael, he accepted, without surprise, the indubitable fact +that Jerry had come back out of the Nothingness. Things of this +sort had begun to happen rapidly, but it was not the things themselves, +but the connotations of them, that almost stunned him. If the +man and woman, whom he had last seen at Tulagi, and, likewise, Jerry, +had come back from the Nothingness, then could come, and might come +at any moment, the beloved Steward.</p> +<p>Instead of responding to Jerry, Michael sniffed and glanced about +in quest of Steward. Jerry’s first expression of greeting +and friendliness took the form of a desire to run. He barked invitation +to his brother, scampered away half a dozen jumps, scampered back, and +dabbed playfully at Michael with one forepaw in added emphasis of invitation +ere he scampered away again.</p> +<p>For so many years had Michael not run with another dog, that at first +Jerry’s invitation had little meaning to him. Nevertheless, +such running was an habitual expression of happiness and friendliness +in dogdom, and especially strong had been his inheritance of it from +Terrence and Biddy, the noted love-runners of the Solomons.</p> +<p>The next time Jerry dabbed at him with a paw, barked, and scurried +away in an enticing semi-circle, Michael started involuntarily though +slowly after him. But Michael did not bark; and, after half a +dozen leaps, he came to a full stop and looked to Villa and Harley for +permission.</p> +<p>“All right, Michael,” Harley called heartily, deliberately +turning his shoulder in the non-interest of consent as he extended his +hand to help Villa from the machine.</p> +<p>Michael sprang away again, and was numbly aware of an ancient joy +as he shouldered Jerry who shouldered against him as they ran side by +side. But most of the joy was Jerry’s, as was the wildest +of the skurrying and the racing and the shouldering, of the body-wriggling, +and ear-pricking, and yelping cries. Also, Jerry barked; and Michael +did not bark.</p> +<p>“He used to bark,” said Villa.</p> +<p>“Much more than Jerry,” Harley supplemented.</p> +<p>“Then they have taken the bark out of him,” she concluded. +“He must have gone through terrible experiences to have lost his +bark.”</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>The green California spring merged into tawny summer, as Jerry, ever +running afield, made Michael acquainted with the farthest and highest +reaches of the Kennan ranch in the Valley of the Moon. The pageant +of the wild flowers vanished until all that lingered on the burnt hillsides +were orange poppies faded to palest gold, and Mariposa lilies, wind-blown +on slender stems amidst the desiccated grasses, that smouldered like +ornate spotted moths fluttering in rest for a space between flight and +flight.</p> +<p>And Michael, a follower always where the exuberant Jerry led, sought +throughout the passing year for what he could not find.</p> +<p>“Looking for something, looking for something,” Harley +would say to Villa. “It is not alive. It is not here. +Now just what is it he is always looking for?”</p> +<p>Steward it was, and Michael never found him. The Nothingness +held him and would not yield him up, although, could Michael have journeyed +a ten-days’ steamer-journey into the South Pacific to the Marquesas, +Steward he would have found, and, along with him, Kwaque and the Ancient +Mariner, all three living like lotus-eaters on the beach-paradise of +Taiohae. Also, in and about their grass-thatched bungalow under +the lofty avocado trees, Michael would have found other pet—cats, +and kittens, and pigs, donkeys and ponies, a pair of love-birds, and +a mischievous monkey or two; but never a dog and never a cockatoo. +For Dag Daughtry, with violence of language, had laid a taboo upon dogs. +After Killeny Boy, he averred, there should be no other dog. And +Kwaque, without averring anything at all, resolutely refrained from +possessing himself of the white cockatoos brought ashore by the sailors +off the trading schooners.</p> +<p>But Michael was long in giving over his search for Steward, and, +running the mountain trails or scrambling and sliding down into the +deep canyons, was ever expectant and ready for Steward to step forth +before him, or to pick up the unmistakable scent that would lead him +to him.</p> +<p>“Looking for something, looking for something,” Harley +Kennan would chant curiously, as he rode beside Villa and observed Michael’s +unending search. “Now Jerry’s after rabbits, and fox-trails; +but you’ll notice they don’t interest Michael much. +They’re not what he’s after. He behaves like one who +has lost a great treasure and doesn’t know where he lost it nor +where to look for it.”</p> +<p>Much Michael learned from Jerry of the varied life of the forest +and fields. To run with Jerry seemed the one pleasure he took, +for he never played. Play had passed out of him. He was +not precisely morose or gloomy from his years on the trained-animal +stage and in Harris Collins’s college of pain, but he was sobered, +subdued. The spring and the spontaneity had gone out of him. +Just as the leopard had claw-marked his shoulder so that damp and frosty +weather made the pain of the old wound come back, so was his mind marked +by what he had gone through. He liked Jerry, was glad to be with +him and to run with him; but it was Jerry who was ever in the lead, +who ever raised the hue and cry of hunting pursuit, who barked indignation +and eager yearning at a tree’d squirrel in refuge forty feet above +the ground. Michael looked on and listened, but took no part in +such antics of enthusiasm.</p> +<p>In the same way he looked on when Jerry fought fearful comic battles +with Norman Chief, the great Percheron stallion. It was only play, +for Jerry and Norman Chief were tried friends; and, though the huge +horse, ears laid back, mouth open to bite, pursued Jerry in mad gyrations +all about the paddock, it was with no thought of inflicting hurt, but +merely to act up to his part in the sham battle. Yet no invitation +of Jerry’s could induce Michael to join in the fun. He contented +himself with sitting down outside the rails and looking on.</p> +<p>“Why play?” might Michael have asked, who had had all +play taken out of him.</p> +<p>But when it came to serious work, he was there even ahead of Jerry. +On account of foot-and-mouth disease and of hog-cholera, strange dogs +were taboo on the Kennan ranch. It did not take Michael long to +learn this, and stray dogs got short shrift from him. With never +a warning bark nor growl, in deadly silence, he rushed them, slashed +and bit them, rolled them over and over in the dust, and drove them +from the place. It was like nigger-chasing, a service to perform +for the gods whom he loved and who willed such chasing.</p> +<p>No wild passion of love, such as he had had for Steward, did he bear +Villa and Harley, but he did develop for them a great, sober love. +He did not go out of his way to express it with overtures of wrigglings +and squirmings and whimpering yelpings. Jerry could be depended +upon for that. But he was always seriously glad to be with Villa +and Harley and to receive recognition from them next after Jerry. +Some of his deepest moments of content, before the fireplace, were to +sit beside Villa or Harley and lean his head against a knee and have +a hand, on occasion, drop down on his head or gently twist his crinkled +ear.</p> +<p>Jerry was even guilty of playing with children who happened at times +to be under the Kennan ægis. Michael endured children for +as long as they left him alone. If they waxed familiar, he would +warn them with a bristling of his neck-hair and a throaty rumbling and +get up and stalk away.</p> +<p>“I can’t understand it,” Villa would say. +“He was the fullest of play, and spirits, and all foolishness. +He was much sillier and much more excitable than Jerry and certainly +noisier. He must have some terrible story to tell, if only he +could, of all that happened between Tulagi and the time we found him +on the Orpheum stage.”</p> +<p>“And that may be the least little hint of it,” Harley +would reply, pointing to Michael’s shoulder where the leopard +had scarred it on the day Jack, the Airedale, and Sara, the little green +monkey, had died.</p> +<p>“He used to bark, I know he used to bark,” Villa would +continue. “Why doesn’t he bark now?”</p> +<p>And Harley would point to the scarred shoulder and say, “That +may account for it, and most possibly a hundred other things like it +of which we cannot see the marks.”</p> +<p>But the time was to come when they were to hear him bark again—not +once, but twice. And both times were to be but an earnest of another +and graver time when, without barking at all, he would express in action +the measure of his love and worship of them who had taken him from the +crate and the footlights and given him the freedom of the Valley of +the Moon.</p> +<p>And in the meantime, running endlessly with Jerry over the ranch, +he learned all the ways of it and all the life of it from the chickenyards +and the duck-ponds to the highest pitch of Sonoma Mountain. He +learned where the wild deer, in their season, were to be found; when +they raided the prune-orchard, the vineyards, and the apple-trees; when +they sought the deepest canyons and most secret coverts; and when they +stamped out in open glades and on bare hillsides and crashed and clattered +their antlers together in combat. Under Jerry’s leadership, +always running second and after on the narrow trails as a subdued dog +should, he learned the ways and habits of the foxes, the coons, the +weasels, and the ring-tail cats that seemed compounded of cat and coon +and weasel. He came to know the ground-nesting birds and the difference +between the customs of the valley quail, the mountain quail, and the +pheasants. The traits and lairs of the domestic cats gone wild +he also learned, as did he learn the wild loves of mountain farm-dogs +with the free-roving coyotes.</p> +<p>He knew of the presence of the mountain lion, adrift down from Mendocino +County, ere the first shorthorn calf was slain, and came home from the +encounter, torn and bleeding, to attest what he had discovered and to +be the cause of Harley Kennan riding trail next day with a rifle across +his pommel. Likewise Michael came to know what Harley Kennan never +did know and always denied as existing on his ranch—the one rocky +outcrop, in the dense heart of the mountain forest, where a score of +rattlesnakes denned through the winters and warmed themselves in the +sun.</p> +<h2>CHAPTER XXXVI</h2> +<p>Winter came on in its delectable way in the Valley of the Moon. +The last Mariposa lily vanished from the burnt grasses as the California +Indian summer dreamed itself out in purple mists on the windless air. +Soft rain-showers first broke the spell. Snow fell on the summit +of Sonoma Mountain. At the ranch house the morning air was crisp +and brittle, yet mid-day made the shade welcome, and in the open, under +the winter sun, roses bloomed and oranges, grape-fruit, and lemons turned +to golden yellow ripeness. Yet, a thousand feet beneath, on the +floor of the valley, the mornings were white with frost.</p> +<p>And Michael barked twice. The first time was when Harley Kennan, +astride a hot-blooded sorrel colt, tried to make it leap a narrow stream. +Villa reined in her steed at the crest beyond, and, looking back into +the little valley, waited for the colt to receive its lesson. +Michael waited, too, but closer at hand. At first he lay down, +panting from his run, by the stream-edge. But he did not know +horses very well, and soon his anxiety for the welfare of Harley Kennan +brought him to his feet.</p> +<p>Harley was gentle and persuasive and all patience as he strove to +make the colt take the leap. The urge of voice and rein was of +the mildest; but the animal balked the take-off each time, and the hot +thoroughbredness in its veins made it sweat and lather. The velvet +of young grass was torn up by its hoofs, and its terror of the stream +was such, that, when fetched to the edge at a canter, it stiffened and +crouched to an abrupt stop, then reared on its hind-legs. Which +was too much for Michael.</p> +<p>He sprang at the horse’s head as it came down with forefeet +to earth, and as he sprang he barked. In his bark was censure +and menace, and, as the horse reared again, he leaped into the air after +it, his teeth clipping together as he just barely missed its nose.</p> +<p>Villa rode back down the slope to the opposite bank of the stream.</p> +<p>“Mercy!” she cried. “Listen to him! +He’s actually barking.”</p> +<p>“He thinks the colt is trying to do some damage to me,” +Harley said. “That’s his provocation. He hasn’t +forgotten how to bark. He’s reading the colt a lecture.”</p> +<p>“If he gets him by the nose it will be more than a lecture,” +Villa warned. “Be careful, Harley, or he will.”</p> +<p>“Now, Michael, lie down and be good,” Harley commanded. +“It’s all right, I tell you. It’s an right. +Lie down.”</p> +<p>Michael sank down obediently, but protestingly; and he had eyes only +for the horse’s antics, while all his muscles were gathered tensely +to spring in case the horse threatened injury to Harley again.</p> +<p>“I can’t give in to him now, or he never will jump anything,” +Harley said to his wife, as he whirled about to gallop back to a distance. +“Either I lift him over or I take a cropper.”</p> +<p>He came back at full speed, and the colt, despite himself, unable +to stop, lifted into the leap that would avoid the stream he feared, +so that he cleared it with a good two yards to spare on the other side.</p> +<p>The next time Michael barked was when Harley, on the same hot-blood +mount, strove to close a poorly hung gate on the steep pitch of a mountain +wood-road. Michael endured the danger to his man-god as long as +he could, then flew at the colt’s head in a frenzy of barking.</p> +<p>“Anyway, his barking helped,” Harley conceded, as he +managed to close the gate. “Michael must certainly have +told the colt that he’d give him what-for if he didn’t behave.”</p> +<p>“At any rate, he’s not tongue-tied,” Villa laughed, +“even if he isn’t very loquacious.”</p> +<p>And Michael’s loquacity never went farther. Only on these +two occasions, when his master-god seemed to be in peril, was he known +to bark. He never barked at the moon, nor at hillside echoes, +nor at any prowling thing. A particular echo, to be heard directly +from the ranch-house, was an unfailing source of exercise for Jerry’s +lungs. At such times that Jerry barked, Michael, with a bored +expression, would lie down and wait until the duet was over. Nor +did he bark when he attacked strange dogs that strayed upon the ranch.</p> +<p>“He fights like a veteran,” Harley remarked, after witnessing +one such encounter. “He’s cold-blooded. There’s +no excitement in him.”</p> +<p>“He’s old before his time,” Villa said. “There +is no heart of play left in him, and no desire for speech. Just +the same I know he loves me, and you—”</p> +<p>“Without having to be voluble about it,” her husband +completed for her.</p> +<p>“You can see it shining in those quiet eyes of his,” +she supplemented.</p> +<p>“Reminds me of one of the survivors of Lieutenant Greeley’s +Expedition I used to know,” he agreed. “He was an +enlisted soldier and one of the handful of survivors. He had been +through so much that he was just as subdued as Michael and just as taciturn. +He bored most people, who could not understand him. Of course, +the truth was the other way around. They bored him. They +knew so little of life that he knew the last word of. And one +could scarcely get any word out of him. It was not that he had +forgotten how to speak, but that he could not see any reason for speaking +when nobody could understand. He was really crusty from too-bitter +wise experience. But all you had to do was look at him in his +tremendous repose and know that he had been through the thousand hells, +including all the frozen ones. His eyes had the same quietness +of Michael’s. And they had the same wisdom. I’d +give almost anything to know how he got his shoulder scarred. +It must have been a tiger or a lion.”</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>The man, like the mountain lion whom Michael had encountered up the +mountain, had strayed down from the wilds of Mendocino County, following +the ruggedest mountain stretches, and, at night, crossing the farmed +valley spaces where the presence of man was a danger to him. Like +the mountain lion, the man was an enemy to man, and all men were his +enemies, seeking his life which he had forfeited in ways more terrible +than the lion which had merely killed calves for food.</p> +<p>Like the mountain lion, the man was a killer. But, unlike the +lion, his vague description and the narrative of his deeds was in all +the newspapers, and mankind was a vast deal more interested in him than +in the lion. The lion had slain calves in upland pastures. +But the man, for purposes of robbery, had slain an entire family—the +postmaster, his wife, and their three children, in the upstairs over +the post office in the mountain village of Chisholm.</p> +<p>For two weeks the man had eluded and exceeded pursuit. His +last crossing had been from the mountains of the Russian River, across +wide-farmed Santa Rosa Valley, to Sonoma Mountain. For two days +he had laired and rested, sleeping much, in the wildest and most inaccessible +precincts of the Kennan Ranch. With him he had carried coffee +stolen from the last house he had raided. One of Harley Kennan’s +angora goats had furnished him with meat. Four times he had slept +the clock around from exhaustion, rousing on occasion, like any animal, +to eat voraciously of the goat-meat, to drink large quantities of the +coffee hot or cold, and to sink down into heavy but nightmare-ridden +sleep.</p> +<p>And in the meantime civilization, with its efficient organization +and intricate inventions, including electricity, had closed in on him. +Electricity had surrounded him. The spoken word had located him +in the wild canyons of Sonoma Mountain and fringed the mountain with +posses of peace-officers and detachments of armed farmers. More +terrible to them than any mountain lion was a man-killing man astray +in their landscape. The telephone on the Kennan Ranch, and the +telephones on all other ranches abutting on Sonoma Mountain, had rung +often and transmitted purposeful conversations and arrangements.</p> +<p>So it happened, when the posses had begun to penetrate the mountain, +and when the man was compelled to make a daylight dash down into the +Valley of the Moon to cross over to the mountain fastnesses that lay +between it and Napa Valley, that Harley Kennan rode out on the hot-blooded +colt he was training. He was not in pursuit of the man who had +slain the postmaster of Chisholm and his family. The mountain +was alive with man-hunters, as he well knew, for a score had bedded +and eaten at the ranch house the night before. So the meeting +of Harley Kennan with the man was unplanned and eventful.</p> +<p>It was not the first meeting with men the man had had that day. +During the preceding night he had noted the campfires of several posses. +At dawn, attempting to break forth down the south-western slopes of +the mountain toward Petaluma, he had encountered not less than five +separate detachments of dairy-ranchers all armed with Winchesters and +shotguns. Breaking back to cover, the chase hot on his heels, +he had run full tilt into a party of village youths from Glen Ellen +and Caliente. Their squirrel and deer rifles had missed him, but +his back had been peppered with birdshot in a score of places, the leaden +pellets penetrating maddeningly in a score of places just under the +skin.</p> +<p>In the rush of his retreat down the canyon slope, he had plunged +into a bunch of shorthorn steers, who, far more startled than he, had +rolled him on the forest floor, trampled over him in their panic, and +smashed his rifle under their hoofs. Weaponless, desperate, stinging +and aching from his superficial wounds and bruises, he had circled the +forest slopes along deer-paths, crossed two canyons, and begun to descend +the horse-trail he found in the third canyon.</p> +<p>It was on this trail, going down, that he met the reporter coming +up. The reporter was—well, just a reporter, from the city, +knowing only city ways, who had never before engaged in a man-hunt. +The livery horse he had rented down in the valley was a broken-kneed, +jaded, and spiritless creature, that stood calmly while its rider was +dragged from its back by the wild-looking and violently impetuous man +who sprang out around a sharp turn of the trail. The reporter +struck at his assailant once with his riding-whip. Then he received +a beating, such as he had often written up about sailor-rows and saloon-frequenters +in his cub-reporter days, but which for the first time it was his lot +to experience.</p> +<p>To the man’s disgust he found the reporter unarmed save for +a pencil and a wad of copy paper. Out of his disappointment in +not securing a weapon, he beat the reporter up some more, left him wailing +among the ferns, and, astride the reporter’s horse, urging it +on with the reporter’s whip, continued down the trail.</p> +<p>Jerry, ever keenest on the hunting, had ranged farther afield than +Michael as the pair of them accompanied Harley Kennan on his early morning +ride. Even so, Michael, at the heels of his master’s horse, +did not see nor understand the beginning of the catastrophe. For +that matter, neither did Harley. Where a steep, eight-foot bank +came down to the edge of the road along which he was riding, Harley +and the hot-blood colt were startled by an eruption through the screen +of manzanita bushes above. Looking up, he saw a reluctant horse +and a forceful rider plunging in mid-air down upon him. In that +flashing glimpse, even as he reined and spurred to make his own horse +leap sidewise out from under, Harley Kennan observed the scratched skin +and torn clothing, the wild-burning eyes, and the haggardness under +the scraggly growth of beard, of the man-hunted man.</p> +<p>The livery horse was justifiably reluctant to make that leap out +and down the bank. Too painfully aware of the penalty its broken +knees and rheumatic joints must pay, it dug its hoofs into the steep +slope of moss and only sprang out and clear in the air in order to avoid +a fall. Even so, its shoulder impacted against the shoulder of +the whirling colt below it, overthrowing the latter. Harley Kennan’s +leg, caught under against the earth, snapped, and the colt, twisted +and twisting as it struck the ground, snapped its backbone.</p> +<p>To his utter disgust, the man, pursued by an armed countryside, found +Harley Kennan, his latest victim, like the reporter, to be weaponless. +Dismounted, he snarled in his rage and disappointment and deliberately +kicked the helpless man in the side. He had drawn back his foot +for the second kick, when Michael took a hand—or a leg, rather, +sinking his teeth into the calf of the back-drawn leg about to administer +the kick.</p> +<p>With a curse the man jerked his leg clear, Michael’s teeth +ribboning flesh and trousers.</p> +<p>“Good boy, Michael!” Harley applauded from where he lay +helplessly pinioned under his horse. “Hey! Michael!” +he continued, lapsing back into bêche-de-mer, “chase ’m +that white fella marster to hell outa here along bush!”</p> +<p>“I’ll kick your head off for that,” the man gritted +at Harley through his teeth.</p> +<p>Savage as were his acts and utterance, the man was nearly ready to +cry. The long pursuit, his hand against all mankind and all mankind +against him, had begun to break his stamina. He was surrounded +by enemies. Even youths had risen up and peppered his back with +birdshot, and beef cattle had trod him underfoot and smashed his rifle. +Everything conspired against him. And now it was a dog that had +slashed down his leg. He was on the death-road. Never before +had this impressed him with such clear certainty. Everything was +against him. His desire to cry was hysterical, and hysteria, in +a desperate man, is prone to express itself in terrible savage ways. +Without rhyme or reason he was prepared to carry out his threat to kick +Harley Kennan to death. Not that Kennan had done anything to him. +On the contrary, it was he who had attacked Kennan, hurling him down +on the road and breaking his leg under his horse. But Harley Kennan +was a man, and all mankind was his enemy; and, in killing Kennan, in +some vague way it appeared to him that he was avenging himself, at least +in part, on mankind in general. Going down himself in death, he +would drag what he could with him into the red ruin.</p> +<p>But ere he could kick the man on the ground, Michael was back upon +him. His other calf and trousers’ leg were ribboned as he +tore clear. Then, catching Michael in mid-leap with a kick that +reached him under the chest, he sent him flying through the air off +the road and down the slope. As mischance would have it, Michael +did not reach the ground. Crashing through a scrub manzanita bush, +his body was caught and pinched in an acute fork a yard above the ground.</p> +<p>“Now,” the man announced grimly to Harley, “I’m +going to do what I said. I’m just going to kick your head +clean off.”</p> +<p>“And I haven’t done a thing to you,” Harley parleyed. +“I don’t so much mind being murdered, but I’d like +to know what I’m being murdered for.”</p> +<p>“Chasing me for my life,” the man snarled, as he advanced. +“I know your kind. You’ve all got it in for me, and +I ain’t got a chance except to give you yours. I’ll +take a whole lot of it out on you.”</p> +<p>Kennan was thoroughly aware of the gravity of his peril. Helpless +himself, a man-killing lunatic was about to kill him and to kill him +most horribly. Michael, a prisoner in the bush, hanging head-downward +in the manzanita from his loins squeezed in the fork, and struggling +vainly, could not come to his defence.</p> +<p>The man’s first kick, aimed at Harley’s face, he blocked +with his forearm; and, before the man could make a second kick, Jerry +erupted on the scene. Nor did he need encouragement or direction +from his love-master. He flashed at the man, sinking his teeth +harmlessly into the slack of the man’s trousers at the waist-band +above the hip, but by his weight dragging him half down to the ground.</p> +<p>And upon Jerry the man turned with an increase of madness. +In truth all the world was against him. The very landscape rained +dogs upon him. But from above, from the slopes of Sonoma Mountain, +the cries and calls of the trailing poses caught his ear, and deflected +his intention. They were the pursuing death, and it was from them +he must escape. With another kick at Jerry, hurling him clear, +he leaped astride the reporter’s horse which had continued to +stand, without movement or excitement, in utter apathy, where he had +dismounted from it.</p> +<p>The horse went into a reluctant and stiff-legged gallop, while Jerry +followed, snarling and growling wrath at so high a pitch that almost +he squalled.</p> +<p>“It’s all right, Michael,” Harley soothed. +“Take it easy. Don’t hurt yourself. The trouble’s +over. Anybody’ll happen along any time now and get us out +of this fix.”</p> +<p>But the smaller branch of the two composing the fork broke, and Michael +fell to the ground, landing in momentary confusion on his head and shoulders. +The next moment he was on his feet and tearing down the road in the +direction of Jerry’s noisy pursuit. Jerry’s noise +broke in a sharp cry of pain that added wings to Michael’s feet. +Michael passed him rolling helplessly on the road. What had happened +was that the livery horse, in its stiff-jointed, broken-kneed gallop, +had stumbled, nearly fallen, and, in its sprawling recovery, had accidentally +stepped on Jerry, bruising and breaking his foreleg.</p> +<p>And the man, looking back and seeing Michael close upon him, decided +that it was still another dog attacking him. But he had no fear +of dogs. It was men, with their rifles and shotguns, that might +bring him to ultimate grief. Nevertheless, the pain of his bleeding +legs, lacerated by Jerry and Michael, maintained his rage against dogs.</p> +<p>“More dogs,” was his bitter thought, as he leaned out +and brought his whip down across Michael’s face.</p> +<p>To his surprise, the dog did not wince under the blow. Nor +for that matter did he yelp or cry out from the pain. Nor did +he bark or growl or snarl. He closed in as though he had not received +the blow, and as though the whip was not brandished above him. +As Michael leaped for his right leg he swung the whip down, striking +him squarely on the muzzle midway between nose and eyes. Deflected +by the blow, Michael dropped back to earth and ran on with his longest +leaps to catch up and make his next spring.</p> +<p>But the man had noticed another thing. At such close range, +bringing his whip down, he could not help noting that Michael had kept +his eyes open under the blow. Neither had he winced nor blinked +as the whip slashed down on him. The thing was uncanny. +It was something new in the way of dogs. Michael sprang again, +the man timed him again with the whip, and he saw the uncanny thing +repeated. By neither wince nor blink had the dog acknowledged +the blow.</p> +<p>And then an entirely new kind of fear came upon the man. Was +this the end for him, after all he had gone through? Was this +deadly silent, rough-coated terrier the thing destined to destroy him +where men had failed? He did not even know that the dog was real. +Might it not be some terrible avenger, out of the mystery beyond life, +placed to beset him and finish him finally on this road that he was +convinced was surely the death-road? The dog was not real. +It could not be real. The dog did not live that could take a full-arm +whip-slash without wince or flinch.</p> +<p>Twice again, as the dog sprang, he deflected it with accurately delivered +blows. And the dog came on with the same surety and silence. +The man surrendered to his terror, clapping heels to his horse’s +old ribs, beating it over the head and under the belly with the whip +until it galloped as it had not galloped in years. Even on that +apathetic steed the terror descended. It was not terror of the +dog, which it knew to be only a dog, but terror of the rider. +In the past its knees had been broken and its joints stiffened for ever, +by drunken-mad riders who had hired him from the stables. And +here was another such drunken-mad rider—for the horse sensed the +man’s terror—who ached his ribs with the weight of his heels +and beat him cruelly over face and nose and ears.</p> +<p>The best speed of the horse was not very great, not great enough +to out-distance Michael, although it was fast enough to give the latter +only infrequent opportunities to spring for the man’s leg. +But each spring was met by the unvarying whip-blow that by its very +weight deflected him in the air. Though his teeth each time clipped +together perilously close to the man’s leg, each time he fell +back to earth he had to gather himself together and run at his own top +speed in order to overtake the terror-stricken man on the crazy-galloping +horse.</p> +<p>Enrico Piccolomini saw the chase and was himself in at the finish; +and the affair, his one great adventure in the world, gave him wealth +as well as material for conversation to the end of his days. Enrico +Piccolomini was a wood-chopper on the Kennan Ranch. On a rounded +knoll, overlooking the road, he had first heard the galloping hoofs +of the horse and the crack of the whip-blows on its body. Next, +he had seen the running battle of the man, the horse, and the dog. +When directly beneath him, not twenty feet distant, he saw the dog leap, +in its queer silent way, straight up and in to the down-smash of the +whip, and sink its teeth in the rider’s leg. He saw the +dog, with its weight, as it fell back to earth, drag the man half out +of the saddle. He saw the man, in an effort to recover his balance, +put his own weight on the bridle-reins. And he saw the horse, +half-rearing, half-tottering and stumbling, overthrow the last shred +of the man’s balance so that he followed the dog to the ground.</p> +<p>“And then they are like two dogs, like two beasts,” Piccolomini +was wont to tell in after-years over a glass of wine in his little hotel +in Glen Ellen. “The dog lets go the man’s leg and +jumps for the man’s throat. And the man, rolling over, is +at the dog’s throat. Both his hands—so—he fastens +about the throat of this dog. And the dog makes no sound. +He never makes sound, before or after. After the two hands of +the man stop his breath he can not make sound. But he is not that +kind of a dog. He will not make sound anyway. And the horse +stands and looks on, and the horse coughs. It is very strange +all that I see.</p> +<p>“And the man is mad. Only a madman will do what I see +him do. I see the man show his teeth like any dog, and bite the +dog on the paw, on the nose, on the body. And when he bites the +dog on the nose, the dog bites him on the check. And the man and +the dog fight like hell, and the dog gets his hind legs up like a cat. +And like a cat he tears the man’s shirt away from his chest, and +tears the skin of the chest with his claws till it is all red with bleeding. +And the man yow-yowls, and makes noises like a wild mountain lion. +And always he chokes the dog. It is a hell of a fight.</p> +<p>“And the dog is Mister Kennan’s dog, a fine man, and +I have worked for him two years. So I will not stand there and +see Mister Kennan’s dog all killed to pieces by the man who fights +like a mountain lion. I run down the hill, but I am excited and +forget my axe. I run down the hill, maybe from this door to that +door, twenty feet or maybe thirty feet. And it is nearly all finished +for the dog. His tongue is a long ways out, and his eyes like +covered with cobwebs; but still he scratches the man’s chest with +his hind-feet and the man yow-yowls like a hen of the mountains.</p> +<p>“What can I do? I have forgotten the axe. The man +will kill the dog. I look for a big rock. There are no rocks. +I look for a club. I cannot find a club. And the man is +killing the dog. I tell you what I do. I am no fool. +I kick the man. My shoes are very heavy—not like shoes I +wear now. They are the shoes of the wood-chopper, very thick on +the sole with hard leather, with many iron nails. I kick the man +on the side of the face, on the neck, right under the ear. I kick +once. It is a good kick. It is enough. I know the +place—right under the ear.</p> +<p>“And the man lets go of the dog. He shuts his eyes, and +opens his mouth, and lies very still. And the dog begins once +more to breathe. And with the breath comes the life, and right +away he wants to kill the man. But I say ‘No,’ though +I am very much afraid of the dog. And the man begins to become +alive. He opens his eyes and he looks at me like a mountain lion. +And his mouth makes a noise like a mountain lion. And I am afraid +of him like I am afraid of the dog. What am I to do? I have +forgotten the axe. I tell you what I do. I kick the man +once again under the ear. Then I take my belt, and my bandana +handkerchief, and I tie him. I tie his hands. I tie his +legs, too. And all the time I am saying ‘No,’ to the +dog, and that he must leave the man alone. And the dog looks. +He knows I am his friend and am tying the man. And he does not +bite me, though I am very much afraid. The dog is a terrible dog. +Do I not know? Have I not seen him take a strong man out of the +saddle?—a man that is like a mountain lion?</p> +<p>“And then the men come. They all have guns-rifles, shotguns, +revolvers, pistols. And I think, first, that justice is very quick +in the United States. Only just now have I kicked a man in the +head, and, one-two-three, just like that, men come with guns to take +me to jail for kicking a man in the head. At first I do not understand. +The many men are angry with me. They call me names, and say bad +things; but they do not arrest me. Ah! I begin to understand! +I hear them talk about three thousand dollars. I have robbed them +of three thousand dollars. It is not true. I say so. +I say never have I robbed a man of one cent. Then they laugh. +And I feel better and I understand better. The three thousand +dollars is the reward of the Government for this man I have tied up +with my belt and my bandana. And the three thousand dollars is +mine because I kicked the man in the head and tied his hands and his +feet.</p> +<p>“So I do not work for Mister Kennan any more. I am a +rich man. Three thousand dollars, all mine, from the Government, +and Mister Kennan sees that it is paid to me by the Government and not +robbed from me by the men with the guns. Just because I kicked +the man in the head who was like a mountain lion! It is fortune. +It is America. And I am glad that I have left Italy and come to +chop wood on Mister Kennan’s ranch. And I start this hotel +in Glen Ellen with the three thousand dollars. I know there is +large money in the hotel business. When I was a little boy, did +not my father have a hotel in Napoli? I have now two daughters +in high school. Also I own an automobile.”</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>“Mercy me, the whole ranch is a hospital!” cried Villa +Kennan, two days later, as she came out on the broad sleeping-porch +and regarded Harley and Jerry stretched out, the one with his leg in +splints, the other with his leg in a plaster cast. “Look +at Michael,” she continued. “You’re not the +only ones with broken bones. I’ve only just discovered that +if his nose isn’t broken, it ought to be, from the blow he must +have received on it. I’ve had hot compresses on it for the +last hour. Look at it!”</p> +<p>Michael, who had followed in at her invitation, betrayed a ridiculously +swollen nose as he sniffed noses with Jerry, wagged his bobtail to Harley +in greeting, and was greeted in turn with a blissful hand laid on his +head.</p> +<p>“Must have got it in the fight,” Harley said. “The +fellow struck him with the whip many times, so Piccolomini says, and, +naturally, it would be right across the nose when he jumped for him.”</p> +<p>“And Piccolomini says he never cried out when he was struck, +but went on running and jumping,” Villa took up enthusiastically. +“Think of it! A dog no bigger than Michael dragging out +of the saddle a man-killing outlaw whom scores of officers could not +catch!”</p> +<p>“So far as we are concerned, he did better than that,” +Harley commented quietly. “If it hadn’t been for Michael, +and for Jerry, too—if it hadn’t been for the pair of them, +I do verily believe that that lunatic would have kicked my head off +as he promised.”</p> +<p>“The blessed pair of them!” Villa cried, with shining +eyes, as her hand flashed out to her husband’s in a quick press +of heart-thankfulness. “The last word has not been said +upon the wonder of dogs,” she added, as, with a quick winking +of her eyelashes to overcome the impending moistness, she controlled +her emotion.</p> +<p>“The last word of the wonder of dogs will never be said,” +Harley spoke, returning the pressure of her hand and releasing it in +order to help her.</p> +<p>“And just for that were going to say something right now,” +she smiled. “Jerry, and Michael, and I. We’ve +been practising it in secret for a surprise for you. You just +lie there and listen. It’s the Doxology. Don’t +Laugh. No pun intended.”</p> +<p>She bent forward from the stool on which she sat, and drew Michael +to her so that he sat between her knees, her two hands holding his head +and jowls, his nose half-buried in her hair.</p> +<p>“Now Jerry!” she called sharply, as a singing teacher +might call, so that Jerry turned his head in attention, looked at her, +smiled understanding with his eyes, and waited.</p> +<p>It was Villa who started and pitched the Doxology, but quickly the +two dogs joined with their own soft, mellow howling, if howling it may +be called when it was so soft and mellow and true. And all that +had vanished into the Nothingness was in the minds of the two dogs as +they sang, and they sang back through the Nothingness to the land of +Otherwhere, and ran once again with the Lost Pack, and yet were not +entirely unaware of the present and of the indubitable two-legged god +who was called Villa and who sang with them and loved them.</p> +<p>“No reason we shouldn’t make a quartette of it,” +remarked Harley Kennan, as with his own voice he joined in.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 1730-h.htm or 1730-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/3/1730 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Michael, Brother of Jerry + + +Author: Jack London + +Release Date: April 28, 2005 [eBook #1730] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY*** + + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1917 Mills & Boon edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY + + +FOREWORD + + +Very early in my life, possibly because of the insatiable curiosity that +was born in me, I came to dislike the performances of trained animals. It +was my curiosity that spoiled for me this form of amusement, for I was +led to seek behind the performance in order to learn how the performance +was achieved. And what I found behind the brave show and glitter of +performance was not nice. It was a body of cruelty so horrible that I am +confident no normal person exists who, once aware of it, could ever enjoy +looking on at any trained-animal turn. + +Now I am not a namby-pamby. By the book reviewers and the namby-pambys I +am esteemed a sort of primitive beast that delights in the spilled blood +of violence and horror. Without arguing this matter of my general +reputation, accepting it at its current face value, let me add that I +have indeed lived life in a very rough school and have seen more than the +average man's share of inhumanity and cruelty, from the forecastle and +the prison, the slum and the desert, the execution-chamber and the lazar- +house, to the battlefield and the military hospital. I have seen +horrible deaths and mutilations. I have seen imbeciles hanged, because, +being imbeciles, they did not possess the hire of lawyers. I have seen +the hearts and stamina of strong men broken, and I have seen other men, +by ill-treatment, driven to permanent and howling madness. I have +witnessed the deaths of old and young, and even infants, from sheer +starvation. I have seen men and women beaten by whips and clubs and +fists, and I have seen the rhinoceros-hide whips laid around the naked +torsos of black boys so heartily that each stroke stripped away the skin +in full circle. And yet, let me add finally, never have I been so +appalled and shocked by the world's cruelty as have I been appalled and +shocked in the midst of happy, laughing, and applauding audiences when +trained-animal turns were being performed on the stage. + +One with a strong stomach and a hard head may be able to tolerate much of +the unconscious and undeliberate cruelty and torture of the world that is +perpetrated in hot blood and stupidity. I have such a stomach and head. +But what turns my head and makes my gorge rise, is the cold-blooded, +conscious, deliberate cruelty and torment that is manifest behind ninety- +nine of every hundred trained-animal turns. Cruelty, as a fine art, has +attained its perfect flower in the trained-animal world. + +Possessed myself of a strong stomach and a hard head, inured to hardship, +cruelty, and brutality, nevertheless I found, as I came to manhood, that +I unconsciously protected myself from the hurt of the trained-animal turn +by getting up and leaving the theatre whenever such turns came on the +stage. I say "unconsciously." By this I mean it never entered my mind +that this was a programme by which the possible death-blow might be given +to trained-animal turns. I was merely protecting myself from the pain of +witnessing what it would hurt me to witness. + +But of recent years my understanding of human nature has become such that +I realize that no normal healthy human would tolerate such performances +did he or she know the terrible cruelty that lies behind them and makes +them possible. So I am emboldened to suggest, here and now, three +things: + +First, let all humans inform themselves of the inevitable and eternal +cruelty by the means of which only can animals be compelled to perform +before revenue-paying audiences. Second, I suggest that all men and +women, and boys and girls, who have so acquainted themselves with the +essentials of the fine art of animal-training, should become members of, +and ally themselves with, the local and national organizations of humane +societies and societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals. + +And the third suggestion I cannot state until I have made a preamble. +Like hundreds of thousands of others, I have worked in other fields, +striving to organize the mass of mankind into movements for the purpose +of ameliorating its own wretchedness and misery. Difficult as this is to +accomplish, it is still more difficult to persuade the human into any +organised effort to alleviate the ill conditions of the lesser animals. + +Practically all of us will weep red tears and sweat bloody sweats as we +come to knowledge of the unavoidable cruelty and brutality on which the +trained-animal world rests and has its being. But not one-tenth of one +per cent. of us will join any organization for the prevention of cruelty +to animals, and by our words and acts and contributions work to prevent +the perpetration of cruelties on animals. This is a weakness of our own +human nature. We must recognize it as we recognize heat and cold, the +opaqueness of the non-transparent, and the everlasting down-pull of +gravity. + +And still for us, for the ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent. of us, +under the easy circumstance of our own weakness, remains another way most +easily to express ourselves for the purpose of eliminating from the world +the cruelty that is practised by some few of us, for the entertainment of +the rest of us, on the trained animals, who, after all, are only lesser +animals than we on the round world's surface. It is so easy. We will +not have to think of dues or corresponding secretaries. We will not have +to think of anything, save when, in any theatre or place of +entertainment, a trained-animal turn is presented before us. Then, +without premeditation, we may express our disapproval of such a turn by +getting up from our seats and leaving the theatre for a promenade and a +breath of fresh air outside, coming back, when the turn is over, to enjoy +the rest of the programme. All we have to do is just that to eliminate +the trained-animal turn from all public places of entertainment. Show +the management that such turns are unpopular, and in a day, in an +instant, the management will cease catering such turns to its audiences. + +JACK LONDON + +GLEN ELLEN, SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, + +December 8, 1915 + + + + +CHAPTER I + + +But Michael never sailed out of Tulagi, nigger-chaser on the _Eugenie_. +Once in five weeks the steamer _Makambo_ made Tulagi its port of call on +the way from New Guinea and the Shortlands to Australia. And on the +night of her belated arrival Captain Kellar forgot Michael on the beach. +In itself, this was nothing, for, at midnight, Captain Kellar was back on +the beach, himself climbing the high hill to the Commissioner's bungalow +while the boat's crew vainly rummaged the landscape and canoe houses. + +In fact, an hour earlier, as the _Makambo's_ anchor was heaving out and +while Captain Kellar was descending the port gang-plank, Michael was +coming on board through a starboard port-hole. This was because Michael +was inexperienced in the world, because he was expecting to meet Jerry on +board this boat since the last he had seen of him was on a boat, and +because he had made a friend. + +Dag Daughtry was a steward on the _Makambo_, who should have known better +and who would have known better and done better had he not been +fascinated by his own particular and peculiar reputation. By luck of +birth possessed of a genial but soft disposition and a splendid +constitution, his reputation was that for twenty years he had never +missed his day's work nor his six daily quarts of bottled beer, even, as +he bragged, when in the German islands, where each bottle of beer carried +ten grains of quinine in solution as a specific against malaria. + +The captain of the _Makambo_ (and, before that, the captains of the +_Moresby_, the _Masena_, the _Sir Edward Grace_, and various others of +the queerly named Burns Philp Company steamers had done the same) was +used to pointing him out proudly to the passengers as a man-thing novel +and unique in the annals of the sea. And at such times Dag Daughtry, +below on the for'ard deck, feigning unawareness as he went about his +work, would steal side-glances up at the bridge where the captain and his +passengers stared down on him, and his breast would swell pridefully, +because he knew that the captain was saying: "See him! that's Dag +Daughtry, the human tank. Never's been drunk or sober in twenty years, +and has never missed his six quarts of beer per diem. You wouldn't think +it, to look at him, but I assure you it's so. I can't understand. Gets +my admiration. Always does his time, his time-and-a-half and his double- +time over time. Why, a single glass of beer would give me heartburn and +spoil my next good meal. But he flourishes on it. Look at him! Look at +him!" + +And so, knowing his captain's speech, swollen with pride in his own +prowess, Dag Daughtry would continue his ship-work with extra vigour and +punish a seventh quart for the day in advertisement of his remarkable +constitution. It was a queer sort of fame, as queer as some men are; and +Dag Daughtry found in it his justification of existence. + +Wherefore he devoted his energy and the soul of him to the maintenance of +his reputation as a six-quart man. That was why he made, in odd moments +of off-duty, turtle-shell combs and hair ornaments for profit, and was +prettily crooked in such a matter as stealing another man's dog. Somebody +had to pay for the six quarts, which, multiplied by thirty, amounted to a +tidy sum in the course of the month; and, since that man was Dag +Daughtry, he found it necessary to pass Michael inboard on the _Makambo_ +through a starboard port-hole. + +On the beach, that night at Tulagi, vainly wondering what had become of +the whaleboat, Michael had met the squat, thick, hair-grizzled ship's +steward. The friendship between them was established almost instantly, +for Michael, from a merry puppy, had matured into a merry dog. Far +beyond Jerry, was he a sociable good fellow, and this, despite the fact +that he had known very few white men. First, there had been Mister +Haggin, Derby and Bob, of Meringe; next, Captain Kellar and Captain +Kellar's mate of the _Eugenie_; and, finally, Harley Kennan and the +officers of the _Ariel_. Without exception, he had found them all +different, and delightfully different, from the hordes of blacks he had +been taught to despise and to lord it over. + +And Dag Daughtry had proved no exception from his first greeting of +"Hello, you white man's dog, what 'r' you doin' herein nigger country?" +Michael had responded coyly with an assumption of dignified aloofness +that was given the lie by the eager tilt of his ears and the good-humour +that shone in his eyes. Nothing of this was missed by Dag Daughtry, who +knew a dog when he saw one, as he studied Michael in the light of the +lanterns held by black boys where the whaleboats were landing cargo. + +Two estimates the steward quickly made of Michael: he was a likable dog, +genial-natured on the face of it, and he was a valuable dog. Because of +those estimates Dag Daughtry glanced about him quickly. No one was +observing. For the moment, only blacks stood about, and their eyes were +turned seaward where the sound of oars out of the darkness warned them to +stand ready to receive the next cargo-laden boat. Off to the right, +under another lantern, he could make out the Resident Commissioner's +clerk and the _Makambo's_ super-cargo heatedly discussing some error in +the bill of lading. + +The steward flung another quick glance over Michael and made up his mind. +He turned away casually and strolled along the beach out of the circle of +lantern light. A hundred yards away he sat down in the sand and waited. + +"Worth twenty pounds if a penny," he muttered to himself. "If I couldn't +get ten pounds for him, just like that, with a thank-you-ma'am, I'm a +sucker that don't know a terrier from a greyhound.--Sure, ten pounds, in +any pub on Sydney beach." + +And ten pounds, metamorphosed into quart bottles of beer, reared an +immense and radiant vision, very like a brewery, inside his head. + +A scurry of feet in the sand, and low sniffings, stiffened him to +alertness. It was as he had hoped. The dog had liked him from the +start, and had followed him. + +For Dag Daughtry had a way with him, as Michael was quickly to learn, +when the man's hand reached out and clutched him, half by the jowl, half +by the slack of the neck under the ear. There was no threat in that +reach, nothing tentative nor timorous. It was hearty, all-confident, and +it produced confidence in Michael. It was roughness without hurt, +assertion without threat, surety without seduction. To him it was the +most natural thing in the world thus to be familiarly seized and shaken +about by a total stranger, while a jovial voice muttered: "That's right, +dog. Stick around, stick around, and you'll wear diamonds, maybe." + +Certainly, Michael had never met a man so immediately likable. Dag +Daughtry knew, instinctively to be sure, how to get on with dogs. By +nature there was no cruelty in him. He never exceeded in peremptoriness, +nor in petting. He did not overbid for Michael's friendliness. He did +bid, but in a manner that conveyed no sense of bidding. Scarcely had he +given Michael that introductory jowl-shake, when he released him and +apparently forgot all about him. + +He proceeded to light his pipe, using several matches as if the wind blew +them out. But while they burned close up to his fingers, and while he +made a simulation of prodigious puffing, his keen little blue eyes, under +shaggy, grizzled brows, intently studied Michael. And Michael, ears +cocked and eyes intent, gazed at this stranger who seemed never to have +been a stranger at all. + +If anything, it was disappointment Michael experienced, in that this +delightful, two-legged god took no further notice of him. He even +challenged him to closer acquaintance with an invitation to play, with an +abrupt movement lifting his paws from the ground and striking them down, +stretched out well before, his body bent down from the rump in such a +curve that almost his chest touched the sand, his stump of a tail waving +signals of good nature while he uttered a sharp, inviting bark. And the +man was uninterested, pulling stolidly away at his pipe, in the darkness +following upon the third match. + +Never was there a more consummate love-making, with all the base intent +of betrayal, than this cavalier seduction of Michael by the elderly, six- +quart ship's steward. When Michael, not entirely unwitting of the snub +of the man's lack of interest, stirred restlessly with a threat to +depart, he had flung at him gruffly: + +"Stick around, dog, stick around." + +Dag Daughtry chuckled to himself, as Michael, advancing, sniffed his +trousers' legs long and earnestly. And the man took advantage of his +nearness to study him some more, lighting his pipe and running over the +dog's excellent lines. + +"Some dog, some points," he said aloud approvingly. "Say, dog, you could +pull down ribbons like a candy-kid in any bench show anywheres. Only +thing against you is that ear, and I could almost iron it out myself. A +vet. could do it." + +Carelessly he dropped a hand to Michael's ear, and, with tips of fingers +instinct with sensuous sympathy, began to manipulate the base of the ear +where its roots bedded in the tightness of skin-stretch over the skull. +And Michael liked it. Never had a man's hand been so intimate with his +ear without hurting it. But these fingers were provocative only of +physical pleasure so keen that he twisted and writhed his whole body in +acknowledgment. + +Next came a long, steady, upward pull of the ear, the ear slipping slowly +through the fingers to the very tip of it while it tingled exquisitely +down to its roots. Now to one ear, now to the other, this happened, and +all the while the man uttered low words that Michael did not understand +but which he accepted as addressed to him. + +"Head all right, good 'n' flat," Dag Daughtry murmured, first sliding his +fingers over it, and then lighting a match. "An' no wrinkles, 'n' some +jaw, good 'n' punishing, an' not a shade too full in the cheek or too +empty." + +He ran his fingers inside Michael's mouth and noted the strength and +evenness of the teeth, measured the breadth of shoulders and depth of +chest, and picked up a foot. In the light of another match he examined +all four feet. + +"Black, all black, every nail of them," said Daughtry, "an' as clean feet +as ever a dog walked on, straight-out toes with the proper arch 'n' small +'n' not too small. I bet your daddy and your mother cantered away with +the ribbons in their day." + +Michael was for growing restless at such searching examination, but +Daughtry, in the midst of feeling out the lines and build of the thighs +and hocks, paused and took Michael's tail in his magic fingers, exploring +the muscles among which it rooted, pressing and prodding the adjacent +spinal column from which it sprang, and twisting it about in a most +daringly intimate way. And Michael was in an ecstasy, bracing his +hindquarters to one side or the other against the caressing fingers. With +open hands laid along his sides and partly under him, the man suddenly +lifted him from the ground. But before he could feel alarm he was back +on the ground again. + +"Twenty-six or -seven--you're over twenty-five right now, I'll bet you on +it, shillings to ha'pennies, and you'll make thirty when you get your +full weight," Dag Daughtry told him. "But what of it? Lots of the +judges fancy the thirty-mark. An' you could always train off a few +ounces. You're all dog n' all correct conformation. You've got the +racing build and the fighting weight, an' there ain't no feathers on your +legs." + +"No, sir, Mr. Dog, your weight's to the good, and that ear can be ironed +out by any respectable dog--doctor. I bet there's a hundred men in +Sydney right now that would fork over twenty quid for the right of +calling you his." + +And then, just that Michael should not make the mistake of thinking he +was being much made over, Daughtry leaned back, relighted his pipe, and +apparently forgot his existence. Instead of bidding for good will, he +was bent on making Michael do the bidding. + +And Michael did, bumping his flanks against Daughtry's knee; nudging his +head against Daughtry's hand, in solicitation for more of the blissful +ear-rubbing and tail-twisting. Daughtry caught him by the jowl instead +and slowly moved his head back and forth as he addressed him: + +"What man's dog are you? Maybe you're a nigger's dog, an' that ain't +right. Maybe some nigger's stole you, an' that'd be awful. Think of the +cruel fates that sometimes happens to dogs. It's a damn shame. No white +man's stand for a nigger ownin' the likes of you, an' here's one white +man that ain't goin' to stand for it. The idea! A nigger ownin' you an' +not knowin' how to train you. Of course a nigger stole you. If I laid +eyes on him right now I'd up and knock seven bells and the Saint Paul +chimes out of 'm. Sure thing I would. Just show 'm to me, that's all, +an' see what I'd do to him. The idea of you takin' orders from a nigger +an' fetchin' 'n' carryin' for him! No, sir, dog, you ain't goin' to do +it any more. You're comin' along of me, an' I reckon I won't have to +urge you." + +Dag Daughtry stood up and turned carelessly along the beach. Michael +looked after him, but did not follow. He was eager to, but had received +no invitation. At last Daughtry made a low kissing sound with his lips. +So low was it that he scarcely heard it himself and almost took it on +faith, or on the testimony of his lips rather than of his ears, that he +had made it. No human being could have heard it across the distance to +Michael; but Michael heard it, and sprang away after in a great delighted +rush. + + + + +CHAPTER II + + +Dag Daughtry strolled along the beach, Michael at his heels or running +circles of delight around him at every repetition of that strange low lip- +noise, and paused just outside the circle of lantern light where dusky +forms laboured with landing cargo from the whaleboats and where the +Commissioner's clerk and the _Makambo's_ super-cargo still wrangled over +the bill of lading. When Michael would have gone forward, the man +withstrained him with the same inarticulate, almost inaudible kiss. + +For Daughtry did not care to be seen on such dog-stealing enterprises and +was planning how to get on board the steamer unobserved. He edged around +outside the lantern shine and went on along the beach to the native +village. As he had foreseen, all the able-bodied men were down at the +boat-landing working cargo. The grass houses seemed lifeless, but at +last, from one of them, came a challenge in the querulous, high-pitched +tones of age: + +"What name?" + +"Me walk about plenty too much," he replied in the beche-de-mer English +of the west South Pacific. "Me belong along steamer. Suppose 'm you +take 'm me along canoe, washee-washee, me give 'm you fella boy two stick +tobacco." + +"Suppose 'm you give 'm me ten stick, all right along me," came the +reply. + +"Me give 'm five stick," the six-quart steward bargained. "Suppose 'm +you no like 'm five stick then you fella boy go to hell close up." + +There was a silence. + +"You like 'm five stick?" Daughtry insisted of the dark interior. + +"Me like 'm," the darkness answered, and through the darkness the body +that owned the voice approached with such strange sounds that the steward +lighted a match to see. + +A blear-eyed ancient stood before him, balancing on a single crutch. His +eyes were half-filmed over by a growth of morbid membrane, and what was +not yet covered shone red and irritated. His hair was mangy, standing +out in isolated patches of wispy grey. His skin was scarred and wrinkled +and mottled, and in colour was a purplish blue surfaced with a grey +coating that might have been painted there had it not indubitably grown +there and been part and parcel of him. + +A blighted leper--was Daughtry's thought as his quick eyes leapt from +hands to feet in quest of missing toe- and finger-joints. But in those +items the ancient was intact, although one leg ceased midway between knee +and thigh. + +"My word! What place stop 'm that fella leg?" quoth Daughtry, pointing +to the space which the member would have occupied had it not been absent. + +"Big fella shark-fish, that fella leg stop 'm along him," the ancient +grinned, exposing a horrible aperture of toothlessness for a mouth. + +"Me old fella boy too much," the one-legged Methuselah quavered. "Long +time too much no smoke 'm tobacco. Suppose 'm you big fella white +marster give 'm me one fella stick, close up me washee-washee you that +fella steamer." + +"Suppose 'm me no give?" the steward impatiently temporized. + +For reply, the old man half-turned, and, on his crutch, swinging his +stump of leg in the air, began sidling hippity-hop into the grass hut. + +"All right," Daughtry cried hastily. "Me give 'm you smoke 'm quick +fella." + +He dipped into a side coat-pocket for the mintage of the Solomons and +stripped off a stick from the handful of pressed sticks. The old man was +transfigured as he reached avidly for the stick and received it. He +uttered little crooning noises, alternating with sharp cries akin to +pain, half-ecstatic, half-petulant, as he drew a black clay pipe from a +hole in his ear-lobe, and into the bowl of it, with trembling fingers, +untwisted and crumbled the cheap leaf of spoiled Virginia crop. + +Pressing down the contents of the full bowl with his thumb, he suddenly +plumped upon the ground, the crutch beside him, the one limb under him so +that he had the seeming of a legless torso. From a small bag of twisted +coconut hanging from his neck upon his withered and sunken chest, he drew +out flint and steel and tinder, and, even while the impatient steward was +proffering him a box of matches, struck a spark, caught it in the tinder, +blew it into strength and quantity, and lighted his pipe from it. + +With the first full puff of the smoke he gave over his moans and yelps, +the agitation began to fade out of him, and Daughtry, appreciatively +waiting, saw the trembling go out of his hands, the pendulous +lip-quivering cease, the saliva stop flowing from the corners of his +mouth, and placidity come into the fiery remnants of his eyes. + +What the old man visioned in the silence that fell, Daughtry did not try +to guess. He was too occupied with his own vision, and vividly burned +before him the sordid barrenness of a poor-house ward, where an ancient, +very like what he himself would become, maundered and gibbered and +drooled for a crumb of tobacco for his old clay pipe, and where, of all +horrors, no sip of beer ever obtained, much less six quarts of it. + +And Michael, by the dim glows of the pipe surveying the scene of the two +old men, one squatted in the dark, the other standing, knew naught of the +tragedy of age, and was only aware, and overwhelmingly aware, of the +immense likableness of this two-legged white god, who, with fingers of +magic, through ear-roots and tail-roots and spinal column, had won to the +heart of him. + +The clay pipe smoked utterly out, the old black, by aid of the crutch, +with amazing celerity raised himself upstanding on his one leg and +hobbled, with his hippity-hop, to the beach. Daughtry was compelled to +lend his strength to the hauling down from the sand into the water of the +tiny canoe. It was a dug-out, as ancient and dilapidated as its owner, +and, in order to get into it without capsizing, Daughtry wet one leg to +the ankle and the other leg to the knee. The old man contorted himself +aboard, rolling his body across the gunwale so quickly, that, even while +it started to capsize, his weight was across the danger-point and +counterbalancing the canoe to its proper equilibrium. + +Michael remained on the beach, waiting invitation, his mind not quite +made up, but so nearly so that all that was required was that lip-noise. +Dag Daughtry made the lip-noise so low that the old man did not hear, and +Michael, springing clear from sand to canoe, was on board without wetting +his feet. Using Daughtry's shoulder for a stepping-place, he passed over +him and down into the bottom of the canoe. Daughtry kissed with his lips +again, and Michael turned around so as to face him, sat down, and rested +his head on the steward's knees. + +"I reckon I can take my affydavy on a stack of Bibles that the dog just +up an' followed me," he grinned in Michael's ear. + +"Washee-washee quick fella," he commanded. + +The ancient obediently dipped his paddle and started pottering an erratic +course in the general direction of the cluster of lights that marked the +_Makambo_. But he was too feeble, panting and wheezing continually from +the exertion and pausing to rest off strokes between strokes. The +steward impatiently took the paddle away from him and bent to the work. + +Half-way to the steamer the ancient ceased wheezing and spoke, nodding +his head at Michael. + +"That fella dog he belong big white marster along schooner . . . You give +'m me ten stick tobacco," he added after due pause to let the information +sink in. + +"I give 'm you bang alongside head," Daughtry assured him cheerfully. +"White marster along schooner plenty friend along me too much. Just now +he stop 'm along _Makambo_. Me take 'm dog along him along _Makambo_." + +There was no further conversation from the ancient, and though he lived +long years after, he never mentioned the midnight passenger in the canoe +who carried Michael away with him. When he saw and heard the confusion +and uproar on the beach later that night when Captain Kellar turned +Tulagi upside-down in his search for Michael, the old one-legged one +remained discreetly silent. Who was he to seek trouble with the strange +ones, the white masters who came and went and roved and ruled? + +In this the ancient was in nowise unlike the rest of his dark-skinned +Melanesian race. The whites were possessed of unguessed and unthinkable +ways and purposes. They constituted another world and were as a play of +superior beings on an exalted stage where was no reality such as black +men might know as reality, where, like the phantoms of a dream, the white +men moved and were as shadows cast upon the vast and mysterious curtain +of the Cosmos. + +The gang-plank being on the port side, Dag Daughtry paddled around to the +starboard and brought the canoe to a stop under a certain open port. + +"Kwaque!" he called softly, once, and twice. + +At the second call the light of the port was obscured apparently by a +head that piped down in a thin squeak. + +"Me stop 'm, marster." + +"One fella dog stop 'm along you," the steward whispered up. "Keep 'm +door shut. You wait along me. Stand by! Now!" + +With a quick catch and lift, he passed Michael up and into unseen hands +outstretched from the iron wall of the ship, and paddled ahead to an open +cargo port. Dipping into his tobacco pocket, he thrust a loose handful +of sticks into the ancient's hand and shoved the canoe adrift with no +thought of how its helpless occupant would ever reach shore. + +The old man did not touch the paddle, and he was unregardless of the +lofty-sided steamer as the canoe slipped down the length of it into the +darkness astern. He was too occupied in counting the wealth of tobacco +showered upon him. No easy task, his counting. Five was the limit of +his numerals. When he had counted five, he began over again and counted +a second five. Three fives he found in all, and two sticks over; and +thus, at the end of it, he possessed as definite a knowledge of the +number of sticks as would be possessed by the average white man by means +of the single number _seventeen_. + +More it was, far more, than his avarice had demanded. Yet he was +unsurprised. Nothing white men did could surprise. Had it been two +sticks instead of seventeen, he would have been equally unsurprised. +Since all acts of white men were surprises, the only surprise of action +they could achieve for a black man would be the doing of an unsurprising +thing. + +Paddling, wheezing, resting, oblivious of the shadow-world of the white +men, knowing only the reality of Tulagi Mountain cutting its crest-line +blackly across the dim radiance of the star-sprinkled sky, the reality of +the sea and of the canoe he so feebly urged across it, and the reality of +his fading strength and of the death into which he would surely end, the +ancient black man slowly made his shoreward way. + + + + +CHAPTER III + + +In the meanwhile, Michael. Lifted through the air, exchanged into +invisible hands that drew him through a narrow diameter of brass into a +lighted room, Michael looked about him in expectancy of Jerry. But +Jerry, at that moment, lay cuddled beside Villa Kennan's sleeping-cot on +the slant deck of the _Ariel_, as that trim craft, the Shortlands astern +and New Guinea dead ahead, heeled her scuppers a-whisper and garrulous to +the sea-welter alongside as she logged her eleven knots under the press +of the freshening trades. Instead of Jerry, from whom he had last parted +on board a boat, Michael saw Kwaque. + +Kwaque? Well, Kwaque was Kwaque, an individual, more unlike all other +men than most men are unlike one another. No queerer estray ever drifted +along the stream of life. Seventeen years old he was, as men measure +time; but a century was measured in his lean-lined face, his wrinkled +forehead, his hollowed temples, and his deep-sunk eyes. From his thin +legs, fragile-looking as windstraws, the bones of which were sheathed in +withered skin with apparently no muscle padding in between--from such +frail stems sprouted the torso of a fat man. The huge and protuberant +stomach was amply supported by wide and massive hips, and the shoulders +were broad as those of a Hercules. But, beheld sidewise, there was no +depth to those shoulders and the top of the chest. Almost, at that part +of his anatomy, he seemed builded in two dimensions. Thin his arms were +as his legs, and, as Michael first beheld him, he had all the seeming of +a big-bellied black spider. + +He proceeded to dress, a matter of moments, slipping into duck trousers +and blouse, dirty and frayed from long usage. Two fingers of his left +hand were doubled into a permanent bend, and, to an expert, would have +advertised that he was a leper. Although he belonged to Dag Daughtry +just as much as if the steward possessed a chattel bill of sale of him, +his owner did not know that his anaesthetic twist of ravaged nerves +tokened the dread disease. + +The manner of the ownership was simple. At King William Island, in the +Admiralties, Kwaque had made, in the parlance of the South Pacific, a +pier-head jump. So to speak, leprosy and all, he had jumped into Dag +Daughtry's arms. Strolling along the native runways in the fringe of +jungle just beyond the beach, as was his custom, to see whatever he might +pick up, the steward had picked up Kwaque. And he had picked him up in +extremity. + +Pursued by two very active young men armed with fire-hardened spears, +tottering along with incredible swiftness on his two spindle legs, Kwaque +had fallen exhausted at Daughtry's feet and looked up at him with the +beseeching eyes of a deer fleeing from the hounds. Daughtry had inquired +into the matter, and the inquiry was violent; for he had a wholesome fear +of germs and bacilli, and when the two active young men tried to run him +through with their filth-corroded spears, he caught the spear of one +young man under his arm and put the other young man to sleep with a left +hook to the jaw. A moment later the young man whose spear he held had +joined the other in slumber. + +The elderly steward was not satisfied with the mere spears. While the +rescued Kwaque continued to moan and slubber thankfulness at his feet, he +proceeded to strip them that were naked. Nothing they wore in the way of +clothing, but from around each of their necks he removed a necklace of +porpoise teeth that was worth a gold sovereign in mere exchange value. +From the kinky locks of one of the naked young men he drew a hand-carved, +fine-toothed comb, the lofty back of which was inlaid with +mother-of-pearl, which he later sold in Sydney to a curio shop for eight +shillings. Nose and ear ornaments of bone and turtle-shell he also +rifled, as well as a chest-crescent of pearl shell, fourteen inches +across, worth fifteen shillings anywhere. The two spears ultimately +fetched him five shillings each from the tourists at Port Moresby. Not +lightly may a ship steward undertake to maintain a six-quart reputation. + +When he turned to depart from the active young men, who, back to +consciousness, were observing him with bright, quick, wild-animal eyes, +Kwaque followed so close at his heels as to step upon them and make him +stumble. Whereupon he loaded Kwaque with his trove and put him in front +to lead along the runway to the beach. And for the rest of the way to +the steamer, Dag Daughtry grinned and chuckled at sight of his plunder +and at sight of Kwaque, who fantastically titubated and ambled along, +barrel-like, on his pipe-stems. + +On board the steamer, which happened to be the _Cockspur_, Daughtry +persuaded the captain to enter Kwaque on the ship's articles as steward's +helper with a rating of ten shillings a month. Also, he learned Kwaque's +story. + +It was all an account of a pig. The two active young men were brothers +who lived in the next village to his, and the pig had been theirs--so +Kwaque narrated in atrocious beche-de-mer English. He, Kwaque, had never +seen the pig. He had never known of its existence until after it was +dead. The two young men had loved the pig. But what of that? It did +not concern Kwaque, who was as unaware of their love for the pig as he +was unaware of the pig itself. + +The first he knew, he averred, was the gossip of the village that the pig +was dead, and that somebody would have to die for it. It was all right, +he said, in reply to a query from the steward. It was the custom. +Whenever a loved pig died its owners were in custom bound to go out and +kill somebody, anybody. Of course, it was better if they killed the one +whose magic had made the pig sick. But, failing that one, any one would +do. Hence Kwaque was selected for the blood-atonement. + +Dag Daughtry drank a seventh quart as he listened, so carried away was he +by the sombre sense of romance of this dark jungle event wherein men +killed even strangers because a pig was dead. + +Scouts out on the runways, Kwaque continued, brought word of the coming +of the two bereaved pig-owners, and the village had fled into the jungle +and climbed trees--all except Kwaque, who was unable to climb trees. + +"My word," Kwaque concluded, "me no make 'm that fella pig sick." + +"My word," quoth Dag Daughtry, "you devil-devil along that fella pig too +much. You look 'm like hell. You make 'm any fella thing sick look +along you. You make 'm me sick too much." + +It became quite a custom for the steward, as he finished his sixth bottle +before turning in, to call upon Kwaque for his story. It carried him +back to his boyhood when he had been excited by tales of wild cannibals +in far lands and dreamed some day to see them for himself. And here he +was, he would chuckle to himself, with a real true cannibal for a slave. + +A slave Kwaque was, as much as if Daughtry had bought him on the auction- +block. Whenever the steward transferred from ship to ship of the Burns +Philp fleet, he always stipulated that Kwaque should accompany him and be +duly rated at ten shillings. Kwaque had no say in the matter. Even had +he desired to escape in Australian ports, there was no need for Daughtry +to watch him. Australia, with her "all-white" policy, attended to that. +No dark-skinned human, whether Malay, Japanese, or Polynesian, could land +on her shore without putting into the Government's hand a cash security +of one hundred pounds. + +Nor at the other islands visited by the _Makambo_ had Kwaque any desire +to cut and run for it. King William Island, which was the only land he +had ever trod, was his yard-stick by which he measured all other islands. +And since King William Island was cannibalistic, he could only conclude +that the other islands were given to similar dietary practice. + +As for King William Island, the _Makambo_, on the former run of the +_Cockspur_, stopped there every ten weeks; but the direst threat Daughtry +ever held over him was the putting ashore of him at the place where the +two active young men still mourned their pig. In fact, it was their +regular programme, each trip, to paddle out and around the _Makambo_ and +make ferocious grimaces up at Kwaque, who grimaced back at them from over +the rail. Daughtry even encouraged this exchange of facial amenities for +the purpose of deterring him from ever hoping to win ashore to the +village of his birth. + +For that matter, Kwaque had little desire to leave his master, who, after +all, was kindly and just, and never lifted a hand to him. Having +survived sea-sickness at the first, and never setting foot upon the land +so that he never again knew sea-sickness, Kwaque was certain he lived in +an earthly paradise. He never had to regret his inability to climb +trees, because danger never threatened him. He had food regularly, and +all he wanted, and it was such food! No one in his village could have +dreamed of any delicacy of the many delicacies which he consumed all the +time. Because of these matters he even pulled through a light attack of +home-sickness, and was as contented a human as ever sailed the seas. + +And Kwaque it was who pulled Michael through the port-hole into Dag +Daughtry's stateroom and waited for that worthy to arrive by the +roundabout way of the door. After a quick look around the room and a +sniff of the bunk and under the bunk which informed him that Jerry was +not present, Michael turned his attention to Kwaque. + +Kwaque tried to be friendly. He uttered a clucking noise in +advertisement of his friendliness, and Michael snarled at this black who +had dared to lay hands upon him--a contamination, according to Michael's +training--and who now dared to address him who associated only with white +gods. + +Kwaque passed off the rebuff with a silly gibbering laugh and started to +step nearer the door to be in readiness to open it at his master's +coming. But at first lift of his leg, Michael flew at it. Kwaque +immediately put it down, and Michael subsided, though he kept a watchful +guard. What did he know of this strange black, save that he was a black +and that, in the absence of a white master, all blacks required watching? +Kwaque tried slowly sliding his foot along the floor, but Michael knew +the trick and with bristle and growl put a stop to it. + +It was upon this tableau that Daughtry entered, and, while he admired +Michael much under the bright electric light, he realized the situation. + +"Kwaque, you make 'm walk about leg belong you," he commanded, in order +to make sure. + +Kwaque's glance of apprehension at Michael was convincing enough, but the +steward insisted. Kwaque gingerly obeyed, but scarcely had his foot +moved an inch when Michael's was upon him. The foot and leg petrified, +while Michael stiff-leggedly drew a half-circle of intimidation about +him. + +"Got you nailed to the floor, eh?" Daughtry chuckled. "Some +nigger-chaser, my word, any amount." + +"Hey, you, Kwaque, go fetch 'm two fella bottle of beer stop 'm along +icey-chestis," he commanded in his most peremptory manner. + +Kwaque looked beseechingly, but did not stir. Nor did he stir at a +harsher repetition of the order. + +"My word!" the steward bullied. "Suppose 'm you no fetch 'm beer close +up, I knock 'm eight bells 'n 'a dog-watch onta you. Suppose 'm you no +fetch 'm close up, me make 'm you go ashore 'n' walk about along King +William Island." + +"No can," Kwaque murmured timidly. "Eye belong dog look along me too +much. Me no like 'm dog kai-kai along me." + +"You fright along dog?" his master demanded. + +"My word, me fright along dog any amount." + +Dag Daughtry was delighted. Also, he was thirsty from his trip ashore +and did not prolong the situation. + +"Hey, you, dog," he addressed Michael. "This fella boy he all right. +Savvee? He all right." + +Michael bobbed his tail and flattened his ears in token that he was +trying to understand. When the steward patted the black on the shoulder, +Michael advanced and sniffed both the legs he had kept nailed to the +floor. + +"Walk about," Daughtry commanded. "Walk about slow fella," he cautioned, +though there was little need. + +Michael bristled, but permitted the first timid step. At the second he +glanced up at Daughtry to make certain. + +"That's right," he was reassured. "That fella boy belong me. He all +right, you bet." + +Michael smiled with his eyes that he understood, and turned casually +aside to investigate an open box on the floor which contained plates of +turtle-shell, hack-saws, and emery paper. + +* * * * * + +"And now," Dag Daughtry muttered weightily aloud, as, bottle in hand, he +leaned back in his arm-chair while Kwaque knelt at his feet to unlace his +shoes, "now to consider a name for you, Mister Dog, that will be just to +your breeding and fair to my powers of invention." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + + +Irish terriers, when they have gained maturity, are notable, not alone +for their courage, fidelity, and capacity for love, but for their cool- +headedness and power of self-control and restraint. They are less easily +excited off their balance; they can recognize and obey their master's +voice in the scuffle and rage of battle; and they never fly into nervous +hysterics such as are common, say, with fox-terriers. + +Michael possessed no trace of hysteria, though he was more +temperamentally excitable and explosive than his blood-brother Jerry, +while his father and mother were a sedate old couple indeed compared with +him. Far more than mature Jerry, was mature Michael playful and +rowdyish. His ebullient spirits were always on tap to spill over on the +slightest provocation, and, as he was afterwards to demonstrate, he could +weary a puppy with play. In short, Michael was a merry soul. + +"Soul" is used advisedly. Whatever the human soul may be--informing +spirit, identity, personality, consciousness--that intangible thing +Michael certainly possessed. His soul, differing only in degree, partook +of the same attributes as the human soul. He knew love, sorrow, joy, +wrath, pride, self-consciousness, humour. Three cardinal attributes of +the human soul are memory, will, and understanding; and memory, will, and +understanding were Michael's. + +Just like a human, with his five senses he contacted with the world +exterior to him. Just like a human, the results to him of these contacts +were sensations. Just like a human, these sensations on occasion +culminated in emotions. Still further, like a human, he could and did +perceive, and such perceptions did flower in his brain as concepts, +certainly not so wide and deep and recondite as those of humans, but +concepts nevertheless. + +Perhaps, to let the human down a trifle from such disgraceful identity of +the highest life-attributes, it would be well to admit that Michael's +sensations were not quite so poignant, say in the matter of a +needle-thrust through his foot as compared with a needle-thrust through +the palm of a hand. Also, it is admitted, when consciousness suffused +his brain with a thought, that the thought was dimmer, vaguer than a +similar thought in a human brain. Furthermore, it is admitted that +never, never, in a million lifetimes, could Michael have demonstrated a +proposition in Euclid or solved a quadratic equation. Yet he was capable +of knowing beyond all peradventure of a doubt that three bones are more +than two bones, and that ten dogs compose a more redoubtable host than do +two dogs. + +One admission, however, will not be made, namely, that Michael could not +love as devotedly, as wholeheartedly, unselfishly, madly, +self-sacrificingly as a human. He did so love--not because he was +Michael, but because he was a dog. + +Michael had loved Captain Kellar more than he loved his own life. No +more than Jerry for Skipper, would he have hesitated to risk his life for +Captain Kellar. And he was destined, as time went by and the conviction +that Captain Kellar had passed into the inevitable nothingness along with +Meringe and the Solomons, to love just as absolutely this six-quart +steward with the understanding ways and the fascinating lip-caress. +Kwaque, no; for Kwaque was black. Kwaque he merely accepted, as an +appurtenance, as a part of the human landscape, as a chattel of Dag +Daughtry. + +But he did not know this new god as Dag Daughtry. Kwaque called him +"marster"; but Michael heard other white men so addressed by the blacks. +Many blacks had he heard call Captain Kellar "marster." It was Captain +Duncan who called the steward "Steward." Michael came to hear him, and +his officers, and all the passengers, so call him; and thus, to Michael, +his god's name was Steward, and for ever after he was to know him and +think of him as Steward. + +There was the question of his own name. The next evening after he came +on board, Dag Daughtry talked it over with him. Michael sat on his +haunches, the length of his lower jaw resting on Daughtry's knee, the +while his eyes dilated, contracted and glowed, his ears ever pricking and +repricking to listen, his stump tail thumping ecstatically on the floor. + +"It's this way, son," the steward told him. "Your father and mother were +Irish. Now don't be denying it, you rascal--" + +This, as Michael, encouraged by the unmistakable geniality and kindness +in the voice, wriggled his whole body and thumped double knocks of +delight with his tail. Not that he understood a word of it, but that he +did understand the something behind the speech that informed the string +of sounds with all the mysterious likeableness that white gods possessed. + +"Never be ashamed of your ancestry. An' remember, God loves the +Irish--Kwaque! Go fetch 'm two bottle beer fella stop 'm along +icey-chestis!--Why, the very mug of you, my lad, sticks out Irish all +over it." (Michael's tail beat a tattoo.) "Now don't be blarneyin' me. +'Tis well I'm wise to your insidyous, snugglin', heart-stealin' ways. +I'll have ye know my heart's impervious. 'Tis soaked too long this many +a day in beer. I stole you to sell you, not to be lovin' you. I +could've loved you once; but that was before me and beer was introduced. +I'd sell you for twenty quid right now, coin down, if the chance offered. +An' I ain't goin' to love you, so you can put that in your pipe 'n' smoke +it." + +"But as I was about to say when so rudely interrupted by your 'fectionate +ways--" + +Here he broke off to tilt to his mouth the opened bottle Kwaque handed +him. He sighed, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and proceeded. + +"'Tis a strange thing, son, this silly matter of beer. Kwaque, the +Methusalem-faced ape grinnin' there, belongs to me. But by my faith do I +belong to beer, bottles 'n' bottles of it 'n' mountains of bottles of it +enough to sink the ship. Dog, truly I envy you, settin' there +comfortable-like inside your body that's untainted of alcohol. I may own +you, and the man that gives me twenty quid will own you, but never will a +mountain of bottles own you. You're a freer man than I am, Mister Dog, +though I don't know your name. Which reminds me--" + +He drained the bottle, tossed it to Kwaque, and made signs for him to +open the remaining one. + +"The namin' of you, son, is not lightly to be considered. Irish, of +course, but what shall it be? Paddy? Well may you shake your head. +There's no smack of distinction to it. Who'd mistake you for a +hod-carrier? Ballymena might do, but it sounds much like a lady, my boy. +Ay, boy you are. 'Tis an idea. Boy! Let's see. Banshee Boy? Rotten. +Lad of Erin!" + +He nodded approbation and reached for the second bottle. He drank and +meditated, and drank again. + +"I've got you," he announced solemnly. "Killeny is a lovely name, and +it's Killeny Boy for you. How's that strike your honourableness?--high- +soundin', dignified as a earl or . . . or a retired brewer. Many's the +one of that gentry I've helped to retire in my day." + +He finished his bottle, caught Michael suddenly by both jowls, and, +leaning forward, rubbed noses with him. As suddenly released, with +thumping tail and dancing eyes, Michael gazed up into the god's face. A +definite soul, or entity, or spirit-thing glimmered behind his dog's +eyes, already fond with affection for this hair-grizzled god who talked +with him he knew not what, but whose very talking carried delicious and +unguessable messages to his heart. + +"Hey! Kwaque, you!" + +Kwaque, squatted on the floor, his hams on his heels, paused from the +rough-polishing of a shell comb designed and cut out by his master, and +looked up, eager to receive command and serve. + +"Kwaque, you fella this time now savvee name stop along this fella dog. +His name belong 'm him, Killeny Boy. You make 'm name stop 'm inside +head belong you. All the time you speak 'm this fella dog, you speak 'm +Killeny Boy. Savvee? Suppose 'm you no savvee, I knock 'm block off +belong you. Killeny Boy, savvee! Killeny Boy. Killeny Boy." + +As Kwaque removed his shoes and helped him undress, Daughtry regarded +Michael with sleepy eyes. + +"I've got you, laddy," he announced, as he stood up and swayed toward +bed. "I've got your name, an' here's your number--I got that, too: _high- +strung but reasonable_. It fits you like the paper on the wall. + +"High-strung but reasonable, that's what you are, Killeny Boy, +high-strung but reasonable," he continued to mumble as Kwaque helped to +roll him into his bunk. + +Kwaque returned to his polishing. His lips stammered and halted in the +making of noiseless whispers, as, with corrugated brows of puzzlement, he +addressed the steward: + +"Marster, what name stop 'm along that fella dog?" + +"Killeny Boy, you kinky-head man-eater, Killeny Boy, Killeny Boy," Dag +Daughtry murmured drowsily. "Kwaque, you black blood-drinker, run n' +fetch 'm one fella bottle stop 'm along icey-chestis." + +"No stop 'm, marster," the black quavered, with eyes alert for something +to be thrown at him. "Six fella bottle he finish altogether." + +The steward's sole reply was a snore. + +The black, with the twisted hand of leprosy and with a barely perceptible +infiltration of the same disease thickening the skin of the forehead +between the eyes, bent over his polishing, and ever his lips moved, +repeating over and over, "Killeny Boy." + + + + +CHAPTER V + + +For a number of days Michael saw only Steward and Kwaque. This was +because he was confined to the steward's stateroom. Nobody else knew +that he was on board, and Dag Daughtry, thoroughly aware that he had +stolen a white man's dog, hoped to keep his presence secret and smuggle +him ashore when the _Makambo_ docked in Sydney. + +Quickly the steward learned Michael's pre-eminent teachableness. In the +course of his careful feeding of him, he gave him an occasional chicken +bone. Two lessons, which would scarcely be called lessons, since both of +them occurred within five minutes and each was not over half a minute in +duration, sufficed to teach Michael that only on the floor of the room in +the corner nearest the door could he chew chicken bones. Thereafter, +without prompting, as a matter of course when handed a bone, he carried +it to the corner. + +And why not? He had the wit to grasp what Steward desired of him; he had +the heart that made it a happiness for him to serve. Steward was a god +who was kind, who loved him with voice and lip, who loved him with touch +of hand, rub of nose, or enfolding arm. As all service flourishes in the +soil of love, so with Michael. Had Steward commanded him to forego the +chicken bone after it was in the corner, he would have served him by +foregoing. Which is the way of the dog, the only animal that will +cheerfully and gladly, with leaping body of joy, leave its food uneaten +in order to accompany or to serve its human master. + +Practically all his waking time off duty, Dag Daughtry spent with the +imprisoned Michael, who, at command, had quickly learned to refrain from +whining and barking. And during these hours of companionship Michael +learned many things. Daughtry found that he already understood and +obeyed simple things such as "no," "yes," "get up," and "lie down," and +he improved on them, teaching him, "Go into the bunk and lie down," "Go +under the bunk," "Bring one shoe," "Bring two shoes." And almost without +any work at all, he taught him to roll over, to say his prayers, to play +dead, to sit up and smoke a pipe with a hat on his head, and not merely +to stand up on his hind legs but to walk on them. + +Then, too, was the trick of "no can and can do." Placing a savoury, nose- +tantalising bit of meat or cheese on the edge of the bunk on a level with +Michael's nose, Daughtry would simply say, "No can." Nor would Michael +touch the food till he received the welcome, "Can do." Daughtry, with +the "no can" still in force, would leave the stateroom, and, though he +remained away half an hour or half a dozen hours, on his return he would +find the food untouched and Michael, perhaps, asleep in the corner at the +head of the bunk which had been allotted him for a bed. Early in this +trick once when the steward had left the room and Michael's eager nose +was within an inch of the prohibited morsel, Kwaque, playfully inclined, +reached for the morsel himself and received a lacerated hand from the +quick flash and clip of Michael's jaws. + +None of the tricks that he was ever eager to do for Steward, would +Michael do for Kwaque, despite the fact that Kwaque had no touch of +meanness or viciousness in him. The point was that Michael had been +trained, from his first dawn of consciousness, to differentiate between +black men and white men. Black men were always the servants of white +men--or such had been his experience; and always they were objects of +suspicion, ever bent on wreaking mischief and requiring careful watching. +The cardinal duty of a dog was to serve his white god by keeping a +vigilant eye on all blacks that came about. + +Yet Michael permitted Kwaque to serve him in matters of food, water, and +other offices, at first in the absence of Steward attending to his ship +duties, and, later, at any time. For he realized, without thinking about +it at all, that whatever Kwaque did for him, whatever food Kwaque spread +for him, really proceeded, not from Kwaque, but from Kwaque's master who +was also his master. Yet Kwaque bore no grudge against Michael, and was +himself so interested in his lord's welfare and comfort--this lord who +had saved his life that terrible day on King William Island from the two +grief-stricken pig-owners--that he cherished Michael for his lord's sake. +Seeing the dog growing into his master's affection, Kwaque himself +developed a genuine affection for Michael--much in the same way that he +worshipped anything of the steward's, whether the shoes he polished for +him, the clothes he brushed and cleaned for him, or the six bottles of +beer he put into the ice-chest each day for him. + +In truth, there was nothing of the master-quality in Kwaque, while +Michael was a natural aristocrat. Michael, out of love, would serve +Steward, but Michael lorded it over the kinky-head. Kwaque possessed +overwhelmingly the slave-nature, while in Michael there was little more +of the slave-nature than was found in the North American Indians when the +vain attempt was made to make them into slaves on the plantations of +Cuba. All of which was no personal vice of Kwaque or virtue of Michael. +Michael's heredity, rigidly selected for ages by man, was chiefly +composed of fierceness and faithfulness. And fierceness and +faithfulness, together, invariably produce pride. And pride cannot exist +without honour, nor can honour without poise. + +Michael's crowning achievement, under Daughtry's tutelage, in the first +days in the stateroom, was to learn to count up to five. Many hours of +work were required, however, in spite of his unusual high endowment of +intelligence. For he had to learn, first, the spoken numerals; second, +to see with his eyes and in his brain differentiate between one object, +and all other groups of objects up to and including the group of five; +and, third, in his mind, to relate an object, or any group of objects, +with its numerical name as uttered by Steward. + +In the training Dag Daughtry used balls of paper tied about with twine. +He would toss the five balls under the bunk and tell Michael to fetch +three, and neither two, nor four, but three would Michael bring forth and +deliver into his hand. When Daughtry threw three under the bunk and +demanded four, Michael would deliver the three, search about vainly for +the fourth, then dance pleadingly with bobs of tail and half-leaps about +Steward, and finally leap into the bed and secure the fourth from under +the pillow or among the blankets. + +It was the same with other known objects. Up to five, whether shoes or +shirts or pillow-slips, Michael would fetch the number requested. And +between the mathematical mind of Michael, who counted to five, and the +mind of the ancient black at Tulagi, who counted sticks of tobacco in +units of five, was a distance shorter than that between Michael and Dag +Daughtry who could do multiplication and long division. In the same +manner, up the same ladder of mathematical ability, a still greater +distance separated Dag Daughtry from Captain Duncan, who by mathematics +navigated the _Makambo_. Greatest mathematical distance of all was that +between Captain Duncan's mind and the mind of an astronomer who charted +the heavens and navigated a thousand million miles away among the stars +and who tossed, a mere morsel of his mathematical knowledge, the few +shreds of information to Captain Duncan that enabled him to know from day +to day the place of the _Makambo_ on the sea. + +In one thing only could Kwaque rule Michael. Kwaque possessed a jews' +harp, and, whenever the world of the _Makambo_ and the servitude to the +steward grew wearisome, he could transport himself to King William Island +by thrusting the primitive instrument between his jaws and fanning weird +rhythms from it with his hand, and when he thus crossed space and time, +Michael sang--or howled, rather, though his howl possessed the same soft +mellowness as Jerry's. Michael did not want to howl, but the chemistry +of his being was such that he reacted to music as compulsively as +elements react on one another in the laboratory. + +While he lay perdu in Steward's stateroom, his voice was the one thing +that was not to be heard, so Kwaque was forced to seek the solace of his +jews' harp in the sweltering heat of the gratings over the fire-room. But +this did not continue long, for, either according to blind chance, or to +the lines of fate written in the book of life ere ever the foundations of +the world were laid, Michael was scheduled for an adventure that was +profoundly to affect, not alone his own destiny, but the destinies of +Kwaque and Dag Daughtry and determine the very place of their death and +burial. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + + +The adventure that was so to alter the future occurred when Michael, in +no uncertain manner, announced to all and sundry his presence on the +_Makambo_. It was due to Kwaque's carelessness, to commence with, for +Kwaque left the stateroom without tight-closing the door. As the +_Makambo_ rolled on an easy sea the door swung back and forth, remaining +wide open for intervals and banging shut but not banging hard enough to +latch itself. + +Michael crossed the high threshold with the innocent intention of +exploring no farther than the immediate vicinity. But scarcely was he +through, when a heavier roll slammed the door and latched it. And +immediately Michael wanted to get back. Obedience was strong in him, for +it was his heart's desire to serve his lord's will, and from the few +days' confinement he sensed, or guessed, or divined, without thinking +about it, that it was Steward's will for him to stay in the stateroom. + +For a long time he sat down before the closed door, regarding it +wistfully but being too wise to bark or speak to such inanimate object. +It had been part of his early puppyhood education to learn that only live +things could be moved by plea or threat, and that while things not alive +did move, as the door had moved, they never moved of themselves, and were +deaf to anything life might have to say to them. Occasionally he trotted +down the short cross-hall upon which the stateroom opened, and gazed up +and down the long hall that ran fore and aft. + +For the better part of an hour he did this, returning always to the door +that would not open. Then he achieved a definite idea. Since the door +would not open, and since Steward and Kwaque did not return, he would go +in search of them. Once with this concept of action clear in his brain, +without timidities of hesitation and irresolution, he trotted aft down +the long hall. Going around the right angle in which it ended, he +encountered a narrow flight of steps. Among many scents, he recognized +those of Kwaque and Steward and knew they had passed that way. + +Up the stairs and on the main deck, he began to meet passengers. Being +white gods, he did not resent their addresses to him, though he did not +linger and went out on the open deck where more of the favoured gods +reclined in steamer-chairs. Still no Kwaque or Steward. Another flight +of narrow, steep stairs invited, and he came out on the boat-deck. Here, +under the wide awnings, were many more of the gods--many times more than +he had that far seen in his life. + +The for'ard end of the boat-deck terminated in the bridge, which, instead +of being raised above it, was part of it. Trotting around the +wheel-house to the shady lee-side of it, he came upon his fate; for be it +known that Captain Duncan possessed on board in addition to two +fox-terriers, a big Persian cat, and that cat possessed a litter of +kittens. Her chosen nursery was the wheel-house, and Captain Duncan had +humoured her, giving her a box for her kittens and threatening the +quartermasters with all manner of dire fates did they so much as step on +one of the kittens. + +But Michael knew nothing of this. And the big Persian knew of his +existence before he did of hers. In fact, the first he knew was when she +launched herself upon him out of the open wheel-house doorway. Even as +he glimpsed this abrupt danger, and before he could know what it was, he +leaped sideways and saved himself. From his point of view, the assault +was unprovoked. He was staring at her with bristling hair, recognizing +her for what she was, a cat, when she sprang again, her tail the size of +a large man's arm, all claws and spitting fury and vindictiveness. + +This was too much for a self-respecting Irish terrier. His wrath was +immediate with her second leap, and he sprang to the side to avoid her +claws, and in from the side to meet her, his jaws clamping together on +her spinal column with a jerk while she was still in mid-air. The next +moment she lay sprawling and struggling on the deck with a broken back. + +But for Michael this was only the beginning. A shrill yelling, rather +than yelping, of more enemies made him whirl half about, but not quick +enough. Struck in flank by two full-grown fox-terriers, he was slashed +and rolled on the deck. The two, by the way, had long before made their +first appearance on the _Makambo_ as little puppies in Dag Daughtry's +coat pockets--Daughtry, in his usual fashion, having appropriated them +ashore in Sydney and sold them to Captain Duncan for a guinea apiece. + +By this time, scrambling to his feet, Michael was really angry. In +truth, it was raining cats and dogs, such belligerent shower all +unprovoked by him who had picked no quarrels nor even been aware of his +enemies until they assailed him. Brave the fox-terriers were, despite +the hysterical rage they were in, and they were upon him as he got his +legs under him. The fangs of one clashed with his, cutting the lips of +both of them, and the lighter dog recoiled from the impact. The other +succeeded in taking Michael in flank, fetching blood and hurt with his +teeth. With an instant curve, that was almost spasmodic, of his body, +Michael flung his flank clear, leaving the other's mouth full of his +hair, and at the same moment drove his teeth through an ear till they +met. The fox-terrier, with a shrill yelp of pain, sprang back so +impetuously as to ribbon its ear as Michael's teeth combed through it. + +The first terrier was back upon him, and he was whirling to meet it, when +a new and equally unprovoked assault was made upon him. This time it was +Captain Duncan, in a rage at sight of his slain cat. The instep of his +foot caught Michael squarely under the chest, half knocking the breath +out of him and wholly lifting him into the air, so that he fell heavily +on his side. The two terriers were upon him, filling their mouths with +his straight, wiry hair as they sank their teeth in. Still on his side, +as he was beginning to struggle to his feet, he clipped his jaws together +on a leg of one, who screamed with pain and retreated on three legs, +holding up the fourth, a fore leg, the bone of which Michael's teeth had +all but crushed. + +Twice Michael slashed the other four-footed foe and then pursued him in a +circle with Captain Duncan pursuing him in turn. Shortening the distance +by leaping across a chord of the arc of the other's flight, Michael +closed his jaws on the back and side of the neck. Such abrupt arrest in +mid-flight by the heavier dog brought the fox-terrier down on deck with, +a heavy thump. Simultaneous with this, Captain Duncan's second kick +landed, communicating such propulsion to Michael as to tear his clenched +teeth through the flesh and out of the flesh of the fox-terrier. + +And Michael turned on the Captain. What if he were a white god? In his +rage at so many assaults of so many enemies, Michael, who had been +peacefully looking for Kwaque and Steward, did not stop to reckon. +Besides, it was a strange white god upon whom he had never before laid +eyes. + +At the beginning he had snarled and growled. But it was a more serious +affair to attack a god, and no sound came from him as he leaped to meet +the leg flying toward him in another kick. As with the cat, he did not +leap straight at it. To the side to avoid, and in with a curve of body +as it passed, was his way. He had learned the trick with many blacks at +Meringe and on board the _Eugenie_, so that as often he succeeded as +failed at it. His teeth came together in the slack of the white duck +trousers. The consequent jerk on Captain Duncan's leg made that +infuriated mariner lose his balance. Almost he fell forward on his face, +part recovered himself with a violent effort, stumbled over Michael who +was in for another bite, tottered wildly around, and sat down on the +deck. + +How long he might have sat there to recover his breath is problematical, +for he rose as rapidly as his stoutness would permit, spurred on by +Michael's teeth already sunk into the fleshy part of his shoulder. +Michael missed his calf as he uprose, but tore the other leg of the +trousers to shreds and received a kick that lifted him a yard above the +deck in a half-somersault and landed him on his back on deck. + +Up to this time the Captain had been on the ferocious offensive, and he +was in the act of following up the kick when Michael regained his feet +and soared up in the air, not for leg or thigh, but for the throat. Too +high it was for him to reach it, but his teeth closed on the flowing +black scarf and tore it to tatters as his weight drew him back to deck. + +It was not this so much that turned Captain Duncan to the pure defensive +and started him retreating backward, as it was the silence of Michael. +Ominous as death it was. There were no snarls nor throat-threats. With +eyes straight-looking and unblinking, he sprang and sprang again. Neither +did he growl when he attacked nor yelp when he was kicked. Fear of the +blow was not in him. As Tom Haggin had so often bragged of Biddy and +Terrence, they bred true in Jerry and Michael in the matter of not +wincing at a blow. Always--they were so made--they sprang to meet the +blow and to encounter the creature who delivered the blow. With a +silence that was invested with the seriousness of death, they were wont +to attack and to continue to attack. + +And so Michael. As the Captain retreated kicking, he attacked, leaping +and slashing. What saved Captain Duncan was a sailor with a deck mop on +the end of a stick. Intervening, he managed to thrust it into Michael's +mouth and shove him away. This first time his teeth closed automatically +upon it. But, spitting it out, he declined thereafter to bite it, +knowing it for what it was, an inanimate thing upon which his teeth could +inflict no hurt. + +Nor, beyond trying to avoid him, was he interested in the sailor. It was +Captain Duncan, leaning his back against the rail, breathing heavily, and +wiping the streaming sweat from his face, who was Michael's meat. Long +as it has taken to tell the battle, beginning with the slaying of the +Persian cat to the thrusting of the mop into Michael's jaws, so swift had +been the rush of events that the passengers, springing from their deck- +chairs and hurrying to the scene, were just arriving when Michael eluded +the mop of the sailor by a successful dodge and plunged in on Captain +Duncan, this time sinking his teeth so savagely into a rotund calf as to +cause its owner to splutter an incoherent curse and howl of wrathful +surprise. + +A fortunate kick hurled Michael away and enabled the sailor to intervene +once again with the mop. And upon the scene came Dag Daughtry, to behold +his captain, frayed and bleeding and breathing apoplectically, Michael +raging in ghastly silence at the end of a mop, and a large Persian mother- +cat writhing with a broken back. + +"Killeny Boy!" the steward cried imperatively. + +Through no matter what indignation and rage that possessed him, his +lord's voice penetrated his consciousness, so that, cooling almost +instantly, Michael's ears flattened, his bristling hair lay down, and his +lips covered his fangs as he turned his head to look acknowledgment. + +"Come here, Killeny!" + +Michael obeyed--not crouching cringingly, but trotting eagerly, gladly, +to Steward's feet. + +"Lie down, Boy." + +He turned half around as he flumped himself down with a sigh of relief, +and, with a red flash of tongue, kissed Steward's foot. + +"Your dog, Steward?" Captain Duncan demanded in a smothered voice wherein +struggled anger and shortness of breath. + +"Yes, sir. My dog. What's he been up to, sir?" + +The totality of what Michael had been up to choked the Captain +completely. He could only gesture around from the dying cat to his torn +clothes and bleeding wounds and the fox-terriers licking their injuries +and whimpering at his feet. + +"It's too bad, sir . . . " Daughtry began. + +"Too bad, hell!" the captain shut him off. "Bo's'n! Throw that dog +overboard." + +"Throw the dog overboard, sir, yes, sir," the boatswain repeated, but +hesitated. + +Dag Daughtry's face hardened unconsciously with the stiffening of his +will to dogged opposition, which, in its own slow quiet way, would go to +any length to have its way. But he answered respectfully enough, his +features, by a shrewd effort, relaxing into a seeming of his customary +good-nature. + +"He's a good dog, sir, and an unoffending dog. I can't imagine what +could a-made 'm break loose this way. He must a-had cause, sir--" + +"He had," one of the passengers, a coconut planter from the Shortlands, +interjected. + +The steward threw him a grateful glance and continued. + +"He's a good dog, sir, a most obedient dog, sir--look at the way he +minded me right in the thick of the scrap an' come 'n' lay down. He's +smart as chain-lightnin', sir; do anything I tell him. I'll make him +make friends. See. . . " + +Stepping over to the two hysterical terriers, Daughtry called Michael to +him. + +"He's all right, savvee, Killeny, he all right," he crooned, at the same +time resting one hand on a terrier and the other on Michael. + +The terrier whimpered and backed solidly against Captain Duncan's legs, +but Michael, with a slow bob of tail and unbelligerent ears, advanced to +him, looked up to Steward to make sure, then sniffed his late antagonist, +and even ran out his tongue in a caress to the side of the other's ear. + +"See, sir, no bad feelings," Daughtry exulted. "He plays the game, sir. +He's a proper dog, he's a man-dog.--Here, Killeny! The other one. He +all right. Kiss and make up. That's the stuff." + +The other fox-terrier, the one with the injured foreleg, endured +Michael's sniff with no more than hysterical growls deep in the throat; +but the flipping out of Michael's tongue was too much. The wounded +terrier exploded in a futile snap at Michael's tongue and nose. + +"He all right, Killeny, he all right, sure," Steward warned quickly. + +With a bob of his tail in token of understanding, without a shade of +resentment, Michael lifted a paw and with a playful casual stroke, dab- +like, brought its weight on the other's neck and rolled him, +head-downward, over on the deck. Though he snarled wrathily, Michael +turned away composedly and looked up into Steward's face for approval. + +A roar of laughter from the passengers greeted the capsizing of the fox- +terrier and the good-natured gravity of Michael. But not alone at this +did they laugh, for at the moment of the snap and the turning over, +Captain Duncan's unstrung nerves had exploded, causing him to jump as he +tensed his whole body. + +"Why, sir," the steward went on with growing confidence, "I bet I can +make him friends with you, too, by this time to-morrow . . . " + +"By this time five minutes he'll be overboard," the captain answered. +"Bo's'n! Over with him!" + +The boatswain advanced a tentative step, while murmurs of protest arose +from the passengers. + +"Look at my cat, and look at me," Captain Duncan defended his action. + +The boatswain made another step, and Dag Daughtry glared a threat at him. + +"Go on!" the Captain commanded. + +"Hold on!" spoke up the Shortlands planter. "Give the dog a square deal. +I saw the whole thing. He wasn't looking for trouble. First the cat +jumped him. She had to jump twice before he turned loose. She'd have +scratched his eyes out. Then the two dogs jumped him. He hadn't +bothered them. Then you jumped him. He hadn't bothered you. And then +came that sailor with the mop. And now you want the bo's'n to jump him +and throw him overboard. Give him a square deal. He's only been +defending himself. What do you expect any dog that is a dog to do?--lie +down and be walked over by every strange dog and cat that comes along? +Play the game, Skipper. You gave him some mighty hard kicks. He only +defended himself." + +"He's some defender," Captain Duncan grinned, with a hint of the return +of his ordinary geniality, at the same time tenderly pressing his +bleeding shoulder and looking woefully down at his tattered duck +trousers. "All right, Steward. If you can make him friends with me in +five minutes, he stays on board. But you'll have to make it up to me +with a new pair of trousers." + +"And gladly, sir, thank you, sir," Daughtry cried. "And I'll make it up +with a new cat as well, sir--Come on, Killeny Boy. This big fella +marster he all right, you bet." + +And Michael listened. Not with the smouldering, smothering, choking +hysteria that still worked in the fox-terriers did he listen, nor with +quivering of muscles and jumps of over-wrought nerves, but coolly, +composedly, as if no battle royal had just taken place and no rips of +teeth and kicks of feet still burned and ached his body. + +He could not help bristling, however, when first he sniffed a trousers' +leg into which his teeth had so recently torn. + +"Put your hand down on him, sir," Daughtry begged. + +And Captain Duncan, his own good self once more, bent and rested a firm, +unhesitating hand on Michael's head. Nay, more; he even caressed the +ears and rubbed about the roots of them. And Michael the merry-hearted, +who fought like a lion and forgave and forgot like a man, laid his neck +hair smoothly down, wagged his stump tail, smiled with his eyes and ears +and mouth, and kissed with his tongue the hand with which a short time +before he had been at war. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + + +For the rest of the voyage Michael had the run of the ship. Friendly to +all, he reserved his love for Steward alone, though he was not above many +an undignified romp with the fox-terriers. + +"The most playful-minded dog, without being silly, I ever saw," was Dag +Daughtry's verdict to the Shortlands planter, to whom he had just sold +one of his turtle-shell combs. "You see, some dogs never get over the +play-idea, an' they're never good for anything else. But not Killeny +Boy. He can come down to seriousness in a second. I'll show you, and +I'll show you he's got a brain that counts to five an' knows wireless +telegraphy. You just watch." + +At the moment the steward made his faint lip-noise--so faint that he +could not hear it himself and was almost for wondering whether or not he +had made it; so faint that the Shortlands planter did not dream that he +was making it. At that moment Michael was lying squirming on his back a +dozen feet away, his legs straight up in the air, both fox-terriers +worrying with well-stimulated ferociousness. With a quick out-thrust of +his four legs, he rolled over on his side and with questioning eyes and +pricked ears looked and listened. Again Daughtry made the lip-noise; +again the Shortlands planter did not hear nor guess; and Michael bounded +to his feet and to his lord's side. + +"Some dog, eh?" the steward boasted. + +"But how did he know you wanted him?" the planter queried. "You never +called him." + +"Mental telepathy, the affinity of souls pitched in the same whatever-you- +call-it harmony," the steward mystified. "You see, Killeny an' me are +made of the same kind of stuff, only run into different moulds. He might +a-been my full brother, or me his, only for some mistake in the creation +factory somewhere. Now I'll show you he knows his bit of arithmetic." + +And, drawing the paper balls from his pocket, Dag Daughtry demonstrated +to the amazement and satisfaction of the ring of passengers Michael's +ability to count to five. + +"Why, sir," Daughtry concluded the performance, "if I was to order four +glasses of beer in a public-house ashore, an' if I was absent-minded an' +didn't notice the waiter 'd only brought three, Killeny Boy there 'd +raise a row instanter." + +Kwaque was no longer compelled to enjoy his jews' harp on the gratings +over the fire-room, now that Michael's presence on the _Makambo_ was +known, and, in the stateroom, on stolen occasions, he made experiments of +his own with Michael. Once the jews' harp began emitting its barbaric +rhythms, Michael was helpless. He needs must open his mouth and pour +forth an unwilling, gushing howl. But, as with Jerry, it was not mere +howl. It was more akin to a mellow singing; and it was not long before +Kwaque could lead his voice up and down, in rough time and tune, within a +definite register. + +Michael never liked these lessons, for, looking down upon Kwaque, he +hated in any way to be under the black's compulsion. But all this was +changed when Dag Daughtry surprised them at a singing lesson. He +resurrected the harmonica with which it was his wont, ashore in public- +houses, to while away the time between bottles. The quickest way to +start Michael singing, he discovered, was with minors; and, once started, +he would sing on and on for as long as the music played. Also, in the +absence of an instrument, Michael would sing to the prompting and +accompaniment of Steward's voice, who would begin by wailing "kow-kow" +long and sadly, and then branch out on some old song or ballad. Michael +had hated to sing with Kwaque, but he loved to do it with Steward, even +when Steward brought him on deck to perform before the laughter-shrieking +passengers. + +Two serious conversations were held by the steward toward the close of +the voyage: one with Captain Duncan and one with Michael. + +"It's this way, Killeny," Daughtry began, one evening, Michael's head +resting on his lord's knees as he gazed adoringly up into his lord's +face, understanding no whit of what was spoken but loving the intimacy +the sounds betokened. "I stole you for beer money, an' when I saw you +there on the beach that night I knew you'd bring ten quid anywheres. Ten +quid's a horrible lot of money. Fifty dollars in the way the Yankees +reckon it, an' a hundred Mex in China fashion. + +"Now, fifty dollars gold 'd buy beer to beat the band--enough to drown me +if I fell in head first. Yet I want to ask you one question. Can you +see me takin' ten quid for you? . . . Go on. Speak up. Can you?" + +And Michael, with thumps of tail to the floor and a high sharp bark, +showed that he was in entire agreement with whatever had been propounded. + +"Or say twenty quid, now. That's a fair offer. Would I? Eh! Would I? +Not on your life. What d'ye say to fifty quid? That might begin to +interest me, but a hundred quid would interest me more. Why, a hundred +quid all in beer 'd come pretty close to floatin' this old hooker. But +who in Sam Hill'd offer a hundred quid? I'd like to clap eyes on him +once, that's all, just once. D'ye want to know what for? All right. +I'll whisper it. So as I could tell him to go to hell. Sure, Killeny +Boy, just like that--oh, most polite, of course, just a kindly directin' +of his steps where he'd never suffer from frigid extremities." + +Michael's love for Steward was so profound as almost to be a mad but +enduring infatuation. What the steward's regard for Michael was coming +to be was best evidenced by his conversation with Captain Duncan. + +"Sure, sir, he must 've followed me on board," Daughtry finished his +unveracious recital. "An' I never knew it. Last I seen of 'm was on the +beach. Next I seen of 'm there, he was fast asleep in my bunk. Now +how'd he get there, sir? How'd he pick out my room? I leave it to you, +sir. I call it marvellous, just plain marvellous." + +"With a quartermaster at the head of the gangway!" Captain Duncan +snorted. "As if I didn't know your tricks, Steward. There's nothing +marvellous about it. Just a plain case of steal. Followed you on board? +That dog never came over the side. He came through a port-hole, and he +never came through by himself. That nigger of yours, I'll wager, had a +hand in the helping. But let's have done with beating about the bush. +Give me the dog, and I'll say no more about the cat." + +"Seein' you believe what you believe, then you'd be for compoundin' the +felony," Daughtry retorted, the habitual obstinate tightening of his +brows showing which way his will set. "Me, sir, I'm only a ship's +steward, an' it wouldn't mean nothin' at all bein' arrested for +dog-stealin'; but you, sir, a captain of a fine steamer, how'd it sound +for you, sir? No, sir; it'd be much wiser for me to keep the dog that +followed me aboard." + +"I'll give ten pounds in the bargain," the captain proffered. + +"No, it wouldn't do, it wouldn't do at all, sir, an' you a captain," the +steward continued to reiterate, rolling his head sombrely. "Besides, I +know where's a peach of an Angora in Sydney. The owner is gone to the +country an' has no further use of it, an' it'd be a kindness to the cat, +air to give it a good regular home like the _Makambo_." + + + + +CHAPTER VIIII + + +Another trick Dag Daughtry succeeded in teaching Michael so enhanced him +in Captain Duncan's eyes as to impel him to offer fifty pounds, "and +never mind the cat." At first, Daughtry practised the trick in private +with the chief engineer and the Shortlands planter. Not until thoroughly +satisfied did he make a public performance of it. + +"Now just suppose you're policemen, or detectives," Daughtry told the +first and third officers, "an' suppose I'm guilty of some horrible crime. +An' suppose Killeny is the only clue, an' you've got Killeny. When he +recognizes his master--me, of course--you've got your man. You go down +the deck with him, leadin' by the rope. Then you come back this way with +him, makin' believe this is the street, an' when he recognizes me you +arrest me. But if he don't realize me, you can't arrest me. See?" + +The two officers led Michael away, and after several minutes returned +along the deck, Michael stretched out ahead on the taut rope seeking +Steward. + +"What'll you take for the dog?" Daughtry demanded, as they drew near--this +the cue he had trained Michael to know. + +And Michael, straining at the rope, went by, without so much as a wag of +tail to Steward or a glance of eye. The officers stopped before Daughtry +and drew Michael back into the group. + +"He's a lost dog," said the first officer. + +"We're trying to find his owner," supplemented the third. + +"Some dog that--what'll you take for 'm?" Daughtry asked, studying +Michael with critical eyes of interest. "What kind of a temper's he +got?" + +"Try him," was the answer. + +The steward put out his hand to pat him on the head, but withdrew it +hastily as Michael, with bristle and growl, viciously bared his teeth. + +"Go on, go on, he won't hurt you," the delighted passengers urged. + +This time the steward's hand was barely missed by a snap, and he leaped +back as Michael ferociously sprang the length of the rope at him. + +"Take 'm away!" Dag Daughtry roared angrily. "The treacherous beast! I +wouldn't take 'm for gift!" + +And as they obeyed, Michael strained backward in a paroxysm of rage, +making fierce short jumps to the end of the tether as he snarled and +growled with utmost fierceness at the steward. + +"Eh? Who'd say he ever seen me in his life?" Daughtry demanded +triumphantly. "It's a trick I never seen played myself, but I've heard +tell about it. The old-time poachers in England used to do it with their +lurcher dogs. If they did get the dog of a strange poacher, no +gamekeeper or constable could identify 'm by the dog--mum was the word." + +"Tell you what, he knows things, that Killeny. He knows English. Right +now, in my room, with the door open, an' so as he can find 'm, is shoes, +slippers, cap, towel, hair-brush, an' tobacco pouch. What'll it be? Name +it an' he'll fetch it." + +So immediately and variously did the passengers respond that every +article was called for. + +"Just one of you choose," the steward advised. "The rest of you pick 'm +out." + +"Slipper," said Captain Duncan, selected by acclamation. + +"One or both?" Daughtry asked. + +"Both." + +"Come here, Killeny," Daughtry began, bending toward him but leaping back +from the snap of jaws that clipped together close to his nose. + +"My mistake," he apologized. "I ain't told him the other game was over. +Now just listen an, watch. 'n' see if you can catch on to the tip I'm +goin' to give 'm." + +No one saw anything, heard anything, yet Michael, with a whine of +eagerness and joy, with laughing mouth and wriggling body, was upon the +steward, licking his hands madly, squirming and twisting in the embrace +of the loved hands he had so recently threatened, making attempts at +short upward leaps as he flashed his tongue upward toward his lord's +face. For hard it was on Michael, a nerve and mental strain of the +severest for him so to control himself as to play-act anger and threat of +hurt to his beloved Steward. + +"Takes him a little time to get over a thing like that," Daughtry +explained, as he soothed Michael down. + +"Now, Killeny! Go fetch 'm slipper! Wait! Fetch 'm _one_ slipper. +Fetch 'm _two_ slipper." + +Michael looked up with pricked ears, and with eyes filled with query as +all his intelligent consciousness suffused them. + +"_Two_ slipper! Fetch 'm quick!" + +He was off and away in a scurry of speed that seemed to flatten him close +to the deck, and that, as he turned the corner of the deck-house to the +stairs, made his hind feet slip and slide across the smooth planks. + +Almost in a trice he was back, both slippers in his mouth, which he +deposited at the steward's feet. + +"The more I know dogs the more amazin' marvellous they are to me," Dag +Daughtry, after he had compassed his fourth bottle, confided in monologue +to the Shortlands planter that night just before bedtime. "Take Killeny +Boy. He don't do things for me mechanically, just because he's learned +to do 'm. There's more to it. He does 'm because he likes me. I can't +give you the hang of it, but I feel it, I _know_ it. + +"Maybe, this is what I'm drivin' at. Killeny can't talk, as you 'n' me +talk, I mean; so he can't tell me how he loves me, an' he's all love, +every last hair of 'm. An' actions speakin' louder 'n' words, he tells +me how he loves me by doin' these things for me. Tricks? Sure. But +they make human speeches of eloquence cheaper 'n dirt. Sure it's speech. +Dog-talk that's tongue-tied. Don't I know? Sure as I'm a livin' man +born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, just as sure am I that it makes +'m happy to do tricks for me . . . just as it makes a man happy to lend a +hand to a pal in a ticklish place, or a lover happy to put his coat +around the girl he loves to keep her warm. I tell you . . . " + +Here, Dag Daughtry broke down from inability to express the concepts +fluttering in his beer-excited, beer-sodden brain, and, with a stutter or +two, made a fresh start. + +"You know, it's all in the matter of talkin', an' Killeny can't talk. +He's got thoughts inside that head of his--you can see 'm shinin' in his +lovely brown eyes--but he can't get 'em across to me. Why, I see 'm +tryin' to tell me sometimes so hard that he almost busts. There's a big +hole between him an' me, an' language is about the only bridge, and he +can't get over the hole, though he's got all kinds of ideas an' feelings +just like mine. + +"But, say! The time we get closest together is when I play the harmonica +an' he yow-yows. Music comes closest to makin' the bridge. It's a +regular song without words. And . . . I can't explain how . . . but just +the same, when we've finished our song, I know we've passed a lot over to +each other that don't need words for the passin'." + +"Why, d'ye know, when I'm playin' an' he's singin', it's a regular duet +of what the sky-pilots 'd call religion an' knowin' God. Sure, when we +sing together I'm absorbin' religion an' gettin' pretty close up to God. +An' it's big, I tell you. Big as the earth an' ocean an' sky an' all the +stars. I just seem to get hold of a sense that we're all the same stuff +after all--you, me, Killeny Boy, mountains, sand, salt water, worms, +mosquitoes, suns, an' shootin' stars an' blazin comets . . . " + +Day Daughtry left his flight as beyond his own grasp of speech, and +concluded, his half embarrassment masked by braggadocio over Michael: + +"Oh, believe me, they don't make dogs like him every day in the week. +Sure, I stole 'm. He looked good to me. An' if I had it over, knowin' +as I do known 'm now, I'd steal 'm again if I lost a leg doin' it. That's +the kind of a dog _he_ is." + + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +The morning the _Makambo_ entered Sydney harbour, Captain Duncan had +another try for Michael. The port doctor's launch was coming alongside, +when he nodded up to Daughtry, who was passing along the deck: + +"Steward, I'll give you twenty pounds." + +"No, sir, thank you, sir," was Dag Daughtry's answer. "I couldn't bear +to part with him." + +"Twenty-five pounds, then. I can't go beyond that. Besides, there are +plenty more Irish terriers in the world." + +"That's what I'm thinkin', sir. An' I'll get one for you. Right here in +Sydney. An' it won't cost you a penny, sir." + +"But I want Killeny Boy," the captain persisted. + +"An' so do I, which is the worst of it, sir. Besides, I got him first." + +"Twenty-five sovereigns is a lot of money . . . for a dog," Captain +Duncan said. + +"An' Killeny Boy's a lot of dog . . . for the money," the steward +retorted. "Why, sir, cuttin' out all sentiment, his tricks is worth more +'n that. Him not recognizing me when I don't want 'm to is worth fifty +pounds of itself. An' there's his countin' an' his singin', an' all the +rest of his tricks. Now, no matter how I got him, he didn't have them +tricks. Them tricks are mine. I taught him them. He ain't the dog he +was when he come on board. He's a whole lot of me now, an' sellin' him +would be like sellin' a piece of myself." + +"Thirty pounds," said the captain with finality. + +"No, sir, thankin' you just the same, sir," was Daughtry's refusal. + +And Captain Duncan was forced to turn away in order to greet the port +doctor coming over the side. + +Scarcely had the _Makambo_ passed quarantine, and while on her way up +harbour to dock, when a trim man-of-war launch darted in to her side and +a trim lieutenant mounted the _Makambo's_ boarding-ladder. His mission +was quickly explained. The _Albatross_, British cruiser of the second +class, of which he was fourth lieutenant, had called in at Tulagi with +dispatches from the High Commissioner of the English South Seas. A scant +twelve hours having intervened between her arrival and the _Makambo's_ +departure, the Commissioner of the Solomons and Captain Kellar had been +of the opinion that the missing dog had been carried away on the steamer. +Knowing that the _Albatross_ would beat her to Sydney, the captain of the +_Albatross_ had undertaken to look up the dog. Was the dog, an Irish +terrier answering to the name of Michael, on board? + +Captain Duncan truthfully admitted that it was, though he most +unveraciously shielded Dag Daughtry by repeating his yarn of the dog +coming on board of itself. How to return the dog to Captain Kellar?--was +the next question; for the _Albatross_ was bound on to New Zealand. +Captain Duncan settled the matter. + +"The _Makambo_ will be back in Tulagi in eight weeks," he told the +lieutenant, "and I'll undertake personally to deliver the dog to its +owner. In the meantime we'll take good care of it. Our steward has sort +of adopted it, so it will be in good hands." + +* * * * * + +"Seems we don't either of us get the dog," Daughtry commented resignedly, +when Captain Duncan had explained the situation. + +But when Daughtry turned his back and started off along the deck, his +constitutional obstinacy tightened his brows so that the Shortlands +planter, observing it, wondered what the captain had been rowing him +about. + +* * * * * + +Despite his six quarts a day and all his easy-goingness of disposition, +Dag Daughtry possessed certain integrities. Though he could steal a dog, +or a cat, without a twinge of conscience, he could not but be faithful to +his salt, being so made. He could not draw wages for being a ship +steward without faithfully performing the functions of ship steward. +Though his mind was firmly made up, during the several days of the +_Makambo_ in Sydney, lying alongside the Burns Philp Dock, he saw to +every detail of the cleaning up after the last crowd of outgoing +passengers, and to every detail of preparation for the next crowd of +incoming passengers who had tickets bought for the passage far away to +the coral seas and the cannibal isles. + +In the midst of this devotion to his duty, he took a night off and part +of two afternoons. The night off was devoted to the public-houses which +sailors frequent, and where can be learned the latest gossip and news of +ships and of men who sail upon the sea. Such information did he gather, +over many bottles of beer, that the next afternoon, hiring a small launch +at a cost of ten shillings, he journeyed up the harbour to Jackson Bay, +where lay the lofty-poled, sweet-lined, three-topmast American schooner, +the _Mary Turner_. + +Once on board, explaining his errand, he was taken below into the main +cabin, where he interviewed, and was interviewed by, a quartette of men +whom Daughtry qualified to himself as "a rum bunch." + +It was because he had talked long with the steward who had left the ship, +that Dag Daughtry recognized and identified each of the four men. That, +surely, was the "Ancient Mariner," sitting back and apart with washed +eyes of such palest blue that they seemed a faded white. Long thin wisps +of silvery, unkempt hair framed his face like an aureole. He was slender +to emaciation, cavernously checked, roll after roll of skin, no longer +encasing flesh or muscle, hanging grotesquely down his neck and swathing +the Adam's apple so that only occasionally, with queer swallowing +motions, did it peep out of the mummy-wrappings of skin and sink back +again from view. + +A proper ancient mariner, thought Daughtry. Might be seventy-five, might +just as well be a hundred and five, or a hundred and seventy-five. + +Beginning at the right temple, a ghastly scar split the cheek-bone, sank +into the depths of the hollow cheek, notched across the lower jaw, and +plunged to disappearance among the prodigious skin-folds of the neck. The +withered lobes of both ears were perforated by tiny gypsy-like circles of +gold. On the skeleton fingers of his right hand were no less than five +rings--not men's rings, nor women's, but foppish rings--"that would fetch +a price," Daughtry adjudged. On the left hand were no rings, for there +were no fingers to wear them. Only was there a thumb; and, for that +matter, most of the hand was missing as well, as if it had been cut off +by the same slicing edge that had cleaved him from temple to jaw and +heaven alone knew how far down that skin-draped neck. + +The Ancient Mariner's washed eyes seemed to bore right through Daughtry +(or at least so Daughtry felt), and rendered him so uncomfortable as to +make him casually step to the side for the matter of a yard. This was +possible, because, a servant seeking a servant's billet, he was expected +to stand and face the four seated ones as if they were judges on the +bench and he the felon in the dock. Nevertheless, the gaze of the +ancient one pursued him, until, studying it more closely, he decided that +it did not reach to him at all. He got the impression that those washed +pale eyes were filmed with dreams, and that the intelligence, the +_thing_, that dwelt within the skull, fluttered and beat against the +dream-films and no farther. + +"How much would you expect?" the captain was asking,--a most unsealike +captain, in Daughtry's opinion; rather, a spick-and-span, brisk little +business-man or floor-walker just out of a bandbox. + +"He shall not share," spoke up another of the four, huge, raw-boned, +middle-aged, whom Daughtry identified by his ham-like hands as the +California wheat-farmer described by the departed steward. + +"Plenty for all," the Ancient Mariner startled Daughtry by cackling +shrilly. "Oodles and oodles of it, my gentlemen, in cask and chest, in +cask and chest, a fathom under the sand." + +"Share--_what_, sir?" Daughtry queried, though well he knew, the other +steward having cursed to him the day he sailed from San Francisco on a +blind lay instead of straight wages. "Not that it matters, sir," he +hastened to add. "I spent a whalin' voyage once, three years of it, an' +paid off with a dollar. Wages for mine, an' sixty gold a month, seein' +there's only four of you." + +"And a mate," the captain added. + +"And a mate," Daughtry repeated. "Very good, sir. An' no share." + +"But yourself?" spoke up the fourth man, a huge-bulking, colossal-bodied, +greasy-seeming grossness of flesh--the Armenian Jew and San Francisco +pawnbroker the previous steward had warned Daughtry about. "Have you +papers--letters of recommendation, the documents you receive when you are +paid off before the shipping commissioners?" + +"I might ask, sir," Dag Daughtry brazened it, "for your own papers. This +ain't no regular cargo-carrier or passenger-carrier, no more than you +gentlemen are a regular company of ship-owners, with regular offices, +doin' business in a regular way. How do I know if you own the ship even, +or that the charter ain't busted long ago, or that you're being libelled +ashore right now, or that you won't dump me on any old beach anywheres +without a soo-markee of what's comin' to me? Howsoever"--he anticipated +by a bluff of his own the show of wrath from the Jew that he knew would +be wind and bluff--"howsoever, here's my papers . . . " + +With a swift dip of his hand into his inside coat-pocket he scattered out +in a wealth of profusion on the cabin table all the papers, sealed and +stamped, that he had collected in forty-five years of voyaging, the +latest date of which was five years back. + +"I don't ask your papers," he went on. "What I ask is, cash payment in +full the first of each month, sixty dollars a month gold--" + +"Oodles and oodles of it, gold and gold and better than gold, in cask and +chest, in cask and chest, a fathom under the sand," the Ancient Mariner +assured him in beneficent cackles. "Kings, principalities and +powers!--all of us, the least of us. And plenty more, my gentlemen, +plenty more. The latitude and longitude are mine, and the bearings from +the oak ribs on the shoal to Lion's Head, and the cross-bearings from the +points unnamable, I only know. I only still live of all that brave, mad, +scallywag ship's company . . . " + +"Will you sign the articles to that?" the Jew demanded, cutting in on the +ancient's maunderings. + +"What port do you wind up the cruise in?" Daughtry asked. + +"San Francisco." + +"I'll sign the articles that I'm to sign off in San Francisco then." + +The Jew, the captain, and the farmer nodded. + +"But there's several other things to be agreed upon," Daughtry continued. +"In the first place, I want my six quarts a day. I'm used to it, and I'm +too old a stager to change my habits." + +"Of spirits, I suppose?" the Jew asked sarcastically. + +"No; of beer, good English beer. It must be understood beforehand, no +matter what long stretches we may be at sea, that a sufficient supply is +taken along." + +"Anything else?" the captain queried. + +"Yes, sir," Daughtry answered. "I got a dog that must come along." + +"Anything else?--a wife or family maybe?" the farmer asked. + +"No wife or family, sir. But I got a nigger, a perfectly good nigger, +that's got to come along. He can sign on for ten dollars a month if he +works for the ship all his time. But if he works for me all the time, +I'll let him sign on for two an' a half a month." + +"Eighteen days in the longboat," the Ancient Mariner shrilled, to +Daughtry's startlement. "Eighteen days in the longboat, eighteen days of +scorching hell." + +"My word," quoth Daughtry, "the old gentleman'd give one the jumps. +There'll sure have to be plenty of beer." + +"Sea stewards put on some style, I must say," commented the wheat-farmer, +oblivious to the Ancient Mariner, who still declaimed of the heat of the +longboat. + +"Suppose we don't see our way to signing on a steward who travels in such +style?" the Jew asked, mopping the inside of his collar-band with a +coloured silk handkerchief. + +"Then you'll never know what a good steward you've missed, sir," Daughtry +responded airily. + +"I guess there's plenty more stewards on Sydney beach," the captain said +briskly. "And I guess I haven't forgotten old days, when I hired them +like so much dirt, yes, by Jinks, so much dirt, there were so many of +them." + +"Thank you, Mr. Steward, for looking us up," the Jew took up the idea +with insulting oiliness. "We very much regret our inability to meet your +wishes in the matter--" + +"And I saw it go under the sand, a fathom under the sand, on +cross-bearings unnamable, where the mangroves fade away, and the coconuts +grow, and the rise of land lifts from the beach to the Lion's Head." + +"Hold your horses," the wheat-farmer said, with a flare of irritation, +directed, not at the Ancient Mariner, but at the captain and the Jew. +"Who's putting up for this expedition? Don't I get no say so? Ain't my +opinion ever to be asked? I like this steward. Strikes me he's the real +goods. I notice he's as polite as all get-out, and I can see he can take +an order without arguing. And he ain't no fool by a long shot." + +"That's the very point, Grimshaw," the Jew answered soothingly. +"Considering the unusualness of our . . . of the expedition, we'd be +better served by a steward who is more of a fool. Another point, which +I'd esteem a real favour from you, is not to forget that you haven't put +a red copper more into this trip than I have--" + +"And where'd either of you be, if it wasn't for me with my knowledge of +the sea?" the captain demanded aggrievedly. "To say nothing of the +mortgage on my house and on the nicest little best paying flat building +in San Francisco since the earthquake." + +"But who's still putting up?--all of you, I ask you." The wheat-farmer +leaned forward, resting the heels of his hands on his knees so that the +fingers hung down his long shins, in Daughtry's appraisal, half-way to +his feet. "You, Captain Doane, can't raise another penny on your +properties. My land still grows the wheat that brings the ready. You, +Simon Nishikanta, won't put up another penny--yet your loan-shark offices +are doing business at the same old stands at God knows what per cent. to +drunken sailors. And you hang the expedition up here in this hole-in-the- +wall waiting for my agent to cable more wheat-money. Well, I guess we'll +just sign on this steward at sixty a month and all he asks, or I'll just +naturally quit you cold on the next fast steamer to San Francisco." + +He stood up abruptly, towering to such height that Daughtry looked to see +the crown of his head collide with the deck above. + +"I'm sick and tired of you all, yes, I am," he continued. "Get busy! +Well, let's get busy. My money's coming. It'll be here by to-morrow. +Let's be ready to start by hiring a steward that is a steward. I don't +care if he brings two families along." + +"I guess you're right, Grimshaw," Simon Nishikanta said appeasingly. "The +trip is beginning to get on all our nerves. Forget it if I fly off the +handle. Of course we'll take this steward if you want him. I thought he +was too stylish for you." + +He turned to Daughtry. + +"Naturally, the least said ashore about us the better." + +"That's all right, sir. I can keep my mouth shut, though I might as well +tell you there's some pretty tales about you drifting around the beach +right now." + +"The object of our expedition?" the Jew queried quickly. + +Daughtry nodded. + +"Is that why you want to come?" was demanded equally quickly. + +Daughtry shook his head. + +"As long as you give me my beer each day, sir, I ain't goin' to be +interested in your treasure-huntin'. It ain't no new tale to me. The +South Seas is populous with treasure-hunters--" Almost could Daughtry +have sworn that he had seen a flash of anxiety break through the dream- +films that bleared the Ancient Mariner's eyes. "And I must say, sir," he +went on easily, though saying what he would not have said had it not been +for what he was almost certain he sensed of the ancient's anxiousness, +"that the South Seas is just naturally lousy with buried treasure. +There's Keeling-Cocos, millions 'n' millions of it, pounds sterling, I +mean, waiting for the lucky one with the right steer." + +This time Daughtry could have sworn to having sensed a change toward +relief in the Ancient Mariner, whose eyes were again filmy with dreams. + +"But I ain't interested in treasure, sir," Daughtry concluded. "It's +beer I'm interested in. You can chase your treasure, an' I don't care +how long, just as long as I've got six quarts to open each day. But I +give you fair warning, sir, before I sign on: if the beer dries up, I'm +goin' to get interested in what you're after. Fair play is my motto." + +"Do you expect us to pay for your beer in addition?" Simon Nishikanta +demanded. + +To Daughtry it was too good to be true. Here, with the Jew healing the +breach with the wheat-farmer whose agents still cabled money, was the +time to take advantage. + +"Sure, it's one of our agreements, sir. What time would it suit you, +sir, to-morrow afternoon, for me to sign on at the shipping +commissioner's?" + +"Casks and chests of it, casks and chests of it, oodles and oodles, a +fathom under the sand," chattered the Ancient Mariner. + +"You're all touched up under the roof," Daughtry grinned. "Which ain't +got nothing to do with me as long as you furnish the beer, pay me due an' +proper what's comin' to me the first of each an' every month, an' pay me +off final in San Francisco. As long as you keep up your end, I'll sail +with you to the Pit 'n' back an' watch you sweatin' the casks 'n' chests +out of the sand. What I want is to sail with you if you want me to sail +with you enough to satisfy me." + +Simon Nishikanta glanced about. Grimshaw and Captain Doane nodded. + +"At three o'clock to-morrow afternoon, at the shipping commissioner's," +the Jew agreed. "When will you report for duty?" + +"When will you sail, sir?" Daughtry countered. + +"Bright and early next morning." + +"Then I'll be on board and on duty some time to-morrow night, sir." + +And as he went up the cabin companion, he could hear the Ancient Mariner +maundering: "Eighteen days in the longboat, eighteen days of scorching +hell . . . " + + + + +CHAPTER X + + +Michael left the _Makambo_ as he had come on board, through a port-hole. +Likewise, the affair occurred at night, and it was Kwaque's hands that +received him. It had been quick work, and daring, in the dark of early +evening. From the boat-deck, with a bowline under Kwaque's arms and a +turn of the rope around a pin, Dag Daughtry had lowered his leprous +servitor into the waiting launch. + +On his way below, he encountered Captain Duncan, who saw fit to warn him: + +"No shannigan with Killeny Boy, Steward. He must go back to Tulagi with +us." + +"Yes, sir," the steward agreed. "An' I'm keepin' him tight in my room to +make safe. Want to see him, sir?" + +The very frankness of the invitation made the captain suspicious, and the +thought flashed through his mind that perhaps Killeny Boy was already +hidden ashore somewhere by the dog-stealing steward. + +"Yes, indeed I'd like to say how-do-you-do to him," Captain Duncan +answered. + +And his was genuine surprise, on entering the steward's room, to behold +Michael just rousing from his curled-up sleep on the floor. But when he +left, his surprise would have been shocking could he have seen through +the closed door what immediately began to take place. Out through the +open port-hole, in a steady stream, Daughtry was passing the contents of +the room. Everything went that belonged to him, including the turtle- +shell and the photographs and calendars on the wall. Michael, with the +command of silence laid upon him, went last. Remained only a sea-chest +and two suit-cases, themselves too large for the port-hole but bare of +contents. + +When Daughtry sauntered along the main deck a few minutes later and +paused for a gossip with the customs officer and a quartermaster at the +head of the gang-plank, Captain Duncan little dreamed that his casual +glance was resting on his steward for the last time. He watched him go +down the gang-plank empty-handed, with no dog at his heels, and stroll +off along the wharf under the electric lights. + +Ten minutes after Captain Duncan saw the last of his broad back, +Daughtry, in the launch with his belongings and heading for Jackson Bay, +was hunched over Michael and caressing him, while Kwaque, crooning with +joy under his breath that he was with all that was precious to him in the +world, felt once again in the side-pocket of his flimsy coat to make sure +that his beloved jews' harp had not been left behind. + +Dag Daughtry was paying for Michael, and paying well. Among other +things, he had not cared to arouse suspicion by drawing his wages from +Burns Philp. The twenty pounds due him he had abandoned, and this was +the very sum, that night on the beach at Tulagi, he had decided he could +realize from the sale of Michael. He had stolen him to sell. He was +paying for him the sales price that had tempted him. + +For, as one has well said: the horse abases the base, ennobles the noble. +Likewise the dog. The theft of a dog to sell for a price had been the +abasement worked by Michael on Dag Daughtry. To pay the price out of +sheer heart-love that could recognize no price too great to pay, had been +the ennoblement of Dag Daughtry which Michael had worked. And as the +launch chug-chugged across the quiet harbour under the southern stars, +Dag Daughtry would have risked and tossed his life into the bargain in a +battle to continue to have and to hold the dog he had originally +conceived of as being interchangeable for so many dozens of beer. + +* * * * * + +The _Mary Turner_, towed out by a tug, sailed shortly after daybreak, and +Daughtry, Kwaque, and Michael looked their last for ever on Sydney +Harbour. + +"Once again these old eyes have seen this fair haven," the Ancient +Mariner, beside them gazing, babbled; and Daughtry could not help but +notice the way the wheat-farmer and the pawnbroker pricked their ears to +listen and glanced each to the other with scant eyes. "It was in '52, in +1852, on such a day as this, all drinking and singing along the decks, we +cleared from Sydney in the _Wide Awake_. A pretty craft, oh sirs, a most +clever and pretty craft. A crew, a brave crew, all youngsters, all of +us, fore and aft, no man was forty, a mad, gay crew. The captain was an +elderly gentleman of twenty-eight, the third officer another of eighteen, +the down, untouched of steel, like so much young velvet on his cheek. He, +too, died in the longboat. And the captain gasped out his last under the +palm trees of the isle unnamable while the brown maidens wept about him +and fanned the air to his parching lungs." + +Dag Daughtry heard no more, for he turned below to take up his new +routine of duty. But while he made up bunks with fresh linen and +directed Kwaque's efforts to cleaning long-neglected floors, he shook his +head to himself and muttered, "He's a keen 'un. He's a keen 'un. All +ain't fools that look it." + +The fine lines of the _Mary Turner_ were explained by the fact that she +had been built for seal-hunting; and for the same reason on board of her +was room and to spare. The forecastle with bunk-space for twelve, bedded +but eight Scandinavian seamen. The five staterooms of the cabin +accommodated the three treasure-hunters, the Ancient Mariner, and the +mate--the latter a large-bodied, gentle-souled Russian-Finn, known as Mr. +Jackson through inability of his shipmates to pronounce the name he had +signed on the ship's articles. + +Remained the steerage, just for'ard of the cabin, separated from it by a +stout bulkhead and entered by a companionway on the main deck. On this +deck, between the break of the poop and the steerage companion, stood the +galley. In the steerage itself, which possessed a far larger +living-space than the cabin, were six capacious bunks, each double the +width of the forecastle bunks, and each curtained and with no bunk above +it. + +"Some fella glory-hole, eh, Kwaque?" Daughtry told his seventeen-years- +old brown-skinned Papuan with the withered ancient face of a centenarian, +the legs of a living skeleton, and the huge-stomached torso of an elderly +Japanese wrestler. "Eh, Kwaque! What you fella think?" + +And Kwaque, too awed by the spaciousness to speak, eloquently rolled his +eyes in agreement. + +"You likee this piecee bunk?" the cook, a little old Chinaman, asked the +steward with eager humility, inviting the white man's acceptance of his +own bunk with a wave of arm. + +Daughtry shook his head. He had early learned that it was wise to get +along well with sea-cooks, since sea-cocks were notoriously given to +going suddenly lunatic and slicing and hacking up their shipmates with +butcher knives and meat cleavers on the slightest remembered provocation. +Besides, there was an equally good bunk all the way across the width of +the steerage from the Chinaman's. The bunk next on the port side to the +cook's and abaft of it Daughtry allotted to Kwaque. Thus he retained for +himself and Michael the entire starboard side with its three bunks. The +next one abaft of his own he named "Killeny Boy's," and called on Kwaque +and the cook to take notice. Daughtry had a sense that the cook, whose +name had been quickly volunteered as Ah Moy, was not entirely satisfied +with the arrangement; but it affected him no more than a momentary +curiosity about a Chinaman who drew the line at a dog taking a bunk in +the same apartment with him. + +Half an hour later, returning, from setting the cabin aright, to the +steerage for Kwaque to serve him with a bottle of beer, Daughtry observed +that Ah Moy had moved his entire bunk belongings across the steerage to +the third bunk on the starboard side. This had put him with Daughtry and +Michael and left Kwaque with half the steerage to himself. Daughtry's +curiosity recrudesced. + +"What name along that fella Chink?" he demanded of Kwaque. "He no like +'m you fella boy stop 'm along same fella side along him. What for? My +word! What name? That fella Chink make 'm me cross along him too much!" + +"Suppose 'm that fella Chink maybe he think 'm me kai-kai along him," +Kwaque grinned in one of his rare jokes. + +"All right," the steward concluded. "We find out. You move 'm along my +bunk, I move 'm along that fella Chink's bunk." + +This accomplished, so that Kwaque, Michael, and Ah Moy occupied the +starboard side and Daughtry alone bunked on the port side, he went on +deck and aft to his duties. On his next return he found Ah Moy had +transferred back to the port side, but this time into the last bunk aft. + +"Seems the beggar's taken a fancy to me," the steward smiled to himself. + +Nor was he capable of guessing Ah Moy's reason for bunking always on the +opposite side from Kwaque. + +"I changee," the little old cook explained, with anxious eyes to please +and placate, in response to Daughtry's direct question. "All the time +like that, changee, plentee changee. You savvee?" + +Daughtry did not savvee, and shook his head, while Ah Moy's slant eyes +betrayed none of the anxiety and fear with which he privily gazed on +Kwaque's two permanently bent fingers of the left hand and on Kwaque's +forehead, between the eyes, where the skin appeared a shade darker, a +trifle thicker, and was marked by the first beginning of three short +vertical lines or creases that were already giving him the lion-like +appearance, the leonine face so named by the experts and technicians of +the fell disease. + +As the days passed, the steward took facetious occasions, when he had +drunk five quarts of his daily allowance, to shift his and Kwaque's bunks +about. And invariably Ah Moy shifted, though Daughtry failed to notice +that he never shifted into a bunk which Kwaque had occupied. Nor did he +notice that it was when the time came that Kwaque had variously occupied +all the six bunks that Ah Moy made himself a canvas hammock, suspended it +from the deck beams above and thereafter swung clear in space and +unmolested. + +Daughtry dismissed the matter from his thoughts as no more than a thing +in keeping with the general inscrutability of the Chinese mind. He did +notice, however, that Kwaque was never permitted to enter the galley. +Another thing he noticed, which, expressed in his own words, was: "That's +the all-dangdest cleanest Chink I've ever clapped my lamps on. Clean in +galley, clean in steerage, clean in everything. He's always washing the +dishes in boiling water, when he isn't washing himself or his clothes or +bedding. My word, he actually boils his blankets once a week!" + +For there were other things to occupy the steward's mind. Getting +acquainted with the five men aft in the cabin, and lining up the whole +situation and the relations of each of the five to that situation and to +one another, consumed much time. Then there was the path of the _Mary +Turner_ across the sea. No old sailor breathes who does not desire to +know the casual course of his ship and the next port-of-call. + +"We ought to be moving along a line that'll cross somewhere northard of +New Zealand," Daughtry guessed to himself, after a hundred stolen glances +into the binnacle. But that was all the information concerning the +ship's navigation he could steal; for Captain Doane took the observations +and worked them out, to the exclusion of the mate, and Captain Doane +always methodically locked up his chart and log. That there were heated +discussions in the cabin, in which terms of latitude and longitude were +bandied back and forth, Daughtry did know; but more than that he could +not know, because it was early impressed upon him that the one place for +him never to be, at such times of council, was the cabin. Also, he could +not but conclude that these councils were real battles wherein Messrs. +Doane, Nishikanta, and Grimahaw screamed at each other and pounded the +table at each other, when they were not patiently and most politely +interrogating the Ancient Mariner. + +"He's got their goat," the steward early concluded to himself; but, +thereafter, try as he would, he failed to get the Ancient Mariner's goat. + +Charles Stough Greenleaf was the Ancient Mariner's name. This, Daughtry +got from him, and nothing else did he get save maunderings and ravings +about the heat of the longboat and the treasure a fathom deep under the +sand. + +"There's some of us plays games, an' some of us as looks on an' admires +the games they see," the steward made his bid one day. "And I'm sure +these days lookin' on at a pretty game. The more I see it the more I got +to admire." + +The Ancient Mariner dreamed back into the steward's eyes with a blank, +unseeing gaze. + +"On the _Wide Awake_ all the stewards were young, mere boys," he +murmured. + +"Yes, sir," Daughtry agreed pleasantly. "From all you say, the _Wide +Awake_, with all its youngsters, was sure some craft. Not like the crowd +of old 'uns on this here hooker. But I doubt, sir, that them youngsters +ever played as clever games as is being played aboard us right now. I +just got to admire the fine way it's being done, sir." + +"I'll tell you something," the Ancient Mariner replied, with such +confidential air that almost Daughtry leaned to hear. "No steward on the +_Wide Awake_ could mix a highball in just the way I like, as well as you. +We didn't know cocktails in those days, but we had sherry and bitters. A +good appetizer, too, a most excellent appetizer." + +"I'll tell you something more," he continued, just as it seemed he had +finished, and just in time to interrupt Daughtry away from his third +attempt to ferret out the true inwardness of the situation on the _Mary +Turner_ and of the Ancient Mariner's part in it. "It is mighty nigh five +bells, and I should be very pleased to have one of your delicious +cocktails ere I go down to dine." + +More suspicious than ever of him was Daughtry after this episode. But, +as the days went by, he came more and more to the conclusion that Charles +Stough Greenleaf was a senile old man who sincerely believed in the +abiding of a buried treasure somewhere in the South Seas. + +Once, polishing the brass-work on the hand-rails of the cabin +companionway, Daughtry overheard the ancient one explaining his terrible +scar and missing fingers to Grimshaw and the Armenian Jew. The pair of +them had plied him with extra drinks in the hope of getting more out of +him by way of his loosened tongue. + +"It was in the longboat," the aged voice cackled up the companion. "On +the eleventh day it was that the mutiny broke. We in the sternsheets +stood together against them. It was all a madness. We were starved +sore, but we were mad for water. It was over the water it began. For, +see you, it was our custom to lick the dew from the oar-blades, the +gunwales, the thwarts, and the inside planking. And each man of us had +developed property in the dew-collecting surfaces. Thus, the tiller and +the rudder-head and half of the plank of the starboard stern-sheet had +become the property of the second officer. No one of us lacked the +honour to respect his property. The third officer was a lad, only +eighteen, a brave and charming boy. He shared with the second officer +the starboard stern-sheet plank. They drew a line to mark the division, +and neither, lapping up what scant moisture fell during the night-hours, +ever dreamed of trespassing across the line. They were too honourable. + +"But the sailors--no. They squabbled amongst themselves over the dew- +surfaces, and only the night before one of them was knifed because he so +stole. But on this night, waiting for the dew, a little of it, to become +more, on the surfaces that were mine, I heard the noises of a dew-lapper +moving aft along the port-gunwale--which was my property aft of the +stroke-thwart clear to the stern. I emerged from a nightmare dream of +crystal springs and swollen rivers to listen to this night-drinker that I +feared might encroach upon what was mine. + +"Nearer he came to the line of my property, and I could hear him making +little moaning, whimpering noises as he licked the damp wood. It was +like listening to an animal grazing pasture-grass at night and ever +grazing nearer. + +"It chanced I was holding a boat-stretcher in my hand--to catch what +little dew might fall upon it. I did not know who it was, but when he +lapped across the line and moaned and whimpered as he licked up my +precious drops of dew, I struck out. The boat-stretcher caught him +fairly on the nose--it was the bo's'n--and the mutiny began. It was the +bo's'n's knife that sliced down my face and sliced away my fingers. The +third officer, the eighteen-year-old lad, fought well beside me, and +saved me, so that, just before I fainted, he and I, between us, hove the +bo's'n's carcass overside." + +A shifting of feet and changing of positions of those in the cabin +plunged Daughtry back into his polishing, which he had for the time +forgotten. And, as he rubbed the brass-work, he told himself under his +breath: "The old party's sure been through the mill. Such things just +got to happen." + +"No," the Ancient Mariner was continuing, in his thin falsetto, in reply +to a query. "It wasn't the wounds that made me faint. It was the +exertion I made in the struggle. I was too weak. No; so little moisture +was there in my system that I didn't bleed much. And the amazing thing, +under the circumstances, was the quickness with which I healed. The +second officer sewed me up next day with a needle he'd made out of an +ivory toothpick and with twine he twisted out of the threads from a +frayed tarpaulin." + +"Might I ask, Mr. Greenleaf, if there were rings at the time on the +fingers that were cut off?" Daughtry heard Simon Nishikanta ask. + +"Yes, and one beauty. I found it afterward in the boat bottom and +presented it to the sandalwood trader who rescued me. It was a large +diamond. I paid one hundred and eighty guineas for it to an English +sailor in the Barbadoes. He'd stolen it, and of course it was worth +more. It was a beautiful gem. The sandalwood man did not merely save my +life for it. In addition, he spent fully a hundred pounds in outfitting +me and buying me a passage from Thursday Island to Shanghai." + +* * * * * + +"There's no getting away from them rings he wears," Daughtry overheard +Simon Nishikanta that evening telling Grimshaw in the dark on the weather +poop. "You don't see that kind nowadays. They're old, real old. They're +not men's rings so much as what you'd call, in the old-fashioned days, +gentlemen's rings. Real gentlemen, I mean, grand gentlemen, wore rings +like them. I wish collateral like them came into my loan offices these +days. They're worth big money." + +* * * * * + +"I just want to tell you, Killeny Boy, that maybe I'll be wishin' before +the voyage is over that I'd gone on a lay of the treasure instead of +straight wages," Dag Daughtry confided to Michael that night at turning- +in time as Kwaque removed his shoes and as he paused midway in the +draining of his sixth bottle. "Take it from me, Killeny, that old +gentleman knows what he's talkin' about, an' has been some hummer in his +days. Men don't lose the fingers off their hands and get their faces +chopped open just for nothing--nor sport rings that makes a Jew +pawnbroker's mouth water." + + + + +CHAPTER XI + + +Before the voyage of the _Mary Turner_ came to an end, Dag Daughtry, +sitting down between the rows of water-casks in the main-hold, with a +great laugh rechristened the schooner "the Ship of Fools." But that was +some weeks after. In the meantime he so fulfilled his duties that not +even Captain Doane could conjure a shadow of complaint. + +Especially did the steward attend upon the Ancient Mariner, for whom he +had come to conceive a strong admiration, if not affection. The old +fellow was different from his cabin-mates. They were money-lovers; +everything in them had narrowed down to the pursuit of dollars. Daughtry, +himself moulded on generously careless lines, could not but appreciate +the spaciousness of the Ancient Mariner, who had evidently lived +spaciously and who was ever for sharing the treasure they sought. + +"You'll get your whack, steward, if it comes out of my share," he +frequently assured Daughtry at times of special kindness on the latter's +part. "There's oodles of it, and oodles of it, and, without kith or kin, +I have so little time longer to live that I shall not need it much or +much of it." + +And so the Ship of Fools sailed on, all aft fooling and befouling, from +the guileless-eyed, gentle-souled Finnish mate, who, with the scent of +treasure pungent in his nostrils, with a duplicate key stole the ship's +daily position from Captain Doane's locked desk, to Ah Moy, the cook, who +kept Kwaque at a distance and never whispered warning to the others of +the risk they ran from continual contact with the carrier of the terrible +disease. + +Kwaque himself had neither thought nor worry of the matter. He knew the +thing as a thing that occasionally happened to human creatures. It +bothered him, from the pain standpoint, scarcely at all, and it never +entered his kinky head that his master did not know about it. For the +same reason he never suspected why Ah Moy kept him so at a distance. Nor +had Kwaque other worries. His god, over all gods of sea and jungle, he +worshipped, and, himself ever intimately allowed in the presence, +paradise was wherever he and his god, the steward, might be. + +And so Michael. Much in the same way that Kwaque loved and worshipped +did he love and worship the six-quart man. To Michael and Kwaque, the +daily, even hourly, recognition and consideration of Dag Daughtry was +tantamount to resting continuously in the bosom of Abraham. The god of +Messrs. Doane, Nishikanta, and Grimshaw was a graven god whose name was +Gold. The god of Kwaque and Michael was a living god, whose voice could +be always heard, whose arms could be always warm, the pulse of whose +heart could be always felt throbbing in a myriad acts and touches. + +No greater joy was Michael's than to sit by the hour with Steward and +sing with him all songs and tunes he sang or hummed. With a quantity or +pitch even more of genius or unusualness in him than in Jerry, Michael +learned more quickly, and since the way of his education was singing, he +came to sing far beyond the best Villa Kennan ever taught Jerry. + +Michael could howl, or sing, rather (because his howling was so mellow +and so controlled), any air that was not beyond his register that Steward +elected to sing with him. In addition, he could sing by himself, and +unmistakably, such simple airs as "Home, Sweet Home," "God save the +King," and "The Sweet By and By." Even alone, prompted by Steward a +score of feet away from him, could he lift up his muzzle and sing +"Shenandoah" and "Roll me down to Rio." + +Kwaque, on stolen occasions when Steward was not around, would get out +his Jews' harp and by the sheer compellingness of the primitive +instrument make Michael sing with him the barbaric and devil-devil +rhythms of King William Island. Another master of song, but one in whom +Michael delighted, came to rule over him. This master's name was Cocky. +He so introduced himself to Michael at their first meeting. + +"Cocky," he said bravely, without a quiver of fear or flight, when +Michael had charged upon him at sight to destroy him. And the human +voice, the voice of a god, issuing from the throat of the tiny, +snow-white bird, had made Michael go back on his haunches, while, with +eyes and nostrils, he quested the steerage for the human who had spoken. +And there was no human . . . only a small cockatoo that twisted his head +impudently and sidewise at him and repeated, "Cocky." + +The taboo of the chicken Michael had been well taught in his earliest +days at Meringe. Chickens, esteemed by _Mister_ Haggin and his white-god +fellows, were things that dogs must even defend instead of ever attack. +But this thing, itself no chicken, with the seeming of a wild feathered +thing of the jungle that was fair game for any dog, talked to him with +the voice of a god. + +"Get off your foot," it commanded so peremptorily, so humanly, as again +to startle Michael and made him quest about the steerage for the +god-throat that had uttered it. + +"Get off your foot, or I'll throw the leg of Moses at you," was the next +command from the tiny feathered thing. + +After that came a farrago of Chinese, so like the voice of Ah Moy, that +again, though for the last time, Michael sought about the steerage for +the utterer. + +At this Cocky burst into such wild and fantastic shrieks of laughter that +Michael, ears pricked, head cocked to one side, identified in the fibres +of the laughter the fibres of the various voices he had just previously +heard. + +And Cocky, only a few ounces in weight, less than half a pound, a tiny +framework of fragile bone covered with a handful of feathers and incasing +a heart that was as big in pluck as any heart on the _Mary Turner_, +became almost immediately Michael's friend and comrade, as well as ruler. +Minute morsel of daring and courage that Cocky was, he commanded +Michael's respect from the first. And Michael, who with a single +careless paw-stroke could have broken Cocky's slender neck and put out +for ever the brave brightness of Cocky's eyes, was careful of him from +the first. And he permitted him a myriad liberties that he would never +have permitted Kwaque. + +Ingrained in Michael's heredity, from the very beginning of four-legged +dogs on earth, was the _defence of the meat_. He never reasoned it. +Automatic and involuntary as his heart-beating and air-breathing, was his +defence of his meat once he had his paw on it, his teeth in it. Only to +Steward, by an extreme effort of will and control, could he accord the +right to touch his meat once he had himself touched it. Even Kwaque, who +most usually fed him under Steward's instructions, knew that the safety +of fingers and flesh resided in having nothing further whatever to do +with anything of food once in Michael's possession. But Cocky, a bit of +feathery down, a morsel-flash of light and life with the throat of a god, +violated with sheer impudence and daring Michael's taboo, the defence of +the meat. + +Perched on the rim of Michael's pannikin, this inconsiderable adventurer +from out of the dark into the sun of life, a mere spark and mote between +the darks, by a ruffing of his salmon-pink crest, a swift and enormous +dilation of his bead-black pupils, and a raucous imperative cry, as of +all the gods, in his throat, could make Michael give back and permit the +fastidious selection of the choicest tidbits of his dish. + +For Cocky had a way with him, and ways and ways. He, who was sheer +bladed steel in the imperious flashing of his will, could swashbuckle and +bully like any over-seas roisterer, or wheedle as wickedly winningly as +the first woman out of Eden or the last woman of that descent. When +Cocky, balanced on one leg, the other leg in the air as the foot of it +held the scruff of Michael's neck, leaned to Michael's ear and wheedled, +Michael could only lay down silkily the bristly hair-waves of his neck, +and with silly half-idiotic eyes of bliss agree to whatever was Cocky's +will or whimsey so delivered. + +Cocky became more intimately Michael's because, very early, Ah Moy washed +his hands of the bird. Ah Moy had bought him in Sydney from a sailor for +eighteen shillings and chaffered an hour over the bargain. And when he +saw Cocky, one day, perched and voluble, on the twisted fingers of +Kwaque's left hand, Ah Moy discovered such instant distaste for the bird +that not even eighteen shillings, coupled with possession of Cocky and +possible contact, had any value to him. + +"You likee him? You wanchee?" he proffered. + +"Changee for changee!" Kwaque queried back, taking for granted that it +was an offer to exchange and wondering whether the little old cook had +become enamoured of his precious jews' harp. + +"No changee for changee," Ah Moy answered. "You wanchee him, all right, +can do." + +"How fashion can do?" Kwaque demanded, who to his beche-de-mer English +was already adding pidgin English. "Suppose 'm me fella no got 'm what +you fella likee?" + +"No fashion changee," Ah Moy reiterated. "You wanchee, you likee he stop +along you fella all right, my word." + +And so did pass the brave bit of feathered life with the heart of pluck, +called of men, and of himself, "Cocky," who had been birthed in the +jungle roof of the island of Santo, in the New Hebrides, who had been +netted by a two-legged black man-eater and sold for six sticks of tobacco +and a shingle hatchet to a Scotch trader dying of malaria, and in turn +had been traded from hand to hand, for four shillings to a blackbirder, +for a turtle-shell comb made by an English coal-passer after an old +Spanish design, for the appraised value of six shillings and sixpence in +a poker game in the firemen's forecastle, for a second-hand accordion +worth at least twenty shillings, and on for eighteen shillings cash to a +little old withered Chinaman--so did pass Cocky, as mortal or as immortal +as any brave sparkle of life on the planet, from the possession of one, +Ah Moy, a sea-cock who, forty years before, had slain his young wife in +Macao for cause and fled away to sea, to Kwaque, a leprous Black Papuan +who was slave to one, Dag Daughtry, himself a servant of other men to +whom he humbly admitted "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," and "Thank you, sir." + +One other comrade Michael found, although Cocky was no party to the +friendship. This was Scraps, the awkward young Newfoundland puppy, who +was the property of no one, unless of the schooner _Mary Turner_ herself, +for no man, fore or aft, claimed ownership, while every man disclaimed +having brought him on board. So he was called Scraps, and, since he was +nobody's dog, was everybody's dog--so much so, that Mr. Jackson promised +to knock Ah Moy's block off if he did not feed the puppy well, while +Sigurd Halvorsen, in the forecastle, did his best to knock off Henrik +Gjertsen's block when the latter was guilty of kicking Scraps out of his +way. Yea, even more. When Simon Nishikanta, huge and gross as in the +flesh he was and for ever painting delicate, insipid, feministic water- +colours, when he threw his deck-chair at Scraps for clumsily knocking +over his easel, he found the ham-like hand of Grimshaw so instant and +heavy on his shoulder as to whirl him half about, almost fling him to the +deck, and leave him lame-muscled and black-and-blued for days. + +Michael, full grown, mature, was so merry-hearted an individual that he +found all delight in interminable romps with Scraps. So strong was the +play-instinct in him, as well as was his constitution strong, that he +continually outplayed Scraps to abject weariness, so that he could only +lie on the deck and pant and laugh through air-draughty lips and dab +futilely in the air with weak forepaws at Michael's continued ferocious- +acted onslaughts. And this, despite the fact that Scraps out-bullied him +and out-scaled him at least three times, and was as careless and +unwitting of the weight of his legs or shoulders as a baby elephant on a +lawn of daisies. Given his breath back again, Scraps was as ripe as ever +for another frolic, and Michael was just as ripe to meet him. All of +which was splendid training for Michael, keeping him in the tiptop of +physical condition and mental wholesomeness. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + + +So sailed the Ship of Fools--Michael playing with Scraps, respecting +Cocky and by Cocky being bullied and wheedled, singing with Steward and +worshipping him; Daughtry drinking his six quarts of beer each day, +collecting his wages the first of each month, and admiring Charles Stough +Greenleaf as the finest man on board; Kwaque serving and loving his +master and thickening and darkening and creasing his brow with the +growing leprous infiltration; Ah Moy avoiding the Black Papuan as the +very plague, washing himself continuously and boiling his blankets once a +week; Captain Doane doing the navigating and worrying about his +flat-building in San Francisco; Grimshaw resting his ham-hands on his +colossal knees and girding at the pawnbroker to contribute as much to the +adventure as he was contributing from his wheat-ranches; Simon Nishikanta +wiping his sweaty neck with the greasy silk handkerchief and painting +endless water-colours; the mate patiently stealing the ship's latitude +and longitude with his duplicate key; and the Ancient Mariner, solacing +himself with Scotch highballs, smoking fragrant three-for-a-dollar +Havanas that were charged to the adventure, and for ever maundering about +the hell of the longboat, the cross-bearings unnamable, and the treasure +a fathom under the sand. + +Came a stretch of ocean that to Daughtry was like all other stretches of +ocean and unidentifiable from them. No land broke the sea-rim. The ship +the centre, the horizon was the invariable and eternal circle of the +world. The magnetic needle in the binnacle was the point on which the +_Mary Turner_ ever pivoted. The sun rose in the undoubted east and set +in the undoubted west, corrected and proved, of course, by declination, +deviation, and variation; and the nightly march of the stars and +constellations proceeded across the sky. + +And in this stretch of ocean, lookouts were mastheaded at day-dawn and +kept mastheaded until twilight of evening, when the _Mary Turner_ was +hove-to, to hold her position through the night. As time went by, and +the scent, according to the Ancient Mariner, grow hotter, all three of +the investors in the adventure came to going aloft. Grimshaw contented +himself with standing on the main crosstrees. Captain Doane climbed even +higher, seating himself on the stump of the foremast with legs a-straddle +of the butt of the fore-topmast. And Simon Nishikanta tore himself away +from his everlasting painting of all colour-delicacies of sea and sky +such as are painted by seminary maidens, to be helped and hoisted up the +ratlines of the mizzen rigging, the huge bulk of him, by two grinning, +slim-waisted sailors, until they lashed him squarely on the crosstrees +and left him to stare with eyes of golden desire, across the sun-washed +sea through the finest pair of unredeemed binoculars that had ever been +pledged in his pawnshops. + +"Strange," the Ancient Mariner would mutter, "strange, and most strange. +This is the very place. There can be no mistake. I'd have trusted that +youngster of a third officer anywhere. He was only eighteen, but he +could navigate better than the captain. Didn't he fetch the atoll after +eighteen days in the longboat? No standard compasses, and you know what +a small-boat horizon is, with a big sea, for a sextant. He died, but the +dying course he gave me held good, so that I fetched the atoll the very +next day after I hove his body overboard." + +Captain Doane would shrug his shoulders and defiantly meet the +mistrustful eyes of the Armenian Jew. + +"It cannot have sunk, surely," the Ancient Mariner would tactfully carry +across the forbidding pause. "The island was no mere shoal or reef. The +Lion's Head was thirty-eight hundred and thirty-five feet. I saw the +captain and the third officer triangulate it." + +"I've raked and combed the sea," Captain Doane would then break out, "and +the teeth of my comb are not so wide apart as to let slip through a four- +thousand-foot peak." + +"Strange, strange," the Ancient Mariner would next mutter, half to his +cogitating soul, half aloud to the treasure-seekers. Then, with a sudden +brightening, he would add: + +"But, of course, the variation has changed, Captain Doane. Have you +allowed for the change in variation for half a century! That should make +a grave difference. Why, as I understand it, who am no navigator, the +variation was not so definitely and accurately known in those days as +now." + +"Latitude was latitude, and longitude was longitude," would be the +captain's retort. "Variation and deviation are used in setting courses +and estimating dead reckoning." + +All of which was Greek to Simon Nishikanta, who would promptly take the +Ancient Mariner's side of the discussion. + +But the Ancient Mariner was fair-minded. What advantage he gave the Jew +one moment, he balanced the next moment with an advantage to the skipper. + +"It's a pity," he would suggest to Captain Doane, "that you have only one +chronometer. The entire fault may be with the chronometer. Why did you +sail with only one chronometer?" + +"But I _was_ willing for two," the Jew would defend. "You know that, +Grimshaw?" + +The wheat-farmer would nod reluctantly and Captain would snap: + +"But not for three chronometers." + +"But if two was no better than one, as you said so yourself and as +Grimshaw will bear witness, then three was no better than two except for +an expense." + +"But if you only have two chronometers, how can you tell which has gone +wrong?" Captain Doane would demand. + +"Search me," would come the pawnbroker's retort, accompanied by an +incredulous shrug of the shoulders. "If you can't tell which is wrong of +two, then how much harder must it be to tell which is wrong of two dozen? +With only two, it's a fifty-fifty split that one or the other is wrong." + +"But don't you realize--" + +"I realize that it's all a great foolishness, all this highbrow stuff +about navigation. I've got clerks fourteen years old in my offices that +can figure circles all around you and your navigation. Ask them that if +two chronometers ain't better than one, then how can two thousand be +better than one? And they'd answer quick, snap, like that, that if two +dollars ain't any better than one dollar, then two thousand dollars ain't +any better than one dollar. That's common sense." + +"Just the same, you're wrong on general principle," Grimshaw would oar +in. "I said at the time that the only reason we took Captain Doane in +with us on the deal was because we needed a navigator and because you and +me didn't know the first thing about it. You said, 'Yes, sure'; and +right away knew more about it than him when you wouldn't stand for buying +three chronometers. What was the matter with you was that the expense +hurt you. That's about as big an idea as your mind ever had room for. +You go around looking for to dig out ten million dollars with a second- +hand spade you call buy for sixty-eight cents." + +Dag Daughtry could not fail to overhear some of these conversations, +which were altercations rather than councils. The invariable ending, for +Simon Nishikanta, would be what sailors name "the sea-grouch." For hours +afterward the sulky Jew would speak to no one nor acknowledge speech from +any one. Vainly striving to paint, he would suddenly burst into violent +rage, tear up his attempt, stamp it into the deck, then get out his large- +calibred automatic rifle, perch himself on the forecastle-head, and try +to shoot any stray porpoise, albacore, or dolphin. It seemed to give him +great relief to send a bullet home into the body of some surging, +gorgeous-hued fish, arrest its glorious flashing motion for ever, and +turn it on its side slowly to sink down into the death and depth of the +sea. + +On occasion, when a school of blackfish disported by, each one of them a +whale of respectable size, Nishikanta would be beside himself in the +ecstasy of inflicting pain. Out of the school perhaps he would reach a +score of the leviathans, his bullets biting into them like whip-lashes, +so that each, like a colt surprised by the stock-whip, would leap in the +air, or with a flirt of tail dive under the surface, and then charge +madly across the ocean and away from sight in a foam-churn of speed. + +The Ancient Mariner would shake his head sadly; and Daughtry, who +likewise was hurt by the infliction of hurt on unoffending animals, would +sympathize with him and fetch him unbidden another of the expensive three- +for-a-dollar cigars so that his feelings might be soothed. Grimshaw +would curl his lip in a sneer and mutter: "The cheap skate. The skunk. +No man with half the backbone of a man would take it out of the harmless +creatures. He's that kind that if he didn't like you, or if you +criticised his grammar or arithmetic, he'd kick your dog to get even . . . +or poison it. In the good old days up in Colusa we used to hang men +like him just to keep the air we breathed clean and wholesome." + +But it was Captain Doane who protested outright. + +"Look at here, Nishikanta," he would say, his face white and his lips +trembling with anger. "That's rough stuff, and all you can get back for +it is rough stuff. I know what I'm talking about. You've got no right +to risk our lives that way. Wasn't the pilot boat _Annie Mine_ sunk by a +whale right in the Golden Gate? Didn't I sail in as a youngster, second +mate on the brig _Berncastle_, into Hakodate, pumping double watches to +keep afloat just because a whale took a smash at us? Didn't the full- +rigged ship, the whaler _Essex_, sink off the west coast of South +America, twelve hundred miles from the nearest land for the small boats +to cover, and all because of a big cow whale that butted her into +kindling-wood?" + +And Simon Nishikanta, in his grouch, disdaining to reply, would continue +to pepper the last whale into flight beyond the circle of the sea their +vision commanded. + +"I remember the whaleship _Essex_," the Ancient Mariner told Dag +Daughtry. "It was a cow with a calf that did for her. Her barrels were +two-thirds full, too. She went down in less than an hour. One of the +boats never was heard of." + +"And didn't another one of her boats get to Hawaii, sir?" Daughtry +queried with all due humility of respect. "Leastwise, thirty years ago, +when I was in Honolulu, I met a man, an old geezer, who claimed he'd been +a harpooner on a whaleship sunk by a whale off the coast of South +America. That was the first and last I heard of it, until right now you +speaking of it, sir. It must a-been the same ship, sir, don't you +think?" + +"Unless two different ships were whale-sunk off the west coast," the +Ancient Mariner replied. "And of the one ship, the _Essex_, there is no +discussion. It is historical. The chance is likely, steward, that the +man you mentioned was from the _Essex_." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + +Captain Doane worked hard, pursuing the sun in its daily course through +the sky, by the equation of time correcting its aberrations due to the +earth's swinging around the great circle of its orbit, and charting +Sumner lines innumerable, working assumed latitudes for position until +his head grew dizzy. + +Simon Nishikanta sneered openly at what he considered the captain's +inefficient navigation, and continued to paint water-colours when he was +serene, and to shoot at whales, sea-birds, and all things hurtable when +he was downhearted and sea-sore with disappointment at not sighting the +Lion's Head peak of the Ancient Mariner's treasure island. + +"I'll show I ain't a pincher," Nishikanta announced one day, after having +broiled at the mast-head for five hours of sea-searching. "Captain +Doane, how much could we have bought extra chronometers for in San +Francisco--good second-hand ones, I mean?" + +"Say a hundred dollars," the captain answered. + +"Very well. And this ain't a piker's proposition. The cost of such a +chronometer would have been divided between the three of us. I stand for +its total cost. You just tell the sailors that I, Simon Nishikanta, will +pay one hundred dollars gold money for the first one that sights land on +Mr. Greenleaf's latitude and longitude." + +But the sailors who swarmed the mast-heads were doomed to disappointment, +in that for only two days did they have opportunity to stare the ocean +surface for the reward. Nor was this due entirely to Dag Daughtry, +despite the fact that his own intention and act would have been +sufficient to spoil their chance for longer staring. + +Down in the lazarette, under the main-cabin floor, it chanced that he +took toll of the cases of beer which had been shipped for his especial +benefit. He counted the cases, doubted the verdict of his senses, +lighted more matches, counted again, then vainly searched the entire +lazarette in the hope of finding more cases of beer stored elsewhere. + +He sat down under the trap door of the main-cabin floor and thought for a +solid hour. It was the Jew again, he concluded--the Jew who had been +willing to equip the _Mary Turner_ with two chronometers, but not with +three; the Jew who had ratified the agreement of a sufficient supply to +permit Daughtry his daily six quarts. Once again the steward counted the +cases to make sure. There were three. And since each case contained two +dozen quarts, and since his whack each day was half a dozen quarts, it +was patent that, the supply that stared him in the face would last him +only twelve days. And twelve days were none too long to sail from this +unidentifiable naked sea-stretch to the nearest possible port where beer +could be purchased. + +The steward, once his mind was made up, wasted no time. The clock marked +a quarter before twelve when he climbed up out of the lazarette, replaced +the trapdoor, and hurried to set the table. He served the company +through the noon meal, although it was all he could do to refrain from +capsizing the big tureen of split-pea soup over the head of Simon +Nishikanta. What did effectually withstrain him was the knowledge of the +act which in the lazarette he had already determined to perform that +afternoon down in the main hold where the water-casks were stored. + +At three o'clock, while the Ancient Mariner supposedly drowned in his +room, and while Captain Doane, Grimshaw, and half the watch on deck +clustered at the mast-heads to try to raise the Lion's Head from out the +sapphire sea, Dag Daughtry dropped down the ladder of the open hatchway +into the main hold. Here, in long tiers, with alleyways between, the +water-casks were chocked safely on their sides. + +From inside his shirt the steward drew a brace, and to it fitted a half- +inch bit from his hip-pocket. On his knees, he bored through the head of +the first cask until the water rushed out upon the deck and flowed down +into the bilge. He worked quickly, boring cask after cask down the +alleyway that led to deeper twilight. When he had reached the end of the +first row of casks he paused a moment to listen to the gurglings of the +many half-inch streams running to waste. His quick ears caught a similar +gurgling from the right in the direction of the next alleyway. Listening +closely, he could have sworn he heard the sounds of a bit biting into +hard wood. + +A minute later, his own brace and bit carefully secreted, his hand was +descending on the shoulder of a man he could not recognize in the gloom, +but who, on his knees and wheezing, was steadily boring into the head of +a cask. The culprit made no effort to escape, and when Daughtry struck a +match he gazed down into the upturned face of the Ancient Mariner. + +"My word!" the steward muttered his amazement softly. "What in hell are +you running water out for?" + +He could feel the old man's form trembling with violent nervousness, and +his own heart smote him for gentleness. + +"It's all right," he whispered. "Don't mind me. How many have you +bored?" + +"All in this tier," came the whispered answer. "You will not inform on +me to the . . . the others?" + +"Inform?" Daughtry laughed softly. "I don't mind telling you that we're +playing the same game, though I don't know why you should play it. I've +just finished boring all of the starboard row. Now I tell you, sir, you +skin out right now, quietly, while the goin' is good. Everybody's aloft, +and you won't be noticed. I'll go ahead and finish this job . . . all +but enough water to last us say a dozen days." + +"I should like to talk with you . . . to explain matters," the Ancient +Mariner whispered. + +"Sure, sir, an' I don't mind sayin', sir, that I'm just plain mad curious +to hear. I'll join you down in the cabin, say in ten minutes, and we can +have a real gam. But anyway, whatever your game is, I'm with you. +Because it happens to be my game to get quick into port, and because, +sir, I have a great liking and respect for you. Now shoot along. I'll +be with you inside ten minutes." + +"I like you, steward, very much," the old man quavered. + +"And I like you, sir--and a damn sight more than them money-sharks aft. +But we'll just postpone this. You beat it out of here, while I finish +scuppering the rest of the water." + +A quarter of an hour later, with the three money-sharks still at the mast- +heads, Charles Stough Greenleaf was seated in the cabin and sipping a +highball, and Dag Daughtry was standing across the table from him, +drinking directly from a quart bottle of beer. + +"Maybe you haven't guessed it," the Ancient Mariner said; "but this is my +fourth voyage after this treasure." + +"You mean . . . ?" Daughtry asked. + +"Just that. There isn't any treasure. There never was one--any more +than the Lion's Head, the longboat, or the bearings unnamable."' + +Daughtry rumpled his grizzled thatch of hair in his perplexity, as he +admitted: + +"Well, you got me, sir. You sure got me to believin' in that treasure." + +"And I acknowledge, steward, that I am pleased to hear it. It shows that +I have not lost my cunning when I can deceive a man like you. It is easy +to deceive men whose souls know only money. But you are different. You +don't live and breathe for money. I've watched you with your dog. I've +watched you with your nigger boy. I've watched you with your beer. And +just because your heart isn't set on a great buried treasure of gold, you +are harder to deceive. Those whose hearts are set, are most +astonishingly easy to fool. They are of cheap kidney. Offer them a +proposition of one hundred dollars for one, and they are like hungry pike +snapping at the bait. Offer a thousand dollars for one, or ten thousand +for one, and they become sheer lunatic. I am an old man, a very old man. +I like to live until I die--I mean, to live decently, comfortably, +respectably." + +"And you like the voyages long? I begin to see, sir. Just as they're +getting near to where the treasure ain't, a little accident like the loss +of their water-supply sends them into port and out again to start hunting +all over." + +The Ancient Mariner nodded, and his sun-washed eyes twinkled. + +"There was the _Emma Louisa_. I kept her on the long voyage over +eighteen months with water accidents and similar accidents. And, +besides, they kept me in one of the best hotels in New Orleans for over +four months before the voyage began, and advanced to me handsomely, yes, +bravely, handsomely." + +"But tell me more, sir; I am most interested," Dag Daughtry concluded his +simple matter of the beer. "It's a good game. I might learn it for my +old age, though I give you my word, sir, I won't butt in on your game. I +wouldn't tackle it until you are gone, sir, good game that it is." + +"First of all, you must pick out men with money--with plenty of money, so +that any loss will not hurt them. Also, they are easier to interest--" + +"Because they are more hoggish," the steward interrupted. "The more +money they've got the more they want." + +"Precisely," the Ancient Mariner continued. "And, at least, they are +repaid. Such sea-voyages are excellent for their health. After all, I +do them neither hurt nor harm, but only good, and add to their health." + +"But them scars--that gouge out of your face--all them fingers missing on +your hand? You never got them in the fight in the longboat when the +bo's'n carved you up. Then where in Sam Hill did you get the them? Wait +a minute, sir. Let me fill your glass first." And with a fresh-brimmed +glass, Charles Stough Greanleaf narrated the history of his scars. + +"First, you must know, steward, that I am--well, a gentleman. My name +has its place in the pages of the history of the United States, even back +before the time when they were the United States. I graduated second in +my class in a university that it is not necessary to name. For that +matter, the name I am known by is not my name. I carefully compounded it +out of names of other families. I have had misfortunes. I trod the +quarter-deck when I was a young man, though never the deck of the _Wide +Awake_, which is the ship of my fancy--and of my livelihood in these +latter days. + +"The scars you asked about, and the missing fingers? Thus it chanced. It +was the morning, at late getting-up times in a Pullman, when the accident +happened. The car being crowded, I had been forced to accept an upper +berth. It was only the other day. A few years ago. I was an old man +then. We were coming up from Florida. It was a collision on a high +trestle. The train crumpled up, and some of the cars fell over sideways +and fell off, ninety feet into the bottom of a dry creek. It was dry, +though there was a pool of water just ten feet in diameter and eighteen +inches deep. All the rest was dry boulders, and I bull's-eyed that pool. + +"This is the way it was. I had just got on my shoes and pants and shirt, +and had started to get out of the bunk. There I was, sitting on the edge +of the bunk, my legs dangling down, when the locomotives came together. +The berths, upper and lower, on the opposite side had already been made +up by the porter. + +"And there I was, sitting, legs dangling, not knowing where I was, on a +trestle or a flat, when the thing happened. I just naturally left that +upper berth, soared like a bird across the aisle, went through the glass +of the window on the opposite side clean head-first, turned over and over +through the ninety feet of fall more times than I like to remember, and +by some sort of miracle was mostly flat-out in the air when I bull's-eyed +that pool of water. It was only eighteen inches deep. But I hit it +flat, and I hit it so hard that it must have cushioned me. I was the +only survivor of my car. It struck forty feet away from me, off to the +side. And they took only the dead out of it. When they took me out of +the pool I wasn't dead by any means. And when the surgeons got done with +me, there were the fingers gone from my hand, that scar down the side of +my face . . . and, though you'd never guess it, I've been three ribs +short of the regular complement ever since. + +"Oh, I had no complaint coming. Think of the others in that car--all +dead. Unfortunately, I was riding on a pass, and so could not sue the +railroad company. But here I am, the only man who ever dived ninety feet +into eighteen inches of water and lived to tell the tale.--Steward, if +you don't mind replenishing my glass . . . " + +Dag Daughtry complied and in his excitement of interest pulled off the +top of another quart of beer for himself. + +"Go on, go on, sir," he murmured huskily, wiping his lips, "and the +treasure-hunting graft. I'm straight dying to hear. Sir, I salute you." + +"I may say, steward," the Ancient Mariner resumed, "that I was born with +a silver spoon that melted in my mouth and left me a proper prodigal son. +Also, that I was born with a backbone of pride that would not melt. Not +for a paltry railroad accident, but for things long before as well as +after, my family let me die, and I . . . I let it live. That is the +story. I let my family live. Furthermore, it was not my family's fault. +I never whimpered. I never let on. I melted the last of my silver +spoon--South Sea cotton, an' it please you, cacao in Tonga, rubber and +mahogany in Yucatan. And do you know, at the end, I slept in Bowery +lodging-houses and ate scrapple in East-Side feeding-dens, and, on more +than one occasion, stood in the bread-line at midnight and pondered +whether or not I should faint before I fed." + +"And you never squealed to your family," Dag Daughtry murmured admiringly +in the pause. + +The Ancient Mariner straightened up his shoulders, threw his head back, +then bowed it and repeated, "No, I never squealed. I went into the poor- +house, or the county poor-farm as they call it. I lived sordidly. I +lived like a beast. For six months I lived like a beast, and then I saw +my way out. I set about building the _Wide Awake_. I built her plank by +plank, and copper-fastened her, selected her masts and every timber of +her, and personally signed on her full ship's complement fore-and-aft, +and outfitted her amongst the Jews, and sailed with her to the South Seas +and the treasure buried a fathom under the sand. + +"You see," he explained, "all this I did in my mind, for all the time I +was a hostage in the poor-farm of broken men." + +The Ancient Mariner's face grew suddenly bleak and fierce, and his right +hand flashed out to Daughtry's wrist, prisoning it in withered fingers of +steel. + +"It was a long, hard way to get out of the poor-farm and finance my +miserable little, pitiful little, adventure of the _Wide Awake_. Do you +know that I worked in the poor-farm laundry for two years, for one dollar +and a half a week, with my one available hand and what little I could do +with the other, sorting dirty clothes and folding sheets and pillow-slips +until I thought a thousand times my poor old back would break in two, and +until I knew a million times the location in my chest of every fraction +of an inch of my missing ribs." + +"You are a young man yet--" + +Daughtry grinned denial as he rubbed his grizzled mat of hair. + +"You are a young man yet, steward," the Ancient Mariner insisted with a +show of irritation. "You have never been shut out from life. In the +poor-farm one is shut out from life. There is no respect--no, not for +age alone, but for human life in the poor-house. How shall I say it? One +is not dead. Nor is one alive. One is what once was alive and is in +process of becoming dead. Lepers are treated that way. So are the +insane. I know it. When I was young and on the sea, a +brother-lieutenant went mad. Sometimes he was violent, and we struggled +with him, twisting his arms, bruising his flesh, tying him helpless while +we sat and panted on him that he might not do harm to us, himself, or the +ship. And he, who still lived, died to us. Don't you understand? He +was no longer of us, like us. He was something other. That is +it--_other_. And so, in the poor-farm, we, who are yet unburied, are +_other_. You have heard me chatter about the hell of the longboat. That +is a pleasant diversion in life compared with the poor-farm. The food, +the filth, the abuse, the bullying, the--the sheer animalness of it! + +"For two years I worked for a dollar and a half a week in the laundry. +And imagine me, who had melted a silver spoon in my mouth--a sizable +silver spoon steward--imagine me, my old sore bones, my old belly +reminiscent of youth's delights, my old palate ticklish yet and not all +withered of the deviltries of taste learned in younger days--as I say, +steward, imagine me, who had ever been free-handed, lavish, saving that +dollar and a half intact like a miser, never spending a penny of it on +tobacco, never mitigating by purchase of any little delicacy the sad +condition of my stomach that protested against the harshness and +indigestibility of our poor fare. I cadged tobacco, poor cheap tobacco, +from poor doddering old chaps trembling on the edge of dissolution. Ay, +and when Samuel Merrivale I found dead in the morning, next cot to mine, +I first rummaged his poor old trousers' pocket for the half-plug of +tobacco I knew was the total estate he left, then announced the news. + +"Oh, steward, I was careful of that dollar and a half. Don't you see?--I +was a prisoner sawing my way out with a tiny steel saw. And I sawed +out!" His voice rose in a shrill cackle of triumph. "Steward, I sawed +out!" + +Dag Daughtry held forth and up his beer-bottle as he said gravely and +sincerely: + +"Sir, I salute you." + +"And I thank you, sir--you understand," the Ancient Mariner replied with +simple dignity to the toast, touching his glass to the bottle and +drinking with the steward eyes to eyes. + +"I should have had one hundred and fifty-six dollars when I left the poor- +farm," the ancient one continued. "But there were the two weeks I lost, +with influenza, and the one week from a confounded pleurisy, so that I +emerged from that place of the living dead with but one hundred and fifty- +one dollars and fifty cents." + +"I see, sir," Daughtry interrupted with honest admiration. "The tiny saw +had become a crowbar, and with it you were going back to break into life +again." + +All the scarred face and washed eyes of Charles Stough Greenleaf beamed +as he held his glass up. + +"Steward, I salute you. You understand. And you have said it well. I +was going back to break into the house of life. It was a crowbar, that +pitiful sum of money accumulated by two years of crucifixion. Think of +it! A sum that in the days ere the silver spoon had melted, I staked in +careless moods of an instant on a turn of the cards. But as you say, a +burglar, I came back to break into life, and I came to Boston. You have +a fine turn for a figure of speech, steward, and I salute you." + +Again bottle and glass tinkled together, and both men drank eyes to eyes +and each was aware that the eyes he gazed into were honest and +understanding. + +"But it was a thin crowbar, steward. I dared not put my weight on it for +a proper pry. I took a room in a small but respectable hotel, European +plan. It was in Boston, I think I said. Oh, how careful I was of my +crowbar! I scarcely ate enough to keep my frame inhabited. But I bought +drinks for others, most carefully selected--bought drinks with an air of +prosperity that was as a credential to my story; and in my cups (my +apparent cups, steward), spun an old man's yarn of the _Wide Awake_, the +longboat, the bearings unnamable, and the treasure under the sand.--A +fathom under the sand; that was literary; it was psychological; it +smacked of the salt sea, and daring rovers, and the loot of the Spanish +Main. + +"You have noticed this nugget I wear on my watch-chain, steward? I could +not afford it at that time, but I talked golden instead, California gold, +nuggets and nuggets, oodles and oodles, from the diggings of forty-nine +and fifty. That was literary. That was colour. Later, after my first +voyage out of Boston I was financially able to buy a nugget. It was so +much bait to which men rose like fishes. And like fishes they nibbled. +These rings, also--bait. You never see such rings now. After I got in +funds, I purchased them, too. Take this nugget: I am talking. I toy +with it absently as I am telling of the great gold treasure we buried +under the sand. Suddenly the nugget flashes fresh recollection into my +mind. I speak of the longboat, of our thirst and hunger, and of the +third officer, the fair lad with cheeks virgin of the razor, and that he +it was who used it as a sinker when we strove to catch fish. + +"But back in Boston. Yarns and yarns, when seemingly I was gone in +drink, I told my apparent cronies--men whom I despised, stupid dolts of +creatures that they were. But the word spread, until one day, a young +man, a reporter, tried to interview me about the treasure and the _Wide +Awake_. I was indignant, angry.--Oh, softly, steward, softly; in my +heart was great joy as I denied that young reporter, knowing that from my +cronies he already had a sufficiency of the details. + +"And the morning paper gave two whole columns and headlines to the tale. +I began to have callers. I studied them out well. Many were for +adventuring after the treasure who themselves had no money. I baffled +and avoided them, and waited on, eating even less as my little capital +dwindled away. + +"And then he came, my gay young doctor--doctor of philosophy he was, for +he was very wealthy. My heart sang when I saw him. But twenty-eight +dollars remained to me--after it was gone, the poor-house, or death. I +had already resolved upon death as my choice rather than go back to be of +that dolorous company, the living dead of the poor-farm. But I did not +go back, nor did I die. The gay young doctor's blood ran warm at thought +of the South Seas, and in his nostrils I distilled all the scents of the +flower-drenched air of that far-off land, and in his eyes I builded him +the fairy visions of the tradewind clouds, the monsoon skies, the palm +isles and the coral seas. + +"He was a gay, mad young dog, grandly careless of his largess, fearless +as a lion's whelp, lithe and beautiful as a leopard, and mad, a trifle +mad of the deviltries and whimsies that tickled in that fine brain of +his. Look you, steward. Before we sailed in the _Gloucester_ fishing- +schooner, purchased by the doctor, and that was like a yacht and showed +her heels to most yachts, he had me to his house to advise about personal +equipment. We were overhauling in a gear-room, when suddenly he spoke: + +"'I wonder how my lady will take my long absence. What say you? Shall +she go along?' + +"And I had not known that he had any wife or lady. And I looked my +surprise and incredulity. + +"'Just that you do not believe I shall take her on the cruise,' he +laughed, wickedly, madly, in my astonished face. 'Come, you shall meet +her.' + +"Straight to his bedroom and his bed he led me, and, turning down the +covers, showed there to me, asleep as she had slept for many a thousand +years, the mummy of a slender Egyptian maid. + +"And she sailed with us on the long vain voyage to the South Seas and +back again, and, steward, on my honour, I grew quite fond of the dear +maid myself." + +The Ancient Mariner gazed dreamily into his glass, and Dag Daughtry took +advantage of the pause to ask: + +"But the young doctor? How did he take the failure to find the +treasure?" + +The Ancient Mariner's face lighted with joy. + +"He called me a delectable old fraud, with his arm on my shoulder while +he did it. Why, steward, I had come to love that young man like a +splendid son. And with his arm on my shoulder, and I know there was more +than mere kindness in it, he told me we had barely reached the River +Plate when he discovered me. With laughter, and with more than one slap +of his hand on my shoulder that was more caress than jollity, he pointed +out the discrepancies in my tale (which I have since amended, steward, +thanks to him, and amended well), and told me that the voyage had been a +grand success, making him eternally my debtor. + +"What could I do? I told him the truth. To him even did I tell my +family name, and the shame I had saved it from by forswearing it. + +"He put his arm on my shoulder, I tell you, and . . . " + +The Ancient Mariner ceased talking because of a huskiness in his throat, +and a moisture from his eyes trickled down both cheeks. + +Dag Daughtry pledged him silently, and in the draught from his glass he +recovered himself. + +"He told me that I should come and live with him, and, to his great +lonely house he took me the very day we landed in Boston. Also, he told +me he would make arrangements with his lawyers--the idea tickled his +fancy--'I shall adopt you,' he said. 'I shall adopt you along with +Isthar'--Isthar was the little maid's name, the little mummy's name. + +"Here was I, back in life, steward, and legally to be adopted. But life +is a fond betrayer. Eighteen hours afterward, in the morning, we found +him dead in his bed, the little mummy maid beside him. Heart-failure, +the burst of some blood-vessel in the brain--I never learned. + +"I prayed and pleaded with them for the pair to be buried together. But +they were a hard, cold, New England lot, his cousins and his aunts, and +they presented Isthar to the museum, and me they gave a week to be quit +of the house. I left in an hour, and they searched my small baggage +before they would let me depart. + +"I went to New York. It was the same game there, only that I had more +money and could play it properly. It was the same in New Orleans, in +Galveston. I came to California. This is my fifth voyage. I had a hard +time getting these three interested, and spent all my little store of +money before they signed the agreement. They were very mean. Advance +any money to me! The very idea of it was preposterous. Though I bided +my time, ran up a comfortable hotel bill, and, at the very last, ordered +my own generous assortment of liquors and cigars and charged the bill to +the schooner. Such a to-do! All three of them raged and all but tore +their hair . . . and mime. They said it could not be. I fell promptly +sick. I told them they got on my nerves and made me sick. The more they +raged, the sicker I got. Then they gave in. As promptly I grew better. +And here we are, out of water and heading soon most likely for the +Marquesas to fill our barrels. Then they will return and try for it +again!" + +"You think so, sir?" + +"I shall remember even more important data, steward," the Ancient Mariner +smiled. "Without doubt they will return. Oh, I know them well. They +are meagre, narrow, grasping fools." + +"Fools! all fools! a ship of fools!" Dag Daughtry exulted; repeating what +he had expressed in the hold, as he bored the last barrel, listened to +the good water gurgling away into the bilge, and chuckled over his +discovery of the Ancient Mariner on the same lay as his own. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + +Early next morning, the morning watch of sailors, whose custom was to +fetch the day's supply of water for the galley and cabin, discovered that +the barrels were empty. Mr. Jackson was so alarmed that he immediately +called Captain Doane, and not many minutes elapsed ere Captain Doane had +routed out Grimshaw and Nishikanta to tell them the disaster. + +Breakfast was an excitement shared in peculiarly by the Ancient Mariner +and Dag Daughtry, while the trio of partners raged and bewailed. Captain +Doane particularly wailed. Simon Nishikanta was fiendish in his +descriptions of whatever miscreant had done the deed and of how he should +be made to suffer for it, while Grimshaw clenched and repeatedly clenched +his great hands as if throttling some throat. + +"I remember, it was in forty-seven--nay, forty-six--yes, forty-six," the +Ancient Mariner chattered. "It was a similar and worse predicament. It +was in the longboat, sixteen of us. We ran on Glister Reef. So named it +was after our pretty little craft discovered it one dark night and left +her bones upon it. The reef is on the Admiralty charts. Captain Doane +will verify me . . . " + +No one listened, save Dag Daughtry, serving hot cakes and admiring. But +Simon Nishikanta, becoming suddenly aware that the old man was babbling, +bellowed out ferociously: + +"Oh, shut up! Close your jaw! You make me tired with your everlasting +'I remember.'" + +The Ancient Mariner was guilelessly surprised, as if he had slipped +somewhere in his narrative. + +"No, I assure you," he continued. "It must have been some error of my +poor old tongue. It was not the _Wide Awake_, but the brig _Glister_. +Did I say _Wide Awake_? It was the _Glister_, a smart little brig, +almost a toy brig in fact, copper-bottomed, lines like a dolphin, a sea- +cutter and a wind-eater. Handled like a top. On my honour, gentlemen, +it was lively work for both watches when she went about. I was super- +cargo. We sailed out of New York, ostensibly for the north-west coast, +with sealed orders--" + +"In the name of God, peace, peace! You drive me mad with your drivel!" +So Nishikanta cried out in nervous pain that was real and quivering. "Old +man, have a heart. What do I care to know of your _Glister_ and your +sealed orders!" + +"Ah, sealed orders," the Ancient Mariner went on beamingly. "A magic +phrase, sealed orders." He rolled it off his tongue with unction. "Those +were the days, gentlemen, when ships did sail with sealed orders. And as +super-cargo, with my trifle invested in the adventure and my share in the +gains, I commanded the captain. Not in him, but in me were reposed the +sealed orders. I assure you I did not know myself what they were. Not +until we were around old Cape Stiff, fifty to fifty, and in fifty in the +Pacific, did I break the seal and learn we were bound for Van Dieman's +Land. They called it Van Dieman's Land in those days . . . " + +It was a day of discoveries. Captain Doane caught the mate stealing the +ship's position from his desk with the duplicate key. There was a scene, +but no more, for the Finn was too huge a man to invite personal +encounter, and Captain Dome could only stigmatize his conduct to a +running reiteration of "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," and "Sorry, sir." + +Perhaps the most important discovery, although he did not know it at the +time, was that of Dag Daughtry. It was after the course had been changed +and all sail set, and after the Ancient Mariner had privily informed him +that Taiohae, in the Marquesas, was their objective, that Daughtry gaily +proceeded to shave. But one trouble was on his mind. He was not quite +sure, in such an out-of-the-way place as Taiohae, that good beer could be +procured. + +As he prepared to make the first stroke of the razor, most of his face +white with lather, he noticed a dark patch of skin on his forehead just +between the eyebrows and above. When he had finished shaving he touched +the dark patch, wondering how he had been sunburned in such a spot. But +he did not know he had touched it in so far as there was any response of +sensation. The dark place was numb. + +"Curious," he thought, wiped his face, and forgot all about it. + +No more than he knew what horror that dark spot represented, did he know +that Ah Moy's slant eyes had long since noticed it and were continuing to +notice it, day by day, with secret growing terror. + +Close-hauled on the south-east trades, the _Mary Turner_ began her long +slant toward the Marquesas. For'ard, all were happy. Being only seamen, +on seamen's wages, they hailed with delight the news that they were bound +in for a tropic isle to fill their water-barrels. Aft, the three +partners were in bad temper, and Nishikanta openly sneered at Captain +Doane and doubted his ability to find the Marquesas. In the steerage +everybody was happy--Dag Daughtry because his wages were running on and a +further supply of beer was certain; Kwaque because he was happy whenever +his master was happy; and Ah Moy because he would soon have opportunity +to desert away from the schooner and the two lepers with whom he was +domiciled. + +Michael shared in the general happiness of the steerage, and joined +eagerly with Steward in learning by heart a fifth song. This was "Lead, +kindly Light." In his singing, which was no more than trained howling +after all, Michael sought for something he knew not what. In truth, it +was the _lost pack_, the pack of the primeval world before the dog ever +came in to the fires of men, and, for that matter, before men built fires +and before men were men. + +He had been born only the other day and had lived but two years in the +world, so that, of himself, he had no knowledge of the lost pack. For +many thousands of generations he had been away from it; yet, deep down in +the crypts of being, tied about and wrapped up in every muscle and nerve +of him, was the indelible record of the days in the wild when dim +ancestors had run with the pack and at the same time developed the pack +and themselves. When Michael was asleep, then it was that pack-memories +sometimes arose to the surface of his subconscious mind. These dreams +were real while they lasted, but when he was awake he remembered them +little if at all. But asleep, or singing with Steward, he sensed and +yearned for the lost pack and was impelled to seek the forgotten way to +it. + +Waking, Michael had another and real pack. This was composed of Steward, +Kwaque, Cocky, and Scraps, and he ran with it as ancient forbears had ran +with their own kind in the hunting. The steerage was the lair of this +pack, and, out of the steerage, it ranged the whole world, which was the +_Mary Turner_ ever rocking, heeling, reeling on the surface of the +unstable sea. + +But the steerage and its company meant more to Michael than the mere +pack. It was heaven as well, where dwelt God. Man early invented God, +often of stone, or clod, or fire, and placed him in trees and mountains +and among the stars. This was because man observed that man passed and +was lost out of the tribe, or family, or whatever name he gave to his +group, which was, after all, the human pack. And man did not want to be +lost out of the pack. So, of his imagination, he devised a new pack that +would be eternal and with which he might for ever run. Fearing the dark, +into which he observed all men passed, he built beyond the dark a fairer +region, a happier hunting-ground, a jollier and robuster feasting-hall +and wassailing-place, and called it variously "heaven." + +Like some of the earliest and lowest of primitive men, Michael never +dreamed of throwing the shadow of himself across his mind and worshipping +it as God. He did not worship shadows. He worshipped a real and +indubitable god, not fashioned in his own four-legged, hair-covered +image, but in the flesh-and-blood image, two-legged, hairless, +upstanding, of Steward. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + + +Had the trade wind not failed on the second day after laying the course +for the Marquesas; had Captain Doane, at the mid-day meal, not grumbled +once again at being equipped with only one chronometer; had Simon +Nishikanta not become viciously angry thereat and gone on deck with his +rifle to find some sea-denizen to kill; and had the sea-denizen that +appeared close alongside been a bonita, a dolphin, a porpoise, an +albacore, or anything else than a great, eighty-foot cow whale +accompanied by her nursing calf--had any link been missing from this +chain of events, the _Mary Turner_ would have undoubtedly reached the +Marquesas, filled her water-barrels, and returned to the +treasure-hunting; and the destinies of Michael, Daughtry, Kwaque, and +Cocky would have been quite different and possibly less terrible. + +But every link was present for the occasion. The schooner, in a dead +calm, was rolling over the huge, smooth seas, her boom sheets and tackles +crashing to the hollow thunder of her great sails, when Simon Nishikanta +put a bullet into the body of the little whale calf. By an almost +miracle of chance, the shot killed the calf. It was equivalent to +killing an elephant with a pea-rifle. Not at once did the calf die. It +merely immediately ceased its gambols and for a while lay quivering on +the surface of the ocean. The mother was beside it the moment after it +was struck, and to those on board, looking almost directly down upon her, +her dismay and alarm were very patent. She would nudge the calf with her +huge shoulder, circle around and around it, then range up alongside and +repeat her nudgings and shoulderings. + +All on the _Mary Turner_, fore and aft, lined the rail and stared down +apprehensively at the leviathan that was as long as the schooner. + +"If she should do to us, sir, what that other one did to the _Essex_," +Dag Daughtry observed to the Ancient Mariner. + +"It would be no more than we deserve," was the response. "It was +uncalled-for--a wanton, cruel act." + +Michael, aware of the excitement overside but unable to see because of +the rail, leaped on top of the cabin and at sight of the monster barked +defiantly. Every eye turned on him in startlement and fear, and Steward +hushed him with a whispered command. + +"This is the last time," Grimshaw muttered in a low voice, tense with +anger, to Nishikanta. "If ever again, on this voyage, you take a shot at +a whale, I'll wring your dirty neck for you. Get me. I mean it. I'll +choke your eye-balls out of you." + +The Jew smiled in a sickly way and whined, "There ain't nothing going to +happen. I don't believe that _Essex_ ever was sunk by a whale." + +Urged on by its mother, the dying calf made spasmodic efforts to swim +that were futile and caused it to veer and wallow from side to side. + +In the course of circling about it, the mother accidentally brushed her +shoulder under the port quarter of the _Mary Turner_, and the _Mary +Turner_ listed to starboard as her stern was lifted a yard or more. Nor +was this unintentional, gentle impact all. The instant after her +shoulder had touched, startled by the contact, she flailed out with her +tail. The blow smote the rail just for'ard of the fore-shrouds, +splintering a gap through it as if it were no more than a cigar-box and +cracking the covering board. + +That was all, and an entire ship's company stared down in silence and +fear at a sea-monster grief-stricken over its dying progeny. + +Several times, in the course of an hour, during which the schooner and +the two whales drifted farther and farther apart, the calf strove vainly +to swim. Then it set up a great quivering, which culminated in a wild +wallowing and lashing about of its tail. + +"It is the death-flurry," said the Ancient Mariner softly. + +"By damn, it's dead," was Captain Doane's comment five minutes later. +"Who'd believe it? A rifle bullet! I wish to heaven we could get half +an hour's breeze of wind to get us out of this neighbourhood." + +"A close squeak," said Grimshaw, + +Captain Doane shook his head, as his anxious eyes cast aloft to the empty +canvas and quested on over the sea in the hope of wind-ruffles on the +water. But all was glassy calm, each great sea, of all the orderly +procession of great seas, heaving up, round-topped and mountainous, like +so much quicksilver. + +"It's all right," Grimahaw encouraged. "There she goes now, beating it +away from us." + +"Of course it's all right, always was all right," Nishikanta bragged, as +he wiped the sweat from his face and neck and looked with the others +after the departing whale. "You're a fine brave lot, you are, losing +your goat to a fish." + +"I noticed your face was less yellow than usual," Grimshaw sneered. "It +must have gone to your heart." + +Captain Doane breathed a great sigh. His relief was too strong to permit +him to join in the squabbling. + +"You're yellow," Grimshaw went on, "yellow clean through." He nodded his +head toward the Ancient Mariner. "Now there's the real thing as a man. +No yellow in him. He never batted an eye, and I reckon he knew more +about the danger than you did. If I was to choose being wrecked on a +desert island with him or you, I'd take him a thousand times first. If--" + +But a cry from the sailors interrupted him. + +"Merciful God!" Captain Doane breathed aloud. + +The great cow whale had turned about, and, on the surface, was charging +straight back at them. Such was her speed that a bore was raised by her +nose like that which a Dreadnought or an Atlantic liner raises on the +sea. + +"Hold fast, all!" Captain Doane roared. + +Every man braced himself for the shock. Henrik Gjertsen, the sailor at +the wheel, spread his legs, crouched down, and stiffened his shoulders +and arms to hand-grips on opposite spokes of the wheel. Several of the +crew fled from the waist to the poop, and others of them sprang into the +main-rigging. Daughtry, one hand on the rail, with his free arm clasped +the Ancient Mariner around the waist. + +All held. The whale struck the _Mary Turner_ just aft of the +fore-shroud. A score of things, which no eye could take in +simultaneously, happened. A sailor, in the main rigging, carried away a +ratline in both hands, fell head-downward, and was clutched by an ankle +and saved head-downward by a comrade, as the schooner cracked and +shuddered, uplifted on the port side, and was flung down on her starboard +side till the ocean poured level over her rail. Michael, on the smooth +roof of the cabin, slithered down the steep slope to starboard and +disappeared, clawing and snarling, into the runway. The port shrouds of +the foremast carried away at the chain-plates, and the fore-topmast +leaned over drunkenly to starboard. + +"My word," quoth the Ancient Mariner. "We certainly felt that." + +"Mr. Jackson," Captain Doane commanded the mate, "will you sound the +well." + +The mate obeyed, although he kept an anxious eye on the whale, which had +gone off at a tangent and was smoking away to the eastward. + +"You see, that's what you get," Grimshaw snarled at Nishikanta. + +Nishikanta nodded, as he wiped the sweat away, and muttered, "And I'm +satisfied. I got all I want. I didn't think a whale had it in it. I'll +never do it again." + +"Maybe you'll never have the chance," the captain retorted. "We're not +done with this one yet. The one that charged the _Essex_ made charge +after charge, and I guess whale nature hasn't changed any in the last few +years." + +"Dry as a bone, sir," Mr. Jackson reported the result of his sounding. + +"There she turns," Daughtry called out. + +Half a mile away, the whale circled about sharply and charged back. + +"Stand from under for'ard there!" Captain Doane shouted to one of the +sailors who had just emerged from the forecastle scuttle, sea-bag in +hand, and over whom the fore-topmast was swaying giddily. + +"He's packed for the get-away," Daughtry murmured to the Ancient Mariner. +"Like a rat leaving a ship." + +"We're all rats," was the reply. "I learned just that when I was a rat +among the mangy rats of the poor-farm." + +By this time, all men on board had communicated to Michael their +contagion of excitement and fear. Back on top of the cabin so that he +might see, he snarled at the cow whale when the men seized fresh grips +against the impending shock and when he saw her close at hand and +oncoming. + +The _Mary Turner_ was struck aft of the mizzen shrouds. As she was +hurled down to starboard, whither Michael was ignominiously flung, the +crack of shattered timbers was plainly heard. Henrik Gjertsen, at the +wheel, clutching the wheel with all his strength, was spun through the +air as the wheel was spun by the fling of the rudder. He fetched up +against Captain Doane, whose grip had been torn loose from the rail. Both +men crumpled down on deck with the wind knocked out of them. Nishikanta +leaned cursing against the side of the cabin, the nails of both hands +torn off at the quick by the breaking of his grip on the rail. + +While Daughtry was passing a turn of rope around the Ancient Mariner and +the mizzen rigging and giving the turn to him to hold, Captain Doane +crawled gasping to the rail and dragged himself erect. + +"That fetched her," he whispered huskily to the mate, hand pressed to his +side to control his pain. "Sound the well again, and keep on sounding." + +More of the sailors took advantage of the interval to rush for'ard under +the toppling fore-topmast, dive into the forecastle, and hastily pack +their sea-bags. As Ah Moy emerged from the steerage with his own rotund +sea-bag, Daughtry dispatched Kwaque to pack the belongings of both of +them. + +"Dry as a bone, sir," came the mate's report. + +"Keep on sounding, Mr. Jackson," the captain ordered, his voice already +stronger as he recovered from the shock of his collision with the +helmsman. "Keep right on sounding. Here she comes again, and the +schooner ain't built that'd stand such hammering." + +By this time Daughtry had Michael tucked under one arm, his free arm +ready to anticipate the next crash by swinging on to the rigging. + +In making its circle to come back, the cow lost her bearings sufficiently +to miss the stern of the _Mary Turner_ by twenty feet. Nevertheless, the +bore of her displacement lifted the schooner's stern gently and made her +dip her bow to the sea in a stately curtsey. + +"If she'd a-hit . . . " Captain Doane murmured and ceased. + +"It'd a-ben good night," Daughtry concluded for him. "She's a-knocked +our stern clean off of us, sir." + +Again wheeling, this time at no more than two hundred yards, the whale +charged back, not completing her semi-circle sufficiently, so that she +bore down upon the schooner's bow from starboard. Her back hit the stem +and seemed just barely to scrape the martingale, yet the _Mary Turner_ +sat down till the sea washed level with her stern-rail. Nor was this +all. Martingale, bob-stays and all parted, as well as all starboard +stays to the bowsprit, so that the bowsprit swung out to port at right +angles and uplifted to the drag of the remaining topmast stays. The +topmast anticked high in the air for a space, then crashed down to deck, +permitting the bowsprit to dip into the sea, go clear with the butt of it +of the forecastle head, and drag alongside. + +"Shut up that dog!" Nishikanta ordered Daughtry savagery. "If you don't +. . . " + +Michael, in Steward's arms, was snarling and growling intimidatingly, not +merely at the cow whale but at all the hostile and menacing universe that +had thrown panic into the two-legged gods of his floating world. + +"Just for that," Daughtry snarled back, "I'll let 'm sing. You made this +mess, and if you lift a hand to my dog you'll miss seeing the end of the +mess you started, you dirty pawnbroker, you." + +"Perfectly right, perfectly right," the Ancient Mariner nodded +approbation. "Do you think, steward, you could get a width of canvas, or +a blanket, or something soft and broad with which to replace this rope? +It cuts me too sharply in the spot where my three ribs are missing." + +Daughtry thrust Michael into the old man's arm. + +"Hold him, sir," the steward said. "If that pawnbroker makes a move +against Killeny Boy, spit in his face, bite him, anything. I'll be back +in a jiffy, sir, before he can hurt you and before the whale can hit us +again. And let Killeny Boy make all the noise he wants. One hair of +him's worth more than a world-full of skunks of money-lenders." + +Daughtry dashed into the cabin, came back with a pillow and three sheets, +and, using the first as a pad and knotting the last together in swift +weaver's knots, he left the Ancient Mariner safe and soft and took +Michael back into his own arms. + +"She's making water, sir," the mate called. "Six inches--no, seven +inches, sir." + +There was a rush of sailors across the wreckage of the fore-topmast to +the forecastle to pack their bags. + +"Swing out that starboard boat, Mr. Jackson," the captain commanded, +staring after the foaming course of the cow as she surged away for a +fresh onslaught. "But don't lower it. Hold it overside in the falls, or +that damned fish'll smash it. Just swing it out, ready and waiting, let +the men get their bags, then stow food and water aboard of her." + +Lashings were cast off the boat and the falls attached, when the men fled +to holding-vantage just ere the whale arrived. She struck the _Mary +Turner_ squarely amidships on the port beam, so that, from the poop, one +saw, as well as heard, her long side bend and spring back like a limber +fabric. The starboard rail buried under the sea as the schooner heeled +to the blow, and, as she righted with a violent lurch, the water swashed +across the deck to the knees of the sailors about the boat and spouted +out of the port scuppers. + +"Heave away!" Captain Doane ordered from the poop. "Up with her! Swing +her out! Hold your turns! Make fast!" + +The boat was outboard, its gunwale resting against the _Mary Turner's_ +rail. + +"Ten inches, sir, and making fast," was the mate's information, as he +gauged the sounding-rod. + +"I'm going after my tools," Captain Doane announced, as he started for +the cabin. Half into the scuttle, he paused to add with a sneer for +Nishikanta's benefit, "And for my one chronometer." + +"A foot and a half, and making," the mate shouted aft to him. + +"We'd better do some packing ourselves," Grimshaw, following on the +captain, said to Nishikanta. + +"Steward," Nishikanta said, "go below and pack my bedding. I'll take +care of the rest." + +"Mr. Nishikanta, you can go to hell, sir, and all the rest as well," was +Daughtry's quiet response, although in the same breath he was saying, +respectfully and assuringly, to the Ancient Mariner: "You hold Killeny, +sir. I'll take care of your dunnage. Is there anything special you want +to save, sir?" + +Jackson joined the four men below, and as the five of them, in haste and +trepidation, packed articles of worth and comfort, the _Mary Turner_ was +struck again. Caught below without warning, all were flung fiercely to +port and from Simon Nishikanta's room came wailing curses of announcement +of the hurt to his ribs against his bunk-rail. But this was drowned by a +prodigious smashing and crashing on deck. + +"Kindling wood--there won't be anything else left of her," Captain Doane +commented in the ensuing calm, as he crept gingerly up the companionway +with his chronometer cuddled on an even keel to his breast. + +Placing it in the custody of a sailor, he returned below and was helped +up with his sea-chest by the steward. In turn, he helped the steward up +with the Ancient Mariner's sea-chest. Next, aided by anxious sailors, he +and Daughtry dropped into the lazarette through the cabin floor, and +began breaking out and passing up a stream of supplies--cases of salmon +and beef, of marmalade and biscuit, of butter and preserved milk, and of +all sorts of the tinned, desiccated, evaporated, and condensed stuff that +of modern times goes down to the sea in ships for the nourishment of men. + +Daughtry and the captain emerged last from the cabin, and both stared +upward for a moment at the gaps in the slender, sky-scraping top-hamper, +where, only minutes before, the main- and mizzen-topmasts had been. A +second moment they devoted to the wreckage of the same on deck--the +mizzen-topmast, thrust through the spanker and supported vertically by +the stout canvas, thrashing back and forth with each thrash of the sail, +the main-topmast squarely across the ruined companionway to the steerage. + +While the mother-whale expressing her bereavement in terms of violence +and destruction, was withdrawing the necessary distance for another +charge, all hands of the _Mary Turner_ gathered about the starboard boat +swung outboard ready for lowering. A respectable hill of case goods, +water-kegs, and personal dunnage was piled on the deck alongside. A +glance at this, and at the many men of fore and aft, demonstrated that it +was to be a perilously overloaded boat. + +"We want the sailors with us, at any rate--they can row," said Simon +Nishikanta. + +"But do we want you?" Grimshaw queried gloomily. "You take up too much +room, for your size, and you're a beast anyway." + +"I guess I'll be wanted," the pawnbroker observed, as he jerked open his +shirt, tearing out the four buttons in his impetuousness and showing a +Colt's .44 automatic, strapped in its holster against the bare skin of +his side under his left arm, the butt of the weapon most readily +accessible to any hasty dip of his right hand. "I guess I'll be wanted. +But just the same we can dispense with the undesirables." + +"If you will have your will," the wheat-farmer conceded sardonically, +although his big hand clenched involuntarily as if throttling a throat. +"Besides, if we should run short of food you will prove desirable--for +the quantity of you, I mean, and not otherwise. Now just who would you +consider undesirable?--the black nigger? He ain't got a gun." + +But his pleasantries were cut short by the whale's next attack--another +smash at the stern that carried away the rudder and destroyed the +steering gear. + +"How much water?" Captain Doane queried of the mate. + +"Three feet, sir--I just sounded," came the answer. "I think, sir, it +would be advisable to part-load the boat; then, right after the next time +the whale hits us, lower away on the run, chuck the rest of the dunnage +in, and ourselves, and get clear." + +Captain Doane nodded. + +"It will be lively work," he said. "Stand ready, all of you. Steward, +you jump aboard first and I'll pass the chronometer to you." + +Nishikanta bellicosely shouldered his vast bulk up to the captain, opened +his shirt, and exposed his revolver. + +"There's too many for the boat," he said, "and the steward's one of 'em +that don't go along. Get that. Hold it in your head. The steward's one +of 'em that don't go along." + +Captain Doane coolly surveyed the big automatic, while at the fore of his +consciousness burned a vision of his flat buildings in San Francisco. + +He shrugged his shoulders. "The boat would be overloaded, with all this +truck, anyway. Go ahead, if you want to make it your party, but just +bear in mind that I'm the navigator, and that, if you ever want to lay +eyes on your string of pawnshops, you'd better see that gentle care is +taken of me.--Steward!" + +Daughtry stepped close. + +"There won't be room for you . . . and for one or two others, I'm sorry +to say." + +"Glory be!" said Daughtry. "I was just fearin' you'd be wantin' me +along, sir.--Kwaque, you take 'm my fella dunnage belong me, put 'm in +other fella boat along other side." + +While Kwaque obeyed, the mate sounded the well for the last time, +reporting three feet and a half, and the lighter freightage of the +starboard boat was tossed in by the sailors. + +A rangy, gangly, Scandinavian youth of a sailor, droop-shouldered, six +feet six and slender as a lath, with pallid eyes of palest blue and skin +and hair attuned to the same colour scheme, joined Kwaque in his work. + +"Here, you Big John," the mate interfered. "This is your boat. You work +here." + +The lanky one smiled in embarrassment as he haltingly explained: "I tank +I lak go along cooky." + +"Sure, let him go, the more the easier," Nishikanta took charge of the +situation. "Anybody else?" + +"Sure," Dag Daughtry sneered to his face. "I reckon what's left of the +beer goes with my boat . . . unless you want to argue the matter." + +"For two cents--" Nishikanta spluttered in affected rage. + +"Not for two billion cents would you risk a scrap with me, you +money-sweater, you," was Daughtry's retort. "You've got their goats, but +I've got your number. Not for two billion billion cents would you excite +me into callin' it right now.--Big John! Just carry that case of beer +across, an' that half case, and store in my boat.--Nishikanta, just start +something, if you've got the nerve." + +Simon Nishikanta did not dare, nor did he know what to do; but he was +saved from his perplexity by the shout: + +"Here she comes!" + +All rushed to holding-ground, and held, while the whale broke more +timbers and the _Mary Turner_ rolled sluggishly down and back again. + +"Lower away! On the run! Lively!" + +Captain Doane's orders were swiftly obeyed. The starboard boat, fended +off by sailors, rose and fell in the water alongside while the remainder +of the dunnage and provisions showered into her. + +"Might as well lend a hand, sir, seein' you're bent on leaving in such a +hurry," said Daughtry, taking the chronometer from Captain Doane's hand +and standing ready to pass it down to him as soon as he was in the boat. + +"Come on, Greenleaf," Grimshaw called up to the Ancient Mariner. + +"No, thanking you very kindly, sir," came the reply. "I think there'll +be more room in the other boat." + +"We want the cook!" Nishikanta cried out from the stern sheets. "Come +on, you yellow monkey! Jump in!" + +Little old shrivelled Ah Moy debated. He visibly thought, although none +knew the intrinsicness of his thinking as he stared at the gun of the fat +pawnbroker and at the leprosy of Kwaque and Daughtry, and weighed the one +against the other and tossed the light and heavy loads of the two boats +into the balance. + +"Me go other boat," said Ah Moy, starting to drag his bag away across the +deck. + +"Cast off," Captain Doane commanded. + +Scraps, the big Newfoundland puppy, who had played and pranced about +through all the excitement, seeing so many of the _Mary Turner's_ humans +in the boat alongside, sprang over the rail, low and close to the water, +and landed sprawling on the mass of sea-bags and goods cases. + +The boot rocked, and Nishikanta, his automatic in his hand, cried out: + +"Back with him! Throw him on board!" + +The sailors obeyed, and the astounded Scraps, after a brief flight +through the air, found himself arriving on his back on the _Mary +Turner's_ deck. At any rate, he took it for no more than a rough joke, +and rolled about ecstatically, squirming vermicularly, in anticipation of +what new delights of play were to be visited upon him. He reached out, +with an enticing growl of good fellowship, for Michael, who was now free +on deck, and received in return a forbidding and crusty snarl. + +"Guess we'll have to add him to our collection, eh, sir?" Daughtry +observed, sparing a moment to pat reassurance on the big puppy's head and +being rewarded with a caressing lick on his hand from the puppy's +blissful tongue. + +No first-class ship's steward can exist without possessing a more than +average measure of executive ability. Dag Daughtry was a first-class +ship's steward. Placing the Ancient Mariner in a nook of safety, and +setting Big John to unlashing the remaining boat and hooking on the +falls, he sent Kwaque into the hold to fill kegs of water from the scant +remnant of supply, and Ah Moy to clear out the food in the galley. + +The starboard boat, cluttered with men, provisions, and property and +being rapidly rowed away from the danger centre, which was the _Mary +Turner_, was scarcely a hundred yards away, when the whale, missing the +schooner clean, turned at full speed and close range, churning the water, +and all but collided with the boat. So near did she come that the rowers +on the side next to her pulled in their oars. The surge she raised, +heeled the loaded boat gunwale under, so that a degree of water was +shipped ere it righted. Nishikanta, automatic still in hand, standing up +in the sternsheets by the comfortable seat he had selected for himself, +was staggered by the lurch of the boat. In his instinctive, spasmodic +effort to maintain balance, he relaxed his clutch on the pistol, which +fell into the sea. + +"_Ha-ah_!" Daughtry girded. "What price Nishikanta? I got his number, +and he's lost you fellows' goats. He's your meat now. Easy meat? I +should say! And when it comes to the eating, eat him first. Sure, he's +a skunk, and will taste like one, but many's the honest man that's eaten +skunk and pulled through a tight place. But you'd better soak 'im all +night in salt water, first." + +Grimshaw, whose seat in the sternsheets was none of the best, grasped the +situation simultaneously with Daughtry, and, with a quick upstanding, and +hooking out-reach of hand, caught the fat pawnbroker around the back of +the neck, and with anything but gentle suasion jerked him half into the +air and flung him face downward on the bottom boards. + +"Ha-ah!" said Daughtry across the hundred yards of ocean. + +Next, and without hurry, Grimshaw took the more comfortable seat for +himself. + +"Want to come along?" he called to Daughtry. + +"No, thank you, sir," was the latter's reply. "There's too many of us, +an' we'll make out better in the other boat." + +With some bailing, and with others bending to the oars, the boat rowed +frantically away, while Daughtry took Ah Moy with him down into the +lazarette beneath the cabin floor and broke out and passed up more +provisions. + +It was when he was thus below that the cow grazed the schooner just +for'ard of amidships on the port side, lashed out with her mighty tail as +she sounded, and ripped clean away the chain plates and rail of the +mizzen-shrouds. In the next roll of the huge, glassy sea, the mizzen- +mast fell overside. + +"My word, some whale," Daughtry said to Ah Moy, as they emerged from the +cabin companionway and gazed at this latest wreckage. + +Ah Moy found need to get more food from the galley, when Daughtry, +Kwaque, and Big John swung their weight on the falls, one at a time, and +hoisted the port boat, one end at a time, over the rail and swung her +out. + +"We'll wait till the next smash, then lower away, throw everything in, +an' get outa this," the steward told the Ancient Mariner. "Lots of time. +The schooner'll sink no faster when she's awash than she's sinkin' now." + +Even as he spoke, the scuppers were nearly level with the ocean, and her +rolling in the big sea was sluggish. + +"Hey!" he called with sudden forethought across the widening stretch of +sea to Captain Doane. "What's the course to the Marquesas? Right now? +And how far away, sir?" + +"Nor'-nor'-east-quarter-east!" came the faint reply. "Will fetch Nuka- +Hiva! About two hundred miles! Haul on the south-east trade with a good +full and you'll make it!" + +"Thank you, sir," was the steward's acknowledgment, ere he ran aft, +disrupted the binnacle, and carried the steering compass back to the +boat. + +Almost, from the whale's delay in renewing her charging, did they think +she had given over. And while they waited and watched her rolling on the +sea an eighth of a mile away, the _Mary Turner_ steadily sank. + +"We might almost chance it," Daughtry was debating aloud to Big John, +when a new voice entered the discussion. + +"Cocky!--Cocky!" came plaintive tones from below out of the steerage +companion. + +"Devil be damned!" was the next, uttered in irritation and anger. "Devil +be damned! Devil be damned!" + +"Of course not," was Daughtry's judgment, as he dashed across the deck, +crawled through the confusion of the main-topmast and its many stays that +blocked the way, and found the tiny, white morsel of life perched on a +bunk-edge, ruffling its feathers, erecting and flattening its rosy crest, +and cursing in honest human speech the waywardness of the world and of +ships and humans upon the sea. + +The cockatoo stepped upon Daughtry's inviting index finger, swiftly +ascended his shirt sleeve, and, on his shoulder, claws sunk into the +flimsy shirt fabric till they hurt the flesh beneath, leaned head to ear +and uttered in gratitude and relief, and in self-identification: "Cocky. +Cocky." + +"You son of a gun," Daughtry crooned. + +"Glory be!" Cooky replied, in tones so like Daughtry's as to startle him. + +"You son of a gun," Daughtry repeated, cuddling his cheek and ear against +the cockatoo's feathered and crested head. "And some folks thinks it's +only folks that count in this world." + +Still the whale delayed, and, with the ocean washing their toes on the +level deck, Daughtry ordered the boat lowered away. Ah Moy was eager in +his haste to leap into the bow. Nor was Daughtry's judgment correct that +the little Chinaman's haste was due to fear of the sinking ship. What Ah +Moy sought was the place in the boat remotest from Kwaque and the +steward. + +Shoving clear, they roughly stored the supplies and dunnage out of the +way of the thwarts and took their places, Ah Moy pulling bow-oar, next in +order Big John and Kwaque, with Daughtry (Cocky still perched on his +shoulder) at stroke. On top of the dunnage, in the sternsheets, Michael +gazed wistfully at the _Mary Turner_ and continued to snarl crustily at +Scraps who idiotically wanted to start a romp. The Ancient Mariner stood +up at the steering sweep and gave the order, when all was ready, for the +first dip of the oars. + +A growl and a bristle from Michael warned them that the whale was not +only coming but was close upon them. But it was not charging. Instead, +it circled slowly about the schooner as if examining its antagonist. + +"I'll bet it's head's sore from all that banging, an' it's beginnin' to +feel it," Daughtry grinned, chiefly for the purpose of keeping his +comrades unafraid. + +Barely had they rowed a dozen strokes, when an exclamation from Big John +led them to follow his gaze to the schooners forecastle-head, where the +forecastle cat flashed across in pursuit of a big rat. Other rats they +saw, evidently driven out of their lairs by the rising water. + +"We just can't leave that cat behind," Daughtry soliloquized in +suggestive tones. + +"Certainly not," the Ancient Mariner responded swinging his weight on the +steering-sweep and heading the boat back. + +Twice the whale gently rolled them in the course of its leisurely +circling, ere they bent to their oars again and pulled away. Of them the +whale seemed to take no notice. It was from the huge thing, the +schooner, that death had been wreaked upon her calf; and it was upon the +schooner that she vented the wrath of her grief. + +Even as they pulled away, the whale turned and headed across the ocean. +At a half-mile distance she curved about and charged back. + +"With all that water in her, the schooner'll have a real kick-back in her +when she's hit," Daughtry said. "Lordy me, rest on your oars an' watch." + +Delivered squarely amidships, it was the hardest blow the _Mary Turner_ +had received. Stays and splinters of rail flew in the air as she rolled +so far over as to expose half her copper wet-glistening in the sun. As +she righted sluggishly, the mainmast swayed drunkenly in the air but did +not fall. + +"A knock-out!" Daughtry cried, at sight of the whale flurrying the water +with aimless, gigantic splashings. "It must a-smashed both of 'em." + +"Schooner he finish close up altogether," Kwaque observed, as the _Mary +Turner's_ rail disappeared. + +Swiftly she sank, and no more than a matter of moments was it when the +stump of her mainmast was gone. Remained only the whale, floating and +floundering, on the surface of the sea. + +"It's nothing to brag about," Daughtry delivered himself of the _Mary +Turner's_ epitaph. "Nobody'd believe us. A stout little craft like that +sunk, deliberately sunk, by an old cow-whale! No, sir. I never believed +that old moss-back in Honolulu, when he claimed he was a survivor of the +sinkin' of the _Essex_, an' no more will anybody believe me." + +"The pretty schooner, the pretty clever craft," mourned the Ancient +Mariner. "Never were there more dainty and lovable topmasts on a three- +masted schooner, and never was there a three-masted schooner that worked +like the witch she was to windward." + +Dag Daughtry, who had kept always footloose and never married, surveyed +the boat-load of his responsibilities to which he was anchored--Kwaque, +the Black Papuan monstrosity whom he had saved from the bellies of his +fellows; Ah Moy, the little old sea-cook whose age was problematical only +by decades; the Ancient Mariner, the dignified, the beloved, and the +respected; gangly Big John, the youthful Scandinavian with the inches of +a giant and the mind of a child; Killeny Boy, the wonder of dogs; Scraps, +the outrageously silly and fat-rolling puppy; Cocky, the white-feathered +mite of life, imperious as a steel-blade and wheedlingly seductive as a +charming child; and even the forecastle cat, the lithe and tawny slayer +of rats, sheltering between the legs of Ah Moy. And the Marquesas were +two hundred miles distant full-hauled on the tradewind which had ceased +but which was as sure to live again as the morning sun in the sky. + +The steward heaved a sigh, and whimsically shot into his mind the memory- +picture in his nursery-book of the old woman who lived in a shoe. He +wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, and was +dimly aware of the area of the numbness that bordered the centre that was +sensationless between his eyebrows, as he said: + +"Well, children, rowing won't fetch us to the Marquesas. We'll need a +stretch of wind for that. But it's up to us, right now, to put a mile or +so between us an' that peevish old cow. Maybe she'll revive, and maybe +she won't, but just the same I can't help feelin' leary about her." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + +Two days later, as the steamer _Mariposa_ plied her customary route +between Tahiti and San Francisco, the passengers ceased playing deck +quoits, abandoned their card games in the smoker, their novels and deck +chairs, and crowded the rail to stare at the small boat that skimmed to +them across the sea before a light following breeze. When Big John, +aided by Ah Moy and Kwaque, lowered the sail and unstepped the mast, +titters and laughter arose from the passengers. It was contrary to all +their preconceptions of mid-ocean rescue of ship-wrecked mariners from +the open boat. + +It caught their fancy that this boat was the Ark, what of its freightage +of bedding, dry goods boxes, beer-cases, a cat, two dogs, a white +cockatoo, a Chinaman, a kinky-headed black, a gangly pallid-haired giant, +a grizzled Dag Daughtry, and an Ancient Mariner who looked every inch the +part. Him a facetious, vacationing architect's clerk dubbed Noah, and so +greeted him. + +"I say, Noah," he called. "Some flood, eh? Located Ararat yet?" + +"Catch any fish?" bawled another youngster down over the rail. + +"Gracious! Look at the beer! Good English beer! Put me down for a +case!" + +Never was a more popular wrecked crew more merrily rescued at sea. The +young blades would have it that none other than old Noah himself had come +on board with the remnants of the Lost Tribes, and to elderly female +passengers spun hair-raising accounts of the sinking of an entire tropic +island by volcanic and earthquake action. + +"I'm a steward," Dag Daughtry told the _Mariposa's_ captain, "and I'll be +glad and grateful to berth along with your stewards in the glory-hole. +Big John there's a sailorman, an' the fo'c's'le 'll do him. The Chink is +a ship's cook, and the nigger belongs to me. But Mr. Greenleaf, sir, is +a gentleman, and the best of cabin fare and staterooms'll be none too +good for him, sir." + +And when the news went around that these were part of the survivors of +the three-masted schooner, _Mary Turner_, smashed into kindling wood and +sunk by a whale, the elderly females no more believed than had they the +yarn of the sunken island. + +"Captain Hayward," one of them demanded of the steamer's skipper, "could +a whale sink the _Mariposa_?" + +"She has never been so sunk," was his reply. + +"I knew it!" she declared emphatically. "It's not the way of ships to go +around being sunk by whales, is it, captain?" + +"No, madam, I assure you it is not," was his response. "Nevertheless, +all the five men insist upon it." + +"Sailors are notorious for their unveracity, are they not?" the lady +voiced her flat conclusion in the form of a tentative query. + +"Worst liars I ever saw, madam. Do you know, after forty years at sea, I +couldn't believe myself under oath." + +* * * * * + +Nine days later the _Mariposa_ threaded the Golden Gate and docked at San +Francisco. Humorous half-columns in the local papers, written in the +customary silly way by unlicked cub reporters just out of grammar school, +tickled the fancy of San Francisco for a fleeting moment in that the +steamship _Mariposa_ had rescued some sea-waifs possessed of a cock-and- +bull story that not even the reporters believed. Thus, silly reportorial +unveracity usually proves extraordinary truth a liar. It is the way of +cub reporters, city newspapers, and flat-floor populations which get +their thrills from moving pictures and for which the real world and all +its spaciousness does not exist. + +"Sunk by a whale!" demanded the average flat-floor person. "Nonsense, +that's all. Just plain rotten nonsense. Now, in the 'Adventures of +Eleanor,' which is some film, believe me, I'll tell you what I saw happen +. . . " + +So Daughtry and his crew went ashore into 'Frisco Town uheralded and +unsung, the second following morning's lucubrations of the sea reporters +being varied disportations upon the attack on an Italian crab fisherman +by an enormous jellyfish. Big John promptly sank out of sight in a +sailors' boarding-house, and, within the week, joined the Sailors' Union +and shipped on a steam schooner to load redwood ties at Bandon, Oregon. +Ah Moy got no farther ashore than the detention sheds of the Federal +Immigration Board, whence he was deported to China on the next Pacific +Mail steamer. The _Mary Turner's_ cat was adopted by the sailors' +forecastle of the _Mariposa_, and on the _Mariposa_ sailed away on the +back trip to Tahiti. Scraps was taken ashore by a quartermaster and left +in the bosom of his family. + +And ashore went Dag Daughtry, with his small savings, to rent two cheap +rooms for himself and his remaining responsibilities, namely, Charles +Stough Greenleaf, Kwaque, Michael, and, not least, Cocky. But not for +long did he permit the Ancient Mariner to live with him. + +"It's not playing the game, sir," he told him. "What we need is capital. +We've got to interest capital, and you've got to do the interesting. Now +this very day you've got to buy a couple of suit-cases, hire a taxicab, +go sailing up to the front door of the Bronx Hotel like good pay and be +damned. She's a real stylish hotel, but reasonable if you want to make +it so. A little room, an inside room, European plan, of course, and then +you can economise by eatin' out." + +"But, steward, I have no money," the Ancient Mariner protested. + +"That's all right, sir; I'll back you for all I can." + +"But, my dear man, you know I'm an old impostor. I can't stick you up +like the others. You . . . why . . . why, you're a friend, don't you +see?" + +"Sure I do, and I thank you for sayin' it, sir. And that's why I'm with +you. And when you've nailed another crowd of treasure-hunters and got +the ship ready, you'll just ship me along as steward, with Kwaque, and +Killeny Boy, and the rest of our family. You've adopted me, now, an' I'm +your grown-up son, an' you've got to listen to me. The Bronx is the +hotel for you--fine-soundin' name, ain't it? That's atmosphere. Folk'll +listen half to you an' more to your hotel. I tell you, you leaning back +in a big leather chair talkin' treasure with a two-bit cigar in your +mouth an' a twenty-cent drink beside you, why that's like treasure. They +just got to believe. An' if you'll come along now, sir, we'll trot out +an' buy them suit-cases." + +Right bravely the Ancient Mariner drove to the Bronx in a taxi, +registered his "Charles Stough Greenleaf" in an old-fashioned hand, and +took up anew the activities which for years had kept him free of the poor- +farm. No less bravely did Dag Daughtry set out to seek work. This was +most necessary, because he was a man of expensive luxuries. His family +of Kwaque, Michael, and Cocky required food and shelter; more costly than +that was maintenance of the Ancient Mariner in the high-class hotel; and, +in addition, was his six-quart thirst. + +But it was a time of industrial depression. The unemployed problem was +bulking bigger than usual to the citizens of San Francisco. And, as +regarded steamships and sailing vessels, there were three stewards for +every Steward's position. Nothing steady could Daughtry procure, while +his occasional odd jobs did not balance his various running expenses. +Even did he do pick-and-shovel work, for the municipality, for three +days, when he had to give way, according to the impartial procedure, to +another needy one whom three days' work would keep afloat a little +longer. + +Daughtry would have put Kwaque to work, except that Kwaque was +impossible. The black, who had only seen Sydney from steamers' decks, +had never been in a city in his life. All he knew of the world was +steamers, far-outlying south-sea isles, and his own island of King +William in Melanesia. So Kwaque remained in the two rooms, cooking and +housekeeping for his master and caring for Michael and Cocky. All of +which was prison for Michael, who had been used to the run of ships, of +coral beaches and plantations. + +But in the evenings, sometimes accompanied a few steps in the rear by +Kwaque, Michael strolled out with Steward. The multiplicity of man-gods +on the teeming sidewalks became a real bore to Michael, so that man-gods, +in general, underwent a sharp depreciation. But Steward, the particular +god of his fealty and worship, appreciated. Amongst so many gods Michael +felt bewildered, while Steward's Abrahamic bosom became more than ever +the one sure haven where harshness and danger never troubled. + +"Mind your step," is the last word and warning of twentieth-century city +life. Michael was not slow to learn it, as he conserved his own feet +among the countless thousands of leather-shod feet of men, ever hurrying, +always unregarding of the existence and right of way of a lowly, four- +legged Irish terrier. + +The evening outings with Steward invariably led from saloon to saloon, +where, at long bars, standing on sawdust floors, or seated at tables, men +drank and talked. Much of both did men do, and also did Steward do, ere, +his daily six-quart stint accomplished, he turned homeward for bed. Many +were the acquaintances he made, and Michael with him. Coasting seamen +and bay sailors they mostly were, although there were many 'longshoremen +and waterfront workmen among them. + +From one of these, a scow-schooner captain who plied up and down the bay +and the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, Daughtry had the promise of +being engaged as cook and sailor on the schooner _Howard_. Eighty tons +of freight, including deckload, she carried, and in all democracy Captain +Jorgensen, the cook, and the two other sailors, loaded and unloaded her +at all hours, and sailed her night and day on all times and tides, one +man steering while three slept and recuperated. It was time, and double- +time, and over-time beyond that, but the feeding was generous and the +wages ran from forty-five to sixty dollars a month. + +"Sure, you bet," said Captain Jorgensen. "This cook-feller, Hanson, +pretty quick I smash him up an' fire him, then you can come along . . . +and the bow-wow, too." Here he dropped a hearty, wholesome hand of toil +down to a caress of Michael's head. "That's one fine bow-wow. A bow-wow +is good on a scow when all hands sleep alongside the dock or in an anchor +watch." + +"Fire Hanson now," Dag Daughtry urged. + +But Captain Jorgensen shook his slow head slowly. "First I smash him +up." + +"Then smash him now and fire him," Daughtry persisted. "There he is +right now at the corner of the bar." + +"No. He must give me reason. I got plenty of reason. But I want reason +all hands can see. I want him make me smash him, so that all hands say, +'Hurrah, Captain, you done right.' Then you get the job, Daughtry." + +Had Captain Jorgensen not been dilatory in his contemplated smashing, and +had not Hanson delayed in giving sufficient provocation for a smashing, +Michael would have accompanied Steward upon the schooner, _Howard_, and +all Michael's subsequent experiences would have been totally different +from what they were destined to be. But destined they were, by chance +and by combinations of chance events over which Michael had no control +and of which he had no more awareness than had Steward himself. At that +period, the subsequent stage career and nightmare of cruelty for Michael +was beyond any wildest forecast or apprehension. And as to forecasting +Dag Daughtry's fate, along with Kwaque, no maddest drug-dream could have +approximated it. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + +One night Dag Daughtry sat at a table in the saloon called the +Pile-drivers' Home. He was in a parlous predicament. Harder than ever +had it been to secure odd jobs, and he had reached the end of his +savings. Earlier in the evening he had had a telephone conference with +the Ancient Mariner, who had reported only progress with an exceptionally +strong nibble that very day from a retired quack doctor. + +"Let me pawn my rings," the Ancient Mariner had urged, not for the first +time, over the telephone. + +"No, sir," had been Daughtry's reply. "We need them in the business. +They're stock in trade. They're atmosphere. They're what you call a +figure of speech. I'll do some thinking to-night an' see you in the +morning, sir. Hold on to them rings an' don't be no more than casual in +playin' that doctor. Make 'm come to you. It's the only way. Now +you're all right, an' everything's hunkydory an' the goose hangs high. +Don't you worry, sir. Dag Daughtry never fell down yet." + +But, as he sat in the Pile-drivers' Home, it looked as if his fall-down +was very near. In his pocket was precisely the room-rent for the +following week, the advance payment of which was already three days +overdue and clamorously demanded by the hard-faced landlady. In the +rooms, with care, was enough food with which to pinch through for another +day. The Ancient Mariner's modest hotel bill had not been paid for two +weeks--a prodigious sum under the circumstances, being a first-class +hotel; while the Ancient Mariner had no more than a couple of dollars in +his pocket with which to make a sound like prosperity in the ears of the +retired doctor who wanted to go a-treasuring. + +Most catastrophic of all, however, was the fact that Dag Daughtry was +three quarts short of his daily allowance and did not dare break into the +rent money which was all that stood between him and his family and the +street. This was why he sat at the beer table with Captain Jorgensen, +who was just returned with a schooner-load of hay from the Petaluma +Flats. He had already bought beer twice, and evinced no further show of +thirst. Instead, he was yawning from long hours of work and waking and +looking at his watch. And Daughtry was three quarts short! Besides, +Hanson had not yet been smashed, so that the cook-job on the schooner +still lay ahead an unknown distance in the future. + +In his desperation, Daughtry hit upon an idea with which to get another +schooner of steam beer. He did not like steam beer, but it was cheaper +than lager. + +"Look here, Captain," he said. "You don't know how smart that Killeny +Boy is. Why, he can count just like you and me." + +"Hoh!" rumbled Captain Jorgensen. "I seen 'em do it in side shows. It's +all tricks. Dogs an' horses can't count." + +"This dog can," Daughtry continued quietly. "You can't fool 'm. I bet +you, right now, I can order two beers, loud so he can hear and notice, +and then whisper to the waiter to bring one, an', when the one comes, +Killeny Boy'll raise a roar with the waiter." + +"Hoh! Hoh! How much will you bet?" + +The steward fingered a dime in his pocket. If Killeny failed him it +meant that the rent-money would be broken in upon. But Killeny couldn't +and wouldn't fail him, he reasoned, as he answered: + +"I'll bet you the price of two beers." + +The waiter was summoned, and, when he had received his secret +instructions, Michael was called over from where he lay at Kwaque's feet +in a corner. When Steward placed a chair for him at the table and +invited him into it, he began to key up. Steward expected something of +him, wanted him to show off. And it was not because of the showing off +that he was eager, but because of his love for Steward. Love and service +were one in the simple processes of Michael's mind. Just as he would +have leaped into fire for Steward's sake, so would he now serve Steward +in any way Steward desired. That was what love meant to him. It was all +love meant to him--service. + +"Waiter!" Steward called; and, when the waiter stood close at hand: "Two +beers.--Did you get that, Killeny? _Two_ beers." + +Michael squirmed in his chair, placed an impulsive paw on the table, and +impulsively flashed out his ribbon of tongue to Steward's close-bending +face. + +"He will remember," Daughtry told the scow-schooner captain. + +"Not if we talk," was the reply. "Now we will fool your bow-wow. I will +say that the job is yours when I smash Hanson. And you will say it is +for me to smash Hanson now. And I will say Hanson must give me reason +first to smash him. And then we will argue like two fools with mouths +full of much noise. Are you ready?" + +Daughtry nodded, and thereupon ensued a loud-voiced discussion that drew +Michael's earnest attention from one talker to the other. + +"I got you," Captain Jorgensen announced, as he saw the waiter +approaching with but a single schooner of beer. "The bow-wow has forgot, +if he ever remembered. He thinks you an' me is fighting. The place in +his mind for _one_ beer, and _two_, is wiped out, like a wave on the +beach wipes out the writing in the sand." + +"I guess he ain't goin' to forget arithmetic no matter how much noise you +shouts," Daughtry argued aloud against his sinking spirits. "An' I ain't +goin' to butt in," he added hopefully. "You just watch 'm for himself." + +The tall, schooner-glass of beer was placed before the captain, who laid +a swift, containing hand around it. And Michael, strung as a taut +string, knowing that something was expected of him, on his toes to serve, +remembered his ancient lessons on the _Makambo_, vainly looked into the +impassive face of Steward for a sign, then looked about and saw, not +_two_ glasses, but _one_ glass. So well had he learned the difference +between one and two that it came to him--how the profoundest psychologist +can no more state than can he state what thought is in itself--that there +was one glass only when two glasses had been commanded. With an abrupt +upspring, his throat half harsh with anger, he placed both forepaws on +the table and barked at the waiter. + +Captain Jorgensen crashed his fist down. + +"You win!" he roared. "I pay for the beer! Waiter, bring one more." + +Michael looked to Steward for verification, and Steward's hand on his +head gave adequate reply. + +"We try again," said the captain, very much awake and interested, with +the back of his hand wiping the beer-foam from his moustache. "Maybe he +knows one an' two. How about three? And four?" + +"Just the same, Skipper. He counts up to five, and knows more than five +when it is more than five, though he don't know the figures by name after +five." + +"Oh, Hanson!" Captain Jorgensen bellowed across the bar-room to the cook +of the _Howard_. "Hey, you square-head! Come and have a drink!" + +Hanson came over and pulled up a chair. + +"I pay for the drinks," said the captain; "but you order, Daughtry. See, +now, Hanson, this is a trick bow-wow. He can count better than you. We +are three. Daughtry is ordering three beers. The bow-wow hears three. I +hold up two fingers like this to the waiter. He brings two. The bow-wow +raises hell with the waiter. You see." + +All of which came to pass, Michael blissfully unappeasable until the +order was filled properly. + +"He can't count," was Hanson's conclusion. "He sees one man without +beer. That's all. He knows every man should ought to have a glass. +That's why he barks." + +"Better than that," Daughtry boasted. "There are three of us. We will +order four. Then each man will have his glass, but Killeny will talk to +the waiter just the same." + +True enough, now thoroughly aware of the game, Michael made outcry to the +waiter till the fourth glass was brought. By this time many men were +about the table, all wanting to buy beer and test Michael. + +"Glory be," Dag Daughtry solloquized. "A funny world. Thirsty one +moment. The next moment they'd fair drown you in beer." + +Several even wanted to buy Michael, offering ridiculous sums like fifteen +and twenty dollars. + +"I tell you what," Captain Jorgensen muttered to Daughtry, whom he had +drawn away into a corner. "You give me that bow-wow, and I'll smash +Hanson right now, and you got the job right away--come to work in the +morning." + +Into another corner the proprietor of the Pile-drivers' Home drew +Daughtry to whisper to him: + +"You stick around here every night with that dog of yourn. It makes +trade. I'll give you free beer any time and fifty cents cash money a +night." + +It was this proposition that started the big idea in Daughtry's mind. As +he told Michael, back in the room, while Kwaque was unlacing his shoes: + +"It's this way Killeny. If you're worth fifty cents a night and free +beer to that saloon keeper, then you're worth that to me . . . and more, +my son, more. 'Cause he's lookin' for a profit. That's why he sells +beer instead of buyin' it. An', Killeny, you won't mind workin' for me, +I know. We need the money. There's Kwaque, an' Mr. Greenleaf, an' +Cocky, not even mentioning you an' me, an' we eat an awful lot. An' room- +rent's hard to get, an' jobs is harder. What d'ye say, son, to-morrow +night you an' me hustle around an' see how much coin we can gather?" + +And Michael, seated on Steward's knees, eyes to eyes and nose to nose, +his jowls held in Steward's hand's wriggled and squirmed with delight, +flipping out his tongue and bobbing his tail in the air. Whatever it +was, it was good, for it was Steward who spoke. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + +The grizzled ship's steward and the rough-coated Irish terrier quickly +became conspicuous figures in the night life of the Barbary Coast of San +Francisco. Daughtry elaborated on the counting trick by bringing Cocky +along. Thus, when a waiter did not fetch the right number of glasses, +Michael would remain quite still, until Cocky, at a privy signal from +Steward, standing on one leg, with the free claw would clutch Michael's +neck and apparently talk into Michael's ear. Whereupon Michael would +look about the glasses on the table and begin his usual expostulation +with the waiter. + +But it was when Daughtry and Michael first sang "Roll me Down to Rio" +together, that the ten-strike was made. It occurred in a sailors' dance- +hall on Pacific Street, and all dancing stopped while the sailors +clamoured for more of the singing dog. Nor did the place lose money, for +no one left, and the crowd increased to standing room as Michael went +through his repertoire of "God Save the King," "Sweet Bye and Bye," +"Lead, Kindly Light," "Home, Sweet Home," and "Shenandoah." + +It meant more than free beer to Daughtry, for, when he started to leave, +the proprietor of the place thrust three silver dollars into his hand and +begged him to come around with the dog next night. + +"For that?" Daughtry demanded, looking at the money as if it were +contemptible. + +Hastily the proprietor added two more dollars, and Daughtry promised. + +"Just the same, Killeny, my son," he told Michael as they went to bed, "I +think you an' me are worth more than five dollars a turn. Why, the like +of you has never been seen before. A real singing dog that can carry +'most any air with me, and that can carry half a dozen by himself. An' +they say Caruso gets a thousand a night. Well, you ain't Caruso, but +you're the dog-Caruso of the entire world. Son, I'm goin' to be your +business manager. If we can't make a twenty-dollar gold-piece a +night--say, son, we're goin' to move into better quarters. An' the old +gent up at the Hotel de Bronx is goin' to move into an outside room. An' +Kwaque's goin' to get a real outfit of clothes. Killeny, my boy, we're +goin' to get so rich that if he can't snare a sucker we'll put up the +cash ourselves 'n' buy a schooner for 'm, 'n' send him out a-treasure- +huntin' on his own. We'll be the suckers, eh, just you an' me, an' love +to." + +* * * * * + +The Barbary Coast of San Francisco, once the old-time sailor-town in the +days when San Francisco was reckoned the toughest port of the Seven Seas, +had evolved with the city until it depended for at least half of its +earnings on the slumming parties that visited it and spent liberally. It +was quite the custom, after dinner, for many of the better classes of +society, especially when entertaining curious Easterners, to spend an +hour or several in motoring from dance-hall to dance-hall and cheap +cabaret to cheap cabaret. In short, the "Coast" was as much a +sight-seeing place as was Chinatown and the Cliff House. + +It was not long before Dag Daughtry was getting his twenty dollars a +night for two twenty-minute turns, and was declining more beer than a +dozen men with thirsts equal to his could have accommodated. Never had +he been so prosperous; nor can it be denied that Michael enjoyed it. +Enjoy it he did, but principally for Steward's sake. He was serving +Steward, and so to serve was his highest heart's desire. + +In truth, Michael was the bread-winner for quite a family, each member of +which fared well. Kwaque blossomed out resplendent in russet-brown +shoes, a derby hat, and a gray suit with trousers immaculately creased. +Also, he became a devotee of the moving-picture shows, spending as much +as twenty and thirty cents a day and resolutely sitting out every +repetition of programme. Little time was required of him in caring for +Daughtry, for they had come to eating in restaurants. Not only had the +Ancient Mariner moved into a more expensive outside room at the Bronx; +but Daughtry insisted on thrusting upon him more spending money, so that, +on occasion, he could invite a likely acquaintance to the theatre or a +concert and bring him home in a taxi. + +"We won't keep this up for ever, Killeny," Steward told Michael. "For +just as long as it takes the old gent to land another bunch of +gold-pouched, retriever-snouted treasure-hunters, and no longer. Then +it's hey for the ocean blue, my son, an' the roll of a good craft under +our feet, an' smash of wet on the deck, an' a spout now an' again of the +scuppers. + +"We got to go rollin' down to Rio as well as sing about it to a lot of +cheap skates. They can take their rotten cities. The sea's the life for +us--you an' me, Killeny, son, an' the old gent an' Kwaque, an' Cocky, +too. We ain't made for city ways. It ain't healthy. Why, son, though +you maybe won't believe it, I'm losin' my spring. The rubber's goin' +outa me. I'm kind o' languid, with all night in an' nothin' to do but +sit around. It makes me fair sick at the thought of hearin' the old gent +say once again, 'I think, steward, one of those prime cocktails would be +just the thing before dinner.' We'll take a little ice-machine along +next voyage, an' give 'm the best. + +"An' look at Kwaque, Killeny, my boy. This ain't his climate. He's +positively ailin'. If he sits around them picture-shows much more he'll +develop the T.B. For the good of his health, an' mine an' yours, an' all +of us, we got to get up anchor pretty soon an' hit out for the home of +the trade winds that kiss you through an' through with the salt an' the +life of the sea." + +* * * * * + +In truth, Kwaque, who never complained, was ailing fast. A swelling, +slow and sensationless at first, under his right arm-pit, had become a +mild and unceasing pain. No longer could he sleep a night through. +Although he lay on his left side, never less than twice, and often three +and four times, the hurt of the swelling woke him. Ah Moy, had he not +long since been delivered back to China by the immigration authorities, +could have told him the meaning of that swelling, just as he could have +told Dag Daughtry the meaning of the increasing area of numbness between +his eyes where the tiny, vertical, lion-lines were cutting more +conspicuously. Also, could he have told him what was wrong with the +little finger on his left hand. Daughtry had first diagnosed it as a +sprain of a tendon. Later, he had decided it was chronic rheumatism +brought on by the damp and foggy Sun Francisco climate. It was one of +his reasons for desiring to get away again to sea where the tropic sun +would warm the rheumatism out of him. + +As a steward, Daughtry had been accustomed to contact with men and women +of the upper world. But for the first time in his life, here in the +underworld of San Francisco, in all equality he met such persons from +above. Nay, more, they were eager to meet him. They sought him. They +fawned upon him for an invitation to sit at his table and buy beer for +him in whatever garish cabaret Michael was performing. They would have +bought wine for him, at enormous expense, had he not stubbornly stuck to +his beer. They were, some of them, for inviting him to their homes--"An' +bring the wonderful dog along for a sing-song"; but Daughtry, proud of +Michael for being the cause of such invitations, explained that the +professional life was too arduous to permit of such diversions. To +Michael he explained that when they proffered a fee of fifty dollars, the +pair of them would "come a-runnin'." + +Among the host of acquaintances made in their cabaret-life, two were +destined, very immediately, to play important parts in the lives of +Daughtry and Michael. The first, a politician and a doctor, by name +Emory--Walter Merritt Emory--was several times at Daughtry's table, where +Michael sat with them on a chair according to custom. Among other +things, in gratitude for such kindnesses from Daughtry, Doctor Emory gave +his office card and begged for the privilege of treating, free of charge, +either master or dog should they ever become sick. In Daughtry's +opinion, Dr. Walter Merritt Emory was a keen, clever man, undoubtedly +able in his profession, but passionately selfish as a hungry tiger. As +he told him, in the brutal candour he could afford under such changed +conditions: "Doc, you're a wonder. Anybody can see it with half an eye. +What you want you just go and get. Nothing'd stop you except . . . " + +"Except?" + +"Oh, except that it was nailed down, or locked up, or had a policeman +standing guard over it. I'd sure hate to have anything you wanted." + +"Well, you have," Doctor assured him, with a significant nod at Michael +on the chair between them. + +"Br-r-r!" Daughtry shivered. "You give me the creeps. If I thought you +really meant it, San Francisco couldn't hold me two minutes." He +meditated into his beer-glass a moment, then laughed with reassurance. +"No man could get that dog away from me. You see, I'd kill the man +first. I'd just up an' tell 'm, as I'm tellin' you now, I'd kill 'm +first. An' he'd believe me, as you're believin' me now. You know I mean +it. So'd he know I meant it. Why, that dog . . . " + +In sheer inability to express the profundity of his emotion, Dag Daughtry +broke off the sentence and drowned it in his beer-glass. + +Of quite different type was the other person of destiny. Harry Del Mar, +he called himself; and Harry Del Mar was the name that appeared on the +programmes when he was doing Orpheum "time." Although Daughtry did not +know it, because Del Mar was laying off for a vacation, the man did +trained-animal turns for a living. He, too, bought drinks at Daughtry's +table. Young, not over thirty, dark of complexion with large, +long-lashed brown eyes that he fondly believed were magnetic, cherubic of +lip and feature, he belied all his appearance by talking business in +direct business fashion. + +"But you ain't got the money to buy 'm," Daughtry replied, when the other +had increased his first offer of five hundred dollars for Michael to a +thousand. + +"I've got the thousand, if that's what you mean." + +"No," Daughtry shook his head. "I mean he ain't for sale at any price. +Besides, what do you want 'm for?" + +"I like him," Del Mar answered. "Why do I come to this joint? Why does +the crowd come here? Why do men buy wine, run horses, sport actresses, +become priests or bookworms? Because they like to. That's the answer. +We all do what we like when we can, go after the thing we want whether we +can get it or not. Now I like your dog, I want him. I want him a +thousand dollars' worth. See that big diamond on that woman's hand over +there. I guess she just liked it, and wanted it, and got it, never mind +the price. The price didn't mean as much to her as the diamond. Now +that dog of yours--" + +"Don't like you," Dag Daughtry broke in. "Which is strange. He likes +most everybody without fussin' about it. But he bristled at you from the +first. No man'd want a dog that don't like him." + +"Which isn't the question," Del Mar stated quietly. "I like him. As for +him liking or not liking me, that's my look-out, and I guess I can attend +to that all right." + +It seemed to Daughtry that he glimpsed or sensed under the other's +unfaltering cherubicness of expression a steelness of cruelty that was +abysmal in that it was of controlled intelligence. Not in such terms did +Daughtry think his impression. At the most, it was a feeling, and +feelings do not require words in order to be experienced or comprehended. + +"There's an all-night bank," the other went on. "We can stroll over, +I'll cash a cheque, and in half an hour the cash will be in your hand." + +Daughtry shook his head. + +"Even as a business proposition, nothing doing," he said. "Look you. +Here's the dog earnin' twenty dollars a night. Say he works twenty-five +days in the month. That's five hundred a month, or six thousand a year. +Now say that's five per cent., because it's easier to count, it +represents the interest on a capital value of one hundred an' twenty +thousand-dollars. Then we'll suppose expenses and salary for me is +twenty thousand. That leaves the dog worth a hundred thousand. Just to +be fair, cut it in half--a fifty-thousand dog. And you're offerin' a +thousand for him." + +"I suppose you think he'll last for ever, like so much land'," Del Mar +smiled quietly. + +Daughtry saw the point instantly. + +"Give 'm five years of work--that's thirty thousand. Give 'm one year of +work--it's six thousand. An' you're offerin' me one thousand for six +thousand. That ain't no kind of business--for me . . . an' him. Besides, +when he can't work any more, an' ain't worth a cent, he'll be worth just +a plumb million to me, an' if anybody offered it, I'd raise the price." + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + +"I'll see you again," Harry Del Mar told Daughtry, at the end of his +fourth conversation on the matter of Michael's sale. + +Wherein Harry Del Mar was mistaken. He never saw Daughtry again, because +Daughtry saw Doctor Emory first. + +Kwaque's increasing restlessness at night, due to the swelling under his +right arm-pit, had began to wake Daughtry up. After several such +experiences, he had investigated and decided that Kwaque was sufficiently +sick to require a doctor. For which reason, one morning at eleven, +taking Kwaque along, he called at Walter Merritt Emory's office and +waited his turn in the crowded reception-room. + +"I think he's got cancer, Doc.," Daughtry said, while Kwaque was pulling +off his shirt and undershirt. "He never squealed, you know, never +peeped. That's the way of niggers. I didn't find our till he got to +wakin' me up nights with his tossin' about an' groanin' in his +sleep.--There! What'd you call it? Cancer or tumour--no two ways about +it, eh?" + +But the quick eye of Walter Merritt Emory had not missed, in passing, the +twisted fingers of Kwaque's left hand. Not only was his eye quick, but +it was a "leper eye." A volunteer surgeon in the first days out in the +Philippines, he had made a particular study of leprosy, and had observed +so many lepers that infallibly, except in the incipient beginnings of the +disease, he could pick out a leper at a glance. From the twisted +fingers, which was the anaesthetic form, produced by +nerve-disintegration, to the corrugated lion forehead (again anaesthetic), +his eyes flashed to the swelling under the right arm-pit and his brain +diagnosed it as the tubercular form. + +Just as swiftly flashed through his brain two thoughts: the first, the +axiom, _whenever and wherever you find a leper, look for the other +leper_; the second, the desired Irish terrier, who was owned by Daughtry, +with whom Kwaque had been long associated. And here all swiftness of eye- +flashing ceased on the part of Walter Merritt Emory. He did not know how +much, if anything, the steward knew about leprosy, and he did not care to +arouse any suspicions. Casually drawing his watch to see the time, he +turned and addressed Daughtry. + +"I should say his blood is out of order. He's run down. He's not used +to the recent life he's been living, nor to the food. To make certain, I +shall examine for cancer and tumour, although there's little chance of +anything like that." + +And as he talked, with just a waver for a moment, his gaze lifted above +Daughtry's eyes to the area of forehead just above and between the eyes. +It was sufficient. His "leper-eye" had seen the "lion" mark of the +leper. + +"You're run down yourself," he continued smoothly. "You're not up to +snuff, I'll wager. Eh?" + +"Can't say that I am," Daughtry agreed. "I guess I got to get back to +the sea an' the tropics and warm the rheumatics outa me." + +"Where?" queried Doctor Emory, almost absently, so well did he feign it, +as if apparently on the verge of returning to a closer examination, of +Kwaque's swelling. + +Daughtry extended his left hand, with a little wiggle of the little +finger advertising the seat of the affliction. Walter Merritt Emory saw, +with seeming careless look out from under careless-drooping eyelids, the +little finger slightly swollen, slightly twisted, with a smooth, almost +shiny, silkiness of skin-texture. Again, in the course of turning to +look at Kwaque, his eyes rested an instant on the lion-lines of +Daughtry's brow. + +"Rheumatism is still the great mystery," Doctor Emory said, returning to +Daughtry as if deflected by the thought. "It's almost individual, there +are so many varieties of it. Each man has a kind of his own. Any +numbness?" + +Daughtry laboriously wiggled his little finger. + +"Yes, sir," he answered. "It ain't as lively as it used to was." + +"Ah," Walter Merritt Emory murmured, with a vastitude of confidence and +assurance. "Please sit down in that chair there. Maybe I won't be able +to cure you, but I promise you I can direct you to the best place to live +for what's the matter with you.--Miss Judson!" + +And while the trained-nurse-apparelled young woman seated Dag Daughtry in +the enamelled surgeon's chair and leaned him back under direction, and +while Doctor Emory dipped his finger-tips into the strongest antiseptic +his office possessed, behind Doctor Emory's eyes, in the midst of his +brain, burned the image of a desired Irish terrier who did turns in +sailor-town cabarets, was rough-coated, and answered to the full name of +Killeny Boy. + +"You've got rheumatism in more places than your little finger," he +assured Daughtry. "There's a touch right here, I'll wager, on your +forehead. One moment, please. Move if I hurt you, Otherwise sit still, +because I don't intend to hurt you. I merely want to see if my diagnosis +is correct.--There, that's it. Move when you feel anything. Rheumatism +has strange freaks.--Watch this, Miss Judson, and I'll wager this form of +rheumatism is new to you. See. He does not resent. He thinks I have +not begun yet . . . " + +And as he talked, steadily, interestingly, he was doing what Dag Daughtry +never dreamed he was doing, and what made Kwaque, looking on, almost +dream he was seeing because of the unrealness and impossibleness of it. +For, with a large needle, Doctor Emory was probing the dark spot in the +midst of the vertical lion-lines. Nor did he merely probe the area. +Thrusting into it from one side, under the skin and parallel to it, he +buried the length of the needle from sight through the insensate +infiltration. This Kwaque beheld with bulging eyes; for his master +betrayed no sign that the thing was being done. + +"Why don't you begin?" Dag Daughtry questioned impatiently. "Besides, my +rheumatism don't count. It's the nigger-boy's swelling." + +"You need a course of treatment," Doctor Emory assured him. "Rheumatism +is a tough proposition. It should never be let grow chronic. I'll fix +up a course of treatment for you. Now, if you'll get out of the chair, +we'll look at your black servant." + +But first, before Kwaque was leaned back, Doctor Emory threw over the +chair a sheet that smelled of having been roasted almost to the scorching +point. As he was about to examine Kwaque, he looked with a slight start +of recollection at his watch. When he saw the time he startled more, and +turned a reproachful face upon his assistant. + +"Miss Judson," he said, coldly emphatic, "you have failed me. Here it +is, twenty before twelve, and you knew I was to confer with Doctor Hadley +over that case at eleven-thirty sharp. How he must be cursing me! You +know how peevish he is." + +Miss Judson nodded, with a perfect expression of contrition and humility, +as if she knew all about it, although, in reality, she knew only all +about her employer and had never heard till that moment of his engagement +at eleven-thirty. + +"Doctor Hadley's just across the hall," Doctor Emory explained to +Daughtry. "It won't take me five minutes. He and I have a disagreement. +He has diagnosed the case as chronic appendicitis and wants to operate. I +have diagnosed it as pyorrhea which has infected the stomach from the +mouth, and have suggested emetine treatment of the mouth as a cure for +the stomach disorder. Of course, you don't understand, but the point is +that I've persuaded Doctor Hadley to bring in Doctor Granville, who is a +dentist and a pyorrhea expert. And they're all waiting for me these ten +minutes! I must run. + +"I'll return inside five minutes," he called back as the door to the hall +was closing upon him.--"Miss Judson, please tell those people in the +reception-room to be patient." + +He did enter Doctor Hadley's office, although no sufferer from pyorrhea +or appendicitis awaited him. Instead, he used the telephone for two +calls: one to the president of the board of health; the other to the +chief of police. Fortunately, he caught both at their offices, +addressing them familiarly by their first names and talking to them most +emphatically and confidentially. + +Back in his own quarters, he was patently elated. + +"I told him so," he assured Miss Judson, but embracing Daughtry in the +happy confidence. "Doctor Granville backed me up. Straight pyorrhea, of +course. That knocks the operation. And right now they're jolting his +gums and the pus-sacs with emetine. Whew! A fellow likes to be right. I +deserve a smoke. Do you mind, Mr. Daughtry?" + +And while the steward shook his head, Doctor Emory lighted a big Havana +and continued audibly to luxuriate in his fictitious triumph over the +other doctor. As he talked, he forgot to smoke, and, leaning quite +casually against the chair, with arrant carelessness allowed the live +coal at the end of his cigar to rest against the tip of one of Kwaque's +twisted fingers. A privy wink to Miss Judson, who was the only one who +observed his action, warned her against anything that might happen. + +"You know, Mr. Daughtry," Walter Merritt Emory went on enthusiastically, +while he held the steward's eyes with his and while all the time the live +end of the cigar continued to rest against Kwaque's finger, "the older I +get the more convinced I am that there are too many ill-advised and hasty +operations." + +Still fire and flesh pressed together, and a tiny spiral of smoke began +to arise from Kwaque's finger-end that was different in colour from the +smoke of a cigar-end. + +"Now take that patient of Doctor Hadley's. I've saved him, not merely +the risk of an operation for appendicitis, but the cost of it, and the +hospital expenses. I shall charge him nothing for what I did. Hadley's +charge will be merely nominal. Doctor Granville, at the outside, will +cure his pyorrhea with emetine for no more than a paltry fifty dollars. +Yes, by George, besides the risk to his life, and the discomfort, I've +saved that man, all told, a cold thousand dollars to surgeon, hospital, +and nurses." + +And while he talked on, holding Daughtry's eyes, a smell of roast meat +began to pervade the air. Doctor Emory smelled it eagerly. So did Miss +Judson smell it, but she had been warned and gave no notice. Nor did she +look at the juxtaposition of cigar and finger, although she knew by the +evidence of her nose that it still obtained. + +"What's burning?" Daughtry demanded suddenly, sniffing the air and +glancing around. + +"Pretty rotten cigar," Doctor Emory observed, having removed it from +contact with Kwaque's finger and now examining it with critical +disapproval. He held it close to his nose, and his face portrayed +disgust. "I won't say cabbage leaves. I'll merely say it's something I +don't know and don't care to know. That's the trouble. They get out a +good, new brand of cigar, advertise it, put the best of tobacco into it, +and, when it has taken with the public, put in inferior tobacco and ride +the popularity of it. No more in mine, thank you. This day I change my +brand." + +So speaking, he tossed the cigar into a cuspidor. And Kwaque, leaning +back in the queerest chair in which he had ever sat, was unaware that the +end of his finger had been burned and roasted half an inch deep, and +merely wondered when the medicine doctor would cease talking and begin +looking at the swelling that hurt his side under his arm. + +And for the first time in his life, and for the ultimate time, Dag +Daughtry fell down. It was an irretrievable fall-down. Life, in its +freedom of come and go, by heaving sea and reeling deck, through the home +of the trade-winds, back and forth between the ports, ceased there for +him in Walter Merritt Emory's office, while the calm-browed Miss Judson +looked on and marvelled that a man's flesh should roast and the man wince +not from the roasting of it. + +Doctor Emory continued to talk, and tried a fresh cigar, and, despite the +fact that his reception-room was overflowing, delivered, not merely a +long, but a live and interesting, dissertation on the subject of cigars +and of the tobacco leaf and filler as grown and prepared for cigars in +the tobacco-favoured regions of the earth. + +"Now, as regards this swelling," he was saying, as he began a belated and +distant examination of Kwaque's affliction, "I should say, at a glance, +that it is neither tumour nor cancer, nor is it even a boil. I should +say . . . " + +A knock at the private door into the hall made him straighten up with an +eagerness that he did not attempt to mask. A nod to Miss Judson sent her +to open the door, and entered two policemen, a police sergeant, and a +professionally whiskered person in a business suit with a carnation in +his button-hole. + +"Good morning, Doctor Masters," Emory greeted the professional one, and, +to the others: "Howdy, Sergeant;" "Hello, Tim;" "Hello, Johnson--when did +they shift you off the Chinatown squad?" + +And then, continuing his suspended sentence, Walter Merritt Emory held +on, looking intently at Kwaque's swelling: + +"I should say, as I was saying, that it is the finest, ripest, +perforating ulcer of the _bacillus leprae_ order, that any San Francisco +doctor has had the honour of presenting to the board of health." + +"Leprosy!" exclaimed Doctor Masters. + +And all started at his pronouncement of the word. The sergeant and the +two policemen shied away from Kwaque; Miss Judson, with a smothered cry, +clapped her two hands over her heart; and Dag Daughtry, shocked but +sceptical, demanded: + +"What are you givin' us, Doc.?" + +"Stand still! don't move!" Walter Merritt Emory said peremptorily to +Daughtry. "I want you to take notice," he added to the others, as he +gently touched the live-end of his fresh cigar to the area of dark skin +above and between the steward's eyes. "Don't move," he commanded +Daughtry. "Wait a moment. I am not ready yet." + +And while Daughtry waited, perplexed, confused, wondering why Doctor +Emory did not proceed, the coal of fire burned his skin and flesh, till +the smoke of it was apparent to all, as was the smell of it. With a +sharp laugh of triumph, Doctor Emory stepped back. + +"Well, go ahead with what you was goin' to do," Daughtry grumbled, the +rush of events too swift and too hidden for him to comprehend. "An' when +you're done with that, I just want you to explain what you said about +leprosy an' that nigger-boy there. He's my boy, an' you can't pull +anything like that off on him . . . or me." + +"Gentlemen, you have seen," Doctor Emory said. "Two undoubted cases of +it, master and man, the man more advanced, with the combination of both +forms, the master with only the anaesthetic form--he has a touch of it, +too, on his little finger. Take them away. I strongly advise, Doctor +Masters, a thorough fumigation of the ambulance afterward." + +"Look here . . . " Dag Daughtry began belligerently. + +Doctor Emory glanced warningly to Doctor Masters, and Doctor Masters +glanced authoritatively at the sergeant who glanced commandingly at his +two policemen. But they did not spring upon Daughtry. Instead, they +backed farther away, drew their clubs, and glared intimidatingly at him. +More convincing than anything else to Daughtry was the conduct of the +policemen. They were manifestly afraid of contact with him. As he +started forward, they poked the ends of their extended clubs towards his +ribs to ward him off. + +"Don't you come any closer," one warned him, flourishing his club with +the advertisement of braining him. "You stay right where you are until +you get your orders." + +"Put on your shirt and stand over there alongside your master," Doctor +Emory commanded Kwaque, having suddenly elevated the chair and spilled +him out on his feet on the floor. + +"But what under the sun . . . " Daughtry began, but was ignored by his +quondam friend, who was saying to Doctor Masters: + +"The pest-house has been vacant since that Japanese died. I know the +gang of cowards in your department so I'd advise you to give the dope to +these here so that they can disinfect the premises when they go in." + +"For the love of Mike," Daughtry pleaded, all of stunned belligerence +gone from him in his state of stunned conviction that the dread disease +possessed him. He touched his finger to his sensationless forehead, then +smelled it and recognized the burnt flesh he had not felt burning. "For +the love of Mike, don't be in such a rush. If I've got it, I've got it. +But that ain't no reason we can't deal with each other like white men. +Give me two hours an' I'll get outa the city. An' in twenty-four I'll be +outa the country. I'll take ship--" + +"And continue to be a menace to the public health wherever you are," +Doctor Masters broke in, already visioning a column in the evening +papers, with scare-heads, in which he would appear the hero, the St. +George of San Francisco standing with poised lance between the people and +the dragon of leprosy. + +"Take them away," said Waiter Merritt Emory, avoiding looking Daughtry in +the eyes. + +"Ready! March!" commanded the sergeant. + +The two policemen advanced on Daughtry and Kwaque with extended clubs. + +"Keep away, an' keep movin'," one of the policemen growled fiercely. "An' +do what we say, or get your head cracked. Out you go, now. Out the door +with you. Better tell that coon to stick right alongside you." + +"Doc., won't you let me talk a moment?" Daughtry begged of Emory. + +"The time for talking is past," was the reply. "This is the time for +segregation.--Doctor Masters, don't forget that ambulance when you're +quit of the load." + +So the procession, led by the board-of-heath doctor and the sergeant, and +brought up in the rear by the policemen with their protectively extended +clubs, started through the doorway. + +Whirling about on the threshold, at the imminent risk of having his skull +cracked, Dag Daughtry called back: + +"Doc! My dog! You know 'm." + +"I'll get him for you," Doctor Emory consented quickly. "What's the +address?" + +"Room eight-seven, Clay street, the Bowhead Lodging House, you know the +place, entrance just around the corner from the Bowhead Saloon. Have 'm +sent out to me wherever they put me--will you?" + +"Certainly I will," said Doctor Emory, "and you've got a cockatoo, too?" + +"You bet, Cocky! Send 'm both along, please, sir." + +* * * * * + +"My!" said Miss Judson, that evening, at dinner with a certain young +interne of St. Joseph's Hospital. "That Doctor Emory is a wizard. No +wonder he's successful. Think of it! Two filthy lepers in our office to- +day! One was a coon. And he knew what was the matter the moment he laid +eyes on them. He's a caution. When I tell you what he did to them with +his cigar! And he was cute about it! He gave me the wink first. And +they never dreamed what he was doing. He took his cigar and . . . " + + + + +CHAPTER XX + + +The dog, like the horse, abases the base. Being base, Waiter Merritt +Emory was abased by his desire for the possession of Michael. Had there +been no Michael, his conduct would have been quite different. He would +have dealt with Daughtry as Daughtry had described, as between white men. +He would have warned Daughtry of his disease and enabled him to take ship +to the South Seas or to Japan, or to other countries where lepers are not +segregated. This would have worked no hardship on those countries, since +such was their law and procedure, while it would have enabled Daughtry +and Kwaque to escape the hell of the San Francisco pest-house, to which, +because of his baseness, he condemned them for the rest of their lives. + +Furthermore, when the expense of the maintenance of armed guards over the +pest-house, day and night, throughout the years, is considered, Walter +Merritt Emory could have saved many thousands of dollars to the +tax-payers of the city and county of San Francisco, which thousands of +dollars, had they been spent otherwise, could have been diverted to the +reduction of the notorious crowding in school-rooms, to purer milk for +the babies of the poor, or to an increase of breathing-space in the park +system for the people of the stifling ghetto. But had Walter Merritt +Emory been thus considerate, not only would Daughtry and Kwaque have +sailed out and away over the sea, but with them would have sailed +Michael. + +Never was a reception-roomful of patients rushed through more +expeditiously than was Doctor Emory's the moment the door had closed upon +the two policemen who brought up Daughtry's rear. And before he went to +his late lunch, Doctor Emory was away in his machine and down into the +Barbary Coast to the door of the Bowhead Lodging House. On the way, by +virtue of his political affiliations, he had been able to pick up a +captain of detectives. The addition of the captain proved necessary, for +the landlady put up a stout argument against the taking of the dog of her +lodger. But Milliken, captain of detectives, was too well known to her, +and she yielded to the law of which he was the symbol and of which she +was credulously ignorant. + +As Michael started out of the room on the end of a rope, a plaintive call +of reminder came from the window-sill, where perched a tiny, snow-white +cockatoo. + +"Cocky," he called. "Cocky." + +Walter Merritt Emory glanced back and for no more than a moment +hesitated. "We'll send for the bird later," he told the landlady, who, +still mildly expostulating as she followed them downstairs, failed to +notice that the captain of the detectives had carelessly left the door to +Daughtry's rooms ajar. + +* * * * * + +But Walter Merritt Emory was not the only base one abased by desire of +possession of Michael. In a deep leather chair, his feet resting in +another deep leather chair, at the Indoor Yacht Club, Harry Del Mar +yielded to the somniferous digestion of lunch, which was for him +breakfast as well, and glanced through the first of the early editions of +the afternoon papers. His eyes lighted on a big headline, with a brief +five lines under it. His feet were instantly drawn down off the chair +and under him as he stood up erect upon them. On swift second thought, +he sat down again, pressed the electric button, and, while waiting for +the club steward, reread the headline and the brief five lines. + +In a taxi, and away, heading for the Barbary Coast, Harry Del Mar saw +visions that were golden. They took on the semblance of yellow, twenty- +dollar gold pieces, of yellow-backed paper bills of the government +stamping of the United States, of bank books, and of rich coupons ripe +for the clipping--and all shot through the flashings of the form of a +rough-coated Irish terrier, on a galaxy of brilliantly-lighted stages, +mouth open, nose upward to the drops, singing, ever singing, as no dog +had ever been known to sing in the world before. + +* * * * * + +Cocky himself was the first to discover that the door was ajar, and was +looking at it with speculation (if by "speculation" may be described the +mental processes of a bird, in some mysterious way absorbing into its +consciousness a fresh impression of its environment and preparing to act, +or not act, according to which way the fresh impression modifies its +conduct). Humans do this very thing, and some of them call it "free +will." Cocky, staring at the open door, was in just the stage of +determining whether or not he should more closely inspect that crack of +exit to the wider world, which inspection, in turn, would determine +whether or not he should venture out through the crack, when his eyes +beheld the eyes of the second discoverer staring in. + +The eyes were bestial, yellow-green, the pupils dilating and narrowing +with sharp swiftness as they sought about among the lights and glooms of +the room. Cocky knew danger at the first glimpse--danger to the +uttermost of violent death. Yet Cocky did nothing. No panic stirred his +heart. Motionless, one eye only turned upon the crack, he focused that +one eye upon the head and eyes of the gaunt gutter-cat whose head had +erupted into the crack like an apparition. + +Alert, dilating and contracting, as swift as cautious, and infinitely +apprehensive, the pupils vertically slitted in jet into the midmost of +amazing opals of greenish yellow, the eyes roved the room. They alighted +on Cocky. Instantly the head portrayed that the cat had stiffened, +crouched, and frozen. Almost imperceptibly the eyes settled into a +watching that was like to the stony stare of a sphinx across aching and +eternal desert sands. The eyes were as if they had so stared for +centuries and millenniums. + +No less frozen was Cocky. He drew no film across his one eye that showed +his head cocked sideways, nor did the passion of apprehension that +whelmed him manifest itself in the quiver of a single feather. Both +creatures were petrified into the mutual stare that is of the hunter and +the hunted, the preyer and the prey, the meat-eater and the meat. + +It was a matter of long minutes, that stare, until the head in the +doorway, with a slight turn, disappeared. Could a bird sigh, Cocky would +have sighed. But he made no movement as he listened to the slow, +dragging steps of a man go by and fade away down the hall. + +Several minutes passed, and, just as abruptly the apparition +reappeared--not alone the head this time, but the entire sinuous form as +it glided into the room and came to rest in the middle of the floor. The +eyes brooded on Cocky, and the entire body was still save for the long +tail, which lashed from one side to the other and back again in an +abrupt, angry, but monotonous manner. + +Never removing its eyes from Cocky, the cat advanced slowly until it +paused not six feet away. Only the tail lashed back and forth, and only +the eyes gleamed like jewels in the full light of the window they faced, +the vertical pupils contracting to scarcely perceptible black slits. + +And Cocky, who could not know death with the clearness of concept of a +human, nevertheless was not altogether unaware that the end of all things +was terribly impending. As he watched the cat deliberately crouch for +the spring, Cocky, gallant mote of life that he was, betrayed his one and +forgivable panic. + +"Cocky! Cocky!" he called plaintively to the blind, insensate walls. + +It was his call to all the world, and all powers and things and +two-legged men-creatures, and Steward in particular, and Kwaque, and +Michael. The burden of his call was: "It is I, Cocky. I am very small +and very frail, and this is a monster to destroy me, and I love the +light, bright world, and I want to live and to continue to live in the +brightness, and I am so very small, and I'm a good little fellow, with a +good little heart, and I cannot battle with this huge, furry, hungry +thing that is going to devour me, and I want help, help, help. I am +Cocky. Everybody knows me. I am Cocky." + +This, and much more, was contained in his two calls of: "Cocky! Cocky!" + +And there was no answer from the blind walls, from the hall outside, nor +from all the world, and, his moment of panic over, Cocky was his brave +little self again. He sat motionless on the window-sill, his head cocked +to the side, with one unwavering eye regarding on the floor, so +perilously near, the eternal enemy of all his kind. + +The human quality of his voice had startled the gutter-cat, causing her +to forgo her spring as she flattened down her ears and bellied closer to +the floor. + +And in the silence that followed, a blue-bottle fly buzzed rowdily +against an adjacent window-pane, with occasional loud bumps against the +glass tokening that he too had his tragedy, a prisoner pent by baffling +transparency from the bright world that blazed so immediately beyond. + +Nor was the gutter-cat without her ill and hurt of life. Hunger hurt +her, and hurt her meagre breasts that should have been full for the seven +feeble and mewing little ones, replicas of her save that their eyes were +not yet open and that they were grotesquely unsteady on their soft, young +legs. She remembered them by the hurt of her breasts and the prod of her +instinct; also she remembered them by vision, so that, by the subtle +chemistry of her brain, she could see them, by way of the broken screen +across the ventilator hole, down into the cellar in the dark +rubbish-corner under the stairway, where she had stolen her lair and +birthed her litter. + +And the vision of them, and the hurt of her hunger stirred her afresh, so +that she gathered her body and measured the distance for the leap. But +Cocky was himself again. + +"Devil be damned! Devil be damned!" he shouted his loudest and most +belligerent, as he ruffled like a bravo at the gutter-cat beneath him, so +that he sent her crouching, with startlement, lower to the floor, her +ears wilting rigidly flat and down, her tail lashing, her head turning +about the room so that her eyes might penetrate its obscurest corners in +quest of the human whose voice had so cried out. + +All of which the gutter-cat did, despite the positive evidence of her +senses that this human noise had proceeded from the white bird itself on +the window-sill. + +The bottle fly bumped once again against its invisible prison wall in the +silence that ensued. The gutter-cat prepared and sprang with sudden +decision, landing where Cocky had perched the fraction of a second +before. Cocky had darted to the side, but, even as he darted, and as the +cat landed on the sill, the cat's paw flashed out sidewise and Cocky +leaped straight up, beating the air with his wings so little used to +flying. The gutter-cat reared on her hind-legs, smote upward with one +paw as a child might strike with its hat at a butterfly. But there was +weight in the cat's paw, and the claws of it were outspread like so many +hooks. + +Struck in mid-air, a trifle of a flying machine, all its delicate gears +tangled and disrupted, Cocky fell to the floor in a shower of white +feathers, which, like snowflakes, eddied slowly down after, and after the +plummet-like descent of the cat, so that some of them came to rest on her +back, startling her tense nerves with their gentle impact and making her +crouch closer while she shot a swift glance around and overhead for any +danger that might threaten. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + +Harry Del Mar found only a few white feathers on the floor of Dag +Daughtry's room in the Bowhead Lodging House, and from the landlady +learned what had happened to Michael. The first thing Harry Del Mar did, +still retaining his taxi, was to locate the residence of Doctor Emory and +make sure that Michael was confined in an outhouse in the back yard. Next +he engaged passage on the steamship _Umatilla_, sailing for Seattle and +Puget Sound ports at daylight. And next he packed his luggage and paid +his bills. + +In the meantime, a wordy war was occurring in Walter Merritt Emory's +office. + +"The man's yelling his head off," Doctor Masters was contending. "The +police had to rap him with their clubs in the ambulance. He was violent. +He wanted his dog. It can't be done. It's too raw. You can't steal his +dog this way. He'll make a howl in the papers." + +"Huh!" quoth Walter Merritt Emory. "I'd like to see a reporter with +backbone enough to go within talking distance of a leper in the +pest-house. And I'd like to see the editor who wouldn't send a +pest-house letter (granting it'd been smuggled past the guards) out to be +burned the very second he became aware of its source. Don't you worry, +Doc. There won't be any noise in the papers." + +"But leprosy! Public health! The dog has been exposed to his master. +The dog itself is a peripatetic source of infection." + +"Contagion is the better and more technical word, Doc.," Walter Merritt +Emory soothed with the sting of superior knowledge. + +"Contagion, then," Doctor Masters took him up. "The public must be +considered. It must not run the risk of being infected--" + +"Of contracting the contagion," the other corrected smoothly. + +"Call it what you will. The public--" + +"Poppycock," said Walter Merritt Emory. "What you don't know about +leprosy, and what the rest of the board of health doesn't know about +leprosy, would fill more books than have been compiled by the men who +have expertly studied the disease. The one thing they have eternally +tried, and are eternally trying, is to inoculate one animal outside man +with the leprosy that is peculiar to man. Horses, rabbits, rats, +donkeys, monkeys, mice, and dogs--heavens, they have tried it on them +all, tens of thousands of times and a hundred thousand times ten thousand +times, and never a successful inoculation! They have never succeeded in +inoculating it on one man from another. Here--let me show you." + +And from his shelves Waiter Merritt Emory began pulling down his +authorities. + +"Amazing . . . most interesting . . . " Doctor Masters continued to emit +from time to time as he followed the expert guidance of the other through +the books. "I never dreamed . . . the amount of work they have done is +astounding . . . " + +"But," he said in conclusion, "there is no convincing a layman of the +matter contained on your shelves. Nor can I so convince my public. Nor +will I try to. Besides, the man is consigned to the living death of life- +long imprisonment in the pest-house. You know the beastly hole it is. He +loves the dog. He's mad over it. Let him have it. I tell you it's +rotten unfair and cruel, and I won't stand for it." + +"Yes, you will," Walter Merritt Emory assured him coolly. "And I'll tell +you why." + +He told him. He said things that no doctor should say to another, but +which a politician may well say, and has often said, to another +politician--things which cannot bear repeating, if, for no other reason, +because they are too humiliating and too little conducive to pride for +the average American citizen to know; things of the inside, secret +governments of imperial municipalities which the average American +citizen, voting free as a king at the polls, fondly thinks he manages; +things which are, on rare occasion, partly unburied and promptly reburied +in the tomes of reports of Lexow Committees and Federal Commissions. + +* * * * * + +And Walter Merritt Emory won his desire of Michael against Doctor +Masters; had his wife dine with him at Jules' that evening and took her +to see Margaret Anglin in celebration of the victory; returned home at +one in the morning, in his pyjamas went out to take a last look at +Michael, and found no Michael. + +* * * * * + +The pest-house of San Francisco, as is naturally the case with +pest-houses in all American cities, was situated on the bleakest, +remotest, forlornest, cheapest space of land owned by the city. Poorly +protected from the Pacific Ocean, chill winds and dense fog-banks +whistled and swirled sadly across the sand-dunes. Picnicking parties +never came there, nor did small boys hunting birds' nests or playing at +being wild Indians. The only class of frequenters was the suicides, who, +sad of life, sought the saddest landscape as a fitting scene in which to +end. And, because they so ended, they never repeated their visits. + +The outlook from the windows was not inspiriting. A quarter of a mile in +either direction, looking out along the shallow canyon of the sand-hills, +Dag Daughtry could see the sentry-boxes of the guards, themselves armed +and more prone to kill than to lay hands on any escaping pest-man, much +less persuavively discuss with him the advisability of his return to the +prison house. + +On the opposing sides of the prospect from the windows of the four walls +of the pest-house were trees. Eucalyptus they were, but not the royal +monarchs that their brothers are in native habitats. Poorly planted, by +politics, illy attended, by politics, decimated and many times repeatedly +decimated by the hostile forces of their environment, a straggling +corporal's guard of survivors, they thrust their branches, twisted and +distorted, as if writhing in agony, into the air. Scrub of growth they +were, expending the major portion of their meagre nourishment in their +roots that crawled seaward through the insufficient sand for anchorage +against the prevailing gales. + +Not even so far as the sentry-boxes were Daughtry and Kwaque permitted to +stroll. A hundred yards inside was the dead-line. Here, the guards came +hastily to deposit food-supplies, medicines, and written doctors' +instructions, retreating as hastily as they came. Here, also, was a +blackboard upon which Daughtry was instructed to chalk up his needs and +requests in letters of such size that they could be read from a distance. +And on this board, for many days, he wrote, not demands for beer, +although the six-quart daily custom had been broken sharply off, but +demands like: + + WHERE IS MY DOG? + + HE IS AN IRISH TERRIER. + + HE IS ROUGH-COATED. + + HIS NAME IS KILLENY BOY. + + I WANT MY DOG. + + I WANT TO TALK TO DOC. EMORY. + + TELL DOC. EMORY TO WRITE TO ME ABOUT MY DOG. + +One day, Dag Daughtry wrote: + + IF I DON'T GET MY DOG I WILL KILL DOC. EMORY. + +Whereupon the newspapers informed the public that the sad case of the two +lepers at the pest-house had become tragic, because the white one had +gone insane. Public-spirited citizens wrote to the papers, declaiming +against the maintenance of such a danger to the community, and demanding +that the United States government build a national leprosarium on some +remote island or isolated mountain peak. But this tiny ripple of +interest faded out in seventy-two hours, and the reporter-cubs proceeded +variously to interest the public in the Alaskan husky dog that was half a +bear, in the question whether or not Crispi Angelotti was guilty of +having cut the carcass of Giuseppe Bartholdi into small portions and +thrown it into the bay in a grain-sack off Fisherman's Wharf, and in the +overt designs of Japan upon Hawaii, the Philippines, and the Pacific +Coast of North America. + +And, outside of imprisonment, nothing happened of interest to Dag +Daughtry and Kwaque at the pest-house until one night in the late fall. A +gale was not merely brewing. It was coming on to blow. Because, in a +basket of fruit, stated to have been sent by the young ladies of Miss +Foote's Seminary, Daughtry had read a note artfully concealed in the +heart of an apple, telling him on the forthcoming Friday night to keep a +light burning in his window. Daughtry received a visitor at five in the +morning. + +It was Charles Stough Greenleaf, the Ancient Mariner himself. Having +wallowed for two hours through the deep sand of the eucalyptus forest, he +fell exhausted against the penthouse door. When Daughtry opened it, the +ancient one blew in upon him along with a gusty wet splatter of the +freshening gale. Daughtry caught him first and supported him toward a +chair. But, remembering his own affliction, he released the old man so +abruptly as to drop him violently into the chair. + +"My word, sir," said Daughtry. "You must 'a' ben havin' a time of +it.--Here, you fella Kwaque, this fella wringin' wet. You fella take 'm +off shoe stop along him." + +But before Kwaque, immediately kneeling, could touch hand to the +shoelaces, Daughtry, remembering that Kwaque was likewise unclean, had +thrust him away. + +"My word, I don't know what to do," Daughtry murmured, staring about +helplessly as he realised that it was a leper-house, that the very chair +in which the old man sat was a leper-chair, that the very floor on which +his exhausted feet rested was a leper-floor. + +"I'm glad to see you, most exceeding glad," the Ancient Mariner panted, +extending his hand in greeting. + +Dag Daughtry avoided it. + +"How goes the treasure-hunting?" he queried lightly. "Any prospects in +sight?" + +The Ancient Mariner nodded, and with returning breath, at first +whispering, gasped out: + +"We're all cleared to sail on the first of the ebb at seven this morning. +She's out in the stream now, a tidy bit of a schooner, the _Bethlehem_, +with good lines and hull and large cabin accommodations. She used to be +in the Tahiti trade, before the steamers ran her out. Provisions are +good. Everything is most excellent. I saw to that. I cannot say I like +the captain. I've seen his type before. A splendid seaman, I am +certain, but a Bully Hayes grown old. A natural born pirate, a very +wicked old man indeed. Nor is the backer any better. He is middle-aged, +has a bad record, and is not in any sense of the word a gentleman, but he +has plenty of money--made it first in California oil, then grub-staked a +prospector in British Columbia, cheated him out of his share of the big +lode he discovered and doubled his own wealth half a dozen times over. A +very undesirable, unlikeable sort of a man. But he believes in luck, and +is confident that he'll make at least fifty millions out of our adventure +and cheat me out of my share. He's as much a pirate as is the captain +he's engaged." + +"Mr. Greenleaf, I congratulate you, sir," Daughtry said. "And you have +touched me, sir, touched me to the heart, coming all the way out here on +such a night, and running such risks, just to say good-bye to poor Dag +Daughtry, who always meant somewhat well but had bad luck." + +But while he talked so heartily, Daughtry saw, in a resplendent +visioning, all the freedom of a schooner in the great South Seas, and +felt his heart sink in realisation that remained for him only the pest- +house, the sand-dunes, and the sad eucalyptus trees. + +The Ancient Mariner sat stiffly upright. + +"Sir, you have hurt me. You have hurt me to the heart." + +"No offence, sir, no offence," Daughtry stammered in apology, although he +wondered in what way he could have hurt the old gentleman's feelings. + +"You are my friend, sir," the other went on, gravely censorious. "I am +your friend, sir. And you give me to understand that you think I have +come out here to this hell-hole to say good-bye. I came out here to get +you, sir, and your nigger, sir. The schooner is waiting for you. All is +arranged. You are signed on the articles before the shipping +commissioner. Both of you. Signed on yesterday by proxies I arranged +for myself. One was a Barbadoes nigger. I got him and the white man out +of a sailors' boarding-house on Commercial Street and paid them five +dollars each to appear before the Commissioner and sign on." + +"But, my God, Mr. Greenleaf, you don't seem to grasp it that he and I are +lepers." + +Almost with a galvanic spring, the Ancient Mariner was out of the chair +and on his feet, the anger of age and of a generous soul in his face as +he cried: + +"My God, sir, what you don't seem to grasp is that you are my friend, and +that I am your friend." + +Abruptly, still under the pressure of his wrath, he thrust out his hand. + +"Steward, Daughtry. Mr. Daughtry, friend, sir, or whatever I may name +you, this is no fairy-story of the open boat, the cross-bearings +unnamable, and the treasure a fathom under the sand. This is real. I +have a heart. That, sir"--here he waved his extended hand under +Daughtry's nose--"is my hand. There is only one thing you may do, must +do, right now. You must take that hand in your hand, and shake it, with +your heart in your hand as mine is in my hand." + +"But . . . but. . . " Daughtry faltered. + +"If you don't, then I shall not depart from this place. I shall remain +here, die here. I know you are a leper. You can't tell me anything +about that. There's my hand. Are you going to take it? My heart is +there in the palm of it, in the pulse in every finger-end of it. If you +don't take it, I warn you I'll sit right down here in this chair and die. +I want you to understand I am a man, sir, a gentleman. I am a friend, a +comrade. I am no poltroon of the flesh. I live in my heart and in my +head, sir--not in this feeble carcass I cursorily inhabit. Take that +hand. I want to talk with you afterward." + +Dag Daughtry extended his hand hesitantly, but the Ancient Mariner seized +it and pressed it so fiercely with his age-lean fingers as to hurt. + +"Now we can talk," he said. "I have thought the whole matter over. We +sail on the _Bethlehem_. When the wicked man discovers that he can never +get a penny of my fabulous treasure, we will leave him. He will be glad +to be quit of us. We, you and I and your nigger, will go ashore in the +Marquesas. Lepers roam about free there. There are no regulations. I +have seen them. We will be free. The land is a paradise. And you and I +will set up housekeeping. A thatched hut--no more is needed. The work +is trifling. The freedom of beach and sea and mountain will be ours. For +you there will be sailing, swimming, fishing, hunting. There are +mountain goats, wild chickens and wild cattle. Bananas and plantains +will ripen over our heads--avocados and custard apples, also. The red +peppers grow by the door, and there will be fowls, and the eggs of fowls. +Kwaque shall do the cooking. And there will be beer. I have long noted +your thirst unquenchable. There will be beer, six quarts of it a day, +and more, more. + +"Quick. We must start now. I am sorry to tell you that I have vainly +sought your dog. I have even paid detectives who were robbers. Doctor +Emory stole Killeny Boy from you, but within a dozen hours he was stolen +from Doctor Emory. I have left no stone unturned. Killeny Boy is gone, +as we shall be gone from this detestable hole of a city. + +"I have a machine waiting. The driver is paid well. Also, I have +promised to kill him if he defaults on me. It bears just a bit north of +east over the sandhill on the road that runs along the other side of the +funny forest . . . That is right. We will start now. We can discuss +afterward. Look! Daylight is beginning to break. The guards must not +see us . . . " + +Out into the storm they passed, Kwaque, with a heart wild with gladness, +bringing up the rear. At the beginning Daughtry strove to walk aloof, +but in a trice, in the first heavy gust that threatened to whisk the +frail old man away, Dag Daughtry's hand was grasping the other's arm, his +own weight behind and under, supporting and impelling forward and up the +hill through the heavy sand. + +"Thank you, steward, thank you, my friend," the Ancient Mariner murmured +in the first lull between the gusts. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + +Not altogether unwillingly, in the darkness of night, despite that he +disliked the man, did Michael go with Harry Del Mar. Like a burglar the +man came, with infinite caution of silence, to the outhouse in Doctor +Emory's back yard where Michael was a prisoner. Del Mar knew the theatre +too well to venture any hackneyed melodramatic effect such as an electric +torch. He felt his way in the darkness to the door of the outhouse, +unlatched it, and entered softly, feeling with his hands for the wire- +haired coat. + +And Michael, a man-dog and a lion-dog in all the stuff of him, bristled +at the instant of intrusion, but made no outcry. Instead, he smelled out +the intruder and recognised him. Disliking the man, nevertheless he +permitted the tying of the rope around his neck and silently followed him +out to the sidewalk, down to the corner, and into the waiting taxi. + +His reasoning--unless reason be denied him--was simple. This man he had +met, more than once, in the company of Steward. Amity had existed +between him and Steward, for they had sat at table, and drunk together. +Steward was lost. Michael knew not where to find him, and was himself a +prisoner in the back yard of a strange place. What had once happened, +could again happen. It had happened that Steward, Del Mar, and Michael +had sat at table together on divers occasions. It was probable that such +a combination would happen again, was going to happen now, and, once +more, in the bright-lighted cabaret, he would sit on a chair, Del Mar on +one side, and on the other side beloved Steward with a glass of beer +before him--all of which might be called "leaping to a conclusion"; for +conclusion there was, and upon the conclusion Michael acted. + +Now Michael could not reason to this conclusion nor think to this +conclusion, in words. "Amity," as an instance, was no word in his +consciousness. Whether or not he thought to the conclusion in +swift-related images and pictures and swift-welded composites of images +and pictures, is a problem that still waits human solution. The point +is: _he did think_. If this be denied him, then must he have acted +wholly by instinct--which would seem more marvellous on the face of it +than if, in dim ways, he had performed a vague thought-process. + +However, into the taxi and away through the maze of San Francisco's +streets, Michael lay alertly on the floor near Del Mar's feet, making no +overtures of friendliness, by the same token making no demonstration of +the repulsion of the man's personality engendered in him. For Harry Del +Mar, who was base, and who had been further abased by his money-making +desire for the possession of Michael, had had his baseness sensed by +Michael from the beginning. That first meeting in the Barbary Coast +cabaret, Michael had bristled at him, and stiffened belligerently, when +he laid his hand on Michael's head. Nor had Michael thought about the +man at all, much less attempted any analysis of him. Something had been +wrong with that hand--the perfunctory way in which it had touched him +under a show of heartiness that could well deceive the onlooker. The +_feel_ of it had not been right. There had been no warmth in it, no +heart, no communication of genuine good approach from the brain and the +soul of the man of which it was the telegraphic tentacle and transmitter. +In short, the message or feel had not been a good message or feel, and +Michael had bristled and stiffened without thinking, but by mere +_knowing_, which is what men call "intuition." + +Electric lights, a shed-covered wharf, mountains of luggage and freight, +the noisy toil of 'longshoremen and sailors, the staccato snorts of +donkey engines and the whining sheaves as running lines ran through the +blocks, a crowd of white-coated stewards carrying hand-baggage, the +quartermaster at the gangway foot, the gangway sloping steeply up to the +_Umatilla's_ promenade deck, more quartermasters and gold-laced ship's +officers at the head of the gangway, and more crowd and confusion +blocking the narrow deck--thus Michael knew, beyond all peradventure, +that he had come back to the sea and its ships, where he had first met +Steward, where he had been always with Steward, save for the recent +nightmare period in the great city. Nor was there absent from the +flashing visions of his consciousness the images and memories of Kwaque +and Cocky. Whining eagerly, he strained at the leash, risking his tender +toes among the many inconsiderate, restless, leather-shod feet of the +humans, as he quested and scented for Cocky and Kwaque, and, most of all, +for Steward. + +Michael accepted his disappointment in not immediately meeting them, for +from the dawn of consciousness, the limitations and restrictions of dogs +in relation to humans had been hammered into him in the form of concepts +of patience. The patience of waiting, when he wanted to go home and when +Steward continued to sit at table and talk and drink beer, was his, as +was the patience of the rope around the neck, the fence too high to +scale, the narrowed-walled room with the closed door which he could never +unlatch but which humans unlatched so easily. So that he permitted +himself to be led away by the ship's butcher, who on the _Umatilla_ had +the charge of all dog passengers. Immured in a tiny between-decks cubby +which was filled mostly with boxes and bales, tied as well by the rope +around his neck, he waited from moment to moment for the door to open and +admit, realised in the flesh, the resplendent vision of Steward which +blazed through the totality of his consciousness. + +Instead, although Michael did not guess it then, and, only later, divined +it as a vague manifestation of power on the part of Del Mar, the well- +tipped ship's butcher opened the door, untied him, and turned him over to +the well-tipped stateroom steward who led him to Del Mar's stateroom. Up +to the last, Michael was convinced that he was being led to Steward. +Instead, in the stateroom, he found only Del Mar. "No Steward," might be +described as Michael's thought; but by _patience_, as his mood and key, +might be described his acceptance of further delay in meeting up with his +god, his best beloved, his Steward who was his own human god amidst the +multitude of human gods he was encountering. + +Michael wagged his tail, flattened his ears, even his crinkled ear, a +trifle, and smiled, all in a casual way of recognition, smelled out the +room to make doubly sure that there was no scent of Steward, and lay down +on the floor. When Del Mar spoke to him, he looked up and gazed at him. + +"Now, my boy, times have changed," Del Mar addressed him in cold, brittle +tones. "I'm going to make an actor out of you, and teach you what's +what. First of all, come here . . . COME HERE!" + +Michael obeyed, without haste, without lagging, and patently without +eagerness. + +"You'll get over that, my lad, and put pep into your motions when I talk +to you," Del Mar assured him; and the very manner of his utterance was a +threat that Michael could not fail to recognise. "Now we'll just see if +I can pull off the trick. You listen to me, and sing like you did for +that leper guy." + +Drawing a harmonica from his vest pocket, he put it to his lips and began +to play "Marching through Georgia." + +"Sit down!" he commanded. + +Again Michael obeyed, although all that was Michael was in protest. He +quivered as the shrill-sweet strains from the silver reeds ran through +him. All his throat and chest was in the impulse to sing; but he +mastered it, for he did not care to sing for this man. All he wanted of +him was Steward. + +"Oh, you're stubborn, eh?" Del Mar sneered at him. "The matter with you +is you're thoroughbred. Well, my boy, it just happens I know your kind +and I reckon I can make you get busy and work for me just as much as you +did for that other guy. Now get busy." + +He shifted the tune on into "Georgia Camp Meeting." But Michael was +obdurate. Not until the melting strains of "Old Kentucky Home" poured +through him did he lose his self-control and lift his mellow-throated +howl that was the call for the lost pack of the ancient millenniums. +Under the prodding hypnosis of this music he could not but yearn and burn +for the vague, forgotten life of the pack when the world was young and +the pack was the pack ere it was lost for ever through the endless +centuries of domestication. + +"Ah, ha," Del Mar chuckled coldly, unaware of the profound history and +vast past he evoked by his silver reeds. + +A loud knock on the partition wall warned him that some sleepy passenger +was objecting. + +"That will do!" he said sharply, taking the harmonica from his lips. And +Michael ceased, and hated him. "I guess I've got your number all right. +And you needn't think you're going to sleep here scratching fleas and +disturbing my sleep." + +He pressed the call-button, and, when his room-steward answered, turned +Michael over to him to be taken down below and tied up in the crowded +cubby-hole. + +* * * * * + +During the several days and nights on the _Umatilla_, Michael learned +much of what manner of man Harry Del Mar was. Almost, might it be said, +he learned Del Mar's pedigree without knowing anything of his history. +For instance he did not know that Del Mar's real name was Percival +Grunsky, and that at grammar school he had been called "Brownie" by the +girls and "Blackie" by the boys. No more did he know that he had gone +from half-way-through grammar school directly into the industrial reform +school; nor that, after serving two years, he had been paroled out by +Harris Collins, who made a living, and an excellent one, by training +animals for the stage. Much less could he know the training that for six +years Del Mar, as assistant, had been taught to give the animals, and, +thereby, had received for himself. + +What Michael did know was that Del Mar had no pedigree and was a scrub as +compared with thoroughbreds such as Steward, Captain Kellar, and _Mister_ +Haggin of Meringe. And he learned it swiftly and simply. In the day- +time, fetched by a steward, Michael would be brought on deck to Del Mar, +who was always surrounded by effusive young ladies and matrons who +lavished caresses and endearments upon Michael. This he stood, although +much bored; but what irked him almost beyond standing were the feigned +caresses and endearments Del Mar lavished on him. He knew the +cold-blooded insincerity of them, for, at night, when he was brought to +Del Mar's room, he heard only the cold brittle tones, sensed only the +threat and the menace of the other's personality, felt, when touched by +the other's hand, only a stiffness and sharpness of contact that was like +to so much steel or wood in so far as all subtle tenderness of heart and +spirit was absent. + +This man was two-faced, two-mannered. No thoroughbred was anything but +single-faced and single-mannered. A thoroughbred, hot-blooded as it +might be, was always sincere. But in this scrub was no sincerity, only a +positive insincerity. A thoroughbred had passion, because of its hot +blood; but this scrub had no passion. Its blood was cold as its +deliberateness, and it did nothing save deliberately. These things he +did not think. He merely realized them, as any creature realizes itself +in _liking_ and in not _liking_. + +To cap it all, the last night on board, Michael lost his thoroughbred +temper with this man who had no temper. It came to a fight. And Michael +had no chance. He raged royally and fought royally, leaping to the +attack, after being knocked over twice by open-handed blows under his +ear. Quick as Michael was, slashing South Sea niggers by virtue of his +quickness and cleverness, he could not touch his teeth to the flesh of +this man, who had been trained for six years with animals by Harris +Collins. So that, when he leaped, open-mouthed, for the bite, Del Mar's +right hand shot out, gripped his under-jaw as he was in the air, and +flipped him over in a somersaulting fall to the floor on his back. Once +again he leapt open-mouthed to the attack, and was filliped to the floor +so hard that almost the last particle of breath was knocked out of him. +The next leap was nearly his last. He was clutched by the throat. Two +thumbs pressed into his neck on either side of the windpipe directly on +the carotid arteries, shutting off the blood to his brain and giving him +most exquisite agony, at the same time rendering him unconscious far more +swiftly than the swiftest anaesthetic. Darkness thrust itself upon him; +and, quivering on the floor, glimmeringly he came back to the light of +the room and to the man who was casually touching a match to a cigarette +and cautiously keeping an observant eye on him. + +"Come on," Del Mar challenged. "I know your kind. You can't get my +goat, and maybe I can't get yours entirely, but I can keep you under my +thumb to work for me. Come on, you!" + +And Michael came. Being a thoroughbred, despite that he knew he was +beaten by this two-legged thing which was not warm human but was so alien +and hard that he might as well attack the wall of a room with his teeth, +or a tree-trunk, or a cliff of rock, Michael leapt bare-fanged for the +throat. And all that he leapt against was training, formula. The +experience was repeated. His throat was gripped, the thumbs shut off the +blood from his brain, and darkness smote him. Had he been more than a +normal thoroughbred dog, he would have continued to assail his +impregnable enemy until he burst his heart or fell in a fit. But he was +normal. Here was something unassailable, adamantine. As little might he +win victory from it, as from the cement-paved sidewalk of a city. The +thing was a devil, with the hardness and coldness, the wickedness and +wisdom, of a devil. It was as bad as Steward was good. Both were two- +legged. Both were gods. But this one was an evil god. + +He did not reason all this, nor any of it. Yet, transmuted into human +terms of thought and understanding, it adequately describes the fulness +of his state of mind toward Del Mar. Had Michael been entangled in a +fight with a warm god, he could have raged and battled blindly, +inflicting and receiving hurt in the chaos of conflict, as such a god, +being warm, would have likewise received and given hurt, being only a +flesh-and-blood, living, breathing entity after all. But this two-legged +god-devil did not rage blindly and was incapable of passional heat. He +was like so much cunning, massive steel machinery, and he did what +Michael could never dream he did--and, for that matter, which few humans +do and which all animal trainers do: _he kept one thought ahead of +Michael's thought all the time_, and therefore, was able to have ready +one action always in anticipation of Michael's next action. This was the +training he had received from Harris Collins, who, withal he was a +sentimental and doting husband and father, was the arch-devil when it +came to animals other than human ones, and who reigned in an animal hell +which he had created and made lucrative. + +* * * * * + +Michael went ashore in Seattle all eagerness, straining at his leash +until he choked and coughed and was coldly cursed by Del Mar. For +Michael was mastered by his expectation that he would meet Steward, and +he looked for him around the first corner, and around all corners with +undiminished zeal. But amongst the multitudes of men there was no +Steward. Instead, down in the basement of the New Washington Hotel, +where electric lights burned always, under the care of the baggage +porter, he was tied securely by the neck in the midst of Alpine ranges of +trunks which were for ever being heaped up, sought over, taken down, +carried away, or added to. + +Three days of this dolorous existence he passed. The porters made +friends with him and offered him prodigious quantities of cooked meats +from the leavings of the dining-room. Michael was too disappointed and +grief-stricken over Steward to overeat himself, while Del Mar, +accompanied by the manager of the hotel, raised a great row with the +porters for violating the feeding instructions. + +"That guy's no good," said the head porter to assistant, when Del Mar had +departed. "He's greasy. I never liked greasy brunettes anyway. My +wife's a brunette, but thank the Lord she ain't greasy." + +"Sure," agreed the assistant. "I know his kind. Why, if you'd stick a +knife into him he wouldn't bleed blood. It'd be straight liquid lard." + +Whereupon the pair of them immediately presented Michael with vaster +quantities of meat which he could not eat because the desire for Steward +was too much with him. + +In the meantime Del Mar sent off two telegrams to New York, the first to +Harris Collins' animal training school, where his troupe of dogs was +boarding through his vacation: + + "_Sell my dogs. You know what they can do and what they are worth. Am + done with them. Deduct the board and hold the balance for me until I + see you. I have the limit here of a dog. Every turn I ever pulled is + put in the shade by this one. He's a ten strike. Wait till you see + him_." + +The second, to his booking agent: + + "_Get busy. Book me over the best. Talk it up. I have the turn. A + winner. Nothing like it. Don't talk up top price but way over top + price. Prepare them for the dog when I give them the chance for the + once over. You know me. I am giving it straight. This will head the + bill anywhere all the time_." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + +Came the crate. Because Del Mar brought it into the baggage-room, +Michael was suspicious of it. A minute later his suspicion was +justified. Del Mar invited him to go into the crate, and he declined. +With a quick deft clutch on the collar at the back of his neck, Del Mar +jerked him off his footing and thrust him in, or partly in, rather, +because he had managed to get a hold on the edge of the crate with his +two forepaws. The animal trainer wasted no time. He brought the +clenched fist of his free hand down in two blows, rat-tat, on Michael's +paws. And Michael, at the pain, relaxed both holds. The next instant he +was thrust inside, snarling his indignation and rage as he vainly flung +himself at the open bars, while Del Mar was locking the stout door. + +Next, the crate was carried out to an express wagon and loaded in along +with a number of trunks. Del Mar had disappeared the moment he had +locked the door, and the two men in the wagon, which was now bouncing +along over the cobblestones, were strangers. There was just room in the +crate for Michael to stand upright, although he could not lift his head +above the level of his shoulders. And so standing, his head pressed +against the top, a rut in the road, jolting the wagon and its contents, +caused his head to bump violently. + +The crate was not quite so long as Michael, so that he was compelled to +stand with the end of his nose pressing against the end of the crate. An +automobile, darting out from a cross-street, caused the driver of the +wagon to pull in abruptly and apply the brake. With the crate thus +suddenly arrested, Michael's body was precipitated forward. There was no +brake to stop him, unless the soft end of his nose be considered the +brake, for it was his nose that brought his body to rest inside the +crate. + +He tried lying down, confined as the space was, and made out better, +although his lips were cut and bleeding by having been forced so sharply +against his teeth. But the worst was to come. One of his forepaws +slipped out through the slats or bars and rested on the bottom of the +wagon where the trunks were squeaking, screeching, and jigging. A rut in +the roadway made the nearest trunk tilt one edge in the air and shift +position, so that when it tilted back again it rested on Michael's paw. +The unexpectedness of the crushing hurt of it caused him to yelp and at +the same time instinctively and spasmodically to pull back with all his +strength. This wrenched his shoulder and added to the agony of the +imprisoned foot. + +And blind fear descended upon Michael, the fear that is implanted in all +animals and in man himself--_the fear of the trap_. Utterly beside +himself, though he no longer yelped, he flung himself madly about, +straining the tendons and muscles of his shoulder and leg and further and +severely injuring the crushed foot. He even attacked the bars with his +teeth in his agony to get at the monster thing outside that had laid hold +of him and would not let him go. Another rut saved him, however, tilting +the trunk just sufficiently to enable his violent struggling to drag the +foot clear. + +At the railroad station, the crate was handled, not with deliberate +roughness, but with such carelessness that it half-slipped out of a +baggageman's hands, capsized sidewise, and was caught when it was past +the man's knees but before it struck the cement floor. But, Michael, +sliding helplessly down the perpendicular bottom of the crate, fetched up +with his full weight on the injured paw. + +"Huh!" said Del Mar a little later to Michael, having strolled down the +platform to where the crate was piled on a truck with other baggage +destined for the train. "Got your foot smashed. Well, it'll teach you a +lesson to keep your feet inside." + +"That claw is a goner," one of the station baggage-men said, +straightening up from an examination of Michael through the bars. + +Del Mar bent to a closer scrutiny. + +"So's the whole toe," he said, drawing his pocket-knife and opening a +blade. "I'll fix it in half a jiffy if you'll lend a hand." + +He unlocked the box and dipped Michael out with the customary strangle- +hold on the neck. He squirmed and struggled, dabbing at the air with the +injured as well as the uninjured forepaw and increasing his pain. + +"You hold the leg," Del Mar commanded. "He's safe with that grip. It +won't take a second." + +Nor did it take longer. And Michael, back in the box and raging, was one +toe short of the number which he had brought into the world. The blood +ran freely from the crude but effective surgery, and he lay and licked +the wound and was depressed with apprehension of he knew not what +terrible fate awaited him and was close at hand. Never, in his +experience of men, had he been so treated, while the confinement of the +box was maddening with its suggestion of the trap. Trapped he was, and +helpless, and the ultimate evil of life had happened to Steward, who had +evidently been swallowed up by the Nothingness which had swallowed up +Meringe, the _Eugenie_, the Solomon Islands, the _Makambo_, Australia, +and the _Mary Turner_. + +Suddenly, from a distance, came a bedlam of noise that made Michael prick +up his ears and bristle with premonition of fresh disaster. It was a +confused yelping, howling, and barking of many dogs. + +"Holy Smoke!--It's them damned acting dogs," growled the baggageman to +his mate. "There ought to be a law against dog-acts. It ain't decent." + +"It's Peterson's Troupe," said the other. "I was on when they come in +last week. One of 'em was dead in his box, and from what I could see of +him it looked mighty like he'd had the tar knocked outa him." + +"Got a wollopin' from Peterson most likely in the last town and then was +shipped along with the bunch and left to die in the baggage car." + +The bedlam increased as the animals were transferred from the wagon to a +platform truck, and when the truck rolled up and stopped alongside +Michael's he made out that it was piled high with crated dogs. In truth, +there were thirty-five dogs, of every sort of breed and mostly mongrel, +and that they were far from happy was attested by their actions. Some +howled, some whimpered, others growled and raged at one another through +the slots, and many maintained a silence of misery. Several licked and +nursed bruised feet. Smaller dogs that did not fight much were crammed +two or more into single crates. Half a dozen greyhounds were crammed +into larger crates that were anything save large enough. + +"Them's the high-jumpers," said the first baggageman. "An' look at the +way they're packed. Peterson ain't going to pay any more excess baggage +than he has to. Not half room enough for them to stand up. It must be +hell for them from the time they leave one town till they arrive at the +next." + +But what the baggageman did not know was that in the towns the hell was +not mitigated, that the dogs were still confined in their too-narrow +prisons, that, in fact, they were life-prisoners. Rarely, except for +their acts, were they taken out from their cages. From a business +standpoint, good care did not pay. Since mongrel dogs were cheap, it was +cheaper to replace them when they died than so to care for them as to +keep them from dying. + +What the baggageman did not know, and what Peterson did know, was that of +these thirty-five dogs not one was a surviving original of the troupe +when it first started out four years before. Nor had there been any +originals discarded. The only way they left the troupe and its cages was +by dying. Nor did Michael know even as little as the baggageman knew. He +knew nothing save that here reigned pain and woe and that it seemed he +was destined to share the same fate. + +Into the midst of them, when with more howlings and yelpings they were +loaded into the baggage car, was Michael's cage piled. And for a day and +a part of two nights, travelling eastward, he remained in the dog +inferno. Then they were loaded off in some large city, and Michael +continued on in greater quietness and comfort, although his injured foot +still hurt and was bruised afresh whenever his crate was moved about in +the car. + +What it was all about--why he was kept in his cramped prison in the +cramped car--he did not ask himself. He accepted it as unhappiness and +misery, and had no more explanation for it than for the crushing of the +paw. Such things happened. It was life, and life had many evils. The +_why_ of things never entered his head. He knew _things_ and some small +bit of the _how_ of things. What was, _was_. Water was wet, fire hot, +iron hard, meat good. He accepted such things as he accepted the +everlasting miracles of the light and of the dark, which were no miracles +to him any more than was his wire coat a miracle, or his beating heart, +or his thinking brain. + +In Chicago, he was loaded upon a track, carted through the roaring +streets of the vast city, and put into another baggage-car which was +quickly in motion in continuation of the eastward journey. It meant more +strange men who handled baggage, as it meant in New York, where, from +railroad baggage-room to express wagon he was exchanged, for ever a +crated prisoner and dispatched to one, Harris Collins, on Long Island. + +First of all came Harris Collins and the animal hell over which he ruled. +But the second event must be stated first. Michael never saw Harry Del +Mar again. As the other men he had known had stepped out of life, which +was a way they had, so Harry Del Mar stepped out of Michael's purview of +life as well as out of life itself. And his stepping out was literal. A +collision on the elevated, a panic scramble of the uninjured out upon the +trestle over the street, a step on the third rail, and Harry Del Mar was +engulfed in the Nothingness which men know as death and which is +nothingness in so far as such engulfed ones never reappear nor walk the +ways of life again. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + +Harris Collins was fifty-two years of age. He was slender and dapper, +and in appearance and comportment was so sweet- and gentle-spirited that +the impression he radiated was almost of sissyness. He might have taught +a Sunday-school, presided over a girls' seminary, or been a president of +a humane society. + +His complexion was pink and white, his hands were as soft as the hands of +his daughters, and he weighed a hundred and twelve pounds. Moreover, he +was afraid of his wife, afraid of a policeman, afraid of physical +violence, and lived in constant dread of burglars. But the one thing he +was not afraid of was wild animals of the most ferocious sorts, such as +lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars. He knew the game, and could +conquer the most refractory lion with a broom-handle--not outside the +cage, but inside and locked in. + +It was because he knew the game and had learned it from his father before +him, a man even smaller than himself and more fearful of all things +except animals. This father, Noel Collins, had been a successful animal +trainer in England, before emigrating to America, and in America he had +continued the success and laid the foundation of the big animal training +school at Cedarwild, which his son had developed and built up after him. +So well had Harris Collins built on his father's foundation that the +place was considered a model of sanitation and kindness. It entertained +many visitors, who invariably went away with their souls filled with +ecstasy over the atmosphere of sweetness and light that pervaded the +place. Never, however, were they permitted to see the actual training. +On occasion, performances were given them by the finished products which +verified all their other delightful and charming conclusions about the +school. But had they seen the training of raw novices, it would have +been a different story. It might even have been a riot. As it was, the +place was a zoo, and free at that; for, in addition to the animals he +owned and trained and bought and sold, a large portion of the business +was devoted to boarding trained animals and troupes of animals for owners +who were out of engagements, or for estates of such owners which were in +process of settlement. From mice and rats to camels and elephants, and +even, on occasion, to a rhinoceros or a pair of hippopotamuses, he could +supply any animal on demand. + +When the Circling Brothers' big three-ring show on a hard winter went +into the hands of the receivers, he boarded the menagerie and the horses +and in three months turned a profit of fifteen thousand dollars. More--he +mortgaged all he possessed against the day of the auction, bought in the +trained horses and ponies, the giraffe herd and the performing elephants, +and, in six months more was quit of an of them, save the pony Repeater +who turned air-springs, at another profit of fifteen thousand dollars. As +for Repeater, he sold the pony several months later for a sheer profit of +two thousand. While this bankruptcy of the Circling Brothers had been +the greatest financial achievement of Harris Collin's life, nevertheless +he enjoyed no mean permanent income from his plant, and, in addition, +split fees with the owners of his board animals when he sent them to the +winter Hippodrome shows, and, more often than not, failed to split any +fee at all when he rented the animals to moving-picture companies. + +Animal men, the country over, acknowledged him to be, not only the +richest in the business, but the king of trainers and the grittiest man +who ever went into a cage. And those who from the inside had seen him +work were agreed that he had no soul. Yet his wife and children, and +those in his small social circle, thought otherwise. They, never seeing +him at work, were convinced that no softer-hearted, more sentimental man +had ever been born. His voice was low and gentle, his gestures were +delicate, his views on life, the world, religion and politics, the +mildest. A kind word melted him. A plea won him. He gave to all local +charities, and was gravely depressed for a week when the Titanic went +down. And yet--the men in the trained-animal game acknowledged him the +nerviest and most nerveless of the profession. And yet--his greatest +fear in the world was that his large, stout wife, at table, should crown +him with a plate of hot soup. Twice, in a tantrum, she had done this +during their earlier married life. In addition to his fear that she +might do it again, he loved her sincerely and devotedly, as he loved his +children, seven of them, for whom nothing was too good or too expensive. + +So well did he love them, that the four boys from the beginning he +forbade from seeing him _work_, and planned gentler careers for them. +John, the oldest, in Yale, had elected to become a man of letters, and, +in the meantime, ran his own automobile with the corresponding standard +of living such ownership connoted in the college town of New Haven. +Harold and Frederick were down at a millionaires' sons' academy in +Pennsylvania; and Clarence, the youngest, at a prep. school in +Massachusetts, was divided in his choice of career between becoming a +doctor or an aviator. The three girls, two of them twins, were pledged +to be cultured into ladies. Elsie was on the verge of graduating from +Vassar. Mary and Madeline, the twins, in the most select and most +expensive of seminaries, were preparing for Vassar. All of which +required money which Harris Collins did not grudge, but which strained +the earning capacity of his animal-training school. It compelled him to +work the harder, although his wife and the four sons and three daughters +did not dream that he actually worked at all. Their idea was that by +virtue of superior wisdom he merely superintended, and they would have +been terribly shocked could they have seen him, club in hand, thrashing +forty mongrel dogs, in the process of training, which had become excited +and out of hand. + +A great deal of the work was done by his assistants, but it was Harris +Collins who taught them continually what to do and how to do it, and who +himself, on more important animals, did the work and showed them how. His +assistants were almost invariably youths from the reform schools, and he +picked them with skilful eye and intuition. Control of them, under their +paroles, with intelligence and coldness on their part, were the +conditions and qualities he sought, and such combination, as a matter of +course, carried with it cruelty. Hot blood, generous impulses, +sentimentality, were qualities he did not want for his business; and the +Cedarwild Animal School was business from the first tick of the clock to +the last bite of the lash. In short, Harris Collins, in the totality of +results, was guilty of causing more misery and pain to animals than all +laboratories of vivisection in Christendom. + +And into this animal hell Michael descended--although his arrival was +horizontal, across three thousand five hundred miles, in the same crate +in which he had been placed at the New Washington Hotel in Seattle. Never +once had he been out of the crate during the entire journey, and +filthiness, as well as wretchedness, characterized his condition. Thanks +to his general good health, the wound of the amputated toe was in the +process of uneventful healing. But dirt clung to him, and he was +infested with fleas. + +Cedarwild, to look at, was anything save a hell. Velvet lawns, gravelled +walks and drives, and flowers formally growing, led up to the group of +long low buildings, some of frame and some of concrete. But Michael was +not received by Harris Collins, who, at the moment, sat in his private +office, Harry Del Mar's last telegram on his desk, writing a memorandum +to his secretary to query the railroad and the express companies for the +whereabouts of a dog, crated and shipped by one, Harry Del Mar, from +Seattle and consigned to Cedarwild. It was a pallid-eyed youth of +eighteen in overalls who received Michael, receipted for him to the +expressman, and carried his crate into a slope-floored concrete room that +smelled offensively and chemically clean. + +Michael was impressed by his surroundings but not attracted by the youth, +who rolled up his sleeves and encased himself in large oilskin apron +before he opened the crate. Michael sprang out and staggered about on +legs which had not walked for days. This particular two-legged god was +uninteresting. He was as cold as the concrete floor, as methodical as a +machine; and in such fashion he went about the washing, scrubbing, and +disinfecting of Michael. For Harris Collins was scientific and +antiseptic to the last word in his handling of animals, and Michael was +scientifically made clean, without deliberate harshness, but without any +slightest hint of gentleness or consideration. + +Naturally, he did not understand. On top of all he had already +experienced, not even knowing executioners and execution chambers, for +all he knew this bare room of cement and chemical smell might well be the +place of the ultimate life-disaster and this youth the god who was to +send him into the dark which had engulfed all he had known and loved. +What Michael did know beyond the shadow of any doubt was that it was all +coldly ominous and terribly strange. He endured the hand of the youth- +god on the scruff of his neck, after the collar had been unbuckled; but +when the hose was turned on him, he resented and resisted. The youth, +merely working by formula, tightened the safe grip on the scruff of +Michael's neck and lifted him clear of the floor, at the same time, with +the other hand, directing the stream of water into his mouth and +increasing it to full force by the nozzle control. Michael fought, and +was well drowned for his pains, until he gasped and strangled helplessly. + +After that he resisted no more, and was washed out and scrubbed out and +cleansed out with the hose, a big bristly brush, and much carbolic soap, +the lather of which got into and stung his eyes and nose, causing him to +weep copiously and sneeze violently. Apprehensive of what might at any +moment happen to him, but by this time aware that the youth was neither +positive nor negative for kindness or harm, Michael continued to endure +without further battling, until, clean and comfortable, he was put away +into a pen, sweet and wholesome, where he slept and for the time being +forgot. The place was the hospital, or segregation ward, and a week of +imprisonment was spent therein, in which nothing happened in the way of +development of germ diseases, and nothing happened to him except regular +good food, pure drinking-water, and absolute isolation from contact with +all life save the youth-god who, like an automaton, attended on him. + +Michael had yet to meet Harris Collins, although, from a distance, often +he heard his voice, not loud, but very imperative. That the owner of +this voice was a high god, Michael knew from the first sound of it. Only +a high god, a master over ordinary gods, could be so imperative. Will +was in that voice, and accustomedness to command. Any dog would have so +decided as quickly as Michael did. And any dog would have decided that +there was no love nor lovableness in the god behind the voice, nothing to +warm one's heart nor to adore. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + +It was at eleven in the morning that the pale youth-god put collar and +chain on Michael, led him out of the segregation ward, and turned him +over to a dark youth-god who wasted no time of greeting on him and +manifested no friendliness. A captive at the end of a chain, on the way +Michael quickly encountered other captives going in his direction. There +were three of them, and never had he seen the like. Three slouching, +ambling monsters of bears they were, and at sight of them Michael +bristled and uttered the lowest of growls; for he knew them, out of his +heredity (as a domestic cow knows her first wolf), as immemorial enemies +from the wild. But he had travelled too far, seen too much, and was +altogether too sensible, to attack them. Instead, walking stiff-legged +and circumspectly, but smelling with all his nose the strange scent of +the creatures, he followed at the end of his chain his own captor god. + +Continually a multitude of strange scents invaded his nostrils. Although +he could not see through walls, he got the smells he was later to +identify of lions, leopards, monkeys, baboons, and seals and sea-lions. +All of which might have stunned an ordinary dog; but the effect on him +was to make him very alert and at the same time very subdued. It was as +if he walked in a new and monstrously populous jungle and was +unacquainted with its ways and denizens. + +As he was entering the arena, he shied off to the side more +stiff-leggedly than ever, bristled all along his neck and back, and +growled deep and low in his throat. For, emerging from the arena, came +five elephants. Small elephants they were, but to him they were the +hugest of monsters, in his mind comparable only with the cow-whale of +which he had caught fleeting glimpses when she destroyed the schooner +_Mary Turner_. But the elephants took no notice of him, each with its +trunk clutching the tail of the one in front of it as it had been taught +to do in making an exit. + +Into the arena, he came, the bears following on his heels. It was a +sawdust circle the size of a circus ring, contained inside a square +building that was roofed over with glass. But there were no seats about +the ring, since spectators were not tolerated. Only Harris Collins and +his assistants, and buyers and sellers of animals and men in the +profession, were ever permitted to behold how animals were tormented into +the performance of tricks to make the public open its mouth in +astonishment or laughter. + +Michael forgot about the bears, who were quickly at work on the other +side of the circle from that to which he was taken. Some men, rolling +out stout bright-painted barrels which elephants could not crush by +sitting on, attracted his attention for a moment. Next, in a pause on +the part of the man who led him, he regarded with huge interest a piebald +Shetland pony. It lay on the ground. A man sat on it. And ever and +anon it lifted its head from the sawdust and kissed the man. This was +all Michael saw, yet he sensed something wrong about it. He knew not +why, had no evidence why, but he felt cruelty and power and unfairness. +What he did not see was the long pin in the man's hand. Each time he +thrust this in the pony's shoulder, the pony, stung by the pain and +reflex action, lifted its head, and the man was deftly ready to meet the +pony's mouth with his own mouth. To an audience the impression would be +that in such fashion the pony was expressing its affection for the +master. + +Not a dozen feet away another Shetland, a coal-black one, was behaving as +peculiarly as it was being treated. Ropes were attached to its forelegs, +each rope held by an assistant, who jerked on the same stoutly when a +third man, standing in front of the pony, tapped it on the knees with a +short, stiff whip of rattan. Whereupon the pony went down on its knees +in the sawdust in a genuflection to the man with the whip. The pony did +not like it, sometimes so successfully resisting with spread, taut legs +and mutinous head-tossings, as to overcome the jerk of the ropes, and, at +the same time wheeling, to fall heavily on its side or to uprear as the +pull on the ropes was relaxed. But always it was lined up again to face +the man who rapped its knees with the rattan. It was being taught merely +how to kneel in the way that is ever a delight to the audiences who see +only the results of the schooling and never dream of the manner of the +schooling. For, as Michael was quickly sensing, knowledge was here +learned by pain. In short, this was the college of pain, this Cedarwild +Animal School. + +Harris Collins himself nodded the dark youth-god up to him, and turned an +inquiring and estimating gaze on Michael. + +"The Del Mar dog, sir," said the youth-god. + +Collins's eyes brightened, and he looked Michael over more carefully. + +"Do you know what he can do?" he queried. + +The youth shook his head. + +"Harry was a keen one," Collins went on, apparently to the youth-god but +mostly for his own benefit, being given to thinking aloud. "He picked +this dog as a winner. And now what can he do? That's the question. Poor +Harry's gone, and we don't know what he can do.--Take off the chain." + +Released Michael regarded the master-god and waited for what might +happen. A squall of pain from one of the bears across the ring hinted to +him what he might expect. + +"Come here," Collins commanded in his cold, hard tones. + +Michael came and stood before him. + +"Lie down!" + +Michael lay down, although he did it slowly, with advertised reluctance. + +"Damned thoroughbred!" Collins sneered at him. "Won't put any pep into +your motions, eh? Well, we'll take care of that.--Get up!--Lie down!--Get +up!--Lie down!--Get up!" + +His commands were staccato, like revolver shots or the cracks of whips, +and Michael obeyed them in his same slow, reluctant way. + +"Understands English, at any rate," said Collins. + +"Wonder if he can turn the double flip," he added, expressing the golden +dream of all dog-trainers. "Come on, we'll try him for a flip. Put the +chain on him. Come over here, Jimmy. Put another lead on him." + +Another reform-school graduate youth obeyed, snapping a girth about +Michael's loins, to which was attached a thin rope. + +"Line him up," Collins commanded. "Ready?--Go!" + +And the most amazing, astounding indignity was wreaked upon Michael. At +the word "Go!", simultaneously, the chain on his collar jerked him up and +back in the air, the rope on his hindquarters jerked that portion of him +under, forward, and up, and the still short stick in Collins's hand hit +him under the lower jaw. Had he had any previous experience with the +manoeuvre, he would have saved himself part of the pain at least by +springing and whirling backward in the air. As it was, he felt as if +being torn and wrenched apart while at the same time the blow under his +jaw stung him and almost dazed him. And, at the same time, whirled +violently into the air, he fell on the back of his head in the sawdust. + +Out of the sawdust he soared in rage, neck-hair erect, throat a-snarl, +teeth bared to bite, and he would have sunk his teeth into the flesh of +the master-god had he not been the slave of cunning formula. The two +youths knew their work. One tightened the lead ahead, the other to the +rear, and Michael snarled and bristled his impotent wrath. Nothing could +he do, neither advance, nor retreat, nor whirl sideways. The youth in +front by the chain prevented him from attacking the youth behind, and the +youth behind, with the rope, prevented him from attacking the youth in +front, and both prevented him from attacking Collins, whom he knew +incontrovertibly to be the master of evil and hurt. + +Michael's wrath was as superlative as was his helplessness. He could +only bristle and tear his vocal chords with his rage. But it was a very +ancient and boresome experience to Collins. He was even taking advantage +of the moment to glance across the arena and size up what the bears were +doing. + +"Oh, you thoroughbred," he sneered at Michael, returning his attention to +him. "Slack him! Let go!" + +The instant his bonds were released, Michael soared at Collins, and +Collins, timing and distancing with the accuracy of long years, kicked +him under the jaw and whirled him back and down into the sawdust. + +"Hold him!" Collins ordered. "Line him out!" + +And the two youths, pulling in opposite directions with chain and rope, +stretched him into helplessness. + +Collins glanced across the ring to the entrance, where two teams of heavy +draft-horses were entering, followed by a woman dressed to +over-dressedness in the last word of a stylish street-costume. + +"I fancy he's never done any flipping," Collins remarked, coming back to +the problem of Michael for a moment. "Take off your lead, Jimmy, and go +over and help Smith.--Johnny, hold him to one side there and mind your +legs. Here comes Miss Marie for her first lesson, and that mutt of a +husband of hers can't handle her." + +Michael did not understand the scene that followed, which he witnessed, +for the youth led him over to look on at the arranging of the woman and +the four horses. Yet, from her conduct, he sensed that she, too, was +captive and ill-treated. In truth, she was herself being trained +unwillingly to do a trick. She had carried herself bravely right to the +moment of the ordeal, but the sight of the four horses, ranged two and +two opposing her, with the thing patent that she was to hold in her hands +the hooks on the double-trees and form the link that connected the two +spans which were to pull in opposite directions--at the sight of this her +courage failed her and she shrank back, drooping and cowering, her face +buried in her hands. + +"No, no, Billikens," she pleaded to the stout though youthful man who was +her husband. "I can't do it. I'm afraid. I'm afraid." + +"Nonsense, madam," Collins interposed. "The trick is absolutely safe. +And it's a good one, a money-maker. Straighten up a moment." With his +hands he began feeling out her shoulders and back under her jacket. "The +apparatus is all right." He ran his hands down her arms. "Now! Drop +the hooks." He shook each arm, and from under each of the fluffy lace +cuffs fell out an iron hook fast to a thin cable of steel that evidently +ran up her sleeves. "Not that way! Nobody must see. Put them back. Try +it again. They must come down hidden in your palms. Like this. +See.--That's it. That's the idea." + +She controlled herself and strove to obey, though ever and anon she cast +appealing glances to Billikens, who stood remote and aloof, his brows +wrinkled with displeasure. + +Each of the men driving the harnessed spans lifted up the double-trees so +that the girl could grasp the hooks. She tried to take hold, but broke +down again. + +"If anything breaks, my arms will be torn out of me," she protested. + +"On the contrary," Collins reassured her. "You will lose merely most of +your jacket. The worst that can happen will be the exposure of the trick +and the laugh on you. But the apparatus isn't going to break. Let me +explain again. The horses do not pull against you. They pull against +each other. The audience thinks that they are pulling against you.--Now +try once more. Take hold the double-trees, and at the same moment slip +down the hooks and connect.--Now!" + +He spoke sharply. She shook the hooks down out of her sleeves, but drew +back from grasping the double-trees. Collins did not betray his +vexation. Instead, he glanced aside to where the kissing pony and the +kneeling pony were leaving the ring. But the husband raged at her: + +"By God, Julia, if you throw me down this way!" + +"Oh, I'll try, Billikens," she whimpered. "Honestly, I'll try. See! I'm +not afraid now." + +She extended her hands and clasped the double-trees. With a thin writhe +of a smile, Collins investigated the insides of her clenched hands to +make sure that the hooks were connected. + +"Now brace yourself! Spread your legs. And straighten out." With his +hands he manipulated her arms and shoulders into position. "Remember, +you've got to meet the first of the strain with your arms straight out. +After the strain is on, you couldn't bend 'em if you wanted to. But if +the strain catches them bent, the wire'll rip the hide off of you. +Remember, straight out, extended, so that they form a straight line with +each other and with the flat of your back and shoulders. That's it. +Ready now." + +"Oh, wait a minute," she begged, forsaking the position. "I'll do it--oh, +I will do it, but, Billikens, kiss me first, and then I won't care if my +arms are pulled out." + +The dark youth who held Michael, and others looking on, grinned. Collins +dissembled whatever grin might have troubled for expression, and +murmured: + +"All the time in the world, madam. The point is, the first time must +come off right. After that you'll have the confidence.--Bill, you'd +better love her up before she tackles it." + +And Billikens, very angry, very disgusted, very embarrassed, obeyed, +putting his arms around his wife and kissing her neither too +perfunctorily nor very long. She was a pretty young thing of a woman, +perhaps twenty years old, with an exceedingly childish, girlish face and +a slender-waisted, generously moulded body of fully a hundred and forty +pounds. + +The embrace and kiss of her husband put courage into her. She stiffened +and steeled herself, and with compressed lips, as he stepped clear of +her, muttered, "Ready." + +"Go!" Collins commanded. + +The four horses, under the urge of the drivers, pressed lazily into their +collars and began pulling. + +"Give 'em the whip!" Collins barked, his eyes on the girl and noting that +the pull of the apparatus was straight across her. + +The lashes fell on the horses' rumps, and they leaped, and surged, and +plunged, with their huge steel-shod hoofs, the size of soup-plates, +tearing up the sawdust into smoke. + +And Billikens forgot himself. The terribleness of the sight painted the +honest anxiety for the woman on his face. And her face was a +kaleidoscope. At the first, tense and fearful, it was like that of a +Christian martyr meeting the lions, or of a felon falling through the +trap. Next, and quickly, came surprise and relief in that there was no +hurt. And, finally, her face was proudly happy with a smile of triumph. +She even smiled to Billikens her pride at making good her love to him. +And Billikens relaxed and looked love and pride back, until, on the spur +of the second, Harris Collins broke in: + +"This ain't a smiling act! Get that smile off your face. The audience +has got to think you're carrying the pull. Show that you are. Make your +face stiff till it cracks. Show determination, will-power. Show great +muscular effort. Spread your legs more. Bring up the muscles through +your skirt just as if you was really working. Let 'em pull you this way +a bit and that way a bit. Give 'em to. Spread your legs more. Make a +noise on your face as if you was being pulled to pieces an' that all that +holds you is will-power.--That's the idea! That's the stuff! It's a +winner, Bill! It's a winner!--Throw the leather into 'em! Make 'm jump! +Make 'm get right down and pull the daylights out of each other!" + +The whips fell on the horses, and the horses struggled in all their +hugeness and might to pull away from the pain of the punishment. It was +a spectacle to win approval from any audience. Each horse averaged +eighteen hundredweight; thus, to the eye of the onlooker, seven thousand +two hundred pounds of straining horse-flesh seemed wrenching and dragging +apart the slim-waisted, delicately bodied, hundred-and-forty pound woman +in her fancy street costume. It was a sight to make women in circus +audiences scream with terror and turn their faces away. + +"Slack down!" Collins commanded the drivers. + +"The lady wins," he announced, after the manner of a ringmaster.--"Bill, +you've got a mint in that turn.--Unhook, madam, unhook!" + +Marie obeyed, and, the hooks still dangling from her sleeves, made a +short run to Billikens, into whose arms she threw herself, her own arms +folding him about the neck as she exclaimed before she kissed him: + +"Oh, Billikens, I knew I could do it all the time! I was brave, wasn't +I!" + +"A give-away," Collins's dry voice broke in on her ecstasy. "Letting all +the audience see the hooks. They must go up your sleeves the moment you +let go.--Try it again. And another thing. When you finish the turn, no +chestiness. No making out how easy it was. Make out it was the very +devil. Show yourself weak, just about to collapse from the strain. Give +at the knees. Make your shoulders cave in. The ringmaster will half +step forward to catch you before you faint. That's your cue. Beat him +to it. Stiffen up and straighten up with an effort of will-power--will- +power's the idea, gameness, and all that, and kiss your hands to the +audience and make a weak, pitiful sort of a smile, as though your heart's +been pulled 'most out of you and you'll have to go to the hospital, but +for right then that you're game an' smiling and kissing your hands to the +audience that's riping the seats up and loving you.--Get me, madam? You, +Bill, get the idea! And see she does it.--Now, ready! Be a bit wistful +as you look at the horses.--That's it! Nobody'd guess you'd palmed the +hooks and connected them.--Straight out!--Let her go!" + +And again the thirty-six-hundredweight of horses on either side pitted +its strength against the similar weight on the other side, and the +seeming was that Marie was the link of woman-flesh being torn asunder. + +A third and a fourth time the turn was rehearsed, and, between turns, +Collins sent a man to his office, for the Del Mar telegram. + +"You take her now, Bill," he told Marie's husband, as, telegram in hand, +he returned to the problem of Michael. "Give her half a dozen tries +more. And don't forget, any time any jay farmer thinks he's got a span +that can pull, bet him on the side your best span can beat him. That +means advance advertising and some paper. It'll be worth it. The +ringmaster'll favour you, and your span can get the first jump. If I was +young and footloose, I'd ask nothing better than to go out with your +turn." + +Harris Collins, in the pauses gazing down at Michael, read Del Mar's +Seattle telegram: + + "_Sell my dogs. You know what they can do and what they are worth. Am + done with them. Deduct the board and hold the balance until I see + you. I have the limit of a dog. Every turn I ever pulled is put in + the shade by this one. He's a ten strike. Wait till you see him_." + +Over to one side in the busy arena, Collins contemplated Michael. + +"Del Mar was the limit himself," he told Johnny, who held Michael by the +chain. "When he wired me to sell his dogs it meant he had a better turn, +and here's only one dog to show for it, a damned thoroughbred at that. He +says it's the limit. It must be, but in heaven's name, what is its turn? +It's never done a flip in its life, much less a double flip. What do you +think, Johnny? Use your head. Suggest something." + +"Maybe it can count," Johnny advanced. + +"And counting-dogs are a drug on the market. Well, anyway, let's try." + +And Michael, who knew unerringly how to count, refused to perform. + +"If he was a regular dog, he could walk anyway," was Collins' next idea. +"We'll try him." + +And Michael went through the humiliating ordeal of being jerked erect on +his hind legs by Johnny while Collins with the stick cracked him under +the jaw and across the knees. In his wrath, Michael tried to bite the +master-god, and was jerked away by the chain. When he strove to +retaliate on Johnny, that imperturbable youth, with extended arm, merely +lifted him into the air on his chain and strangled him. + +"That's off," quoth Collins wearily. "If he can't stand on his hind legs +he can't barrel-jump--you've heard about Ruth, Johnny. She was a winner. +Jump in and out of nail-kegs, on her hind legs, without ever touching +with her front ones. She used to do eight kegs, in one and out into the +next. Remember when she was boarded here and rehearsed. She was a gold- +mine, but Carson didn't know how to treat her, and she croaked off with +penumonia at Cripple Creek." + +"Wonder if he can spin plates on his nose," Johnny volunteered. + +"Can't stand up on hind legs," Collins negatived. "Besides, nothing like +the limit in a turn like that. This dog's got a specially. He ain't +ordinary. He does some unusual thing unusually well, and it's up to us +to locate it. That comes of Harry dying so inconsiderately and leaving +this puzzle-box on my hands. I see I just got to devote myself to him. +Take him away, Johnny. Number Eighteen for him. Later on we can put him +in the single compartments." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + +Number Eighteen was a big compartment or cage in the dog row, large +enough with due comfort for a dozen Irish terriers like Michael. For +Harris Collins was scientific. Dogs on vacation, boarding at the +Cedarwild Animal School, were given every opportunity to recuperate from +the hardships and wear and tear of from six months to a year and more on +the road. It was for this reason that the school was so popular a +boarding-place for performing animals when the owners were on vacation or +out of "time." Harris Collins kept his animals clean and comfortable and +guarded from germ diseases. In short, he renovated them against their +next trips out on vaudeville time or circus engagement. + +To the left of Michael, in Number Seventeen, were five grotesquely +clipped French poodles. Michael could not see them, save when he was +being taken out or brought back, but he could smell them and hear them, +and, in his loneliness, he even started a feud of snarling bickeringness +with Pedro, the biggest of them who acted as clown in their turn. They +were aristocrats among performing animals, and Michael's feud with Pedro +was not so much real as play-acted. Had he and Pedro been brought +together they would have made friends in no time. But through the slow +monotonous drag of the hours they developed a fictitious excitement and +interest in mouthing their quarrel which each knew in his heart of hearts +was no quarrel at all. + +In Number Nineteen, on Michael's right, was a sad and tragic company. +They were mongrels, kept spotlessly and germicidally clean, who were +unattached and untrained. They composed a sort of reserve of raw +material, to be worked into established troupes when an extra one or a +substitute was needed. This meant the hell of the arena where the +training went on. Also, in spare moments, Collins, or his assistants, +were for ever trying them out with all manner of tricks in the quest of +special aptitudes on their parts. Thus, a mongrel semblance to a cooker +spaniel of a dog was tried out for several days as a pony-rider who would +leap through paper hoops from the pony's back, and return upon the back +again. After several falls and painful injuries, it was rejected for the +feat and tried out as a plate-balancer. Failing in this, it was made +into a see-saw dog who, for the rest of the turn, filled into the +background of a troupe of twenty dogs. + +Number Nineteen was a place of perpetual quarrelling and pain. Dogs, +hurt in the training, licked their wounds, and moaned, or howled, or were +irritable to excess on the slightest provocation. Always, when a new dog +entered--and this was a regular happening, for others were continually +being taken away to hit the road--the cage was vexed with quarrels and +battles, until the new dog, by fighting or by non resistance, had +commanded or been taught its proper place. + +Michael ignored the denizens of Number Nineteen. They could sniff and +snarl belligerently across at him, but he took no notice, reserving his +companionship for the play-acted and perennial quarrel with Pedro. Also, +Michael was out in the arena more often and far longer hours than any of +them. + +"Trust Harry not to make a mistake on a dog," was Collins's judgment; and +constantly he strove to find in Michael what had made Del Mar declare him +a ten strike and the limit. + +Every indignity, in the attempt to find out, was wreaked upon Michael. +They tried him at hurdle-jumping, at walking on forelegs, at pony-riding, +at forward flips, and at clowning with other dogs. They tried him at +waltzing, all his legs cord-fastened and dragged and jerked and slacked +under him. They spiked his collar in some of the attempted tricks to +keep him from lurching from side to side or from falling forward or +backward. They used the whip and the rattan stick; and twisted his nose. +They attempted to make a goal-keeper of him in a football game between +two teams of pain-driven and pain-bitten mongrels. And they dragged him +up ladders to make him dive into a tank of water. + +Even they essayed to make him "loop the loop"--rushing him down an +inclined trough at so high speed of his legs, accelerated by the slash of +whips on his hindquarters, that, with such initial momentum, had he put +his heart and will into it, he could have successfully run up the inside +of the loop, and across the inside of the top of it, back-downward, like +a fly on the ceiling, and on and down and around and out of the loop. But +he refused the will and the heart, and every time, when he was unable at +the beginning to leap sideways out of the inclined trough, he fell +grievously from the inside of the loop, bruising and injuring himself. + +"It isn't that I expect these things are what Harry had in mind," Collins +would say, for always he was training his assistants; "but that through +them I may get a cue to his specially, whatever in God's name it is, that +poor Harry must have known." + +Out of love, at the wish of his love-god, Steward, Michael would have +striven to learn these tricks and in most of them would have succeeded. +But here at Cedarwild was no love, and his own thoroughbred nature made +him stubbornly refuse to do under compulsion what he would gladly have +done out of love. As a result, since Collins was no thoroughbred of a +man, the clashes between them were for a time frequent and savage. In +this fighting Michael quickly learned he had no chance. He was always +doomed to defeat. He was beaten by stereotyped formula before he began. +Never once could he get his teeth into Collins or Johnny. He was too +common-sensed to keep up the battling in which he would surely have +broken his heart and his body and gone dumb mad. Instead, he retired +into himself, became sullen, undemonstrative, and, though he never +cowered in defeat, and though he was always ready to snarl and bristle +his hair in advertisement that inside he was himself and unconquered, he +no longer burst out in furious anger. + +After a time, scarcely ever trying him out on a new trick, the chain and +Johnny were dispensed with, and with Collins he spent all Collins's hours +in the arena. He learned, by bitter lessons, that he must follow Collins +around; and follow him he did, hating him perpetually and in his own body +slowly and subtly poisoning himself by the juices of his glands that did +not secrete and flow in quite their normal way because of the pressure +put upon them by his hatred. + +The effect of this, on his body, was not perceptible. This was because +of his splendid constitution and health. Wherefore, since the effect +must be produced somewhere, it was his mind, or spirit, or nature, or +brain, or processes of consciousness, that received it. He drew more and +more within himself, became morose, and brooded much. All of which was +spiritually unhealthful. He, who had been so merry-hearted, even merrier- +hearted than his brother Jerry, began to grow saturnine, and peevish, and +ill-tempered. He no longer experienced impulses to play, to romp around, +to run about. His body became as quiet and controlled as his brain. +Human convicts, in prisons, attain this quietude. He could stand by the +hour, to heel to Collins, uninterested, infinitely bored, while Collins +tortured some mongrel creature into the performance of a trick. + +And much of this torturing Michael witnessed. There were the greyhounds, +the high-jumpers and wide-leapers. They were willing to do their best, +but Collins and his assistants achieved the miracle, if miracle it may be +called, of making them do better than their best. Their best was +natural. Their better than best was unnatural, and it killed some and +shortened the lives of all. Rushed to the springboard and the leap, +always, after the take-off, in mid-air, they had to encounter an +assistant who stood underneath, an extraordinarily long buggy-whip in +hand, and lashed them vigorously. This made them leap from the +springboard beyond their normal powers, hurting and straining and +injuring them in their desperate attempt to escape the whip-lash, to beat +the whip-lash in the air and be past ere it could catch their flying +flanks and sting them like a scorpion. + +"Never will a jumping dog jump his hardest," Collins told his assistants, +"unless he's made to. That's your job. That's the difference between +the jumpers I turn out and some of these dub amateur-jumping outfits that +fail to make good even on the bush circuits." + +Collins continually taught. A graduate from his school, an assistant who +received from him a letter of recommendation, carried a high credential +of a sheepskin into the trained-animal world. + +"No dog walks naturally on its hind legs, much less on its forelegs," +Collins would say. "Dogs ain't built that way. _They have to be made +to_, that's all. That's the secret of all animal training. They have +to. You've got to make them. That's your job. Make them. Anybody who +can't, can't make good in this factory. Put that in your pipe and smoke +it, and get busy." + +Michael saw, without fully appreciating, the use of the spiked saddle on +the bucking mule. The mule was fat and good-natured the first day of its +appearance in the arena. It had been a pet mule in a family of children +until Collins's keen eyes rested on it; and it had known only love and +kindness and much laughter for its foolish mulishness. But Collins's +eyes had read health, vigour, and long life, as well as laughableness of +appearance and action in the long-eared hybrid. + +Barney Barnato he was renamed that first day in the arena, when, also, he +received the surprise of his life. He did not dream of the spike in the +saddle, nor, while the saddle was empty, did it press against him. But +the moment Samuel Bacon, a negro tumbler, got into the saddle, the spike +sank home. He knew about it and was prepared. But Barney, taken by +surprise, arched his back in the first buck he had ever made. It was so +prodigious a buck that Collins eyes snapped with satisfaction, while Sam +landed a dozen feet away in the sawdust. + +"Make good like that," Collins approved, "and when I sell the mule you'll +go along as part of the turn, or I miss my guess. And it will be some +turn. There'll be at least two more like you, who'll have to be nervy +and know how to fall. Get busy. Try him again." + +And Barney entered into the hell of education that later won his +purchaser more time than he could deliver over the best vaudeville +circuits in Canada and the United States. Day after day Barney took his +torture. Not for long did he carry the spiked saddle. Instead, bare- +back, he received the negro on his back, and was spiked and set bucking +just the same; for the spike was now attached to Sam's palm by means of +leather straps. In the end, Barney became so "touchy" about his back +that he almost began bucking if a person as much as looked at it. +Certainly, aware of the stab of pain, he started bucking, whirling, and +kicking whenever the first signal was given of some one trying to mount +him. + +At the end of the fourth week, two other tumblers, white youths, being +secured, the complete, builded turn was performed for the benefit of a +slender, French-looking gentleman, with waxed moustaches. In the end he +bought Barney, without haggling, at Collins's own terms and engaged Sammy +and the other two tumblers as well. Collins staged the trick properly, +as it would be staged in the theatre, even had ready and set up all the +necessary apparatus, and himself acted as ringmaster while the +prospective purchaser looked on. + +Barney, fat as butter, humorous-looking, was led into the square of cloth- +covered steel cables and cloth-covered steel uprights. The halter was +removed and he was turned loose. Immediately he became restless, the +ears were laid back, and he was a picture of viciousness. + +"Remember one thing," Collins told the man who might buy. "If you buy +him, you'll be ringmaster, and you must never, never spike him. When he +comes to know that, you can always put your hands on him any time and +control him. He's good-natured at heart, and he's the gratefullest mule +I've ever seen in the business. He's just got to love you, and hate the +other three. And one warning: if he goes real bad and starts biting, +you'll have to pull out his teeth and feed him soft mashes and crushed +grain that's steamed. I'll give you the recipe for the digestive dope +you'll have to put in. Now--watch!" + +Collins stopped into the ring and caressed Barney, who responded in the +best of tempers and tried affectionately to nudge and shove past on the +way out of the ropes to escape what he knew was coming. + +"See," Collins exposited. "He's got confidence in me. He trusts me. He +knows I've never spiked him and that I always save him in the end. I'm +his good Samaritan, and you'll have to be the same to him if you buy +him.--Now I'll give you your spiel. Of course, you can improve on it to +suit yourself." + +The master-trainer walked out of the rope square, stepped forward to an +imaginary line, and looked down and out and up as if he were gazing at +the pit of the orchestra beneath him, across at the body of the house, +and up into the galleries. + +"Ladies and gentlemen," he addressed the sawdust emptiness before him as +if it were a packed audience, "this is Barney Barnato, the biggest joker +of a mule ever born. He's as affectionate as a Newfoundland puppy--just +watch--" + +Stepping back to the ropes, Collins extended his hand across them, +saying: "Come here, Barney, and show all these people who you love best." + +And Barney twinkled forward on his small hoofs, nozzled the open hand, +and came closer, nozzling up the arm, nudging Collins's shoulders with +his nose, half-rearing as if to get across the ropes and embrace him. +What he was really doing was begging and entreating Collins to take him +away out of the squared ring from the torment he knew awaited him. + +"That's what it means by never spiking him," Collins shot at the man with +the waxed moustaches, as he stepped forward to the imaginary line in the +sawdust, above the imaginary pit of the orchestra, and addressed the +imaginary house. + +"Ladies and gentlemen, Barney Barnato is a josher. He's got forty tricks +up each of his four legs, and the man don't live that he'll let stick on +big back for sixty seconds. I'm telling you this in fair warning, before +I make my proposition. Looks easy, doesn't it?--one minute, the sixtieth +part of an hour, to be precise, sixty seconds, to stick on the back of an +affectionate josher mule like Barney. Well, come on you boys and broncho +riders. To anybody who sticks on for one minute I shall immediately pay +the sum of fifty dollars; for two whole, entire minutes, the sum of five +hundred dollars." + +This was the cue for Samuel Bacon, who advanced across the sawdust, +awkward and grinning and embarrassed, and apparently was helped up to the +stage by the extended hand of Collins. + +"Is your life insured?" Collins demanded. + +Sam shook his head and grinned. + +"Then what are you tackling this for?" + +"For the money," said Sam. "I jes' naturally needs it in my business." + +"What is your business?" + +"None of your business, mister." Here Sam grinned ingratiating apology +for his impertinence and shuffled on his legs. "I might be investin' in +lottery tickets, only I ain't. Do I get the money?--that's _our_ +business." + +"Sure you do," Collins replied. "When you earn it. Stand over there to +one side and wait a moment.--Ladies and gentlemen, if you will forgive +the delay, I must ask for more volunteers.--Any more takers? Fifty +dollars for sixty seconds. Almost a dollar a second . . . if you win. +Better! I'll make it a dollar a second. Sixty dollars to the boy, man, +woman, or girl who sticks on Barney's back for one minute. Come on, +ladies. Remember this is the day of equal suffrage. Here's where you +put it over on your husbands, brothers, sons, fathers, and grandfathers. +Age is no limit.--Grandma, do I get you?" he uttered directly to what +must have been a very elderly lady in a near front row.--"You see," (to +the prospective buyer), "I've got the entire patter for you. You could +do it with two rehearsals, and you can do them right here, free of +charge, part of the purchase." + +The next two tumblers crossed the sawdust and were helped by Collins up +to the imaginary stage. + +"You can change the patter according to the cities you're in," he +explained to the Frenchman. "It's easy to find out the names of the most +despised and toughest neighbourhoods or villages, and have the boys hail +from them." + +Continuing the patter, Collins put the performance on. Sam's first +attempt was brief. He was not half on when he was flung to the ground. +Half a dozen attempts, quickly repeated, were scarcely better, the last +one permitting him to remain on Barney's back nearly ten seconds, and +culminating in a ludicrous fall over Barney's head. Sam withdrew from +the ring, shaking his head dubiously and holding his side as if in pain. +The other lads followed. Expert tumblers, they executed most amazing and +side-splitting fails. Sam recovered and came back. Toward the last, all +three made a combined attack on Barney, striving to mount him +simultaneously from different slants of approach. They were scattered +and flung like chaff, sometimes falling heaped together. Once, the two +white boys, standing apart as if recovering breath, were mowed down by +Sam's flying body. + +"Remember, this is a real mule," Collins told the man with the waxed +moustaches. "If any outsiders butt in for a hack at the money, all the +better. They'll get theirs quick. The man don't live who can stay on +his back a minute . . . if you keep him rehearsed with the spike. He +must live in fear of the spike. Never let him slow up on it. Never let +him forget it. If you lay off any time for a few days, rehearse him with +the spike a couple of times just before you begin again, or else he might +forget it and queer the turn by ambling around with the first outside +rube that mounts him. + +"And just suppose some rube, all hooks of arms and legs and hands, is +managing to stick on anyway, and the minute is getting near up. Just +have Sam here, or any of your three, slide in and spike him from the +palm. That'll be good night for Mr. Rube. You can't lose, and the +audience'll laugh its fool head off. + +"Now for the climax! Watch! This always brings the house down. Get +busy you two!--Sam! Ready!" + +While the white boys threatened to mount Barney from either side and kept +his attention engaged, Sam, from outside, in a sudden fit of rage and +desperation, made a flying dive across the ropes and from in front locked +arms and legs about Barney's neck, tucking his own head close against +Barney's head. And Barney reared up on his hind legs, as he had long +since learned from the many palm-spikings he had received on head and +neck. + +"It's a corker," Collins announced, as Barney, on his hind legs, striking +vainly with his fore, struggled about the ring. "There's no danger. +He'll never fall over backwards. He's a mule, and he's too wise. +Besides, even if he does, all Sam has to do is let go and fall clear." + +The turn over, Barney gladly accepted the halter and was led out of the +square ring and up to the Frenchman. + +"Long life there--look him over," Collins continued to sell. "It's a +full turn, including yourself, four performers, besides the mule, and +besides any suckers from the audience. It's all ready to put on the +boards, and dirt cheap at five thousand." + +The Frenchman winced at the sum. + +"Listen to arithmetic," Collins went on. "You can sell at twelve hundred +a week at least, and you can net eight hundred certain. Six weeks of the +net pays for the turn, and you can book a hundred weeks right off the bat +and have them yelling for more. Wish I was young and footloose. I'd +take it out on the road myself and coin a fortune." + +And Barney was sold, and passed out of the Cedarwild Animal School to the +slavery of the spike and to be provocative of much joy and laughter in +the pleasure-theatre of the world. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + +"The thing is, Johnny, you can't love dogs into doing professional +tricks, which is the difference between dogs and women," Collins told his +assistant. "You know how it is with any dog. You love it up into lying +down and rolling over and playing dead and all such dub tricks. And then +one day you show him off to your friends, and the conditions are changed, +and he gets all excited and foolish, and you can't get him to do a thing. +Children are like that. Lose their heads in company, forget all their +training, and throw you down." + +"Now on the stage, they got real tricks to do, tricks they don't do, +tricks they hate. And they mightn't be feeling good--got a touch of +cold, or mange, or are sour-balled. What are you going to do? Apologize +to the audience? Besides, on the stage, the programme runs like +clockwork. Got to start performing on the tick of the clock, and +anywhere from one to seven turns a day, all depending what kind of time +you've got. The point is, your dogs have got to get right up and +perform. No loving them, no begging them, no waiting on them. And +there's only the one way. They've got to know when you start, you mean +it." + +"And dogs ain't fools," Johnny opined. "They know when you mean +anything, an' when you don't." + +"Sure thing," Collins nodded approbation. "The moment you slack up on +them is the moment they slack up in their work. You get soft, and see +how quick they begin making mistakes in their tricks. You've got to keep +the fear of God over them. If you don't, they won't, and you'll find +yourself begging for spotted time on the bush circuits." + +Half an hour later, Michael heard, though he understood no word of it, +the master-trainer laying another law down to another assistant. + +"Cross-breds and mongrels are what's needed, Charles. Not one +thoroughbred in ten makes good, unless he's got the heart of a coward, +and that's just what distinguishes them from mongrels and cross-breds. +Like race-horses, they're hot-blooded. They've got sensitiveness, and +pride. Pride's the worst. You listen to me. I was born into the +business and I've studied it all my life. I'm a success. There's only +one reason I'm a success--I KNOW. Get that. I KNOW." + +"Another thing is that cross-breds and mongrels are cheap. You needn't +be afraid of losing them or working them out. You can always get more, +and cheap. And they ain't the trouble in teaching. You can throw the +fear of God into them. That's what's the matter with the thoroughbreds. +You can't throw the fear of God into them." + +"Give a mongrel a real licking, and what's he do? He'll kiss your hand, +and be obedient, and crawl on his belly to do what you want him to do. +They're slave dogs, that's what mongrels are. They ain't got courage, +and you don't want courage in a performing dog. You want fear. Now you +give a thoroughbred a licking and see what happens. Sometimes they die. +I've known them to die. And if they don't die, what do they do? Either +they go stubborn, or vicious, or both. Sometimes they just go to biting +and foaming. You can kill them, but you can't keep them from biting and +foaming. Or they'll go straight stubborn. They're the worst. They're +the passive resisters--that's what I call them. They won't fight back. +You can flog them to death, but it won't buy you anything. They're like +those Christians that used to be burned at the stake or boiled in oil. +They've got their opinions, and nothing you can do will change them. +They'll die first. . . . And they do. I've had them. I was learning +myself . . . and I learned to leave the thoroughbred alone. They beat +you out. They get your goat. You never get theirs. And they're time- +wasters, and patience-wasters, and they're expensive." + +"Take this terrier here." Collins nodded at Michael, who stood several +feet back of him, morosely regarding the various activities of the arena. +"He's both kinds of a thoroughbred, and therefore no good. I've never +given him a real licking, and I never will. It would be a waste of time. +He'll fight if you press him too hard. And he'll die fighting you. He's +too sensible to fight if you don't press him too hard. And if you don't +press him too hard, he'll just stay as he is, and refuse to learn +anything. I'd chuck him right now, except Del Mar couldn't make a +mistake. Poor Harry knew he had a specially, and a crackerjack, and it's +up to me to find it." + +"Wonder if he's a lion dog," Charles suggested. + +"He's the kind that ain't afraid of lions," Collins concurred. "But what +sort of a specially trick could he do with lions? Stick his head in +their mouths? I never heard of a dog doing that, and it's an idea. But +we can try him. We've tried him at 'most everything else." + +"There's old Hannibal," said Charles. "He used to take a woman's head in +his mouth with the old Sales-Sinker shows." + +"But old Hannibal's getting cranky," Collins objected. "I've been +watching him and trying to get rid of him. Any animal is liable to go +off its nut any time, especially wild ones. You see, the life ain't +natural. And when they do, it's good night. You lose your investment, +and, if you don't know your business, maybe your life." + +And Michael might well have been tried out on Hannibal and have lost his +head inside that animal's huge mouth, had not the good fortune of apropos- +ness intervened. For, the next moment, Collins was listening to the +hasty report of his lion-and-tiger keeper. The man who reported was +possibly forty years of age, although he looked half as old again. He +was a withered-faced man, whose face-lines, deep and vertical, looked as +if they had been clawed there by some beast other than himself. + +"Old Hannibal is going crazy," was the burden of his report. + +"Nonsense," said Harris Collins. "It's you that's getting old. He's got +your goat, that's all. I'll show it to you.--Come on along, all of you. +We'll take fifteen minutes off of the work, and I'll show you a show +never seen in the show-ring. It'd be worth ten thousand a week anywhere +. . . only it wouldn't last. Old Hannibal would turn up his toes out of +sheer hurt feelings.--Come on everybody! All hands! Fifteen minutes +recess!" + +And Michael followed at the heels of his latest and most terrible master, +the twain leading the procession of employees and visiting professional +animal men who trooped along behind. As was well known, when Harris +Collins performed he performed only for the elite, for the hoi-polloi of +the trained-animal world. + +The lion-and-tiger man, who had clawed his own face with the beast-claws +of his nature, whimpered protest when he saw his employer's preparation +to enter Hannibal's cage; for the preparation consisted merely in +equipping himself with a broom-handle. + +Hannibal was old, but he was reputed the largest lion in captivity, and +he had not lost his teeth. He was pacing up and down the length of his +cage, heavily and swaying, after the manner of captive animals, when the +unexpected audience erupted into the space before his cage. Yet he took +no notice whatever, merely continuing his pacing, swinging his head from +side to side, turning lithely at each end of his cage, with all the air +of being bent on some determined purpose. + +"That's the way he's been goin' on for two days," whimpered his keeper. +"An' when you go near 'm, he just reaches for you. Look what he done to +me." The man held up his right arm, the shirt and undershirt ripped to +shreds, and red parallel grooves, slightly clotted with blood, showing +where the claws had broken the skin. "An' I wasn't inside. He did it +through the bars, with one swipe, when I was startin' to clean his cage. +Now if he'd only roar, or something. But he never makes a sound, just +keeps on goin' up an' down." + +"Where's the key?" Collins demanded. "Good. Now let me in. And lock it +afterward and take the key out. Lose it, forget it, throw it away. I'll +have all the time in the world to wait for you to find it to let me out." + +And Harris Collins, a sliver of a less than a light-weight man, who lived +in mortal fear that at table the mother of his children would crown him +with a plate of hot soup, went into the cage, before the critical +audience of his employees and professional visitors, armed only with a +broom-handle. Further, the door was locked behind him, and, the moment +he was in, keeping a casual but alert eye on the pacing Hannibal, he +reiterated his order to lock the door and remove the key. + +Half a dozen times the lion paced up and down, declining to take any +notice of the intruder. And then, when his back was turned as he went +down the cage, Collins stepped directly in the way of his return path and +stood still. Coming back and finding his way blocked, Hannibal did not +roar. His muscular movements sliding each into the next like so much +silk of tawny hide, he struck at the obstacle that confronted his way. +But Collins, knowing ahead of the lion what the lion was going to do, +struck first, with the broom-handle rapping the beast on its tender nose. +Hannibal recoiled with a flash of snarl and flashed back a second +sweeping stroke of his mighty paw. Again he was anticipated, and the rap +on his nose sent him into recoil. + +"Got to keep his head down--that way lies safety," the master-trainer +muttered in a low, tense voice. + +"Ah, would you? Take it, then." + +Hannibal, in wrath, crouching for a spring, had lifted his head. The +consequent blow on his nose forced his head down to the floor, and the +king of beasts, nose still to floor, backed away with mouth-snarls and +throat-and-chest noises. + +"Follow up," Collins enunciated, himself following, rapping the nose +again sharply and accelerating the lion's backward retreat. + +"Man is the boss because he's got the head that thinks," Collins preached +the lesson; "and he's just got to make his head boss his body, that's +all, so that he can think one thought ahead of the animal, and act one +act ahead. Watch me get his goat. He ain't the hard case he's trying to +make himself believe he is. And that idea, which he's just starting, has +got to be taken out of him. The broomstick will do it. Watch." + +He backed the animal down the length of the cage, continually rapping at +the nose and keeping it down to the floor. + +"Now I'm going to pile him into the corner." + +And Hannibal, snarling, growling, and spitting, ducking his head and with +short paw-strokes trying to ward off the insistent broomstick, backed +obediently into the corner, crumpled up his hind-parts, and tried to +withdraw his corporeal body within itself in a pain-urged effort to make +it smaller. And always he kept his nose down and himself harmless for a +spring. In the thick of it he slowly raised his nose and yawned. Nor, +because it came up slowly, and because Collins had anticipated the yawn +by being one thought ahead of Hannibal in Hannibal's own brain, was the +nose rapped. + +"That's the goat," Collins announced, for the first time speaking in a +hearty voice in which was no vibration of strain. "When a lion yawns in +the thick of a fight, you know he ain't crazy. He's sensible. He's got +to be sensible, or he'd be springing or lashing out instead of yawning. +He knows he's licked, and that yawn of his merely says: 'I quit. For the +I love of Mike leave me alone. My nose is awful sore. I'd like to get +you, but I can't. I'll do anything you want, and I'll be dreadful good, +but don't hit my poor sore nose.' + +"But man is the boss, and he can't afford to be so easy. Drive the +lesson home that you're boss. Rub it in. Don't stop when he quits. Make +him swallow the medicine and lick the spoon. Make him kiss your foot on +his neck holding him down in the dirt. Make him kiss the stick that's +beaten him.--Watch!" + +And Hannibal, the largest lion in captivity, with all his teeth, captured +out of the jungle after he was full-grown, a veritable king of beasts, +before the menacing broomstick in the hand of a sliver of a man, backed +deeper and more crumpled together into the corner. His back was bowed +up, the very opposite muscular position to that for a spring, while he +drew his head more and more down and under his chest in utter abjectness, +resting his weight on his elbows and shielding his poor nose with his +massive paws, a single stroke of which could have ripped the life of +Collins quivering from his body. + +"Now he might be tricky," Collins announced, "but he's got to kiss my +foot and the stick just the same. Watch!" + +He lifted and advanced his left foot, not tentatively and hesitantly, but +quickly and firmly, bringing it to rest on the lion's neck. The stick +was poised to strike, one act ahead of the lion's next possible act, as +Collins's mind was one thought ahead of the lion's next thought. + +And Hannibal did the forecasted and predestined. His head flashed up, +huge jaws distended, fangs gleaming, to sink into the slender, silken- +hosed ankle above the tan low-cut shoes. But the fangs never sank. They +were scarcely started a fifth of the way of the distance, when the +waiting broomstick rapped on his nose and made him sink it in the floor +under his chest and cover it again with his paws. + +"He ain't crazy," said Collins. "He knows, from the little he knows, +that I know more than him and that I've got him licked to a +fare-you-well. If he was crazy, he wouldn't know, and I wouldn't know +his mind either, and I wouldn't be that one jump ahead of him, and he'd +get me and mess the whole cage up with my insides." + +He prodded Hannibal with the end of the broom-handle, after each prod +poising it for a stroke. And the great lion lay and roared in +helplessness, and at each prod exposed his nose more and lifted it +higher, until, at the end, his red tongue ran out between his fangs and +licked the boot resting none too gently on his neck, and, after that, +licked the broomstick that had administered all the punishment. + +"Going to be a good lion now?" Collins demanded, roughly rubbing his foot +back and forth on Hannibal's neck. + +Hannibal could not refrain from growling his hatred. + +"Going to be a good lion?" Collins repeated, rubbing his foot back and +forth still more roughly. + +And Hannibal exposed his nose and with his red tongue licked again the +tan shoe and the slender, tan-silken ankle that he could have destroyed +with one crunch. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + +One friend Michael made among the many animals he encountered in the +Cedarwild School, and a strange, sad friendship it was. Sara she was +called, a small, green monkey from South America, who seemed to have been +born hysterical and indignant, and with no appreciation of humour. +Sometimes, following Collins about the arena, Michael would meet her +while she waited to be tried out on some new turn. For, unable or +unwilling to try, she was for ever being tried out on turns, or, with +little herself to do, as a filler-in for more important performers. + +But she always caused confusion, either chattering and squealing with +fright or bickering at the other animals. Whenever they attempted to +make her do anything, she protested indignantly; and if they tried force, +her squalls and cries excited all the animals in the arena and set the +work back. + +"Never mind," said Collins finally. "She'll go into the next monkey band +we make up." + +This was the last and most horrible fate that could befall a monkey on +the stage, to be a helpless marionette, compelled by unseen sticks and +wires, poked and jerked by concealed men, to move and act throughout an +entire turn. + +But it was before this doom was passed upon her that Michael made her +acquaintance. Their first meeting, she sprang suddenly at him, a +screaming, chattering little demon, threatening him with nails and teeth. +And Michael, already deep-sunk in habitual moroseness merely looked at +her calmly, not a ripple to his neck-hair nor a prick to his ears. The +next moment, her fuss and fury quite ignored, she saw him turn his head +away. This gave her pause. Had he sprung at her, or snarled, or shown +any anger or resentment such as did the other dogs when so treated by +her, she would have screamed and screeched and raised a hubbub of +expostulation, crying for help and calling all men to witness how she was +being unwarrantably attacked. + +As it was, Michael's unusual behaviour seemed to fascinate her. She +approached him tentatively, without further racket; and the boy who had +her in charge slacked the thin chain that held her. + +"Hope he breaks her back for her," was his unholy wish; for he hated Sara +intensely, desiring to be with the lions or elephants rather than dancing +attendance on a cantankerous female monkey there was no reasoning with. + +And because Michael took no notice of her, she made up to him. It was +not long before she had her hands on him, and, quickly after that, an arm +around his neck and her head snuggled against his. Then began her +interminable tale. Day after day, catching him at odd times in the ring, +she would cling closely to him and in a low voice, running on and on, +never pausing for breath, tell him, for all he knew, the story of her +life. At any rate, it sounded like the story of her woes and of all the +indignities which had been wreaked upon her. It was one long complaint, +and some of it might have been about her health, for she sniffed and +coughed a great deal and her chest seemed always to hurt her from the way +she had of continually and gingerly pressing the palm of her hand to it. +Sometimes, however, she would cease her complaining, and love and mother +him, uttering occasional series of gentle mellow sounds that were like +croonings. + +Hers was the only hand of affection that was laid on him at Cedarwild, +and she was ever gentle, never pinching him, never pulling his ears. By +the same token, he was the only friend she had; and he came to look +forward to meeting her in the course of the morning work--and this, +despite that every meeting always concluded in a scene, when she fought +with her keeper against being taken away. Her cries and protests would +give way to whimperings and wailings, while the men about laughed at the +strangeness of the love-affair between her and the Irish terrier. + +But Harris Collins tolerated, even encouraged, their friendship. + +"The two sour-balls get along best together," he said. "And it does them +good. Gives them something to live for, and that way lies health. But +some day, mark my words, she'll turn on him and give him what for, and +their friendship will get a terrible smash." + +And half of it he spoke with the voice of prophecy, and, though she never +turned on Michael, the day in the world was written when their friendship +would truly receive a terrible smash. + +"Now seals are too wise," Collins explained one day, in a sort of +extempore lecture to several of his apprentice trainers. "You've just +got to toss fish to them when they perform. If you don't, they won't, +and there's an end of it. But you can't depend on feeding dainties to +dogs, for instance, though you can make a young, untrained pig perform +creditably by means of a nursing bottle hidden up your sleeve." + +"All you have to do is think it over. Do you think you can make those +greyhounds extend themselves with the promise of a bite of meat? It's +the whip that makes them extend.--Look over there at Billy Green. There +ain't another way to teach that dog that trick. You can't love her into +doing it. You can't pay her to do it. There's only one way, and that's +_make_ her." + +Billy Green, at the moment, was training a tiny, nondescript, frizzly- +haired dog. Always, on the stage, he made a hit by drawing from his +pocket a tiny dog that would do this particular trick. The last one had +died from a wrenched back, and he was now breaking in a new one. He was +catching the little mite by the hind-legs and tossing it up in the air, +where, making a half-flip and descending head first, it was supposed to +alight with its forefeet on his hand and there balance itself, its hind +feet and body above it in the air. Again and again he stooped, caught +her hind-legs and flung her up into the half-turn. Almost frozen with +fear, she vainly strove to effect the trick. Time after time, and every +time, she failed to make the balance. Sometimes she fell crumpled; +several times she all but struck the ground: and once, she did strike, on +her side and so hard as to knock the breath out of her. Her master, +taking advantage of the moment to wipe the sweat from his streaming face, +nudged her about with his toe till she staggered weakly to her feet. + +"The dog was never born that'd learn that trick for the promise of a bit +of meat," Collins went on. "Any more than was the dog ever born that'd +walk on its forelegs without having its hind-legs rapped up in the air +with the stick a thousand times. Yet you take that trick there. It's +always a winner, especially with the women--so cunning, you know, so +adorable cute, to be yanked out of its beloved master's pocket and to +have such trust and confidence in him as to allow herself to be tossed +around that way. Trust and confidence hell! He's put the fear of God +into her, that's what." + +"Just the same, to dig a dainty out of your pocket once in a while and +give an animal a nibble, always makes a hit with the audience. That's +about all it's good for, yet it's a good stunt. Audiences like to +believe that the animals enjoy doing their tricks, and that they are +treated like pampered darlings, and that they just love their masters to +death. But God help all of us and our meal tickets if the audiences +could see behind the scenes. Every trained-animal turn would be taken +off the stage instanter, and we'd be all hunting for a job." + +"Yes, and there's rough stuff no end pulled off on the stage right before +the audience's eyes. The best fooler I ever saw was Lottie's. She had a +bunch of trained cats. She loved them to death right before everybody, +especially if a trick wasn't going good. What'd she do? She'd take that +cat right up in her arms and kiss it. And when she put it down it'd +perform the trick all right all right, while the audience applauded its +silly head off for the kindness and humaneness she'd shown. Kiss it? Did +she? I'll tell you what she did. She bit its nose." + +"Eleanor Pavalo learned the trick from Lottie, and used it herself on her +toy dogs. And many a dog works on the stage in a spiked collar, and a +clever man can twist a dog's nose and nobody in the audience any the +wiser. But it's the fear that counts. It's what the dog knows he'll get +afterward when the turn's over that keeps most of them straight." + +"Remember Captain Roberts and his great Danes. They weren't pure-breds, +though. He must have had a dozen of them--toughest bunch of brutes I +ever saw. He boarded them here twice. You couldn't go among them +without a club in your hand. I had a Mexican lad laid up by them. He +was a tough one, too. But they got him down and nearly ate him. The +doctors took over forty stitches in him and shot him full of that Pasteur +dope for hydrophobia. And he always will limp with his right leg from +what the dogs did to him. I tell you, they were the limit. And yet, +every time the curtain went up, Captain Roberts brought the house down +with the first stunt. Those dogs just flocked all over him, loving him +to death, from the looks of it. And were they loving him? They hated +him. I've seen him, right here in the cage at Cedarwild, wade into them +with a club and whale the stuffing impartially out of all of them. Sure, +they loved him not. Just a bit of the same old aniseed was what he used. +He'd soak small pieces of meat in aniseed oil and stick them in his +pockets. But that stunt would only work with a bunch of giant dogs like +his. It was their size that got it across. Had they been a lot of +ordinary dogs it would have looked silly. And, besides, they didn't do +their regular tricks for aniseed. They did it for Captain Roberts's +club. He was a tough bird himself." + +"He used to say that the art of training animals was the art of inspiring +them with fear. One of his assistants told me a nasty one about him +afterwards. They had an off month in Los Angeles, and Captain Roberts +got it into his head he was going to make a dog balance a silver dollar +on the neck of a champagne bottle. Now just think that over and try to +see yourself loving a dog into doing it. The assistant said he wore out +about as many sticks as dogs, and that he wore out half a dozen dogs. He +used to get them from the public pound at two and a half apiece, and +every time one died he had another ready and waiting. And he succeeded +with the seventh dog. I'm telling you, it learned to balance a dollar on +the neck of a bottle. And it died from the effects of the learning +within a week after he put it on the stage. Abscesses in the lungs, from +the stick." + +"There was an Englishman came over when I was a youngster. He had +ponies, monkeys, and dogs. He bit the monkey's ears, so that, on the +stage, all he had to do was to make a move as if he was going to bite and +they'd quit their fooling and be good. He had a big chimpanzee that was +a winner. It could turn four somersaults as fast as you could count on +the back of a galloping pony, and he used to have to give it a real +licking about twice a week. And sometimes the lickings were too stiff, +and the monkey'd get sick and have to lay off. But the owner solved the +problem. He got to giving him a little licking, a mere taste of the +stick, regular, just before the turn came on. And that did it in his +case, though with some other case the monkey most likely would have got +sullen and not acted at all." + +It was on that day that Harris Collins sold a valuable bit of information +to a lion man who needed it. It was off time for him, and his three +lions were boarding at Cedarwild. Their turn was an exciting and even +terrifying one, when viewed from the audience; for, jumping about and +roaring, they were made to appear as if about to destroy the slender +little lady who performed with them and seemed to hold them in subjection +only by her indomitable courage and a small riding-switch in her hand. + +"The trouble is they're getting too used to it," the man complained. +"Isadora can't prod them up any more. They just won't make a showing." + +"I know them," Collins nodded. "They're pretty old now, and they're +spirit-broken besides. Take old Sark there. He's had so many blank +cartridges fired into his ears that he's stone deaf. And Selim--he lost +his heart with his teeth. A Portuguese fellow who was handling him for +the Barnum and Bailey show did that for him. You've heard?" + +"I've often wondered," the man shook his head. "It must have been a +smash." + +"It was. The Portuguese did it with an iron bar. Selim was sulky and +took a swipe at him with his paw, and he whopped it to him full in the +mouth just as he opened it to let out a roar. He told me about it +himself. Said Selim's teeth rattled on the floor like dominoes. But he +shouldn't have done it. It was destroying valuable property. Anyway, +they fired him for it." + +"Well, all three of them ain't worth much to me now," said their owner. +"They won't play up to Isadora in that roaring and rampaging at the end. +It really made the turn. It was our finale, and we always got a great +hand for it. Say, what am I going to do about it anyway? Ditch it? Or +get some young lions?" + +"Isadora would be safer with the old ones," Collins said. + +"Too safe," Isadora's husband objected. "Of course, with younger lions, +the work and responsibility piles up on me. But we've got to make our +living, and this turn's about busted." + +Harris Collins shook his head. + +"What d'ye mean?--what's the idea?" the man demanded eagerly. + +"They'll live for years yet, seeing how captivity has agreed with them," +Collins elucidated. "If you invest in young lions you run the risk of +having them pass out on you. And you can go right on pulling the trick +off with what you've got. All you've got to do is to take my advice . . . " + +The master-trainer paused, and the lion man opened his mouth to speak. + +"Which will cost you," Collins went on deliberately, "say three hundred +dollars." + +"Just for some advice?" the other asked quickly. + +"Which I guarantee will work. What would you have to pay for three new +lions? Here's where you make money at three hundred. And it's the +simplest of advice. I can tell it to you in three words, which is at the +rate of a hundred dollars a word, and one of the words is 'the.'" + +"Too steep for me," the other objected. "I've got a make a living." + +"So have I," Collins assured him. "That's why I'm here. I'm a +specialist, and you're paying a specialist's fee. You'll be as mad as a +hornet when I tell you, it's that simple; and for the life of me I can't +understand why you don't already know it." + +"And if it don't work?" was the dubious query. + +"If it don't work, you don't pay." + +"Well, shoot it along," the lion man surrendered. + +"_Wire the cage_," said Collins. + +At first the man could not comprehend; then the light began to break on +him. + +"You mean . . . ?" + +"Just that," Collins nodded. "And nobody need be the wiser. Dry +batteries will do it beautifully. You can install them nicely under the +cage floor. All Isadora has to do when she's ready is to step on the +button; and when the electricity shoots through their feet, if they don't +go up in the air and rampage and roar around to beat the band, not only +can you keep the three hundred, but I'll give you three hundred more. I +know. I've seen it done, and it never misses fire. It's just as though +they were dancing on a red-hot stove. Up they go, and every time they +come down they burn their feet again. + +"But you'll have to put the juice into them slowly," Collins warned. +"I'll show you how to do the wiring. Just a weak battery first, so as +they can work up to it, and then stronger and stronger to the curtain. +And they never get used to it. As long as they live they'll dance just +as lively as the first time. What do you think of it?" + +"It's worth three hundred all right," the man admitted. "I wish I could +make my money that easy." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + +"Guess I'll have to wash my hands of him," Collins told Johnny. "I know +Del Mar must have been right when he said he was the limit, but I can't +get a clue to it." + +This followed upon a fight between Michael and Collins. Michael, more +morose than ever, had become even crusty-tempered, and, scarcely with +provocation at all, had attacked the man he hated, failing, as ever, to +put his teeth into him, and receiving, in turn, a couple of smashing +kicks under his jaw. + +"He's like a gold-mine all right all right," Collins meditated, "but I'm +hanged if I can crack it, and he's getting grouchier every day. Look at +him. What'd he want to jump me for? I wasn't rough with him. He's +piling up a sour-ball that'll make him fight a policeman some day." + +A few minutes later, one of his patrons, a tow-headed young man who was +boarding and rehearsing three performing leopards at Cedarwild, was +asking Collins for the loan of an Airedale. + +"I've only got one left now," he explained, "and I ain't safe without +two." + +"What's happened to the other one?" the master-trainer queried. + +"Alphonso--that's the big buck leopard--got nasty this morning and +settled his hash. I had to put him out of his misery. He was gutted +like a horse in the bull-ring. But he saved me all right. If it hadn't +been for him I'd have got a mauling. Alphonso gets these bad streaks +just about every so often. That's the second dog he's killed for me." + +Collins shook his head. + +"Haven't got an Airedale," he said, and just then his eyes chanced to +fall on Michael. "Try out the Irish terrier," he suggested. "They're +like the Airedale in disposition. Pretty close cousins, at any rate." + +"I pin my faith on the Airedale when it comes to lion dogs," the leopard +man demurred. + +"So's an Irish terrier a lion dog. Take that one there. Look at the +size and weight of him. Also, take it from me, he's all spunk. He'll +stand up to anything. Try him out. I'll lend him to you. If he makes +good I'll sell him to you cheap. An Irish terrier for a leopard dog will +be a novelty." + +"If he gets fresh with them cats he'll find his finish," Johnny told +Collins, as Michael was led away by the leopard man. + +"Then, maybe, the stage will lose a star," Collins answered, with a shrug +of shoulders. "But I'll have him off my chest anyway. When a dog gets a +perpetual sour-ball like that he's finished. Never can do a thing with +them. I've had them on my hands before." + +* * * * * + +And Michael went to make the acquaintance of Jack, the surviving +Airedale, and to do his daily turn with the leopards. In the big spotted +cats he recognized the hereditary enemy, and, even before he was thrust +into the cage, his neck was all a-prickle as the skin nervously tightened +and the hair uprose stiff-ended. It was a nervous moment for all +concerned, the introduction of a new dog into the cage. The tow-headed +leopard man, who was billed on the boards as Raoul Castlemon and was +called Ralph by his intimates, was already in the cage. The Airedale was +with him, while outside stood several men armed with iron bars and long +steel forks. These weapons, ready for immediate use, were thrust between +the bars as a menace to the leopards who were, very much against their +wills, to be made to perform. + +They resented Michael's intrusion on the instant, spitting, lashing their +long tails, and crouching to spring. At the same instant the trainer +spoke with sharp imperativeness and raised his whip, while the men on the +outside lifted their irons and advanced them intimidatingly into the +cage. And the leopards, bitter-wise of the taste of the iron, remained +crouched, although they still spat and whipped their tails angrily. + +Michael was no coward. He did not slink behind the man for protection. +On the other hand, he was too sensible to rush to attack such formidable +creatures. What he did do, with bristling neck-hair, was to stalk stiff- +leggedly across the cage, turn about with his face toward the danger, and +stalk stiffly back, coming to a pause alongside of Jack, who gave him a +good-natured sniff of greeting. + +"He's the stuff," the trainer muttered in a curiously tense voice. "They +don't get his goat." + +The situation was deservedly tense, and Ralph developed it with cautious +care, making no abrupt movements, his eyes playing everywhere over dogs +and leopards and the men outside with the prods and bars. He made the +savage cats come out of their crouch and separate from one another. At +his word of command, Jack walked about among them. Michael, on his own +initiative, followed. And, like Jack, he walked very stiffly on his +guard and very circumspectly. + +One of them, Alphonso, spat suddenly at him. He did not startle, though +his hair rippled erect and he bared his fangs in a silent snarl. At the +same moment the nearest iron bar was shoved in threateningly close to +Alphonso, who shifted his yellow eyes from Michael to the bar and back +again and did not strike out. + +The first day was the hardest. After that the leopards accepted Michael +as they accepted Jack. No love was lost on either side, nor were +friendly overtures ever offered. Michael was quick to realize that it +was the men and dogs against the cats and that the men and does must +stand together. Each day he spent from an hour to two hours in the cage, +watching the rehearsing, with nothing for him and Jack to do save stand +vigilantly on guard. Sometimes, when the leopards seemed better natured, +Ralph even encouraged the two dogs to lie down. But, on bad mornings, he +saw to it that they were ever ready to spring in between him and any +possible attack. + +For the rest of the time Michael shared his large pen with Jack. They +were well cared for, as were all animals at Cedarwild, receiving frequent +scrubbings and being kept clean of vermin. For a dog only three years +old, Jack was very sedate. Either he had never learned to play or had +already forgotten how. On the other hand, he was sweet-tempered and +equable, and he did not resent the early shows of crustiness which +Michael made. And Michael quickly ceased from being crusty and took +pleasure in their quiet companionship. There were no demonstrations. +They were content to lie awake by the hour, merely pleasantly aware of +each other's proximity. + +Occasionally, Michael could hear Sara making a distant scene or sending +out calls which he knew were for him. Once she got away from her keeper +and located Michael coming out of the leopard cage. With a shrill squeal +of joy she was upon him, clinging to him and chattering the hysterical +tale of all her woes since they had been parted. The leopard man looked +on tolerantly and let her have her few minutes. It was her keeper who +tore her away in the end, cling as she would to Michael, screaming all +the while like a harridan. When her hold was broken, she sprang at the +man in a fury, and, before he could throttle her to subjection, sank her +teeth into his thumb and wrist. All of which was provocative of great +hilarity to the onlookers, while her squalls and cries excited the +leopards to spitting and leaping against their bars. And, as she was +borne away, she set up a soft wailing like that of a heart-broken child. + +* * * * * + +Although Michael proved a success with the leopards, Raoul Castlemon +never bought him from Collins. One morning, several days later, the +arena was vexed by uproar and commotion from the animal cages. The +excitement, starting with revolver shots, was communicated everywhere. +The various lions raised a great roaring, and the many dogs barked +frantically. All tricks in the arena stopped, the animals temporarily +unstrung and unable to continue. Several men, among them Collins, ran in +the direction of the cages. Sara's keeper dropped her chain in order to +follow. + +"It's Alphonso--shillings to pence it is," Collins called to one of his +assistants who was running beside him. "He'll get Ralph yet." + +The affair was all but over and leaping to its culmination when Collins +arrived. Castlemon was just being dragged out, and as Collins ran he +could see the two men drop him to the ground so that they might slam the +cage-door shut. Inside, in so wildly struggling a tangle on the floor +that it was difficult to discern what animals composed it, were Alphonso, +Jack, and Michael looked together. Men danced about outside, thrusting +in with iron bars and trying to separate them. In the far end of the +cage were the other two leopards, nursing their wounds and snarling and +striking at the iron rods that kept them out of the combat. + +Sara's arrival and what followed was a matter of seconds. Trailing her +chain behind her, the little green monkey, the tailed female who knew +love and hysteria and was remote cousin to human women, flashed up to the +narrow cage-bars and squeezed through. Simultaneously the tangle +underwent a violent upheaval. Flung out with such force as to be smashed +against the near end of the cage, Michael fell to the floor, tried to +spring up, but crumpled and sank down, his right shoulder streaming blood +from a terrible mauling and crushing. To him Sara leaped, throwing her +arms around him and mothering him up to her flat little hairy breast. She +uttered solicitous cries, and, as Michael strove to rise on his ruined +foreleg, scolded him with sharp gentleness and with her arms tried to +hold him away from the battle. Also, in an interval, her eyes malevolent +in her rage, she chattered piercing curses at Alphonso. + +A crowbar, shoved into his side, distracted the big leopard. He struck +at the weapon with his paw, and, when it was poked into him again, flung +himself upon it, biting the naked iron with his teeth. With a second +fling he was against the cage bars, with a single slash of paw ripping +down the forearm of the man who had poked him. The crowbar was dropped +as the man leaped away. Alphonso flung back on Jack, a sorry antagonist +by this time, who could only pant and quiver where he lay in the welter +of what was left of him. + +Michael had managed to get up on his three legs and was striving to +stumble forward against the restraining arms of Sara. The mad leopard +was on the verge of springing upon them when deflected by another prod of +the iron. This time he went straight at the man, fetching up against the +cage-bars with such fierceness as to shake the structure. + +More men began thrusting with more rods, but Alphonso was not to be +balked. Sara saw him coming and screamed her shrillest and savagest at +him. Collins snatched a revolver from one of the men. + +"Don't kill him!" Castlemon cried, seizing Collins's arm. + +The leopard man was in a bad way himself. One arm dangled helplessly at +his side, while his eyes, filling with blood from a scalp wound, he wiped +on the master-trainer's shoulder so that he might see. + +"He's my property," he protested. "And he's worth a hundred sick monkeys +and sour-balled terriers. Anyway, we'll get them out all right. Give me +a chance.--Somebody mop my eyes out, please. I can't see. I've used up +my blank cartridges. Has anybody any blanks?" + +One moment Sara would interpose her body between Michael and the leopard, +which was still being delayed by the prodding irons; and the next moment +she would turn to screech at the fanged cat is if by very advertisement +of her malignancy she might intimidate him into keeping back. + +Michael, dragging her with him, growling and bristling, staggered forward +a couple of three-legged steps, gave at the ruined shoulder, and +collapsed. And then Sara did the great deed. With one last scream of +utmost fury, she sprang full into the face of the monstrous cat, tearing +and scratching with hands and feet, her mouth buried into the roots of +one of its stubby ears. The astounded leopard upreared, with his +forepaws striking and ripping at the little demon that would not let go. + +The fight and the life in the little green monkey lasted a short ten +seconds. But this was sufficient for Collins to get the door ajar and +with a quick clutch on Michael's hind-leg jerk him out and to the ground. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + +No rough-and-ready surgery of the Del Mar sort obtained at Cedarwild, +else Michael would not have lived. A real surgeon, skilful and +audacious, came very close to vivisecting him as he radically repaired +the ruin of a shoulder, doing things he would not have dared with a human +but which proved to be correct for Michael. + +"He'll always be lame," the surgeon said, wiping his hands and gazing +down at Michael, who lay, for the most part of him, a motionless prisoner +set in plaster of Paris. "All the healing, and there's plenty of it, +will have to be by first intention. If his temperature shoots up we'll +have to put him out of his misery. What's he worth?" + +"He has no tricks," Collins answered. "Possibly fifty dollars, and +certainly not that now. Lame dogs are not worth teaching tricks to." + +Time was to prove both men wrong. Michael was not destined to permanent +lameness, although in after-years his shoulder was always tender, and, on +occasion, when the weather was damp, he was compelled to ease it with a +slight limp. On the other hand, he was destined to appreciate to a great +price and to become the star performer Harry Del Mar had predicted of +him. + +In the meantime he lay for many weary days in the plaster and abstained +from raising a dangerous temperature. The care taken of him was +excellent. But not out of love and affection was it given. It was +merely a part of the system at Cedarwild which made the institution such +a success. When he was taken out of the plaster, he was still denied +that instinctive pleasure which all animals take in licking their wounds, +for shrewdly arranged bandages were wrapped and buckled on him. And when +they were finally removed, there were no wounds to lick; though deep in +the shoulder was a pain that required months in which to die out. + +Harris Collins bothered him no more with trying to teach him tricks, and, +one day, loaned him as a filler-in to a man and woman who had lost three +of their dog-troupe by pneumonia. + +"If he makes out you can have him for twenty dollars," Collins told the +man, Wilton Davis. + +"And if he croaks?" Davis queried. + +Collins shrugged his shoulders. "I won't sit up nights worrying about +him. He's unteachable." + +And when Michael departed from Cedarwild in a crate on an express wagon, +he might well have never returned, for Wilton Davis was notorious among +trained-animal men for his cruelty to dogs. Some care he might take of a +particular dog with a particularly valuable trick, but mere fillers-in +came too cheaply. They cost from three to five dollars apiece. Worse +than that, so far as he was concerned, Michael had cost nothing. And if +he died it meant nothing to Davis except the trouble of finding another +dog. + +The first stage of Michael's new adventure involved no unusual hardship, +despite the fact that he was so cramped in his crate that he could not +stand up and that the jolting and handling of the crate sent countless +twinges of pain shooting through his shoulder. The journey was only to +Brooklyn, where he was duly delivered to a second-rate theatre, Wilton +Davis being so indifferent a second-rate animal man that he could never +succeed in getting time with the big circuits. + +The hardship of the cramped crate began after Michael had been carried +into a big room above the stage and deposited with nearly a score of +similarly crated dogs. A sorry lot they were, all of them scrubs and +most of them spirit-broken and miserable. Several had bad sores on their +heads from being knocked about by Davis. No care was taken of these +sores, and they were not improved by the whitening that was put on them +for concealment whenever they performed. Some of them howled lamentably +at times, and every little while, as if it were all that remained for +them to do in their narrow cells, all of them would break out into +barking. + +Michael was the only one who did not join in these choruses. Long since, +as one feature of his developing moroseness, he had ceased from barking. +He had become too unsociable for any such demonstrations; nor did he +pattern after the example of some of the sourer-tempered dogs in the +room, who were for ever bickering and snarling through the slats of their +cages. In fact, Michael's sourness of temper had become too profound +even for quarrelling. All he desired was to be let alone, and of this he +had a surfeit for the first forty-eight hours. + +Wilton Davis had assembled his troupe ahead of time, so that the change +of programme was five days away. Having taken advantage of this to go to +see his wife's people over in New Jersey, he had hired one of the stage- +hands to feed and water his dogs. This the stage-hand would have done, +had he not had the misfortune to get into an altercation with a barkeeper +which culminated in a fractured skull and an ambulance ride to the +receiving hospital. To make the situation perfect for what followed, the +theatre was closed for three days in order to make certain alterations +demanded by the Fire Commissioners. + +No one came near the room, and after several hours Michael grew aware of +hunger and thirst. The time passed, and the desire for food was +supplanted by the desire for water. By nightfall the barking and yelping +became continuous, changing through the long night hours to whimpering +and whining. Michael alone made no sound, suffering dumbly in the bedlam +of misery. + +Morning of the second day dawned; the slow hours dragged by to the second +night; and the darkness of the second night drew down upon a scene behind +the scenes, sufficient of itself to condemn all trained-animal acts in +all theatres and show-tents of all the world. Whether Michael dreamed or +was in semi-delirium, there is no telling; but, whichever it was, he +lived most of his past life over again. Again he played as a puppy on +the broad verandas of _Mister_ Haggin's plantation bungalow at Meringe; +or, with Jerry, stalked the edges of the jungle down by the river-bank to +spy upon the crocodiles; or, learning from _Mister_ Haggin and Bob, and +patterning after Biddy and Terrence, to consider black men as lesser and +despised gods who must for ever be kept strictly in their places. + +On the schooner _Eugenie_ he sailed with Captain Kellar, his second +master, and on the beach at Tulagi lost his heart to Steward of the magic +fingers and sailed away with him and Kwaque on the steamer _Makambo_. +Steward was most in his visions, against a hazy background of vessels, +and of individuals like the Ancient Mariner, Simon Nishikanta, Grimshaw, +Captain Doane, and little old Ah Moy. Nor least of all did Scraps +appear, and Cocky, the valiant-hearted little fluff of life gallantly +bearing himself through his brief adventure in the sun. And it would +seem to Michael that on one side, clinging to him, Cocky talked farrago +in his ear, and on the other side Sara clung to him and chattered an +interminable and incommunicable tale. And then, deep about the roots of +his ears would seem to prod the magic, caressing fingers of Steward the +beloved. + +"I just don't I have no luck," Wilton Davis mourned, gazing about at his +dogs, the air still vibrating with the string of oaths he had at first +ripped out. + +"That comes of trusting a drunken stage-hand," his wife remarked +placidly. "I wouldn't be surprised if half of them died on us now." + +"Well, this is no time for talk," Davis snarled, proceeding to take off +his coat. "Get busy, my love, and learn the worst. Water's what they +need. I'll give them a tub of it." + +Bucketful by bucketful, from the tap at the sink in the corner, he filled +a large galvanized-iron tub. At sound of the running water the dogs +began whimpering and yelping and moaning. Some tried to lick his hands +with their swollen tongues as he dragged them roughly out of their cages. +The weaker ones crawled and bellied toward the tub, and were over-trod by +the stronger ones. There was not room for all, and the stronger ones +drank first, with much fighting and squabbling and slashing of fangs. +Into the foremost of this was Michael, slashing and being slashed, but +managing to get hasty gulps of the life-saving fluid. Davis danced about +among them, kicking right and left, so that all might have a chance. His +wife took a hand, laying about her with a mop. It was a pandemonium of +pain, for, their parched throats softened by the water, they were again +able to yelp and cry out loudly all their hurt and woe. + +Several were too weak to get to the water, so it was carried to them and +doused and splashed into their mouths. It seemed that they would never +be satisfied. They lay in collapse all about the room, but every little +while one or another would crawl over to the tub and try to drink more. +In the meantime Davis had started a fire and filled a caldron with +potatoes. + +"The place stinks like a den of skunks," Mrs. Davis observed, pausing +from dabbing the end of her nose with a powder-puff. "Dearest, we'll +just have to wash them." + +"All right, sweetheart," her husband agreed. "And the quicker the +better. We can get through with it while the potatoes are boiling and +cooling. I'll scrub them and you dry them. Remember that pneumonia, and +do it thoroughly." + +It was quick, rough bathing. Reaching out for the dogs nearest him, he +flung them in turn into the tub from which they had drunk. When they +were frightened, or when they objected in any way, he rapped them on the +head with the scrubbing brush or the bar of yellow laundry soap with +which he was lathering them. Several minutes sufficed for a dog. + +"Drink, damn you, drink--have some more," he would say, as he shoved +their heads down and under the dirty, soapy water. + +He seemed to hold them responsible for their horrible condition, to look +upon their filthiness as a personal affront. + +Michael yielded to being flung into the tub. He recognized that baths +were necessary and compulsory, although they were administered in much +better fashion at Cedarwild, while Kwaque and Steward had made a sort of +love function of it when they bathed him. So he did his best to endure +the scrubbing, and all might have been well had not Davis soused him +under. Michael jerked his head up with a warning growl. Davis suspended +half-way the blow he was delivering with the heavy brush, and emitted a +low whistle of surprise. + +"Hello!" he said. "And look who's here!--Lovey, this is the Irish +terrier I got from Collins. He's no good. Collins said so. Just a fill- +in.--Get out!" he commanded Michael. "That's all you get now, Mr. Fresh +Dog. But take it from me pretty soon you'll be getting it fast enough to +make you dizzy." + +While the potatoes were cooling, Mrs. Davis kept the hungry dogs warned +away by sharp cries. Michael lay down sullenly to one side, and took no +part in the rush for the trough when permission was given. Again Davis +danced among them, kicking away the stronger and the more eager. + +"If they get to fighting after all we've done for them, kick in their +ribs, lovey," he told his wife. + +"There! You would, would you?"--this to a large black dog, accompanied +by a savage kick in the side. The animal yelped its pain as it fled +away, and, from a safe distance, looked on piteously at the steaming +food. + +"Well, after this they can't say I don't never give my dogs a bath," +Davis remarked from the sink, where he was rinsing his arms. "What d'ye +say we call it a day's work, my dear?" Mrs. Davis nodded agreement. "We +can rehearse them to-morrow and next day. That will be plenty of time. +I'll run in to-night and boil them some bran. They'll need an extra meal +after fasting two days." + +The potatoes finished, the dogs were put back in their cages for another +twenty-four hours of close confinement. Water was poured into their +drinking-tins, and, in the evening, still in their cages, they were +served liberally with boiled bran and dog-biscuit. This was Michael's +first food, for he had sulkily refused to go near the potatoes. + +* * * * * + +The rehearsing took place on the stage, and for Michael trouble came at +the very start. The drop-curtain was supposed to go up and reveal the +twenty dogs seated on chairs in a semi-circle. Because, while they were +being thus arranged, the preceding turn was taking place in front of the +drop-curtain, it was imperative that rigid silence should be kept. Next, +when the curtain rose on full stage, the dogs were trained to make a +great barking. + +As a filler-in, Michael had nothing to do but sit on a chair. But he had +to get upon the chair, first, and when Davis so ordered him he +accompanied the order with a clout on the side of the head. Michael +growled warningly. + +"Oh, ho, eh?" the man sneered. "It's Fresh Dog looking for trouble. +Well, you might as well get it over with now so your name can be changed +to Good Dog.--My dear, just keep the rest of them in order while I teach +Fresh Dog lesson number one." + +Of the beating that followed, the least said the better. Michael put up +a fight that was hopeless, and was thoroughly beaten in return. Bruised +and bleeding, he sat on the chair, taking no part in the performance and +only sullenly engendering a deeper and bitterer sourness. To keep silent +before the curtain went up was no hardship for him. But when the curtain +did go up, he declined to join the rest of the dogs in their frantic +barking and yelping. + +The dogs, sometimes alone and sometimes in couples and trios and groups, +left their chairs at command and performed the conventional dog tricks +such as walking on hind-legs, hopping, limping, waltzing, and throwing +somersaults. Wilton Davis's temper was short and his hand heavy +throughout the rehearsal, as the shrill yelps of pain from the lagging +and stupid attested. + +In all, during that day and the forenoon of the next, three long +rehearsals took place. Michael's troubles ceased for the time being. At +command, he silently got on the chair and silently sat there. "Which +shows, dearest, what a bit of the stick will do," Davis bragged to his +wife. Nor did the pair of them dream of the scandalizing part Michael +was going to play in their first performance. + +Behind the curtain all was ready on the full stage. The dogs sat on +their chairs in abject silence with Davis and his wife menacing them to +remain silent, while, in front of the curtain, Dick and Daisy Bell +delighted the matinee audience with their singing and dancing. And all +went well, and no one in the audience would have suspected the full stage +of dogs behind the curtain had not Dick and Daisy, accompanied by the +orchestra, begun to sing "Roll Me Down to Rio." + +Michael could not help it. Even as Kwaque had long before mastered him +by the jews' harp, and Steward by love, and Harry Del Mar by the +harmonica, so now was he mastered by the strains of the orchestra and the +voices of the man and woman lifting the old familiar rhythm, taught him +by Steward, of "Roll Me Down to Rio." Despite himself, despite his +sullenness, the forces compulsive opened his jaws and set all his throat +vibrating in accompaniment. + +From beyond the curtain came a titter of children and women that grew +into a roar and drowned out the voices of Dick and Daisy. Wilton Davis +cursed unbelievably as he sprang down the stage to Michael. But Michael +howled on, and the audience laughed on. Michael was still howling when +the short club smote him. The shock and hurt of it made him break off +and yelp an involuntary cry of pain. + +"Knock his block off, dearest," Mrs. Davis counselled. + +And then ensued battle royal. Davis struck shrewd blows that could be +heard, as were heard the snarls and growls of Michael. The audience, +under the sway of the comic, ignored Dick and Daisy Bell. Their turn was +spoiled. The Davis turn was "queered," as Wilton impressed it. Michael's +block was knocked off within the meaning of the term. And the audience, +on the other side of the curtain, was edified and delighted. + +Dick and Daisy could not continue. The audience wanted what was behind +the curtain, not in front of it. Michael was taken off stage thoroughly +throttled by one of the stage-hands, and the curtain arose on the full +set--full, save for the one empty chair. The boys in the audience first +realized the connection between the empty chair and the previous uproar, +and began clamouring for the absent dog. The audience took up the cry, +the dogs barked more excitedly, and five minutes of hilarity delayed the +turn which, when at last started, was marked by rustiness and erraticness +on the part of the dogs and by great peevishness on the part of Wilton +Davis. + +"Never mind, honey," his imperturbable wife assured him in a stage +whisper. "We'll just ditch that dog and get a regular one. And, anyway, +we've put one over on that Daisy Bell. I ain't told you yet what she +said about me, only last week, to some of my friends." + +Several minutes later, still on the stage and handling his animals, the +husband managed a chance to mutter to his wife: "It's the dog. It's him +I'm after. I'm going to lay him out." + +"Yes, dearest," she agreed. + +The curtain down, with a gleeful audience in front and with the dogs back +in the room over the stage, Wilton Davis descended to look for Michael, +who, instead of cowering in some corner, stood between the legs of the +stage-hand, quivering yet from his mishandling and threatening to fight +as hard as ever if attacked. On his way, Davis encountered the song-and- +dance couple. The woman was in a tearful rage, the man in a dry one. + +"You're a peach of a dog man, you are," he announced belligerently. +"Here's where you get yours." + +"You keep away from me, or I'll lay you out," Wilton Davis responded +desperately, brandishing a short iron bar in his right hand. "Besides, +you just wait if you want to, and I'll lay you out afterward. But first +of all I'm going to lay out that dog. Come on along and see--damn him! +How was I to know? He was a new one. He never peeped in rehearsal. How +was I to know he was going to yap when we arranged the set behind you?" + +"You've raised hell," the manager of the theatre greeted Davis, as the +latter, trailed by Dick Bell, came upon Michael bristling from between +the legs of the stage-hand. + +"Nothing to what I'm going to raise," Davis retorted, shortening his grip +on the iron bar and raising it. "I'm going to kill 'm. I'm going to +beat the life out of him. You just watch." + +Michael snarled acknowledgment of the threat, crouched to spring, and +kept his eyes on the iron weapon. + +"I just guess you ain't goin' to do anything of the sort," the stage-hand +assured Davis. + +"It's my property," the latter asserted with an air of legal +convincingness. + +"And against it I'm goin' to stack up my common sense," was the stage- +hand's reply. "You tap him once, and see what you'll get. Dogs is dogs, +and men is men, but I'm damned if I know what you are. You can't pull +off rough stuff on that dog. First time he was on a stage in his life, +after being starved and thirsted for two days. Oh, I know, Mr. Manager." + +"If you kill the dog it'll cost you a dollar to the garbage man to get +rid of the carcass," the manager took up. + +"I'll pay it gladly," Davis said, again lifting the iron bar. "I've got +some come-back, ain't I?" + +"You animal guys make me sick," the stage-hand uttered. "You just make +me draw the line somewheres. And here it is: you tap him once with that +baby crowbar, and I'll tap you hard enough to lose me my job and to send +you to hospital." + +"Now look here, Jackson . . . " the manager began threateningly. + +"You can't say nothin' to me," was the retort. "My mind's made up. If +that cheap guy lays a finger on that dog I'm just sure goin' to lose my +job. I'm gettin tired anyway of seein' these skates beatin' up their +animals. They've made me sick clean through." + +The manager looked to Davis and shrugged his shoulders helplessly. + +"There's no use pulling off a rough-house," he counselled. "I don't want +to lose Jackson and he'll put you into hospital if he ever gets started. +Send the dog back where you got him. Your wife's told me about him. +Stick him into a box and send him back collect. Collins won't mind. +He'll take the singing out of him and work him into something." + +Davis, with another glance at the truculent Jackson, wavered. + +"I'll tell you what," the manager went on persuasively. "Jackson will +attend to the whole thing, box him up, ship him, everything--won't you, +Jackson?" + +The stage-hand nodded curtly, then reached down and gently caressed +Michael's bruised head. + +"Well," Davis gave in, turning on his heel, "they can make fools of +themselves over dogs, them that wants to. But when they've been in the +business as long as I have . . . " + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + +A post card from Davis to Collins explained the reasons for Michael's +return. "He sings too much to suit my fancy," was Davis's way of putting +it, thereby unwittingly giving the clue to what Collins had vainly +sought, and which Collins as unwittingly failed to grasp. As he told +Johnny: + +"From the looks of the beatings he's got no wonder he's been singing. +That's the trouble with these animal people. They don't know how to take +care of their property. They hammer its head off and get grouched +because it ain't an angel of obedience.--Put him away, Johnny. Wash him +clean, and put on the regular dressing wherever the skin's broken. I +give him up myself, but I'll find some place for him in the next bunch of +dogs." + +Two weeks later, by sheerest accident, Harris Collins made the discovery +for himself of what Michael was good for. In a spare moment in the +arena, he had sent for him to be tried out by a dog man who needed +several fillers-in. Beyond what he knew, such as at command to stand up, +to lie down, to come here and go there, Michael had done nothing. He had +refused to learn the most elementary things a show-dog should know, and +Collins had left him to go over to another part of the arena where a +monkey band, on a sort of mimic stage, was being arranged and broken in. + +Frightened and mutinous, nevertheless the monkeys were compelled to +perform by being tied to their seats and instruments and by being pulled +and jerked from off stage by wires fastened to their bodies. The leader +of the orchestra, an irascible elderly monkey, sat on a revolving stool +to which he was securely attached. When poked from off the stage by +means of long poles, he flew into ecstasies of rage. At the same time, +by a rope arrangement, his chair was whirled around and around. To an +audience the effect would be that he was angered by the blunders of his +fellow-musicians. And to an audience such anger would be highly +ludicrous. As Collins said: + +"A monkey band is always a winner. It fetches the laugh, and the money's +in the laugh. Humans just have to laugh at monkeys because they're so +similar and because the human has the advantage and feels himself +superior. Suppose we're walking along the street, you and me, and you +slip and fall down. Of course I laugh. That's because I'm superior to +you. I didn't fall down. Same thing if your hat blows off. I laugh +while you chase it down the street. I'm superior. My hat's still on my +head. Same thing with the monkey band. All the fool things of it make +us feel so superior. We don't see ourselves as foolish. That's why we +pay to see the monkeys behave foolish." + +It was scarcely a matter of training the monkeys. Rather was it the +training of the men who operated the concealed mechanisms that made the +monkeys perform. To this Harris Collins was devoting his effort. + +"There isn't any reason why you fellows can't make them play a real tune. +It's up to you, just according to how you pull the wires. Come on. It's +worth going in for. Let's try something you all know. And remember, the +regular orchestra will always help you out. Now, what do you all know? +Something simple, and something the audience'll know, too?" + +He became absorbed in trying out the idea, and even borrowed a circus +rider whose act was to play the violin while standing on the back of a +galloping horse and to throw somersaults on such precarious platform +while still playing the violin. This man he got merely to play simple +airs in slow time, so that the assistants could keep the time and the air +and pull the wires accordingly. + +"Of course, if you make a howling mistake," Collins told them, "that's +when you all pull the wires like mad and poke the leader and whirl him +around. That always brings down the house. They think he's got a real +musical ear and is mad at his orchestra for the discord." + +In the midst of the work, Johnny and Michael came along. + +"That guy says he wouldn't take him for a gift," Johnny reported to his +employer. + +"All right, all right, put him back in the kennels," Collins ordered +hurriedly.--"Now, you fellows, all ready! 'Home, Sweet Home!' Go to it, +Fisher! Now keep the time the rest of you! . . . That's it. With a full +orchestra you're making motions like the tune.--Faster, you, Simmons. You +drag behind all the time." + +And the accident happened. Johnny, instead of immediately obeying the +order and taking Michael back to the kennels, lingered in the hope of +seeing the orchestra leader whirled chattering around on his stool. The +violinist, within a yard of where Michael sat squatted on his haunches, +played the notes of "Home, Sweet Home" with loud slow exactitude and +emphasis. + +And Michael could not help it. No more could he help it than could he +help responding with a snarl when threatened by a club; no more could he +help it than when he had spoiled the turn of Dick and Daisy Bell when +swept by the strains of "Roll Me Down to Rio"; no more could he help it +than could Jerry, on the deck of the _Ariel_, help singing when Villa +Kennan put her arms around him, smothered him deliciously in her cloud of +hair, and sang his memory back into time and the fellowship of the +ancient pack. As with Jerry, was it with Michael. Music was a drug of +dream. He, too, remembered the lost pack and sought it, seeing the bare +hills of snow and the stars glimmering overhead through the frosty +darkness of night, hearing the faint answering howls from other hills as +the pack assembled. Lost the pack was, through the thousands of years +Michael's ancestors had lived by the fires of men; yet remembered always +it was when the magic of rhythm poured through him and flooded his being +with visions and sensations of that Otherwhere which in his own life he +had never known. + +Compounded with the waking dream of Otherwhere, was the memory of Steward +and the love of Steward, with whom he had learned to sing the very series +of notes that now were being reproduced by the circus-rider violinist. +And Michael's jaw dropped down, his throat vibrated, his forefeet made +restless little movements as if in the body he were running, as truly he +was running in the mind, back to Steward, back through all the ages to +the lost pack, and with the shadowy lost pack itself across the snowy +wastes and through the forest aisles in the hunt of the meat. + +The spectral forms of the lost pack were all about him as he sang and ran +in open-eyed dream; the violinist paused in surprise; the men poked the +monkey leader of the monkey orchestra and whirled him about wildly raging +on his revolving stool; and Johnny laughed. But Harris Collins took +note. He had heard Michael accurately follow the air. He had heard him +sing--not merely howl, but _sing_. + +Silence fell. The monkey leader ceased revolving and chattering. The +men who had poked him held poles and wires suspended in their hands. The +rest of the monkey orchestra merely shivered in apprehension of what next +atrocity should be perpetrated. The violinist stared. Johnny still +heaved from his laughter. But Harris Collins pondered, scratched his +head, and continued to ponder. + +"You can't tell me . . . " he began vaguely. "I know it. I heard it. +That dog carried the tune. Didn't he now? I leave it to all of you. +Didn't he? The damned dog sang. I'll stake my life on it.--Hold on, you +fellows; rest the monkeys off. This is worth following up.--Mr. +Violinist, play that over again, now, 'Home, Sweet Home,'--let her go. +Press her strong, and loud, and slow.--Now watch, all of you, and listen, +and tell me if I'm crazy, or if that dog ain't carrying the tune.--There! +What d'ye call it? Ain't it?" + +There was no discussion. Michael's jaw dropped and his forefeet began +their restless lifting after several measures had been played. And +Harris Collins stepped close to him and sang with him and in accord. + +"Harry Del Mar was right when he said that dog was the limit and sold his +troupe. He knew. The dog's a dog Caruso. No howling chorus of mutts +such as Kingman used to carry around with him, but a real singer, a +soloist. No wonder he wouldn't learn tricks. He had his specially all +the time. And just to think of it! I as good as gave him away to that +dog-killing Wilton Davis. Only he came back.--Johnny, take extra care of +him after this. Bring him up to the house this afternoon, and I'll give +him a real try-out. My daughter plays the violin. We'll see what music +he'll sing with her. There's a mint of money in him, take it from me." + +* * * * * + +Thus was Michael discovered. The afternoon's try-out was partially +successful. After vainly attempting strange music on him, Collins found +that he could sing, and would sing, "God Save the King" and "Sweet Bye +and Bye." Many hours of many days were spent in the quest. Vainly he +tried to teach Michael new airs. Michael put no heart of love in the +effort and sullenly abstained. But whenever one of the songs he had +learned from Steward was played, he responded. He could not help +responding. The magic was stronger than he. In the end, Collins +discovered five of the six songs he knew: "God Save the King," "Sweet Bye +and Bye," "Lead, Kindly Light," "Home, Sweet Home," and "Roll Me Down to +Rio." Michael never sang "Shenandoah," because Collins and Collins's +daughter did not know the old sea-chanty and therefore were unable to +suggest it to him. + +"Five songs are enough, if he won't never learn another note," Collins +concluded. "They'll make him a bill-topper anywhere. There's a mint in +him. Hang me if I wouldn't take him out on the road myself if only I was +young and footloose." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + +And so Michael was ultimately sold to one Jacob Henderson for two +thousand dollars. "And I'm giving him away to you at that," said +Collins. "If you don't refuse five thousand for him before six months, I +don't know anything about the show game. He'll skin that last arithmetic +dog of yours to a finish and you won't have to show yourself and work +every minute of the turn. And if you don't insure him for fifty thousand +as soon as he's made good you'll be a fool. Why, I wouldn't ask anything +better, if I was young and footloose, than to take him out on the road +myself." + +Henderson proved totally different from any master Michael had had. The +man was a neutral sort of creature. He was neither good nor evil. He +neither drank, smoked, nor swore; nor did he go to church or belong to +the Y.M.C.A. He was a vegetarian without being a bigoted one, liked +moving pictures when they were concerned with travel, and spent most of +his spare time in reading Swedenborg. He had no temper whatever. Nobody +had ever witnessed anger in him, and all said he had the patience of Job. +He was even timid of policemen, freight agents, and conductors, though he +was not afraid of them. He was not afraid of anything, any more than was +he enamoured of anything save Swedenborg. He was as colourless of +character as the neutral-coloured clothes he wore, as the +neutral-coloured hair that sprawled upon his crown, as the +neutral-coloured eyes with which he observed the world. Nor was he a +fool any more than was he a wise man or a scholar. He gave little to +life, asked little of life, and, in the show business, was a recluse in +the very heart of life. + +Michael neither liked nor disliked him, but, rather, merely accepted him. +They travelled the United States over together, and they never had a +quarrel. Not once did Henderson raise his voice sharply to Michael, and +not once did Michael snarl a warning at him. They simply endured +together, existed together, because the currents of life had drifted them +together. Of course, there was no heart-bond between them. Henderson +was master. Michael was Henderson's chattel. Michael was as dead to him +as he was himself dead to all things. + +Yet Jacob Henderson was fair and square, business-like and methodical. +Once each day, when not travelling on the interminable trains, he gave +Michael a thorough bath and thoroughly dried him afterward. He was never +harsh nor hasty in the bathing. Michael never was aware whether he liked +or disliked the bathing function. It was all one, part of his own fate +in the world as it was part of Henderson's fate to bathe him every so +often. + +Michael's own work was tolerably easy, though monotonous. Leaving out +the eternal travelling, the never-ending jumps from town to town and from +city to city, he appeared on the stage once each night for seven nights +in the week and for two afternoon performances in the week. The curtain +went up, leaving him alone on the stage in the full set that befitted a +bill-topper. Henderson stood in the wings, unseen by the audience, and +looked on. The orchestra played four of the pieces Michael had been +taught by Steward, and Michael sang them, for his modulated howling was +truly singing. He never responded to more than one encore, which was +always "Home, Sweet Home." After that, while the audience clapped and +stamped its approval and delight of the dog Caruso, Jacob Henderson would +appear on the stage, bowing and smiling in stereotyped gladness and +gratefulness, rest his right hand on Michael's shoulders with a +play-acted assumption of comradeliness, whereupon both Henderson and +Michael would bow ere the final curtain went down. + +And yet Michael was a prisoner, a life-prisoner. Fed well, bathed well, +exercised well, he never knew a moment of freedom. When travelling, days +and nights he spent in the cage, which, however, was generous enough to +allow him to stand at full height and to turn around without too +uncomfortable squirming. Sometimes, in hotels in country towns, out of +the crate he shared Henderson's room with him. Otherwise, unless other +animals were hewing on the same circuit time, he had, outside his cage, +the freedom of the animal room attached to the particular theatre where +he performed for from three days to a week. + +But there was never a chance, never a moment, when he might run free of a +cage about him, of the walls of a room restricting him, of a chain +shackled to the collar about his throat. In good weather, in the +afternoons, Henderson often took him for a walk. But always it was at +the end of a chain. And almost always the way led to some park, where +Henderson fastened the other end of the chain to the bench on which he +sat and browsed Swedenborg. Not one act of free agency was left to +Michael. Other dogs ran free, playing with one another, or behaving +bellicosely. If they approached him for purposes of investigation or +acquaintance, Henderson invariably ceased from his reading long enough to +drive them away. + +A life prisoner to a lifeless gaoler, life was all grey to Michael. His +moroseness changed to a deep-seated melancholy. He ceased to be +interested in life and in the freedom of life. Not that he regarded the +play of life about him with a jaundiced eye, but, rather, that his eyes +became unseeing. Debarred from life, he ignored life. He permitted +himself to become a sheer puppet slave, eating, taking his baths, +travelling in his cage, performing regularly, and sleeping much. + +He had pride--the pride of the thoroughbred; the pride of the North +American Indian enslaved on the plantations of the West Indies who died +uncomplaining and unbroken. So Michael. He submitted to the cage and +the iron of the chain because they were too strong for his muscles and +teeth. He did his slave-task of performance and rendered obedience to +Jacob Henderson; but he neither loved nor feared that master. And +because of this his spirit turned in on itself. He slept much, brooded +much, and suffered unprotestingly a great loneliness. Had Henderson made +a bid for his heart, he would surely have responded; but Henderson had a +heart only for the fantastic mental gyrations of Swedenborg, and merely +made his living out of Michael. + +Sometimes there were hardships. Michael accepted them. Especially hard +did he find railroad travel in winter-time, when, on occasion, fresh from +the last night's performance in a town, he remained for hours in his +crate on a truck waiting for the train that would take him to the next +town of performance. There was a night on a station platform in +Minnesota, when two dogs of a troupe, on the next truck to his, froze to +death. He was himself well frosted, and the cold bit abominably into his +shoulder wounded by the leopard; but a better constitution and better +general care of him enabled him to survive. + +Compared with other show animals, he was well treated. And much of the +ill-treatment accorded other animals on the same turn with him he did not +comprehend or guess. One turn, with which he played for three months, +was a scandal amongst all vaudeville performers. Even the hardiest of +them heartily disliked the turn and the man, although Duckworth, and +Duckworth's Trained Cats and Rats, were an invariable popular success. + +"Trained cats!" sniffed dainty little Pearl La Pearle, the bicyclist. +"Crushed cats, that's what they are. All the cat has been beaten out of +their blood, and they've become rats. You can't tell me. I know." + +"Trained rats!" Manuel Fonseca, the contortionist, exploded in the bar- +room of the Hotel Annandale, after refusing to drink with Duckworth. +"Doped rats, believe me. Why don't they jump off when they crawl along +the tight rope with a cat in front and a cat behind? Because they ain't +got the life in 'm to jump. They're doped, straight doped when they're +fresh, and starved afterward so as to making a saving on the dope. They +never are fed. You can't tell me. I know. Else why does he use up +anywhere to forty or fifty rats a week! I know his express shipments, +when he can't buy 'm in the towns." + +"My Gawd!" protested Miss Merle Merryweather, the Accordion Girl, who +looked like sixteen on the stage, but who, in private life among her +grand-children, acknowledged forty-eight. "My Gawd, how the public can +fall for it gets my honest-to-Gawd goat. I looked myself yesterday +morning early. Out of thirty rats there were seven dead,--starved to +death. He never feeds them. They're dying rats, dying of starvation, +when they crawl along that rope. That's why they crawl. If they had a +bit of bread and cheese in their tummies they'd jump and run to get away +from the cats. They're dying, they're dying right there on the rope, +trying to crawl as a dying man would try to crawl away from a tiger that +was eating him. And my Gawd! The bonehead audience sits there and +applauds the show as an educational act!" + +But the audience! "Wonderful things kindness will do with animals," said +a member of one, a banker and a deacon. "Even human love can be taught +to them by kindness. The cat and the rat have been enemies since the +world began. Yet here, to-night, we have seen them doing highly trained +feats together, and neither a cat committed one hostile or overt act +against a rat, nor ever a rat showed it was afraid of a cat. Human +kindness! The power of human kindness!" + +"The lion and the lamb," said another. "We have it that when the +millennium comes the lion and the lamb will lie down together--and +outside each other, my dear, outside each other. And this is a forecast, +a proving up, by man, ahead of the day. Cats and rats! Think of it. And +it shows conclusively the power of kindness. I shall see to it at once +that we get pets for our own children, our palm branches. They shall +learn kindness early, to the dog, the cat, yes, even the rat, and the +pretty linnet in its cage." + +"But," said his dear, beside him, "you remember what Blake said: + + "'A Robin Redbreast in a cage + Puts all heaven in a rage.'" + +"Ah--but not when it is treated truly with kindness, my dear. I shall +immediately order some rabbits, and a canary or two, and--what sort of a +dog would you prefer our dear little ones to have to play with, my +sweet?" + +And his dear looked at him in all his imperturbable, complacent +self-consciousness of kindness, and saw herself the little rural school- +teacher who, with Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Lord Byron as her idols, and +with the dream of herself writing "Poems of Passion," had come up to +Topeka Town to be beaten by the game into marrying the solid, substantial +business man beside her, who enjoyed delight in the spectacle of cats and +rats walking the tight-rope in amity, and who was blissfully unaware that +she was the Robin Redbreast in a cage that put all heaven in a rage. + +"The rats are bad enough," said Miss Merle Merryweather. "But look how +he uses up the cats. He's had three die on him in the last two weeks to +my certain knowledge. They're only alley-cats, but they've got feelings. +It's that boxing match that does for them." + +The boxing match, sure always of a great hand from the audience, +invariably concluded Duckworth's turn. Two cats, with small +boxing-gloves, were put on a table for a friendly bout. Naturally, the +cats that performed with the rats were too cowed for this. It was the +fresh cats he used, the ones with spunk and spirit . . . until they lost +all spunk and spirit or sickened and died. To the audience it was a side- +splitting, playful encounter between four-legged creatures who thus +displayed a ridiculous resemblance to superior, two-legged man. But it +was not playful to the cats. They were always excited into starting a +real fight with each other off stage just before they were brought on. In +the blows they struck were anger and pain and bewilderment and fear. And +the gloves just would come off, so that they were ripping and tearing at +each other, biting as well as making the fur fly, like furies, when the +curtain went down. In the eyes of the audience this apparent impromptu +was always the ultimate scream, and the laughter and applause would +compel the curtain up again to reveal Duckworth and an assistant stage- +hand, as if caught by surprise, fanning the two belligerents with towels. + +But the cats themselves were so continually torn and scratched that the +wounds never had a chance to heal and became infected until they were a +mass of sores. On occasion they died, or, when they had become too +abjectly spiritless to attack even a rat, were set to work on the tight- +rope with the doped starved rats that were too near dead to run away from +them. And, as Miss Merle Merryweather said: the bonehead audiences, +tickled to death, applauded Duckworth's Trained Cats and Rats as an +educational act! + +A big chimpanzee that covered one of the circuits with Michael had an +antipathy for clothes. Like a horse that fights the putting on of the +bridle, and, after it is on, takes no further notice of it, so the big +chimpanzee fought the putting on the clothes. Once on, it was ready to +go out on the stage and through its turn. But the rub was in putting on +the clothes. It took the owner and two stage-hands, pulling him up to a +ring in the wall and throttling him, to dress him--and this, despite the +fact that the owner had long since knocked out his incisors. + +All this cruelty Michael sensed without knowing. And he accepted it as +the way of life, as he accepted the daylight and the dark, the bite of +the frost on bleak and windy station platforms, the mysterious land of +Otherwhere that he knew in dreams and song, the equally mysterious +Nothingness into which had vanished Meringe Plantation and ships and +oceans and men and Steward. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + +For two years Michael sang his way over the United States, to fame for +himself and to fortune for Jacob Henderson. There was never any time +off. So great was his success, that Henderson refused flattering offers +to cross the Atlantic to show in Europe. But off-time did come to +Michael when Henderson fell ill of typhoid in Chicago. + +It was a three-months' vacation for Michael, who, well treated but still +a prisoner, spent it in a caged kennel in Mulcachy's Animal Home. +Mulcachy, one of Harris Collins's brightest graduates, had emulated his +master by setting up in business in Chicago, where he ran everything with +the same rigid cleanliness, sanitation, and scientific cruelty. Michael +received nothing but the excellent food and the cleanliness; but, a +solitary and brooding prisoner in his cage, he could not help but sense +the atmosphere of pain and terror about him of the animals being broken +for the delight of men. + +Mulcachy had originated aphorisms of his own which he continually +enunciated, among which were: + +"Take it from me, when an animal won't give way to pain, it can't be +broke. Pain is the only school-teacher." + +"Just as you got to take the buck out of a broncho, you've got to take +the bite out of a lion." + +"You can't break animals with a feather duster. The thicker the skull +the thicker the crowbar." + +"They'll always beat you in argument. First thing is to club the +argument out of them." + +"Heart-bonds between trainers and animals! Son, that's dope for the +newspaper interviewer. The only heart-bond I know is a stout stick with +some iron on the end of it." + +"Sure you can make 'm eat outa your hand. But the thing to watch out for +is that they don't eat your hand. A blank cartridge in the nose just +about that time is the best preventive I know." + +There were days when all the air was vexed with roars and squalls of +ferocity and agony from the arena, until the last animal in the cages was +excited and ill at ease. In truth, since it was Mulcachy's boast that he +could break the best animal living, no end of the hardest cases fell to +his hand. He had built a reputation for succeeding where others failed, +and, endowed with fearlessness, callousness, and cunning, he never let +his reputation wane. There was nothing he dared not tackle, and, when he +gave up an animal, the last word was said. For it, remained nothing but +to be a cage-animal, in solitary confinement, pacing ever up and down, +embittered with all the world of man and roaring its bitterness to the +most delicious enthrillment of the pay-spectators. + +During the three months spent by Michael in Mulcachy's Animal Home, +occurred two especially hard cases. Of course, the daily chant of +ordinary pain of training went on all the time through the working hours, +such as of "good" bears and lions and tigers that were made amenable +under stress, and of elephants derricked and gaffed into making the head- +stand or into the beating of a bass drum. But the two cases that were +exceptional, put a mood of depression and fear into all the listening +animals, such as humans might experience in an ante-room of hell, +listening to the flailing and the flaying of their fellows who had +preceded them into the torture-chamber. + +The first was of the big Indian tiger. Free-born in the jungle, and free +all his days, master, according to his nature and prowess, of all other +living creatures including his fellow-tigers, he had come to grief in the +end; and, from the trap to the cramped cage, by elephant-back and +railroad and steamship, ever in the cramped cage, he had journeyed across +seas and continents to Mulcachy's Animal Home. Prospective buyers had +examined but not dared to purchase. But Mulcachy had been undeterred. +His own fighting blood leapt hot at sight of the magnificent striped cat. +It was a challenge of the brute in him to excel. And, two weeks of hell, +for the great tiger and for all the other animals, were required to teach +him his first lesson. + +Ben Bolt he had been named, and he arrived indomitable and +irreconcilable, though almost paralysed from eight weeks of cramp in his +narrow cage which had restricted all movement. Mulcachy should have +undertaken the job immediately, but two weeks were lost by the fact that +he had got married and honeymooned for that length of time. And in that +time, in a large cage of concrete and iron, Ben Bolt had exercised and +recovered the use of his muscles, and added to his hatred of the +two-legged things, puny against him in themselves, who by trick and wile +had so helplessly imprisoned him. + +So, on this morning when hell yawned for him, he was ready and eager to +meet all comers. They came, equipped with formulas, nooses, and forked +iron bars. Five of them tossed nooses in through the bars upon the floor +of his cage. He snarled and struck at the curling ropes, and for ten +minutes was a grand and impossible wild creature, lacking in nothing save +the wit and the patience possessed by the miserable two-legged things. +And then, impatient and careless of the inanimate ropes, he paused, +snarling at the men, with one hind foot resting inside a noose. The next +moment, craftily lifted up about the girth of his leg by an iron fork, +the noose tightened and the bite of it sank home into his flesh and +pride. He leaped, he roared, he was a maniac of ferocity. Again and +again, almost burning their palms, he tore the rope smoking through their +hands. But ever they took in the slack and paid it out again, until, ere +he was aware, a similar noose tightened on his foreleg. What he had done +was nothing to what he now did. But he was stupid and impatient. The +man-creatures were wise and patient, and a third leg and a fourth leg +were finally noosed, so that, with many men tailing on to the ropes, he +was dragged ignominiously on his side to the bars, and, ignominiously, +through the bars were hauled his four legs, his chiefest weapons of +offence after his terribly fanged jaws. + +And then a puny man-creature, Mulcachy himself, dared openly and brazenly +to enter the cage and approach him. He sprang to be at him, or, rather, +strove so to spring, but was withstrained by his four legs through the +bars which he could not draw back and get under him. And Mulcachy knelt +beside him, dared kneel beside him, and helped the fifth noose over his +head and round his neck. Then his head was drawn to the bars as +helplessly as his legs had been drawn through. Next, Mulcachy laid hands +on him, on his head, on his ears, on his very nose within an inch of his +fangs; and he could do nothing but snarl and roar and pant for breath as +the noose shut off his breathing. + +Quivering, not with fear but with rage, Ben Bolt perforce endured the +buckling around his throat of a thick, broad collar of leather to which +was attached a very stout and a very long trailing rope. After that, +when Mulcachy had left the cage, one by one the five nooses were artfully +manipulated off his legs and his neck. Again, after this prodigious +indignity, he was free--within his cage. He went up into the air. With +returning breath he roared his rage. He struck at the trailing rope that +offended his nerves, clawed at the trap of the collar that encased his +neck, fell, rolled over, offended his body-nerves more and more by +entangling contacts with the rope, and for half an hour exhausted himself +in the futile battle with the inanimate thing. Thus tigers are broken. + +At the last, wearied, even with sensations of sickness from the nervous +strain put upon himself by his own anger, he lay down in the middle of +the floor, lashing his tail, hating with his eyes, and accepting the +clinging thing about his neck which he had learned he could not get rid +of. + +To his amazement, if such a thing be possible in the mental processes of +a tiger, the rear door to his cage was thrown open and left open. He +regarded the aperture with belligerent suspicion. No one and no +threatening danger appeared in the doorway. But his suspicion grew. +Always, among these man-animals, occurred what he did not know and could +not comprehend. His preference was to remain where he was, but from +behind, through the bars of the cage, came shouts and yells, the lash of +whips, and the painful thrusts of the long iron forks. Dragging the rope +behind him, with no thought of escape, but in the hope that he would get +at his tormentors, he leaped into the rear passage that ran behind the +circle of permanent cages. The passage way was deserted and dark, but +ahead he saw light. With great leaps and roars, he rushed in that +direction, arousing a pandemonium of roars and screams from the animals +in the cages. + +He bounded through the light, and into the light, dazzled by the +brightness of it, and crouched down, with long, lashing tail, to orient +himself to the situation. But it was only another and larger cage that +he was in, a very large cage, a big, bright performing-arena that was all +cage. Save for himself, the arena was deserted, although, overhead, +suspended from the roof-bars, were block-and-tackle and seven strong iron +chairs that drew his instant suspicion and caused him to roar at them. + +For half an hour he roamed the arena, which was the greatest area of +restricted freedom he had known in the ten weeks of his captivity. Then, +a hooked iron rod, thrust through the bars, caught and drew the bight of +his trailing rope into the hands of the men outside. Immediately ten of +them had hold of it, and he would have charged up to the bars at them had +not, at that moment, Mulcachy entered the arena through a door on the +opposite side. No bars stood between Ben Bolt and this creature, and Ben +Bolt charged him. Even as he charged he was aware of suspicion in that +the small, fragile man-creature before him did not flee or crouch down, +but stood awaiting him. + +Ben Bolt never reached him. First, with an access of caution, he +craftily ceased from his charge, and, crouching, with lashing tail, +studied the man who seemed so easily his. Mulcachy was equipped with a +long-lashed whip and a sharp-pronged fork of iron. + +In his belt, loaded with blank cartridges, was a revolver. + +Bellying closer to the ground, Ben Bolt advanced upon him, creeping +slowly like a cat stalking a mouse. When he came to his next pause, +which was within certain leaping distance, he crouched lower, gathered +himself for the leap, then turned his head to regard the men at his back +outside the cage. The trailing rope in their hands, to his neck, he had +forgotten. + +"Now you might as well be good, old man," Mulcachy addressed him in soft, +caressing tones, taking a step toward him and holding in advance the iron +fork. + +This merely incensed the huge, magnificent creature. He rumbled a low, +tense growl, flattened his ears back, and soared into the air, his paws +spread so that the claws stood out like talons, his tail behind him as +stiff and straight as a rod. Neither did the man crouch or flee, nor did +the beast attain to him. At the height of his leap the rope tightened +taut on his neck, causing him to describe a somersault and fall heavily +to the floor on his side. + +Before he could regain his feet, Mulcachy was upon him, shouting to his +small audience: "Here's where we pound the argument out of him!" And +pound he did, on the nose with the butt of the whip, and jab he did, with +the iron fork to the ribs. He rained a hurricane of blows and jabs on +the animal's most sensitive parts. Ever Ben Bolt leaped to retaliate, +but was thrown by the ten men tailed on to the rope, and, each time, even +as he struck the floor on his side, Mulcachy was upon him, pounding, +smashing, jabbing. His pain was exquisite, especially that of his tender +nose. And the creature who inflicted the pain was as fierce and terrible +as he, even more so because he was more intelligent. In but few minutes, +dazed by the pain, appalled by his inability to rend and destroy the man +who inflicted it, Ben Bolt lost his courage. He fled ignominiously +before the little, two-legged creature who was more terrible than himself +who was a full-grown Royal Bengal tiger. He leaped high in the air in +sheer panic; he ran here and there, with lowered head, to avoid the rain +of pain. He even charged the sides of the arena, springing up and vainly +trying to climb the slippery vertical bars. + +Ever, like an avenging devil, Mulcachy pursued and smashed and jabbed, +gritting through his teeth: "You will argue, will you? I'll teach you +what argument is! There! Take that! And that! And that!" + +"Now I've got him afraid of me, and the rest ought to be easy," he +announced, resting off and panting hard from his exertions, while the +great tiger crouched and quivered and shrank back from him against the +base of the arena-bars. "Take a five-minute spell, you fellows, and +we'll got our breaths." + +Lowering one of the iron chairs, and attaching it firmly in its place on +the floor, Mulcachy prepared for the teaching of the first trick. Ben +Bolt, jungle-born and jungle-reared, was to be compelled to sit in the +chair in ludicrous and tragic imitation of man-creatures. But Mulcachy +was not quite ready. The first lesson of fear of him must be reiterated +and driven home. + +Stepping to a near safe distance, he lashed Ben Bolt on the nose. He +repeated it. He did it a score of times, and scores of times. Turn his +head as he would, ever Ben Bolt received the bite of the whip on his +fearfully bruised nose; for Mulcachy was as expert as a stage-driver in +his manipulation of the whip, and unerringly the lash snapped and cracked +and stung Ben Bolt's nose wherever Ben Bolt at the moment might have it. + +When it became maddeningly unendurable, he sprang, only to be jerked back +by the ten strong men who held the rope to his neck. And wrath, and +ferocity, and intent to destroy, passed out utterly from the tiger's +inflamed brain, until he knew fear, again and again, always fear and only +fear, utter and abject fear, of this human mite who searched him with +such pain. + +Then the lesson of the first trick was taken up. Mulcachy tapped the +chair sharply with the butt of the whip to draw the animal's attention to +it, then flicked the whip-lash sharply on his nose. At the same moment, +an attendant, through the bars behind, drove an iron fork into his ribs +to force him away from the bars and toward the chair. He crouched +forward, then shrank back against the side-bars. Again the chair was +rapped, his nose was lashed, his ribs were jabbed, and he was forced by +pain toward the chair. This went on interminably--for a quarter of an +hour, for half an hour, for an hour; for the men-animals had the patience +of gods while he was only a jungle-brute. Thus tigers are broken. And +the verb means just what it means. A performing animal is _broken_. +Something _breaks_ in an animal of the wild ere such an animal submits to +do tricks before pay-audiences. + +Mulcachy ordered an assistant to enter the arena with him. Since he +could not compel the tiger directly to sit in the chair, he must employ +other means. The rope about Ben Bolt's neck was passed up through the +bars and rove through the block-and-tackle. At signal from Mulcachy, the +ten men hauled away. Snarling, struggling, choking, in a fresh madness +of terror at this new outrage, Ben Bolt was slowly hoisted by his neck up +from the floor, until, quite clear of it, whirling, squirming, battling, +suspended by his neck like a man being hanged, his wind was shut off and +he began to suffocate. He coiled and twisted, the splendid muscles of +his body enabling him almost to tie knots in it. + +The block-and-tackle, running like a trolley on the overhead track, made +it possible for the assistant to seize his tail and drag him through the +air till he was above the chair. His helpless body guided thus by the +tail, his chest jabbed by the iron fork in Mulcachy's hands, the rope was +suddenly lowered, and Ben Bolt, with swimming brain, found himself seated +in the chair. On the instant he leaped for the floor, received a blow on +the nose from the heavy whip-handle, and had a blank cartridge fired +straight into his nostril. His madness of pain and fear was multiplied. +He sprang away in flight, but Mulcachy's voice rang out, "Hoist him!" and +he slowly rose in the air again, hanging by his neck, and began to +strangle. + +Once more he was swung into position by his tail, jabbed in the chest, +and lowered suddenly on the run--but so suddenly, with a frantic twist of +his body on his part, that he fell violently across the chair on his +belly. What little wind was left him from the strangling, seemed to have +been ruined out of him by the violence of the fall. The glare in his +eyes was maniacal and swimming. He panted frightfully, and his head +rolled back and forth. Slaver dripped from his mouth, blood ran from his +nose. + +"Hoist away!" Mulcachy shouted. + +And again, struggling frantically as the tightening collar shut off his +wind, Ben Bolt was slowly lifted into the air. So wildly did he struggle +that, ere his hind feet were off the floor, he pranced back and forth, so +that when he was heaved clear his body swung like a huge pendulum. Over +the chair, he was dropped, and for a fraction of a second the posture was +his of a man sitting in a chair. Then he uttered a terrible cry and +sprang. + +It was neither snarl, nor growl, nor roar, that cry, but a sheer scream, +as if something had broken inside of him. He missed Mulcachy by inches, +as another blank cartridge exploded up his other nostril and as the men +with the rope snapped him back so abruptly as almost to break his neck. + +This time, lowered quickly, he sank into the chair like a half-empty sack +of meal, and continued so to sink, until, crumpling at the middle, his +great tawny head falling forward, he lay on the floor unconscious. His +tongue, black and swollen, lolled out of his mouth. As buckets of water +were poured on him he groaned and moaned. And here ended the first +lesson. + +"It's all right," Mulcachy said, day after day, as the teaching went on. +"Patience and hard work will pull off the trick. I've got his goat. He's +afraid of me. All that's required is time, and time adds to value with +an animal like him." + +Not on that first day, nor on the second, nor on the third, did the +requisite something really break inside Ben Bolt. But at the end of a +fortnight it did break. For the day came when Mulcachy rapped the chair +with his whip-butt, when the attendant through the bars jabbed the iron +fork into Ben Bolt's ribs, and when Ben Bolt, anything but royal, +slinking like a beaten alley-cat, in pitiable terror, crawled over to the +chair and sat down in it like a man. He now was an "educated" tiger. The +sight of him, so sitting, tragically travestying man, has been +considered, and is considered, "educative" by multitudinous audiences. + +The second case, that of St. Elias, was a harder one, and it was marked +down against Mulcachy as one of his rare failures, though all admitted +that it was an unavoidable failure. St. Elias was a huge monster of an +Alaskan bear, who was good-natured and even facetious and humorous after +the way of bears. But he had a will of his own that was correspondingly +as stubborn as his bulk. He could be persuaded to do things, but he +would not tolerate being compelled to do things. And in the +trained-animal world, where turns must go off like clockwork, is little +or no space for persuasion. An animal must do its turn, and do it +promptly. Audiences will not brook the delay of waiting while a trainer +tries to persuade a crusty or roguish beast to do what the audience has +paid to see it do. + +So St. Elias received his first lesson in compulsion. It was also his +last lesson, and it never progressed so far as the training-arena, for it +took place in his own cage. + +Noosed in the customary way, his four legs dragged through the bars, and +his head, by means of a "choke" collar, drawn against the bars, he was +first of all manicured. Each one of his great claws was cut off flush +with his flesh. The men outside did this. Then Mulcachy, on the inside, +punched his nose. Not lightly as it sounds was this operation. The +punch was a perforation. Thrusting the instrument into the huge bear's +nostril, Mulcachy cut a clean round chunk of living meat out of one side +of it. Mulcachy knew the bear business. At all times, to make an +untrained bear obey, one must be fast to some sensitive portion of the +bear. The ears, the nose, and the eyes are the accessible sensitive +parts, and, the eyes being out of the question, remain the nose and the +ears as the parts to which to make fast. + +Through the perforation Mulcachy immediately clamped a metal ring. To +the ring he fastened a long "lunge"-rope, which was well named. Any +unruly lunge, at any time during all the subsequent life of St. Elias, +could thus be checked by the man who held the lunge-rope. His destiny +was patent and ordained. For ever, as long as he lived and breathed, +would he be a prisoner and slave to the rope in the ring in his nostril. + +The nooses were slipped, and St. Elias was at liberty, within the +confines of his cage, to get acquainted with the ring in his nose. With +his powerful forepaws, standing erect and roaring, he proceeded to get +acquainted with the ring. It certainly was not a thing persuasible. It +was living fire. And he tore at it with his paws as he would have torn +at the stings of bees when raiding a honey-tree. He tore the thing out, +ripping the ring clear through the flesh and transforming the round +perforation into a ragged chasm of pain. + +Mulcachy cursed. "Here's where hell coughs," he said. The nooses were +introduced again. Again St. Elias, helpless on his side against and +partly through the bars, had his nose punched. This time it was the +other nostril. And hell coughed. As before, the moment he was released, +he tore the ring out through his flesh. + +Mulcachy was disgusted. "Listen to reason, won't you?" he objurgated, +as, this time, the reason he referred to was the introduction of the ring +clear through both nostrils, higher up, and through the central dividing +wall of cartilage. But St. Elias was unreasonable. Unlike Ben Bolt, +there was nothing inside of him weak enough, or nervous enough, or high- +strung enough, to break. The moment he was free he ripped the ring away +with half of his nose along with it. Mulcachy punched St. Elias's right +ear. St. Elias tore his right ear to shreds. Mulcachy punched his left +ear. He tore his left ear to shreds. And Mulcachy gave in. He had to. +As he said plaintively: + +"We're beaten. There ain't nothing left to make fast to." + +Later, when St. Elias was condemned to be a "cage-animal" all his days, +Mulcachy was wont to grumble: + +"He was the most unreasonable animal! Couldn't do a thing with him. +Couldn't ever get anything to make fast to." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + +It was in the Orpheum Theatre, of Oakland, California; and Harley Kennan +was in the act of reaching under his seat for his hat, when his wife +said: + +"Why, this isn't the interval. There's one more turn yet." + +"A dog turn," he answered, and thereby explained; for it was his practice +to leave a theatre during the period of the performance of an animal-act. + +Villa Kennan glanced hastily at the programme. + +"Of course," she said, then added: "But it's a singing dog. A dog +Caruso. And it points out that there is no one on the stage with the +dog. Let us stay for once, and see how he compares with Jerry." + +"Some poor brute tormented into howling," Harley grumbled. + +"But it has the stage to itself," Villa urged. "Besides, if it is +painful, then we can go out. I'll go out with you. But I just would +like to see how much better Jerry sings than does he. And it says an +Irish terrier, too." + +So Harley Kennan remained. The two burnt-cork comedians finished their +turn and their three encores, and the curtain behind them went up on a +full set of an empty stage. A rough-coated Irish terrier entered at a +sedate walk, sedately walked forward to the centre, nearly to the +footlights, and faced the leader of the orchestra. As the programme had +stated, he had the stage to himself. + +The orchestra played the opening strains of "Sweet Bye and Bye." The dog +yawned and sat down. But the orchestra was thoroughly instructed to play +the opening strains over and over, until the dog responded, and then to +follow on with him. By the third time, the dog opened his mouth and +began. It was not a mere howling. For that matter, it was too mellow to +be classified as a howl at all. Nor was it merely rhythmic. The notes +the dog sang were of the air, and they were correct. + +But Villa Kennan scarcely heard. + +"He has Jerry beaten a mile," Harley muttered to her. + +"Listen," she replied, in tense whispers. "Did you ever see that dog +before?" + +Harley shook his head. + +"You have seen him before," she insisted. "Look at that crinkled ear. +Think! Think back! Remember!" + +Still her husband shook his head. + +"Remember the Solomons," she pressed. "Remember the _Ariel_. Remember +when we came back from Malaita, where we picked Jerry up, to Tulagi, that +he had a brother there, a nigger-chaser on a schooner." + +"And his name was Michael--go on." + +"And he had that self-same crinkled ear," she hurried. "And he was rough- +coated. And he was full brother to Jerry. And their father and mother +were Terrence and Biddy of Meringe. And Jerry is our Sing Song Silly. +And this dog sings. And he has a crinkled ear. And his name is +Michael." + +"Impossible," said Harley. + +"It is when the impossible comes true that life proves worth while," she +retorted. "And this is one of those worth-whiles of impossibles. I know +it." + +Still the man of him said impossible, and still the woman of her insisted +that this was an impossible come true. By this time the dog on the stage +was singing "God Save the King." + +"That shows I am right," Villa contended. "No American, in America, +would teach a dog 'God Save the King.' An Englishman originally owned +that dog and taught it. The Solomons are British." + +"That's a far cry," he smiled. "But what gets me is that ear. I +remember it now. I remember the day when we were on the beach at Tulagi +with Jerry, and when his brother came ashore from the _Eugenie_ in a +whaleboat. And his brother had that self-same, loppy, crinkled ear." + +"And more," Villa argued. "How many singing dogs have we ever known! +Only one--Jerry. Evidently such a type occurs rarely. The same family +would more likely produce similar types than different families. The +family of Terrence and Biddy produced Jerry. And this is Michael." + +"He _was_ rough-coated, along with a crinkly ear," Harley meditated back. +"I see him distinctly as he stood up in the bow of the whaleboat and as +he ran along the beach side by side with Jerry." + +"If Jerry should to-morrow run side by side with him you would be +convinced?" she queried. + +"It was their trick, and the trick of Terrence and Biddy before them," he +agreed. "But it's a far cry from the Solomons to the United States." + +"Jerry is such a far cry," she replied. "And if Jerry won from the +Solomons to California, then is there anything more remarkable in Michael +so winning?--Oh, listen!" + +For the dog on the stage, now responding to its one encore, was singing +"Home, Sweet Home." This finished, Jacob Henderson, to tumultuous +applause, came on the stage from the wings and joined the dog in bowing. +Villa and Harley sat in silence for a moment. Then Villa said, apropos +of nothing: + +"I have been sitting here and feeling very grateful for one particular +thing." + +He waited. + +"It is that we are so abominably wealthy," she concluded. + +"Which means that you want the dog, must have him, and are going to got +him, just because I can afford to do it for you," he teased. + +"Because you can't afford not to," she answered. "You must know he is +Jerry's brother. At least, you must have a sneaking suspicion . . . ?" + +"I have," he nodded. "The thing that can't sometimes does, and there is +a chance that this may be one of those times. Of course, it isn't +Michael; but, on the other hand, what's to prevent it from being Michael? +Let us go behind and find out." + +* * * * * + +"More agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals," +was Jacob Henderson's thought, as the man and woman, accompanied by the +manager of the theatre, were shown into his tiny dressing-room. Michael, +on a chair and half asleep, took no notice of them. While Harley talked +with Henderson, Villa investigated Michael; and Michael scarcely opened +his eyes ere he closed them again. Too sour on the human world, and too +glum in his own soured nature, he was anything save his old courtly self +to chance humans who broke in upon him to pat his head, and say silly +things, and go their way never to be seen by him again. + +Villa Kennan, with a pang of disappointment at such rebuff, forwent her +overtures for the moment, and listened to what tale Jacob Henderson could +tell of his dog. Harry Del Mar, a trained-animal man, had picked the dog +up somewhere on the Pacific Coast, most probably in San Francisco, she +learned; but, having taken the dog east with him, Harry Del Mar had died +by accident in New York before telling anybody anything about the animal. +That was all, except that Henderson had paid two thousand dollars to one +Harris Collins, and had found the investment the finest he had ever made. + +Villa turned back to the dog. + +"Michael," she called, caressingly, almost in a whisper. + +And Michael's eyes partly opened, the base-muscles of his ears stiffened, +and his body quivered. + +"Michael," she repeated. + +This time raising his head, the eyes open and the ears stiffly erect, +Michael looked at her. Not since on the beach at Tulagi had he heard +that name uttered. Across the years and the seas the word came to him +out of the past. Its effect was electrical, for on the instant all the +connotations of "Michael" flooded his consciousness. He saw again +Captain Kellar, of the _Eugenie_, who had last called him it, and +_Mister_ Haggin, and Derby, and Bob of Meringe Plantation, and Biddy and +Terrence, and, not least among these shades of the vanished past, his +brother Jerry. + +But was it the vanished past? The name which had ceased for years, had +come back. It had entered the room along with this man and woman. All +this he did not reason; but indubitably, as if he had so reasoned, he +acted upon it. + +He jumped from the chair and ran to the woman. He smelled her hand, and +smelled her as she patted him. Then, as he recognized her, he went wild. +He sprang away, dashing around and around the room, sniffing under the +washstand and smelling out the corners. As in a frenzy he was back to +the woman, whimpering eagerly as she strove to pet him. The next moment, +stiff in a frenzy, he was away again, scurrying about the room and still +whimpering. + +Jacob Henderson looked on with mild disapproval. + +"He never cuts up that way," he said. "He is a very quiet dog. Maybe it +is a fit he is going to have, though he never has fits." + +No one understood, not even Villa Kennan. But Michael understood. He +was looking for that vanished world which had rushed back upon him at +sound of his old-time name. If this name could come to him out of the +Nothingness, as this woman had whom once he had seen treading the beach +at Tulagi, then could all other things of Tulagi and the Nothingness come +to him. As she was there, before him in the living flesh, uttering his +name, so might Captain Kellar, and _Mister_ Haggin, and Jerry be there, +somewhere in the very room or just outside the door. + +He ran to the door, whimpering as he scratched at it. + +"Maybe he thinks there is something outside," said Jacob Henderson, +opening the door for him. + +And Michael did so think. As a matter of course, through that open door, +he was prepared to have the South-Pacific Ocean flow in, bearing on its +bosom schooners and ships, islands and reefs, and all men and animals and +things he once had known and still remembered. + +But no past flowed in through the door. Outside was the usual present. +He came back dejectedly to the woman, who still called him Michael as she +petted him. She, at any rate, was real. Next he carefully smelled and +identified the man with the beach of Tulagi and the deck of the _Ariel_, +and again his excitement began to mount. + +"Oh, Harley, I know it is he!" Villa cried. "Can't you test him? Can't +you prove him?" + +"But how?" Harley pondered. "He seems to recognize his name. It excites +him. And though he never knew us very well, he seems to remember us and +to be excited by us, too. If only he could talk . . . " + +"Oh, talk! Talk!" Villa pleaded with Michael, catching both sides of his +head and jaws in her hands and swaying him back and forth. + +"Be careful, madam," Jacob Henderson warned. "He is a very sour dog; and +he don't let people take such liberties." + +"He does me," she laughed, half-hysterically. "Because he knows me. . . . +Harley!" She broke off as the great idea dawned on her. "I have a +test. Listen! Remember, Jerry was a nigger-chaser before we got him. +And Michael was a nigger-chaser. You talk in beche-de-mer. Appear angry +with some black boy, and see how it will affect him." + +"I'll have to remember hard to resurrect any beche-de-mer," Harley said, +nodding approval of the suggestion. + +"At the same time I'll distract him," she rushed on. + +Sitting down and bending forward to Michael so that his head was buried +in her arms and breast, she began swaying him and crooning to him as was +her wont with Jerry. Nor did he resent the liberty she took, and, like +Jerry, he yielded to her crooning and softly began to croon with her. She +signalled Harley with her eyes. + +"My word!" he began in tones of wrath. "What name you fella boy stop 'm +along this fella place? You make 'm me cross along you any amount!" + +And at the words Michael bristled, dragged himself clear of the woman's +detaining hands, and, with a snarl, whirled about to get a look at the +black boy who must have just then entered the room and aroused the white +god's ire. But there was no black boy. He looked on, still bristling, +to the door. Harley transferred his own gaze to the door, and Michael +knew, beyond all doubt, that outside the door was standing a Solomons +nigger. + +"Hey! Michael!" Harley shouted. "Chase 'm that black fella boy +overside!" + +With a roaring snarl, Michael flung himself at the door. Such was the +fury and weight of his onslaught that the latch flew loose and the door +swung open. The emptiness of the space which he had expected to see +occupied, was appalling, and he shrank down, sick and dizzy with the +baffling apparitional past that thus vexed his consciousness. + +"And now," said Harley to Jacob Henderson, "we will talk business . . . " + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + +When the train arrived at Glen Ellen, in the Valley of the Moon, it was +Harley Kennan himself, at the side-door of the baggage-car, who caught +hold of Michael and swung him to the ground. For the first time Michael +had performed a railroad journey uncrated. Merely with collar and chain +had he travelled up from Oakland. In the waiting automobile he found +Villa Kennan, and, chain removed, sat beside her and between her and +Harley + +As the machine purred along the two miles of road that wound up the side +of Sonoma Mountain, Michael scarcely looked at the forest-trees and +vistas of wandering glades. He had been in the United States three +years, during which time he had been kept a close prisoner. Cage and +crate and chain had been his portion, and narrow rooms, baggage cars, and +station platforms. The nearest he had come to the country was when +chained to benches in the various parks while Jacob Henderson studied +Swedenborg. So that trees and hills and fields had ceased to mean +anything. They were something inaccessible, as inaccessible as the blue +of the sky or the drifting cloud-fleeces. Thus did he regard the trees +and hills and fields, if the negative act of not regarding a thing at all +can be considered a state of mind. + +"Don't seem to be enthusiastic over the ranch, eh, Michael?" Harley +remarked. + +He looked up at sound of his old name, and made acknowledgment by +flattening his ears a quivering trifle and by touching his nose against +Harley's shoulder. + +"Nor does he seem demonstrative," was Villa's judgment. "At least, +nothing like Jerry," + +"Wait till they meet," Harley smiled in anticipation. "Jerry will +furnish enough excitement for both of them." + +"If they remember each other after all this time," said Villa. "I wonder +if they will." + +"They did at Tulagi," he reminded her. "And they were full grown and +hadn't seen each other since they were puppies. Remember how they barked +and scampered all about the beach. Michael was the hurly-burly one. At +least he made twice as much noise." + +"But he seems dreadfully grown-up and subdued now." + +"Three years ought to have subdued him," Harley insisted. + +But Villa shook her head. + +As the machine drew up at the house and Kennan first stepped out, a dog's +whimperingly joyous bark of welcome struck Michael as not altogether +unfamiliar. The joyous bark turned to a suspicious and jealous snarl as +Jerry scented the other dog's presence from Harley's caressing hand. The +next moment he had traced the original source of the scent into the +limousine and sprung in after it. With snarl and forward leap Michael +met the snarling rush less than half-way, and was rolled over on the +bottom of the car. + +The Irish terrier, under all circumstances amenable to the control of the +master as are few breeds of dogs, was instantly manifest in Jerry and +Michael an Harley Kennan's voice rang out. They separated, and, despite +the rumbling of low growling in their throats, refrained from attacking +each other as they plunged out to the ground. The little set-to had +occurred in so few seconds, or fractions of seconds, that they had not +begun to betray recognition of each other until they were out of the +machine. They were still comically stiff-legged and bristly as they +aloofly sniffed noses. + +"They know each other!" Villa cried. "Let's wait and see what they will +do." + +As for Michael, he accepted, without surprise, the indubitable fact that +Jerry had come back out of the Nothingness. Things of this sort had +begun to happen rapidly, but it was not the things themselves, but the +connotations of them, that almost stunned him. If the man and woman, +whom he had last seen at Tulagi, and, likewise, Jerry, had come back from +the Nothingness, then could come, and might come at any moment, the +beloved Steward. + +Instead of responding to Jerry, Michael sniffed and glanced about in +quest of Steward. Jerry's first expression of greeting and friendliness +took the form of a desire to run. He barked invitation to his brother, +scampered away half a dozen jumps, scampered back, and dabbed playfully +at Michael with one forepaw in added emphasis of invitation ere he +scampered away again. + +For so many years had Michael not run with another dog, that at first +Jerry's invitation had little meaning to him. Nevertheless, such running +was an habitual expression of happiness and friendliness in dogdom, and +especially strong had been his inheritance of it from Terrence and Biddy, +the noted love-runners of the Solomons. + +The next time Jerry dabbed at him with a paw, barked, and scurried away +in an enticing semi-circle, Michael started involuntarily though slowly +after him. But Michael did not bark; and, after half a dozen leaps, he +came to a full stop and looked to Villa and Harley for permission. + +"All right, Michael," Harley called heartily, deliberately turning his +shoulder in the non-interest of consent as he extended his hand to help +Villa from the machine. + +Michael sprang away again, and was numbly aware of an ancient joy as he +shouldered Jerry who shouldered against him as they ran side by side. But +most of the joy was Jerry's, as was the wildest of the skurrying and the +racing and the shouldering, of the body-wriggling, and ear-pricking, and +yelping cries. Also, Jerry barked; and Michael did not bark. + +"He used to bark," said Villa. + +"Much more than Jerry," Harley supplemented. + +"Then they have taken the bark out of him," she concluded. "He must have +gone through terrible experiences to have lost his bark." + +* * * * * + +The green California spring merged into tawny summer, as Jerry, ever +running afield, made Michael acquainted with the farthest and highest +reaches of the Kennan ranch in the Valley of the Moon. The pageant of +the wild flowers vanished until all that lingered on the burnt hillsides +were orange poppies faded to palest gold, and Mariposa lilies, wind-blown +on slender stems amidst the desiccated grasses, that smouldered like +ornate spotted moths fluttering in rest for a space between flight and +flight. + +And Michael, a follower always where the exuberant Jerry led, sought +throughout the passing year for what he could not find. + +"Looking for something, looking for something," Harley would say to +Villa. "It is not alive. It is not here. Now just what is it he is +always looking for?" + +Steward it was, and Michael never found him. The Nothingness held him +and would not yield him up, although, could Michael have journeyed a ten- +days' steamer-journey into the South Pacific to the Marquesas, Steward he +would have found, and, along with him, Kwaque and the Ancient Mariner, +all three living like lotus-eaters on the beach-paradise of Taiohae. +Also, in and about their grass-thatched bungalow under the lofty avocado +trees, Michael would have found other pet--cats, and kittens, and pigs, +donkeys and ponies, a pair of love-birds, and a mischievous monkey or +two; but never a dog and never a cockatoo. For Dag Daughtry, with +violence of language, had laid a taboo upon dogs. After Killeny Boy, he +averred, there should be no other dog. And Kwaque, without averring +anything at all, resolutely refrained from possessing himself of the +white cockatoos brought ashore by the sailors off the trading schooners. + +But Michael was long in giving over his search for Steward, and, running +the mountain trails or scrambling and sliding down into the deep canyons, +was ever expectant and ready for Steward to step forth before him, or to +pick up the unmistakable scent that would lead him to him. + +"Looking for something, looking for something," Harley Kennan would chant +curiously, as he rode beside Villa and observed Michael's unending +search. "Now Jerry's after rabbits, and fox-trails; but you'll notice +they don't interest Michael much. They're not what he's after. He +behaves like one who has lost a great treasure and doesn't know where he +lost it nor where to look for it." + +Much Michael learned from Jerry of the varied life of the forest and +fields. To run with Jerry seemed the one pleasure he took, for he never +played. Play had passed out of him. He was not precisely morose or +gloomy from his years on the trained-animal stage and in Harris Collins's +college of pain, but he was sobered, subdued. The spring and the +spontaneity had gone out of him. Just as the leopard had claw-marked his +shoulder so that damp and frosty weather made the pain of the old wound +come back, so was his mind marked by what he had gone through. He liked +Jerry, was glad to be with him and to run with him; but it was Jerry who +was ever in the lead, who ever raised the hue and cry of hunting pursuit, +who barked indignation and eager yearning at a tree'd squirrel in refuge +forty feet above the ground. Michael looked on and listened, but took no +part in such antics of enthusiasm. + +In the same way he looked on when Jerry fought fearful comic battles with +Norman Chief, the great Percheron stallion. It was only play, for Jerry +and Norman Chief were tried friends; and, though the huge horse, ears +laid back, mouth open to bite, pursued Jerry in mad gyrations all about +the paddock, it was with no thought of inflicting hurt, but merely to act +up to his part in the sham battle. Yet no invitation of Jerry's could +induce Michael to join in the fun. He contented himself with sitting +down outside the rails and looking on. + +"Why play?" might Michael have asked, who had had all play taken out of +him. + +But when it came to serious work, he was there even ahead of Jerry. On +account of foot-and-mouth disease and of hog-cholera, strange dogs were +taboo on the Kennan ranch. It did not take Michael long to learn this, +and stray dogs got short shrift from him. With never a warning bark nor +growl, in deadly silence, he rushed them, slashed and bit them, rolled +them over and over in the dust, and drove them from the place. It was +like nigger-chasing, a service to perform for the gods whom he loved and +who willed such chasing. + +No wild passion of love, such as he had had for Steward, did he bear +Villa and Harley, but he did develop for them a great, sober love. He +did not go out of his way to express it with overtures of wrigglings and +squirmings and whimpering yelpings. Jerry could be depended upon for +that. But he was always seriously glad to be with Villa and Harley and +to receive recognition from them next after Jerry. Some of his deepest +moments of content, before the fireplace, were to sit beside Villa or +Harley and lean his head against a knee and have a hand, on occasion, +drop down on his head or gently twist his crinkled ear. + +Jerry was even guilty of playing with children who happened at times to +be under the Kennan aegis. Michael endured children for as long as they +left him alone. If they waxed familiar, he would warn them with a +bristling of his neck-hair and a throaty rumbling and get up and stalk +away. + +"I can't understand it," Villa would say. "He was the fullest of play, +and spirits, and all foolishness. He was much sillier and much more +excitable than Jerry and certainly noisier. He must have some terrible +story to tell, if only he could, of all that happened between Tulagi and +the time we found him on the Orpheum stage." + +"And that may be the least little hint of it," Harley would reply, +pointing to Michael's shoulder where the leopard had scarred it on the +day Jack, the Airedale, and Sara, the little green monkey, had died. + +"He used to bark, I know he used to bark," Villa would continue. "Why +doesn't he bark now?" + +And Harley would point to the scarred shoulder and say, "That may account +for it, and most possibly a hundred other things like it of which we +cannot see the marks." + +But the time was to come when they were to hear him bark again--not once, +but twice. And both times were to be but an earnest of another and +graver time when, without barking at all, he would express in action the +measure of his love and worship of them who had taken him from the crate +and the footlights and given him the freedom of the Valley of the Moon. + +And in the meantime, running endlessly with Jerry over the ranch, he +learned all the ways of it and all the life of it from the chickenyards +and the duck-ponds to the highest pitch of Sonoma Mountain. He learned +where the wild deer, in their season, were to be found; when they raided +the prune-orchard, the vineyards, and the apple-trees; when they sought +the deepest canyons and most secret coverts; and when they stamped out in +open glades and on bare hillsides and crashed and clattered their antlers +together in combat. Under Jerry's leadership, always running second and +after on the narrow trails as a subdued dog should, he learned the ways +and habits of the foxes, the coons, the weasels, and the ring-tail cats +that seemed compounded of cat and coon and weasel. He came to know the +ground-nesting birds and the difference between the customs of the valley +quail, the mountain quail, and the pheasants. The traits and lairs of +the domestic cats gone wild he also learned, as did he learn the wild +loves of mountain farm-dogs with the free-roving coyotes. + +He knew of the presence of the mountain lion, adrift down from Mendocino +County, ere the first shorthorn calf was slain, and came home from the +encounter, torn and bleeding, to attest what he had discovered and to be +the cause of Harley Kennan riding trail next day with a rifle across his +pommel. Likewise Michael came to know what Harley Kennan never did know +and always denied as existing on his ranch--the one rocky outcrop, in the +dense heart of the mountain forest, where a score of rattlesnakes denned +through the winters and warmed themselves in the sun. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + +Winter came on in its delectable way in the Valley of the Moon. The last +Mariposa lily vanished from the burnt grasses as the California Indian +summer dreamed itself out in purple mists on the windless air. Soft rain- +showers first broke the spell. Snow fell on the summit of Sonoma +Mountain. At the ranch house the morning air was crisp and brittle, yet +mid-day made the shade welcome, and in the open, under the winter sun, +roses bloomed and oranges, grape-fruit, and lemons turned to golden +yellow ripeness. Yet, a thousand feet beneath, on the floor of the +valley, the mornings were white with frost. + +And Michael barked twice. The first time was when Harley Kennan, astride +a hot-blooded sorrel colt, tried to make it leap a narrow stream. Villa +reined in her steed at the crest beyond, and, looking back into the +little valley, waited for the colt to receive its lesson. Michael +waited, too, but closer at hand. At first he lay down, panting from his +run, by the stream-edge. But he did not know horses very well, and soon +his anxiety for the welfare of Harley Kennan brought him to his feet. + +Harley was gentle and persuasive and all patience as he strove to make +the colt take the leap. The urge of voice and rein was of the mildest; +but the animal balked the take-off each time, and the hot +thoroughbredness in its veins made it sweat and lather. The velvet of +young grass was torn up by its hoofs, and its terror of the stream was +such, that, when fetched to the edge at a canter, it stiffened and +crouched to an abrupt stop, then reared on its hind-legs. Which was too +much for Michael. + +He sprang at the horse's head as it came down with forefeet to earth, and +as he sprang he barked. In his bark was censure and menace, and, as the +horse reared again, he leaped into the air after it, his teeth clipping +together as he just barely missed its nose. + +Villa rode back down the slope to the opposite bank of the stream. + +"Mercy!" she cried. "Listen to him! He's actually barking." + +"He thinks the colt is trying to do some damage to me," Harley said. +"That's his provocation. He hasn't forgotten how to bark. He's reading +the colt a lecture." + +"If he gets him by the nose it will be more than a lecture," Villa +warned. "Be careful, Harley, or he will." + +"Now, Michael, lie down and be good," Harley commanded. "It's all right, +I tell you. It's an right. Lie down." + +Michael sank down obediently, but protestingly; and he had eyes only for +the horse's antics, while all his muscles were gathered tensely to spring +in case the horse threatened injury to Harley again. + +"I can't give in to him now, or he never will jump anything," Harley said +to his wife, as he whirled about to gallop back to a distance. "Either I +lift him over or I take a cropper." + +He came back at full speed, and the colt, despite himself, unable to +stop, lifted into the leap that would avoid the stream he feared, so that +he cleared it with a good two yards to spare on the other side. + +The next time Michael barked was when Harley, on the same hot-blood +mount, strove to close a poorly hung gate on the steep pitch of a +mountain wood-road. Michael endured the danger to his man-god as long as +he could, then flew at the colt's head in a frenzy of barking. + +"Anyway, his barking helped," Harley conceded, as he managed to close the +gate. "Michael must certainly have told the colt that he'd give him what- +for if he didn't behave." + +"At any rate, he's not tongue-tied," Villa laughed, "even if he isn't +very loquacious." + +And Michael's loquacity never went farther. Only on these two occasions, +when his master-god seemed to be in peril, was he known to bark. He +never barked at the moon, nor at hillside echoes, nor at any prowling +thing. A particular echo, to be heard directly from the ranch-house, was +an unfailing source of exercise for Jerry's lungs. At such times that +Jerry barked, Michael, with a bored expression, would lie down and wait +until the duet was over. Nor did he bark when he attacked strange dogs +that strayed upon the ranch. + +"He fights like a veteran," Harley remarked, after witnessing one such +encounter. "He's cold-blooded. There's no excitement in him." + +"He's old before his time," Villa said. "There is no heart of play left +in him, and no desire for speech. Just the same I know he loves me, and +you--" + +"Without having to be voluble about it," her husband completed for her. + +"You can see it shining in those quiet eyes of his," she supplemented. + +"Reminds me of one of the survivors of Lieutenant Greeley's Expedition I +used to know," he agreed. "He was an enlisted soldier and one of the +handful of survivors. He had been through so much that he was just as +subdued as Michael and just as taciturn. He bored most people, who could +not understand him. Of course, the truth was the other way around. They +bored him. They knew so little of life that he knew the last word of. +And one could scarcely get any word out of him. It was not that he had +forgotten how to speak, but that he could not see any reason for speaking +when nobody could understand. He was really crusty from too-bitter wise +experience. But all you had to do was look at him in his tremendous +repose and know that he had been through the thousand hells, including +all the frozen ones. His eyes had the same quietness of Michael's. And +they had the same wisdom. I'd give almost anything to know how he got +his shoulder scarred. It must have been a tiger or a lion." + +* * * * * + +The man, like the mountain lion whom Michael had encountered up the +mountain, had strayed down from the wilds of Mendocino County, following +the ruggedest mountain stretches, and, at night, crossing the farmed +valley spaces where the presence of man was a danger to him. Like the +mountain lion, the man was an enemy to man, and all men were his enemies, +seeking his life which he had forfeited in ways more terrible than the +lion which had merely killed calves for food. + +Like the mountain lion, the man was a killer. But, unlike the lion, his +vague description and the narrative of his deeds was in all the +newspapers, and mankind was a vast deal more interested in him than in +the lion. The lion had slain calves in upland pastures. But the man, +for purposes of robbery, had slain an entire family--the postmaster, his +wife, and their three children, in the upstairs over the post office in +the mountain village of Chisholm. + +For two weeks the man had eluded and exceeded pursuit. His last crossing +had been from the mountains of the Russian River, across wide-farmed +Santa Rosa Valley, to Sonoma Mountain. For two days he had laired and +rested, sleeping much, in the wildest and most inaccessible precincts of +the Kennan Ranch. With him he had carried coffee stolen from the last +house he had raided. One of Harley Kennan's angora goats had furnished +him with meat. Four times he had slept the clock around from exhaustion, +rousing on occasion, like any animal, to eat voraciously of the +goat-meat, to drink large quantities of the coffee hot or cold, and to +sink down into heavy but nightmare-ridden sleep. + +And in the meantime civilization, with its efficient organization and +intricate inventions, including electricity, had closed in on him. +Electricity had surrounded him. The spoken word had located him in the +wild canyons of Sonoma Mountain and fringed the mountain with posses of +peace-officers and detachments of armed farmers. More terrible to them +than any mountain lion was a man-killing man astray in their landscape. +The telephone on the Kennan Ranch, and the telephones on all other +ranches abutting on Sonoma Mountain, had rung often and transmitted +purposeful conversations and arrangements. + +So it happened, when the posses had begun to penetrate the mountain, and +when the man was compelled to make a daylight dash down into the Valley +of the Moon to cross over to the mountain fastnesses that lay between it +and Napa Valley, that Harley Kennan rode out on the hot-blooded colt he +was training. He was not in pursuit of the man who had slain the +postmaster of Chisholm and his family. The mountain was alive with man- +hunters, as he well knew, for a score had bedded and eaten at the ranch +house the night before. So the meeting of Harley Kennan with the man was +unplanned and eventful. + +It was not the first meeting with men the man had had that day. During +the preceding night he had noted the campfires of several posses. At +dawn, attempting to break forth down the south-western slopes of the +mountain toward Petaluma, he had encountered not less than five separate +detachments of dairy-ranchers all armed with Winchesters and shotguns. +Breaking back to cover, the chase hot on his heels, he had run full tilt +into a party of village youths from Glen Ellen and Caliente. Their +squirrel and deer rifles had missed him, but his back had been peppered +with birdshot in a score of places, the leaden pellets penetrating +maddeningly in a score of places just under the skin. + +In the rush of his retreat down the canyon slope, he had plunged into a +bunch of shorthorn steers, who, far more startled than he, had rolled him +on the forest floor, trampled over him in their panic, and smashed his +rifle under their hoofs. Weaponless, desperate, stinging and aching from +his superficial wounds and bruises, he had circled the forest slopes +along deer-paths, crossed two canyons, and begun to descend the horse- +trail he found in the third canyon. + +It was on this trail, going down, that he met the reporter coming up. The +reporter was--well, just a reporter, from the city, knowing only city +ways, who had never before engaged in a man-hunt. The livery horse he +had rented down in the valley was a broken-kneed, jaded, and spiritless +creature, that stood calmly while its rider was dragged from its back by +the wild-looking and violently impetuous man who sprang out around a +sharp turn of the trail. The reporter struck at his assailant once with +his riding-whip. Then he received a beating, such as he had often +written up about sailor-rows and saloon-frequenters in his cub-reporter +days, but which for the first time it was his lot to experience. + +To the man's disgust he found the reporter unarmed save for a pencil and +a wad of copy paper. Out of his disappointment in not securing a weapon, +he beat the reporter up some more, left him wailing among the ferns, and, +astride the reporter's horse, urging it on with the reporter's whip, +continued down the trail. + +Jerry, ever keenest on the hunting, had ranged farther afield than +Michael as the pair of them accompanied Harley Kennan on his early +morning ride. Even so, Michael, at the heels of his master's horse, did +not see nor understand the beginning of the catastrophe. For that +matter, neither did Harley. Where a steep, eight-foot bank came down to +the edge of the road along which he was riding, Harley and the hot-blood +colt were startled by an eruption through the screen of manzanita bushes +above. Looking up, he saw a reluctant horse and a forceful rider +plunging in mid-air down upon him. In that flashing glimpse, even as he +reined and spurred to make his own horse leap sidewise out from under, +Harley Kennan observed the scratched skin and torn clothing, the wild- +burning eyes, and the haggardness under the scraggly growth of beard, of +the man-hunted man. + +The livery horse was justifiably reluctant to make that leap out and down +the bank. Too painfully aware of the penalty its broken knees and +rheumatic joints must pay, it dug its hoofs into the steep slope of moss +and only sprang out and clear in the air in order to avoid a fall. Even +so, its shoulder impacted against the shoulder of the whirling colt below +it, overthrowing the latter. Harley Kennan's leg, caught under against +the earth, snapped, and the colt, twisted and twisting as it struck the +ground, snapped its backbone. + +To his utter disgust, the man, pursued by an armed countryside, found +Harley Kennan, his latest victim, like the reporter, to be weaponless. +Dismounted, he snarled in his rage and disappointment and deliberately +kicked the helpless man in the side. He had drawn back his foot for the +second kick, when Michael took a hand--or a leg, rather, sinking his +teeth into the calf of the back-drawn leg about to administer the kick. + +With a curse the man jerked his leg clear, Michael's teeth ribboning +flesh and trousers. + +"Good boy, Michael!" Harley applauded from where he lay helplessly +pinioned under his horse. "Hey! Michael!" he continued, lapsing back +into beche-de-mer, "chase 'm that white fella marster to hell outa here +along bush!" + +"I'll kick your head off for that," the man gritted at Harley through his +teeth. + +Savage as were his acts and utterance, the man was nearly ready to cry. +The long pursuit, his hand against all mankind and all mankind against +him, had begun to break his stamina. He was surrounded by enemies. Even +youths had risen up and peppered his back with birdshot, and beef cattle +had trod him underfoot and smashed his rifle. Everything conspired +against him. And now it was a dog that had slashed down his leg. He was +on the death-road. Never before had this impressed him with such clear +certainty. Everything was against him. His desire to cry was +hysterical, and hysteria, in a desperate man, is prone to express itself +in terrible savage ways. Without rhyme or reason he was prepared to +carry out his threat to kick Harley Kennan to death. Not that Kennan had +done anything to him. On the contrary, it was he who had attacked +Kennan, hurling him down on the road and breaking his leg under his +horse. But Harley Kennan was a man, and all mankind was his enemy; and, +in killing Kennan, in some vague way it appeared to him that he was +avenging himself, at least in part, on mankind in general. Going down +himself in death, he would drag what he could with him into the red ruin. + +But ere he could kick the man on the ground, Michael was back upon him. +His other calf and trousers' leg were ribboned as he tore clear. Then, +catching Michael in mid-leap with a kick that reached him under the +chest, he sent him flying through the air off the road and down the +slope. As mischance would have it, Michael did not reach the ground. +Crashing through a scrub manzanita bush, his body was caught and pinched +in an acute fork a yard above the ground. + +"Now," the man announced grimly to Harley, "I'm going to do what I said. +I'm just going to kick your head clean off." + +"And I haven't done a thing to you," Harley parleyed. "I don't so much +mind being murdered, but I'd like to know what I'm being murdered for." + +"Chasing me for my life," the man snarled, as he advanced. "I know your +kind. You've all got it in for me, and I ain't got a chance except to +give you yours. I'll take a whole lot of it out on you." + +Kennan was thoroughly aware of the gravity of his peril. Helpless +himself, a man-killing lunatic was about to kill him and to kill him most +horribly. Michael, a prisoner in the bush, hanging head-downward in the +manzanita from his loins squeezed in the fork, and struggling vainly, +could not come to his defence. + +The man's first kick, aimed at Harley's face, he blocked with his +forearm; and, before the man could make a second kick, Jerry erupted on +the scene. Nor did he need encouragement or direction from his +love-master. He flashed at the man, sinking his teeth harmlessly into +the slack of the man's trousers at the waist-band above the hip, but by +his weight dragging him half down to the ground. + +And upon Jerry the man turned with an increase of madness. In truth all +the world was against him. The very landscape rained dogs upon him. But +from above, from the slopes of Sonoma Mountain, the cries and calls of +the trailing poses caught his ear, and deflected his intention. They +were the pursuing death, and it was from them he must escape. With +another kick at Jerry, hurling him clear, he leaped astride the +reporter's horse which had continued to stand, without movement or +excitement, in utter apathy, where he had dismounted from it. + +The horse went into a reluctant and stiff-legged gallop, while Jerry +followed, snarling and growling wrath at so high a pitch that almost he +squalled. + +"It's all right, Michael," Harley soothed. "Take it easy. Don't hurt +yourself. The trouble's over. Anybody'll happen along any time now and +get us out of this fix." + +But the smaller branch of the two composing the fork broke, and Michael +fell to the ground, landing in momentary confusion on his head and +shoulders. The next moment he was on his feet and tearing down the road +in the direction of Jerry's noisy pursuit. Jerry's noise broke in a +sharp cry of pain that added wings to Michael's feet. Michael passed him +rolling helplessly on the road. What had happened was that the livery +horse, in its stiff-jointed, broken-kneed gallop, had stumbled, nearly +fallen, and, in its sprawling recovery, had accidentally stepped on +Jerry, bruising and breaking his foreleg. + +And the man, looking back and seeing Michael close upon him, decided that +it was still another dog attacking him. But he had no fear of dogs. It +was men, with their rifles and shotguns, that might bring him to ultimate +grief. Nevertheless, the pain of his bleeding legs, lacerated by Jerry +and Michael, maintained his rage against dogs. + +"More dogs," was his bitter thought, as he leaned out and brought his +whip down across Michael's face. + +To his surprise, the dog did not wince under the blow. Nor for that +matter did he yelp or cry out from the pain. Nor did he bark or growl or +snarl. He closed in as though he had not received the blow, and as +though the whip was not brandished above him. As Michael leaped for his +right leg he swung the whip down, striking him squarely on the muzzle +midway between nose and eyes. Deflected by the blow, Michael dropped +back to earth and ran on with his longest leaps to catch up and make his +next spring. + +But the man had noticed another thing. At such close range, bringing his +whip down, he could not help noting that Michael had kept his eyes open +under the blow. Neither had he winced nor blinked as the whip slashed +down on him. The thing was uncanny. It was something new in the way of +dogs. Michael sprang again, the man timed him again with the whip, and +he saw the uncanny thing repeated. By neither wince nor blink had the +dog acknowledged the blow. + +And then an entirely new kind of fear came upon the man. Was this the +end for him, after all he had gone through? Was this deadly silent, +rough-coated terrier the thing destined to destroy him where men had +failed? He did not even know that the dog was real. Might it not be +some terrible avenger, out of the mystery beyond life, placed to beset +him and finish him finally on this road that he was convinced was surely +the death-road? The dog was not real. It could not be real. The dog +did not live that could take a full-arm whip-slash without wince or +flinch. + +Twice again, as the dog sprang, he deflected it with accurately delivered +blows. And the dog came on with the same surety and silence. The man +surrendered to his terror, clapping heels to his horse's old ribs, +beating it over the head and under the belly with the whip until it +galloped as it had not galloped in years. Even on that apathetic steed +the terror descended. It was not terror of the dog, which it knew to be +only a dog, but terror of the rider. In the past its knees had been +broken and its joints stiffened for ever, by drunken-mad riders who had +hired him from the stables. And here was another such drunken-mad +rider--for the horse sensed the man's terror--who ached his ribs with the +weight of his heels and beat him cruelly over face and nose and ears. + +The best speed of the horse was not very great, not great enough to out- +distance Michael, although it was fast enough to give the latter only +infrequent opportunities to spring for the man's leg. But each spring +was met by the unvarying whip-blow that by its very weight deflected him +in the air. Though his teeth each time clipped together perilously close +to the man's leg, each time he fell back to earth he had to gather +himself together and run at his own top speed in order to overtake the +terror-stricken man on the crazy-galloping horse. + +Enrico Piccolomini saw the chase and was himself in at the finish; and +the affair, his one great adventure in the world, gave him wealth as well +as material for conversation to the end of his days. Enrico Piccolomini +was a wood-chopper on the Kennan Ranch. On a rounded knoll, overlooking +the road, he had first heard the galloping hoofs of the horse and the +crack of the whip-blows on its body. Next, he had seen the running +battle of the man, the horse, and the dog. When directly beneath him, +not twenty feet distant, he saw the dog leap, in its queer silent way, +straight up and in to the down-smash of the whip, and sink its teeth in +the rider's leg. He saw the dog, with its weight, as it fell back to +earth, drag the man half out of the saddle. He saw the man, in an effort +to recover his balance, put his own weight on the bridle-reins. And he +saw the horse, half-rearing, half-tottering and stumbling, overthrow the +last shred of the man's balance so that he followed the dog to the +ground. + +"And then they are like two dogs, like two beasts," Piccolomini was wont +to tell in after-years over a glass of wine in his little hotel in Glen +Ellen. "The dog lets go the man's leg and jumps for the man's throat. +And the man, rolling over, is at the dog's throat. Both his hands--so--he +fastens about the throat of this dog. And the dog makes no sound. He +never makes sound, before or after. After the two hands of the man stop +his breath he can not make sound. But he is not that kind of a dog. He +will not make sound anyway. And the horse stands and looks on, and the +horse coughs. It is very strange all that I see. + +"And the man is mad. Only a madman will do what I see him do. I see the +man show his teeth like any dog, and bite the dog on the paw, on the +nose, on the body. And when he bites the dog on the nose, the dog bites +him on the check. And the man and the dog fight like hell, and the dog +gets his hind legs up like a cat. And like a cat he tears the man's +shirt away from his chest, and tears the skin of the chest with his claws +till it is all red with bleeding. And the man yow-yowls, and makes +noises like a wild mountain lion. And always he chokes the dog. It is a +hell of a fight. + +"And the dog is Mister Kennan's dog, a fine man, and I have worked for +him two years. So I will not stand there and see Mister Kennan's dog all +killed to pieces by the man who fights like a mountain lion. I run down +the hill, but I am excited and forget my axe. I run down the hill, maybe +from this door to that door, twenty feet or maybe thirty feet. And it is +nearly all finished for the dog. His tongue is a long ways out, and his +eyes like covered with cobwebs; but still he scratches the man's chest +with his hind-feet and the man yow-yowls like a hen of the mountains. + +"What can I do? I have forgotten the axe. The man will kill the dog. I +look for a big rock. There are no rocks. I look for a club. I cannot +find a club. And the man is killing the dog. I tell you what I do. I +am no fool. I kick the man. My shoes are very heavy--not like shoes I +wear now. They are the shoes of the wood-chopper, very thick on the sole +with hard leather, with many iron nails. I kick the man on the side of +the face, on the neck, right under the ear. I kick once. It is a good +kick. It is enough. I know the place--right under the ear. + +"And the man lets go of the dog. He shuts his eyes, and opens his mouth, +and lies very still. And the dog begins once more to breathe. And with +the breath comes the life, and right away he wants to kill the man. But +I say 'No,' though I am very much afraid of the dog. And the man begins +to become alive. He opens his eyes and he looks at me like a mountain +lion. And his mouth makes a noise like a mountain lion. And I am afraid +of him like I am afraid of the dog. What am I to do? I have forgotten +the axe. I tell you what I do. I kick the man once again under the ear. +Then I take my belt, and my bandana handkerchief, and I tie him. I tie +his hands. I tie his legs, too. And all the time I am saying 'No,' to +the dog, and that he must leave the man alone. And the dog looks. He +knows I am his friend and am tying the man. And he does not bite me, +though I am very much afraid. The dog is a terrible dog. Do I not know? +Have I not seen him take a strong man out of the saddle?--a man that is +like a mountain lion? + +"And then the men come. They all have guns-rifles, shotguns, revolvers, +pistols. And I think, first, that justice is very quick in the United +States. Only just now have I kicked a man in the head, and, +one-two-three, just like that, men come with guns to take me to jail for +kicking a man in the head. At first I do not understand. The many men +are angry with me. They call me names, and say bad things; but they do +not arrest me. Ah! I begin to understand! I hear them talk about three +thousand dollars. I have robbed them of three thousand dollars. It is +not true. I say so. I say never have I robbed a man of one cent. Then +they laugh. And I feel better and I understand better. The three +thousand dollars is the reward of the Government for this man I have tied +up with my belt and my bandana. And the three thousand dollars is mine +because I kicked the man in the head and tied his hands and his feet. + +"So I do not work for Mister Kennan any more. I am a rich man. Three +thousand dollars, all mine, from the Government, and Mister Kennan sees +that it is paid to me by the Government and not robbed from me by the men +with the guns. Just because I kicked the man in the head who was like a +mountain lion! It is fortune. It is America. And I am glad that I have +left Italy and come to chop wood on Mister Kennan's ranch. And I start +this hotel in Glen Ellen with the three thousand dollars. I know there +is large money in the hotel business. When I was a little boy, did not +my father have a hotel in Napoli? I have now two daughters in high +school. Also I own an automobile." + +* * * * * + +"Mercy me, the whole ranch is a hospital!" cried Villa Kennan, two days +later, as she came out on the broad sleeping-porch and regarded Harley +and Jerry stretched out, the one with his leg in splints, the other with +his leg in a plaster cast. "Look at Michael," she continued. "You're +not the only ones with broken bones. I've only just discovered that if +his nose isn't broken, it ought to be, from the blow he must have +received on it. I've had hot compresses on it for the last hour. Look +at it!" + +Michael, who had followed in at her invitation, betrayed a ridiculously +swollen nose as he sniffed noses with Jerry, wagged his bobtail to Harley +in greeting, and was greeted in turn with a blissful hand laid on his +head. + +"Must have got it in the fight," Harley said. "The fellow struck him +with the whip many times, so Piccolomini says, and, naturally, it would +be right across the nose when he jumped for him." + +"And Piccolomini says he never cried out when he was struck, but went on +running and jumping," Villa took up enthusiastically. "Think of it! A +dog no bigger than Michael dragging out of the saddle a man-killing +outlaw whom scores of officers could not catch!" + +"So far as we are concerned, he did better than that," Harley commented +quietly. "If it hadn't been for Michael, and for Jerry, too--if it +hadn't been for the pair of them, I do verily believe that that lunatic +would have kicked my head off as he promised." + +"The blessed pair of them!" Villa cried, with shining eyes, as her hand +flashed out to her husband's in a quick press of heart-thankfulness. "The +last word has not been said upon the wonder of dogs," she added, as, with +a quick winking of her eyelashes to overcome the impending moistness, she +controlled her emotion. + +"The last word of the wonder of dogs will never be said," Harley spoke, +returning the pressure of her hand and releasing it in order to help her. + +"And just for that were going to say something right now," she smiled. +"Jerry, and Michael, and I. We've been practising it in secret for a +surprise for you. You just lie there and listen. It's the Doxology. +Don't Laugh. No pun intended." + +She bent forward from the stool on which she sat, and drew Michael to her +so that he sat between her knees, her two hands holding his head and +jowls, his nose half-buried in her hair. + +"Now Jerry!" she called sharply, as a singing teacher might call, so that +Jerry turned his head in attention, looked at her, smiled understanding +with his eyes, and waited. + +It was Villa who started and pitched the Doxology, but quickly the two +dogs joined with their own soft, mellow howling, if howling it may be +called when it was so soft and mellow and true. And all that had +vanished into the Nothingness was in the minds of the two dogs as they +sang, and they sang back through the Nothingness to the land of +Otherwhere, and ran once again with the Lost Pack, and yet were not +entirely unaware of the present and of the indubitable two-legged god who +was called Villa and who sang with them and loved them. + +"No reason we shouldn't make a quartette of it," remarked Harley Kennan, +as with his own voice he joined in. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY*** + + +******* This file should be named 1730.txt or 1730.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/3/1730 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk +from the 1917 Mills & Boon edition. + + + + + +MICHAEL, BROTHER OF JERRY + + + + +FOREWORD + + + +Very early in my life, possibly because of the insatiable +curiosity that was born in me, I came to dislike the performances +of trained animals. It was my curiosity that spoiled for me this +form of amusement, for I was led to seek behind the performance in +order to learn how the performance was achieved. And what I found +behind the brave show and glitter of performance was not nice. It +was a body of cruelty so horrible that I am confident no normal +person exists who, once aware of it, could ever enjoy looking on +at any trained-animal turn. + +Now I am not a namby-pamby. By the book reviewers and the namby- +pambys I am esteemed a sort of primitive beast that delights in +the spilled blood of violence and horror. Without arguing this +matter of my general reputation, accepting it at its current face +value, let me add that I have indeed lived life in a very rough +school and have seen more than the average man's share of +inhumanity and cruelty, from the forecastle and the prison, the +slum and the desert, the execution-chamber and the lazar-house, to +the battlefield and the military hospital. I have seen horrible +deaths and mutilations. I have seen imbeciles hanged, because, +being imbeciles, they did not possess the hire of lawyers. I have +seen the hearts and stamina of strong men broken, and I have seen +other men, by ill-treatment, driven to permanent and howling +madness. I have witnessed the deaths of old and young, and even +infants, from sheer starvation. I have seen men and women beaten +by whips and clubs and fists, and I have seen the rhinoceros-hide +whips laid around the naked torsos of black boys so heartily that +each stroke stripped away the skin in full circle. And yet, let +me add finally, never have I been so appalled and shocked by the +world's cruelty as have I been appalled and shocked in the midst +of happy, laughing, and applauding audiences when trained-animal +turns were being performed on the stage. + +One with a strong stomach and a hard head may be able to tolerate +much of the unconscious and undeliberate cruelty and torture of +the world that is perpetrated in hot blood and stupidity. I have +such a stomach and head. But what turns my head and makes my +gorge rise, is the cold-blooded, conscious, deliberate cruelty and +torment that is manifest behind ninety-nine of every hundred +trained-animal turns. Cruelty, as a fine art, has attained its +perfect flower in the trained-animal world. + +Possessed myself of a strong stomach and a hard head, inured to +hardship, cruelty, and brutality, nevertheless I found, as I came +to manhood, that I unconsciously protected myself from the hurt of +the trained-animal turn by getting up and leaving the theatre +whenever such turns came on the stage. I say "unconsciously." By +this I mean it never entered my mind that this was a programme by +which the possible death-blow might be given to trained-animal +turns. I was merely protecting myself from the pain of witnessing +what it would hurt me to witness. + +But of recent years my understanding of human nature has become +such that I realize that no normal healthy human would tolerate +such performances did he or she know the terrible cruelty that +lies behind them and makes them possible. So I am emboldened to +suggest, here and now, three things: + +First, let all humans inform themselves of the inevitable and +eternal cruelty by the means of which only can animals be +compelled to perform before revenue-paying audiences. Second, I +suggest that all men and women, and boys and girls, who have so +acquainted themselves with the essentials of the fine art of +animal-training, should become members of, and ally themselves +with, the local and national organizations of humane societies and +societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals. + +And the third suggestion I cannot state until I have made a +preamble. Like hundreds of thousands of others, I have worked in +other fields, striving to organize the mass of mankind into +movements for the purpose of ameliorating its own wretchedness and +misery. Difficult as this is to accomplish, it is still more +difficult to persuade the human into any organised effort to +alleviate the ill conditions of the lesser animals. + +Practically all of us will weep red tears and sweat bloody sweats +as we come to knowledge of the unavoidable cruelty and brutality +on which the trained-animal world rests and has its being. But +not one-tenth of one per cent. of us will join any organization +for the prevention of cruelty to animals, and by our words and +acts and contributions work to prevent the perpetration of +cruelties on animals. This is a weakness of our own human nature. +We must recognize it as we recognize heat and cold, the opaqueness +of the non-transparent, and the everlasting down-pull of gravity. + +And still for us, for the ninety-nine and nine-tenths per cent. of +us, under the easy circumstance of our own weakness, remains +another way most easily to express ourselves for the purpose of +eliminating from the world the cruelty that is practised by some +few of us, for the entertainment of the rest of us, on the trained +animals, who, after all, are only lesser animals than we on the +round world's surface. It is so easy. We will not have to think +of dues or corresponding secretaries. We will not have to think +of anything, save when, in any theatre or place of entertainment, +a trained-animal turn is presented before us. Then, without +premeditation, we may express our disapproval of such a turn by +getting up from our seats and leaving the theatre for a promenade +and a breath of fresh air outside, coming back, when the turn is +over, to enjoy the rest of the programme. All we have to do is +just that to eliminate the trained-animal turn from all public +places of entertainment. Show the management that such turns are +unpopular, and in a day, in an instant, the management will cease +catering such turns to its audiences. + +JACK LONDON +GLEN ELLEN, SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, +December 8, 1915 + + + +CHAPTER I + + + +But Michael never sailed out of Tulagi, nigger-chaser on the +Eugenie. Once in five weeks the steamer Makambo made Tulagi its +port of call on the way from New Guinea and the Shortlands to +Australia. And on the night of her belated arrival Captain Kellar +forgot Michael on the beach. In itself, this was nothing, for, at +midnight, Captain Kellar was back on the beach, himself climbing +the high hill to the Commissioner's bungalow while the boat's crew +vainly rummaged the landscape and canoe houses. + +In fact, an hour earlier, as the Makambo's anchor was heaving out +and while Captain Kellar was descending the port gangplank, +Michael was coming on board through a starboard port-hole. This +was because Michael was inexperienced in the world, because he was +expecting to meet Jerry on board this boat since the last he had +seen of him was on a boat, and because he had made a friend. + +Dag Daughtry was a steward on the Makambo, who should have known +better and who would have known better and done better had he not +been fascinated by his own particular and peculiar reputation. By +luck of birth possessed of a genial but soft disposition and a +splendid constitution, his reputation was that for twenty years he +had never missed his day's work nor his six daily quarts of +bottled beer, even, as he bragged, when in the German islands, +where each bottle of beer carried ten grains of quinine in +solution as a specific against malaria. + +The captain of the Makambo (and, before that, the captains of the +Moresby, the Masena, the Sir Edward Grace, and various others of +the queerly named Burns Philp Company steamers had done the same) +was used to pointing him out proudly to the passengers as a man- +thing novel and unique in the annals of the sea. And at such +times Dag Daughtry, below on the for'ard deck, feigning +unawareness as he went about his work, would steal side-glances up +at the bridge where the captain and his passengers stared down on +him, and his breast would swell pridefully, because he knew that +the captain was saying: "See him! that's Dag Daughtry, the human +tank. Never's been drunk or sober in twenty years, and has never +missed his six quarts of beer per diem. You wouldn't think it, to +look at him, but I assure you it's so. I can't understand. Gets +my admiration. Always does his time, his time-and-a-half and his +double-time over time. Why, a single glass of beer would give me +heartburn and spoil my next good meal. But he flourishes on it. +Look at him! Look at him!" + +And so, knowing his captain's speech, swollen with pride in his +own prowess, Dag Daughtry would continue his ship-work with extra +vigour and punish a seventh quart for the day in advertisement of +his remarkable constitution. It was a queer sort of fame, as +queer as some men are; and Dag Daughtry found in it his +justification of existence. + +Wherefore he devoted his energy and the soul of him to the +maintenance of his reputation as a six-quart man. That was why he +made, in odd moments of off-duty, turtle-shell combs and hair +ornaments for profit, and was prettily crooked in such a matter as +stealing another man's dog. Somebody had to pay for the six +quarts, which, multiplied by thirty, amounted to a tidy sum in the +course of the month; and, since that man was Dag Daughtry, he +found it necessary to pass Michael inboard on the Makambo through +a starboard port-hole. + +On the beach, that night at Tulagi, vainly wondering what had +become of the whaleboat, Michael had met the squat, thick, hair- +grizzled ship's steward. The friendship between them was +established almost instantly, for Michael, from a merry puppy, had +matured into a merry dog. Far beyond Jerry, was he a sociable +good fellow, and this, despite the fact that he had known very few +white men. First, there had been Mister Haggin, Derby and Bob, of +Meringe; next, Captain Kellar and Captain Kellar's mate of the +Eugenie; and, finally, Harley Kennan and the officers of the +Ariel. Without exception, he had found them all different, and +delightfully different, from the hordes of blacks he had been +taught to despise and to lord it over. + +And Dag Daughtry had proved no exception from his first greeting +of "Hello, you white man's dog, what 'r' you doin' herein nigger +country?" Michael had responded coyly with an assumption of +dignified aloofness that was given the lie by the eager tilt of +his ears and the good-humour that shone in his eyes. Nothing of +this was missed by Dag Daughtry, who knew a dog when he saw one, +as he studied Michael in the light of the lanterns held by black +boys where the whaleboats were landing cargo. + +Two estimates the steward quickly made of Michael: he was a +likable dog, genial-natured on the face of it, and he was a +valuable dog. Because of those estimates Dag Daughtry glanced +about him quickly. No one was observing. For the moment, only +blacks stood about, and their eyes were turned seaward where the +sound of oars out of the darkness warned them to stand ready to +receive the next cargo-laden boat. Off to the right, under +another lantern, he could make out the Resident Commissioner's +clerk and the Makambo's super-cargo heatedly discussing some error +in the bill of lading. + +The steward flung another quick glance over Michael and made up +his mind. He turned away casually and strolled along the beach +out of the circle of lantern light. A hundred yards away he sat +down in the sand and waited. + +"Worth twenty pounds if a penny," he muttered to himself. "If I +couldn't get ten pounds for him, just like that, with a thank-you- +ma'am, I'm a sucker that don't know a terrier from a greyhound.-- +Sure, ten pounds, in any pub on Sydney beach." + +And ten pounds, metamorphosed into quart bottles of beer, reared +an immense and radiant vision, very like a brewery, inside his +head. + +A scurry of feet in the sand, and low sniffings, stiffened him to +alertness. It was as he had hoped. The dog had liked him from +the start, and had followed him. + +For Dag Daughtry had a way with him, as Michael was quickly to +learn, when the man's hand reached out and clutched him, half by +the jowl, half by the slack of the neck under the ear. There was +no threat in that reach, nothing tentative nor timorous. It was +hearty, all-confident, and it produced confidence in Michael. It +was roughness without hurt, assertion without threat, surety +without seduction. To him it was the most natural thing in the +world thus to be familiarly seized and shaken about by a total +stranger, while a jovial voice muttered: "That's right, dog. +Stick around, stick around, and you'll wear diamonds, maybe." + +Certainly, Michael had never met a man so immediately likable. +Dag Daughtry knew, instinctively to be sure, how to get on with +dogs. By nature there was no cruelty in him. He never exceeded +in peremptoriness, nor in petting. He did not overbid for +Michael's friendliness. He did bid, but in a manner that conveyed +no sense of bidding. Scarcely had he given Michael that +introductory jowl-shake, when he released him and apparently +forgot all about him. + +He proceeded to light his pipe, using several matches as if the +wind blew them out. But while they burned close up to his +fingers, and while he made a simulation of prodigious puffing, his +keen little blue eyes, under shaggy, grizzled brows, intently +studied Michael. And Michael, ears cocked and eyes intent, gazed +at this stranger who seemed never to have been a stranger at all. + +If anything, it was disappointment Michael experienced, in that +this delightful, two-legged god took no further notice of him. He +even challenged him to closer acquaintance with an invitation to +play, with an abrupt movement lifting his paws from the ground and +striking them down, stretched out well before, his body bent down +from the rump in such a curve that almost his chest touched the +sand, his stump of a tail waving signals of good nature while he +uttered a sharp, inviting bark. And the man was uninterested, +pulling stolidly away at his pipe, in the darkness following upon +the third match. + +Never was there a more consummate love-making, with all the base +intent of betrayal, than this cavalier seduction of Michael by the +elderly, six-quart ship's steward. When Michael, not entirely +unwitting of the snub of the man's lack of interest, stirred +restlessly with a threat to depart, he had flung at him gruffly: + +"Stick around, dog, stick around." + +Dag Daughtry chuckled to himself, as Michael, advancing, sniffed +his trousers' legs long and earnestly. And the man took advantage +of his nearness to study him some more, lighting his pipe and +running over the dog's excellent lines. + +"Some dog, some points," he said aloud approvingly. "Say, dog, +you could pull down ribbons like a candy-kid in any bench show +anywheres. Only thing against you is that ear, and I could almost +iron it out myself. A vet. could do it." + +Carelessly he dropped a hand to Michael's ear, and, with tips of +fingers instinct with sensuous sympathy, began to manipulate the +base of the ear where its roots bedded in the tightness of skin- +stretch over the skull. And Michael liked it. Never had a man's +hand been so intimate with his ear without hurting it. But these +fingers were provocative only of physical pleasure so keen that he +twisted and writhed his whole body in acknowledgment. + +Next came a long, steady, upward pull of the ear, the ear slipping +slowly through the fingers to the very tip of it while it tingled +exquisitely down to its roots. Now to one ear, now to the other, +this happened, and all the while the man uttered low words that +Michael did not understand but which he accepted as addressed to +him. + +"Head all right, good 'n' flat," Dag Daughtry murmured, first +sliding his fingers over it, and then lighting a match. "An' no +wrinkles, 'n' some jaw, good 'n' punishing, an' not a shade too +full in the cheek or too empty." + +He ran his fingers inside Michael's mouth and noted the strength +and evenness of the teeth, measured the breadth of shoulders and +depth of chest, and picked up a foot. In the light of another +match he examined all four feet. + +"Black, all black, every nail of them," said Daughtry, "an' as +clean feet as ever a dog walked on, straight-out toes with the +proper arch 'n' small 'n' not too small. I bet your daddy and +your mother cantered away with the ribbons in their day." + +Michael was for growing restless at such searching examination, +but Daughtry, in the midst of feeling out the lines and build of +the thighs and hocks, paused and took Michael's tail in his magic +fingers, exploring the muscles among which it rooted, pressing and +prodding the adjacent spinal column from which it sprang, and +twisting it about in a most daringly intimate way. And Michael +was in an ecstasy, bracing his hindquarters to one side or the +other against the caressing fingers. With open hands laid along +his sides and partly under him, the man suddenly lifted him from +the ground. But before he could feel alarm he was back on the +ground again. + +"Twenty-six or -seven--you're over twenty-five right now, I'll bet +you on it, shillings to ha'pennies, and you'll make thirty when +you get your full weight," Dag Daughtry told him. "But what of +it? Lots of the judges fancy the thirty-mark. An' you could +always train off a few ounces. You're all dog n' all correct +conformation. You've got the racing build and the fighting +weight, an' there ain't no feathers on your legs." + +"No, sir, Mr. Dog, your weight's to the good, and that ear can be +ironed out by any respectable dog--doctor. I bet there's a +hundred men in Sydney right now that would fork over twenty quid +for the right of calling you his." + +And then, just that Michael should not make the mistake of +thinking he was being much made over, Daughtry leaned back, +relighted his pipe, and apparently forgot his existence. Instead +of bidding for good will, he was bent on making Michael do the +bidding. + +And Michael did, bumping his flanks against Daughtry's knee; +nudging his head against Daughtry's hand, in solicitation for more +of the blissful ear-rubbing and tail-twisting. Daughtry caught +him by the jowl instead and slowly moved his head back and forth +as he addressed him: + +"What man's dog are you? Maybe you're a nigger's dog, an' that +ain't right. Maybe some nigger's stole you, an' that'd be awful. +Think of the cruel fates that sometimes happens to dogs. It's a +damn shame. No white man's stand for a nigger ownin' the likes of +you, an' here's one white man that ain't goin' to stand for it. +The idea! A nigger ownin' you an' not knowin' how to train you. +Of course a nigger stole you. If I laid eyes on him right now I'd +up and knock seven bells and the Saint Paul chimes out of 'm. ' +Sure thing I would. Just show 'm to me, that's all, an' see what +I'd do to him. The idea of you takin' orders from a nigger an' +fetchin' 'n' carryin' for him! No, sir, dog, you ain't goin' to +do it any more. You're comin' along of me, an' I reckon I won't +have to urge you." + +Dag Daughtry stood up and turned carelessly along the beach. +Michael looked after him, but did not follow. He was eager to, +but had received no invitation. At last Daughtry made a low +kissing sound with his lips. So low was it that he scarcely heard +it himself and almost took it on faith, or on the testimony of his +lips rather than of his ears, that he had made it. No human being +could have heard it across the distance to Michael; but Michael +heard it, and sprang away after in a great delighted rush. + + + +CHAPTER II + + + +Dag Daughtry strolled along the beach, Michael at his heels or +running circles of delight around him at every repetition of that +strange low lip-noise, and paused just outside the circle of +lantern light where dusky forms laboured with landing cargo from +the whale-boats and where the Commissioner's clerk and the +Makambo's super-cargo still wrangled over the bill of lading. +When Michael would have gone forward, the man withstrained him +with the same inarticulate, almost inaudible kiss. + +For Daughtry did not care to be seen on such dog-stealing +enterprises and was planning how to get on board the steamer +unobserved. He edged around outside the lantern shine and went on +along the beach to the native village. As he had foreseen, all +the able-bodied men were down at the boat-landing working cargo. +The grass houses seemed lifeless, but at last, from one of them, +came a challenge in the querulous, high-pitched tones of age: + +"What name?" + +"Me walk about plenty too much," he replied in the beche-de-mer +English of the west South Pacific. "Me belong along steamer. +Suppose 'm you take 'm me along canoe, washee-washee, me give 'm +you fella boy two stick tobacco." + +"Suppose 'm you give 'm me ten stick, all right along me," came +the reply. + +"Me give 'm five stick," the six-quart steward bargained. +"Suppose 'm you no like 'm five stick then you fella boy go to +hell close up." + +There was a silence. + +"You like 'm five stick?" Daughtry insisted of the dark interior. + +"Me like 'm," the darkness answered, and through the darkness the +body that owned the voice approached with such strange sounds that +the steward lighted a match to see. + +A blear-eyed ancient stood before him, balancing on a single +crutch. His eyes were half-filmed over by a growth of morbid +membrane, and what was not yet covered shone red and irritated. +His hair was mangy, standing out in isolated patches of wispy +grey. His skin was scarred and wrinkled and mottled, and in +colour was a purplish blue surfaced with a grey coating that might +have been painted there had it not indubitably grown there and +been part and parcel of him. + +A blighted leper--was Daughtry's thought as his quick eyes leapt +from hands to feet in quest of missing toe- and finger-joints. +But in those items the ancient was intact, although one leg ceased +midway between knee and thigh. + +"My word! What place stop 'm that fella leg?" quoth Daughtry, +pointing to the space which the member would have occupied had it +not been absent. + +"Big fella shark-fish, that fella leg stop 'm along him," the +ancient grinned, exposing a horrible aperture of toothlessness for +a mouth. + +"Me old fella boy too much," the one-legged Methuselah quavered. +"Long time too much no smoke 'm tobacco. Suppose 'm you big fella +white marster give 'm me one fella stick, close up me washee- +washee you that fella steamer." + +"Suppose 'm me no give?" the steward impatiently temporized. + +For reply, the old man half-turned, and, on his crutch, swinging +his stump of leg in the air, began sidling hippity-hop into the +grass hut. + +"All right," Daughtry cried hastily. "Me give 'm you smoke 'm +quick fella." + +He dipped into a side coat-pocket for the mintage of the Solomons +and stripped off a stick from the handful of pressed sticks. The +old man was transfigured as he reached avidly for the stick and +received it. He uttered little crooning noises, alternating with +sharp cries akin to pain, half-ecstatic, half-petulant, as he drew +a black clay pipe from a hole in his ear-lobe, and into the bowl +of it, with trembling fingers, untwisted and crumbled the cheap +leaf of spoiled Virginia crop. + +Pressing down the contents of the full bowl with his thumb, he +suddenly plumped upon the ground, the crutch beside him, the one +limb under him so that he had the seeming of a legless torso. +From a small bag of twisted coconut hanging from his neck upon his +withered and sunken chest, he drew out flint and steel and tinder, +and, even while the impatient steward was proffering him a box of +matches, struck a spark, caught it in the tinder, blew it into +strength and quantity, and lighted his pipe from it. + +With the first full puff of the smoke he gave over his moans and +yelps, the agitation began to fade out of him, and Daughtry, +appreciatively waiting, saw the trembling go out of his hands, the +pendulous lip-quivering cease, the saliva stop flowing from the +corners of his mouth, and placidity come into the fiery remnants +of his eyes. + +What the old man visioned in the silence that fell, Daughtry did +not try to guess. He was too occupied with his own vision, and +vividly burned before him the sordid barrenness of a poorhouse +ward, where an ancient, very like what he himself would become, +maundered and gibbered and drooled for a crumb of tobacco for his +old clay pipe, and where, of all horrors, no sip of beer ever +obtained, much less six quarts of it. + +And Michael, by the dim glows of the pipe surveying the scene of +the two old men, one squatted in the dark, the other standing, +knew naught of the tragedy of age, and was only aware, and +overwhelmingly aware, of the immense likableness of this two- +legged white god, who, with fingers of magic, through ear-roots +and tail-roots and spinal column, had won to the heart of him. + +The clay pipe smoked utterly out, the old black, by aid of the +crutch, with amazing celerity raised himself upstanding on his one +leg and hobbled, with his hippity-hop, to the beach. Daughtry was +compelled to lend his strength to the hauling down from the sand +into the water of the tiny canoe. It was a dug-out, as ancient +and dilapidated as its owner, and, in order to get into it without +capsizing, Daughtry wet one leg to the ankle and the other leg to +the knee. The old man contorted himself aboard, rolling his body +across the gunwale so quickly, that, even while it started to +capsize, his weight was across the danger-point and +counterbalancing the canoe to its proper equilibrium. + +Michael remained on the beach, waiting invitation, his mind not +quite made up, but so nearly so that all that was required was +that lip-noise. Dag Daughtry made the lip-noise so low that the +old man did not hear, and Michael, springing clear from sand to +canoe, was on board without wetting his feet. Using Daughtry's +shoulder for a stepping-place, he passed over him and down into +the bottom of the canoe. Daughtry kissed with his lips again, and +Michael turned around so as to face him, sat down, and rested his +head on the steward's knees. + +"I reckon I can take my affydavy on a stack of Bibles that the dog +just up an' followed me," he grinned in Michael's ear. + +"Washee-washee quick fella," he commanded. + +The ancient obediently dipped his paddle and started pottering an +erratic course in the general direction of the cluster of lights +that marked the Makambo. But he was too feeble, panting and +wheezing continually from the exertion and pausing to rest off +strokes between strokes. The steward impatiently took the paddle +away from him and bent to the work. + +Half-way to the steamer the ancient ceased wheezing and spoke, +nodding his head at Michael. + +"That fella dog he belong big white marster along schooner . . . +You give 'm me ten stick tobacco," he added after due pause to let +the information sink in. + +"I give 'm you bang alongside head," Daughtry assured him +cheerfully. "White marster along schooner plenty friend along me +too much. Just now he stop 'm along Makambo. Me take 'm dog +along him along Makambo." + +There was no further conversation from the ancient, and though he +lived long years after, he never mentioned the midnight passenger +in the canoe who carried Michael away with him. When he saw and +heard the confusion and uproar on the beach later that night when +Captain Kellar turned Tulagi upside-down in his search for +Michael, the old one-legged one remained discreetly silent. Who +was he to seek trouble with the strange ones, the white masters +who came and went and roved and ruled? + +In this the ancient was in nowise unlike the rest of his dark- +skinned Melanesian race. The whites were possessed of unguessed +and unthinkable ways and purposes. They constituted another world +and were as a play of superior beings on an exalted stage where +was no reality such as black men might know as reality, where, +like the phantoms of a dream, the white men moved and were as +shadows cast upon the vast and mysterious curtain of the Cosmos. + +The gang-plank being on the port side, Dag Daughtry paddled around +to the starboard and brought the canoe to a stop under a certain +open port. + +"Kwaque!" he called softly, once, and twice. + +At the second call the light of the port was obscured apparently +by a head that piped down in a thin squeak. + +"Me stop 'm, marster." + +"One fella dog stop 'm along you," the steward whispered up. +"Keep 'm door shut. You wait along me. Stand by! Now!" + +With a quick catch and lift, he passed Michael up and into unseen +hands outstretched from the iron wall of the ship, and paddled +ahead to an open cargo port. Dipping into his tobacco pocket, he +thrust a loose handful of sticks into the ancient's hand and +shoved the canoe adrift with no thought of how its helpless +occupant would ever reach shore. + +The old man did not touch the paddle, and he was unregardless of +the lofty-sided steamer as the canoe slipped down the length of it +into the darkness astern. He was too occupied in counting the +wealth of tobacco showered upon him. No easy task, his counting. +Five was the limit of his numerals. When he had counted five, he +began over again and counted a second five. Three fives he found +in all, and two sticks over; and thus, at the end of it, he +possessed as definite a knowledge of the number of sticks as would +be possessed by the average white man by means of the single +number SEVENTEEN. + +More it was, far more, than his avarice had demanded. Yet he was +unsurprised. Nothing white men did could surprise. Had it been +two sticks instead of seventeen, he would have been equally +unsurprised. Since all acts of white men were surprises, the only +surprise of action they could achieve for a black man would be the +doing of an unsurprising thing. + +Paddling, wheezing, resting, oblivious of the shadow-world of the +white men, knowing only the reality of Tulagi Mountain cutting its +crest-line blackly across the dim radiance of the star-sprinkled +sky, the reality of the sea and of the canoe he so feebly urged +across it, and the reality of his fading strength and of the death +into which he would surely end, the ancient black man slowly made +his shoreward way. + + + +CHAPTER III + + + +In the meanwhile, Michael. Lifted through the air, exchanged into +invisible hands that drew him through a narrow diameter of brass +into a lighted room, Michael looked about him in expectancy of +Jerry. But Jerry, at that moment, lay cuddled beside Villa +Kennan's sleeping-cot on the slant deck of the Ariel, as that trim +craft, the Shortlands astern and New Guinea dead ahead, heeled her +scuppers a-whisper and garrulous to the sea-welter alongside as +she logged her eleven knots under the press of the freshening +trades. Instead of Jerry, from whom he had last parted on board a +boat, Michael saw Kwaque. + +Kwaque? Well, Kwaque was Kwaque, an individual, more unlike all +other men than most men are unlike one another. No queerer estray +ever drifted along the stream of life. Seventeen years old he +was, as men measure time; but a century was measured in his lean- +lined face, his wrinkled forehead, his hollowed temples, and his +deep-sunk eyes. From his thin legs, fragile-looking as +windstraws, the bones of which were sheathed in withered skin with +apparently no muscle padding in between--from such frail stems +sprouted the torso of a fat man. The huge and protuberant stomach +was amply supported by wide and massive hips, and the shoulders +were broad as those of a Hercules. But, beheld sidewise, there +was no depth to those shoulders and the top of the chest. Almost, +at that part of his anatomy, he seemed builded in two dimensions. +Thin his arms were as his legs, and, as Michael first beheld him, +he had all the seeming of a big-bellied black spider. + +He proceeded to dress, a matter of moments, slipping into duck +trousers and blouse, dirty and frayed from long usage. Two +fingers of his left hand were doubled into a permanent bend, and, +to an expert, would have advertised that he was a leper. Although +he belonged to Dag Daughtry just as much as if the steward +possessed a chattel bill of sale of him, his owner did not know +that his anaesthetic twist of ravaged nerves tokened the dread +disease. + +The manner of the ownership was simple. At King William Island, +in the Admiralties, Kwaque had made, in the parlance of the South +Pacific, a pier-head jump. So to speak, leprosy and all, he had +jumped into Dag Daughtry's arms. Strolling along the native +runways in the fringe of jungle just beyond the beach, as was his +custom, to see whatever he might pick up, the steward had picked +up Kwaque. And he had picked him up in extremity. + +Pursued by two very active young men armed with fire-hardened +spears, tottering along with incredible swiftness on his two +spindle legs, Kwaque had fallen exhausted at Daughtry's feet and +looked up at him with the beseeching eyes of a deer fleeing from +the hounds. Daughtry had inquired into the matter, and the +inquiry was violent; for he had a wholesome fear of germs and +bacilli, and when the two active young men tried to run him +through with their filth-corroded spears, he caught the spear of +one young man under his arm and put the other young man to sleep +with a left hook to the jaw. A moment later the young man whose +spear he held had joined the other in slumber. + +The elderly steward was not satisfied with the mere spears. While +the rescued Kwaque continued to moan and slubber thankfulness at +his feet, he proceeded to strip them that were naked. Nothing +they wore in the way of clothing, but from around each of their +necks he removed a necklace of porpoise teeth that was worth a +gold sovereign in mere exchange value. From the kinky locks of +one of the naked young men he drew a hand-carved, fine-toothed +comb, the lofty back of which was inlaid with mother-of-pearl, +which he later sold in Sydney to a curio shop for eight shillings. +Nose and ear ornaments of bone and turtle-shell he also rifled, as +well as a chest-crescent of pearl shell, fourteen inches across, +worth fifteen shillings anywhere. The two spears ultimately +fetched him five shillings each from the tourists at Port Moresby. +Not lightly may a ship steward undertake to maintain a six-quart +reputation. + +When he turned to depart from the active young men, who, back to +consciousness, were observing him with bright, quick, wild-animal +eyes, Kwaque followed so close at his heels as to step upon them +and make him stumble. Whereupon he loaded Kwaque with his trove +and put him in front to lead along the runway to the beach. And +for the rest of the way to the steamer, Dag Daughtry grinned and +chuckled at sight of his plunder and at sight of Kwaque, who +fantastically titubated and ambled along, barrel-like, on his +pipe-stems. + +On board the steamer, which happened to be the Cockspur, Daughtry +persuaded the captain to enter Kwaque on the ship's articles as +steward's helper with a rating of ten shillings a month. Also, he +learned Kwaque's story. + +It was all an account of a pig. The two active young men were +brothers who lived in the next village to his, and the pig had +been theirs--so Kwaque narrated in atrocious beche-de-mer English. +He, Kwaque, had never seen the pig. He had never known of its +existence until after it was dead. The two young men had loved +the pig. But what of that? It did not concern Kwaque, who was as +unaware of their love for the pig as he was unaware of the pig +itself. + +The first he knew, he averred, was the gossip of the village that +the pig was dead, and that somebody would have to die for it. It +was all right, he said, in reply to a query from the steward. It +was the custom. Whenever a loved pig died its owners were in +custom bound to go out and kill somebody, anybody. Of course, it +was better if they killed the one whose magic had made the pig +sick. But, failing that one, any one would do. Hence Kwaque was +selected for the blood-atonement. + +Dag Daughtry drank a seventh quart as he listened, so carried away +was he by the sombre sense of romance of this dark jungle event +wherein men killed even strangers because a pig was dead. + +Scouts out on the runways, Kwaque continued, brought word of the +coming of the two bereaved pig-owners, and the village had fled +into the jungle and climbed trees--all except Kwaque, who was +unable to climb trees. + +"My word," Kwaque concluded, "me no make 'm that fella pig sick." + +"My word," quoth Dag Daughtry, "you devil-devil along that fella +pig too much. You look 'm like hell. You make 'm any fella thing +sick look along you. You make 'm me sick too much." + +It became quite a custom for the steward, as he finished his sixth +bottle before turning in, to call upon Kwaque for his story. It +carried him back to his boyhood when he had been excited by tales +of wild cannibals in far lands and dreamed some day to see them +for himself. And here he was, he would chuckle to himself, with a +real true cannibal for a slave. + +A slave Kwaque was, as much as if Daughtry had bought him on the +auction-block. Whenever the steward transferred from ship to ship +of the Burns Philp fleet, he always stipulated that Kwaque should +accompany him and be duly rated at ten shillings. Kwaque had no +say in the matter. Even had he desired to escape in Australian +ports, there was no need for Daughtry to watch him. Australia, +with her "all-white" policy, attended to that. No dark-skinned +human, whether Malay, Japanese, or Polynesian, could land on her +shore without putting into the Government's hand a cash security +of one hundred pounds. + +Nor at the other islands visited by the Makambo had Kwaque any +desire to cut and run for it. King William Island, which was the +only land he had ever trod, was his yard-stick by which he +measured all other islands. And since King William Island was +cannibalistic, he could only conclude that the other islands were +given to similar dietary practice. + +As for King William Island, the Makambo, on the former run of the +Cockspur, stopped there every ten weeks; but the direst threat +Daughtry ever held over him was the putting ashore of him at the +place where the two active young men still mourned their pig. In +fact, it was their regular programme, each trip, to paddle out and +around the Makambo and make ferocious grimaces up at Kwaque, who +grimaced back at them from over the rail. Daughtry even +encouraged this exchange of facial amenities for the purpose of +deterring him from ever hoping to win ashore to the village of his +birth. + +For that matter, Kwaque had little desire to leave his master, +who, after all, was kindly and just, and never lifted a hand to +him. Having survived sea-sickness at the first, and never setting +foot upon the land so that he never again knew sea-sickness, +Kwaque was certain he lived in an earthly paradise. He never had +to regret his inability to climb trees, because danger never +threatened him. He had food regularly, and all he wanted, and it +was such food! No one in his village could have dreamed of any +delicacy of the many delicacies which he consumed all the time. +Because of these matters he even pulled through a light attack of +home-sickness, and was as contented a human as ever sailed the +seas. + +And Kwaque it was who pulled Michael through the port-hole into +Dag Daughtry's stateroom and waited for that worthy to arrive by +the roundabout way of the door. After a quick look around the +room and a sniff of the bunk and under the bunk which informed him +that Jerry was not present, Michael turned his attention to +Kwaque. + +Kwaque tried to be friendly. He uttered a clucking noise in +advertisement of his friendliness, and Michael snarled at this +black who had dared to lay hands upon him--a contamination, +according to Michael's training--and who now dared to address him +who associated only with white gods. + +Kwaque passed off the rebuff with a silly gibbering laugh and +started to step nearer the door to be in readiness to open it at +his master's coming. But at first lift of his leg, Michael flew +at it. Kwaque immediately put it down, and Michael subsided, +though he kept a watchful guard. What did he know of this strange +black, save that he was a black and that, in the absence of a +white master, all blacks required watching? Kwaque tried slowly +sliding his foot along the floor, but Michael knew the trick and +with bristle and growl put a stop to it. + +It was upon this tableau that Daughtry entered, and, while he +admired Michael much under the bright electric light, he realized +the situation. + +"Kwaque, you make 'm walk about leg belong you," he commanded, in +order to make sure. + +Kwaque's glance of apprehension at Michael was convincing enough, +but the steward insisted. Kwaque gingerly obeyed, but scarcely +had his foot moved an inch when Michael's was upon him. The foot +and leg petrified, while Michael stiff-leggedly drew a half-circle +of intimidation about him. + +"Got you nailed to the floor, eh?" Daughtry chuckled. "Some +nigger-chaser, my word, any amount." + +"Hey, you, Kwaque, go fetch 'm two fella bottle of beer stop 'm +along icey-chestis," he commanded in his most peremptory manner. + +Kwaque looked beseechingly, but did not stir. Nor did he stir at +a harsher repetition of the order. + +"My word!" the steward bullied. "Suppose 'm you no fetch 'm beer +close up, I knock 'm eight bells 'n 'a dog-watch onta you. +Suppose 'm you no fetch 'm close up, me make 'm you go ashore 'n' +walk about along King William Island." + +"No can," Kwaque murmured timidly. "Eye belong dog look along me +too much. Me no like 'm dog kai-kai along me." + +"You fright along dog?" his master demanded. + +"My word, me fright along dog any amount." + +Dag Daughtry was delighted. Also, he was thirsty from his trip +ashore and did not prolong the situation. + +"Hey, you, dog," he addressed Michael. "This fella boy he all +right. Savvee? He all right." + +Michael bobbed his tail and flattened his ears in token that he +was trying to understand. When the steward patted the black on +the shoulder, Michael advanced and sniffed both the legs he had +kept nailed to the floor. + +"Walk about," Daughtry commanded. "Walk about slow fella," he +cautioned, though there was little need. + +Michael bristled, but permitted the first timid step. At the +second he glanced up at Daughtry to make certain. + +"That's right," he was reassured. "That fella boy belong me. He +all right, you bet." + +Michael smiled with his eyes that he understood, and turned +casually aside to investigate an open box on the floor which +contained plates of turtle-shell, hack-saws, and emery paper. + + +"And now," Dag Daughtry muttered weightily aloud, as, bottle in +hand, he leaned back in his arm-chair while Kwaque knelt at his +feet to unlace his shoes, "now to consider a name for you, Mister +Dog, that will be just to your breeding and fair to my powers of +invention." + + + +CHAPTER IV + + + +Irish terriers, when they have gained maturity, are notable, not +alone for their courage, fidelity, and capacity for love, but for +their cool-headedness and power of self-control and restraint. +They are less easily excited off their balance; they can recognize +and obey their master's voice in the scuffle and rage of battle; +and they never fly into nervous hysterics such as are common, say, +with fox-terriers. + +Michael possessed no trace of hysteria, though he was more +temperamentally excitable and explosive than his blood-brother +Jerry, while his father and mother were a sedate old couple indeed +compared with him. Far more than mature Jerry, was mature Michael +playful and rowdyish. His ebullient spirits were always on tap to +spill over on the slightest provocation, and, as he was afterwards +to demonstrate, he could weary a puppy with play. In short, +Michael was a merry soul. + +"Soul" is used advisedly. Whatever the human soul may be-- +informing spirit, identity, personality, consciousness--that +intangible thing Michael certainly possessed. His soul, differing +only in degree, partook of the same attributes as the human soul. +He knew love, sorrow, joy, wrath, pride, self-consciousness, +humour. Three cardinal attributes of the human soul are memory, +will, and understanding; and memory, will, and understanding were +Michael's. + +Just like a human, with his five senses he contacted with the +world exterior to him. Just like a human, the results to him of +these contacts were sensations. Just like a human, these +sensations on occasion culminated in emotions. Still further, +like a human, he could and did perceive, and such perceptions did +flower in his brain as concepts, certainly not so wide and deep +and recondite as those of humans, but concepts nevertheless. + +Perhaps, to let the human down a trifle from such disgraceful +identity of the highest life-attributes, it would be well to admit +that Michael's sensations were not quite so poignant, say in the +matter of a needle-thrust through his foot as compared with a +needle-thrust through the palm of a hand. Also, it is admitted, +when consciousness suffused his brain with a thought, that the +thought was dimmer, vaguer than a similar thought in a human +brain. Furthermore, it is admitted that never, never, in a +million lifetimes, could Michael have demonstrated a proposition +in Euclid or solved a quadratic equation. Yet he was capable of +knowing beyond all peradventure of a doubt that three bones are +more than two bones, and that ten dogs compose a more redoubtable +host than do two dogs. + +One admission, however, will not be made, namely, that Michael +could not love as devotedly, as wholeheartedly, unselfishly, +madly, self-sacrificingly as a human. He did so love--not because +he was Michael, but because he was a dog. + +Michael had loved Captain Kellar more than he loved his own life. +No more than Jerry for Skipper, would he have hesitated to risk +his life for Captain Kellar. And he was destined, as time went by +and the conviction that Captain Kellar had passed into the +inevitable nothingness along with Meringe and the Solomons, to +love just as absolutely this six-quart steward with the +understanding ways and the fascinating lip-caress. Kwaque, no; +for Kwaque was black. Kwaque he merely accepted, as an +appurtenance, as a part of the human landscape, as a chattel of +Dag Daughtry. + +But he did not know this new god as Dag Daughtry. Kwaque called +him "marster"; but Michael heard other white men so addressed by +the blacks. Many blacks had he heard call Captain Kellar +"marster." It was Captain Duncan who called the steward +"Steward." Michael came to hear him, and his officers, and all +the passengers, so call him; and thus, to Michael, his god's name +was Steward, and for ever after he was to know him and think of +him as Steward. + +There was the question of his own name. The next evening after he +came on board, Dag Daughtry talked it over with him. Michael sat +on his haunches, the length of his lower jaw resting on Daughtry's +knee, the while his eyes dilated, contracted and glowed, his ears +ever pricking and repricking to listen, his stump tail thumping +ecstatically on the floor. + +"It's this way, son," the steward told him. "Your father and +mother were Irish. Now don't be denying it, you rascal--" + +This, as Michael, encouraged by the unmistakable geniality and +kindness in the voice, wriggled his whole body and thumped double +knocks of delight with his tail. Not that he understood a word of +it, but that he did understand the something behind the speech +that informed the string of sounds with all the mysterious +likeableness that white gods possessed. + +"Never be ashamed of your ancestry. An' remember, God loves the +Irish--Kwaque! Go fetch 'm two bottle beer fella stop 'm along +icey-chestis!--Why, the very mug of you, my lad, sticks out Irish +all over it." (Michael's tail beat a tattoo.) "Now don't be +blarneyin' me. 'Tis well I'm wise to your insidyous, snugglin', +heart-stealin' ways. I'll have ye know my heart's impervious. +'Tis soaked too long this many a day in beer. I stole you to sell +you, not to be lovin' you. I could've loved you once; but that +was before me and beer was introduced. I'd sell you for twenty +quid right now, coin down, if the chance offered. An' I ain't +goin' to love you, so you can put that in your pipe 'n' smoke it." + +"But as I was about to say when so rudely interrupted by your +'fectionate ways--" + +Here he broke off to tilt to his mouth the opened bottle Kwaque +handed him. He sighed, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, +and proceeded. + +"'Tis a strange thing, son, this silly matter of beer. Kwaque, +the Methusalem-faced ape grinnin' there, belongs to me. But by my +faith do I belong to beer, bottles 'n' bottles of it 'n' mountains +of bottles of it enough to sink the ship. Dog, truly I envy you, +settin' there comfortable-like inside your body that's untainted +of alcohol. I may own you, and the man that gives me twenty quid +will own you, but never will a mountain of bottles own you. +You're a freer man than I am, Mister Dog, though I don't know your +name. Which reminds me--" + +He drained the bottle, tossed it to Kwaque, and made signs for him +to open the remaining one. + +"The namin' of you, son, is not lightly to be considered. Irish, +of course, but what shall it be? Paddy? Well may you shake your +head. There's no smack of distinction to it. Who'd mistake you +for a hod-carrier? Ballymena might do, but it sounds much like a +lady, my boy. Ay, boy you are. 'Tis an idea. Boy! Let's see. +Banshee Boy? Rotten. Lad of Erin!" + +He nodded approbation and reached for the second bottle. He drank +and meditated, and drank again. + +"I've got you," he announced solemnly. "Killeny is a lovely name, +and it's Killeny Boy for you. How's that strike your +honourableness?--high-soundin', dignified as a earl or . . . or a +retired brewer. Many's the one of that gentry I've helped to +retire in my day." + +He finished his bottle, caught Michael suddenly by both jowls, +and, leaning forward, rubbed noses with him. As suddenly +released, with thumping tail and dancing eyes, Michael gazed up +into the god's face. A definite soul, or entity, or spirit-thing +glimmered behind his dog's eyes, already fond with affection for +this hair-grizzled god who talked with him he knew not what, but +whose very talking carried delicious and unguessable messages to +his heart. + +"Hey! Kwaque, you!" + +Kwaque, squatted on the floor, his hams on his heels, paused from +the rough-polishing of a shell comb designed and cut out by his +master, and looked up, eager to receive command and serve. + +"Kwaque, you fella this time now savvee name stop along this fella +dog. His name belong 'm him, Killeny Boy. You make 'm name stop +'m inside head belong you. All the time you speak 'm this fella +dog, you speak 'm Killeny Boy. Savvee? Suppose 'm you no savvee, +I knock 'm block off belong you. Killeny Boy, savvee! Killeny +Boy. Killeny Boy." + +As Kwaque removed his shoes and helped him undress, Daughtry +regarded Michael with sleepy eyes. + +"I've got you, laddy," he announced, as he stood up and swayed +toward bed. "I've got your name, an' here's your number--I got +that, too: HIGH-STRUNG BUT REASONABLE. It fits you like the +paper on the wall. + +"High-strung but reasonable, that's what you are, Killeny Boy, +high-strung but reasonable," he continued to mumble as Kwaque +helped to roll him into his bunk. + +Kwaque returned to his polishing. His lips stammered and halted +in the making of noiseless whispers, as, with corrugated brows of +puzzlement, he addressed the steward: + +"Marster, what name stop 'm along that fella dog?" + +"Killeny Boy, you kinky-head man-eater, Killeny Boy, Killeny Boy," +Dag Daughtry murmured drowsily. "Kwaque, you black blood-drinker, +run n' fetch 'm one fella bottle stop 'm along icey-chestis." + +"No stop 'm, marster," the black quavered, with eyes alert for +something to be thrown at him. "Six fella bottle he finish +altogether." + +The steward's sole reply was a snore. + +The black, with the twisted hand of leprosy and with a barely +perceptible infiltration of the same disease thickening the skin +of the forehead between the eyes, bent over his polishing, and +ever his lips moved, repeating over and over, "Killeny Boy." + + + +CHAPTER V + + + +For a number of days Michael saw only Steward and Kwaque. This +was because he was confined to the steward's stateroom. Nobody +else knew that he was on board, and Dag Daughtry, thoroughly aware +that he had stolen a white man's dog, hoped to keep his presence +secret and smuggle him ashore when the Makambo docked in Sydney. + +Quickly the steward learned Michael's pre-eminent teachableness. +In the course of his careful feeding of him, he gave him an +occasional chicken bone. Two lessons, which would scarcely be +called lessons, since both of them occurred within five minutes +and each was not over half a minute in duration, sufficed to teach +Michael that only on the floor of the room in the corner nearest +the door could he chew chicken bones. Thereafter, without +prompting, as a matter of course when handed a bone, he carried it +to the corner. + +And why not? He had the wit to grasp what Steward desired of him; +he had the heart that made it a happiness for him to serve. +Steward was a god who was kind, who loved him with voice and lip, +who loved him with touch of hand, rub of nose, or enfolding arm. +As all service flourishes in the soil of love, so with Michael. +Had Steward commanded him to forego the chicken bone after it was +in the corner, he would have served him by foregoing. Which is +the way of the dog, the only animal that will cheerfully and +gladly, with leaping body of joy, leave its food uneaten in order +to accompany or to serve its human master. + +Practically all his waking time off duty, Dag Daughtry spent with +the imprisoned Michael, who, at command, had quickly learned to +refrain from whining and barking. And during these hours of +companionship Michael learned many things. Daughtry found that he +already understood and obeyed simple things such as "no," "yes," +"get up," and "lie down," and he improved on them, teaching him, +"Go into the bunk and lie down," "Go under the bunk," "Bring one +shoe," "Bring two shoes." And almost without any work at all, he +taught him to roll over, to say his prayers, to play dead, to sit +up and smoke a pipe with a hat on his head, and not merely to +stand up on his hind legs but to walk on them. + +Then, too, was the trick of "no can and can do." Placing a +savoury, nose-tantalising bit of meat or cheese on the edge of the +bunk on a level with Michael's nose, Daughtry would simply say, +"No can." Nor would Michael touch the food till he received the +welcome, "Can do." Daughtry, with the "no can" still in force, +would leave the stateroom, and, though he remained away half an +hour or half a dozen hours, on his return he would find the food +untouched and Michael, perhaps, asleep in the corner at the head +of the bunk which had been allotted him for a bed. Early in this +trick once when the steward had left the room and Michael's eager +nose was within an inch of the prohibited morsel, Kwaque, +playfully inclined, reached for the morsel himself and received a +lacerated hand from the quick flash and clip of Michael's jaws. + +None of the tricks that he was ever eager to do for Steward, would +Michael do for Kwaque, despite the fact that Kwaque had no touch +of meanness or viciousness in him. The point was that Michael had +been trained, from his first dawn of consciousness, to +differentiate between black men and white men. Black men were +always the servants of white men--or such had been his experience; +and always they were objects of suspicion, ever bent on wreaking +mischief and requiring careful watching. The cardinal duty of a +dog was to serve his white god by keeping a vigilant eye on all +blacks that came about. + +Yet Michael permitted Kwaque to serve him in matters of food, +water, and other offices, at first in the absence of Steward +attending to his ship duties, and, later, at any time. For he +realized, without thinking about it at all, that whatever Kwaque +did for him, whatever food Kwaque spread for him, really +proceeded, not from Kwaque, but from Kwaque's master who was also +his master. Yet Kwaque bore no grudge against Michael, and was +himself so interested in his lord's welfare and comfort--this lord +who had saved his life that terrible day on King William Island +from the two grief-stricken pig-owners--that he cherished Michael +for his lord's sake. Seeing the dog growing into his master's +affection, Kwaque himself developed a genuine affection for +Michael--much in the same way that he worshipped anything of the +steward's, whether the shoes he polished for him, the clothes he +brushed and cleaned for him, or the six bottles of beer he put +into the ice-chest each day for him. + +In truth, there was nothing of the master-quality in Kwaque, while +Michael was a natural aristocrat. Michael, out of love, would +serve Steward, but Michael lorded it over the kinky-head. Kwaque +possessed overwhelmingly the slave-nature, while in Michael there +was little more of the slave-nature than was found in the North +American Indians when the vain attempt was made to make them into +slaves on the plantations of Cuba. All of which was no personal +vice of Kwaque or virtue of Michael. Michael's heredity, rigidly +selected for ages by man, was chiefly composed of fierceness and +faithfulness. And fierceness and faithfulness, together, +invariably produce pride. And pride cannot exist without honour, +nor can honour without poise. + +Michael's crowning achievement, under Daughtry's tutelage, in the +first days in the stateroom, was to learn to count up to five. +Many hours of work were required, however, in spite of his unusual +high endowment of intelligence. For he had to learn, first, the +spoken numerals; second, to see with his eyes and in his brain +differentiate between one object, and all other groups of objects +up to and including the group of five; and, third, in his mind, to +relate an object, or any group of objects, with its numerical name +as uttered by Steward. + +In the training Dag Daughtry used balls of paper tied about with +twine. He would toss the five balls under the bunk and tell +Michael to fetch three, and neither two, nor four, but three would +Michael bring forth and deliver into his hand. When Daughtry +threw three under the bunk and demanded four, Michael would +deliver the three, search about vainly for the fourth, then dance +pleadingly with bobs of tail and half-leaps about Steward, and +finally leap into the bed and secure the fourth from under the +pillow or among the blankets. + +It was the same with other known objects. Up to five, whether +shoes or shirts or pillow-slips, Michael would fetch the number +requested. And between the mathematical mind of Michael, who +counted to five, and the mind of the ancient black at Tulagi, who +counted sticks of tobacco in units of five, was a distance shorter +than that between Michael and Dag Daughtry who could do +multiplication and long division. In the same manner, up the same +ladder of mathematical ability, a still greater distance separated +Dag Daughtry from Captain Duncan, who by mathematics navigated the +Makambo. Greatest mathematical distance of all was that between +Captain Duncan's mind and the mind of an astronomer who charted +the heavens and navigated a thousand million miles away among the +stars and who tossed, a mere morsel of his mathematical knowledge, +the few shreds of information to Captain Duncan that enabled him +to know from day to day the place of the Makambo on the sea. + +In one thing only could Kwaque rule Michael. Kwaque possessed a +jews' harp, and, whenever the world of the Makambo and the +servitude to the steward grew wearisome, he could transport +himself to King William Island by thrusting the primitive +instrument between his jaws and fanning weird rhythms from it with +his hand, and when he thus crossed space and time, Michael sang-- +or howled, rather, though his howl possessed the same soft +mellowness as Jerry's. Michael did not want to howl, but the +chemistry of his being was such that he reacted to music as +compulsively as elements react on one another in the laboratory. + +While he lay perdu in Steward's stateroom, his voice was the one +thing that was not to be heard, so Kwaque was forced to seek the +solace of his jews' harp in the sweltering heat of the gratings +over the fire-room. But this did not continue long, for, either +according to blind chance, or to the lines of fate written in the +book of life ere ever the foundations of the world were laid, +Michael was scheduled for an adventure that was profoundly to +affect, not alone his own destiny, but the destinies of Kwaque and +Dag Daughtry and determine the very place of their death and +burial. + + + +CHAPTER VI + + + +The adventure that was so to alter the future occurred when +Michael, in no uncertain manner, announced to all and sundry his +presence on the Makambo. It was due to Kwaque's carelessness, to +commence with, for Kwaque left the stateroom without tight-closing +the door. As the Makambo rolled on an easy sea the door swung +back and forth, remaining wide open for intervals and banging shut +but not banging hard enough to latch itself. + +Michael crossed the high threshold with the innocent intention of +exploring no farther than the immediate vicinity. But scarcely +was he through, when a heavier roll slammed the door and latched +it. And immediately Michael wanted to get back. Obedience was +strong in him, for it was his heart's desire to serve his lord's +will, and from the few days' confinement he sensed, or guessed, or +divined, without thinking about it, that it was Steward's will for +him to stay in the stateroom. + +For a long time he sat down before the closed door, regarding it +wistfully but being too wise to bark or speak to such inanimate +object. It had been part of his early puppyhood education to +learn that only live things could be moved by plea or threat, and +that while things not alive did move, as the door had moved, they +never moved of themselves, and were deaf to anything life might +have to say to them. Occasionally he trotted down the short +cross-hall upon which the stateroom opened, and gazed up and down +the long hall that ran fore and aft. + +For the better part of an hour he did this, returning always to +the door that would not open. Then he achieved a definite idea. +Since the door would not open, and since Steward and Kwaque did +not return, he would go in search of them. Once with this concept +of action clear in his brain, without timidities of hesitation and +irresolution, he trotted aft down the long hall. Going around the +right angle in which it ended, he encountered a narrow flight of +steps. Among many scents, he recognized those of Kwaque and +Steward and knew they had passed that way. + +Up the stairs and on the main deck, he began to meet passengers. +Being white gods, he did not resent their addresses to him, though +he did not linger and went out on the open deck where more of the +favoured gods reclined in steamer-chairs. Still no Kwaque or +Steward. Another flight of narrow, steep stairs invited, and he +came out on the boat-deck. Here, under the wide awnings, were +many more of the gods--many times more than he had that far seen +in his life. + +The for'ard end of the boat-deck terminated in the bridge, which, +instead of being raised above it, was part of it. Trotting around +the wheel-house to the shady lee-side of it, he came upon his +fate; for be it known that Captain Duncan possessed on board in +addition to two fox-terriers, a big Persian cat, and that cat +possessed a litter of kittens. Her chosen nursery was the wheel- +house, and Captain Duncan had humoured her, giving her a box for +her kittens and threatening the quartermasters with all manner of +dire fates did they so much as step on one of the kittens. + +But Michael knew nothing of this. And the big Persian knew of his +existence before he did of hers. In fact, the first he knew was +when she launched herself upon him out of the open wheel-house +doorway. Even as he glimpsed this abrupt danger, and before he +could know what it was, he leaped sideways and saved himself. +From his point of view, the assault was unprovoked. He was +staring at her with bristling hair, recognizing her for what she +was, a cat, when she sprang again, her tail the size of a large +man's arm, all claws and spitting fury and vindictiveness. + +This was too much for a self-respecting Irish terrier. His wrath +was immediate with her second leap, and he sprang to the side to +avoid her claws, and in from the side to meet her, his jaws +clamping together on her spinal column with a jerk while she was +still in mid-air. The next moment she lay sprawling and +struggling on the deck with a broken back. + +But for Michael this was only the beginning. A shrill yelling, +rather than yelping, of more enemies made him whirl half about, +but not quick enough. Struck in flank by two full-grown fox- +terriers, he was slashed and rolled on the deck. The two, by the +way, had long before made their first appearance on the Makambo as +little puppies in Dag Daughtry's coat pockets--Daughtry, in his +usual fashion, having appropriated them ashore in Sydney and sold +them to Captain Duncan for a guinea apiece. + +By this time, scrambling to his feet, Michael was really angry. +In truth, it was raining cats and dogs, such belligerent shower +all unprovoked by him who had picked no quarrels nor even been +aware of his enemies until they assailed him. Brave the fox- +terriers were, despite the hysterical rage they were in, and they +were upon him as he got his legs under him. The fangs of one +clashed with his, cutting the lips of both of them, and the +lighter dog recoiled from the impact. The other succeeded in +taking Michael in flank, fetching blood and hurt with his teeth. +With an instant curve, that was almost spasmodic, of his body, +Michael flung his flank clear, leaving the other's mouth full of +his hair, and at the same moment drove his teeth through an ear +till they met. The fox-terrier, with a shrill yelp of pain, +sprang back so impetuously as to ribbon its ear as Michael's teeth +combed through it. + +The first terrier was back upon him, and he was whirling to meet +it, when a new and equally unprovoked assault was made upon him. +This time it was Captain Duncan, in a rage at sight of his slain +cat. The instep of his foot caught Michael squarely under the +chest, half knocking the breath out of him and wholly lifting him +into the air, so that he fell heavily on his side. The two +terriers were upon him, filling their mouths with his straight, +wiry hair as they sank their teeth in. Still on his side, as he +was beginning to struggle to his feet, he clipped his jaws +together on a leg of one, who screamed with pain and retreated on +three legs, holding up the fourth, a fore leg, the bone of which +Michael's teeth had all but crushed. + +Twice Michael slashed the other four-footed foe and then pursued +him in a circle with Captain Duncan pursuing him in turn. +Shortening the distance by leaping across a chord of the arc of +the other's flight, Michael closed his jaws on the back and side +of the neck. Such abrupt arrest in mid-flight by the heavier dog +brought the fox-terrier down on deck with, a heavy thump. +Simultaneous with this, Captain Duncan's second kick landed, +communicating such propulsion to Michael as to tear his clenched +teeth through the flesh and out of the flesh of the fox-terrier. + +And Michael turned on the Captain. What if he were a white god? +In his rage at so many assaults of so many enemies, Michael, who +had been peacefully looking for Kwaque and Steward, did not stop +to reckon. Besides, it was a strange white god upon whom he had +never before laid eyes. + +At the beginning he had snarled and growled. But it was a more +serious affair to attack a god, and no sound came from him as he +leaped to meet the leg flying toward him in another kick. As with +the cat, he did not leap straight at it. To the side to avoid, +and in with a curve of body as it passed, was his way. He had +learned the trick with many blacks at Meringe and on board the +Eugenie, so that as often he succeeded as failed at it. His teeth +came together in the slack of the white duck trousers. The +consequent jerk on Captain Duncan's leg made that infuriated +mariner lose his balance. Almost he fell forward on his face, +part recovered himself with a violent effort, stumbled over +Michael who was in for another bite, tottered wildly around, and +sat down on the deck. + +How long he might have sat there to recover his breath is +problematical, for he rose as rapidly as his stoutness would +permit, spurred on by Michael's teeth already sunk into the fleshy +part of his shoulder. Michael missed his calf as he uprose, but +tore the other leg of the trousers to shreds and received a kick +that lifted him a yard above the deck in a half-somersault and +landed him on his back on deck. + +Up to this time the Captain had been on the ferocious offensive, +and he was in the act of following up the kick when Michael +regained his feet and soared up in the air, not for leg or thigh, +but for the throat. Too high it was for him to reach it, but his +teeth closed on the flowing black scarf and tore it to tatters as +his weight drew him back to deck. + +It was not this so much that turned Captain Duncan to the pure +defensive and started him retreating backward, as it was the +silence of Michael. Ominous as death it was. There were no +snarls nor throat-threats. With eyes straight-looking and +unblinking, he sprang and sprang again. Neither did he growl when +he attacked nor yelp when he was kicked. Fear of the blow was not +in him. As Tom Haggin had so often bragged of Biddy and Terrence, +they bred true in Jerry and Michael in the matter of not wincing +at a blow. Always--they were so made--they sprang to meet the +blow and to encounter the creature who delivered the blow. With a +silence that was invested with the seriousness of death, they were +wont to attack and to continue to attack. + +And so Michael. As the Captain retreated kicking, he attacked, +leaping and slashing. What saved Captain Duncan was a sailor with +a deck mop on the end of a stick. Intervening, he managed to +thrust it into Michael's mouth and shove him away. This first +time his teeth closed automatically upon it. But, spitting it +out, he declined thereafter to bite it, knowing it for what it +was, an inanimate thing upon which his teeth could inflict no +hurt. + +Nor, beyond trying to avoid him, was he interested in the sailor. +It was Captain Duncan, leaning his back against the rail, +breathing heavily, and wiping the streaming sweat from his face, +who was Michael's meat. Long as it has taken to tell the battle, +beginning with the slaying of the Persian cat to the thrusting of +the mop into Michael's jaws, so swift had been the rush of events +that the passengers, springing from their deck-chairs and hurrying +to the scene, were just arriving when Michael eluded the mop of +the sailor by a successful dodge and plunged in on Captain Duncan, +this time sinking his teeth so savagely into a rotund calf as to +cause its owner to splutter an incoherent curse and howl of +wrathful surprise. + +A fortunate kick hurled Michael away and enabled the sailor to +intervene once again with the mop. And upon the scene came Dag +Daughtry, to behold his captain, frayed and bleeding and breathing +apoplectically, Michael raging in ghastly silence at the end of a +mop, and a large Persian mother-cat writhing with a broken back. + +"Killeny Boy!" the steward cried imperatively. + +Through no matter what indignation and rage that possessed him, +his lord's voice penetrated his consciousness, so that, cooling +almost instantly, Michael's ears flattened, his bristling hair lay +down, and his lips covered his fangs as he turned his head to look +acknowledgment. + +"Come here, Killeny!" + +Michael obeyed--not crouching cringingly, but trotting eagerly, +gladly, to Steward's feet. + +"Lie down, Boy." + +He turned half around as he flumped himself down with a sigh of +relief, and, with a red flash of tongue, kissed Steward's foot. + +"Your dog, Steward?" Captain Duncan demanded in a smothered voice +wherein struggled anger and shortness of breath. + +"Yes, sir. My dog. What's he been up to, sir?" + +The totality of what Michael had been up to choked the Captain +completely. He could only gesture around from the dying cat to +his torn clothes and bleeding wounds and the fox-terriers licking +their injuries and whimpering at his feet. + +"It's too bad, sir . . . " Daughtry began. + +"Too bad, hell!" the captain shut him off. "Bo's'n! Throw that +dog overboard." + +"Throw the dog overboard, sir, yes, sir," the boat-swain repeated, +but hesitated. + +Dag Daughtry's face hardened unconsciously with the stiffening of +his will to dogged opposition, which, in its own slow quiet way, +would go to any length to have its way. But he answered +respectfully enough, his features, by a shrewd effort, relaxing +into a seeming of his customary good-nature. + +"He's a good dog, sir, and an unoffending dog. I can't imagine +what could a-made 'm break loose this way. He must a-had cause, +sir--" + +"He had," one of the passengers, a coconut planter from the +Shortlands, interjected. + +The steward threw him a grateful glance and continued. + +"He's a good dog, sir, a most obedient dog, sir--look at the way +he minded me right in the thick of the scrap an' come 'n' lay +down. He's smart as chain-lightnin', sir; do anything I tell him. +I'll make him make friends. See. . . " + +Stepping over to the two hysterical terriers, Daughtry called +Michael to him. + +"He's all right, savvee, Killeny, he all right," he crooned, at +the same time resting one hand on a terrier and the other on +Michael. + +The terrier whimpered and backed solidly against Captain Duncan's +legs, but Michael, with a slow bob of tail and unbelligerent ears, +advanced to him, looked up to Steward to make sure, then sniffed +his late antagonist, and even ran out his tongue in a caress to +the side of the other's ear. + +"See, sir, no bad feelings," Daughtry exulted. "He plays the +game, sir. He's a proper dog, he's a man-dog.--Here, Killeny! +The other one. He all right. Kiss and make up. That's the +stuff." + +The other fox-terrier, the one with the injured foreleg, endured +Michael's sniff with no more than hysterical growls deep in the +throat; but the flipping out of Michael's tongue was too much. +The wounded terrier exploded in a futile snap at Michael's tongue +and nose. + +"He all right, Killeny, he all right, sure," Steward warned +quickly. + +With a bob of his tail in token of understanding, without a shade +of resentment, Michael lifted a paw and with a playful casual +stroke, dab-like, brought its weight on the other's neck and +rolled him, head-downward, over on the deck. Though he snarled +wrathily, Michael turned away composedly and looked up into +Steward's face for approval. + +A roar of laughter from the passengers greeted the capsizing of +the fox-terrier and the good-natured gravity of Michael. But not +alone at this did they laugh, for at the moment of the snap and +the turning over, Captain Duncan's unstrung nerves had exploded, +causing him to jump as he tensed his whole body. + +"Why, sir," the steward went on with growing confidence, "I bet I +can make him friends with you, too, by this time to-morrow . . . " + +"By this time five minutes he'll be overboard," the captain +answered. "Bo's'n! Over with him!" + +The boatswain advanced a tentative step, while murmurs of protest +arose from the passengers. + +"Look at my cat, and look at me," Captain Duncan defended his +action. + +The boatswain made another step, and Dag Daughtry glared a threat +at him. + +"Go on!" the Captain commanded. + +"Hold on!" spoke up the Shortlands planter. "Give the dog a +square deal. I saw the whole thing. He wasn't looking for +trouble. First the cat jumped him. She had to jump twice before +he turned loose. She'd have scratched his eyes out. Then the two +dogs jumped him. He hadn't bothered them. Then you jumped him. +He hadn't bothered you. And then came that sailor with the mop. +And now you want the bo's'n to jump him and throw him overboard. +Give him a square deal. He's only been defending himself. What +do you expect any dog that is a dog to do?--lie down and be walked +over by every strange dog and cat that comes along? Play the +game, Skipper. You gave him some mighty hard kicks. He only +defended himself." + +"He's some defender," Captain Duncan grinned, with a hint of the +return of his ordinary geniality, at the same time tenderly +pressing his bleeding shoulder and looking woefully down at his +tattered duck trousers. "All right, Steward. If you can make him +friends with me in five minutes, he stays on board. But you'll +have to make it up to me with a new pair of trousers." + +"And gladly, sir, thank you, sir," Daughtry cried. "And I'll make +it up with a new cat as well, sir--Come on, Killeny Boy. This big +fella marster he all right, you bet." + +And Michael listened. Not with the smouldering, smothering, +choking hysteria that still worked in the fox-terriers did he +listen, nor with quivering of muscles and jumps of over-wrought +nerves, but coolly, composedly, as if no battle royal had just +taken place and no rips of teeth and kicks of feet still burned +and ached his body. + +He could not help bristling, however, when first he sniffed a +trousers' leg into which his teeth had so recently torn. + +"Put your hand down on him, sir," Daughtry begged. + +And Captain Duncan, his own good self once more, bent and rested a +firm, unhesitating hand on Michael's head. Nay, more; he even +caressed the ears and rubbed about the roots of them. And Michael +the merry-hearted, who fought like a lion and forgave and forgot +like a man, laid his neck hair smoothly down, wagged his stump +tail, smiled with his eyes and ears and mouth, and kissed with his +tongue the hand with which a short time before he had been at war. + + + +CHAPTER VII + + + +For the rest of the voyage Michael had the run of the ship. +Friendly to all, he reserved his love for Steward alone, though he +was not above many an undignified romp with the fox-terriers. + +"The most playful-minded dog, without being silly, I ever saw," +was Dag Daughtry's verdict to the Shortlands planter, to whom he +had just sold one of his turtle-shell combs. "You see, some dogs +never get over the play-idea, an' they're never good for anything +else. But not Killeny Boy. He can come down to seriousness in a +second. I'll show you, and I'll show you he's got a brain that +counts to five an' knows wireless telegraphy. You just watch." + +At the moment the steward made his faint lip-noise--so faint that +he could not hear it himself and was almost for wondering whether +or not he had made it; so faint that the Shortlands planter did +not dream that he was making it. At that moment Michael was lying +squirming on his back a dozen feet away, his legs straight up in +the air, both fox-terriers worrying with well-stimulated +ferociousness. With a quick out-thrust of his four legs, he +rolled over on his side and with questioning eyes and pricked ears +looked and listened. Again Daughtry made the lip-noise; again the +Shortlands planter did not hear nor guess; and Michael bounded to +his feet and to his lord's side. + +"Some dog, eh?" the steward boasted. + +"But how did he know you wanted him?" the planter queried. "You +never called him." + +"Mental telepathy, the affinity of souls pitched in the same +whatever-you-call-it harmony," the steward mystified. "You see, +Killeny an' me are made of the same kind of stuff, only run into +different moulds. He might a-been my full brother, or me his, +only for some mistake in the creation factory somewhere. Now I'll +show you he knows his bit of arithmetic." + +And, drawing the paper balls from his pocket, Dag Daughtry +demonstrated to the amazement and satisfaction of the ring of +passengers Michael's ability to count to five. + +"Why, sir," Daughtry concluded the performance, "if I was to order +four glasses of beer in a public-house ashore, an' if I was +absent-minded an' didn't notice the waiter 'd only brought three, +Killeny Boy there 'd raise a row instanter." + +Kwaque was no longer compelled to enjoy his jews' harp on the +gratings over the fire-room, now that Michael's presence on the +Makambo was known, and, in the stateroom, on stolen occasions, he +made experiments of his own with Michael. Once the jews' harp +began emitting its barbaric rhythms, Michael was helpless. He +needs must open his mouth and pour forth an unwilling, gushing +howl. But, as with Jerry, it was not mere howl. It was more akin +to a mellow singing; and it was not long before Kwaque could lead +his voice up and down, in rough time and tune, within a definite +register. + +Michael never liked these lessons, for, looking down upon Kwaque, +he hated in any way to be under the black's compulsion. But all +this was changed when Dag Daughtry surprised them at a singing +lesson. He resurrected the harmonica with which it was his wont, +ashore in public-houses, to while away the time between bottles. +The quickest way to start Michael singing, he discovered, was with +minors; and, once started, he would sing on and on for as long as +the music played. Also, in the absence of an instrument, Michael +would sing to the prompting and accompaniment of Steward's voice, +who would begin by wailing "kow-kow" long and sadly, and then +branch out on some old song or ballad. Michael had hated to sing +with Kwaque, but he loved to do it with Steward, even when Steward +brought him on deck to perform before the laughter-shrieking +passengers. + +Two serious conversations were held by the steward toward the +close of the voyage: one with Captain Duncan and one with +Michael. + +"It's this way, Killeny," Daughtry began, one evening, Michael's +head resting on his lord's knees as he gazed adoringly up into his +lord's face, understanding no whit of what was spoken but loving +the intimacy the sounds betokened. "I stole you for beer money, +an' when I saw you there on the beach that night I knew you'd +bring ten quid anywheres. Ten quid's a horrible lot of money. +Fifty dollars in the way the Yankees reckon it, an' a hundred Mex +in China fashion. + +"Now, fifty dollars gold 'd buy beer to beat the band--enough to +drown me if I fell in head first. Yet I want to ask you one +question. Can you see me takin' ten quid for you? . . . Go on. +Speak up. Can you?" + +And Michael, with thumps of tail to the floor and a high sharp +bark, showed that he was in entire agreement with whatever had +been propounded. + +"Or say twenty quid, now. That's a fair offer. Would I? Eh! +Would I? Not on your life. What d'ye say to fifty quid? That +might begin to interest me, but a hundred quid would interest me +more. Why, a hundred quid all in beer 'd come pretty close to +floatin' this old hooker. But who in Sam Hill'd offer a hundred +quid? I'd like to clap eyes on him once, that's all, just once. +D'ye want to know what for? All right. I'll whisper it. So as I +could tell him to go to hell. Sure, Killeny Boy, just like that-- +oh, most polite, of course, just a kindly directin' of his steps +where he'd never suffer from frigid extremities." + +Michael's love for Steward was so profound as almost to he a mad +but enduring infatuation. What the steward's regard for Michael +was coming to be was best evidenced by his conversation with +Captain Duncan. + +"Sure, sir, he must 've followed me on board," Daughtry finished +his unveracious recital. "An' I never knew it. Last I seen of 'm +was on the beach. Next I seen of 'm there, he was fast asleep in +my bunk. Now how'd he get there, sir? How'd he pick out my room? +I leave it to you, sir. I call it marvellous, just plain +marvellous." + +"With a quartermaster at the head of the gangway!" Captain Duncan +snorted. "As if I didn't know your tricks, Steward. There's +nothing marvellous about it. Just a plain case of steal. +Followed you on board? That dog never came over the side. He +came through a port-hole, and he never came through by himself. +That nigger of yours, I'll wager, had a hand in the helping. But +let's have done with beating about the bush. Give me the dog, and +I'll say no more about the cat." + +"Seein' you believe what you believe, then you'd be for +compoundin' the felony," Daughtry retorted, the habitual obstinate +tightening of his brows showing which way his will set. "Me, sir, +I'm only a ship's steward, an' it wouldn't mean nothin' at all +bein' arrested for dog-stealin'; but you, sir, a captain of a fine +steamer, how'd it sound for you, sir? No, sir; it'd be much wiser +for me to keep the dog that followed me aboard." + +"I'll give ten pounds in the bargain," the captain proffered. + +"No, it wouldn't do, it wouldn't do at all, sir, an' you a +captain," the steward continued to reiterate, rolling his head +sombrely. "Besides, I know where's a peach of an Angora in +Sydney. The owner is gone to the country an' has no further use +of it, an' it'd be a kindness to the cat, air to give it a good +regular home like the Makambo." + + + +CHAPTER VIIII + + + +Another trick Dag Daughtry succeeded in teaching Michael so +enhanced him in Captain Duncan's eyes as to impel him to offer +fifty pounds, "and never mind the cat." At first, Daughtry +practised the trick in private with the chief engineer and the +Shortlands planter. Not until thoroughly satisfied did he make a +public performance of it. + +"Now just suppose you're policemen, or detectives," Daughtry told +the first and third officers, "an' suppose I'm guilty of some +horrible crime. An' suppose Killeny is the only clue, an' you've +got Killeny. When he recognizes his master--me, of course--you've +got your man. You go down the deck with him, leadin' by the rope. +Then you come back this way with him, makin' believe this is the +street, an' when he recognizes me you arrest me. But if he don't +realize me, you can't arrest me. See?" + +The two officers led Michael away, and after several minutes +returned along the deck, Michael stretched out ahead on the taut +rope seeking Steward. + +"What'll you take for the dog?" Daughtry demanded, as they drew +near--this the cue he had trained Michael to know. + +And Michael, straining at the rope, went by, without so much as a +wag of tail to Steward or a glance of eye. The officers stopped +before Daughtry and drew Michael back into the group. + +"He's a lost dog," said the first officer. + +"We're trying to find his owner," supplemented the third. + +"Some dog that--what'll you take for 'm?" Daughtry asked, studying +Michael with critical eyes of interest. "What kind of a temper's +he got?" + +"Try him," was the answer. + +The steward put out his hand to pat him on the head, but withdrew +it hastily as Michael, with bristle and growl, viciously bared his +teeth. + +"Go on, go on, he won't hurt you," the delighted passengers urged. + +This time the steward's hand was barely missed by a snap, and he +leaped back as Michael ferociously sprang the length of the rope +at him. + +"Take 'm away!" Dag Daughtry roared angrily. "The treacherous +beast! I wouldn't take 'm for gift!" + +And as they obeyed, Michael strained backward in a paroxysm of +rage, making fierce short jumps to the end of the tether as he +snarled and growled with utmost fierceness at the steward. + +"Eh? Who'd say he ever seen me in his life?" Daughtry demanded +triumphantly. "It's a trick I never seen played myself, but I've +heard tell about it. The old-time poachers in England used to do +it with their lurcher dogs. If they did get the dog of a strange +poacher, no gamekeeper or constable could identify 'm by the dog-- +mum was the word." + +"Tell you what, he knows things, that Killeny. He knows English. +Right now, in my room, with the door open, an' so as he can find +'m, is shoes, slippers, cap, towel, hair-brush, an' tobacco pouch. +What'll it be? Name it an' he'll fetch it." + +So immediately and variously did the passengers respond that every +article was called for. + +"Just one of you choose," the steward advised. "The rest of you +pick 'm out." + +"Slipper," said Captain Duncan, selected by acclamation. + +"One or both?" Daughtry asked. + +"Both." + +"Come here, Killeny," Daughtry began, bending toward him but +leaping back from the snap of jaws that clipped together close to +his nose + +"My mistake," he apologized. "I ain't told him the other game was +over. Now just listen an, watch. 'n' see if you can catch on to +the tip I'm goin' to give 'm." + +No one saw anything, heard anything, yet Michael, with a whine of +eagerness and joy, with laughing mouth and wriggling body, was +upon the steward, licking his hands madly, squirming and twisting +in the embrace of the loved hands he had so recently threatened, +making attempts at short upward leaps as he flashed his tongue +upward toward his lord's face. For hard it was on Michael, a +nerve and mental strain of the severest for him so to control +himself as to play-act anger and threat of hurt to his beloved +Steward. + +"Takes him a little time to get over a thing like that," Daughtry +explained, as he soothed Michael down. + +"Now, Killeny! Go fetch 'm slipper! Wait! Fetch 'm ONE slipper. +Fetch 'm TWO slipper." + +Michael looked up with pricked ears, and with eyes filled with +query as all his intelligent consciousness suffused them. + +"TWO slipper! Fetch 'm quick!" + +He was off and away in a scurry of speed that seemed to flatten +him close to the deck, and that, as he turned the corner of the +deck-house to the stairs, made his hind feet slip and slide across +the smooth planks. + +Almost in a trice he was back, both slippers in his mouth, which +he deposited at the steward's feet. + +"The more I know dogs the more amazin' marvellous they are to me," +Dag Daughtry, after he had compassed his fourth bottle, confided +in monologue to the Shortlands planter that night just before +bedtime. "Take Killeny Boy. He don't do things for me +mechanically, just because he's learned to do 'm. There's more to +it. He does 'm because he likes me. I can't give you the hang of +it, but I feel it, I KNOW it. + +"Maybe, this is what I'm drivin' at. Killeny can't talk, as you +'n 'me talk, I mean; so he can't tell me how he loves me, an' he's +all love, every last hair of 'm. An' actions speakin' louder 'n' +words, he tells me how he loves me by doin' these things for me. +Tricks? Sure. But they make human speeches of eloquence cheaper +'n dirt. Sure it's speech. Dog-talk that's tongue-tied. Don't I +know? Sure as I'm a livin' man born to trouble as the sparks fly +upward, just as sure am I that it makes 'm happy to do tricks for +me . . . just as it makes a man happy to lend a hand to a pal in a +ticklish place, or a lover happy to put his coat around the girl +he loves to keep her warm. I tell you . . . " + +Here, Dag Daughtry broke down from inability to express the +concepts fluttering in his beer-excited, beer-sodden brain, and, +with a stutter or two, made a fresh start. + +"You know, it's all in the matter of talkin', an' Killeny can't +talk. He's got thoughts inside that head of his--you can see 'm +shinin' in his lovely brown eyes--but he can't get 'em across to +me. Why, I see 'm tryin' to tell me sometimes so hard that he +almost busts. There's a big hole between him an' me, an' language +is about the only bridge, and he can't get over the hole, though +he's got all kinds of ideas an' feelings just like mine. + +"But, say! The time we get closest together is when I play the +harmonica an' he yow-yows. Music comes closest to makin' the +bridge. It's a regular song without words. And . . . I can't +explain how . . . but just the same, when we've finished our song, +I know we've passed a lot over to each other that don't need words +for the passin'." + +"Why, d'ye know, when I'm playin' an' he's singin', it's a regular +duet of what the sky-pilots 'd call religion an' knowin' God. +Sure, when we sing together I'm absorbin' religion an' gettin' +pretty close up to God. An' it's big, I tell you. Big as the +earth an' ocean an' sky an' all the stars. I just seem to get +hold of a sense that we're all the same stuff after all--you, me, +Killeny Boy, mountains, sand, salt water, worms, mosquitoes, suns, +an' shootin' stars an' blazin comets . . . " + +Day Daughtry left his flight as beyond his own grasp of speech, +and concluded, his half embarrassment masked by braggadocio over +Michael: + +"Oh, believe me, they don't make dogs like him every day in the +week. Sure, I stole 'm. He looked good to me. An' if I had it +over, knowin' as I do known 'm now, I'd steal 'm again if I lost a +leg doin' it. That's the kind of a dog HE is." + + + +CHAPTER IX + + + +The morning the Makambo entered Sydney harbour, Captain Duncan had +another try for Michael. The port doctor's launch was coming +alongside, when he nodded up to Daughtry, who was passing along +the deck: + +"Steward, I'll give you twenty pounds." + +"No, sir, thank you, sir," was Dag Daughtry's answer. "I couldn't +bear to part with him." + +"Twenty-five pounds, then. I can't go beyond that. Besides, +there are plenty more Irish terriers in the world." + +"That's what I'm thinkin', sir. An' I'll get one for you. Right +here in Sydney. An' it won't cost you a penny, sir." + +"But I want Killeny Boy," the captain persisted. + +"An' so do I, which is the worst of it, sir. Besides, I got him +first." + +"Twenty-five sovereigns is a lot of money . . . for a dog," +Captain Duncan said. + +"An' Killeny Boy's a lot of dog . . . for the money," the steward +retorted. "Why, sir, cuttin' out all sentiment, his tricks is +worth more 'n that. Him not recognizing me when I don't want 'm +to is worth fifty pounds of itself. An' there's his countin' an' +his singin', an' all the rest of his tricks. Now, no matter how I +got him, he didn't have them tricks. Them tricks are mine. I +taught him them. He ain't the dog he was when he come on board. +He's a whole lot of me now, an' sellin' him would be like sellin' +a piece of myself." + +"Thirty pounds," said the captain with finality. + +"No, sir, thankin' you just the same, sir," was Daughtry's +refusal. + +And Captain Duncan was forced to turn away in order to greet the +port doctor coming over the side. + +Scarcely had the Makambo passed quarantine, and while on her way +up harbour to dock, when a trim man-of-war launch darted in to her +side and a trim lieutenant mounted the Makambo's boarding-ladder. +His mission was quickly explained. The Albatross, British cruiser +of the second class, of which he was fourth lieutenant, had called +in at Tulagi with dispatches from the High Commissioner of the +English South Seas. A scant twelve hours having intervened +between her arrival and the Makambo's departure, the Commissioner +of the Solomons and Captain Kellar had been of the opinion that +the missing dog had been carried away on the steamer. Knowing +that the Albatross would beat her to Sydney, the captain of the +Albatross had undertaken to look up the dog. Was the dog, an +Irish terrier answering to the name of Michael, on board? + +Captain Duncan truthfully admitted that it was, though he most +unveraciously shielded Dag Daughtry by repeating his yarn of the +dog coming on board of itself. How to return the dog to Captain +Kellar?--was the next question; for the Albatross was bound on to +New Zealand. Captain Duncan settled the matter. + +"The Makambo will be back in Tulagi in eight weeks," he told the +lieutenant, "and I'll undertake personally to deliver the dog to +its owner. In the meantime we'll take good care of it. Our +steward has sort of adopted it, so it will be in good hands." + + +"Seems we don't either of us get the dog," Daughtry commented +resignedly, when Captain Duncan had explained the situation. + +But when Daughtry turned his back and started off along the deck, +his constitutional obstinacy tightened his brows so that the +Shortlands planter, observing it, wondered what the captain had +been rowing him about. + + +Despite his six quarts a day and all his easy-goingness of +disposition, Dag Daughtry possessed certain integrities. Though +he could steal a dog, or a cat, without a twinge of conscience, he +could not but be faithful to his salt, being so made. He could +not draw wages for being a ship steward without faithfully +performing the functions of ship steward. Though his mind was +firmly made up, during the several days of the Makambo in Sydney, +lying alongside the Burns Philp Dock, he saw to every detail of +the cleaning up after the last crowd of outgoing passengers, and +to every detail of preparation for the next crowd of incoming +passengers who had tickets bought for the passage far away to the +coral seas and the cannibal isles. + +In the midst of this devotion to his duty, he took a night off and +part of two afternoons. The night off was devoted to the public- +houses which sailors frequent, and where can be learned the latest +gossip and news of ships and of men who sail upon the sea. Such +information did he gather, over many bottles of beer, that the +next afternoon, hiring a small launch at a cost of ten shillings, +he journeyed up the harbour to Jackson Bay, where lay the lofty- +poled, sweet-lined, three-topmast American schooner, the Mary +Turner. + +Once on board, explaining his errand, he was taken below into the +main cabin, where he interviewed, and was interviewed by, a +quartette of men whom Daughtry qualified to himself as "a rum +bunch." + +It was because he had talked long with the steward who had left +the ship, that Dag Daughtry recognized and identified each of the +four men. That, surely, was the "Ancient Mariner," sitting back +and apart with washed eyes of such palest blue that they seemed a +faded white. Long thin wisps of silvery, unkempt hair framed his +face like an aureole. He was slender to emaciation, cavernously +checked, roll after roll of skin, no longer encasing flesh or +muscle, hanging grotesquely down his neck and swathing the Adam's +apple so that only occasionally, with queer swallowing motions, +did it peep out of the mummy-wrappings of skin and sink back again +from view. + +A proper ancient mariner, thought Daughtry. Might be seventy- +five, might just as well be a hundred and five, or a hundred and +seventy-five. + +Beginning at the right temple, a ghastly scar split the cheek- +bone, sank into the depths of the hollow cheek, notched across the +lower jaw, and plunged to disappearance among the prodigious skin- +folds of the neck. The withered lobes of both ears were +perforated by tiny gypsy-like circles of gold. On the skeleton +fingers of his right hand were no less than five rings--not men's +rings, nor women's, but foppish rings--"that would fetch a price," +Daughtry adjudged. On the left hand were no rings, for there were +no fingers to wear them. Only was there a thumb; and, for that +matter, most of the hand was missing as well, as if it had been +cut off by the same slicing edge that had cleaved him from temple +to jaw and heaven alone knew how far down that skin-draped neck. + +The Ancient Mariner's washed eyes seemed to bore right through +Daughtry (or at least so Daughtry felt), and rendered him so +uncomfortable as to make him casually step to the side for the +matter of a yard. This was possible, because, a servant seeking a +servant's billet, he was expected to stand and face the four +seated ones as if they were judges on the bench and he the felon +in the dock. Nevertheless, the gaze of the ancient one pursued +him, until, studying it more closely, he decided that it did not +reach to him at all. He got the impression that those washed pale +eyes were filmed with dreams, and that the intelligence, the +THING, that dwelt within the skull, fluttered and beat against the +dream-films and no farther. + +"How much would you expect?" the captain was asking,--a most +unsealike captain, in Daughtry's opinion; rather, a spick-and- +span, brisk little business-man or floor-walker just out of a +bandbox. + +"He shall not share," spoke up another of the four, huge, raw- +boned, middle-aged, whom Daughtry identified by his ham-like hands +as the California wheat-farmer described by the departed steward. + +"Plenty for all," the Ancient Mariner startled Daughtry by +cackling shrilly. "Oodles and oodles of it, my gentlemen, in cask +and chest, in cask and chest, a fathom under the sand." + +"Share--WHAT, sir?" Daughtry queried, though well he knew, the +other steward having cursed to him the day he sailed from San +Francisco on a blind lay instead of straight wages. "Not that it +matters, sir," he hastened to add. "I spent a whalin' voyage +once, three years of it, an' paid off with a dollar. Wages for +mine, an' sixty gold a month, seein' there's only four of you." + +"And a mate," the captain added. + +"And a mate," Daughtry repeated. "Very good, sir. An' no share." + +"But yourself?" spoke up the fourth man, a huge-bulking, colossal- +bodied, greasy-seeming grossness of flesh--the Armenian Jew and +San Francisco pawnbroker the previous steward had warned Daughtry +about. "Have you papers--letters of recommendation, the documents +you receive when you are paid off before the shipping +commissioners?" + +"I might ask, sir," Dag Daughtry brazened it, "for your own +papers. This ain't no regular cargo-carrier or passenger-carrier, +no more than you gentlemen are a regular company of ship-owners, +with regular offices, doin' business in a regular way. How do I +know if you own the ship even, or that the charter ain't busted +long ago, or that you're being libelled ashore right now, or that +you won't dump me on any old beach anywheres without a soo-markee +of what's comin' to me? Howsoever"--he anticipated by a bluff of +his own the show of wrath from the Jew that he knew would be wind +and bluff--"howsoever, here's my papers . . . " + +With a swift dip of his hand into his inside coat-pocket he +scattered out in a wealth of profusion on the cabin table all the +papers, sealed and stamped, that he had collected in forty-five +years of voyaging, the latest date of which was five years back. + +"I don't ask your papers," he went on. "What I ask is, cash +payment in full the first of each month, sixty dollars a month +gold--" + +"Oodles and oodles of it, gold and gold and better than gold, in +cask and chest, in cask and chest, a fathom under the sand," the +Ancient Mariner assured him in beneficent cackles. "Kings, +principalities and powers!--all of us, the least of us. And +plenty more, my gentlemen, plenty more. The latitude and +longitude are mine, and the bearings from the oak ribs on the +shoal to Lion's Head, and the cross-bearings from the points +unnamable, I only know. I only still live of all that brave, mad, +scallywag ship's company . . . " + +"Will you sign the articles to that?" the Jew demanded, cutting in +on the ancient's maunderings. + +"What port do you wind up the cruise in?" Daughtry asked. + +"San Francisco." + +"I'll sign the articles that I'm to sign off in San Francisco +then." + +The Jew, the captain, and the farmer nodded. + +"But there's several other things to be agreed upon," Daughtry +continued. "In the first place, I want my six quarts a day. I'm +used to it, and I'm too old a stager to change my habits." + +"Of spirits, I suppose?" the Jew asked sarcastically. + +"No; of beer, good English beer. It must be understood +beforehand, no matter what long stretches we may be at sea, that a +sufficient supply is taken along." + +"Anything else?" the captain queried. + +"Yes, sir," Daughtry answered. "I got a dog that must come +along." + +"Anything else?--a wife or family maybe?" the farmer asked. + +"No wife or family, sir. But I got a nigger, a perfectly good +nigger, that's got to come along. He can sign on for ten dollars +a month if he works for the ship all his time. But if he works +for me all the time, I'll let him sign on for two an' a half a +month." + +"Eighteen days in the longboat," the Ancient Mariner shrilled, to +Daughtry's startlement. "Eighteen days in the longboat, eighteen +days of scorching hell." + +"My word," quoth Daughtry, "the old gentleman'd give one the +jumps. There'll sure have to be plenty of beer." + +"Sea stewards put on some style, I must say," commented the wheat- +farmer, oblivious to the Ancient Mariner, who still declaimed of +the heat of the longboat. + +"Suppose we don't see our way to signing on a steward who travels +in such style?" the Jew asked, mopping the inside of his collar- +band with a coloured silk handkerchief. + +"Then you'll never know what a good steward you've missed, sir," +Daughtry responded airily. + +"I guess there's plenty more stewards on Sydney beach," the +captain said briskly. "And I guess I haven't forgotten old days, +when I hired them like so much dirt, yes, by Jinks, so much dirt, +there were so many of them." + +"Thank you, Mr. Steward, for looking us up," the Jew took up the +idea with insulting oiliness. "We very much regret our inability +to meet your wishes in the matter--" + +"And I saw it go under the sand, a fathom under the sand, on +cross-bearings unnamable, where the mangroves fade away, and the +coconuts grow, and the rise of land lifts from the beach to the +Lion's Head." + +"Hold your horses," the wheat-farmer said, with a flare of +irritation, directed, not at the Ancient Mariner, but at the +captain and the Jew. "Who's putting up for this expedition? +Don't I get no say so? Ain't my opinion ever to be asked? I like +this steward. Strikes me he's the real goods. I notice he's as +polite as all get-out, and I can see he can take an order without +arguing. And he ain't no fool by a long shot." + +"That's the very point, Grimshaw," the Jew answered soothingly. +"Considering the unusualness of our . . . of the expedition, we'd +be better served by a steward who is more of a fool. Another +point, which I'd esteem a real favour from you, is not to forget +that you haven't put a red copper more into this trip than I have- +-" + +"And where'd either of you be, if it wasn't for me with my +knowledge of the sea?" the captain demanded aggrievedly. "To say +nothing of the mortgage on my house and on the nicest little best +paying flat building in San Francisco since the earthquake." + +"But who's still putting up?--all of you, I ask you." The wheat- +farmer leaned forward, resting the heels of his hands on his knees +so that the fingers hung down his long shins, in Daughtry's +appraisal, half-way to his feet. "You, Captain Doane, can't raise +another penny on your properties. My land still grows the wheat +that brings the ready. You, Simon Nishikanta, won't put up +another penny--yet your loan-shark offices are doing business at +the same old stands at God knows what per cent. to drunken +sailors. And you hang the expedition up here in this hole-in-the- +wall waiting for my agent to cable more wheat-money. Well, I +guess we'll just sign on this steward at sixty a month and all he +asks, or I'll just naturally quit you cold on the next fast +steamer to San Francisco." + +He stood up abruptly, towering to such height that Daughtry looked +to see the crown of his head collide with the deck above. + +"I'm sick and tired of you all, yes, I am," he continued. "Get +busy! Well, let's get busy. My money's coming. It'll be here by +to-morrow. Let's be ready to start by hiring a steward that is a +steward. I don't care if he brings two families along." + +"I guess you're right, Grimshaw," Simon Nishikanta said +appeasingly. "The trip is beginning to get on all our nerves. +Forget it if I fly off the handle. Of course we'll take this +steward if you want him. I thought he was too stylish for you." + +He turned to Daughtry. + +"Naturally, the least said ashore about us the better." + +"That's all right, sir. I can keep my mouth shut, though I might +as well tell you there's some pretty tales about you drifting +around the beach right now." + +"The object of our expedition?" the Jew queried quickly. + +Daughtry nodded. + +"Is that why you want to come?" was demanded equally quickly. + +Daughtry shook his head. + +"As long as you give me my beer each day, sir, I ain't goin' to be +interested in your treasure-huntin'. It ain't no new tale to me. +The South Seas is populous with treasure-hunters--" Almost could +Daughtry have sworn that he had seen a flash of anxiety break +through the dream-films that bleared the Ancient Mariner's eyes. +"And I must say, sir," he went on easily, though saying what he +would not have said had it not been for what he was almost certain +he sensed of the ancient's anxiousness, "that the South Seas is +just naturally lousy with buried treasure. There's Keeling-Cocos, +millions 'n' millions of it, pounds sterling, I mean, waiting for +the lucky one with the right steer." + +This time Daughtry could have sworn to having sensed a change +toward relief in the Ancient Mariner, whose eyes were again filmy +with dreams. + +"But I ain't interested in treasure, sir," Daughtry concluded. +"It's beer I'm interested in. You can chase your treasure, an' I +don't care how long, just as long as I've got six quarts to open +each day. But I give you fair warning, sir, before I sign on: if +the beer dries up, I'm goin' to get interested in what you're +after. Fair play is my motto." + +"Do you expect us to pay for your beer in addition?" Simon +Nishikanta demanded. + +To Daughtry it was too good to be true. Here, with the Jew +healing the breach with the wheat-farmer whose agents still cabled +money, was the time to take advantage. + +"Sure, it's one of our agreements, sir. What time would it suit +you, sir, to-morrow afternoon, for me to sign on at the shipping +commissioner's?" + +"Casks and chests of it, casks and chests of it, oodles and +oodles, a fathom under the sand," chattered the Ancient Mariner. + +"You're all touched up under the roof," Daughtry grinned. "Which +ain't got nothing to do with me as long as you furnish the beer, +pay me due an' proper what's comin' to me the first of each an' +every month, an' pay me off final in San Francisco. As long as +you keep up your end, I'll sail with you to the Pit 'n' back an' +watch you sweatin' the casks 'n' chests out of the sand. What I +want is to sail with you if you want me to sail with you enough to +satisfy me." + +Simon Nishikanta glanced about. Grimshaw and Captain Doane +nodded. + +"At three o'clock to-morrow afternoon, at the shipping +commissioner's," the Jew agreed. "When will you report for duty?" + +"When will you sail, sir?" Daughtry countered. + +"Bright and early next morning." + +"Then I'll be on board and on duty some time to-morrow night, +sir." + +And as he went up the cabin companion, he could hear the Ancient +Mariner maundering: "Eighteen days in the longboat, eighteen days +of scorching hell . . . " + + + +CHAPTER X + + + +Michael left the Makambo as he had come on board, through a +porthole. Likewise, the affair occurred at night, and it was +Kwaque's hands that received him. It had been quick work, and +daring, in the dark of early evening. From the boat-deck, with a +bowline under Kwaque's arms and a turn of the rope around a pin, +Dag Daughtry had lowered his leprous servitor into the waiting +launch. + +On his way below, he encountered Captain Duncan, who saw fit to +warn him: + +"No shannigan with Killeny Boy, Steward. He must go back to +Tulagi with us." + +"Yes, sir," the steward agreed. "An' I'm keepin' him tight in my +room to make safe. Want to see him, sir?" + +The very frankness of the invitation made the captain suspicious, +and the thought flashed through his mind that perhaps Killeny Boy +was already hidden ashore somewhere by the dog-stealing steward. + +"Yes, indeed I'd like to say how-do-you-do to him," Captain Duncan +answered. + +And his was genuine surprise, on entering the steward's room, to +behold Michael just rousing from his curled-up sleep on the floor. +But when he left, his surprise would have been shocking could he +have seen through the closed door what immediately began to take +place. Out through the open porthole, in a steady stream, +Daughtry was passing the contents of the room. Everything went +that belonged to him, including the turtle-shell and the +photographs and calendars on the wall. Michael, with the command +of silence laid upon him, went last. Remained only a sea-chest +and two suit-cases, themselves too large for the porthole but bare +of contents. + +When Daughtry sauntered along the main deck a few minutes later +and paused for a gossip with the customs officer and a +quartermaster at the head of the gang-plank, Captain Duncan little +dreamed that his casual glance was resting on his steward for the +last time. He watched him go down the gang-plank empty-handed, +with no dog at his heels, and stroll off along the wharf under the +electric lights. + +Ten minutes after Captain Duncan saw the last of his broad back, +Daughtry, in the launch with his belongings and heading for +Jackson Bay, was hunched over Michael and caressing him, while +Kwaque, crooning with joy under his breath that he was with all +that was precious to him in the world, felt once again in the +side-pocket of his flimsy coat to make sure that his beloved jews' +harp had not been left behind. + +Dag Daughtry was paying for Michael, and paying well. Among other +things, he had not cared to arouse suspicion by drawing his wages +from Burns Philp. The twenty pounds due him he had abandoned, and +this was the very sum, that night on the beach at Tulagi, he had +decided he could realize from the sale of Michael. He had stolen +him to sell. He was paying for him the sales price that had +tempted him. + +For, as one has well said: the horse abases the base, ennobles +the noble. Likewise the dog. The theft of a dog to sell for a +price had been the abasement worked by Michael on Dag Daughtry. +To pay the price out of sheer heart-love that could recognize no +price too great to pay, had been the ennoblement of Dag Daughtry +which Michael had worked. And as the launch chug-chugged across +the quiet harbour under the southern stars, Dag Daughtry would +have risked and tossed his life into the bargain in a battle to +continue to have and to hold the dog he had originally conceived +of as being interchangeable for so many dozens of beer. + + +The Mary Turner, towed out by a tug, sailed shortly after +daybreak, and Daughtry, Kwaque, and Michael looked their last for +ever on Sydney Harbour. + +"Once again these old eyes have seen this fair haven," the Ancient +Mariner, beside them gazing, babbled; and Daughtry could not help +but notice the way the wheat-farmer and the pawnbroker pricked +their ears to listen and glanced each to the other with scant +eyes. "It was in '52, in 1852, on such a day as this, all +drinking and singing along the decks, we cleared from Sydney in +the Wide Awake. A pretty craft, oh sirs, a most clever and pretty +craft. A crew, a brave crew, all youngsters, all of us, fore and +aft, no man was forty, a mad, gay crew. The captain was an +elderly gentleman of twenty-eight, the third officer another of +eighteen, the down, untouched of steel, like so much young velvet +on his cheek. He, too, died in the longboat. And the captain +gasped out his last under the palm trees of the isle unnamable +while the brown maidens wept about him and fanned the air to his +parching lungs." + +Dag Daughtry heard no more, for he turned below to take up his new +routine of duty. But while he made up bunks with fresh linen and +directed Kwaque's efforts to cleaning long-neglected floors, he +shook his head to himself and muttered, "He's a keen 'un. He's a +keen 'un. All ain't fools that look it." + +The fine lines of the Mary Turner were explained by the fact that +she had been built for seal-hunting; and for the same reason on +board of her was room and to spare. The forecastle with bunk- +space for twelve, bedded but eight Scandinavian seamen. The five +staterooms of the cabin accommodated the three treasure-hunters, +the Ancient Mariner, and the mate--the latter a large-bodied, +gentle-souled Russian-Finn, known as Mr. Jackson through inability +of his shipmates to pronounce the name he had signed on the ship's +articles. + +Remained the steerage, just for'ard of the cabin, separated from +it by a stout bulkhead and entered by a companionway on the main +deck. On this deck, between the break of the poop and the +steerage companion, stood the galley. In the steerage itself, +which possessed a far larger living-space than the cabin, were six +capacious bunks, each double the width of the forecastle bunks, +and each curtained and with no bunk above it. + +"Some fella glory-hole, eh, Kwaque?" Daughtry told his seventeen- +years-old brown-skinned Papuan with the withered ancient face of a +centenarian, the legs of a living skeleton, and the huge-stomached +torso of an elderly Japanese wrestler. "Eh, Kwaque! What you +fella think?" + +And Kwaque, too awed by the spaciousness to speak, eloquently +rolled his eyes in agreement. + +"You likee this piecee bunk?" the cook, a little old Chinaman, +asked the steward with eager humility, inviting the white man's +acceptance of his own bunk with a wave of arm. + +Daughtry shook his head. He had early learned that it was wise to +get along well with sea-cooks, since sea-cocks were notoriously +given to going suddenly lunatic and slicing and hacking up their +shipmates with butcher knives and meat cleavers on the slightest +remembered provocation. Besides, there was an equally good bunk +all the way across the width of the steerage from the Chinaman's. +The bunk next on the port side to the cook's and abaft of it +Daughtry allotted to Kwaque. Thus he retained for himself and +Michael the entire starboard side with its three bunks. The next +one abaft of his own he named "Killeny Boy's," and called on +Kwaque and the cook to take notice. Daughtry had a sense that the +cook, whose name had been quickly volunteered as Ah Moy, was not +entirely satisfied with the arrangement; but it affected him no +more than a momentary curiosity about a Chinaman who drew the line +at a dog taking a bunk in the same apartment with him. + +Half an hour later, returning, from setting the cabin aright, to +the steerage for Kwaque to serve him with a bottle of beer, +Daughtry observed that Ah Moy had moved his entire bunk belongings +across the steerage to the third bunk on the starboard side. This +had put him with Daughtry and Michael and left Kwaque with half +the steerage to himself. Daughtry's curiosity recrudesced. + +"What name along that fella Chink?" he demanded of Kwaque. "He no +like 'm you fella boy stop 'm along same fella side along him. +What for? My word! What name? That fella Chink make 'm me cross +along him too much!" + +"Suppose 'm that fella Chink maybe he think 'm me kai-kai along +him," Kwaque grinned in one of his rare jokes. + +"All right," the steward concluded. "We find out. You move 'm +along my bunk, I move 'm along that fella Chink's bunk." + +This accomplished, so that Kwaque, Michael, and Ah Moy occupied +the starboard side and Daughtry alone bunked on the port side, he +went on deck and aft to his duties. On his next return he found +Ah Moy had transferred back to the port side, but this time into +the last bunk aft. + +"Seems the beggar's taken a fancy to me," the steward smiled to +himself. + +Nor was he capable of guessing Ah Moy's reason for bunking always +on the opposite side from Kwaque. + +"I changee," the little old cook explained, with anxious eyes to +please and placate, in response to Daughtry's direct question. +"All the time like that, changee, plentee changee. You savvee?" + +Daughtry did not savvee, and shook his head, while Ah Moy's slant +eyes betrayed none of the anxiety and fear with which he privily +gazed on Kwaque's two permanently bent fingers of the left hand +and on Kwaque's forehead, between the eyes, where the skin +appeared a shade darker, a trifle thicker, and was marked by the +first beginning of three short vertical lines or creases that were +already giving him the lion-like appearance, the leonine face so +named by the experts and technicians of the fell disease. + +As the days passed, the steward took facetious occasions, when he +had drunk five quarts of his daily allowance, to shift his and +Kwaque's bunks about. And invariably Ah Moy shifted, though +Daughtry failed to notice that he never shifted into a bunk which +Kwaque had occupied. Nor did he notice that it was when the time +came that Kwaque had variously occupied all the six bunks that Ah +Moy made himself a canvas hammock, suspended it from the deck +beams above and thereafter swung clear in space and unmolested. + +Daughtry dismissed the matter from his thoughts as no more than a +thing in keeping with the general inscrutability of the Chinese +mind. He did notice, however, that Kwaque was never permitted to +enter the galley. Another thing he noticed, which, expressed in +his own words, was: "That's the all-dangdest cleanest Chink I've +ever clapped my lamps on. Clean in galley, clean in steerage, +clean in everything. He's always washing the dishes in boiling +water, when he isn't washing himself or his clothes or bedding. +My word, he actually boils his blankets once a week!" + +For there were other things to occupy the steward's mind. Getting +acquainted with the five men aft in the cabin, and lining up the +whole situation and the relations of each of the five to that +situation and to one another, consumed much time. Then there was +the path of the Mary Turner across the sea. No old sailor +breathes who does not desire to know the casual course of his ship +and the next port-of-call. + +"We ought to be moving along a line that'll cross somewhere +northard of New Zealand," Daughtry guessed to himself, after a +hundred stolen glances into the binnacle. But that was all the +information concerning the ship's navigation he could steal; for +Captain Doane took the observations and worked them out, to the +exclusion of the mate, and Captain Doane always methodically +locked up his chart and log. That there were heated discussions +in the cabin, in which terms of latitude and longitude were +bandied back and forth, Daughtry did know; but more than that he +could not know, because it was early impressed upon him that the +one place for him never to be, at such times of council, was the +cabin. Also, he could not but conclude that these councils were +real battles wherein Messrs. Doane, Nishikanta, and Grimahaw +screamed at each other and pounded the table at each other, when +they were not patiently and most politely interrogating the +Ancient Mariner. + +"He's got their goat," the steward early concluded to himself; +but, thereafter, try as he would, he failed to get the Ancient +Mariner's goat. + +Charles Stough Greenleaf was the Ancient Mariner's name. This, +Daughtry got from him, and nothing else did he get save +maunderings and ravings about the heat of the longboat and the +treasure a fathom deep under the sand. + +"There's some of us plays games, an' some of us as looks on an' +admires the games they see," the steward made his bid one day. +"And I'm sure these days lookin' on at a pretty game. The more I +see it the more I got to admire." + +The Ancient Mariner dreamed back into the steward's eyes with a +blank, unseeing gaze. + +"On the Wide Awake all the stewards were young, mere boys," he +murmured. + +"Yes, sir," Daughtry agreed pleasantly. "From all you say, the +Wide Awake, with all its youngsters, was sure some craft. Not +like the crowd of old 'uns on this here hooker. But I doubt, sir, +that them youngsters ever played as clever games as is being +played aboard us right now. I just got to admire the fine way +it's being done, sir." + +"I'll tell you something," the Ancient Mariner replied, with such +confidential air that almost Daughtry leaned to hear. "No steward +on the Wide Awake could mix a high-ball in just the way I like, as +well as you. We didn't know cocktails in those days, but we had +sherry and bitters. A good appetizer, too, a most excellent +appetizer." + +"I'll tell you something more," he continued, just as it seemed he +had finished, and just in time to interrupt Daughtry away from his +third attempt to ferret out the true inwardness of the situation +on the Mary Turner and of the Ancient Mariner's part in it. "It +is mighty nigh five bells, and I should be very pleased to have +one of your delicious cocktails ere I go down to dine." + +More suspicious than ever of him was Daughtry after this episode. +But, as the days went by, he came more and more to the conclusion +that Charles Stough Greenleaf was a senile old man who sincerely +believed in the abiding of a buried treasure somewhere in the +South Seas. + +Once, polishing the brasswork on the hand-rails of the cabin +companionway, Daughtry overheard the ancient one explaining his +terrible scar and missing fingers to Grimshaw and the Armenian +Jew. The pair of them had plied him with extra drinks in the hope +of getting more out of him by way of his loosened tongue. + +"It was in the longboat," the aged voice cackled up the companion. +"On the eleventh day it was that the mutiny broke. We in the +sternsheets stood together against them. It was all a madness. +We were starved sore, but we were mad for water. It was over the +water it began. For, see you, it was our custom to lick the dew +from the oar-blades, the gunwales, the thwarts, and the inside +planking. And each man of us had developed property in the dew- +collecting surfaces. Thus, the tiller and the rudder-head and +half of the plank of the starboard stern-sheet had become the +property of the second officer. No one of us lacked the honour to +respect his property. The third officer was a lad, only eighteen, +a brave and charming boy. He shared with the second officer the +starboard stern-sheet plank. They drew a line to mark the +division, and neither, lapping up what scant moisture fell during +the night-hours, ever dreamed of trespassing across the line. +They were too honourable. + +"But the sailors--no. They squabbled amongst themselves over the +dew-surfaces, and only the night before one of them was knifed +because he so stole. But on this night, waiting for the dew, a +little of it, to become more, on the surfaces that were mine, I +heard the noises of a dew-lapper moving aft along the port- +gunwale--which was my property aft of the stroke-thwart clear to +the stern. I emerged from a nightmare dream of crystal springs +and swollen rivers to listen to this night-drinker that I feared +might encroach upon what was mine. + +"Nearer he came to the line of my property, and I could hear him +making little moaning, whimpering noises as he licked the damp +wood. It was like listening to an animal grazing pasture-grass at +night and ever grazing nearer. + +It chanced I was holding a boat-stretcher in my hand--to catch +what little dew might fall upon it. I did not know who it was, +but when he lapped across the line and moaned and whimpered as he +licked up my precious drops of dew, I struck out. The boat- +stretcher caught him fairly on the nose--it was the bo's'n--and +the mutiny began. It was the bo's'n's knife that sliced down my +face and sliced away my fingers. The third officer, the eighteen- +year-old lad, fought well beside me, and saved me, so that, just +before I fainted, he and I, between us, hove the bo's'n's carcass +overside." + +A shifting of feet and changing of positions of those in the cabin +plunged Daughtry back into his polishing, which he had for the +time forgotten. And, as he rubbed the brass-work, he told himself +under his breath: "The old party's sure been through the mill. +Such things just got to happen." + +"No," the Ancient Mariner was continuing, in his thin falsetto, in +reply to a query. "It wasn't the wounds that made me faint. It +was the exertion I made in the struggle. I was too weak. No; so +little moisture was there in my system that I didn't bleed much. +And the amazing thing, under the circumstances, was the quickness +with which I healed. The second officer sewed me up next day with +a needle he'd made out of an ivory toothpick and with twine he +twisted out of the threads from a frayed tarpaulin." + +"Might I ask, Mr. Greenleaf, if there were rings at the time on +the fingers that were cut off?" Daughtry heard Simon Nishikanta +ask. + +"Yes, and one beauty. I found it afterward in the boat bottom and +presented it to the sandalwood trader who rescued me. It was a +large diamond. I paid one hundred and eighty guineas for it to an +English sailor in the Barbadoes. He'd stolen it, and of course it +was worth more. It was a beautiful gem. The sandalwood man did +not merely save my life for it. In addition, he spent fully a +hundred pounds in outfitting me and buying me a passage from +Thursday Island to Shanghai." + + +"There's no getting away from them rings he wears," Daughtry +overheard Simon Nishikanta that evening telling Grimshaw in the +dark on the weather poop. "You don't see that kind nowadays. +They're old, real old. They're not men's rings so much as what +you'd call, in the old-fashioned days, gentlemen's rings. Real +gentlemen, I mean, grand gentlemen, wore rings like them. I wish +collateral like them came into my loan offices these days. +They're worth big money." + + +"I just want to tell you, Killeny Boy, that maybe I'll be wishin' +before the voyage is over that I'd gone on a lay of the treasure +instead of straight wages," Dag Daughtry confided to Michael that +night at turning-in time as Kwaque removed his shoes and as he +paused midway in the draining of his sixth bottle. "Take it from +me, Killeny, that old gentleman knows what he's talkin' about, an' +has been some hummer in his days. Men don't lose the fingers off +their hands and get their faces chopped open just for nothing--nor +sport rings that makes a Jew pawnbroker's mouth water." + + + +CHAPTER XI + + + +Before the voyage of the Mary Turner came to an end, Dag Daughtry, +sitting down between the rows of water-casks in the main-hold, +with a great laugh rechristened the schooner "the Ship of Fools." +But that was some weeks after. In the meantime he so fulfilled +his duties that not even Captain Doane could conjure a shadow of +complaint. + +Especially did the steward attend upon the Ancient Mariner, for +whom he had come to conceive a strong admiration, if not +affection. The old fellow was different from his cabin-mates. +They were money-lovers; everything in them had narrowed down to +the pursuit of dollars. Daughtry, himself moulded on generously +careless lines, could not but appreciate the spaciousness of the +Ancient Mariner, who had evidently lived spaciously and who was +ever for sharing the treasure they sought. + +"You'll get your whack, steward, if it comes out of my share," he +frequently assured Daughtry at times of special kindness on the +latter's part. "There's oodles of it, and oodles of it, and, +without kith or kin, I have so little time longer to live that I +shall not need it much or much of it." + +And so the Ship of Fools sailed on, all aft fooling and befouling, +from the guileless-eyed, gentle-souled Finnish mate, who, with the +scent of treasure pungent in his nostrils, with a duplicate key +stole the ship's daily position from Captain Doane's locked desk, +to Ah Moy, the cook, who kept Kwaque at a distance and never +whispered warning to the others of the risk they ran from +continual contact with the carrier of the terrible disease. + +Kwaque himself had neither thought nor worry of the matter. He +knew the thing as a thing that occasionally happened to human +creatures. It bothered him, from the pain standpoint, scarcely at +all, and it never entered his kinky head that his master did not +know about it. For the same reason he never suspected why Ah Moy +kept him so at a distance. Nor had Kwaque other worries. His +god, over all gods of sea and jungle, he worshipped, and, himself +ever intimately allowed in the presence, paradise was wherever he +and his god, the steward, might be. + +And so Michael. Much in the same way that Kwaque loved and +worshipped did he love and worship the six-quart man. To Michael +and Kwaque, the daily, even hourly, recognition and consideration +of Dag Daughtry was tantamount to resting continuously in the +bosom of Abraham. The god of Messrs. Doane, Nishikanta, and +Grimshaw was a graven god whose name was Gold. The god of Kwaque +and Michael was a living god, whose voice could be always heard, +whose arms could be always warm, the pulse of whose heart could be +always felt throbbing in a myriad acts and touches. + +No greater joy was Michael's than to sit by the hour with Steward +and sing with him all songs and tunes he sang or hummed. With a +quantity or pitch even more of genius or unusualness in him than +in Jerry, Michael learned more quickly, and since the way of his +education was singing, he came to sing far beyond the best Villa +Kennan ever taught Jerry. + +Michael could howl, or sing, rather (because his howling was so +mellow and so controlled), any air that was not beyond his +register that Steward elected to sing with him. In addition, he +could sing by himself, and unmistakably, such simple airs as +"Home, Sweet Home," "God save the King," and "The Sweet By and +By." Even alone, prompted by Steward a score of feet away from +him, could he lift up his muzzle and sing "Shenandoah" and "Roll +me down to Rio." + +Kwaque, on stolen occasions when Steward was not around, would get +out his Jews' harp and by the sheer compellingness of the +primitive instrument make Michael sing with him the barbaric and +devil-devil rhythms of King William Island. Another master of +song, but one in whom Michael delighted, came to rule over him. +This master's name was Cocky. He so introduced himself to Michael +at their first meeting. + +"Cocky," he said bravely, without a quiver of fear or flight, when +Michael had charged upon him at sight to destroy him. And the +human voice, the voice of a god, issuing from the throat of the +tiny, snow-white bird, had made Michael go back on his haunches, +while, with eyes and nostrils, he quested the steerage for the +human who had spoken. And there was no human . . . only a small +cockatoo that twisted his head impudently and sidewise at him and +repeated, "Cocky." + +The taboo of the chicken Michael had been well taught in his +earliest days at Meringe. Chickens, esteemed by MISTER Haggin and +his white-god fellows, were things that dogs must even defend +instead of ever attack. But this thing, itself no chicken, with +the seeming of a wild feathered thing of the jungle that was fair +game for any dog, talked to him with the voice of a god. + +"Get off your foot," it commanded so peremptorily, so humanly, as +again to startle Michael and made him quest about the steerage for +the god-throat that had uttered it. + +"Get off your foot, or I'll throw the leg of Moses at you," was +the next command from the tiny feathered thing. + +After that came a farrago of Chinese, so like the voice of Ah Moy, +that again, though for the last time, Michael sought about the +steerage for the utterer. + +At this Cocky burst into such wild and fantastic shrieks of +laughter that Michael, ears pricked, head cocked to one side, +identified in the fibres of the laughter the fibres of the various +voices he had just previously heard. + +And Cocky, only a few ounces in weight, less than half a pound, a +tiny framework of fragile bone covered with a handful of feathers +and incasing a heart that was as big in pluck as any heart on the +Mary Turner, became almost immediately Michael's friend and +comrade, as well as ruler. Minute morsel of daring and courage +that Cocky was, he commanded Michael's respect from the first. +And Michael, who with a single careless paw-stroke could have +broken Cocky's slender neck and put out for ever the brave +brightness of Cocky's eyes, was careful of him from the first. +And he permitted him a myriad liberties that he would never have +permitted Kwaque. + +Ingrained in Michael's heredity, from the very beginning of four- +legged dogs on earth, was the DEFENCE OF THE MEAT. He never +reasoned it. Automatic and involuntary as his heart-beating and +air-breathing, was his defence of his meat once he had his paw on +it, his teeth in it. Only to Steward, by an extreme effort of +will and control, could he accord the right to touch his meat once +he had himself touched it. Even Kwaque, who most usually fed him +under Steward's instructions, knew that the safety of fingers and +flesh resided in having nothing further whatever to do with +anything of food once in Michael's possession. But Cocky, a bit +of feathery down, a morsel-flash of light and life with the throat +of a god, violated with sheer impudence and daring Michael's +taboo, the defence of the meat. + +Perched on the rim of Michael's pannikin, this inconsiderable +adventurer from out of the dark into the sun of life, a mere spark +and mote between the darks, by a ruffing of his salmon-pink crest, +a swift and enormous dilation of his bead-black pupils, and a +raucous imperative cry, as of all the gods, in his throat, could +make Michael give back and permit the fastidious selection of the +choicest tidbits of his dish. + +For Cocky had a way with him, and ways and ways. He, who was +sheer bladed steel in the imperious flashing of his will, could +swashbuckle and bully like any over-seas roisterer, or wheedle as +wickedly winningly as the first woman out of Eden or the last +woman of that descent. When Cocky, balanced on one leg, the other +leg in the air as the foot of it held the scruff of Michael's +neck, leaned to Michael's ear and wheedled, Michael could only lay +down silkily the bristly hair-waves of his neck, and with silly +half-idiotic eyes of bliss agree to whatever was Cocky's will or +whimsey so delivered. + +Cocky became more intimately Michael's because, very early, Ah Moy +washed his hands of the bird. Ah Moy had bought him in Sydney +from a sailor for eighteen shillings and chaffered an hour over +the bargain. And when he saw Cocky, one day, perched and voluble, +on the twisted fingers of Kwaque's left hand, Ah Moy discovered +such instant distaste for the bird that not even eighteen +shillings, coupled with possession of Cocky and possible contact, +had any value to him. + +"You likee him? You wanchee?" he proffered. + +"Changee for changee!" Kwaque queried back, taking for granted +that it was an offer to exchange and wondering whether the little +old cook had become enamoured of his precious jews' harp. + +"No changee for changee," Ah Moy answered. "You wanchee him, all +right, can do." + +"How fashion can do?" Kwaque demanded, who to his beche-de-mer +English was already adding pidgin English. "Suppose 'm me fella +no got 'm what 'you fella likee?" + +"No fashion changee," Ah Moy reiterated. "You wanchee, you likee +he stop along you fella all right, my word." + +And so did pass the brave bit of feathered life with the heart of +pluck, called of men, and of himself, "Cocky," who had been +birthed in the jungle roof of the island of Santo, in the New +Hebrides, who had been netted by a two-legged black man-eater and +sold for six sticks of tobacco and a shingle hatchet to a Scotch +trader dying of malaria, and in turn had been traded from hand to +hand, for four shillings to a blackbirder, for a turtle-shell comb +made by an English coal-passer after an old Spanish design, for +the appraised value of six shillings and sixpence in a poker game +in the firemen's forecastle, for a secondhand accordion worth at +least twenty shillings, and on for eighteen shillings cash to a +little old withered Chinaman--so did pass Cocky, as mortal or as +immortal as any brave sparkle of life on the planet, from the +possession of one, Ah Moy, a sea-cock who, forty years before, had +slain his young wife in Macao for cause and fled away to sea, to +Kwaque, a leprous Black Papuan who was slave to one, Dag Daughtry, +himself a servant of other men to whom he humbly admitted "Yes, +sir," and "No, sir," and "Thank you, sir." + +One other comrade Michael found, although Cocky was no party to +the friendship. This was Scraps, the awkward young Newfoundland +puppy, who was the property of no one, unless of the schooner Mary +Turner herself, for no man, fore or aft, claimed ownership, while +every man disclaimed having brought him on board. So he was +called Scraps, and, since he was nobody's dog, was everybody's +dog--so much so, that Mr. Jackson promised to knock Ah Moy's block +off if he did not feed the puppy well, while Sigurd Halvorsen, in +the forecastle, did his best to knock off Henrik Gjertsen's block +when the latter was guilty of kicking Scraps out of his way. Yea, +even more. When Simon Nishikanta, huge and gross as in the flesh +he was and for ever painting delicate, insipid, feministic water- +colours, when he threw his deck-chair at Scraps for clumsily +knocking over his easel, he found the ham-like hand of Grimshaw so +instant and heavy on his shoulder as to whirl him half about, +almost fling him to the deck, and leave him lame-muscled and +black-and-blued for days. + +Michael, full grown, mature, was so merry-hearted an individual +that he found all delight in interminable romps with Scraps. So +strong was the play-instinct in him, as well as was his +constitution strong, that he continually outplayed Scraps to +abject weariness, so that he could only lie on the deck and pant +and laugh through air-draughty lips and dab futilely in the air +with weak forepaws at Michael's continued ferocious-acted +onslaughts. And this, despite the fact that Scraps out-bullied +him and out-scaled him at least three times, and was as careless +and unwitting of the weight of his legs or shoulders as a baby +elephant on a lawn of daisies. Given his breath back again, +Scraps was as ripe as ever for another frolic, and Michael was +just as ripe to meet him. All of which was splendid training for +Michael, keeping him in the tiptop of physical condition and +mental wholesomeness. + + + +CHAPTER XII + + + +So sailed the Ship of Fools--Michael playing with Scraps, +respecting Cocky and by Cocky being bullied and wheedled, singing +with Steward and worshipping him; Daughtry drinking his six quarts +of beer each day, collecting his wages the first of each month, +and admiring Charles Stough Greenleaf as the finest man on board; +Kwaque serving and loving his master and thickening and darkening +and creasing his brow with the growing leprous infiltration; Ah +Moy avoiding the Black Papuan as the very plague, washing himself +continuously and boiling his blankets once a week; Captain Doane +doing the navigating and worrying about his flat-building in San +Francisco; Grimshaw resting his ham-hands on his colossal knees +and girding at the pawnbroker to contribute as much to the +adventure as he was contributing from his wheat-ranches; Simon +Nishikanta wiping his sweaty neck with the greasy silk +handkerchief and painting endless water-colours; the mate +patiently stealing the ship's latitude and longitude with his +duplicate key; and the Ancient Mariner, solacing himself with +Scotch highballs, smoking fragrant three-for-a-dollar Havanas that +were charged to the adventure, and for ever maundering about the +hell of the longboat, the cross-bearings unnamable, and the +treasure a fathom under the sand. + +Came a stretch of ocean that to Daughtry was like all other +stretches of ocean and unidentifiable from them. No land broke +the sea-rim. The ship the centre, the horizon was the invariable +and eternal circle of the world. The magnetic needle in the +binnacle was the point on which the Mary Turner ever pivoted. The +sun rose in the undoubted east and set in the undoubted west, +corrected and proved, of course, by declination, deviation, and +variation; and the nightly march of the stars and constellations +proceeded across the sky. + +And in this stretch of ocean, lookouts were mastheaded at day-dawn +and kept mastheaded until twilight of evening, when the Mary +Turner was hove-to, to hold her position through the night. As +time went by, and the scent, according to the Ancient Mariner, +grow hotter, all three of the investors in the adventure came to +going aloft. Grimshaw contented himself with standing on the main +cross-trees. Captain Doane climbed even higher, seating himself +on the stump of the foremast with legs a-straddle of the butt of +the foretopmast. And Simon Nishikanta tore himself away from his +everlasting painting of all colour-delicacies of sea and sky such +as are painted by seminary maidens, to be helped and hoisted up +the ratlines of the mizzen rigging, the huge bulk of him, by two +grinning, slim-waisted sailors, until they lashed him squarely on +the crosstrees and left him to stare with eyes of golden desire, +across the sun-washed sea through the finest pair of unredeemed +binoculars that had ever been pledged in his pawnshops. + +"Strange," the Ancient Mariner would mutter, "strange, and most +strange. This is the very place. There can be no mistake. I'd +have trusted that youngster of a third officer anywhere. He was +only eighteen, but he could navigate better than the captain. +Didn't he fetch the atoll after eighteen days in the longboat? No +standard compasses, and you know what a small-boat horizon is, +with a big sea, for a sextant. He died, but the dying course he +gave me held good, so that I fetched the atoll the very next day +after I hove his body overboard." + +Captain Doane would shrug his shoulders and defiantly meet the +mistrustful eyes of the Armenian Jew. + +"It cannot have sunk, surely," the Ancient Mariner would tactfully +carry across the forbidding pause. "The island was no mere shoal +or reef. The Lion's Head was thirty-eight hundred and thirty-five +feet. I saw the captain and the third officer triangulate it." + +"I've raked and combed the sea," Captain Doane would then break +out, "and the teeth of my comb are not so wide apart as to let +slip through a four-thousand-foot peak." + +"Strange, strange," the Ancient Mariner would next mutter, half to +his cogitating soul, half aloud to the treasure-seekers. Then, +with a sudden brightening, he would add: + +"But, of course, the variation has changed, Captain Doane. Have +you allowed for the change in variation for half a century! That +should make a grave difference. Why, as I understand it, who am +no navigator, the variation was not so definitely and accurately +known in those days as now." + +"Latitude was latitude, and longitude was longitude," would be the +captain's retort. "Variation and deviation are used in setting +courses and estimating dead reckoning." + +All of which was Greek to Simon Nishikanta, who would promptly +take the Ancient Mariner's side of the discussion. + +But the Ancient Mariner was fair-minded. What advantage he gave +the Jew one moment, he balanced the next moment with an advantage +to the skipper. + +"It's a pity," he would suggest to Captain Doane, "that you have +only one chronometer. The entire fault may be with the +chronometer. Why did you sail with only one chronometer?" + +"But I WAS willing for two," the Jew would defend. "You know +that, Grimshaw?" + +The wheat-farmer would nod reluctantly and Captain would snap: + +"But not for three chronometers." + +"But if two was no better than one, as you said so yourself and as +Grimshaw will bear witness, then three was no better than two +except for an expense." + +"But if you only have two chronometers, how can you tell which has +gone wrong?" Captain Doane would demand. + +"Search me," would come the pawnbroker's retort, accompanied by an +incredulous shrug of the shoulders. "If you can't tell which is +wrong of two, then how much harder must it be to tell which is +wrong of two dozen? With only two, it's a fifty-fifty split that +one or the other is wrong." + +"But don't you realize--" + +"I realize that it's all a great foolishness, all this highbrow +stuff about navigation. I've got clerks fourteen years old in my +offices that can figure circles all around you and your +navigation. Ask them that if two chronometers ain't better than +one, then how can two thousand be better than one? And they'd +answer quick, snap, like that, that if two dollars ain't any +better than one dollar, then two thousand dollars ain't any better +than one dollar. That's common sense." + +"Just the same, you're wrong on general principle," Grimshaw would +oar in. "I said at the time that the only reason we took Captain +Doane in with us on the deal was because we needed a navigator and +because you and me didn't know the first thing about it. You +said, 'Yes, sure'; and right away knew more about it than him when +you wouldn't stand for buying three chronometers. What was the +matter with you was that the expense hurt you. That's about as +big an idea as your mind ever had room for. You go around looking +for to dig out ten million dollars with a second-hand spade you +call buy for sixty-eight cents." + +Dag Daughtry could not fail to overhear some of these +conversations, which were altercations rather than councils. The +invariable ending, for Simon Nishikanta, would be what sailors +name "the sea-grouch." For hours afterward the sulky Jew would +speak to no one nor acknowledge speech from any one. Vainly +striving to paint, he would suddenly burst into violent rage, tear +up his attempt, stamp it into the deck, then get out his large- +calibred automatic rifle, perch himself on the forecastle-head, +and try to shoot any stray porpoise, albacore, or dolphin. It +seemed to give him great relief to send a bullet home into the +body of some surging, gorgeous-hued fish, arrest its glorious +flashing motion for ever, and turn it on its side slowly to sink +down into the death and depth of the sea. + +On occasion, when a school of blackfish disported by, each one of +them a whale of respectable size, Nishikanta would be beside +himself in the ecstasy of inflicting pain. Out of the school +perhaps he would reach a score of the leviathans, his bullets +biting into them like whip-lashes, so that each, like a colt +surprised by the stock-whip, would leap in the air, or with a +flirt of tail dive under the surface, and then charge madly across +the ocean and away from sight in a foam-churn of speed. + +The Ancient Mariner would shake his head sadly; and Daughtry, who +likewise was hurt by the infliction of hurt on unoffending +animals, would sympathize with him and fetch him unbidden another +of the expensive three-for-a-dollar cigars so that his feelings +might be soothed. Grimshaw would curl his lip in a sneer and +mutter: "The cheap skate. The skunk. No man with half the +backbone of a man would take it out of the harmless creatures. +He's that kind that if he didn't like you, or if you criticised +his grammar or arithmetic, he'd kick your dog to get even . . . or +poison it. In the good old days up in Colusa we used to hang men +like him just to keep the air we breathed clean and wholesome." + +But it was Captain Doane who protested outright. + +"Look at here, Nishikanta," he would say, his face white and his +lips trembling with anger. "That's rough stuff, and all you can +get back for it is rough stuff. I know what I'm talking about. +You've got no right to risk our lives that way. Wasn't the pilot +boat Annie Mine sunk by a whale right in the Golden Gate? Didn't +I sail in as a youngster, second mate on the brig Berncastle, into +Hakodate, pumping double watches to keep afloat just because a +whale took a smash at us? Didn't the full-rigged ship, the whaler +Essex, sink off the west coast of South America, twelve hundred +miles from the nearest land for the small boats to cover, and all +because of a big cow whale that butted her into kindling-wood?" + +And Simon Nishikanta, in his grouch, disdaining to reply, would +continue to pepper the last whale into flight beyond the circle of +the sea their vision commanded. + +"I remember the whaleship Essex," the Ancient Mariner told Dag +Daughtry. "It was a cow with a calf that did for her. Her +barrels were two-thirds full, too. She went down in less than an +hour. One of the boats never was heard of." + +"And didn't another one of her boats get to Hawaii, sir?" Daughtry +queried with all due humility of respect. "Leastwise, thirty +years ago, when I was in Honolulu, I met a man, an old geezer, who +claimed he'd been a harpooner on a whaleship sunk by a whale off +the coast of South America. That was the first and last I heard +of it, until right now you speaking of it, sir. It must a-been +the same ship, sir, don't you think?" + +"Unless two different ships were whale-sunk off the west coast," +the Ancient Mariner replied. "And of the one ship, the Essex, +there is no discussion. It is historical. The chance is likely, +steward, that the man you mentioned was from the Essex." + + + +CHAPTER XIII + + + +Captain Doane worked hard, pursuing the sun in its daily course +through the sky, by the equation of time correcting its +aberrations due to the earth's swinging around the great circle of +its orbit, and charting Sumner lines innumerable, working assumed +latitudes for position until his head grew dizzy. + +Simon Nishikanta sneered openly at what he considered the +captain's inefficient navigation, and continued to paint water- +colours when he was serene, and to shoot at whales, sea-birds, and +all things hurtable when he was downhearted and sea-sore with +disappointment at not sighting the Lion's Head peak of the Ancient +Mariner's treasure island + +"I'll show I ain't a pincher," Nishikanta announced one day, after +having broiled at the mast-head for five hours of sea-searching. +"Captain Doane, how much could we have bought extra chronometers +for in San Francisco--good second-hand ones, I mean?" + +"Say a hundred dollars," the captain answered. + +"Very well. And this ain't a piker's proposition. The cost of +such a chronometer would have been divided between the three of +us. I stand for its total cost. You just tell the sailors that +I, Simon Nishikanta, will pay one hundred dollars gold money for +the first one that sights land on Mr. Greenleaf's latitude and +longitude." + +But the sailors who swarmed the mast-heads were doomed to +disappointment, in that for only two days did they have +opportunity to stare the ocean surface for the reward. Nor was +this due entirely to Dag Daughtry, despite the fact that his own +intention and act would have been sufficient to spoil their chance +for longer staring. + +Down in the lazarette, under the main-cabin floor, it chanced that +he took toll of the cases of beer which had been shipped for his +especial benefit. He counted the cases, doubted the verdict of +his senses, lighted more matches, counted again, then vainly +searched the entire lazarette in the hope of finding more cases of +beer stored elsewhere. + +He sat down under the trap door of the main-cabin floor and +thought for a solid hour. It was the Jew again, he concluded--the +Jew who had been willing to equip the Mary Turner with two +chronometers, but not with three; the Jew who had ratified the +agreement of a sufficient supply to permit Daughtry his daily six +quarts. Once again the steward counted the cases to make sure. +There were three. And since each case contained two dozen quarts, +and since his whack each day was half a dozen quarts, it was +patent that, the supply that stared him in the face would last him +only twelve days. And twelve days were none too long to sail from +this unidentifiable naked sea-stretch to the nearest possible port +where beer could be purchased. + +The steward, once his mind was made up, wasted no time. The clock +marked a quarter before twelve when he climbed up out of the +lazarette, replaced the trapdoor, and hurried to set the table. +He served the company through the noon meal, although it was all +he could do to refrain from capsizing the big tureen of split-pea +soup over the head of Simon Nishikanta. What did effectually +withstrain him was the knowledge of the act which in the lazarette +he had already determined to perform that afternoon down in the +main hold where the water-casks were stored. + +At three o'clock, while the Ancient Mariner supposedly drowned in +his room, and while Captain Doane, Grimshaw, and half the watch on +deck clustered at the mast-heads to try to raise the Lion's Head +from out the sapphire sea, Dag Daughtry dropped down the ladder of +the open hatchway into the main hold. Here, in long tiers, with +alleyways between, the water-casks were chocked safely on their +sides. + +From inside his shirt the steward drew a brace, and to it fitted a +half-inch bit from his hip-pocket. On his knees, he bored through +the head of the first cask until the water rushed out upon the +deck and flowed down into the bilge. He worked quickly, boring +cask after cask down the alleyway that led to deeper twilight. +When he had reached the end of the first row of casks he paused a +moment to listen to the gurglings of the many half-inch streams +running to waste. His quick ears caught a similar gurgling from +the right in the direction of the next alleyway. Listening +closely, he could have sworn he heard the sounds of a bit biting +into hard wood. + +A minute later, his own brace and bit carefully secreted, his hand +was descending on the shoulder of a man he could not recognize in +the gloom, but who, on his knees and wheezing, was steadily boring +into the head of a cask. The culprit made no effort to escape, +and when Daughtry struck a match he gazed down into the upturned +face of the Ancient Mariner. + +"My word!" the steward muttered his amazement softly. "What in +hell are you running water out for?" + +He could feel the old man's form trembling with violent +nervousness, and his own heart smote him for gentleness. + +"It's all right," he whispered. "Don't mind me. How many have +you bored?" + +"All in this tier," came the whispered answer. "You will not +inform on me to the . . . the others?" + +"Inform?" Daughtry laughed softly. "I don't mind telling you that +we're playing the same game, though I don't know why you should +play it. I've just finished boring all of the starboard row. Now +I tell you, sir, you skin out right now, quietly, while the goin' +is good. Everybody's aloft, and you won't be noticed. I'll go +ahead and finish this job . . . all but enough water to last us +say a dozen days." + +"I should like to talk with you . . . to explain matters," the +Ancient Mariner whispered. + +"Sure, sir, an' I don't mind sayin', sir, that I'm just plain mad +curious to hear. I'll join you down in the cabin, say in ten +minutes, and we can have a real gam. But anyway, whatever your +game is, I'm with you. Because it happens to be my game to get +quick into port, and because, sir, I have a great liking and +respect for you. Now shoot along. I'll be with you inside ten +minutes." + +"I like you, steward, very much," the old man quavered. + +"And I like you, sir--and a damn sight more than them money-sharks +aft. But we'll just postpone this. You beat it out of here, +while I finish scuppering the rest of the water." + +A quarter of an hour later, with the three money-sharks still at +the mast-heads, Charles Stough Green-leaf was seated in the cabin +and sipping a highball, and Dag Daughtry was standing across the +table from him, drinking directly from a quart bottle of beer. + +"Maybe you haven't guessed it," the Ancient Mariner said; "but +this is my fourth voyage after this treasure." + +"You mean . . . ?" Daughtry asked. + +"Just that. There isn't any treasure. There never was one--any +more than the Lion's Head, the longboat, or the bearings +unnamable."' + +Daughtry rumpled his grizzled thatch of hair in his perplexity, as +he admitted: + +"Well, you got me, sir. You sure got me to believin' in that +treasure." + +"And I acknowledge, steward, that I am pleased to hear it. It +shows that I have not lost my cunning when I can deceive a man +like you. It is easy to deceive men whose souls know only money. +But you are different. You don't live and breathe for money. +I've watched you with your dog. I've watched you with your nigger +boy. I've watched you with your beer. And just because your +heart isn't set on a great buried treasure of gold, you are harder +to deceive. Those whose hearts are set, are most astonishingly +easy to fool. They are of cheap kidney. Offer them a proposition +of one hundred dollars for one, and they are like hungry pike +snapping at the bait. Offer a thousand dollars for one, or ten +thousand for one, and they become sheer lunatic. I am an old man, +a very old man. I like to live until I die--I mean, to live +decently, comfortably, respectably." + +"And you like the voyages long? I begin to see, sir. Just as +they're getting near to where the treasure ain't, a little +accident like the loss of their water-supply sends them into port +and out again to start hunting all over." + +The Ancient Mariner nodded, and his sun-washed eyes twinkled. + +"There was the Emma Louisa. I kept her on the long voyage over +eighteen months with water accidents and similar accidents. And, +besides, they kept me in one of the best hotels in New Orleans for +over four months before the voyage began, and advanced to me +handsomely, yes, bravely, handsomely." + +"But tell me more, sir; I am most interested," Dag Daughtry +concluded his simple matter of the beer. "It's a good game. I +might learn it for my old age, though I give you my word, sir, I +won't butt in on your game. I wouldn't tackle it until you are +gone, sir, good game that it is." + +"First of all, you must pick out men with money--with plenty of +money, so that any loss will not hurt them. Also, they are easier +to interest--" + +"Because they are more hoggish," the steward interrupted. "The +more money they've got the more they want." + +"Precisely," the Ancient Mariner continued. "And, at least, they +are repaid. Such sea-voyages are excellent for their health. +After all, I do them neither hurt nor harm, but only good, and add +to their health." + +"But them scars--that gouge out of your face--all them fingers +missing on your hand? You never got them in the fight in the +longboat when the bo's'n carved you up. Then where in Sam Hill +did you get the them? Wait a minute, sir. Let me fill your glass +first." And with a fresh-brimmed glass, Charles Stough Greanleaf +narrated the history of his scars. + +"First, you must know, steward, that I am--well, a gentleman. My +name has its place in the pages of the history of the United +States, even back before the time when they were the United +States. I graduated second in my class in a university that it is +not necessary to name. For that matter, the name I am known by is +not my name. I carefully compounded it out of names of other +families. I have had misfortunes. I trod the quarter-deck when I +was a young man, though never the deck of the Wide Awake, which is +the ship of my fancy--and of my livelihood in these latter days. + +"The scars you asked about, and the missing fingers? Thus it +chanced. It was the morning, at late getting-up times in a +Pullman, when the accident happened. The car being crowded, I had +been forced to accept an upper berth. It was only the other day. +A few years ago. I was an old man then. We were coming up from +Florida. It was a collision on a high trestle. The train +crumpled up, and some of the cars fell over sideways and fell off, +ninety feet into the bottom of a dry creek. It was dry, though +there was a pool of water just ten feet in diameter and eighteen +inches deep. All the rest was dry boulders, and I bull's-eyed +that pool. + +"This is the way it was. I had just got on my shoes and pants and +shirt, and had started to get out of the bunk. There I was, +sitting on the edge of the bunk, my legs dangling down, when the +locomotives came together. The berths, upper and lower, on the +opposite side had already been made up by the porter. + +"And there I was, sitting, legs dangling, not knowing where I was, +on a trestle or a flat, when the thing happened. I just naturally +left that upper berth, soared like a bird across the aisle, went +through the glass of the window on the opposite side clean head- +first, turned over and over through the ninety feet of fall more +times than I like to remember, and by some sort of miracle was +mostly flat-out in the air when I bull's-eyed that pool of water. +It was only eighteen inches deep. But I hit it flat, and I hit it +so hard that it must have cushioned me. I was the only survivor +of my car. It struck forty feet away from me, off to the side. +And they took only the dead out of it. When they took me out of +the pool I wasn't dead by any means. And when the surgeons got +done with me, there were the fingers gone from my hand, that scar +down the side of my face . . . and, though you'd never guess it, +I've been three ribs short of the regular complement ever since. + +"Oh, I had no complaint coming. Think of the others in that car-- +all dead. Unfortunately, I was riding on a pass, and so could not +sue the railroad company. But here I am, the only man who ever +dived ninety feet into eighteen inches of water and lived to tell +the tale.--Steward, if you don't mind replenishing my glass . . . +" + +Dag Daughtry complied and in his excitement of interest pulled off +the top of another quart of beer for himself. + +"Go on, go on, sir," he murmured huskily, wiping his lips, "and +the treasure-hunting graft. I'm straight dying to hear. Sir, I +salute you." + +"I may say, steward," the Ancient Mariner resumed, "that I was +born with a silver spoon that melted in my mouth and left me a +proper prodigal son. Also, that I was born with a back-bone of +pride that would not melt. Not for a paltry railroad accident, +but for things long before as well as after, my family let me die, +and I . . . I let it live. That is the story. I let my family +live. Furthermore, it was not my family's fault. I never +whimpered. I never let on. I melted the last of my silver spoon- +-South Sea cotton, an' it please you, cacao in Tonga, rubber and +mahogany in Yucatan. And do you know, at the end, I slept in +Bowery lodging-houses and ate scrapple in East-Side feeding-dens, +and, on more than one occasion, stood in the bread-line at +midnight and pondered whether or not I should faint before I fed." + +"And you never squealed to your family," Dag Daughtry murmured +admiringly in the pause. + +The Ancient Mariner straightened up his shoulders, threw his head +back, then bowed it and repeated, "No, I never squealed. I went +into the poor-house, or the county poor-farm as they call it. I +lived sordidly. I lived like a beast. For six months I lived +like a beast, and then I saw my way out. I set about building the +Wide Awake. I built her plank by plank, and copper-fastened her, +selected her masts and every timber of her, and personally signed +on her full ship's complement fore-and-aft, and outfitted her +amongst the Jews, and sailed with her to the South Seas and the +treasure buried a fathom under the sand. + +"You see," he explained, "all this I did in my mind, for all the +time I was a hostage in the poor-farm of broken men." + +The Ancient Mariner's face grew suddenly bleak and fierce, and his +right hand flashed out to Daughtry's wrist, prisoning it in +withered fingers of steel. + +"It was a long, hard way to get out of the poor-farm and finance +my miserable little, pitiful little, adventure of the Wide Awake. +Do you know that I worked in the poor-farm laundry for two years, +for one dollar and a half a week, with my one available hand and +what little I could do with the other, sorting dirty clothes and +folding sheets and pillow-slips until I thought a thousand times +my poor old back would break in two, and until I knew a million +times the location in my chest of every fraction of an inch of my +missing ribs." + +"You are a young man yet--" + +Daughtry grinned denial as he rubbed his grizzled mat of hair. + +"You are a young man yet, steward," the Ancient Mariner insisted +with a show of irritation. "You have never been shut out from +life. In the poor-farm one is shut out from life. There is no +respect--no, not for age alone, but for human life in the poor- +house. How shall I say it? One is not dead. Nor is one alive. +One is what once was alive and is in process of becoming dead. +Lepers are treated that way. So are the insane. I know it. When +I was young and on the sea, a brother-lieutenant went mad. +Sometimes he was violent, and we struggled with him, twisting his +arms, bruising his flesh, tying him helpless while we sat and +panted on him that he might not do harm to us, himself, or the +ship. And he, who still lived, died to us. Don't you understand? +He was no longer of us, like us. He was something other. That is +it--OTHER. And so, in the poor-farm, we, who are yet unburied, +are OTHER. You have heard me chatter about the hell of the +longboat. That is a pleasant diversion in life compared with the +poor-farm. The food, the filth, the abuse, the bullying, the--the +sheer animalness of it! + +"For two years I worked for a dollar and a half a week in the +laundry. And imagine me, who had melted a silver spoon in my +mouth--a sizable silver spoon steward--imagine me, my old sore +bones, my old belly reminiscent of youth's delights, my old palate +ticklish yet and not all withered of the deviltries of taste +learned in younger days--as I say, steward, imagine me, who had +ever been free-handed, lavish, saving that dollar and a half +intact like a miser, never spending a penny of it on tobacco, +never mitigating by purchase of any little delicacy the sad +condition of my stomach that protested against the harshness and +indigestibility of our poor fare. I cadged tobacco, poor cheap +tobacco, from poor doddering old chaps trembling on the edge of +dissolution. Ay, and when Samuel Merrivale I found dead in the +morning, next cot to mine, I first rummaged his poor old trousers' +pocket for the half-plug of tobacco I knew was the total estate he +left, then announced the news. + +"Oh, steward, I was careful of that dollar and a half. Don't you +see?--I was a prisoner sawing my way out with a tiny steel saw. +And I sawed out!" His voice rose in a shrill cackle of triumph. +"Steward, I sawed out!" + +Dag Daughtry held forth and up his beer-bottle as he said gravely +and sincerely: + +"Sir, I salute you." + +"And I thank you, sir--you understand," the Ancient Mariner +replied with simple dignity to the toast, touching his glass to +the bottle and drinking with the steward eyes to eyes. + +"I should have had one hundred and fifty-six dollars when I left +the poor-farm," the ancient one continued. "But there were the +two weeks I lost, with influenza, and the one week from a +confounded pleurisy, so that I emerged from that place of the +living dead with but one hundred and fifty-one dollars and fifty +cents." + +"I see, sir," Daughtry interrupted with honest admiration. "The +tiny saw had become a crow-bar, and with it you were going back to +break into life again." + +All the scarred face and washed eyes of Charles Stough Greenleaf +beamed as he held his glass up. + +"Steward, I salute you. You understand. And you have said it +well. I was going back to break into the house of life. It was a +crowbar, that pitiful sum of money accumulated by two years of +crucifixion. Think of it! A sum that in the days ere the silver +spoon had melted, I staked in careless moods of an instant on a +turn of the cards. But as you say, a burglar, I came back to +break into life, and I came to Boston. You have a fine turn for a +figure of speech, steward, and I salute you." + +Again bottle and glass tinkled together, and both men drank eyes +to eyes and each was aware that the eyes he gazed into were honest +and understanding. + +"But it was a thin crow-bar, steward. I dared not put my weight +on it for a proper pry. I took a room in a small but respectable +hotel, European plan. It was in Boston, I think I said. Oh, how +careful I was of my crowbar! I scarcely ate enough to keep my +frame inhabited. But I bought drinks for others, most carefully +selected--bought drinks with an air of prosperity that was as a +credential to my story; and in my cups (my apparent cups, +steward), spun an old man's yarn of the Wide Awake, the longboat, +the bearings unnamable, and the treasure under the sand.--A fathom +under the sand; that was literary; it was psychological; it +smacked of the salt sea, and daring rovers, and the loot of the +Spanish Main. + +"You have noticed this nugget I wear on my watch-chain, steward? +I could not afford it at that time, but I talked golden instead, +California gold, nuggets and nuggets, oodles and oodles, from the +diggings of forty-nine and fifty. That was literary. That was +colour. Later, after my first voyage out of Boston I was +financially able to buy a nugget. It was so much bait to which +men rose like fishes. And like fishes they nibbled. These rings, +also--bait. You never see such rings now. After I got in funds, +I purchased them, too. Take this nugget: I am talking. I toy +with it absently as I am telling of the great gold treasure we +buried under the sand. Suddenly the nugget flashes fresh +recollection into my mind. I speak of the longboat, of our thirst +and hunger, and of the third officer, the fair lad with cheeks +virgin of the razor, and that he it was who used it as a sinker +when we strove to catch fish. + +"But back in Boston. Yarns and yarns, when seemingly I was gone +in drink, I told my apparent cronies--men whom I despised, stupid +dolts of creatures that they were. But the word spread, until one +day, a young man, a reporter, tried to interview me about the +treasure and the Wide Awake. I was indignant, angry.--Oh, softly, +steward, softly; in my heart was great joy as I denied that young +reporter, knowing that from my cronies he already had a +sufficiency of the details. + +"And the morning paper gave two whole columns and headlines to the +tale. I began to have callers. I studied them out well. Many +were for adventuring after the treasure who themselves had no +money. I baffled and avoided them, and waited on, eating even +less as my little capital dwindled away. + +"And then he came, my gay young doctor--doctor of philosophy he +was, for he was very wealthy. My heart sang when I saw him. But +twenty-eight dollars remained to me--after it was gone, the poor- +house, or death. I had already resolved upon death as my choice +rather than go back to be of that dolorous company, the living +dead of the poor-farm. But I did not go back, nor did I die. The +gay young doctor's blood ran warm at thought of the South Seas, +and in his nostrils I distilled all the scents of the flower- +drenched air of that far-off land, and in his eyes I builded him +the fairy visions of the tradewind clouds, the monsoon skies, the +palm isles and the coral seas. + +"He was a gay, mad young dog, grandly careless of his largess, +fearless as a lion's whelp, lithe and beautiful as a leopard, and +mad, a trifle mad of the deviltries and whimsies that tickled in +that fine brain of his. Look you, steward. Before we sailed in +the Gloucester fishing-schooner, purchased by the doctor, and that +was like a yacht and showed her heels to most yachts, he had me to +his house to advise about personal equipment. We were overhauling +in a gear-room, when suddenly he spoke: + +"'I wonder how my lady will take my long absence. What say you? +Shall she go along?' + +"And I had not known that he had any wife or lady. And I looked +my surprise and incredulity. + +"'Just that you do not believe I shall take her on the cruise,' he +laughed, wickedly, madly, in my astonished face. 'Come, you shall +meet her.' + +"Straight to his bedroom and his bed he led me, and, turning down +the covers, showed there to me, asleep as she had slept for many a +thousand years, the mummy of a slender Egyptian maid. + +"And she sailed with us on the long vain voyage to the South Seas +and back again, and, steward, on my honour, I grew quite fond of +the dear maid myself. + +The Ancient Mariner gazed dreamily into his glass, and Dag +Daughtry took advantage of the pause to ask: + +"But the young doctor? How did he take the failure to find the +treasure?" + +The Ancient Mariner's face lighted with joy. + +"He called me a delectable old fraud, with his arm on my shoulder +while he did it. Why, steward, I had come to love that young man +like a splendid son. And with his arm on my shoulder, and I know +there was more than mere kindness in it, he told me we had barely +reached the River Plate when he discovered me. With laughter, and +with more than one slap of his hand on my shoulder that was more +caress than jollity, he pointed out the discrepancies in my tale +(which I have since amended, steward, thanks to him, and amended +well), and told me that the voyage had been a grand success, +making him eternally my debtor. + +"What could I do? I told him the truth. To him even did I tell +my family name, and the shame I had saved it from by forswearing +it. + +"He put his arm on my shoulder, I tell you, and . . . " + +The Ancient Mariner ceased talking because of a huskiness in his +throat, and a moisture from his eyes trickled down both cheeks. + +Dag Daughtry pledged him silently, and in the draught from his +glass he recovered himself. + +"He told me that I should come and live with him, and, to his +great lonely house he took me the very day we landed in Boston. +Also, he told me he would make arrangements with his lawyers--the +idea tickled his fancy--'I shall adopt you,' he said. 'I shall +adopt you along with Isthar'--Isthar was the little maid's name, +the little mummy's name. + +"Here was I, back in life, steward, and legally to be adopted. +But life is a fond betrayer. Eighteen hours afterward, in the +morning, we found him dead in his bed, the little mummy maid +beside him. Heart-failure, the burst of some blood-vessel in the +brain--I never learned. + +"I prayed and pleaded with them for the pair to be buried +together. But they were a hard, cold, New England lot, his +cousins and his aunts, and they presented Isthar to the museum, +and me they gave a week to be quit of the house. I left in an +hour, and they searched my small baggage before they would let me +depart. + +"I went to New York. It was the same game there, only that I had +more money and could play it properly. It was the same in New +Orleans, in Galveston. I came to California. This is my fifth +voyage. I had a hard time getting these three interested, and +spent all my little store of money before they signed the +agreement. They were very mean. Advance any money to me! The +very idea of it was preposterous. Though I bided my time, ran up +a comfortable hotel bill, and, at the very last, ordered my own +generous assortment of liquors and cigars and charged the bill to +the schooner. Such a to-do! All three of them raged and all but +tore their hair . . . and mime. They said it could not be. I +fell promptly sick. I told them they got on my nerves and made me +sick. The more they raged, the sicker I got. Then they gave in. +As promptly I grew better. And here we are, out of water and +heading soon most likely for the Marquesas to fill our barrels. +Then they will return and try for it again!" + +"You think so, sir?" + +"I shall remember even more important data, steward," the Ancient +Mariner smiled. "Without doubt they will return. Oh, I know them +well. They are meagre, narrow, grasping fools." + +"Fools! all fools! a ship of fools!" Dag Daughtry exulted; +repeating what he had expressed in the hold, as he bored the last +barrel, listened to the good water gurgling away into the bilge, +and chuckled over his discovery of the Ancient Mariner on the same +lay as his own. + + + +CHAPTER XIV + + + +Early next morning, the morning watch of sailors, whose custom was +to fetch the day's supply of water for the galley and cabin, +discovered that the barrels were empty. Mr. Jackson was so +alarmed that he immediately called Captain Doane, and not many +minutes elapsed ere Captain Doane had routed out Grimshaw and +Nishikanta to tell them the disaster. + +Breakfast was an excitement shared in peculiarly by the Ancient +Mariner and Dag Daughtry, while the trio of partners raged and +bewailed. Captain Doane particularly wailed. Simon Nishikanta +was fiendish in his descriptions of whatever miscreant had done +the deed and of how he should be made to suffer for it, while +Grimshaw clenched and repeatedly clenched his great hands as if +throttling some throat. + +"I remember, it was in forty-seven--nay, forty-six--yes, forty- +six," the Ancient Mariner chattered. "It was a similar and worse +predicament. It was in the longboat, sixteen of us. We ran on +Glister Reef. So named it was after our pretty little craft +discovered it one dark night and left her bones upon it. The reef +is on the Admiralty charts. Captain Doane will verify me . . . " + +No one listened, save Dag Daughtry, serving hot cakes and +admiring. But Simon Nishikanta, becoming suddenly aware that the +old man was babbling, bellowed out ferociously: + +"Oh, shut up! Close your jaw! You make me tired with your +everlasting 'I remember.'" + +The Ancient Mariner was guilelessly surprised, as if he had +slipped somewhere in his narrative. + +"No, I assure you," he continued. "It must have been some error +of my poor old tongue. It was not the Wide Awake, but the brig +Glister. Did I say Wide Awake? It was the Glister, a smart +little brig, almost a toy brig in fact, copper-bottomed, lines +like a dolphin, a sea-cutter and a wind-eater. Handled like a +top. On my honour, gentlemen, it was lively work for both watches +when she went about. I was supercargo. We sailed out of New +York, ostensibly for the north-west coast, with sealed orders--" + +"In the name of God, peace, peace! You drive me mad with your +drivel!" So Nishikanta cried out in nervous pain that was real +and quivering. "Old man, have a heart. What do I care to know of +your Glister and your sealed orders!" + +"Ah, sealed orders," the Ancient Mariner went on beamingly. "A +magic phrase, sealed orders." He rolled it off his tongue with +unction. "Those were the days, gentlemen, when ships did sail +with sealed orders. And as supercargo, with my trifle invested in +the adventure and my share in the gains, I commanded the captain. +Not in him, but in me were reposed the sealed orders. I assure +you I did not know myself what they were. Not until we were +around old Cape Stiff, fifty to fifty, and in fifty in the +Pacific, did I break the seal and learn we were bound for Van +Dieman's Land. They called it Van Dieman's Land in those days . . +. " + +It was a day of discoveries. Captain Doane caught the mate +stealing the ship's position from his desk with the duplicate key. +There was a scene, but no more, for the Finn was too huge a man to +invite personal encounter, and Captain Dome could only stigmatize +his conduct to a running reiteration of "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," +and "Sorry, sir." + +Perhaps the most important discovery, although he did not know it +at the time, was that of Dag Daughtry. It was after the course +had been changed and all sail set, and after the Ancient Mariner +had privily informed him that Taiohae, in the Marquesas, was their +objective, that Daughtry gaily proceeded to shave. But one +trouble was on his mind. He was not quite sure, in such an out- +of-the-way place as Taiohae, that good beer could be procured. + +As he prepared to make the first stroke of the razor, most of his +face white with lather, he noticed a dark patch of skin on his +forehead just between the eye-brows and above. When he had +finished shaving he touched the dark patch, wondering how he had +been sunburned in such a spot. But he did not know he had touched +it in so far as there was any response of sensation. The dark +place was numb. + +"Curious," he thought, wiped his face, and forgot all about it. + +No more than he knew what horror that dark spot represented, did +he know that Ah Moy's slant eyes had long since noticed it and +were continuing to notice it, day by day, with secret growing +terror. + +Close-hauled on the south-east trades, the Mary Turner began her +long slant toward the Marquesas. For'ard, all were happy. Being +only seamen, on seamen's wages, they hailed with delight the news +that they were bound in for a tropic isle to fill their water- +barrels. Aft, the three partners were in bad temper, and +Nishikanta openly sneered at Captain Doane and doubted his ability +to find the Marquesas. In the steerage everybody was happy--Dag +Daughtry because his wages were running on and a further supply of +beer was certain; Kwaque because he was happy whenever his master +was happy; and Ah Moy because he would soon have opportunity to +desert away from the schooner and the two lepers with whom he was +domiciled. + +Michael shared in the general happiness of the steerage, and +joined eagerly with Steward in learning by heart a fifth song. +This was "Lead, kindly Light." In his singing, which was no more +than trained howling after all, Michael sought for something he +knew not what. In truth, it was the LOST PACK, the pack of the +primeval world before the dog ever came in to the fires of men, +and, for that matter, before men built fires and before men were +men. + +He had been born only the other day and had lived but two years in +the world, so that, of himself, he had no knowledge of the lost +pack. For many thousands of generations he had been away from it; +yet, deep down in the crypts of being, tied about and wrapped up +in every muscle and nerve of him, was the indelible record of the +days in the wild when dim ancestors had run with the pack and at +the same time developed the pack and themselves. When Michael was +asleep, then it was that pack-memories sometimes arose to the +surface of his subconscious mind. These dreams were real while +they lasted, but when he was awake he remembered them little if at +all. But asleep, or singing with Steward, he sensed and yearned +for the lost pack and was impelled to seek the forgotten way to +it. + +Waking, Michael had another and real pack. This was composed of +Steward, Kwaque, Cocky, and Scraps, and he ran with it as ancient +forbears had ran with their own kind in the hunting. The steerage +was the lair of this pack, and, out of the steerage, it ranged the +whole world, which was the Mary Turner ever rocking, heeling, +reeling on the surface of the unstable sea. + +But the steerage and its company meant more to Michael than the +mere pack. It was heaven as well, where dwelt God. Man early +invented God, often of stone, or clod, or fire, and placed him in +trees and mountains and among the stars. This was because man +observed that man passed and was lost out of the tribe, or family, +or whatever name he gave to his group, which was, after all, the +human pack. And man did not want to be lost out of the pack. So, +of his imagination, he devised a new pack that would be eternal +and with which he might for ever run. Fearing the dark, into +which he observed all men passed, he built beyond the dark a +fairer region, a happier hunting-ground, a jollier and robuster +feasting-hall and wassailing-place, and called it variously +"heaven." + +Like some of the earliest and lowest of primitive men, Michael +never dreamed of throwing the shadow of himself across his mind +and worshipping it as God. He did not worship shadows. He +worshipped a real and indubitable god, not fashioned in his own +four-legged, hair-covered image, but in the flesh-and-blood image, +two-legged, hairless, upstanding, of Steward. + + + +CHAPTER XV + + + +Had the trade wind not failed on the second day after laying the +course for the Marquesas; had Captain Doane, at the mid-day meal, +not grumbled once again at being equipped with only one +chronometer; had Simon Nishikanta not become viciously angry +thereat and gone on deck with his rifle to find some sea-denizen +to kill; and had the sea-denizen that appeared close alongside +been a bonita, a dolphin, a porpoise, an albacore, or anything +else than a great, eighty-foot cow whale accompanied by her +nursing calf--had any link been missing from this chain of events, +the Mary Turner would have undoubtedly reached the Marquesas, +filled her water-barrels, and returned to the treasure-hunting; +and the destinies of Michael, Daughtry, Kwaque, and Cocky would +have been quite different and possibly less terrible. + +But every link was present for the occasion. The schooner, in a +dead calm, was rolling over the huge, smooth seas, her boom sheets +and tackles crashing to the hollow thunder of her great sails, +when Simon Nishikanta put a bullet into the body of the little +whale calf. By an almost miracle of chance, the shot killed the +calf. It was equivalent to killing an elephant with a pea-rifle. +Not at once did the calf die. It merely immediately ceased its +gambols and for a while lay quivering on the surface of the ocean. +The mother was beside it the moment after it was struck, and to +those on board, looking almost directly down upon her, her dismay +and alarm were very patent. She would nudge the calf with her +huge shoulder, circle around and around it, then range up +alongside and repeat her nudgings and shoulderings. + +All on the Mary Turner, fore and aft, lined the rail and stared +down apprehensively at the leviathan that was as long as the +schooner. + +"If she should do to us, sir, what that other one did to the +Essex," Dag Daughtry observed to the Ancient Mariner. + +"It would be no more than we deserve," was the response. "It was +uncalled-for--a wanton, cruel act." + +Michael, aware of the excitement overside but unable to see +because of the rail, leaped on top of the cabin and at sight of +the monster barked defiantly. Every eye turned on him in +startlement and fear, and Steward hushed him with a whispered +command. + +"This is the last time," Grimshaw muttered in a low voice, tense +with anger, to Nishikanta. "If ever again, on this voyage, you +take a shot at a whale, I'll wring your dirty neck for you. Get +me. I mean it. I'll choke your eye-balls out of you." + +The Jew smiled in a sickly way and whined, "There ain't nothing +going to happen. I don't believe that Essex ever was sunk by a +whale." + +Urged on by its mother, the dying calf made spasmodic efforts to +swim that were futile and caused it to veer and wallow from side +to side. + +In the course of circling about it, the mother accidentally +brushed her shoulder under the port quarter of the Mary Turner, +and the Mary Turner listed to starboard as her stern was lifted a +yard or more. Nor was this unintentional, gentle impact all. The +instant after her shoulder had touched, startled by the contact, +she flailed out with her tail. The blow smote the rail just +for'ard of the fore-shrouds, splintering a gap through it as if it +were no more than a cigar-box and cracking the covering board. + +That was all, and an entire ship's company stared down in silence +and fear at a sea-monster grief-stricken over its dying progeny. + +Several times, in the course of an hour, during which the schooner +and the two whales drifted farther and farther apart, the calf +strove vainly to swim. Then it set up a great quivering, which +culminated in a wild wallowing and lashing about of its tail. + +"It is the death-flurry," said the Ancient Mariner softly. + +"By damn, it's dead," was Captain Doane's comment five minutes +later. "Who'd believe it? A rifle bullet! I wish to heaven we +could get half an hour's breeze of wind to get us out of this +neighbourhood." + +"A close squeak," said Grimshaw, + +Captain Doane shook his head, as his anxious eyes cast aloft to +the empty canvas and quested on over the sea in the hope of wind- +ruffles on the water. But all was glassy calm, each great sea, of +all the orderly procession of great seas, heaving up, round-topped +and mountainous, like so much quicksilver. + +"It's all right," Grimahaw encouraged. "There she goes now, +beating it away from us." + +"Of course it's all right, always was all right," Nishikanta +bragged, as he wiped the sweat from his face and neck and looked +with the others after the departing whale. "You're a fine brave +lot, you are, losing your goat to a fish." + +"I noticed your face was less yellow than usual," Grimshaw +sneered. "It must have gone to your heart." + +Captain Doane breathed a great sigh. His relief was too strong to +permit him to join in the squabbling. + +"You're yellow," Grimshaw went on, "yellow clean through." He +nodded his head toward the Ancient Mariner. "Now there's the real +thing as a man. No yellow in him. He never batted an eye, and I +reckon he knew more about the danger than you did. If I was to +choose being wrecked on a desert island with him or you, I'd take +him a thousand times first. If--" + +But a cry from the sailors interrupted him. + +"Merciful God!" Captain Doane breathed aloud. + +The great cow whale had turned about, and, on the surface, was +charging straight back at them. Such was her speed that a bore +was raised by her nose like that which a Dreadnought or an +Atlantic liner raises on the sea. + +"Hold fast, all!" Captain Doane roared. + +Every man braced himself for the shock. Henrik Gjertsen, the +sailor at the wheel, spread his legs, crouched down, and stiffened +his shoulders and arms to hand-grips on opposite spokes of the +wheel. Several of the crew fled from the waist to the poop, and +others of them sprang into the main-rigging. Daughtry, one hand +on the rail, with his free arm clasped the Ancient Mariner around +the waist. + +All held. The whale struck the Mary Turner just aft of the fore- +shroud. A score of things, which no eye could take in +simultaneously, happened. A sailor, in the main rigging, carried +away a ratline in both hands, fell head-downward, and was clutched +by an ankle and saved head-downward by a comrade, as the schooner +cracked and shuddered, uplifted on the port side, and was flung +down on her starboard side till the ocean poured level over her +rail. Michael, on the smooth roof of the cabin, slithered down +the steep slope to starboard and disappeared, clawing and +snarling, into the runway. The port shrouds of the foremast +carried away at the chain-plates, and the fore-topmast leaned over +drunkenly to starboard. + +"My word," quoth the Ancient Mariner. "We certainly felt that." + +"Mr. Jackson," Captain Doane commanded the mate, "will you sound +the well." + +The mate obeyed, although he kept an anxious eye on the whale, +which had gone off at a tangent and was smoking away to the +eastward. + +"You see, that's what you get," Grimshaw snarled at Nishikanta. + +Nishikanta nodded, as he wiped the sweat away, and muttered, "And +I'm satisfied. I got all I want. I didn't think a whale had it +in it. I'll never do it again." + +"Maybe you'll never have the chance," the captain retorted. +"We're not done with this one yet. The one that charged the Essex +made charge after charge, and I guess whale nature hasn't changed +any in the last few years." + +"Dry as a bone, sir," Mr. Jackson reported the result of his +sounding. + +"There she turns," Daughtry called out. + +Half a mile away, the whale circled about sharply and charged +back. + +"Stand from under for'ard there!" Captain Doane shouted to one of +the sailors who had just emerged from the forecastle scuttle, sea- +bag in hand, and over whom the fore-topmast was swaying giddily. + +"He's packed for the get-away," Daughtry murmured to the Ancient +Mariner. "Like a rat leaving a ship." + +"We're all rats," was the reply. "I learned just that when I was +a rat among the mangy rats of the poor-farm." + +By this time, all men on board had communicated to Michael their +contagion of excitement and fear. Back on top of the cabin so +that he might see, he snarled at the cow whale when the men seized +fresh grips against the impending shock and when he saw her close +at hand and oncoming. + +The Mary Turner was struck aft of the mizzen shrouds. As she was +hurled down to starboard, whither Michael was ignominiously flung, +the crack of shattered timbers was plainly heard. Henrik +Gjertsen, at the wheel, clutching the wheel with all his strength, +was spun through the air as the wheel was spun by the fling of the +rudder. He fetched up against Captain Doane, whose grip had been +torn loose from the rail. Both men crumpled down on deck with the +wind knocked out of them. Nishikanta leaned cursing against the +side of the cabin, the nails of both hands torn off at the quick +by the breaking of his grip on the rail. + +While Daughtry was passing a turn of rope around the Ancient +Mariner and the mizzen rigging and giving the turn to him to hold, +Captain Doane crawled gasping to the rail and dragged himself +erect. + +"That fetched her," he whispered huskily to the mate, hand pressed +to his side to control his pain. "Sound the well again, and keep +on sounding." + +More of the sailors took advantage of the interval to rush for'ard +under the toppling fore-topmast, dive into the forecastle, and +hastily pack their sea-bags. As Ah Moy emerged from the steerage +with his own rotund sea-bag, Daughtry dispatched Kwaque to pack +the belongings of both of them. + +"Dry as a bone, sir," came the mate's report. + +"Keep on sounding, Mr. Jackson," the captain ordered, his voice +already stronger as he recovered from the shock of his collision +with the helmsman. "Keep right on sounding. Here she comes +again, and the schooner ain't built that'd stand such hammering." + +By this time Daughtry had Michael tucked under one arm, his free +arm ready to anticipate the next crash by swinging on to the +rigging. + +In making its circle to come back, the cow lost her bearings +sufficiently to miss the stern of the Mary Turner by twenty feet. +Nevertheless, the bore of her displacement lifted the schooner's +stern gently and made her dip her bow to the sea in a stately +curtsey. + +"If she'd a-hit . . . " Captain Doane murmured and ceased. + +"It'd a-ben good night," Daughtry concluded for him. "She's a- +knocked our stern clean off of us, sir." + +Again wheeling, this time at no more than two hundred yards, the +whale charged back, not completing her semi-circle sufficiently, +so that she bore down upon the schooner's bow from starboard. Her +back hit the stem and seemed just barely to scrape the martingale, +yet the Mary Turner sat down till the sea washed level with her +stern-rail. Nor was this all. Martingale, bob-stays and all +parted, as well as all starboard stays to the bowsprit, so that +the bowsprit swung out to port at right angles and uplifted to the +drag of the remaining topmast stays. The topmast anticked high in +the air for a space, then crashed down to deck, permitting the +bowsprit to dip into the sea, go clear with the butt of it of the +forecastle head, and drag alongside. + +"Shut up that dog!" Nishikanta ordered Daughtry savagery. "If you +don't . . . " + +Michael, in Steward's arms, was snarling and growling +intimidatingly, not merely at the cow whale but at all the hostile +and menacing universe that had thrown panic into the two-legged +gods of his floating world. + +"Just for that," Daughtry snarled back, "I'll let 'm sing. You +made this mess, and if you lift a hand to my dog you'll miss +seeing the end of the mess you started, you dirty pawnbroker, +you." + +"Perfectly right, perfectly right," the Ancient Mariner nodded +approbation. "Do you think, steward, you could get a width of +canvas, or a blanket, or something soft and broad with which to +replace this rope? It cuts me too sharply in the spot where my +three ribs are missing." + +Daughtry thrust Michael into the old man's arm. + +"Hold him, sir," the steward said. "If that pawnbroker makes a +move against Killeny Boy, spit in his face, bite him, anything. +I'll be back in a jiffy, sir, before he can hurt you and before +the whale can hit us again. And let Killeny Boy make all the +noise he wants. One hair of him's worth more than a world-full of +skunks of money-lenders." + +Daughtry dashed into the cabin, came back with a pillow and three +sheets, and, using the first as a pad and knotting the last +together in swift weaver's knots, he left the Ancient Mariner safe +and soft and took Michael back into his own arms. + +"She's making water, sir," the mate called. "Six inches--no, +seven inches, sir." + +There was a rush of sailors across the wreckage of the fore- +topmast to the forecastle to pack their bags. + +"Swing out that starboard boat, Mr. Jackson," the captain +commanded, staring after the foaming course of the cow as she +surged away for a fresh onslaught. "But don't lower it. Hold it +overside in the falls, or that damned fish'll smash it. Just +swing it out, ready and waiting, let the men get their bags, then +stow food and water aboard of her." + +Lashings were cast off the boat and the falls attached, when the +men fled to holding-vantage just ere the whale arrived. She +struck the Mary Turner squarely amidships on the port beam, so +that, from the poop, one saw, as well as heard, her long side bend +and spring back like a limber fabric. The starboard rail buried +under the sea as the schooner heeled to the blow, and, as she +righted with a violent lurch, the water swashed across the deck to +the knees of the sailors about the boat and spouted out of the +port scuppers. + +"Heave away!" Captain Doane ordered from the poop. "Up with her! +Swing her out! Hold your turns! Make fast!" + +The boat was outboard, its gunwale resting against the Mary +Turner's rail. + +"Ten inches, sir, and making fast," was the mate's information, as +he gauged the sounding-rod. + +"I'm going after my tools," Captain Doane announced, as he started +for the cabin. Half into the scuttle, he paused to add with a +sneer for Nishikanta's benefit, "And for my one chronometer." + +"A foot and a half, and making," the mate shouted aft to him. + +"We'd better do some packing ourselves," Grimshaw, following on +the captain, said to Nishikanta. + +"Steward," Nishikanta said, "go below and pack my bedding. I'll +take care of the rest." + +"Mr. Nishikanta, you can go to hell, sir, and all the rest as +well," was Daughtry's quiet response, although in the same breath +he was saying, respectfully and assuringly, to the Ancient +Mariner: "You hold Killeny, sir. I'll take care of your dunnage. +Is there anything special you want to save, sir?" + +Jackson joined the four men below, and as the five of them, in +haste and trepidation, packed articles of worth and comfort, the +Mary Turner was struck again. Caught below without warning, all +were flung fiercely to port and from Simon Nishikanta's room came +wailing curses of announcement of the hurt to his ribs against his +bunk-rail. But this was drowned by a prodigious smashing and +crashing on deck. + +"Kindling wood--there won't be anything else left of her," Captain +Doane commented in the ensuing calm, as he crept gingerly up the +companionway with his chronometer cuddled on an even keel to his +breast. + +Placing it in the custody of a sailor, he returned below and was +helped up with his sea-chest by the steward. In turn, he helped +the steward up with the Ancient Mariner's sea-chest. Next, aided +by anxious sailors, he and Daughtry dropped into the lazarette +through the cabin floor, and began breaking out and passing up a +stream of supplies--cases of salmon and beef, of marmalade and +biscuit, of butter and preserved milk, and of all sorts of the +tinned, desiccated, evaporated, and condensed stuff that of modern +times goes down to the sea in ships for the nourishment of men. + +Daughtry and the captain emerged last from the cabin, and both +stared upward for a moment at the gaps in the slender, sky- +scraping top-hamper, where, only minutes before, the main- and +mizzen-topmasts had been. A second moment they devoted to the +wreckage of the same on deck--the mizzen-topmast, thrust through +the spanker and supported vertically by the stout canvas, +thrashing back and forth with each thrash of the sail, the main- +topmast squarely across the ruined companionway to the steerage. + +While the mother-whale expressing her bereavement in terms of +violence and destruction, was withdrawing the necessary distance +for another charge, all hands of the Mary Turner gathered about +the starboard boat swung outboard ready for lowering. A +respectable hill of case goods, water-kegs, and personal dunnage +was piled on the deck alongside. A glance at this, and at the +many men of fore and aft, demonstrated that it was to be a +perilously overloaded boat. + +"We want the sailors with us, at any rate--they can row," said +Simon Nishikanta. + +"But do we want you?" Grimshaw queried gloomily. "You take up too +much room, for your size, and you're a beast anyway." + +"I guess I'll be wanted," the pawnbroker observed, as he jerked +open his shirt, tearing out the four buttons in his impetuousness +and showing a Colt's .44 automatic, strapped in its holster +against the bare skin of his side under his left arm, the butt of +the weapon most readily accessible to any hasty dip of his right +hand. "I guess I'll be wanted. But just the same we can dispense +with the undesirables." + +"If you will have your will," the wheat-farmer conceded +sardonically, although his big hand clenched involuntarily as if +throttling a throat. "Besides, if we should run short of food you +will prove desirable--for the quantity of you, I mean, and not +otherwise. Now just who would you consider undesirable?--the +black nigger? He ain't got a gun." + +But his pleasantries were cut short by the whale's next attack-- +another smash at the stern that carried away the rudder and +destroyed the steering gear. + +"How much water?" Captain Doane queried of the mate. + +"Three feet, sir--I just sounded," came the answer. "I think, +sir, it would be advisable to part-load the boat; then, right +after the next time the whale hits us, lower away on the run, +chuck the rest of the dunnage in, and ourselves, and get clear." + +Captain Doane nodded. + +"It will be lively work," he said. "Stand ready, all of you. +Steward, you jump aboard first and I'll pass the chronometer to +you." + +Nishikanta bellicosely shouldered his vast bulk up to the captain, +opened his shirt, and exposed his revolver. + +"There's too many for the boat," he said, "and the steward's one +of 'em that don't go along. Get that. Hold it in your head. The +steward's one of 'em that don't go along." + +Captain Doane coolly surveyed the big automatic, while at the fore +of his consciousness burned a vision of his flat buildings in San +Francisco. + +He shrugged his shoulders. "The boat would be overloaded, with +all this truck, anyway. Go ahead, if you want to make it your +party, but just bear in mind that I'm the navigator, and that, if +you ever want to lay eyes on your string of pawnshops, you'd +better see that gentle care is taken of me.--Steward!" + +Daughtry stepped close. + +"There won't be room for you . . . and for one or two others, I'm +sorry to say." + +"Glory be!" said Daughtry. "I was just fearin' you'd be wantin' +me along, sir.--Kwaque, you take 'm my fella dunnage belong me, +put 'm in other fella boat along other side." + +While Kwaque obeyed, the mate sounded the well for the last time, +reporting three feet and a half, and the lighter freightage of the +starboard boat was tossed in by the sailors. + +A rangy, gangly, Scandinavian youth of a sailor, droop-shouldered, +six feet six and slender as a lath, with pallid eyes of palest +blue and skin and hair attuned to the same colour scheme, joined +Kwaque in his work. + +"Here, you Big John," the mate interfered. "This is your boat. +You work here." + +The lanky one smiled in embarrassment as he haltingly explained: +"I tank I lak go along cooky." + +"Sure, let him go, the more the easier," Nishikanta took charge of +the situation. "Anybody else?" + +"Sure," Dag Daughtry sneered to his face. "I reckon what's left +of the beer goes with my boat . . . unless you want to argue the +matter." + +"For two cents--" Nishikanta spluttered in affected rage. + +"Not for two billion cents would you risk a scrap with me, you +money-sweater, you," was Daughtry's retort. "You've got their +goats, but I've got your number. Not for two billion billion +cents would you excite me into callin' it right now.--Big John! +Just carry that case of beer across, an' that half case, and store +in my boat.--Nishikanta, just start something, if you've got the +nerve." + +Simon Nishikanta did not dare, nor did he know what to do; but he +was saved from his perplexity by the shout: + +"Here she comes!" + +All rushed to holding-ground, and held, while the whale broke more +timbers and the Mary Turner rolled sluggishly down and back again. + +"Lower away! On the run! Lively!" + +Captain Doane's orders were swiftly obeyed. The starboard boat, +fended off by sailors, rose and fell in the water alongside while +the remainder of the dunnage and provisions showered into her. + +"Might as well lend a hand, sir, seein' you're bent on leaving in +such a hurry," said Daughtry, taking the chronometer from Captain +Doane's hand and standing ready to pass it down to him as soon as +he was in the boat. + +"Come on, Greenleaf," Grimshaw called up to the Ancient Mariner. + +"No, thanking you very kindly, sir," came the reply. "I think +there'll be more room in the other boat." + +"We want the cook!" Nishikanta cried out from the stern sheets. +"Come on, you yellow monkey! Jump in!" + +Little old shrivelled Ah Moy debated. He visibly thought, +although none knew the intrinsicness of his thinking as he stared +at the gun of the fat pawnbroker and at the leprosy of Kwaque and +Daughtry, and weighed the one against the other and tossed the +light and heavy loads of the two boats into the balance. + +"Me go other boat," said Ah Moy, starting to drag his bag away +across the deck. + +"Cast off," Captain Doane commanded. + +Scraps, the big Newfoundland puppy, who had played and pranced +about through all the excitement, seeing so many of the Mary +Turner's humans in the boat alongside, sprang over the rail, low +and close to the water, and landed sprawling on the mass of sea- +bags and goods cases. + +The boot rocked, and Nishikanta, his automatic in his hand, cried +out: + +"Back with him! Throw him on board!" + +The sailors obeyed, and the astounded Scraps, after a brief flight +through the air, found himself arriving on his back on the Mary +Turner's deck. At any rate, he took it for no more than a rough +joke, and rolled about ecstatically, squirming vermicularly, in +anticipation of what new delights of play were to be visited upon +him. He reached out, with an enticing growl of good fellowship, +for Michael, who was now free on deck, and received in return a +forbidding and crusty snarl. + +"Guess we'll have to add him to our collection, eh, sir?" Daughtry +observed, sparing a moment to pat reassurance on the big puppy's +head and being rewarded with a caressing lick on his hand from the +puppy's blissful tongue. + +No first-class ship's steward can exist without possessing a more +than average measure of executive ability. Dag Daughtry was a +first-class ship's steward. Placing the Ancient Mariner in a nook +of safety, and setting Big John to unlashing the remaining boat +and hooking on the falls, he sent Kwaque into the hold to fill +kegs of water from the scant remnant of supply, and Ah Moy to +clear out the food in the galley. + +The starboard boat, cluttered with men, provisions, and property +and being rapidly rowed away from the danger centre, which was the +Mary Turner, was scarcely a hundred yards away, when the whale, +missing the schooner clean, turned at full speed and close range, +churning the water, and all but collided with the boat. So near +did she come that the rowers on the side next to her pulled in +their oars. The surge she raised, heeled the loaded boat gunwale +under, so that a degree of water was shipped ere it righted. +Nishikanta, automatic still in hand, standing up in the +sternsheets by the comfortable seat he had selected for himself, +was staggered by the lurch of the boat. In his instinctive, +spasmodic effort to maintain balance, he relaxed his clutch on the +pistol, which fell into the sea. + +"HA-AH!" Daughtry girded. "What price Nishikanta? I got his +number, and he's lost you fellows' goats. He's your meat now. +Easy meat? I should say! And when it comes to the eating, eat +him first. Sure, he's a skunk, and will taste like one, but +many's the honest man that's eaten skunk and pulled through a +tight place. But you'd better soak 'im all night in salt water, +first." + +Grimshaw, whose seat in the sternsheets was none of the best, +grasped the situation simultaneously with Daughtry, and, with a +quick upstanding, and hooking out-reach of hand, caught the fat +pawn-broker around the back of the neck, and with anything but +gentle suasion jerked him half into the air and flung him face +downward on the bottom boards. + +"Ha-ah!" said Daughtry across the hundred yards of ocean. + +Next, and without hurry, Grimshaw took the more comfortable seat +for himself. + +"Want to come along?" he called to Daughtry. + +"No, thank you, sir," was the latter's reply. "There's too many +of us, an' we'll make out better in the other boat." + +With some bailing, and with others bending to the oars, the boat +rowed frantically away, while Daughtry took Ah Moy with him down +into the lazarette beneath the cabin floor and broke out and +passed up more provisions. + +It was when he was thus below that the cow grazed the schooner +just for'ard of amidships on the port side, lashed out with her +mighty tail as she sounded, and ripped clean away the chain plates +and rail of the mizzen-shrouds. In the next roll of the huge, +glassy sea, the mizzen-mast fell overside. + +"My word, some whale," Daughtry said to Ah Moy, as they emerged +from the cabin companionway and gazed at this latest wreckage. + +Ah Moy found need to get more food from the galley, when Daughtry, +Kwaque, and Big John swung their weight on the falls, one at a +time, and hoisted the port boat, one end at a time, over the rail +and swung her out. + +"We'll wait till the next smash, then lower away, throw everything +in, an' get outa this," the steward told the Ancient Mariner. +"Lots of time. The schooner'll sink no faster when she's awash +than she's sinkin' now." + +Even as he spoke, the scuppers were nearly level with the ocean, +and her rolling in the big sea was sluggish. + +"Hey!" he called with sudden forethought across the widening +stretch of sea to Captain Doane. "What's the course to the +Marquesas? Right now? And how far away, sir?" + +"Nor'-nor'-east-quarter-east!" came the faint reply. "Will fetch +Nuka-Hiva! About two hundred miles! Haul on the south-east trade +with a good full and you'll make it!" + +"Thank you, sir," was the steward's acknowledgment, ere he ran +aft, disrupted the binnacle, and carried the steering compass back +to the boat. + +Almost, from the whale's delay in renewing her charging, did they +think she had given over. And while they waited and watched her +rolling on the sea an eighth of a mile away, the Mary Turner +steadily sank. + +"We might almost chance it," Daughtry was debating aloud to Big +John, when a new voice entered the discussion. + +"Cocky! --Cocky!" came plaintive tones from below out of the +steerage companion. + +"Devil be damned!" was the next, uttered in irritation and anger. +"Devil be damned! Devil be damned!" + +"Of course not," was Daughtry's judgment, as he dashed across the +deck, crawled through the confusion of the main-topmast and its +many stays that blocked the way, and found the tiny, white morsel +of life perched on a bunk-edge, ruffling its feathers, erecting +and flattening its rosy crest, and cursing in honest human speech +the waywardness of the world and of ships and humans upon the sea. + +The cockatoo stepped upon Daughtry's inviting index finger, +swiftly ascended his shirt sleeve, and, on his shoulder, claws +sunk into the flimsy shirt fabric till they hurt the flesh +beneath, leaned head to ear and uttered in gratitude and relief, +and in self-identification: "Cocky. Cocky." + +"You son of a gun," Daughtry crooned. + +"Glory be!" Cooky replied, in tones so like Daughtry's as to +startle him. + +"You son of a gun," Daughtry repeated, cuddling his cheek and ear +against the cockatoo's feathered and crested head. "And some +folks thinks it's only folks that count in this world." + +Still the whale delayed, and, with the ocean washing their toes on +the level deck, Daughtry ordered the boat lowered away. Ah Moy +was eager in his haste to leap into the bow. Nor was Daughtry's +judgment correct that the little Chinaman's haste was due to fear +of the sinking ship. What Ah Moy sought was the place in the boat +remotest from Kwaque and the steward. + +Shoving clear, they roughly stored the supplies and dunnage out of +the way of the thwarts and took their places, Ah Moy pulling bow- +oar, next in order Big John and Kwaque, with Daughtry (Cocky still +perched on his shoulder) at stroke. On top of the dunnage, in the +stern-sheets, Michael gazed wistfully at the Mary Turner and +continued to snarl crustily at Scraps who idiotically wanted to +start a romp. The Ancient Mariner stood up at the steering sweep +and gave the order, when all was ready, for the first dip of the +oars. + +A growl and a bristle from Michael warned them that the whale was +not only coming but was close upon them. But it was not charging. +Instead, it circled slowly about the schooner as if examining its +antagonist. + +"I'll bet it's head's sore from all that banging, an' it's +beginnin' to feel it," Daughtry grinned, chiefly for the purpose +of keeping his comrades unafraid. + +Barely had they rowed a dozen strokes, when an exclamation from +Big John led them to follow his gaze to the schooners forecastle- +head, where the forecastle cat flashed across in pursuit of a big +rat. Other rats they saw, evidently driven out of their lairs by +the rising water. + +"We just can't leave that cat behind," Daughtry soliloquized in +suggestive tones. + +"Certainly not," the Ancient Mariner responded swinging his weight +on the steering-sweep and heading the boat back. + +Twice the whale gently rolled them in the course of its leisurely +circling, ere they bent to their oars again and pulled away. Of +them the whale seemed to take no notice. It was from the huge +thing, the schooner, that death had been wreaked upon her calf; +and it was upon the schooner that she vented the wrath of her +grief. + +Even as they pulled away, the whale turned and headed across the +ocean. At a half-mile distance she curved about and charged back. + +"With all that water in her, the schooner'll have a real kick-back +in her when she's hit," Daughtry said. "Lordy me, rest on your +oars an' watch." + +Delivered squarely amidships, it was the hardest blow the Mary +Turner had received. Stays and splinters of rail flew in the air +as she rolled so far over as to expose half her copper wet- +glistening in the sun. As she righted sluggishly, the mainmast +swayed drunkenly in the air but did not fall. + +"A knock-out!" Daughtry cried, at sight of the whale flurrying the +water with aimless, gigantic splashings. "It must a-smashed both +of 'em." + +"Schooner he finish close up altogether," Kwaque observed, as the +Mary Turner's rail disappeared. + +Swiftly she sank, and no more than a matter of moments was it when +the stump of her mainmast was gone. Remained only the whale, +floating and floundering, on the surface of the sea. + +"It's nothing to brag about," Daughtry delivered himself of the +Mary Turner's epitaph. "Nobody'd believe us. A stout little +craft like that sunk, deliberately sunk, by an old cow-whale! No, +sir. I never believed that old moss-back in Honolulu, when he +claimed he was a survivor of the sinkin' of the Essex, an' no more +will anybody believe me." + +"The pretty schooner, the pretty clever craft," mourned the +Ancient Mariner. "Never were there more dainty and lovable +topmasts on a three-masted schooner, and never was there a three- +masted schooner that worked like the witch she was to windward." + +Dag Daughtry, who had kept always foot-loose and never married, +surveyed the boat-load of his responsibilities to which he was +anchored--Kwaque, the Black Papuan monstrosity whom he had saved +from the bellies of his fellows; Ah Moy, the little old sea-cook +whose age was problematical only by decades; the Ancient Mariner, +the dignified, the beloved, and the respected; gangly Big John, +the youthful Scandinavian with the inches of a giant and the mind +of a child; Killeny Boy, the wonder of dogs; Scraps, the +outrageously silly and fat-rolling puppy; Cocky, the white- +feathered mite of life, imperious as a steel-blade and wheedlingly +seductive as a charming child; and even the forecastle cat, the +lithe and tawny slayer of rats, sheltering between the legs of Ah +Moy. And the Marquesas were two hundred miles distant full-hauled +on the tradewind which had ceased but which was as sure to live +again as the morning sun in the sky. + +The steward heaved a sigh, and whimsically shot into his mind the +memory-picture in his nursery-book of the old woman who lived in a +shoe. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his +hand, and was dimly aware of the area of the numbness that +bordered the centre that was sensationless between his eyebrows, +as he said: + +"Well, children, rowing won't fetch us to the Marquesas. We'll +need a stretch of wind for that. But it's up to us, right now, to +put a mile or so between us an' that peevish old cow. Maybe +she'll revive, and maybe she won't, but just the same I can't help +feelin' leary about her." + + + +CHAPTER XVI + + + +Two days later, as the steamer Mariposa plied her customary route +between Tahiti and San Francisco, the passengers ceased playing +deck quoits, abandoned their card games in the smoker, their +novels and deck chairs, and crowded the rail to stare at the small +boat that skimmed to them across the sea before a light following +breeze. When Big John, aided by Ah Moy and Kwaque, lowered the +sail and unstepped the mast, titters and laughter arose from the +passengers. It was contrary to all their preconceptions of mid- +ocean rescue of ship-wrecked mariners from the open boat. + +It caught their fancy that this boat was the Ark, what of its +freightage of bedding, dry goods boxes, beer-cases, a cat, two +dogs, a white cockatoo, a Chinaman, a kinky-headed black, a gangly +pallid-haired giant, a grizzled Dag Daughtry, and an Ancient +Mariner who looked every inch the part. Him a facetious, +vacationing architect's clerk dubbed Noah, and so greeted him. + +"I say, Noah," he called. "Some flood, eh? Located Ararat yet?" + +"Catch any fish?" bawled another youngster down over the rail. + +"Gracious! Look at the beer! Good English beer! Put me down for +a case!" + +Never was a more popular wrecked crew more merrily rescued at sea. +The young blades would have it that none other than old Noah +himself had come on board with the remnants of the Lost Tribes, +and to elderly female passengers spun hair-raising accounts of the +sinking of an entire tropic island by volcanic and earthquake +action. + +"I'm a steward," Dag Daughtry told the Mariposa's captain, "and +I'll be glad and grateful to berth along with your stewards in the +glory-hole. Big John there's a sailorman, an' the fo'c's'le 'll +do him. The Chink is a ship's cook, and the nigger belongs to me. +But Mr. Greenleaf, sir, is a gentleman, and the best of cabin fare +and staterooms'll be none too good for him, sir." + +And when the news went around that these were part of the +survivors of the three-masted schooner, Mary Turner, smashed into +kindling wood and sunk by a whale, the elderly females no more +believed than had they the yarn of the sunken island. + +"Captain Hayward," one of them demanded of the steamer's skipper, +"could a whale sink the Mariposa?" + +"She has never been so sunk," was his reply. + +"I knew it!" she declared emphatically. "It's not the way of +ships to go around being sunk by whales, is it, captain?" + +"No, madam, I assure you it is not," was his response. +"Nevertheless, all the five men insist upon it." + +"Sailors are notorious for their unveracity, are they not?" the +lady voiced her flat conclusion in the form of a tentative query. + +"Worst liars I ever saw, madam. Do you know, after forty years at +sea, I couldn't believe myself under oath." + + +Nine days later the Mariposa threaded the Golden Gate and docked +at San Francisco. Humorous half-columns in the local papers, +written in the customary silly way by unlicked cub reporters just +out of grammar school, tickled the fancy of San Francisco for a +fleeting moment in that the steamship Mariposa had rescued some +sea-waifs possessed of a cock-and-bull story that not even the +reporters believed. Thus, silly reportorial unveracity usually +proves extraordinary truth a liar. It is the way of cub +reporters, city newspapers, and flat-floor populations which get +their thrills from moving pictures and for which the real world +and all its spaciousness does not exist. + +"Sunk by a whale!" demanded the average flat-floor person. +"Nonsense, that's all. Just plain rotten nonsense. Now, in the +'Adventures of Eleanor,' which is some film, believe me, I'll tell +you what I saw happen . . . " + +So Daughtry and his crew went ashore into 'Frisco Town uheralded +and unsung, the second following morning's lucubrations of the sea +reporters being varied disportations upon the attack on an Italian +crab fisherman by an enormous jellyfish. Big John promptly sank +out of sight in a sailors' boarding-house, and, within the week, +joined the Sailors' Union and shipped on a steam schooner to load +redwood ties at Bandon, Oregon. Ah Moy got no farther ashore than +the detention sheds of the Federal Immigration Board, whence he +was deported to China on the next Pacific Mail steamer. The Mary +Turner's cat was adopted by the sailors' forecastle of the +Mariposa, and on the Mariposa sailed away on the back trip to +Tahiti. Scraps was taken ashore by a quartermaster and left in +the bosom of his family. + +And ashore went Dag Daughtry, with his small savings, to rent two +cheap rooms for himself and his remaining responsibilities, +namely, Charles Stough Greenleaf, Kwaque, Michael, and, not least, +Cocky. But not for long did he permit the Ancient Mariner to live +with him. + +"It's not playing the game, sir," he told him. "What we need is +capital. We've got to interest capital, and you've got to do the +interesting. Now this very day you've got to buy a couple of +suitcases, hire a taxicab, go sailing up to the front door of the +Bronx Hotel like good pay and be damned. She's a real stylish +hotel, but reasonable if you want to make it so. A little room, +an inside room, European plan, of course, and then you can +economise by eatin' out." + +"But, steward, I have no money," the Ancient Mariner protested. + +"That's all right, sir; I'll back you for all I can." + +"But, my dear man, you know I'm an old impostor. I can't stick +you up like the others. You . . . why . . . why, you're a friend, +don't you see?" + +"Sure I do, and I thank you for sayin' it, sir. And that's why +I'm with you. And when you've nailed another crowd of treasure- +hunters and got the ship ready, you'll just ship me along as +steward, with Kwaque, and Killeny Boy, and the rest of our family. +You've adopted me, now, an' I'm your grown-up son, an' you've got +to listen to me. The Bronx is the hotel for you--fine-soundin' +name, ain't it? That's atmosphere. Folk'll listen half to you +an' more to your hotel. I tell you, you leaning back in a big +leather chair talkin' treasure with a two-bit cigar in your mouth +an' a twenty-cent drink beside you, why that's like treasure. +They just got to believe. An' if you'll come along now, sir, +we'll trot out an' buy them suit-cases." + +Right bravely the Ancient Mariner drove to the Bronx in a taxi, +registered his "Charles Stough Greenleaf" in an old-fashioned +hand, and took up anew the activities which for years had kept him +free of the poor-farm. No less bravely did Dag Daughtry set out +to seek work. This was most necessary, because he was a man of +expensive luxuries. His family of Kwaque, Michael, and Cocky +required food and shelter; more costly than that was maintenance +of the Ancient Mariner in the high-class hotel; and, in addition, +was his six-quart thirst. + +But it was a time of industrial depression. The unemployed +problem was bulking bigger than usual to the citizens of San +Francisco. And, as regarded steamships and sailing vessels, there +were three stewards for every Steward's position. Nothing steady +could Daughtry procure, while his occasional odd jobs did not +balance his various running expenses. Even did he do pick-and- +shovel work, for the municipality, for three days, when he had to +give way, according to the impartial procedure, to another needy +one whom three days' work would keep afloat a little longer. + +Daughtry would have put Kwaque to work, except that Kwaque was +impossible. The black, who had only seen Sydney from steamers' +decks, had never been in a city in his life. All he knew of the +world was steamers, far-outlying south-sea isles, and his own +island of King William in Melanesia. So Kwaque remained in the +two rooms, cooking and housekeeping for his master and caring for +Michael and Cocky. All of which was prison for Michael, who had +been used to the run of ships, of coral beaches and plantations. + +But in the evenings, sometimes accompanied a few steps in the rear +by Kwaque, Michael strolled out with Steward. The multiplicity of +man-gods on the teeming sidewalks became a real bore to Michael, +so that man-gods, in general, underwent a sharp depreciation. But +Steward, the particular god of his fealty and worship, +appreciated. Amongst so many gods Michael felt bewildered, while +Steward's Abrahamic bosom became more than ever the one sure haven +where harshness and danger never troubled. + +"Mind your step," is the last word and warning of twentieth- +century city life. Michael was not slow to learn it, as he +conserved his own feet among the countless thousands of leather- +shod feet of men, ever hurrying, always unregarding of the +existence and right of way of a lowly, four-legged Irish terrier. + +The evening outings with Steward invariably led from saloon to +saloon, where, at long bars, standing on sawdust floors, or seated +at tables, men drank and talked. Much of both did men do, and +also did Steward do, ere, his daily six-quart stint accomplished, +he turned homeward for bed. Many were the acquaintances he made, +and Michael with him. Coasting seamen and bay sailors they mostly +were, although there were many 'longshoremen and waterfront +workmen among them. + +From one of these, a scow-schooner captain who plied up and down +the bay and the San Joaquin and Sacramento rivers, Daughtry had +the promise of being engaged as cook and sailor on the schooner +Howard. Eighty tons of freight, including deckload, she carried, +and in all democracy Captain Jorgensen, the cook, and the two +other sailors, loaded and unloaded her at all hours, and sailed +her night and day on all times and tides, one man steering while +three slept and recuperated. It was time, and double-time, and +over-time beyond that, but the feeding was generous and the wages +ran from forty-five to sixty dollars a month. + +"Sure, you bet," said Captain Jorgensen. "This cook-feller, +Hanson, pretty quick I smash him up an' fire him, then you can +come along . . . and the bow-wow, too." Here he dropped a hearty, +wholesome hand of toil down to a caress of Michael's head. +"That's one fine bow-wow. A bow-wow is good on a scow when all +hands sleep alongside the dock or in an anchor watch." + +"Fire Hanson now," Dag Daughtry urged. + +But Captain Jorgensen shook his slow head slowly. "First I smash +him up." + +"Then smash him now and fire him," Daughtry persisted. "There he +is right now at the corner of the bar." + +"No. He must give me reason. I got plenty of reason. But I want +reason all hands can see. I want him make me smash him, so that +all hands say, 'Hurrah, Captain, you done right.' Then you get +the job, Daughtry." + +Had Captain Jorgensen not been dilatory in his contemplated +smashing, and had not Hanson delayed in giving sufficient +provocation for a smashing, Michael would have accompanied Steward +upon the schooner, Howard, and all Michael's subsequent +experiences would have been totally different from what they were +destined to be. But destined they were, by chance and by +combinations of chance events over which Michael had no control +and of which he had no more awareness than had Steward himself. +At that period, the subsequent stage career and nightmare of +cruelty for Michael was beyond any wildest forecast or +apprehension. And as to forecasting Dag Daughtry's fate, along +with Kwaque, no maddest drug-dream could have approximated it. + + + +CHAPTER XVII + + + +One night Dag Daughtry sat at a table in the saloon called the +Pile-drivers' Home. He was in a parlous predicament. Harder than +ever had it been to secure odd jobs, and he had reached the end of +his savings. Earlier in the evening he had had a telephone +conference with the Ancient Mariner, who had reported only +progress with an exceptionally strong nibble that very day from a +retired quack doctor. + +"Let me pawn my rings," the Ancient Mariner had urged, not for the +first time, over the telephone. + +"No, sir," had been Daughtry's reply. "We need them in the +business. They're stock in trade. They're atmosphere. They're +what you call a figure of speech. I'll do some thinking to-night +an' see you in the morning, sir. Hold on to them rings an' don't +be no more than casual in playin' that doctor. Make 'm come to +you. It's the only way. Now you're all right, an' everything's +hunkydory an' the goose hangs high. Don't you worry, sir. Dag +Daughtry never fell down yet." + +But, as he sat in the Pile-drivers' Home, it looked as if his +fall-down was very near. In his pocket was precisely the room- +rent for the following week, the advance payment of which was +already three days overdue and clamorously demanded by the hard- +faced landlady. In the rooms, with care, was enough food with +which to pinch through for another day. The Ancient Mariner's +modest hotel bill had not been paid for two weeks--a prodigious +sum under the circumstances, being a first-class hotel; while the +Ancient Mariner had no more than a couple of dollars in his pocket +with which to make a sound like prosperity in the ears of the +retired doctor who wanted to go a-treasuring. + +Most catastrophic of all, however, was the fact that Dag Daughtry +was three quarts short of his daily allowance and did not dare +break into the rent money which was all that stood between him and +his family and the street. This was why he sat at the beer table +with Captain Jorgensen, who was just returned with a schooner-load +of hay from the Petaluma Flats. He had already bought beer twice, +and evinced no further show of thirst. Instead, he was yawning +from long hours of work and waking and looking at his watch. And +Daughtry was three quarts short! Besides, Hanson had not yet been +smashed, so that the cook-job on the schooner still lay ahead an +unknown distance in the future. + +In his desperation, Daughtry hit upon an idea with which to get +another schooner of steam beer. He did not like steam beer, but +it was cheaper than lager. + +"Look here, Captain," he said. "You don't know how smart that +Killeny Boy is. Why, he can count just like you and me." + +"Hoh!" rumbled Captain Jorgensen. "I seen 'em do it in side +shows. It's all tricks. Dogs an' horses can't count." + +"This dog can," Daughtry continued quietly. "You can't fool 'm. +I bet you, right now, I can order two beers, loud so he can hear +and notice, and then whisper to the waiter to bring one, an', when +the one comes, Killeny Boy'll raise a roar with the waiter." + +"Hoh! Hoh! How much will you bet?" + +The steward fingered a dime in his pocket. If Killeny failed him +it meant that the rent-money would be broken in upon. But Killeny +couldn't and wouldn't fail him, he reasoned, as he answered: + +"I'll bet you the price of two beers." + +The waiter was summoned, and, when he had received his secret +instructions, Michael was called over from where he lay at +Kwaque's feet in a corner. When Steward placed a chair for him at +the table and invited him into it, he began to key up. Steward +expected something of him, wanted him to show off. And it was not +because of the showing off that he was eager, but because of his +love for Steward. Love and service were one in the simple +processes of Michael's mind. Just as he would have leaped into +fire for Steward's sake, so would he now serve Steward in any way +Steward desired. That was what love meant to him. It was all +love meant to him--service. + +"Waiter!" Steward called; and, when the waiter stood close at +hand: "Two beers.--Did you get that, Killeny? TWO beers." + +Michael squirmed in his chair, placed an impulsive paw on the +table, and impulsively flashed out his ribbon of tongue to +Steward's close-bending face. + +"He will remember," Daughtry told the scow-schooner captain. + +"Not if we talk," was the reply. "Now we will fool your bow-wow. +I will say that the job is yours when I smash Hanson. And you +will say it is for me to smash Hanson now. And I will say Hanson +must give me reason first to smash him. And then we will argue +like two fools with mouths full of much noise. Are you ready?" + +Daughtry nodded, and thereupon ensued a loud-voiced discussion +that drew Michael's earnest attention from one talker to the +other. + +"I got you," Captain Jorgensen announced, as he saw the waiter +approaching with but a single schooner of beer. "The bow-wow has +forgot, if he ever remembered. He thinks you 'an me is fighting. +The place in his mind for ONE beer, and TWO, is wiped out, like a +wave on the beach wipes out the writing in the sand." + +"I guess he ain't goin' to forget arithmetic no matter how much +noise you shouts," Daughtry argued aloud against his sinking +spirits. "An' I ain't goin' to butt in," he added hopefully. +"You just watch 'm for himself." + +The tall, schooner-glass of beer was placed before the captain, +who laid a swift, containing hand around it. And Michael, strung +as a taut string, knowing that something was expected of him, on +his toes to serve, remembered his ancient lessons on the Makambo, +vainly looked into the impassive face of Steward for a sign, then +looked about and saw, not TWO glasses, but ONE glass. So well had +he learned the difference between one and two that it came to him- +-how the profoundest psychologist can no more state than can he +state what thought is in itself--that there was one glass only +when two glasses had been commanded. With an abrupt upspring, his +throat half harsh with anger, he placed both fore-paws on the +table and barked at the waiter. + +Captain Jorgensen crashed his fist down. + +"You win!" he roared. "I pay for the beer! Waiter, bring one +more." + +Michael looked to Steward for verification, and Steward's hand on +his head gave adequate reply. + +"We try again," said the captain, very much awake and interested, +with the back of his hand wiping the beer-foam from his moustache. +"Maybe he knows one an' two. How about three? And four?" + +"Just the same, Skipper. He counts up to five, and knows more +than five when it is more than five, though he don't know the +figures by name after five." + +"Oh, Hanson!" Captain Jorgensen bellowed across the bar-room to +the cook of the Howard. "Hey, you square-head! Come and have a +drink!" + +Hanson came over and pulled up a chair. + +"I pay for the drinks," said the captain; "but you order, +Daughtry. See, now, Hanson, this is a trick bow-wow. He can +count better than you. We are three. Daughtry is ordering three +beers. The bow-wow hears three. I hold up two fingers like this +to the waiter. He brings two. The bow-wow raises hell with the +waiter. You see." + +All of which came to pass, Michael blissfully unappeasable until +the order was filled properly. + +"He can't count," was Hanson's conclusion. "He sees one man +without beer. That's all. He knows every man should ought to +have a glass. That's why he barks." + +"Better than that," Daughtry boasted. "There are three of us. We +will order four. Then each man will have his glass, but Killeny +will talk to the waiter just the same." + +True enough, now thoroughly aware of the game, Michael made outcry +to the waiter till the fourth glass was brought. By this time +many men were about the table, all wanting to buy beer and test +Michael. + +"Glory be," Dag Daughtry solloquized. "A funny world. Thirsty +one moment. The next moment they'd fair drown you in beer." + +Several even wanted to buy Michael, offering ridiculous sums like +fifteen and twenty dollars. + +"I tell you what," Captain Jorgensen muttered to Daughtry, whom he +had drawn away into a corner. "You give me that bow-wow, and I'll +smash Hanson right now, and you got the job right away--come to +work in the morning." + +Into another corner the proprietor of the Pile-drivers' Home drew +Daughtry to whisper to him: + +"You stick around here every night with that dog of yourn. It +makes trade. I'll give you free beer any time and fifty cents +cash money a night." + +It was this proposition that started the big idea in Daughtry's +mind. As he told Michael, back in the room, while Kwaque was +unlacing his shoes: + +"It's this way Killeny. If you're worth fifty cents a night and +free beer to that saloon keeper, then you're worth that to me . . +. and more, my son, more. 'Cause he's lookin' for a profit. +That's why he sells beer instead of buyin' it. An', Killeny, you +won't mind workin' for me, I know. We need the money. There's +Kwaque, an' Mr. Greenleaf, an' Cocky, not even mentioning you an' +me, an' we eat an awful lot. An' room-rent's hard to get, an' +jobs is harder. What d'ye say, son, to-morrow night you an' me +hustle around an' see how much coin we can gather?" + +And Michael, seated on Steward's knees, eyes to eyes and nose to +nose, his jowls held in Steward's hand's wriggled and squirmed +with delight, flipping out his tongue and bobbing his tail in the +air. Whatever it was, it was good, for it was Steward who spoke. + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + + + +The grizzled ship's steward and the rough-coated Irish terrier +quickly became conspicuous figures in the night life of the +Barbary Coast of San Francisco. Daughtry elaborated on the +counting trick by bringing Cocky along. Thus, when a waiter did +not fetch the right number of glasses, Michael would remain quite +still, until Cocky, at a privy signal from Steward, standing on +one leg, with the free claw would clutch Michael's neck and +apparently talk into Michael's ear. Whereupon Michael would look +about the glasses on the table and begin his usual expostulation +with the waiter. + +But it was when Daughtry and Michael first sang "Roll me Down to +Rio" together, that the ten-strike was made. It occurred in a +sailors' dance-hall on Pacific Street, and all dancing stopped +while the sailors clamoured for more of the singing dog. Nor did +the place lose money, for no one left, and the crowd increased to +standing room as Michael went through his repertoire of "God Save +the King," "Sweet Bye and Bye," "Lead, Kindly Light," "Home, Sweet +Home," and "Shenandoah." + +It meant more than free beer to Daughtry, for, when he started to +leave, the proprietor of the place thrust three silver dollars +into his hand and begged him to come around with the dog next +night. + +"For that?" Daughtry demanded, looking at the money as if it were +contemptible. + +Hastily the proprietor added two more dollars, and Daughtry +promised. + +"Just the same, Killeny, my son," he told Michael as they went to +bed, "I think you an' me are worth more than five dollars a turn. +Why, the like of you has never been seen before. A real singing +dog that can carry 'most any air with me, and that can carry half +a dozen by himself. An' they say Caruso gets a thousand a night. +Well, you ain't Caruso, but you're the dog-Caruso of the entire +world. Son, I'm goin' to be your business manager. If we can't +make a twenty-dollar gold-piece a night--say, son, we're goin' to +move into better quarters. An' the old gent up at the Hotel de +Bronx is goin' to move into an outside room. An' Kwaque's goin' +to get a real outfit of clothes. Killeny, my boy, we're goin' to +get so rich that if he can't snare a sucker we'll put up the cash +ourselves 'n' buy a schooner for 'm, 'n' send him out a-treasure- +huntin' on his own. We'll be the suckers, eh, just you an' me, +an' love to." + + +The Barbary Coast of San Francisco, once the old-time sailor-town +in the days when San Francisco was reckoned the toughest port of +the Seven Seas, had evolved with the city until it depended for at +least half of its earnings on the slumming parties that visited it +and spent liberally. It was quite the custom, after dinner, for +many of the better classes of society, especially when +entertaining curious Easterners, to spend an hour or several in +motoring from dance-hall to dance-hall and cheap cabaret to cheap +cabaret. In short, the "Coast" was as much a sight-seeing place +as was Chinatown and the Cliff House. + +It was not long before Dag Daughtry was getting his twenty dollars +a night for two twenty-minute turns, and was declining more beer +than a dozen men with thirsts equal to his could have +accommodated. Never had he been so prosperous; nor can it be +denied that Michael enjoyed it. Enjoy it he did, but principally +for Steward's sake. He was serving Steward, and so to serve was +his highest heart's desire. + +In truth, Michael was the bread-winner for quite a family, each +member of which fared well. Kwaque blossomed out resplendent in +russet-brown shoes, a derby hat, and a gray suit with trousers +immaculately creased. Also, he became a devotee of the moving- +picture shows, spending as much as twenty and thirty cents a day +and resolutely sitting out every repetition of programme. Little +time was required of him in caring for Daughtry, for they had come +to eating in restaurants. Not only had the Ancient Mariner moved +into a more expensive outside room at the Bronx; but Daughtry +insisted on thrusting upon him more spending money, so that, on +occasion, he could invite a likely acquaintance to the theatre or +a concert and bring him home in a taxi. + +"We won't keep this up for ever, Killeny," Steward told Michael. +"For just as long as it takes the old gent to land another bunch +of gold-pouched, retriever-snouted treasure-hunters, and no +longer. Then it's hey for the ocean blue, my son, an' the roll of +a good craft under our feet, an' smash of wet on the deck, an' a +spout now an' again of the scuppers. + +"We got to go rollin' down to Rio as well as sing about it to a +lot of cheap skates. They can take their rotten cities. The +sea's the life for us--you an' me, Killeny, son, an' the old gent +an' Kwaque, an' Cocky, too. We ain't made for city ways. It +ain't healthy. Why, son, though you maybe won't believe it, I'm +losin' my spring. The rubber's goin' outa me. I'm kind o' +languid, with all night in an' nothin' to do but sit around. It +makes me fair sick at the thought of hearin' the old gent say once +again, 'I think, steward, one of those prime cocktails would be +just the thing before dinner.' We'll take a little ice-machine +along next voyage, an' give 'm the best. + +"An' look at Kwaque, Killeny, my boy. This ain't his climate. +He's positively ailin'. If he sits around them picture-shows much +more he'll develop the T.B. For the good of his health, an' mine +an' yours, an' all of us, we got to get up anchor pretty soon an' +hit out for the home of the trade winds that kiss you through an' +through with the salt an' the life of the sea." + + +In truth, Kwaque, who never complained, was ailing fast. A +swelling, slow and sensationless at first, under his right arm- +pit, had become a mild and unceasing pain. No longer could he +sleep a night through. Although he lay on his left side, never +less than twice, and often three and four times, the hurt of the +swelling woke him. Ah Moy, had he not long since been delivered +back to China by the immigration authorities, could have told him +the meaning of that swelling, just as he could have told Dag +Daughtry the meaning of the increasing area of numbness between +his eyes where the tiny, vertical, lion-lines were cutting more +conspicuously. Also, could he have told him what was wrong with +the little finger on his left hand. Daughtry had first diagnosed +it as a sprain of a tendon. Later, he had decided it was chronic +rheumatism brought on by the damp and foggy Sun Francisco climate. +It was one of his reasons for desiring to get away again to sea +where the tropic sun would warm the rheumatism out of him. + +As a steward, Daughtry had been accustomed to contact with men and +women of the upper world. But for the first time in his life, +here in the underworld of San Francisco, in all equality he met +such persons from above. Nay, more, they were eager to meet him. +They sought him. They fawned upon him for an invitation to sit at +his table and buy beer for him in whatever garish cabaret Michael +was performing. They would have bought wine for him, at enormous +expense, had he not stubbornly stuck to his beer. They were, some +of them, for inviting him to their homes--"An' bring the wonderful +dog along for a sing-song"; but Daughtry, proud of Michael for +being the cause of such invitations, explained that the +professional life was too arduous to permit of such diversions. +To Michael he explained that when they proffered a fee of fifty +dollars, the pair of them would "come a-runnin'." + +Among the host of acquaintances made in their cabaret-life, two +were destined, very immediately, to play important parts in the +lives of Daughtry and Michael. The first, a politician and a +doctor, by name Emory--Walter Merritt Emory--was several times at +Daughtry's table, where Michael sat with them on a chair according +to custom. Among other things, in gratitude for such kindnesses +from Daughtry, Doctor Emory gave his office card and begged for +the privilege of treating, free of charge, either master or dog +should they ever become sick. In Daughtry's opinion, Dr. Walter +Merritt Emory was a keen, clever man, undoubtedly able in his +profession, but passionately selfish as a hungry tiger. As he +told him, in the brutal candour he could afford under such changed +conditions: "Doc, you're a wonder. Anybody can see it with half +an eye. What you want you just go and get. Nothing'd stop you +except . . . " + +"Except?" + +"Oh, except that it was nailed down, or locked up, or had a +policeman standing guard over it. I'd sure hate to have anything +you wanted." + +"Well, you have," Doctor assured him, with a significant nod at +Michael on the chair between them. + +"Br-r-r!" Daughtry shivered. "You give me the creeps. If I +thought you really meant it, San Francisco couldn't hold me two +minutes." He meditated into his beer-glass a moment, then laughed +with reassurance. "No man could get that dog away from me. You +see, I'd kill the man first. I'd just up an' tell 'm, as I'm +tellin' you now, I'd kill 'm first. An' he'd believe me, as +you're believin' me now. You know I mean it. So'd he know I +meant it. Why, that dog . . . " + +In sheer inability to express the profundity of his emotion, Dag +Daughtry broke off the sentence and drowned it in his beer-glass. + +Of quite different type was the other person of destiny. Harry +Del Mar, he called himself; and Harry Del Mar was the name that +appeared on the programmes when he was doing Orpheum "time." +Although Daughtry did not know it, because Del Mar was laying off +for a vacation, the man did trained-animal turns for a living. +He, too, bought drinks at Daughtry's table. Young, not over +thirty, dark of complexion with large, long-lashed brown eyes that +he fondly believed were magnetic, cherubic of lip and feature, he +belied all his appearance by talking business in direct business +fashion. + +"But you ain't got the money to buy 'm," Daughtry replied, when +the other had increased his first offer of five hundred dollars +for Michael to a thousand. + +"I've got the thousand, if that's what you mean." + +"No," Daughtry shook his head. "I mean he ain't for sale at any +price. Besides, what do you want 'm for?" + +"I like him," Del Mar answered. "Why do I come to this joint? +Why does the crowd come here? Why do men buy wine, run horses, +sport actresses, become priests or bookworms? Because they like +to. That's the answer. We all do what we like when we can, go +after the thing we want whether we can get it or not. Now I like +your dog, I want him. I want him a thousand dollars' worth. See +that big diamond on that woman's hand over there. I guess she +just liked it, and wanted it, and got it, never mind the price. +The price didn't mean as much to her as the diamond. Now that dog +of yours--" + +"Don't like you," Dag Daughtry broke in. "Which is strange. He +likes most everybody without fussin' about it. But he bristled at +you from the first. No man'd want a dog that don't like him." + +"Which isn't the question," Del Mar stated quietly. "I like him. +As for him liking or not liking me, that's my look-out, and I +guess I can attend to that all right." + +It seemed to Daughtry that he glimpsed or sensed under the other's +unfaltering cherubicness of expression a steelness of cruelty that +was abysmal in that it was of controlled intelligence. Not in +such terms did Daughtry think his impression. At the most, it was +a feeling, and feelings do not require words in order to be +experienced or comprehended. + +"There's an all-night bank," the other went on. "We can stroll +over, I'll cash a cheque, and in half an hour the cash will be in +your hand." + +Daughtry shook his head. + +"Even as a business proposition, nothing doing," he said. "Look +you. Here's the dog earnin' twenty dollars a night. Say he works +twenty-five days in the month. That's five hundred a month, or +six thousand a year. Now say that's five per cent., because it's +easier to count, it represents the interest on a capital value of +one hundred an' twenty thousand-dollars. Then we'll suppose +expenses and salary for me is twenty thousand. That leaves the +dog worth a hundred thousand. Just to be fair, cut it in half--a +fifty-thousand dog. And you're offerin' a thousand for him." + +"I suppose you think he'll last for ever, like so much land'," Del +Mar smiled quietly. + +Daughtry saw the point instantly. + +"Give 'm five years of work--that's thirty thousand. Give 'm one +year of work--it's six thousand. An' you're offerin' me one +thousand for six thousand. That ain't no kind of business--for me +. . . an' him. Besides, when he can't work any more, an' ain't +worth a cent, he'll be worth just a plumb million to me, an' if +anybody offered it, I'd raise the price." + + + +CHAPTER XIX + + + +"I'll see you again," Harry Del Mar told Daughtry, at the end of +his fourth conversation on the matter of Michael's sale. + +Wherein Harry Del Mar was mistaken. He never saw Daughtry again, +because Daughtry saw Doctor Emory first. + +Kwaque's increasing restlessness at night, due to the swelling +under his right arm-pit, had began to wake Daughtry up. After +several such experiences, he had investigated and decided that +Kwaque was sufficiently sick to require a doctor. For which +reason, one morning at eleven, taking Kwaque along, he called at +Walter Merritt Emory's office and waited his turn in the crowded +reception-room. + +"I think he's got cancer, Doc.," Daughtry said, while Kwaque was +pulling off his shirt and undershirt. "He never squealed, you +know, never peeped. That's the way of niggers. I didn't find our +till he got to wakin' me up nights with his tossin' about an' +groanin' in his sleep.--There! What'd you call it? Cancer or +tumour--no two ways about it, eh?" + +But the quick eye of Walter Merritt Emory had not missed, in +passing, the twisted fingers of Kwaque's left hand. Not only was +his eye quick, but it was a "leper eye." A volunteer surgeon in +the first days out in the Philippines, he had made a particular +study of leprosy, and had observed so many lepers that infallibly, +except in the incipient beginnings of the disease, he could pick +out a leper at a glance. From the twisted fingers, which was the +anaesthetic form, produced by nerve-disintegration, to the +corrugated lion forehead (again anaesthetic), his eyes flashed to +the swelling under the right arm-pit and his brain diagnosed it as +the tubercular form. + +Just as swiftly flashed through his brain two thoughts: the +first, the axiom, WHENEVER AND WHEREVER YOU FIND A LEPER, LOOK FOR +THE OTHER LEPER; the second, the desired Irish terrier, who was +owned by Daughtry, with whom Kwaque had been long associated. And +here all swiftness of eye-flashing ceased on the part of Walter +Merritt Emory. He did not know how much, if anything, the steward +knew about leprosy, and he did not care to arouse any suspicions. +Casually drawing his watch to see the time, he turned and +addressed Daughtry. + +"I should say his blood is out of order. He's run down. He's not +used to the recent life he's been living, nor to the food. To +make certain, I shall examine for cancer and tumour, although +there's little chance of anything like that." + +And as he talked, with just a waver for a moment, his gaze lifted +above Daughtry's eyes to the area of forehead just above and +between the eyes. It was sufficient. His "leper-eye" had seen +the "lion" mark of the leper. + +"You're run down yourself," he continued smoothly. "You're not up +to snuff, I'll wager. Eh?" + +"Can't say that I am," Daughtry agreed. "I guess I got to get +back to the sea an' the tropics and warm the rheumatics outa me." + +"Where?" queried Doctor Emory, almost absently, so well did he +feign it, as if apparently on the verge of returning to a closer +examination, of Kwaque's swelling. + +Daughtry extended his left hand, with a little wiggle of the +little finger advertising the seat of the affliction. Walter +Merritt Emory saw, with seeming careless look out from under +careless-drooping eyelids, the little finger slightly swollen, +slightly twisted, with a smooth, almost shiny, silkiness of skin- +texture. Again, in the course of turning to look at Kwaque, his +eyes rested an instant on the lion-lines of Daughtry's brow. + +"Rheumatism is still the great mystery," Doctor Emory said, +returning to Daughtry as if deflected by the thought. "It's +almost individual, there are so many varieties of it. Each man +has a kind of his own. Any numbness?" + +Daughtry laboriously wiggled his little finger. + +"Yes, sir," he answered. "It ain't as lively as it used to was." + +"Ah," Walter Merritt Emory murmured, with a vastitude of +confidence and assurance. "Please sit down in that chair there. +Maybe I won't be able to cure you, but I promise you I can direct +you to the best place to live for what's the matter with you.-- +Miss Judson!" + +And while the trained-nurse-apparelled young woman seated Dag +Daughtry in the enamelled surgeon's chair and leaned him back +under direction, and while Doctor Emory dipped his finger-tips +into the strongest antiseptic his office possessed, behind Doctor +Emory's eyes, in the midst of his brain, burned the image of a +desired Irish terrier who did turns in sailor-town cabarets, was +rough-coated, and answered to the full name of Killeny Boy. + +"You've got rheumatism in more places than your little finger," he +assured Daughtry. "There's a touch right here, I'll wager, on +your forehead. One moment, please. Move if I hurt you, Otherwise +sit still, because I don't intend to hurt you. I merely want to +see if my diagnosis is correct.--There, that's it. Move when you +feel anything. Rheumatism has strange freaks.--Watch this, Miss +Judson, and I'll wager this form of rheumatism is new to you. +See. He does not resent. He thinks I have not begun yet . . . " + +And as he talked, steadily, interestingly, he was doing what Dag +Daughtry never dreamed he was doing, and what made Kwaque, looking +on, almost dream he was seeing because of the unrealness and +impossibleness of it. For, with a large needle, Doctor Emory was +probing the dark spot in the midst of the vertical lion-lines. +Nor did he merely probe the area. Thrusting into it from one +side, under the skin and parallel to it, he buried the length of +the needle from sight through the insensate infiltration. This +Kwaque beheld with bulging eyes; for his master betrayed no sign +that the thing was being done. + +"Why don't you begin?" Dag Daughtry questioned impatiently. +"Besides, my rheumatism don't count. It's the nigger-boy's +swelling." + +"You need a course of treatment," Doctor Emory assured him. +"Rheumatism is a tough proposition. It should never be let grow +chronic. I'll fix up a course of treatment for you. Now, if +you'll get out of the chair, we'll look at your black servant." + +But first, before Kwaque was leaned back, Doctor Emory threw over +the chair a sheet that smelled of having been roasted almost to +the scorching point. As he was about to examine Kwaque, he looked +with a slight start of recollection at his watch. When he saw the +time he startled more, and turned a reproachful face upon his +assistant. + +"Miss Judson," he said, coldly emphatic, "you have failed me. +Here it is, twenty before twelve, and you knew I was to confer +with Doctor Hadley over that case at eleven-thirty sharp. How he +must be cursing me! You know how peevish he is." + +Miss Judson nodded, with a perfect expression of contrition and +humility, as if she knew all about it, although, in reality, she +knew only all about her employer and had never heard till that +moment of his engagement at eleven-thirty. + +"Doctor Hadley's just across the hall," Doctor Emory explained to +Daughtry. "It won't take me five minutes. He and I have a +disagreement. He has diagnosed the case as chronic appendicitis +and wants to operate. I have diagnosed it as pyorrhea which has +infected the stomach from the mouth, and have suggested emetine +treatment of the mouth as a cure for the stomach disorder. Of +course, you don't understand, but the point is that I've persuaded +Doctor Hadley to bring in Doctor Granville, who is a dentist and a +pyorrhea expert. And they're all waiting for me these ten +minutes! I must run. + +"I'll return inside five minutes," he called back as the door to +the hall was closing upon him.--"Miss Judson, please tell those +people in the reception-room to be patient." + +He did enter Doctor Hadley's office, although no sufferer from +pyorrhea or appendicitis awaited him. Instead, he used the +telephone for two calls: one to the president of the board of +health; the other to the chief of police. Fortunately, he caught +both at their offices, addressing them familiarly by their first +names and talking to them most emphatically and confidentially. + +Back in his own quarters, he was patently elated. + +"I told him so," he assured Miss Judson, but embracing Daughtry in +the happy confidence. "Doctor Granville backed me up. Straight +pyorrhea, of course. That knocks the operation. And right now +they're jolting his gums and the pus-sacs with emetine. Whew! A +fellow likes to be right. I deserve a smoke. Do you mind, Mr. +Daughtry?" + +And while the steward shook his head, Doctor Emory lighted a big +Havana and continued audibly to luxuriate in his fictitious +triumph over the other doctor. As he talked, he forgot to smoke, +and, leaning quite casually against the chair, with arrant +carelessness allowed the live coal at the end of his cigar to rest +against the tip of one of Kwaque's twisted fingers. A privy wink +to Miss Judson, who was the only one who observed his action, +warned her against anything that might happen. + +"You know, Mr. Daughtry," Walter Merritt Emory went on +enthusiastically, while he held the steward's eyes with his and +while all the time the live end of the cigar continued to rest +against Kwaque's finger, "the older I get the more convinced I am +that there are too many ill-advised and hasty operations." + +Still fire and flesh pressed together, and a tiny spiral of smoke +began to arise from Kwaque's finger-end that was different in +colour from the smoke of a cigar-end. + +"Now take that patient of Doctor Hadley's. I've saved him, not +merely the risk of an operation for appendicitis, but the cost of +it, and the hospital expenses. I shall charge him nothing for +what I did. Hadley's charge will be merely nominal. Doctor +Granville, at the outside, will cure his pyorrhea with emetine for +no more than a paltry fifty dollars. Yes, by George, besides the +risk to his life, and the discomfort, I've saved that man, all +told, a cold thousand dollars to surgeon, hospital, and nurses." + +And while he talked on, holding Daughtry's eyes, a smell of roast +meat began to pervade the air. Doctor Emory smelled it eagerly. +So did Miss Judson smell it, but she had been warned and gave no +notice. Nor did she look at the juxtaposition of cigar and +finger, although she knew by the evidence of her nose that it +still obtained. + +"What's burning?" Daughtry demanded suddenly, sniffing the air and +glancing around. + +"Pretty rotten cigar," Doctor Emory observed, having removed it +from contact with Kwaque's finger and now examining it with +critical disapproval. He held it close to his nose, and his face +portrayed disgust. "I won't say cabbage leaves. I'll merely say +it's something I don't know and don't care to know. That's the +trouble. They get out a good, new brand of cigar, advertise it, +put the best of tobacco into it, and, when it has taken with the +public, put in inferior tobacco and ride the popularity of it. No +more in mine, thank you. This day I change my brand." + +So speaking, he tossed the cigar into a cuspidor. And Kwaque, +leaning back in the queerest chair in which he had ever sat, was +unaware that the end of his finger had been burned and roasted +half an inch deep, and merely wondered when the medicine doctor +would cease talking and begin looking at the swelling that hurt +his side under his arm. + +And for the first time in his life, and for the ultimate time, Dag +Daughtry fell down. It was an irretrievable fall-down. Life, in +its freedom of come and go, by heaving sea and reeling deck, +through the home of the trade-winds, back and forth between the +ports, ceased there for him in Walter Merritt Emory's office, +while the calm-browed Miss Judson looked on and marvelled that a +man's flesh should roast and the man wince not from the roasting +of it. + +Doctor Emory continued to talk, and tried a fresh cigar, and, +despite the fact that his reception-room was overflowing, +delivered, not merely a long, but a live and interesting, +dissertation on the subject of cigars and of the tobacco leaf and +filler as grown and prepared for cigars in the tobacco-favoured +regions of the earth. + +"Now, as regards this swelling," he was saying, as he began a +belated and distant examination of Kwaque's affliction, "I should +say, at a glance, that it is neither tumour nor cancer, nor is it +even a boil. I should say . . . " + +A knock at the private door into the hall made him straighten up +with an eagerness that he did not attempt to mask. A nod to Miss +Judson sent her to open the door, and entered two policemen, a +police sergeant, and a professionally whiskered person in a +business suit with a carnation in his button-hole. + +"Good morning, Doctor Masters," Emory greeted the professional +one, and, to the others: "Howdy, Sergeant;" "Hello, Tim;" "Hello, +Johnson--when did they shift you off the Chinatown squad?" + +And then, continuing his suspended sentence, Walter Merritt Emory +held on, looking intently at Kwaque's swelling: + +"I should say, as I was saying, that it is the finest, ripest, +perforating ulcer of the bacillus leprae order, that any San +Francisco doctor has had the honour of presenting to the board of +health." + +"Leprosy!" exclaimed Doctor Masters. + +And all started at his pronouncement of the word. The sergeant +and the two policemen shied away from Kwaque; Miss Judson, with a +smothered cry, clapped her two hands over her heart; and Dag +Daughtry, shocked but sceptical, demanded: + +"What are you givin' us, Doc.?" + +"Stand still! don't move!" Walter Merritt Emory said peremptorily +to Daughtry. "I want you to take notice," he added to the others, +as he gently touched the live-end of his fresh cigar to the area +of dark skin above and between the steward's eyes. "Don't move," +he commanded Daughtry. "Wait a moment. I am not ready yet." + +And while Daughtry waited, perplexed, confused, wondering why +Doctor Emory did not proceed, the coal of fire burned his skin and +flesh, till the smoke of it was apparent to all, as was the smell +of it. With a sharp laugh of triumph, Doctor Emory stepped back. + +"Well, go ahead with what you was goin' to do," Daughtry grumbled, +the rush of events too swift and too hidden for him to comprehend. +"An' when you're done with that, I just want you to explain what +you said about leprosy an' that nigger-boy there. He's my boy, +an' you can't pull anything like that off on him . . . or me." + +"Gentlemen, you have seen," Doctor Emory said. "Two undoubted +cases of it, master and man, the man more advanced, with the +combination of both forms, the master with only the anaesthetic +form--he has a touch of it, too, on his little finger. Take them +away. I strongly advise, Doctor Masters, a thorough fumigation of +the ambulance afterward." + +"Look here . . . " Dag Daughtry began belligerently. + +Doctor Emory glanced warningly to Doctor Masters, and Doctor +Masters glanced authoritatively at the sergeant who glanced +commandingly at his two policemen. But they did not spring upon +Daughtry. Instead, they backed farther away, drew their clubs, +and glared intimidatingly at him. More convincing than anything +else to Daughtry was the conduct of the policemen. They were +manifestly afraid of contact with him. As he started forward, +they poked the ends of their extended clubs towards his ribs to +ward him off. + +"Don't you come any closer," one warned him, flourishing his club +with the advertisement of braining him. "You stay right where you +are until you get your orders." + +"Put on your shirt and stand over there alongside your master," +Doctor Emory commanded Kwaque, having suddenly elevated the chair +and spilled him out on his feet on the floor. + +"But what under the sun . . . " Daughtry began, but was ignored by +his quondam friend, who was saying to Doctor Masters: + +"The pest-house has been vacant since that Japanese died. I know +the gang of cowards in your department so I'd advise you to give +the dope to these here so that they can disinfect the premises +when they go in." + +"For the love of Mike," Daughtry pleaded, all of stunned +belligerence gone from him in his state of stunned conviction that +the dread disease possessed him. He touched his finger to his +sensationless forehead, then smelled it and recognized the burnt +flesh he had not felt burning. "For the love of Mike, don't be in +such a rush. If I've got it, I've got it. But that ain't no +reason we can't deal with each other like white men. Give me two +hours an' I'll get outa the city. An' in twenty-four I'll be outa +the country. I'll take ship--" + +"And continue to be a menace to the public health wherever you +are," Doctor Masters broke in, already visioning a column in the +evening papers, with scare-heads, in which he would appear the +hero, the St. George of San Francisco standing with poised lance +between the people and the dragon of leprosy. + +"Take them away," said Waiter Merritt Emory, avoiding looking +Daughtry in the eyes. + +"Ready! March!" commanded the sergeant. + +The two policemen advanced on Daughtry and Kwaque with extended +clubs. + +"Keep away, an' keep movin'," one of the policemen growled +fiercely. "An' do what we say, or get your head cracked. Out you +go, now. Out the door with you. Better tell that coon to stick +right alongside you." + +"Doc., won't you let me talk a moment?" Daughtry begged of Emory. + +"The time for talking is past," was the reply. "This is the time +for segregation.--Doctor Masters, don't forget that ambulance when +you're quit of the load." + +So the procession, led by the board-of-heath doctor and the +sergeant, and brought up in the rear by the policemen with their +protectively extended clubs, started through the doorway. + +Whirling about on the threshold, at the imminent risk of having +his skull cracked, Dag Daughtry called back: + +"Doc! My dog! You know 'm." + +"I'll get him for you," Doctor Emory consented quickly. "What's +the address?" + +"Room eight-seven, Clay street, the Bowhead Lodging House, you +know the place, entrance just around the corner from the Bowhead +Saloon. Have 'm sent out to me wherever they put me--will you?" + +"Certainly I will," said Doctor Emory, "and you've got a cockatoo, +too?" + +"You bet, Cocky! Send 'm both along, please, sir." + + +"My!" said Miss Judson, that evening, at dinner with a certain +young interne of St. Joseph's Hospital. "That Doctor Emory is a +wizard. No wonder he's successful. Think of it! Two filthy +lepers in our office to-day! One was a coon. And he knew what +was the matter the moment he laid eyes on them. He's a caution. +When I tell you what he did to them with his cigar! And he was +cute about it! He gave me the wink first. And they never dreamed +what he was doing. He took his cigar and . . . " + + + +CHAPTER XX + + + +The dog, like the horse, abases the base. Being base, Waiter +Merritt Emory was abased by his desire for the possession of +Michael. Had there been no Michael, his conduct would have been +quite different. He would have dealt with Daughtry as Daughtry +had described, as between white men. He would have warned +Daughtry of his disease and enabled him to take ship to the South +Seas or to Japan, or to other countries where lepers are not +segregated. This would have worked no hardship on those +countries, since such was their law and procedure, while it would +have enabled Daughtry and Kwaque to escape the hell of the San +Francisco pest-house, to which, because of his baseness, he +condemned them for the rest of their lives. + +Furthermore, when the expense of the maintenance of armed guards +over the pest-house, day and night, throughout the years, is +considered, Walter Merritt Emory could have saved many thousands +of dollars to the tax-payers of the city and county of San +Francisco, which thousands of dollars, had they been spent +otherwise, could have been diverted to the reduction of the +notorious crowding in school-rooms, to purer milk for the babies +of the poor, or to an increase of breathing-space in the park +system for the people of the stifling ghetto. But had Walter +Merritt Emory been thus considerate, not only would Daughtry and +Kwaque have sailed out and away over the sea, but with them would +have sailed Michael. + +Never was a reception-roomful of patients rushed through more +expeditiously than was Doctor Emory's the moment the door had +closed upon the two policemen who brought up Daughtry's rear. And +before he went to his late lunch, Doctor Emory was away in his +machine and down into the Barbary Coast to the door of the Bowhead +Lodging House. On the way, by virtue of his political +affiliations, he had been able to pick up a captain of detectives. +The addition of the captain proved necessary, for the landlady put +up a stout argument against the taking of the dog of her lodger. +But Milliken, captain of detectives, was too well known to her, +and she yielded to the law of which he was the symbol and of which +she was credulously ignorant. + +As Michael started out of the room on the end of a rope, a +plaintive call of reminder came from the window-sill, where +perched a tiny, snow-white cockatoo. + +"Cocky," he called. "Cocky." + +Walter Merritt Emory glanced back and for no more than a moment +hesitated. "We'll send for the bird later," he told the landlady, +who, still mildly expostulating as she followed them downstairs, +failed to notice that the captain of the detectives had carelessly +left the door to Daughtry's rooms ajar. + + +But Walter Merritt Emory was not the only base one abased by +desire of possession of Michael. In a deep leather chair, his +feet resting in another deep leather chair, at the Indoor Yacht +Club, Harry Del Mar yielded to the somniferous digestion of lunch, +which was for him breakfast as well, and glanced through the first +of the early editions of the afternoon papers. His eyes lighted +on a big headline, with a brief five lines under it. His feet +were instantly drawn down off the chair and under him as he stood +up erect upon them. On swift second thought, he sat down again, +pressed the electric button, and, while waiting for the club +steward, reread the headline and the brief five lines. + +In a taxi, and away, heading for the Barbary Coast, Harry Del Mar +saw visions that were golden. They took on the semblance of +yellow, twenty-dollar gold pieces, of yellow-backed paper bills of +the government stamping of the United States, of bank books, and +of rich coupons ripe for the clipping--and all shot through the +flashings of the form of a rough-coated Irish terrier, on a galaxy +of brilliantly-lighted stages, mouth open, nose upward to the +drops, singing, ever singing, as no dog had ever been known to +sing in the world before. + + +Cocky himself was the first to discover that the door was ajar, +and was looking at it with speculation (if by "speculation" may be +described the mental processes of a bird, in some mysterious way +absorbing into its consciousness a fresh impression of its +environment and preparing to act, or not act, according to which +way the fresh impression modifies its conduct). Humans do this +very thing, and some of them call it "free will." Cocky, staring +at the open door, was in just the stage of determining whether or +not he should more closely inspect that crack of exit to the wider +world, which inspection, in turn, would determine whether or not +he should venture out through the crack, when his eyes beheld the +eyes of the second discoverer staring in. + +The eyes were bestial, yellow-green, the pupils dilating and +narrowing with sharp swiftness as they sought about among the +lights and glooms of the room. Cocky knew danger at the first +glimpse--danger to the uttermost of violent death. Yet Cocky did +nothing. No panic stirred his heart. Motionless, one eye only +turned upon the crack, he focused that one eye upon the head and +eyes of the gaunt gutter-cat whose head had erupted into the crack +like an apparition. + +Alert, dilating and contracting, as swift as cautious, and +infinitely apprehensive, the pupils vertically slitted in jet into +the midmost of amazing opals of greenish yellow, the eyes roved +the room. They alighted on Cocky. Instantly the head portrayed +that the cat had stiffened, crouched, and frozen. Almost +imperceptibly the eyes settled into a watching that was like to +the stony stare of a sphinx across aching and eternal desert +sands. The eyes were as if they had so stared for centuries and +millenniums. + +No less frozen was Cocky. He drew no film across his one eye that +showed his head cocked sideways, nor did the passion of +apprehension that whelmed him manifest itself in the quiver of a +single feather. Both creatures were petrified into the mutual +stare that is of the hunter and the hunted, the preyer and the +prey, the meat-eater and the meat. + +It was a matter of long minutes, that stare, until the head in the +doorway, with a slight turn, disappeared. Could a bird sigh, +Cocky would have sighed. But he made no movement as he listened +to the slow, dragging steps of a man go by and fade away down the +hall. + +Several minutes passed, and, just as abruptly the apparition +reappeared--not alone the head this time, but the entire sinuous +form as it glided into the room and came to rest in the middle of +the floor. The eyes brooded on Cocky, and the entire body was +still save for the long tail, which lashed from one side to the +other and back again in an abrupt, angry, but monotonous manner. + +Never removing its eyes from Cocky, the cat advanced slowly until +it paused not six feet away. Only the tail lashed back and forth, +and only the eyes gleamed like jewels in the full light of the +window they faced, the vertical pupils contracting to scarcely +perceptible black slits. + +And Cocky, who could not know death with the clearness of concept +of a human, nevertheless was not altogether unaware that the end +of all things was terribly impending. As he watched the cat +deliberately crouch for the spring, Cocky, gallant mote of life +that he was, betrayed his one and forgivable panic. + +"Cocky! Cocky!" he called plaintively to the blind, insensate +walls. + +It was his call to all the world, and all powers and things and +two-legged men-creatures, and Steward in particular, and Kwaque, +and Michael. The burden of his call was: "It is I, Cocky. I am +very small and very frail, and this is a monster to destroy me, +and I love the light, bright world, and I want to live and to +continue to live in the brightness, and I am so very small, and +I'm a good little fellow, with a good little heart, and I cannot +battle with this huge, furry, hungry thing that is going to devour +me, and I want help, help, help. I am Cocky. Everybody knows me. +I am Cocky." + +This, and much more, was contained in his two calls of: "Cocky! +Cocky!" + +And there was no answer from the blind walls, from the hall +outside, nor from all the world, and, his moment of panic over, +Cocky was his brave little self again. He sat motionless on the +windowsill, his head cocked to the side, with one unwavering eye +regarding on the floor, so perilously near, the eternal enemy of +all his kind. + +The human quality of his voice had startled the gutter-cat, +causing her to forgo her spring as she flattened down her ears and +bellied closer to the floor. + +And in the silence that followed, a blue-bottle fly buzzed rowdily +against an adjacent window-pane, with occasional loud bumps +against the glass tokening that he too had his tragedy, a prisoner +pent by baffling transparency from the bright world that blazed so +immediately beyond. + +Nor was the gutter-cat without her ill and hurt of life. Hunger +hurt her, and hurt her meagre breasts that should have been full +for the seven feeble and mewing little ones, replicas of her save +that their eyes were not yet open and that they were grotesquely +unsteady on their soft, young legs. She remembered them by the +hurt of her breasts and the prod of her instinct; also she +remembered them by vision, so that, by the subtle chemistry of her +brain, she could see them, by way of the broken screen across the +ventilator hole, down into the cellar in the dark rubbish-corner +under the stairway, where she had stolen her lair and birthed her +litter. + +And the vision of them, and the hurt of her hunger stirred her +afresh, so that she gathered her body and measured the distance +for the leap. But Cocky was himself again. + +"Devil be damned! Devil be damned!" he shouted his loudest and +most belligerent, as he ruffled like a bravo at the gutter-cat +beneath him, so that he sent her crouching, with startlement, +lower to the floor, her ears wilting rigidly flat and down, her +tail lashing, her head turning about the room so that her eyes +might penetrate its obscurest corners in quest of the human whose +voice had so cried out. + +All of which the gutter-cat did, despite the positive evidence of +her senses that this human noise had proceeded from the white bird +itself on the window-sill. + +The bottle fly bumped once again against its invisible prison wall +in the silence that ensued. The gutter-cat prepared and sprang +with sudden decision, landing where Cocky had perched the fraction +of a second before. Cocky had darted to the side, but, even as he +darted, and as the cat landed on the sill, the cat's paw flashed +out sidewise and Cocky leaped straight up, beating the air with +his wings so little used to flying. The gutter-cat reared on her +hind-legs, smote upward with one paw as a child might strike with +its hat at a butterfly. But there was weight in the cat's paw, +and the claws of it were outspread like so many hooks. + +Struck in mid-air, a trifle of a flying machine, all its delicate +gears tangled and disrupted, Cocky fell to the floor in a shower +of white feathers, which, like snowflakes, eddied slowly down +after, and after the plummet-like descent of the cat, so that some +of them came to rest on her back, startling her tense nerves with +their gentle impact and making her crouch closer while she shot a +swift glance around and overhead for any danger that might +threaten. + + + +CHAPTER XXI + + + +Harry Del Mar found only a few white feathers on the floor of Dag +Daughtry's room in the Bowhead Lodging House, and from the +landlady learned what had happened to Michael. The first thing +Harry Del Mar did, still retaining his taxi, was to locate the +residence of Doctor Emory and make sure that Michael was confined +in an outhouse in the back yard. Next he engaged passage on the +steamship Umatilla, sailing for Seattle and Puget Sound ports at +daylight. And next he packed his luggage and paid his bills. + +In the meantime, a wordy war was occurring in Walter Merritt +Emory's office. + +"The man's yelling his head off," Doctor Masters was contending. +"The police had to rap him with their clubs in the ambulance. He +was violent. He wanted his dog. It can't be done. It's too raw. +You can't steal his dog this way. He'll make a howl in the +papers." + +"Huh!" quoth Walter Merritt Emory. "I'd like to see a reporter +with backbone enough to go within talking distance of a leper in +the pest-house. And I'd like to see the editor who wouldn't send +a pest-house letter (granting it'd been smuggled past the guards) +out to be burned the very second he became aware of its source. +Don't you worry, Doc. There won't be any noise in the papers." + +"But leprosy! Public health! The dog has been exposed to his +master. The dog itself is a peripatetic source of infection." + +"Contagion is the better and more technical word, Doc.," Walter +Merritt Emory soothed with the sting of superior knowledge. + +"Contagion, then," Doctor Masters took him up. "The public must +be considered. It must not run the risk of being infected--" + +"Of contracting the contagion," the other corrected smoothly. + +"Call it what you will. The public--" + +"Poppycock," said Walter Merritt Emory. "What you don't know +about leprosy, and what the rest of the board of health doesn't +know about leprosy, would fill more books than have been compiled +by the men who have expertly studied the disease. The one thing +they have eternally tried, and are eternally trying, is to +inoculate one animal outside man with the leprosy that is peculiar +to man. Horses, rabbits, rats, donkeys, monkeys, mice, and dogs-- +heavens, they have tried it on them all, tens of thousands of +times and a hundred thousand times ten thousand times, and never a +successful inoculation! They have never succeeded in inoculating +it on one man from another. Here--let me show you." + +And from his shelves Waiter Merritt Emory began pulling down his +authorities. + +"Amazing . . . most interesting . . . " Doctor Masters continued +to emit from time to time as he followed the expert guidance of +the other through the books. "I never dreamed . . . the amount of +work they have done is astounding . . . " + +"But," he said in conclusion, "there is no convincing a layman of +the matter contained on your shelves. Nor can I so convince my +public. Nor will I try to. Besides, the man is consigned to the +living death of life-long imprisonment in the pest-house. You +know the beastly hole it is. He loves the dog. He's mad over it. +Let him have it. I tell you it's rotten unfair and cruel, and I +won't stand for it." + +"Yes, you will," Walter Merritt Emory assured him coolly. "And +I'll tell you why." + +He told him. He said things that no doctor should say to another, +but which a politician may well say, and has often said, to +another politician--things which cannot bear repeating, if, for no +other reason, because they are too humiliating and too little +conducive to pride for the average American citizen to know; +things of the inside, secret governments of imperial +municipalities which the average American citizen, voting free as +a king at the polls, fondly thinks he manages; things which are, +on rare occasion, partly unburied and promptly reburied in the +tomes of reports of Lexow Committees and Federal Commissions. + + +And Walter Merritt Emory won his desire of Michael against Doctor +Masters; had his wife dine with him at Jules' that evening and +took her to see Margaret Anglin in celebration of the victory; +returned home at one in the morning, in his pyjamas went out to +take a last look at Michael, and found no Michael. + + +The pest-house of San Francisco, as is naturally the case with +pest-houses in all American cities, was situated on the bleakest, +remotest, forlornest, cheapest space of land owned by the city. +Poorly protected from the Pacific Ocean, chill winds and dense +fog-banks whistled and swirled sadly across the sand-dunes. +Picnicking parties never came there, nor did small boys hunting +birds' nests or playing at being wild Indians. The only class of +frequenters was the suicides, who, sad of life, sought the saddest +landscape as a fitting scene in which to end. And, because they +so ended, they never repeated their visits. + +The outlook from the windows was not inspiriting. A quarter of a +mile in either direction, looking out along the shallow canyon of +the sand-hills, Dag Daughtry could see the sentry-boxes of the +guards, themselves armed and more prone to kill than to lay hands +on any escaping pest-man, much less persuavively discuss with him +the advisability of his return to the prison house. + +On the opposing sides of the prospect from the windows of the four +walls of the pest-house were trees. Eucalyptus they were, but not +the royal monarchs that their brothers are in native habitats. +Poorly planted, by politics, illy attended, by politics, decimated +and many times repeatedly decimated by the hostile forces of their +environment, a straggling corporal's guard of survivors, they +thrust their branches, twisted and distorted, as if writhing in +agony, into the air. Scrub of growth they were, expending the +major portion of their meagre nourishment in their roots that +crawled seaward through the insufficient sand for anchorage +against the prevailing gales. + +Not even so far as the sentry-boxes were Daughtry and Kwaque +permitted to stroll. A hundred yards inside was the dead-line. +Here, the guards came hastily to deposit food-supplies, medicines, +and written doctors' instructions, retreating as hastily as they +came. Here, also, was a blackboard upon which Daughtry was +instructed to chalk up his needs and requests in letters of such +size that they could be read from a distance. And on this board, +for many days, he wrote, not demands for beer, although the six- +quart daily custom had been broken sharply off, but demands like: + + +WHERE IS MY DOG? +HE IS AN IRISH TERRIER. +HE IS ROUGH-COATED. +HIS NAME IS KILLENY BOY. +I WANT MY DOG. +I WANT TO TALK TO DOC. EMORY. +TELL DOC. EMORY TO WRITE TO ME ABOUT MY DOG. + + +One day, Dag Daughtry wrote: + + +IF I DON'T GET MY DOG I WILL KILL DOC. EMORY. + + +Whereupon the newspapers informed the public that the sad case of +the two lepers at the pest-house had become tragic, because the +white one had gone insane. Public-spirited citizens wrote to the +papers, declaiming against the maintenance of such a danger to the +community, and demanding that the United States government build a +national leprosarium on some remote island or isolated mountain +peak. But this tiny ripple of interest faded out in seventy-two +hours, and the reporter-cubs proceeded variously to interest the +public in the Alaskan husky dog that was half a bear, in the +question whether or not Crispi Angelotti was guilty of having cut +the carcass of Giuseppe Bartholdi into small portions and thrown +it into the bay in a grain-sack off Fisherman's Wharf, and in the +overt designs of Japan upon Hawaii, the Philippines, and the +Pacific Coast of North America. + +And, outside of imprisonment, nothing happened of interest to Dag +Daughtry and Kwaque at the pest-house until one night in the late +fall. A gale was not merely brewing. It was coming on to blow. +Because, in a basket of fruit, stated to have been sent by the +young ladies of Miss Foote's Seminary, Daughtry had read a note +artfully concealed in the heart of an apple, telling him on the +forthcoming Friday night to keep a light burning in his window. +Daughtry received a visitor at five in the morning. + +It was Charles Stough Greenleaf, the Ancient Mariner himself. +Having wallowed for two hours through the deep sand of the +eucalyptus forest, he fell exhausted against the penthouse door. +When Daughtry opened it, the ancient one blew in upon him along +with a gusty wet splatter of the freshening gale. Daughtry caught +him first and supported him toward a chair. But, remembering his +own affliction, he released the old man so abruptly as to drop him +violently into the chair. + +"My word, sir," said Daughtry. "You must 'a' ben havin' a time of +it.--Here, you fella Kwaque, this fella wringin' wet. You fella +take 'm off shoe stop along him." + +But before Kwaque, immediately kneeling, could touch hand to the +shoelaces, Daughtry, remembering that Kwaque was likewise unclean, +had thrust him away. + +"My word, I don't know what to do," Daughtry murmured, staring +about helplessly as he realised that it was a leper-house, that +the very chair in which the old man sat was a leper-chair, that +the very floor on which his exhausted feet rested was a leper- +floor. + +"I'm glad to see you, most exceeding glad," the Ancient Mariner +panted, extending his hand in greeting. + +Dag Daughtry avoided it. + +"How goes the treasure-hunting?" he queried lightly. "Any +prospects in sight?" + +The Ancient Mariner nodded, and with returning breath, at first +whispering, gasped out: + +"We're all cleared to sail on the first of the ebb at seven this +morning. She's out in the stream now, a tidy bit of a schooner, +the Bethlehem, with good lines and hull and large cabin +accommodations. She used to be in the Tahiti trade, before the +steamers ran her out. Provisions are good. Everything is most +excellent. I saw to that. I cannot say I like the captain. I've +seen his type before. A splendid seaman, I am certain, but a +Bully Hayes grown old. A natural born pirate, a very wicked old +man indeed. Nor is the backer any better. He is middle-aged, has +a bad record, and is not in any sense of the word a gentleman, but +he has plenty of money--made it first in California oil, then +grub-staked a prospector in British Columbia, cheated him out of +his share of the big lode he discovered and doubled his own wealth +half a dozen times over. A very undesirable, unlikeable sort of a +man. But he believes in luck, and is confident that he'll make at +least fifty millions out of our adventure and cheat me out of my +share. He's as much a pirate as is the captain he's engaged." + +"Mr. Greenleaf, I congratulate you, sir," Daughtry said. "And you +have touched me, sir, touched me to the heart, coming all the way +out here on such a night, and running such risks, just to say +good-bye to poor Dag Daughtry, who always meant somewhat well but +had bad luck." + +But while he talked so heartily, Daughtry saw, in a resplendent +visioning, all the freedom of a schooner in the great South Seas, +and felt his heart sink in realisation that remained for him only +the pest-house, the sand-dunes, and the sad eucalyptus trees. + +The Ancient Mariner sat stiffly upright. + +"Sir, you have hurt me. You have hurt me to the heart." + +"No offence, sir, no offence," Daughtry stammered in apology, +although he wondered in what way he could have hurt the old +gentleman's feelings. + +"You are my friend, sir," the other went on, gravely censorious. +"I am your friend, sir. And you give me to understand that you +think I have come out here to this hell-hole to say good-bye. I +came out here to get you, sir, and your nigger, sir. The schooner +is waiting for you. All is arranged. You are signed on the +articles before the shipping commissioner. Both of you. Signed +on yesterday by proxies I arranged for myself. One was a +Barbadoes nigger. I got him and the white man out of a sailors' +boarding-house on Commercial Street and paid them five dollars +each to appear before the Commissioner and sign on." + +"But, my God, Mr. Greenleaf, you don't seem to grasp it that he +and I are lepers." + +Almost with a galvanic spring, the Ancient Mariner was out of the +chair and on his feet, the anger of age and of a generous soul in +his face as he cried: + +"My God, sir, what you don't seem to grasp is that you are my +friend, and that I am your friend." + +Abruptly, still under the pressure of his wrath, he thrust out his +hand. + +"Steward, Daughtry. Mr. Daughtry, friend, sir, or whatever I may +name you, this is no fairy-story of the open boat, the cross- +bearings unnamable, and the treasure a fathom under the sand. +This is real. I have a heart. That, sir"--here he waved his +extended hand under Daughtry's nose--"is my hand. There is only +one thing you may do, must do, right now. You must take that hand +in your hand, and shake it, with your heart in your hand as mine +is in my hand." + +"But . . . but. . . " Daughtry faltered. + +"If you don't, then I shall not depart from this place. I shall +remain here, die here. I know you are a leper. You can't tell me +anything about that. There's my hand. Are you going to take it? +My heart is there in the palm of it, in the pulse in every finger- +end of it. If you don't take it, I warn you I'll sit right down +here in this chair and die. I want you to understand I am a man, +sir, a gentleman. I am a friend, a comrade. I am no poltroon of +the flesh. I live in my heart and in my head, sir--not in this +feeble carcass I cursorily inhabit. Take that hand. I want to +talk with you afterward." + +Dag Daughtry extended his hand hesitantly, but the Ancient Mariner +seized it and pressed it so fiercely with his age-lean fingers as +to hurt. + +"Now we can talk," he said. "I have thought the whole matter +over. We sail on the Bethlehem. When the wicked man discovers +that he can never get a penny of my fabulous treasure, we will +leave him. He will be glad to be quit of us. We, you and I and +your nigger, will go ashore in the Marquesas. Lepers roam about +free there. There are no regulations. I have seen them. We will +be free. The land is a paradise. And you and I will set up +housekeeping. A thatched hut--no more is needed. The work is +trifling. The freedom of beach and sea and mountain will be ours. +For you there will be sailing, swimming, fishing, hunting. There +are mountain goats, wild chickens and wild cattle. Bananas and +plantains will ripen over our heads--avocados and custard apples, +also. The red peppers grow by the door, and there will be fowls, +and the eggs of fowls. Kwaque shall do the cooking. And there +will be beer. I have long noted your thirst unquenchable. There +will be beer, six quarts of it a day, and more, more. + +"Quick. We must start now. I am sorry to tell you that I have +vainly sought your dog. I have even paid detectives who were +robbers. Doctor Emory stole Killeny Boy from you, but within a +dozen hours he was stolen from Doctor Emory. I have left no stone +unturned. Killeny Boy is gone, as we shall be gone from this +detestable hole of a city. + +"I have a machine waiting. The driver is paid well. Also, I have +promised to kill him if he defaults on me. It bears just a bit +north of east over the sandhill on the road that runs along the +other side of the funny forest . . . That is right. We will start +now. We can discuss afterward. Look! Daylight is beginning to +break. The guards must not see us . . . " + +Out into the storm they passed, Kwaque, with a heart wild with +gladness, bringing up the rear. At the beginning Daughtry strove +to walk aloof, but in a trice, in the first heavy gust that +threatened to whisk the frail old man away, Dag Daughtry's hand +was grasping the other's arm, his own weight behind and under, +supporting and impelling forward and up the hill through the heavy +sand. + +"Thank you, steward, thank you, my friend," the Ancient Mariner +murmured in the first lull between the gusts. + + + +CHAPTER XXII + + + +Not altogether unwillingly, in the darkness of night, despite that +he disliked the man, did Michael go with Harry Del Mar. Like a +burglar the man came, with infinite caution of silence, to the +outhouse in Doctor Emory's back yard where Michael was a prisoner. +Del Mar knew the theatre too well to venture any hackneyed +melodramatic effect such as an electric torch. He felt his way in +the darkness to the door of the outhouse, unlatched it, and +entered softly, feeling with his hands for the wire-haired coat. + +And Michael, a man-dog and a lion-dog in all the stuff of him, +bristled at the instant of intrusion, but made no outcry. +Instead, he smelled out the intruder and recognised him. +Disliking the man, nevertheless he permitted the tying of the rope +around his neck and silently followed him out to the sidewalk, +down to the corner, and into the waiting taxi. + +His reasoning--unless reason be denied him--was simple. This man +he had met, more than once, in the company of Steward. Amity had +existed between him and Steward, for they had sat at table, and +drunk together. Steward was lost. Michael knew not where to find +him, and was himself a prisoner in the back yard of a strange +place. What had once happened, could again happen. It had +happened that Steward, Del Mar, and Michael had sat at table +together on divers occasions. It was probable that such a +combination would happen again, was going to happen now, and, once +more, in the bright-lighted cabaret, he would sit on a chair, Del +Mar on one side, and on the other side beloved Steward with a +glass of beer before him--all of which might be called "leaping to +a conclusion"; for conclusion there was, and upon the conclusion +Michael acted. + +Now Michael could not reason to this conclusion nor think to this +conclusion, in words. "Amity," as an instance, was no word in his +consciousness. Whether or not he thought to the conclusion in +swift-related images and pictures and swift-welded composites of +images and pictures, is a problem that still waits human solution. +The point is: HE DID THINK. If this be denied him, then must he +have acted wholly by instinct--which would seem more marvellous on +the face of it than if, in dim ways, he had performed a vague +thought-process. + +However, into the taxi and away through the maze of San +Francisco's streets, Michael lay alertly on the floor near Del +Mar's feet, making no overtures of friendliness, by the same token +making no demonstration of the repulsion of the man's personality +engendered in him. For Harry Del Mar, who was base, and who had +been further abased by his money-making desire for the possession +of Michael, had had his baseness sensed by Michael from the +beginning. That first meeting in the Barbary Coast cabaret, +Michael had bristled at him, and stiffened belligerently, when he +laid his hand on Michael's head. Nor had Michael thought about +the man at all, much less attempted any analysis of him. +Something had been wrong with that hand--the perfunctory way in +which it had touched him under a show of heartiness that could +well deceive the onlooker. The FEEL of it had not been right. +There had been no warmth in it, no heart, no communication of +genuine good approach from the brain and the soul of the man of +which it was the telegraphic tentacle and transmitter. In short, +the message or feel had not been a good message or feel, and +Michael had bristled and stiffened without thinking, but by mere +KNOWING, which is what men call "intuition." + +Electric lights, a shed-covered wharf, mountains of luggage and +freight, the noisy toil of 'longshoremen and sailors, the staccato +snorts of donkey engines and the whining sheaves as running lines +ran through the blocks, a crowd of white-coated stewards carrying +hand-baggage, the quartermaster at the gangway foot, the gangway +sloping steeply up to the Umatilla's promenade deck, more +quartermasters and gold-laced ship's officers at the head of the +gangway, and more crowd and confusion blocking the narrow deck-- +thus Michael knew, beyond all peradventure, that he had come back +to the sea and its ships, where he had first met Steward, where he +had been always with Steward, save for the recent nightmare period +in the great city. Nor was there absent from the flashing visions +of his consciousness the images and memories of Kwaque and Cocky. +Whining eagerly, he strained at the leash, risking his tender toes +among the many inconsiderate, restless, leather-shod feet of the +humans, as he quested and scented for Cocky and Kwaque, and, most +of all, for Steward. + +Michael accepted his disappointment in not immediately meeting +them, for from the dawn of consciousness, the limitations and +restrictions of dogs in relation to humans had been hammered into +him in the form of concepts of patience. The patience of waiting, +when he wanted to go home and when Steward continued to sit at +table and talk and drink beer, was his, as was the patience of the +rope around the neck, the fence too high to scale, the narrowed- +walled room with the closed door which he could never unlatch but +which humans unlatched so easily. So that he permitted himself to +be led away by the ship's butcher, who on the Umatilla had the +charge of all dog passengers. Immured in a tiny between-decks +cubby which was filled mostly with boxes and bales, tied as well +by the rope around his neck, he waited from moment to moment for +the door to open and admit, realised in the flesh, the resplendent +vision of Steward which blazed through the totality of his +consciousness. + +Instead, although Michael did not guess it then, and, only later, +divined it as a vague manifestation of power on the part of Del +Mar, the well-tipped ship's butcher opened the door, untied him, +and turned him over to the well-tipped stateroom steward who led +him to Del Mar's stateroom. Up to the last, Michael was convinced +that he was being led to Steward. Instead, in the stateroom, he +found only Del Mar. "No Steward," might be described as Michael's +thought; but by PATIENCE, as his mood and key, might be described +his acceptance of further delay in meeting up with his god, his +best beloved, his Steward who was his own human god amidst the +multitude of human gods he was encountering. + +Michael wagged his tail, flattened his ears, even his crinkled +ear, a trifle, and smiled, all in a casual way of recognition, +smelled out the room to make doubly sure that there was no scent +of Steward, and lay down on the floor. When Del Mar spoke to him, +he looked up and gazed at him. + +"Now, my boy, times have changed," Del Mar addressed him in cold, +brittle tones. "I'm going to make an actor out of you, and teach +you what's what. First of all, come here . . . COME HERE!" + +Michael obeyed, without haste, without lagging, and patently +without eagerness. + +"You'll get over that, my lad, and put pep into your motions when +I talk to you," Del Mar assured him; and the very manner of his +utterance was a threat that Michael could not fail to recognise. +"Now we'll just see if I can pull off the trick. You listen to +me, and sing like you did for that leper guy." + +Drawing a harmonica from his vest pocket, he put it to his lips +and began to play "Marching through Georgia." + +"Sit down!" he commanded. + +Again Michael obeyed, although all that was Michael was in +protest. He quivered as the shrill-sweet strains from the silver +reeds ran through him. All his throat and chest was in the +impulse to sing; but he mastered it, for he did not care to sing +for this man. All he wanted of him was Steward. + +"Oh, you're stubborn, eh?" Del Mar sneered at him. "The matter +with you is you're thoroughbred. Well, my boy, it just happens I +know your kind and I reckon I can make you get busy and work for +me just as much as you did for that other guy. Now get busy." + +He shifted the tune on into "Georgia Camp Meeting." But Michael +was obdurate. Not until the melting strains of "Old Kentucky +Home" poured through him did he lose his self-control and lift his +mellow-throated howl that was the call for the lost pack of the +ancient millenniums. Under the prodding hypnosis of this music he +could not but yearn and burn for the vague, forgotten life of the +pack when the world was young and the pack was the pack ere it was +lost for ever through the endless centuries of domestication. + +"Ah, ha," Del Mar chuckled coldly, unaware of the profound history +and vast past he evoked by his silver reeds. + +A loud knock on the partition wall warned him that some sleepy +passenger was objecting. + +"That will do!" he said sharply, taking the harmonica from his +lips. And Michael ceased, and hated him. "I guess I've got your +number all right. And you needn't think you're going to sleep +here scratching fleas and disturbing my sleep." + +He pressed the call-button, and, when his room-steward answered, +turned Michael over to him to be taken down below and tied up in +the crowded cubby-hole. + + +During the several days and nights on the Umatilla, Michael +learned much of what manner of man Harry Del Mar was. Almost, +might it be said, he learned Del Mar's pedigree without knowing +anything of his history. For instance he did not know that Del +Mar's real name was Percival Grunsky, and that at grammar school +he had been called "Brownie" by the girls and "Blackie" by the +boys. No more did he know that he had gone from half-way-through +grammar school directly into the industrial reform school; nor +that, after serving two years, he had been paroled out by Harris +Collins, who made a living, and an excellent one, by training +animals for the stage. Much less could he know the training that +for six years Del Mar, as assistant, had been taught to give the +animals, and, thereby, had received for himself. + +What Michael did know was that Del Mar had no pedigree and was a +scrub as compared with thoroughbreds such as Steward, Captain +Kellar, and MISTER Haggin of Meringe. And he learned it swiftly +and simply. In the day-time, fetched by a steward, Michael would +be brought on deck to Del Mar, who was always surrounded by +effusive young ladies and matrons who lavished caresses and +endearments upon Michael. This he stood, although much bored; but +what irked him almost beyond standing were the feigned caresses +and endearments Del Mar lavished on him. He knew the cold-blooded +insincerity of them, for, at night, when he was brought to Del +Mar's room, he heard only the cold brittle tones, sensed only the +threat and the menace of the other's personality, felt, when +touched by the other's hand, only a stiffness and sharpness of +contact that was like to so much steel or wood in so far as all +subtle tenderness of heart and spirit was absent. + +This man was two-faced, two-mannered. No thoroughbred was +anything but single-faced and single-mannered. A thoroughbred, +hot-blooded as it might be, was always sincere. But in this scrub +was no sincerity, only a positive insincerity. A thoroughbred had +passion, because of its hot blood; but this scrub had no passion. +Its blood was cold as its deliberateness, and it did nothing save +deliberately. These things he did not think. He merely realized +them, as any creature realizes itself in LIKING and in not LIKING. + +To cap it all, the last night on board, Michael lost his +thoroughbred temper with this man who had no temper. It came to a +fight. And Michael had no chance. He raged royally and fought +royally, leaping to the attack, after being knocked over twice by +open-handed blows under his ear. Quick as Michael was, slashing +South Sea niggers by virtue of his quickness and cleverness, he +could not touch his teeth to the flesh of this man, who had been +trained for six years with animals by Harris Collins. So that, +when he leaped, open-mouthed, for the bite, Del Mar's right hand +shot out, gripped his under-jaw as he was in the air, and flipped +him over in a somersaulting fall to the floor on his back. Once +again he leapt open-mouthed to the attack, and was filliped to the +floor so hard that almost the last particle of breath was knocked +out of him. The next leap was nearly his last. He was clutched +by the throat. Two thumbs pressed into his neck on either side of +the windpipe directly on the carotid arteries, shutting off the +blood to his brain and giving him most exquisite agony, at the +same time rendering him unconscious far more swiftly than the +swiftest anaesthetic. Darkness thrust itself upon him; and, +quivering on the floor, glimmeringly he came back to the light of +the room and to the man who was casually touching a match to a +cigarette and cautiously keeping an observant eye on him. + +"Come on," Del Mar challenged. "I know your kind. You can't get +my goat, and maybe I can't get yours entirely, but I can keep you +under my thumb to work for me. Come on, you!" + +And Michael came. Being a thoroughbred, despite that he knew he +was beaten by this two-legged thing which was not warm human but +was so alien and hard that he might as well attack the wall of a +room with his teeth, or a tree-trunk, or a cliff of rock, Michael +leapt bare-fanged for the throat. And all that he leapt against +was training, formula. The experience was repeated. His throat +was gripped, the thumbs shut off the blood from his brain, and +darkness smote him. Had he been more than a normal thoroughbred +dog, he would have continued to assail his impregnable enemy until +he burst his heart or fell in a fit. But he was normal. Here was +something unassailable, adamantine. As little might he win +victory from it, as from the cement-paved side-walk of a city. +The thing was a devil, with the hardness and coldness, the +wickedness and wisdom, of a devil. It was as bad as Steward was +good. Both were two-legged. Both were gods. But this one was an +evil god. + +He did not reason all this, nor any of it. Yet, transmuted into +human terms of thought and understanding, it adequately describes +the fulness of his state of mind toward Del Mar. Had Michael been +entangled in a fight with a warm god, he could have raged and +battled blindly, inflicting and receiving hurt in the chaos of +conflict, as such a god, being warm, would have likewise received +and given hurt, being only a flesh-and-blood, living, breathing +entity after all. But this two-legged god-devil did not rage +blindly and was incapable of passional heat. He was like so much +cunning, massive steel machinery, and he did what Michael could +never dream he did--and, for that matter, which few humans do and +which all animal trainers do: HE KEPT ONE THOUGHT AHEAD OF +MICHAEL'S THOUGHT ALL THE TIME, and therefore, was able to have +ready one action always in anticipation of Michael's next action. +This was the training he had received from Harris Collins, who, +withal he was a sentimental and doting husband and father, was the +arch-devil when it came to animals other than human ones, and who +reigned in an animal hell which he had created and made lucrative. + + +Michael went ashore in Seattle all eagerness, straining at his +leash until he choked and coughed and was coldly cursed by Del +Mar. For Michael was mastered by his expectation that he would +meet Steward, and he looked for him around the first corner, and +around all corners with undiminished zeal. But amongst the +multitudes of men there was no Steward. Instead, down in the +basement of the New Washington Hotel, where electric lights burned +always, under the care of the baggage porter, he was tied securely +by the neck in the midst of Alpine ranges of trunks which were for +ever being heaped up, sought over, taken down, carried away, or +added to. + +Three days of this dolorous existence he passed. The porters made +friends with him and offered him prodigious quantities of cooked +meats from the leavings of the dining-room. Michael was too +disappointed and grief-stricken over Steward to overeat himself, +while Del Mar, accompanied by the manager of the hotel, raised a +great row with the porters for violating the feeding instructions. + +"That guy's no good," said the head porter to assistant, when Del +Mar had departed. "He's greasy. I never liked greasy brunettes +anyway. My wife's a brunette, but thank the Lord she ain't +greasy." + +"Sure," agreed the assistant. "I know his kind. Why, if you'd +stick a knife into him he wouldn't bleed blood. It'd be straight +liquid lard." + +Whereupon the pair of them immediately presented Michael with +vaster quantities of meat which he could not eat because the +desire for Steward was too much with him. + +In the meantime Del Mar sent off two telegrams to New York, the +first to Harris Collins' animal training school, where his troupe +of dogs was boarding through his vacation: + + +"Sell my dogs. You know what they can do and what they are worth. +Am done with them. Deduct the board and hold the balance for me +until I see you. I have the limit here of a dog. Every turn I +ever pulled is put in the shade by this one. He's a ten strike. +Wait till you see him." + + +The second, to his booking agent: + + +"Get busy. Book me over the best. Talk it up. I have the turn. +A winner. Nothing like it. Don't talk up top price but way over +top price. Prepare them for the dog when I give them the chance +for the once over. You know me. I am giving it straight. This +will head the bill anywhere all the time." + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + + + +Came the crate. Because Del Mar brought it into the baggage-room, +Michael was suspicious of it. A minute later his suspicion was +justified. Del Mar invited him to go into the crate, and he +declined. With a quick deft clutch on the collar at the back of +his neck, Del Mar jerked him off his footing and thrust him in, or +partly in, rather, because he had managed to get a hold on the +edge of the crate with his two fore-paws. The animal trainer +wasted no time. He brought the clenched fist of his free hand +down in two blows, rat-tat, on Michael's paws. And Michael, at +the pain, relaxed both holds. The next instant he was thrust +inside, snarling his indignation and rage as he vainly flung +himself at the open bars, while Del Mar was locking the stout +door. + +Next, the crate was carried out to an express wagon and loaded in +along with a number of trunks. Del Mar had disappeared the moment +he had locked the door, and the two men in the wagon, which was +now bouncing along over the cobblestones, were strangers. There +was just room in the crate for Michael to stand upright, although +he could not lift his head above the level of his shoulders. And +so standing, his head pressed against the top, a rut in the road, +jolting the wagon and its contents, caused his head to bump +violently. + +The crate was not quite so long as Michael, so that he was +compelled to stand with the end of his nose pressing against the +end of the crate. An automobile, darting out from a cross-street, +caused the driver of the wagon to pull in abruptly and apply the +brake. With the crate thus suddenly arrested, Michael's body was +precipitated forward. There was no brake to stop him, unless the +soft end of his nose be considered the brake, for it was his nose +that brought his body to rest inside the crate. + +He tried lying down, confined as the space was, and made out +better, although his lips were cut and bleeding by having been +forced so sharply against his teeth. But the worst was to come. +One of his fore-paws slipped out through the slats or bars and +rested on the bottom of the wagon where the trunks were squeaking, +screeching, and jigging. A rut in the roadway made the nearest +trunk tilt one edge in the air and shift position, so that when it +tilted back again it rested on Michael's paw. The unexpectedness +of the crushing hurt of it caused him to yelp and at the same time +instinctively and spasmodically to pull back with all his +strength. This wrenched his shoulder and added to the agony of +the imprisoned foot. + +And blind fear descended upon Michael, the fear that is implanted +in all animals and in man himself--THE FEAR OF THE TRAP. Utterly +beside himself, though he no longer yelped, he flung himself madly +about, straining the tendons and muscles of his shoulder and leg +and further and severely injuring the crushed foot. He even +attacked the bars with his teeth in his agony to get at the +monster thing outside that had laid hold of him and would not let +him go. Another rut saved him, however, tilting the trunk just +sufficiently to enable his violent struggling to drag the foot +clear. + +At the railroad station, the crate was handled, not with +deliberate roughness, but with such carelessness that it half- +slipped out of a baggage-man's hands, capsized sidewise, and was +caught when it was past the man's knees but before it struck the +cement floor. But, Michael, sliding helplessly down the +perpendicular bottom of the crate, fetched up with his full weight +on the injured paw. + +"Huh!" said Del Mar a little later to Michael, having strolled +down the platform to where the crate was piled on a truck with +other baggage destined for the train. "Got your foot smashed. +Well, it'll teach you a lesson to keep your feet inside." + +"That claw is a goner," one of the station baggage-men said, +straightening up from an examination of Michael through the bars. + +Del Mar bent to a closer scrutiny. + +"So's the whole toe," he said, drawing his pocket-knife and +opening a blade. "I'll fix it in half a jiffy if you'll lend a +hand." + +He unlocked the box and dipped Michael out with the customary +strangle-hold on the neck. He squirmed and struggled, dabbing at +the air with the injured as well as the uninjured forepaw and +increasing his pain. + +"You hold the leg," Del Mar commanded. "He's safe with that grip. +It won't take a second." + +Nor did it take longer. And Michael, back in the box and raging, +was one toe short of the number which he had brought into the +world. The blood ran freely from the crude but effective surgery, +and he lay and licked the wound and was depressed with +apprehension of he knew not what terrible fate awaited him and was +close at hand. Never, in his experience of men, had he been so +treated, while the confinement of the box was maddening with its +suggestion of the trap. Trapped he was, and helpless, and the +ultimate evil of life had happened to Steward, who had evidently +been swallowed up by the Nothingness which had swallowed up +Meringe, the Eugenie, the Solomon Islands, the Makambo, Australia, +and the Mary Turner. + +Suddenly, from a distance, came a bedlam of noise that made +Michael prick up his ears and bristle with premonition of fresh +disaster. It was a confused yelping, howling, and barking of many +dogs. + +"Holy Smoke!--It's them damned acting dogs," growled the +baggageman to his mate. "There ought to be a law against dog- +acts. It ain't decent." + +"It's Peterson's Troupe," said the other. "I was on when they +come in last week. One of 'em was dead in his box, and from what +I could see of him it looked mighty like he'd had the tar knocked +outa him." + +"Got a wollopin' from Peterson most likely in the last town and +then was shipped along with the bunch and left to die in the +baggage car." + +The bedlam increased as the animals were transferred from the +wagon to a platform truck, and when the truck rolled up and +stopped alongside Michael's he made out that it was piled high +with crated dogs. In truth, there were thirty-five dogs, of every +sort of breed and mostly mongrel, and that they were far from +happy was attested by their actions. Some howled, some whimpered, +others growled and raged at one another through the slots, and +many maintained a silence of misery. Several licked and nursed +bruised feet. Smaller dogs that did not fight much were crammed +two or more into single crates. Half a dozen greyhounds were +crammed into larger crates that were anything save large enough. + +"Them's the high-jumpers," said the first baggageman. "An' look +at the way they're packed. Peterson ain't going to pay any more +excess baggage than he has to. Not half room enough for them to +stand up. It must be hell for them from the time they leave one +town till they arrive at the next." + +But what the baggageman did not know was that in the towns the +hell was not mitigated, that the dogs were still confined in their +too-narrow prisons, that, in fact, they were life-prisoners. +Rarely, except for their acts, were they taken out from their +cages. From a business standpoint, good care did not pay. Since +mongrel dogs were cheap, it was cheaper to replace them when they +died than so to care for them as to keep them from dying. + +What the baggageman did not know, and what Peterson did know, was +that of these thirty-five dogs not one was a surviving original of +the troupe when it first started out four years before. Nor had +there been any originals discarded. The only way they left the +troupe and its cages was by dying. Nor did Michael know even as +little as the baggageman knew. He knew nothing save that here +reigned pain and woe and that it seemed he was destined to share +the same fate. + +Into the midst of them, when with more howlings and yelpings they +were loaded into the baggage car, was Michael's cage piled. And +for a day and a part of two nights, travelling eastward, he +remained in the dog inferno. Then they were loaded off in some +large city, and Michael continued on in greater quietness and +comfort, although his injured foot still hurt and was bruised +afresh whenever his crate was moved about in the car. + +What it was all about--why he was kept in his cramped prison in +the cramped car--he did not ask himself. He accepted it as +unhappiness and misery, and had no more explanation for it than +for the crushing of the paw. Such things happened. It was life, +and life had many evils. The WHY of things never entered his +head. He knew THINGS and some small bit of the HOW of things. +What was, WAS. Water was wet, fire hot, iron hard, meat good. He +accepted such things as he accepted the everlasting miracles of +the light and of the dark, which were no miracles to him any more +than was his wire coat a miracle, or his beating heart, or his +thinking brain. + +In Chicago, he was loaded upon a track, carted through the roaring +streets of the vast city, and put into another baggage-car which +was quickly in motion in continuation of the eastward journey. It +meant more strange men who handled baggage, as it meant in New +York, where, from railroad baggage-room to express wagon he was +exchanged, for ever a crated prisoner and dispatched to one, +Harris Collins, on Long Island. + +First of all came Harris Collins and the animal hell over which he +ruled. But the second event must be stated first. Michael never +saw Harry Del Mar again. As the other men he had known had +stepped out of life, which was a way they had, so Harry Del Mar +stepped out of Michael's purview of life as well as out of life +itself. And his stepping out was literal. A collision on the +elevated, a panic scramble of the uninjured out upon the trestle +over the street, a step on the third rail, and Harry Del Mar was +engulfed in the Nothingness which men know as death and which is +nothingness in so far as such engulfed ones never reappear nor +walk the ways of life again. + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + + + +Harris Collins was fifty-two years of age. He was slender and +dapper, and in appearance and comportment was so sweet- and +gentle-spirited that the impression he radiated was almost of +sissyness. He might have taught a Sunday-school, presided over a +girls' seminary, or been a president of a humane society. + +His complexion was pink and white, his hands were as soft as the +hands of his daughters, and he weighed a hundred and twelve +pounds. Moreover, he was afraid of his wife, afraid of a +policeman, afraid of physical violence, and lived in constant +dread of burglars. But the one thing he was not afraid of was +wild animals of the most ferocious sorts, such as lions, tigers, +leopards, and jaguars. He knew the game, and could conquer the +most refractory lion with a broom-handle--not outside the cage, +but inside and locked in. + +It was because he knew the game and had learned it from his father +before him, a man even smaller than himself and more fearful of +all things except animals. This father, Noel Collins, had been a +successful animal trainer in England, before emigrating to +America, and in America he had continued the success and laid the +foundation of the big animal training school at Cedarwild, which +his son had developed and built up after him. So well had Harris +Collins built on his father's foundation that the place was +considered a model of sanitation and kindness. It entertained +many visitors, who invariably went away with their souls filled +with ecstasy over the atmosphere of sweetness and light that +pervaded the place. Never, however, were they permitted to see +the actual training. On occasion, performances were given them by +the finished products which verified all their other delightful +and charming conclusions about the school. But had they seen the +training of raw novices, it would have been a different story. It +might even have been a riot. As it was, the place was a zoo, and +free at that; for, in addition to the animals he owned and trained +and bought and sold, a large portion of the business was devoted +to boarding trained animals and troupes of animals for owners who +were out of engagements, or for estates of such owners which were +in process of settlement. From mice and rats to camels and +elephants, and even, on occasion, to a rhinoceros or a pair of +hippopotamuses, he could supply any animal on demand. + +When the Circling Brothers' big three-ring show on a hard winter +went into the hands of the receivers, he boarded the menagerie and +the horses and in three months turned a profit of fifteen thousand +dollars. More--he mortgaged all he possessed against the day of +the auction, bought in the trained horses and ponies, the giraffe +herd and the performing elephants, and, in six months more was +quit of an of them, save the pony Repeater who turned air-springs, +at another profit of fifteen thousand dollars. As for Repeater, +he sold the pony several months later for a sheer profit of two +thousand. While this bankruptcy of the Circling Brothers had been +the greatest financial achievement of Harris Collin's life, +nevertheless he enjoyed no mean permanent income from his plant, +and, in addition, split fees with the owners of his board animals +when he sent them to the winter Hippodrome shows, and, more often +than not, failed to split any fee at all when he rented the +animals to moving-picture companies. + +Animal men, the country over, acknowledged him to be, not only the +richest in the business, but the king of trainers and the +grittiest man who ever went into a cage. And those who from the +inside had seen him work were agreed that he had no soul. Yet his +wife and children, and those in his small social circle, thought +otherwise. They, never seeing him at work, were convinced that no +softer-hearted, more sentimental man had ever been born. His +voice was low and gentle, his gestures were delicate, his views on +life, the world, religion and politics, the mildest. A kind word +melted him. A plea won him. He gave to all local charities, and +was gravely depressed for a week when the Titanic went down. And +yet--the men in the trained-animal game acknowledged him the +nerviest and most nerveless of the profession. And yet--his +greatest fear in the world was that his large, stout wife, at +table, should crown him with a plate of hot soup. Twice, in a +tantrum, she had done this during their earlier married life. In +addition to his fear that she might do it again, he loved her +sincerely and devotedly, as he loved his children, seven of them, +for whom nothing was too good or too expensive. + +So well did he love them, that the four boys from the beginning he +forbade from seeing him WORK, and planned gentler careers for +them. John, the oldest, in Yale, had elected to become a man of +letters, and, in the meantime, ran his own automobile with the +corresponding standard of living such ownership connoted in the +college town of New Haven. Harold and Frederick were down at a +millionaires' sons' academy in Pennsylvania; and Clarence, the +youngest, at a prep. school in Massachusetts, was divided in his +choice of career between becoming a doctor or an aviator. The +three girls, two of them twins, were pledged to be cultured into +ladies. Elsie was on the verge of graduating from Vassar. Mary +and Madeline, the twins, in the most select and most expensive of +seminaries, were preparing for Vassar. All of which required +money which Harris Collins did not grudge, but which strained the +earning capacity of his animal-training school. It compelled him +to work the harder, although his wife and the four sons and three +daughters did not dream that he actually worked at all. Their +idea was that by virtue of superior wisdom he merely +superintended, and they would have been terribly shocked could +they have seen him, club in hand, thrashing forty mongrel dogs, in +the process of training, which had become excited and out of hand. + +A great deal of the work was done by his assistants, but it was +Harris Collins who taught them continually what to do and how to +do it, and who himself, on more important animals, did the work +and showed them how. His assistants were almost invariably youths +from the reform schools, and he picked them with skilful eye and +intuition. Control of them, under their paroles, with +intelligence and coldness on their part, were the conditions and +qualities he sought, and such combination, as a matter of course, +carried with it cruelty. Hot blood, generous impulses, +sentimentality, were qualities he did not want for his business; +and the Cedarwild Animal School was business from the first tick +of the clock to the last bite of the lash. In short, Harris +Collins, in the totality of results, was guilty of causing more +misery and pain to animals than all laboratories of vivisection in +Christendom. + +And into this animal hell Michael descended--although his arrival +was horizontal, across three thousand five hundred miles, in the +same crate in which he had been placed at the New Washington Hotel +in Seattle. Never once had he been out of the crate during the +entire journey, and filthiness, as well as wretchedness, +characterized his condition. Thanks to his general good health, +the wound of the amputated toe was in the process of uneventful +healing. But dirt clung to him, and he was infested with fleas. + +Cedarwild, to look at, was anything save a hell. Velvet lawns, +gravelled walks and drives, and flowers formally growing, led up +to the group of long low buildings, some of frame and some of +concrete. But Michael was not received by Harris Collins, who, at +the moment, sat in his private office, Harry Del Mar's last +telegram on his desk, writing a memorandum to his secretary to +query the railroad and the express companies for the whereabouts +of a dog, crated and shipped by one, Harry Del Mar, from Seattle +and consigned to Cedarwild. It was a pallid-eyed youth of +eighteen in overalls who received Michael, receipted for him to +the expressman, and carried his crate into a slope-floored +concrete room that smelled offensively and chemically clean. + +Michael was impressed by his surroundings but not attracted by the +youth, who rolled up his sleeves and encased himself in large +oilskin apron before he opened the crate. Michael sprang out and +staggered about on legs which had not walked for days. This +particular two-legged god was uninteresting. He was as cold as +the concrete floor, as methodical as a machine; and in such +fashion he went about the washing, scrubbing, and disinfecting of +Michael. For Harris Collins was scientific and antiseptic to the +last word in his handling of animals, and Michael was +scientifically made clean, without deliberate harshness, but +without any slightest hint of gentleness or consideration. + +Naturally, he did not understand. On top of all he had already +experienced, not even knowing executioners and execution chambers, +for all he knew this bare room of cement and chemical smell might +well be the place of the ultimate life-disaster and this youth the +god who was to send him into the dark which had engulfed all he +had known and loved. What Michael did know beyond the shadow of +any doubt was that it was all coldly ominous and terribly strange. +He endured the hand of the youth-god on the scruff of his neck, +after the collar had been unbuckled; but when the hose was turned +on him, he resented and resisted. The youth, merely working by +formula, tightened the safe grip on the scruff of Michael's neck +and lifted him clear of the floor, at the same time, with the +other hand, directing the stream of water into his mouth and +increasing it to full force by the nozzle control. Michael +fought, and was well drowned for his pains, until he gasped and +strangled helplessly. + +After that he resisted no more, and was washed out and scrubbed +out and cleansed out with the hose, a big bristly brush, and much +carbolic soap, the lather of which got into and stung his eyes and +nose, causing him to weep copiously and sneeze violently. +Apprehensive of what might at any moment happen to him, but by +this time aware that the youth was neither positive nor negative +for kindness or harm, Michael continued to endure without further +battling, until, clean and comfortable, he was put away into a +pen, sweet and wholesome, where he slept and for the time being +forgot. The place was the hospital, or segregation ward, and a +week of imprisonment was spent therein, in which nothing happened +in the way of development of germ diseases, and nothing happened +to him except regular good food, pure drinking-water, and absolute +isolation from contact with all life save the youth-god who, like +an automaton, attended on him. + +Michael had yet to meet Harris Collins, although, from a distance, +often he heard his voice, not loud, but very imperative. That the +owner of this voice was a high god, Michael knew from the first +sound of it. Only a high god, a master over ordinary gods, could +be so imperative. Will was in that voice, and accustomedness to +command. Any dog would have so decided as quickly as Michael did. +And any dog would have decided that there was no love nor +lovableness in the god behind the voice, nothing to warm one's +heart nor to adore. + + + +CHAPTER XXV + + + +It was at eleven in the morning that the pale youth-god put collar +and chain on Michael, led him out of the segregation ward, and +turned him over to a dark youth-god who wasted no time of greeting +on him and manifested no friendliness. A captive at the end of a +chain, on the way Michael quickly encountered other captives going +in his direction. There were three of them, and never had he seen +the like. Three slouching, ambling monsters of bears they were, +and at sight of them Michael bristled and uttered the lowest of +growls; for he knew them, out of his heredity (as a domestic cow +knows her first wolf), as immemorial enemies from the wild. But +he had travelled too far, seen too much, and was altogether too +sensible, to attack them. Instead, walking stiff-legged and +circumspectly, but smelling with all his nose the strange scent of +the creatures, he followed at the end of his chain his own captor +god. + +Continually a multitude of strange scents invaded his nostrils. +Although he could not see through walls, he got the smells he was +later to identify of lions, leopards, monkeys, baboons, and seals +and sea-lions. All of which might have stunned an ordinary dog; +but the effect on him was to make him very alert and at the same +time very subdued. It was as if he walked in a new and +monstrously populous jungle and was unacquainted with its ways and +denizens. + +As he was entering the arena, he shied off to the side more stiff- +leggedly than ever, bristled all along his neck and back, and +growled deep and low in his throat. For, emerging from the arena, +came five elephants. Small elephants they were, but to him they +were the hugest of monsters, in his mind comparable only with the +cow-whale of which he had caught fleeting glimpses when she +destroyed the schooner Mary Turner. But the elephants took no +notice of him, each with its trunk clutching the tail of the one +in front of it as it had been taught to do in making an exit. + +Into the arena, he came, the bears following on his heels. It was +a sawdust circle the size of a circus ring, contained inside a +square building that was roofed over with glass. But there were +no seats about the ring, since spectators were not tolerated. +Only Harris Collins and his assistants, and buyers and sellers of +animals and men in the profession, were ever permitted to behold +how animals were tormented into the performance of tricks to make +the public open its mouth in astonishment or laughter. + +Michael forgot about the bears, who were quickly at work on the +other side of the circle from that to which he was taken. Some +men, rolling out stout bright-painted barrels which elephants +could not crush by sitting on, attracted his attention for a +moment. Next, in a pause on the part of the man who led him, he +regarded with huge interest a piebald Shetland pony. It lay on +the ground. A man sat on it. And ever and anon it lifted its +head from the sawdust and kissed the man. This was all Michael +saw, yet he sensed something wrong about it. He knew not why, had +no evidence why, but he felt cruelty and power and unfairness. +What he did not see was the long pin in the man's hand. Each time +he thrust this in the pony's shoulder, the pony, stung by the pain +and reflex action, lifted its head, and the man was deftly ready +to meet the pony's mouth with his own mouth. To an audience the +impression would be that in such fashion the pony was expressing +its affection for the master. + +Not a dozen feet away another Shetland, a coal-black one, was +behaving as peculiarly as it was being treated. Ropes were +attached to its forelegs, each rope held by an assistant, who +jerked on the same stoutly when a third man, standing in front of +the pony, tapped it on the knees with a short, stiff whip of +rattan. Whereupon the pony went down on its knees in the sawdust +in a genuflection to the man with the whip. The pony did not like +it, sometimes so successfully resisting with spread, taut legs and +mutinous head-tossings, as to overcome the jerk of the ropes, and, +at the same time wheeling, to fall heavily on its side or to +uprear as the pull on the ropes was relaxed. But always it was +lined up again to face the man who rapped its knees with the +rattan. It was being taught merely how to kneel in the way that +is ever a delight to the audiences who see only the results of the +schooling and never dream of the manner of the schooling. For, as +Michael was quickly sensing, knowledge was here learned by pain. +In short, this was the college of pain, this Cedarwild Animal +School. + +Harris Collins himself nodded the dark youth-god up to him, and +turned an inquiring and estimating gaze on Michael. + +"The Del Mar dog, sir," said the youth-god. + +Collins's eyes brightened, and he looked Michael over more +carefully. + +"Do you know what he can do?" he queried. + +The youth shook his head. + +"Harry was a keen one," Collins went on, apparently to the youth- +god but mostly for his own benefit, being given to thinking aloud. +"He picked this dog as a winner. And now what can he do? That's +the question. Poor Harry's gone, and we don't know what he can +do.--Take off the chain." + +Released Michael regarded the master-god and waited for what might +happen. A squall of pain from one of the bears across the ring +hinted to him what he might expect. + +"Come here," Collins commanded in his cold, hard tones. + +Michael came and stood before him. + +"Lie down!" + +Michael lay down, although he did it slowly, with advertised +reluctance. + +"Damned thoroughbred!" Collins sneered at him. "Won't put any pep +into your motions, eh? Well, we'll take care of that.--Get up!-- +Lie down!--Get up!--Lie down!--Get up!" + +His commands were staccato, like revolver shots or the cracks of +whips, and Michael obeyed them in his same slow, reluctant way. + +"Understands English, at any rate," said Collins. + +"Wonder if he can turn the double flip," he added, expressing the +golden dream of all dog-trainers. "Come on, we'll try him for a +flip. Put the chain on him. Come over here, Jimmy. Put another +lead on him." + +Another reform-school graduate youth obeyed, snapping a girth +about Michael's loins, to which was attached a thin rope. + +"Line him up," Collins commanded. "Ready?--Go!" + +And the most amazing, astounding indignity was wreaked upon +Michael. At the word "Go!", simultaneously, the chain on his +collar jerked him up and back in the air, the rope on his +hindquarters jerked that portion of him under, forward, and up, +and the still short stick in Collins's hand hit him under the +lower jaw. Had he had any previous experience with the manoeuvre, +he would have saved himself part of the pain at least by springing +and whirling backward in the air. As it was, he felt as if being +torn and wrenched apart while at the same time the blow under his +jaw stung him and almost dazed him. And, at the same time, +whirled violently into the air, he fell on the back of his head in +the sawdust. + +Out of the sawdust he soared in rage, neck-hair erect, throat a- +snarl, teeth bared to bite, and he would have sunk his teeth into +the flesh of the master-god had he not been the slave of cunning +formula. The two youths knew their work. One tightened the lead +ahead, the other to the rear, and Michael snarled and bristled his +impotent wrath. Nothing could he do, neither advance, nor +retreat, nor whirl sideways. The youth in front by the chain +prevented him from attacking the youth behind, and the youth +behind, with the rope, prevented him from attacking the youth in +front, and both prevented him from attacking Collins, whom he knew +incontrovertibly to be the master of evil and hurt. + +Michael's wrath was as superlative as was his helplessness. He +could only bristle and tear his vocal chords with his rage. But +it was a very ancient and boresome experience to Collins. He was +even taking advantage of the moment to glance across the arena and +size up what the bears were doing. + +"Oh, you thoroughbred," he sneered at Michael, returning his +attention to him. "Slack him! Let go!" + +The instant his bonds were released, Michael soared at Collins, +and Collins, timing and distancing with the accuracy of long +years, kicked him under the jaw and whirled him back and down into +the sawdust. + +"Hold him!" Collins ordered. "Line him out!" + +And the two youths, pulling in opposite directions with chain and +rope, stretched him into helplessness. + +Collins glanced across the ring to the entrance, where two teams +of heavy draft-horses were entering, followed by a woman dressed +to over-dressedness in the last word of a stylish street-costume. + +"I fancy he's never done any flipping," Collins remarked, coming +back to the problem of Michael for a moment. "Take off your lead, +Jimmy, and go over and help Smith.--Johnny, hold him to one side +there and mind your legs. Here comes Miss Marie for her first +lesson, and that mutt of a husband of hers can't handle her." + +Michael did not understand the scene that followed, which he +witnessed, for the youth led him over to look on at the arranging +of the woman and the four horses. Yet, from her conduct, he +sensed that she, too, was captive and ill-treated. In truth, she +was herself being trained unwillingly to do a trick. She had +carried herself bravely right to the moment of the ordeal, but the +sight of the four horses, ranged two and two opposing her, with +the thing patent that she was to hold in her hands the hooks on +the double-trees and form the link that connected the two spans +which were to pull in opposite directions--at the sight of this +her courage failed her and she shrank back, drooping and cowering, +her face buried in her hands. + +"No, no, Billikens," she pleaded to the stout though youthful man +who was her husband. "I can't do it. I'm afraid. I'm afraid." + +"Nonsense, madam," Collins interposed. "The trick is absolutely +safe. And it's a good one, a money-maker. Straighten up a +moment." With his hands he began feeling out her shoulders and +back under her jacket. "The apparatus is all right." He ran his +hands down her arms. "Now! Drop the hooks." He shook each arm, +and from under each of the fluffy lace cuffs fell out an iron hook +fast to a thin cable of steel that evidently ran up her sleeves. +"Not that way! Nobody must see. Put them back. Try it again. +They must come down hidden in your palms. Like this. See.-- +That's it. That's the idea." + +She controlled herself and strove to obey, though ever and anon +she cast appealing glances to Billikens, who stood remote and +aloof, his brows wrinkled with displeasure. + +Each of the men driving the harnessed spans lifted up the double- +trees so that the girl could grasp the hooks. She tried to take +hold, but broke down again. + +"If anything breaks, my arms will be torn out of me," she +protested. + +"On the contrary," Collins reassured her. "You will lose merely +most of your jacket. The worst that can happen will be the +exposure of the trick and the laugh on you. But the apparatus +isn't going to break. Let me explain again. The horses do not +pull against you. They pull against each other. The audience +thinks that they are pulling against you.--Now try once more. +Take hold the double-trees, and at the same moment slip down the +hooks and connect.--Now!" + +He spoke sharply. She shook the hooks down out of her sleeves, +but drew back from grasping the double-trees. Collins did not +betray his vexation. Instead, he glanced aside to where the +kissing pony and the kneeling pony were leaving the ring. But the +husband raged at her: + +"By God, Julia, if you throw me down this way!" + +"Oh, I'll try, Billikens," she whimpered. "Honestly, I'll try. +See! I'm not afraid now." + +She extended her hands and clasped the double-trees. With a thin +writhe of a smile, Collins investigated the insides of her +clenched hands to make sure that the hooks were connected. + +"Now brace yourself! Spread your legs. And straighten out." +With his hands he manipulated her arms and shoulders into +position. "Remember, you've got to meet the first of the strain +with your arms straight out. After the strain is on, you couldn't +bend 'em if you wanted to. But if the strain catches them bent, +the wire'll rip the hide off of you. Remember, straight out, +extended, so that they form a straight line with each other and +with the flat of your back and shoulders. That's it. Ready now." + +"Oh, wait a minute," she begged, forsaking the position. "I'll do +it--oh, I will do it, but, Billikens, kiss me first, and then I +won't care if my arms are pulled out." + +The dark youth who held Michael, and others looking on, grinned. +Collins dissembled whatever grin might have troubled for +expression, and murmured: + +"All the time in the world, madam. The point is, the first time +must come off right. After that you'll have the confidence.-- +Bill, you'd better love her up before she tackles it." + +And Billikens, very angry, very disgusted, very embarrassed, +obeyed, putting his arms around his wife and kissing her neither +too perfunctorily nor very long. She was a pretty young thing of +a woman, perhaps twenty years old, with an exceedingly childish, +girlish face and a slender-waisted, generously moulded body of +fully a hundred and forty pounds. + +The embrace and kiss of her husband put courage into her. She +stiffened and steeled herself, and with compressed lips, as he +stepped clear of her, muttered, "Ready." + +"Go!" Collins commanded. + +The four horses, under the urge of the drivers, pressed lazily +into their collars and began pulling. + +"Give 'em the whip!" Collins barked, his eyes on the girl and +noting that the pull of the apparatus was straight across her. + +The lashes fell on the horses' rumps, and they leaped, and surged, +and plunged, with their huge steel-shod hoofs, the size of soup- +plates, tearing up the sawdust into smoke. + +And Billikens forgot himself. The terribleness of the sight +painted the honest anxiety for the woman on his face. And her +face was a kaleidoscope. At the first, tense and fearful, it was +like that of a Christian martyr meeting the lions, or of a felon +falling through the trap. Next, and quickly, came surprise and +relief in that there was no hurt. And, finally, her face was +proudly happy with a smile of triumph. She even smiled to +Billikens her pride at making good her love to him. And Billikens +relaxed and looked love and pride back, until, on the spur of the +second, Harris Collins broke in: + +"This ain't a smiling act! Get that smile off your face. The +audience has got to think you're carrying the pull. Show that you +are. Make your face stiff till it cracks. Show determination, +will-power. Show great muscular effort. Spread your legs more. +Bring up the muscles through your skirt just as if you was really +working. Let 'em pull you this way a bit and that way a bit. +Give 'em to. Spread your legs more. Make a noise on your face as +if you was being pulled to pieces an' that all that holds you is +will-power.--That's the idea! That's the stuff! It's a winner, +Bill! It's a winner!--Throw the leather into 'em! Make 'm jump! +Make 'm get right down and pull the daylights out of each other!" + +The whips fell on the horses, and the horses struggled in all +their hugeness and might to pull away from the pain of the +punishment. It was a spectacle to win approval from any audience. +Each horse averaged eighteen hundredweight; thus, to the eye of +the onlooker, seven thousand two hundred pounds of straining +horse-flesh seemed wrenching and dragging apart the slim-waisted, +delicately bodied, hundred-and-forty pound woman in her fancy +street costume. It was a sight to make women in circus audiences +scream with terror and turn their faces away. + +"Slack down!" Collins commanded the drivers. + +"The lady wins," he announced, after the manner of a ringmaster.-- +"Bill, you've got a mint in that turn.--Unhook, madam, unhook!" + +Marie obeyed, and, the hooks still dangling from her sleeves, made +a short run to Billikens, into whose arms she threw herself, her +own arms folding him about the neck as she exclaimed before she +kissed him: + +"Oh, Billikens, I knew I could do it all the time! I was brave, +wasn't I!" + +"A give-away," Collins's dry voice broke in on her ecstasy. +"Letting all the audience see the hooks. They must go up your +sleeves the moment you let go.--Try it again. And another thing. +When you finish the turn, no chestiness. No making out how easy +it was. Make out it was the very devil. Show yourself weak, just +about to collapse from the strain. Give at the knees. Make your +shoulders cave in. The ringmaster will half step forward to catch +you before you faint. That's your cue. Beat him to it. Stiffen +up and straighten up with an effort of will-power--will-power's +the idea, gameness, and all that, and kiss your hands to the +audience and make a weak, pitiful sort of a smile, as though your +heart's been pulled 'most out of you and you'll have to go to the +hospital, but for right then that you're game an' smiling and +kissing your hands to the audience that's riping the seats up and +loving you.--Get me, madam? You, Bill, get the idea! And see she +does it.--Now, ready! Be a bit wistful as you look at the +horses.--That's it! Nobody'd guess you'd palmed the hooks and +connected them.--Straight out!--Let her go!" + +And again the thirty-six-hundredweight of horses on either side +pitted its strength against the similar weight on the other side, +and the seeming was that Marie was the link of woman-flesh being +torn asunder. + +A third and a fourth time the turn was rehearsed, and, between +turns, Collins sent a man to his office, for the Del Mar telegram. + +"You take her now, Bill," he told Marie's husband, as, telegram in +hand, he returned to the problem of Michael. "Give her half a +dozen tries more. And don't forget, any time any jay farmer +thinks he's got a span that can pull, bet him on the side your +best span can beat him. That means advance advertising and some +paper. It'll be worth it. The ringmaster'll favour you, and your +span can get the first jump. If I was young and foot-loose, I'd +ask nothing better than to go out with your turn." + +Harris Collins, in the pauses gazing down at Michael, read Del +Mar's Seattle telegram: + + +"Sell my dogs. You know what they can do and what they are worth. +Am done with them. Deduct the board and hold the balance until I +see you. I have the limit of a dog. Every turn I ever pulled is +put in the shade by this one. He's a ten strike. Wait till you +see him." + + +Over to one side in the busy arena, Collins contemplated Michael. + +"Del Mar was the limit himself," he told Johnny, who held Michael +by the chain. "When he wired me to sell his dogs it meant he had +a better turn, and here's only one dog to show for it, a damned +thoroughbred at that. He says it's the limit. It must be, but in +heaven's name, what is its turn? It's never done a flip in its +life, much less a double flip. What do you think, Johnny? Use +your head. Suggest something." + +"Maybe it can count," Johnny advanced. + +"And counting-dogs are a drug on the market. Well, anyway, let's +try." + +And Michael, who knew unerringly how to count, refused to perform. + +"If he was a regular dog, he could walk anyway," was Collins' next +idea. "We'll try him." + +And Michael went through the humiliating ordeal of being jerked +erect on his hind legs by Johnny while Collins with the stick +cracked him under the jaw and across the knees. In his wrath, +Michael tried to bite the master-god, and was jerked away by the +chain. When he strove to retaliate on Johnny, that imperturbable +youth, with extended arm, merely lifted him into the air on his +chain and strangled him. + +"That's off," quoth Collins wearily. "If he can't stand on his +hind legs he can't barrel-jump--you've heard about Ruth, Johnny. +She was a winner. Jump in and out of nail-kegs, on her hind legs, +without ever touching with her front ones. She used to do eight +kegs, in one and out into the next. Remember when she was boarded +here and rehearsed. She was a gold-mine, but Carson didn't know +how to treat her, and she croaked off with penumonia at Cripple +Creek." + +"Wonder if he can spin plates on his nose," Johnny volunteered. + +"Can't stand up on hind legs," Collins negatived. "Besides, +nothing like the limit in a turn like that. This dog's got a +specially. He ain't ordinary. He does some unusual thing +unusually well, and it's up to us to locate it. That comes of +Harry dying so inconsiderately and leaving this puzzle-box on my +hands. I see I just got to devote myself to him. Take him away, +Johnny. Number Eighteen for him. Later on we can put him in the +single compartments." + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + + + +Number Eighteen was a big compartment or cage in the dog row, +large enough with due comfort for a dozen Irish terriers like +Michael. For Harris Collins was scientific. Dogs on vacation, +boarding at the Cedarwild Animal School, were given every +opportunity to recuperate from the hardships and wear and tear of +from six months to a year and more on the road. It was for this +reason that the school was so popular a boarding-place for +performing animals when the owners were on vacation or out of +"time." Harris Collins kept his animals clean and comfortable and +guarded from germ diseases. In short, he renovated them against +their next trips out on vaudeville time or circus engagement. + +To the left of Michael, in Number Seventeen, were five grotesquely +clipped French poodles. Michael could not see them, save when he +was being taken out or brought back, but he could smell them and +hear them, and, in his loneliness, he even started a feud of +snarling bickeringness with Pedro, the biggest of them who acted +as clown in their turn. They were aristocrats among performing +animals, and Michael's feud with Pedro was not so much real as +play-acted. Had he and Pedro been brought together they would +have made friends in no time. But through the slow monotonous +drag of the hours they developed a fictitious excitement and +interest in mouthing their quarrel which each knew in his heart of +hearts was no quarrel at all. + +In Number Nineteen, on Michael's right, was a sad and tragic +company. They were mongrels, kept spotlessly and germicidally +clean, who were unattached and untrained. They composed a sort of +reserve of raw material, to be worked into established troupes +when an extra one or a substitute was needed. This meant the hell +of the arena where the training went on. Also, in spare moments, +Collins, or his assistants, were for ever trying them out with all +manner of tricks in the quest of special aptitudes on their parts. +Thus, a mongrel semblance to a cooker spaniel of a dog was tried +out for several days as a pony-rider who would leap through paper +hoops from the pony's back, and return upon the back again. After +several falls and painful injuries, it was rejected for the feat +and tried out as a plate-balancer. Failing in this, it was made +into a see-saw dog who, for the rest of the turn, filled into the +background of a troupe of twenty dogs. + +Number Nineteen was a place of perpetual quarrelling and pain. +Dogs, hurt in the training, licked their wounds, and moaned, or +howled, or were irritable to excess on the slightest provocation. +Always, when a new dog entered--and this was a regular happening, +for others were continually being taken away to hit the road--the +cage was vexed with quarrels and battles, until the new dog, by +fighting or by non resistance, had commanded or been taught its +proper place. + +Michael ignored the denizens of Number Nineteen. They could sniff +and snarl belligerently across at him, but he took no notice, +reserving his companionship for the play-acted and perennial +quarrel with Pedro. Also, Michael was out in the arena more often +and far longer hours than any of them. + +"Trust Harry not to make a mistake on a dog," was Collins's +judgment; and constantly he strove to find in Michael what had +made Del Mar declare him a ten strike and the limit. + +Every indignity, in the attempt to find out, was wreaked upon +Michael. They tried him at hurdle-jumping, at walking on fore- +legs, at pony-riding, at forward flips, and at clowning with other +dogs. They tried him at waltzing, all his legs cord-fastened and +dragged and jerked and slacked under him. They spiked his collar +in some of the attempted tricks to keep him from lurching from +side to side or from falling forward or backward. They used the +whip and the rattan stick; and twisted his nose. They attempted +to make a goal-keeper of him in a football game between two teams +of pain-driven and pain-bitten mongrels. And they dragged him up +ladders to make him dive into a tank of water. + +Even they essayed to make him "loop the loop"--rushing him down an +inclined trough at so high speed of his legs, accelerated by the +slash of whips on his hindquarters, that, with such initial +momentum, had he put his heart and will into it, he could have +successfully run up the inside of the loop, and across the inside +of the top of it, back-downward, like a fly on the ceiling, and on +and down and around and out of the loop. But he refused the will +and the heart, and every time, when he was unable at the beginning +to leap sideways out of the inclined trough, he fell grievously +from the inside of the loop, bruising and injuring himself. + +"It isn't that I expect these things are what Harry had in mind," +Collins would say, for always he was training his assistants; "but +that through them I may get a cue to his specially, whatever in +God's name it is, that poor Harry must have known." + +Out of love, at the wish of his love-god, Steward, Michael would +have striven to learn these tricks and in most of them would have +succeeded. But here at Cedarwild was no love, and his own +thoroughbred nature made him stubbornly refuse to do under +compulsion what he would gladly have done out of love. As a +result, since Collins was no thoroughbred of a man, the clashes +between them were for a time frequent and savage. In this +fighting Michael quickly learned he had no chance. He was always +doomed to defeat. He was beaten by stereotyped formula before he +began. Never once could he get his teeth into Collins or Johnny. +He was too common-sensed to keep up the battling in which he would +surely have broken his heart and his body and gone dumb mad. +Instead, he retired into himself, became sullen, undemonstrative, +and, though he never cowered in defeat, and though he was always +ready to snarl and bristle his hair in advertisement that inside +he was himself and unconquered, he no longer burst out in furious +anger. + +After a time, scarcely ever trying him out on a new trick, the +chain and Johnny were dispensed with, and with Collins he spent +all Collins's hours in the arena. He learned, by bitter lessons, +that he must follow Collins around; and follow him he did, hating +him perpetually and in his own body slowly and subtly poisoning +himself by the juices of his glands that did not secrete and flow +in quite their normal way because of the pressure put upon them by +his hatred. + +The effect of this, on his body, was not perceptible. This was +because of his splendid constitution and health. Wherefore, since +the effect must be produced somewhere, it was his mind, or spirit, +or nature, or brain, or processes of consciousness, that received +it. He drew more and more within himself, became morose, and +brooded much. All of which was spiritually unhealthful. He, who +had been so merry-hearted, even merrier-hearted than his brother +Jerry, began to grow saturnine, and peevish, and ill-tempered. He +no longer experienced impulses to play, to romp around, to run +about. His body became as quiet and controlled as his brain. +Human convicts, in prisons, attain this quietude. He could stand +by the hour, to heel to Collins, uninterested, infinitely bored, +while Collins tortured some mongrel creature into the performance +of a trick. + +And much of this torturing Michael witnessed. There were the +greyhounds, the high-jumpers and wide-leapers. They were willing +to do their best, but Collins and his assistants achieved the +miracle, if miracle it may be called, of making them do better +than their best. Their best was natural. Their better than best +was unnatural, and it killed some and shortened the lives of all. +Rushed to the spring-board and the leap, always, after the take- +off, in mid-air, they had to encounter an assistant who stood +underneath, an extraordinarily long buggy-whip in hand, and lashed +them vigorously. This made them leap from the springboard beyond +their normal powers, hurting and straining and injuring them in +their desperate attempt to escape the whip-lash, to beat the whip- +lash in the air and be past ere it could catch their flying flanks +and sting them like a scorpion. + +"Never will a jumping dog jump his hardest," Collins told his +assistants, "unless he's made to. That's your job. That's the +difference between the jumpers I turn out and some of these dub +amateur-jumping outfits that fail to make good even on the bush +circuits." + +Collins continually taught. A graduate from his school, an +assistant who received from him a letter of recommendation, +carried a high credential of a sheepskin into the trained-animal +world. + +"No dog walks naturally on its hind legs, much less on its +forelegs," Collins would say. "Dogs ain't built that way. THEY +HAVE TO BE MADE TO, that's all. That's the secret of all animal +training. They have to. You've got to make them. That's your +job. Make them. Anybody who can't, can't make good in this +factory. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, and get busy." + +Michael saw, without fully appreciating, the use of the spiked +saddle on the bucking mule. The mule was fat and good-natured the +first day of its appearance in the arena. It had been a pet mule +in a family of children until Collins's keen eyes rested on it; +and it had known only love and kindness and much laughter for its +foolish mulishness. But Collins's eyes had read health, vigour, +and long life, as well as laughableness of appearance and action +in the long-eared hybrid. + +Barney Barnato he was renamed that first day in the arena, when, +also, he received the surprise of his life. He did not dream of +the spike in the saddle, nor, while the saddle was empty, did it +press against him. But the moment Samuel Bacon, a negro tumbler, +got into the saddle, the spike sank home. He knew about it and +was prepared. But Barney, taken by surprise, arched his back in +the first buck he had ever made. It was so prodigious a buck that +Collins eyes snapped with satisfaction, while Sam landed a dozen +feet away in the sawdust. + +"Make good like that," Collins approved, "and when I sell the mule +you'll go along as part of the turn, or I miss my guess. And it +will be some turn. There'll be at least two more like you, who'll +have to be nervy and know how to fall. Get busy. Try him again." + +And Barney entered into the hell of education that later won his +purchaser more time than he could deliver over the best vaudeville +circuits in Canada and the United States. Day after day Barney +took his torture. Not for long did he carry the spiked saddle. +Instead, bare-back, he received the negro on his back, and was +spiked and set bucking just the same; for the spike was now +attached to Sam's palm by means of leather straps. In the end, +Barney became so "touchy" about his back that he almost began +bucking if a person as much as looked at it. Certainly, aware of +the stab of pain, he started bucking, whirling, and kicking +whenever the first signal was given of some one trying to mount +him. + +At the end of the fourth week, two other tumblers, white youths, +being secured, the complete, builded turn was performed for the +benefit of a slender, French-looking gentleman, with waxed +moustaches. In the end he bought Barney, without haggling, at +Collins's own terms and engaged Sammy and the other two tumblers +as well. Collins staged the trick properly, as it would be staged +in the theatre, even had ready and set up all the necessary +apparatus, and himself acted as ringmaster while the prospective +purchaser looked on. + +Barney, fat as butter, humorous-looking, was led into the square +of cloth-covered steel cables and cloth-covered steel uprights. +The halter was removed and he was turned loose. Immediately he +became restless, the ears were laid back, and he was a picture of +viciousness. + +"Remember one thing," Collins told the man who might buy. "If you +buy him, you'll be ringmaster, and you must never, never spike +him. When he comes to know that, you can always put your hands on +him any time and control him. He's good-natured at heart, and +he's the gratefullest mule I've ever seen in the business. He's +just got to love you, and hate the other three. And one warning: +if he goes real bad and starts biting, you'll have to pull out his +teeth and feed him soft mashes and crushed grain that's steamed. +I'll give you the recipe for the digestive dope you'll have to put +in. Now--watch!" + +Collins stopped into the ring and caressed Barney, who responded +in the best of tempers and tried affectionately to nudge and shove +past on the way out of the ropes to escape what he knew was +coming. + +"See," Collins exposited. "He's got confidence in me. He trusts +me. He knows I've never spiked him and that I always save him in +the end. I'm his good Samaritan, and you'll have to be the same +to him if you buy him.--Now I'll give you your spiel. Of course, +you can improve on it to suit yourself." + +The master-trainer walked out of the rope square, stepped forward +to an imaginary line, and looked down and out and up as if he were +gazing at the pit of the orchestra beneath him, across at the body +of the house, and up into the galleries. + +"Ladies and gentlemen," he addressed the sawdust emptiness before +him as if it were a packed audience, "this is Barney Barnato, the +biggest joker of a mule ever born. He's as affectionate as a +Newfoundland puppy--just watch--" + +Stepping back to the ropes, Collins extended his hand across them, +saying: "Come here, Barney, and show all these people who you +love best." + +And Barney twinkled forward on his small hoofs, nozzled the open +hand, and came closer, nozzling up the arm, nudging Collins's +shoulders with his nose, half-rearing as if to get across the +ropes and embrace him. What he was really doing was begging and +entreating Collins to take him away out of the squared ring from +the torment he knew awaited him. + +"That's what it means by never spiking him," Collins shot at the +man with the waxed moustaches, as he stepped forward to the +imaginary line in the sawdust, above the imaginary pit of the +orchestra, and addressed the imaginary house. + +"Ladies and gentlemen, Barney Barnato is a josher. He's got forty +tricks up each of his four legs, and the man don't live that he'll +let stick on big back for sixty seconds. I'm telling you this in +fair warning, before I make my proposition. Looks easy, doesn't +it?--one minute, the sixtieth part of an hour, to be precise, +sixty seconds, to stick on the back of an affectionate josher mule +like Barney. Well, come on you boys and broncho riders. To +anybody who sticks on for one minute I shall immediately pay the +sum of fifty dollars; for two whole, entire minutes, the sum of +five hundred dollars." + +This was the cue for Samuel Bacon, who advanced across the +sawdust, awkward and grinning and embarrassed, and apparently was +helped up to the stage by the extended hand of Collins. + +"Is your life insured?" Collins demanded. + +Sam shook his head and grinned. + +"Then what are you tackling this for?" + +"For the money," said Sam. "I jes' naturally needs it in my +business." + +"What is your business?" + +"None of your business, mister." Here Sam grinned ingratiating +apology for his impertinence and shuffled on his legs. "I might +be investin' in lottery tickets, only I ain't. Do I get the +money?--that's OUR business." + +"Sure you do," Collins replied. "When you earn it. Stand over +there to one side and wait a moment.--Ladies and gentlemen, if you +will forgive the delay, I must ask for more volunteers.--Any more +takers? Fifty dollars for sixty seconds. Almost a dollar a +second . . . if you win. Better! I'll make it a dollar a second. +Sixty dollars to the boy, man, woman, or girl who sticks on +Barney's back for one minute. Come on, ladies. Remember this is +the day of equal suffrage. Here's where you put it over on your +husbands, brothers, sons, fathers, and grandfathers. Age is no +limit.--Grandma, do I get you?" he uttered directly to what must +have been a very elderly lady in a near front row.--"You see," (to +the prospective buyer), "I've got the entire patter for you. You +could do it with two rehearsals, and you can do them right here, +free of charge, part of the purchase." + +The next two tumblers crossed the sawdust and were helped by +Collins up to the imaginary stage. + +"You can change the patter according to the cities you're in," he +explained to the Frenchman. "It's easy to find out the names of +the most despised and toughest neighbourhoods or villages, and +have the boys hail from them." + +Continuing the patter, Collins put the performance on. Sam's +first attempt was brief. He was not half on when he was flung to +the ground. Half a dozen attempts, quickly repeated, were +scarcely better, the last one permitting him to remain on Barney's +back nearly ten seconds, and culminating in a ludicrous fall over +Barney's head. Sam withdrew from the ring, shaking his head +dubiously and holding his side as if in pain. The other lads +followed. Expert tumblers, they executed most amazing and side- +splitting fails. Sam recovered and came back. Toward the last, +all three made a combined attack on Barney, striving to mount him +simultaneously from different slants of approach. They were +scattered and flung like chaff, sometimes falling heaped together. +Once, the two white boys, standing apart as if recovering breath, +were mowed down by Sam's flying body. + +"Remember, this is a real mule," Collins told the man with the +waxed moustaches. "If any outsiders butt in for a hack at the +money, all the better. They'll get theirs quick. The man don't +live who can stay on his back a minute . . . if you keep him +rehearsed with the spike. He must live in fear of the spike. +Never let him slow up on it. Never let him forget it. If you lay +off any time for a few days, rehearse him with the spike a couple +of times just before you begin again, or else he might forget it +and queer the turn by ambling around with the first outside rube +that mounts him. + +"And just suppose some rube, all hooks of arms and legs and hands, +is managing to stick on anyway, and the minute is getting near up. +Just have Sam here, or any of your three, slide in and spike him +from the palm. That'll be good night for Mr. Rube. You can't +lose, and the audience'll laugh its fool head off. + +"Now for the climax! Watch! This always brings the house down. +Get busy you two!--Sam! Ready!" + +While the white boys threatened to mount Barney from either side +and kept his attention engaged, Sam, from outside, in a sudden fit +of rage and desperation, made a flying dive across the ropes and +from in front locked arms and legs about Barney's neck, tucking +his own head close against Barney's head. And Barney reared up on +his hind legs, as he had long since learned from the many palm- +spikings he had received on head and neck. + +"It's a corker," Collins announced, as Barney, on his hind legs, +striking vainly with his fore, struggled about the ring. "There's +no danger. He'll never fall over backwards. He's a mule, and +he's too wise. Besides, even if he does, all Sam has to do is let +go and fall clear." + +The turn over, Barney gladly accepted the halter and was led out +of the square ring and up to the Frenchman. + +"Long life there--look him over," Collins continued to sell. +"It's a full turn, including yourself, four performers, besides +the mule, and besides any suckers from the audience. It's all +ready to put on the boards, and dirt cheap at five thousand." + +The Frenchman winced at the sum. + +"Listen to arithmetic," Collins went on. "You can sell at twelve +hundred a week at least, and you can net eight hundred certain. +Six weeks of the net pays for the turn, and you can book a hundred +weeks right off the bat and have them yelling for more. Wish I +was young and footloose. I'd take it out on the road myself and +coin a fortune." + +And Barney was sold, and passed out of the Cedarwild Animal School +to the slavery of the spike and to be provocative of much joy and +laughter in the pleasure-theatre of the world. + + + +CHAPTER XXVII + + + +"The thing is, Johnny, you can't love dogs into doing professional +tricks, which is the difference between dogs and women," Collins +told his assistant. "You know how it is with any dog. You love +it up into lying down and rolling over and playing dead and all +such dub tricks. And then one day you show him off to your +friends, and the conditions are changed, and he gets all excited +and foolish, and you can't get him to do a thing. Children are +like that. Lose their heads in company, forget all their +training, and throw you down." + +"Now on the stage, they got real tricks to do, tricks they don't +do, tricks they hate. And they mightn't be feeling good--got a +touch of cold, or mange, or are sour-balled. What are you going +to do? Apologize to the audience? Besides, on the stage, the +programme runs like clockwork. Got to start performing on the +tick of the clock, and anywhere from one to seven turns a day, all +depending what kind of time you've got. The point is, your dogs +have got to get right up and perform. No loving them, no begging +them, no waiting on them. And there's only the one way. They've +got to know when you start, you mean it." + +"And dogs ain't fools," Johnny opined. "They know when you mean +anything, an' when you don't." + +"Sure thing," Collins nodded approbation. "The moment you slack +up on them is the moment they slack up in their work. You get +soft, and see how quick they begin making mistakes in their +tricks. You've got to keep the fear of God over them. If you +don't, they won't, and you'll find yourself begging for spotted +time on the bush circuits." + +Half an hour later, Michael heard, though he understood no word of +it, the master-trainer laying another law down to another +assistant. + +"Cross-breds and mongrels are what's needed, Charles. Not one +thoroughbred in ten makes good, unless he's got the heart of a +coward, and that's just what distinguishes them from mongrels and +cross-breds. Like race-horses, they're hot-blooded. They've got +sensitiveness, and pride. Pride's the worst. You listen to me. +I was born into the business and I've studied it all my life. I'm +a success. There's only one reason I'm a success--I KNOW. Get +that. I KNOW." + +"Another thing is that cross-breds and mongrels are cheap. You +needn't be afraid of losing them or working them out. You can +always get more, and cheap. And they ain't the trouble in +teaching. You can throw the fear of God into them. That's what's +the matter with the thoroughbreds. You can't throw the fear of +God into them." + +"Give a mongrel a real licking, and what's he do? He'll kiss your +hand, and be obedient, and crawl on his belly to do what you want +him to do. They're slave dogs, that's what mongrels are. They +ain't got courage, and you don't want courage in a performing dog. +You want fear. Now you give a thoroughbred a licking and see what +happens. Sometimes they die. I've known them to die. And if +they don't die, what do they do? Either they go stubborn, or +vicious, or both. Sometimes they just go to biting and foaming. +You can kill them, but you can't keep them from biting and +foaming. Or they'll go straight stubborn. They're the worst. +They're the passive resisters--that's what I call them. They +won't fight back. You can flog them to death, but it won't buy +you anything. They're like those Christians that used to be +burned at the stake or boiled in oil. They've got their opinions, +and nothing you can do will change them. They'll die first. . . . +And they do. I've had them. I was learning myself . . . and I +learned to leave the thoroughbred alone. They beat you out. They +get your goat. You never get theirs. And they're time-wasters, +and patience-wasters, and they're expensive." + +"Take this terrier here." Collins nodded at Michael, who stood +several feet back of him, morosely regarding the various +activities of the arena. "He's both kinds of a thoroughbred, and +therefore no good. I've never given him a real licking, and I +never will. It would be a waste of time. He'll fight if you +press him too hard. And he'll die fighting you. He's too +sensible to fight if you don't press him too hard. And if you +don't press him too hard, he'll just stay as he is, and refuse to +learn anything. I'd chuck him right now, except Del Mar couldn't +make a mistake. Poor Harry knew he had a specially, and a +crackerjack, and it's up to me to find it." + +"Wonder if he's a lion dog," Charles suggested. + +"He's the kind that ain't afraid of lions," Collins concurred. +"But what sort of a specially trick could he do with lions? Stick +his head in their mouths? I never heard of a dog doing that, and +it's an idea. But we can try him. We've tried him at 'most +everything else." + +"There's old Hannibal," said Charles. "He used to take a woman's +head in his mouth with the old Sales-Sinker shows." + +"But old Hannibal's getting cranky," Collins objected. "I've been +watching him and trying to get rid of him. Any animal is liable +to go off its nut any time, especially wild ones. You see, the +life ain't natural. And when they do, it's good night. You lose +your investment, and, if you don't know your business, maybe your +life." + +And Michael might well have been tried out on Hannibal and have +lost his head inside that animal's huge mouth, had not the good +fortune of apropos-ness intervened. For, the next moment, Collins +was listening to the hasty report of his lion-and-tiger keeper. +The man who reported was possibly forty years of age, although he +looked half as old again. He was a withered-faced man, whose +face-lines, deep and vertical, looked as if they had been clawed +there by some beast other than himself. + +"Old Hannibal is going crazy," was the burden of his report. + +"Nonsense," said Harris Collins. "It's you that's getting old. +He's got your goat, that's all. I'll show it to you.--Come on +along, all of you. We'll take fifteen minutes off of the work, +and I'll show you a show never seen in the show-ring. It'd be +worth ten thousand a week anywhere . . . only it wouldn't last. +Old Hannibal would turn up his toes out of sheer hurt feelings.-- +Come on everybody! All hands! Fifteen minutes recess!" + +And Michael followed at the heels of his latest and most terrible +master, the twain leading the procession of employees and visiting +professional animal men who trooped along behind. As was well +known, when Harris Collins performed he performed only for the +elite, for the hoi-polloi of the trained-animal world. + +The lion-and-tiger man, who had clawed his own face with the +beast-claws of his nature, whimpered protest when he saw his +employer's preparation to enter Hannibal's cage; for the +preparation consisted merely in equipping himself with a broom- +handle. + +Hannibal was old, but he was reputed the largest lion in +captivity, and he had not lost his teeth. He was pacing up and +down the length of his cage, heavily and swaying, after the manner +of captive animals, when the unexpected audience erupted into the +space before his cage. Yet he took no notice whatever, merely +continuing his pacing, swinging his head from side to side, +turning lithely at each end of his cage, with all the air of being +bent on some determined purpose. + +"That's the way he's been goin' on for two days," whimpered his +keeper. "An' when you go near 'm, he just reaches for you. Look +what he done to me." The man held up his right arm, the shirt and +undershirt ripped to shreds, and red parallel grooves, slightly +clotted with blood, showing where the claws had broken the skin. +"An' I wasn't inside. He did it through the bars, with one swipe, +when I was startin' to clean his cage. Now if he'd only roar, or +something. But he never makes a sound, just keeps on goin' up an' +down." + +"Where's the key?" Collins demanded. "Good. Now let me in. And +lock it afterward and take the key out. Lose it, forget it, throw +it away. I'll have all the time in the world to wait for you to +find it to let me out." + +And Harris Collins, a sliver of a less than a light-weight man, +who lived in mortal fear that at table the mother of his children +would crown him with a plate of hot soup, went into the cage, +before the critical audience of his employees and professional +visitors, armed only with a broom-handle. Further, the door was +locked behind him, and, the moment he was in, keeping a casual but +alert eye on the pacing Hannibal, he reiterated his order to lock +the door and remove the key. + +Half a dozen times the lion paced up and down, declining to take +any notice of the intruder. And then, when his back was turned as +he went down the cage, Collins stepped directly in the way of his +return path and stood still. Coming back and finding his way +blocked, Hannibal did not roar. His muscular movements sliding +each into the next like so much silk of tawny hide, he struck at +the obstacle that confronted his way. But Collins, knowing ahead +of the lion what the lion was going to do, struck first, with the +broom-handle rapping the beast on its tender nose. Hannibal +recoiled with a flash of snarl and flashed back a second sweeping +stroke of his mighty paw. Again he was anticipated, and the rap +on his nose sent him into recoil. + +"Got to keep his head down--that way lies safety," the master- +trainer muttered in a low, tense voice. + +"Ah, would you? Take it, then." + +Hannibal, in wrath, crouching for a spring, had lifted his head. +The consequent blow on his nose forced his head down to the floor, +and the king of beasts, nose still to floor, backed away with +mouth-snarls and throat-and-chest noises. + +"Follow up," Collins enunciated, himself following, rapping the +nose again sharply and accelerating the lion's backward retreat. + +"Man is the boss because he's got the head that thinks," Collins +preached the lesson; "and he's just got to make his head boss his +body, that's all, so that he can think one thought ahead of the +animal, and act one act ahead. Watch me get his goat. He ain't +the hard case he's trying to make himself believe he is. And that +idea, which he's just starting, has got to be taken out of him. +The broomstick will do it. Watch." + +He backed the animal down the length of the cage, continually +rapping at the nose and keeping it down to the floor. + +"Now I'm going to pile him into the corner." + +And Hannibal, snarling, growling, and spitting, ducking his head +and with short paw-strokes trying to ward off the insistent +broomstick, backed obediently into the corner, crumpled up his +hind-parts, and tried to withdraw his corporeal body within itself +in a pain-urged effort to make it smaller. And always he kept his +nose down and himself harmless for a spring. In the thick of it +he slowly raised his nose and yawned. Nor, because it came up +slowly, and because Collins had anticipated the yawn by being one +thought ahead of Hannibal in Hannibal's own brain, was the nose +rapped. + +"That's the goat," Collins announced, for the first time speaking +in a hearty voice in which was no vibration of strain. "When a +lion yawns in the thick of a fight, you know he ain't crazy. He's +sensible. He's got to be sensible, or he'd be springing or +lashing out instead of yawning. He knows he's licked, and that +yawn of his merely says: 'I quit. For the I love of Mike leave +me alone. My nose is awful sore. I'd like to get you, but I +can't. I'll do anything you want, and I'll be dreadful good, but +don't hit my poor sore nose.' + +"But man is the boss, and he can't afford to be so easy. Drive +the lesson home that you're boss. Rub it in. Don't stop when he +quits. Make him swallow the medicine and lick the spoon. Make +him kiss your foot on his neck holding him down in the dirt. Make +him kiss the stick that's beaten him.--Watch!" + +And Hannibal, the largest lion in captivity, with all his teeth, +captured out of the jungle after he was full-grown, a veritable +king of beasts, before the menacing broomstick in the hand of a +sliver of a man, backed deeper and more crumpled together into the +corner. His back was bowed up, the very opposite muscular +position to that for a spring, while he drew his head more and +more down and under his chest in utter abjectness, resting his +weight on his elbows and shielding his poor nose with his massive +paws, a single stroke of which could have ripped the life of +Collins quivering from his body. + +"Now he might be tricky," Collins announced, "but he's got to kiss +my foot and the stick just the same. Watch!" + +He lifted and advanced his left foot, not tentatively and +hesitantly, but quickly and firmly, bringing it to rest on the +lion's neck. The stick was poised to strike, one act ahead of the +lion's next possible act, as Collins's mind was one thought ahead +of the lion's next thought. + +And Hannibal did the forecasted and predestined. His head flashed +up, huge jaws distended, fangs gleaming, to sink into the slender, +silken-hosed ankle above the tan low-cut shoes. But the fangs +never sank. They were scarcely started a fifth of the way of the +distance, when the waiting broomstick rapped on his nose and made +him sink it in the floor under his chest and cover it again with +his paws. + +"He ain't crazy," said Collins. "He knows, from the little he +knows, that I know more than him and that I've got him licked to a +fare-you-well. If he was crazy, he wouldn't know, and I wouldn't +know his mind either, and I wouldn't be that one jump ahead of +him, and he'd get me and mess the whole cage up with my insides." + +He prodded Hannibal with the end of the broom-handle, after each +prod poising it for a stroke. And the great lion lay and roared +in helplessness, and at each prod exposed his nose more and lifted +it higher, until, at the end, his red tongue ran out between his +fangs and licked the boot resting none too gently on his neck, +and, after that, licked the broomstick that had administered all +the punishment. + +"Going to be a good lion now?" Collins demanded, roughly rubbing +his foot back and forth on Hannibal's neck. + +Hannibal could not refrain from growling his hatred. + +"Going to be a good lion?" Collins repeated, rubbing his foot back +and forth still more roughly. + +And Hannibal exposed his nose and with his red tongue licked again +the tan shoe and the slender, tan-silken ankle that he could have +destroyed with one crunch. + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII + + + +One friend Michael made among the many animals he encountered in +the Cedarwild School, and a strange, sad friendship it was. Sara +she was called, a small, green monkey from South America, who +seemed to have been born hysterical and indignant, and with no +appreciation of humour. Sometimes, following Collins about the +arena, Michael would meet her while she waited to be tried out on +some new turn. For, unable or unwilling to try, she was for ever +being tried out on turns, or, with little herself to do, as a +filler-in for more important performers. + +But she always caused confusion, either chattering and squealing +with fright or bickering at the other animals. Whenever they +attempted to make her do anything, she protested indignantly; and +if they tried force, her squalls and cries excited all the animals +in the arena and set the work back. + +"Never mind," said Collins finally. "She'll go into the next +monkey band we make up." + +This was the last and most horrible fate that could befall a +monkey on the stage, to be a helpless marionette, compelled by +unseen sticks and wires, poked and jerked by concealed men, to +move and act throughout an entire turn. + +But it was before this doom was passed upon her that Michael made +her acquaintance. Their first meeting, she sprang suddenly at +him, a screaming, chattering little demon, threatening him with +nails and teeth. And Michael, already deep-sunk in habitual +moroseness merely looked at her calmly, not a ripple to his neck- +hair nor a prick to his ears. The next moment, her fuss and fury +quite ignored, she saw him turn his head away. This gave her +pause. Had he sprung at her, or snarled, or shown any anger or +resentment such as did the other dogs when so treated by her, she +would have screamed and screeched and raised a hubbub of +expostulation, crying for help and calling all men to witness how +she was being unwarrantably attacked. + +As it was, Michael's unusual behaviour seemed to fascinate her. +She approached him tentatively, without further racket; and the +boy who had her in charge slacked the thin chain that held her. + +"Hope he breaks her back for her," was his unholy wish; for he +hated Sara intensely, desiring to be with the lions or elephants +rather than dancing attendance on a cantankerous female monkey +there was no reasoning with. + +And because Michael took no notice of her, she made up to him. It +was not long before she had her hands on him, and, quickly after +that, an arm around his neck and her head snuggled against his. +Then began her interminable tale. Day after day, catching him at +odd times in the ring, she would cling closely to him and in a low +voice, running on and on, never pausing for breath, tell him, for +all he knew, the story of her life. At any rate, it sounded like +the story of her woes and of all the indignities which had been +wreaked upon her. It was one long complaint, and some of it might +have been about her health, for she sniffed and coughed a great +deal and her chest seemed always to hurt her from the way she had +of continually and gingerly pressing the palm of her hand to it. +Sometimes, however, she would cease her complaining, and love and +mother him, uttering occasional series of gentle mellow sounds +that were like croonings. + +Hers was the only hand of affection that was laid on him at +Cedarwild, and she was ever gentle, never pinching him, never +pulling his ears. By the same token, he was the only friend she +had; and he came to look forward to meeting her in the course of +the morning work--and this, despite that every meeting always +concluded in a scene, when she fought with her keeper against +being taken away. Her cries and protests would give way to +whimperings and wailings, while the men about laughed at the +strangeness of the love-affair between her and the Irish terrier. + +But Harris Collins tolerated, even encouraged, their friendship. + +"The two sour-balls get along best together," he said. "And it +does them good. Gives them something to live for, and that way +lies health. But some day, mark my words, she'll turn on him and +give him what for, and their friendship will get a terrible +smash." + +And half of it he spoke with the voice of prophecy, and, though +she never turned on Michael, the day in the world was written when +their friendship would truly receive a terrible smash. + +"Now seals are too wise," Collins explained one day, in a sort of +extempore lecture to several of his apprentice trainers. "You've +just got to toss fish to them when they perform. If you don't, +they won't, and there's an end of it. But you can't depend on +feeding dainties to dogs, for instance, though you can make a +young, untrained pig perform creditably by means of a nursing +bottle hidden up your sleeve." + +"All you have to do is think it over. Do you think you can make +those greyhounds extend themselves with the promise of a bite of +meat? It's the whip that makes them extend.--Look over there at +Billy Green. There ain't another way to teach that dog that +trick. You can't love her into doing it. You can't pay her to do +it. There's only one way, and that's MAKE her." + +Billy Green, at the moment, was training a tiny, nondescript, +frizzly-haired dog. Always, on the stage, he made a hit by +drawing from his pocket a tiny dog that would do this particular +trick. The last one had died from a wrenched back, and he was now +breaking in a new one. He was catching the little mite by the +hind-legs and tossing it up in the air, where, making a half-flip +and descending head first, it was supposed to alight with its +fore-feet on his hand and there balance itself, its hind feet and +body above it in the air. Again and again he stooped, caught her +hind-legs and flung her up into the half-turn. Almost frozen with +fear, she vainly strove to effect the trick. Time after time, and +every time, she failed to make the balance. Sometimes she fell +crumpled; several times she all but struck the ground: and once, +she did strike, on her side and so hard as to knock the breath out +of her. Her master, taking advantage of the moment to wipe the +sweat from his streaming face, nudged her about with his toe till +she staggered weakly to her feet. + +"The dog was never born that'd learn that trick for the promise of +a bit of meat," Collins went on. "Any more than was the dog ever +born that'd walk on its fore-legs without having its hind-legs +rapped up in the air with the stick a thousand times. Yet you +take that trick there. It's always a winner, especially with the +women--so cunning, you know, so adorable cute, to be yanked out of +its beloved master's pocket and to have such trust and confidence +in him as to allow herself to be tossed around that way. Trust +and confidence hell! He's put the fear of God into her, that's +what." + +"Just the same, to dig a dainty out of your pocket once in a while +and give an animal a nibble, always makes a hit with the audience. +That's about all it's good for, yet it's a good stunt. Audiences +like to believe that the animals enjoy doing their tricks, and +that they are treated like pampered darlings, and that they just +love their masters to death. But God help all of us and our meal +tickets if the audiences could see behind the scenes. Every +trained-animal turn would be taken off the stage instanter, and +we'd be all hunting for a job." + +"Yes, and there's rough stuff no end pulled off on the stage right +before the audience's eyes. The best fooler I ever saw was +Lottie's. She had a bunch of trained cats. She loved them to +death right before everybody, especially if a trick wasn't going +good. What'd she do? She'd take that cat right up in her arms +and kiss it. And when she put it down it'd perform the trick all +right all right, while the audience applauded its silly head off +for the kindness and humaneness she'd shown. Kiss it? Did she? +I'll tell you what she did. She bit its nose." + +"Eleanor Pavalo learned the trick from Lottie, and used it herself +on her toy dogs. And many a dog works on the stage in a spiked +collar, and a clever man can twist a dog's nose and nobody in the +audience any the wiser. But it's the fear that counts. It's what +the dog knows he'll get afterward when the turn's over that keeps +most of them straight." + +"Remember Captain Roberts and his great Danes. They weren't pure- +breds, though. He must have had a dozen of them--toughest bunch +of brutes I ever saw. He boarded them here twice. You couldn't +go among them without a club in your hand. I had a Mexican lad +laid up by them. He was a tough one, too. But they got him down +and nearly ate him. The doctors took over forty stitches in him +and shot him full of that Pasteur dope for hydrophobia. And he +always will limp with his right leg from what the dogs did to him. +I tell you, they were the limit. And yet, every time the curtain +went up, Captain Roberts brought the house down with the first +stunt. Those dogs just flocked all over him, loving him to death, +from the looks of it. And were they loving him? They hated him. +I've seen him, right here in the cage at Cedarwild, wade into them +with a club and whale the stuffing impartially out of all of them. +Sure, they loved him not. Just a bit of the same old aniseed was +what he used. He'd soak small pieces of meat in aniseed oil and +stick them in his pockets. But that stunt would only work with a +bunch of giant dogs like his. It was their size that got it +across. Had they been a lot of ordinary dogs it would have looked +silly. And, besides, they didn't do their regular tricks for +aniseed. They did it for Captain Roberts's club. He was a tough +bird himself." + +"He used to say that the art of training animals was the art of +inspiring them with fear. One of his assistants told me a nasty +one about him afterwards. They had an off month in Los Angeles, +and Captain Roberts got it into his head he was going to make a +dog balance a silver dollar on the neck of a champagne bottle. +Now just think that over and try to see yourself loving a dog into +doing it. The assistant said he wore out about as many sticks as +dogs, and that he wore out half a dozen dogs. He used to get them +from the public pound at two and a half apiece, and every time one +died he had another ready and waiting. And he succeeded with the +seventh dog. I'm telling you, it learned to balance a dollar on +the neck of a bottle. And it died from the effects of the +learning within a week after he put it on the stage. Abscesses in +the lungs, from the stick." + +"There was an Englishman came over when I was a youngster. He had +ponies, monkeys, and dogs. He bit the monkey's ears, so that, on +the stage, all he had to do was to make a move as if he was going +to bite and they'd quit their fooling and be good. He had a big +chimpanzee that was a winner. It could turn four somersaults as +fast as you could count on the back of a galloping pony, and he +used to have to give it a real licking about twice a week. And +sometimes the lickings were too stiff, and the monkey'd get sick +and have to lay off. But the owner solved the problem. He got to +giving him a little licking, a mere taste of the stick, regular, +just before the turn came on. And that did it in his case, though +with some other case the monkey most likely would have got sullen +and not acted at all." + +It was on that day that Harris Collins sold a valuable bit of +information to a lion man who needed it. It was off time for him, +and his three lions were boarding at Cedarwild. Their turn was an +exciting and even terrifying one, when viewed from the audience; +for, jumping about and roaring, they were made to appear as if +about to destroy the slender little lady who performed with them +and seemed to hold them in subjection only by her indomitable +courage and a small riding-switch in her hand. + +"The trouble is they're getting too used to it," the man +complained. "Isadora can't prod them up any more. They just +won't make a showing." + +"I know them," Collins nodded. "They're pretty old now, and +they're spirit-broken besides. Take old Sark there. He's had so +many blank cartridges fired into his ears that he's stone deaf. +And Selim--he lost his heart with his teeth. A Portuguese fellow +who was handling him for the Barnum and Bailey show did that for +him. You've heard?" + +"I've often wondered," the man shook his head. "It must have been +a smash." + +"It was. The Portuguese did it with an iron bar. Selim was sulky +and took a swipe at him with his paw, and he whopped it to him +full in the mouth just as he opened it to let out a roar. He told +me about it himself. Said Selim's teeth rattled on the floor like +dominoes. But he shouldn't have done it. It was destroying +valuable property. Anyway, they fired him for it." + +"Well, all three of them ain't worth much to me now," said their +owner. "They won't play up to Isadora in that roaring and +rampaging at the end. It really made the turn. It was our +finale, and we always got a great hand for it. Say, what am I +going to do about it anyway? Ditch it? Or get some young lions?" + +"Isadora would be safer with the old ones," Collins said. + +"Too safe," Isadora's husband objected. "Of course, with younger +lions, the work and responsibility piles up on me. But we've got +to make our living, and this turn's about busted." + +Harris Collins shook his head. + +"What d'ye mean?--what's the idea?" the man demanded eagerly. + +"They'll live for years yet, seeing how captivity has agreed with +them," Collins elucidated. "If you invest in young lions you run +the risk of having them pass out on you. And you can go right on +pulling the trick off with what you've got. All you've got to do +is to take my advice . . . " + +The master-trainer paused, and the lion man opened his mouth to +speak. + +"Which will cost you," Collins went on deliberately, "say three +hundred dollars." + +"Just for some advice?" the other asked quickly. + +"Which I guarantee will work. What would you have to pay for +three new lions? Here's where you make money at three hundred. +And it's the simplest of advice. I can tell it to you in three +words, which is at the rate of a hundred dollars a word, and one +of the words is 'the.'" + +"Too steep for me," the other objected. "I've got a make a +living." + +"So have I," Collins assured him. "That's why I'm here. I'm a +specialist, and you're paying a specialist's fee. You'll be as +mad as a hornet when I tell you, it's that simple; and for the +life of me I can't understand why you don't already know it." + +"And if it don't work?" was the dubious query. + +"If it don't work, you don't pay." + +"Well, shoot it along," the lion man surrendered. + +"WIRE THE CAGE," said Collins. + +At first the man could not comprehend; then the light began to +break on him. + +"You mean . . . ?" + +"Just that," Collins nodded. "And nobody need be the wiser. Dry +batteries will do it beautifully. You can install them nicely +under the cage floor. All Isadora has to do when she's ready is +to step on the button; and when the electricity shoots through +their feet, if they don't go up in the air and rampage and roar +around to beat the band, not only can you keep the three hundred, +but I'll give you three hundred more. I know. I've seen it done, +and it never misses fire. It's just as though they were dancing +on a red-hot stove. Up they go, and every time they come down +they burn their feet again. + +"But you'll have to put the juice into them slowly," Collins +warned. "I'll show you how to do the wiring. Just a weak battery +first, so as they can work up to it, and then stronger and +stronger to the curtain. And they never get used to it. As long +as they live they'll dance just as lively as the first time. What +do you think of it?" + +"It's worth three hundred all right," the man admitted. "I wish I +could make my money that easy." + + + +CHAPTER XXIX + + + +"Guess I'll have to wash my hands of him," Collins told Johnny. +"I know Del Mar must have been right when he said he was the +limit, but I can't get a clue to it." + +This followed upon a fight between Michael and Collins. Michael, +more morose than ever, had become even crusty-tempered, and, +scarcely with provocation at all, had attacked the man he hated, +failing, as ever, to put his teeth into him, and receiving, in +turn, a couple of smashing kicks under his jaw. + +"He's like a gold-mine all right all right," Collins meditated, +"but I'm hanged if I can crack it, and he's getting grouchier +every day. Look at him. What'd he want to jump me for? I wasn't +rough with him. He's piling up a sour-ball that'll make him fight +a policeman some day." + +A few minutes later, one of his patrons, a tow-headed young man +who was boarding and rehearsing three performing leopards at +Cedarwild, was asking Collins for the loan of an Airedale. + +"I've only got one left now," he explained, "and I ain't safe +without two." + +"What's happened to the other one?" the master-trainer queried. + +"Alphonso--that's the big buck leopard--got nasty this morning and +settled his hash. I had to put him out of his misery. He was +gutted like a horse in the bull-ring. But he saved me all right. +If it hadn't been for him I'd have got a mauling. Alphonso gets +these bad streaks just about every so often. That's the second +dog he's killed for me." + +Collins shook his head. + +"Haven't got an Airedale," he said, and just then his eyes chanced +to fall on Michael. "Try out the Irish terrier," he suggested. +"They're like the Airedale in disposition. Pretty close cousins, +at any rate." + +"I pin my faith on the Airedale when it comes to lion dogs," the +leopard man demurred. + +"So's an Irish terrier a lion dog. Take that one there. Look at +the size and weight of him. Also, take it from me, he's all +spunk. He'll stand up to anything. Try him out. I'll lend him +to you. If he makes good I'll sell him to you cheap. An Irish +terrier for a leopard dog will be a novelty." + +"If he gets fresh with them cats he'll find his finish," Johnny +told Collins, as Michael was led away by the leopard man. + +"Then, maybe, the stage will lose a star," Collins answered, with +a shrug of shoulders. "But I'll have him off my chest anyway. +When a dog gets a perpetual sour-ball like that he's finished. +Never can do a thing with them. I've had them on my hands +before." + + +And Michael went to make the acquaintance of Jack, the surviving +Airedale, and to do his daily turn with the leopards. In the big +spotted cats he recognized the hereditary enemy, and, even before +he was thrust into the cage, his neck was all a-prickle as the +skin nervously tightened and the hair uprose stiff-ended. It was +a nervous moment for all concerned, the introduction of a new dog +into the cage. The tow-headed leopard man, who was billed on the +boards as Raoul Castlemon and was called Ralph by his intimates, +was already in the cage. The Airedale was with him, while outside +stood several men armed with iron bars and long steel forks. +These weapons, ready for immediate use, were thrust between the +bars as a menace to the leopards who were, very much against their +wills, to be made to perform. + +They resented Michael's intrusion on the instant, spitting, +lashing their long tails, and crouching to spring. At the same +instant the trainer spoke with sharp imperativeness and raised his +whip, while the men on the outside lifted their irons and advanced +them intimidatingly into the cage. And the leopards, bitter-wise +of the taste of the iron, remained crouched, although they still +spat and whipped their tails angrily. + +Michael was no coward. He did not slink behind the man for +protection. On the other hand, he was too sensible to rush to +attack such formidable creatures. What he did do, with bristling +neck-hair, was to stalk stiff-leggedly across the cage, turn about +with his face toward the danger, and stalk stiffly back, coming to +a pause alongside of Jack, who gave him a good-natured sniff of +greeting. + +"He's the stuff," the trainer muttered in a curiously tense voice. +"They don't get his goat." + +The situation was deservedly tense, and Ralph developed it with +cautious care, making no abrupt movements, his eyes playing +everywhere over dogs and leopards and the men outside with the +prods and bars. He made the savage cats come out of their crouch +and separate from one another. At his word of command, Jack +walked about among them. Michael, on his own initiative, +followed. And, like Jack, he walked very stiffly on his guard and +very circumspectly. + +One of them, Alphonso, spat suddenly at him. He did not startle, +though his hair rippled erect and he bared his fangs in a silent +snarl. At the same moment the nearest iron bar was shoved in +threateningly close to Alphonso, who shifted his yellow eyes from +Michael to the bar and back again and did not strike out. + +The first day was the hardest. After that the leopards accepted +Michael as they accepted Jack. No love was lost on either side, +nor were friendly overtures ever offered. Michael was quick to +realize that it was the men and dogs against the cats and that the +men and does must stand together. Each day he spent from an hour +to two hours in the cage, watching the rehearsing, with nothing +for him and Jack to do save stand vigilantly on guard. Sometimes, +when the leopards seemed better natured, Ralph even encouraged the +two dogs to lie down. But, on bad mornings, he saw to it that +they were ever ready to spring in between him and any possible +attack. + +For the rest of the time Michael shared his large pen with Jack. +They were well cared for, as were all animals at Cedarwild, +receiving frequent scrubbings and being kept clean of vermin. For +a dog only three years old, Jack was very sedate. Either he had +never learned to play or had already forgotten how. On the other +hand, he was sweet-tempered and equable, and he did not resent the +early shows of crustiness which Michael made. And Michael quickly +ceased from being crusty and took pleasure in their quiet +companionship. There were no demonstrations. They were content +to lie awake by the hour, merely pleasantly aware of each other's +proximity. + +Occasionally, Michael could hear Sara making a distant scene or +sending out calls which he knew were for him. Once she got away +from her keeper and located Michael coming out of the leopard +cage. With a shrill squeal of joy she was upon him, clinging to +him and chattering the hysterical tale of all her woes since they +had been parted. The leopard man looked on tolerantly and let her +have her few minutes. It was her keeper who tore her away in the +end, cling as she would to Michael, screaming all the while like a +harridan. When her hold was broken, she sprang at the man in a +fury, and, before he could throttle her to subjection, sank her +teeth into his thumb and wrist. All of which was provocative of +great hilarity to the onlookers, while her squalls and cries +excited the leopards to spitting and leaping against their bars. +And, as she was borne away, she set up a soft wailing like that of +a heart-broken child. + + +Although Michael proved a success with the leopards, Raoul +Castlemon never bought him from Collins. One morning, several +days later, the arena was vexed by uproar and commotion from the +animal cages. The excitement, starting with revolver shots, was +communicated everywhere. The various lions raised a great +roaring, and the many dogs barked frantically. All tricks in the +arena stopped, the animals temporarily unstrung and unable to +continue. Several men, among them Collins, ran in the direction +of the cages. Sara's keeper dropped her chain in order to follow. + +"It's Alphonso--shillings to pence it is," Collins called to one +of his assistants who was running beside him. "He'll get Ralph +yet." + +The affair was all but over and leaping to its culmination when +Collins arrived. Castlemon was just being dragged out, and as +Collins ran he could see the two men drop him to the ground so +that they might slam the cage-door shut. Inside, in so wildly +struggling a tangle on the floor that it was difficult to discern +what animals composed it, were Alphonso, Jack, and Michael looked +together. Men danced about outside, thrusting in with iron bars +and trying to separate them. In the far end of the cage were the +other two leopards, nursing their wounds and snarling and striking +at the iron rods that kept them out of the combat. + +Sara's arrival and what followed was a matter of seconds. +Trailing her chain behind her, the little green monkey, the tailed +female who knew love and hysteria and was remote cousin to human +women, flashed up to the narrow cage-bars and squeezed through. +Simultaneously the tangle underwent a violent upheaval. Flung out +with such force as to be smashed against the near end of the cage, +Michael fell to the floor, tried to spring up, but crumpled and +sank down, his right shoulder streaming blood from a terrible +mauling and crushing. To him Sara leaped, throwing her arms +around him and mothering him up to her flat little hairy breast. +She uttered solicitous cries, and, as Michael strove to rise on +his ruined foreleg, scolded him with sharp gentleness and with her +arms tried to hold him away from the battle. Also, in an +interval, her eyes malevolent in her rage, she chattered piercing +curses at Alphonso. + +A crowbar, shoved into his side, distracted the big leopard. He +struck at the weapon with his paw, and, when it was poked into him +again, flung himself upon it, biting the naked iron with his +teeth. With a second fling he was against the cage bars, with a +single slash of paw ripping down the forearm of the man who had +poked him. The crowbar was dropped as the man leaped away. +Alphonso flung back on Jack, a sorry antagonist by this time, who +could only pant and quiver where he lay in the welter of what was +left of him. + +Michael had managed to get up on his three legs and was striving +to stumble forward against the restraining arms of Sara. The mad +leopard was on the verge of springing upon them when deflected by +another prod of the iron. This time he went straight at the man, +fetching up against the cage-bars with such fierceness as to shake +the structure. + +More men began thrusting with more rods, but Alphonso was not to +be balked. Sara saw him coming and screamed her shrillest and +savagest at him. Collins snatched a revolver from one of the men. + +"Don't kill him!" Castlemon cried, seizing Collins's arm. + +The leopard man was in a bad way himself. One arm dangled +helplessly at his side, while his eyes, filling with blood from a +scalp wound, he wiped on the master-trainer's shoulder so that he +might see. + +"He's my property," he protested. "And he's worth a hundred sick +monkeys and sour-balled terriers. Anyway, we'll get them out all +right. Give me a chance.--Somebody mop my eyes out, please. I +can't see. I've used up my blank cartridges. Has anybody any +blanks?" + +One moment Sara would interpose her body between Michael and the +leopard, which was still being delayed by the prodding irons; and +the next moment she would turn to screech at the fanged cat is if +by very advertisement of her malignancy she might intimidate him +into keeping back. + +Michael, dragging her with him, growling and bristling, staggered +forward a couple of three-legged steps, gave at the ruined +shoulder, and collapsed. And then Sara did the great deed. With +one last scream of utmost fury, she sprang full into the face of +the monstrous cat, tearing and scratching with hands and feet, her +mouth buried into the roots of one of its stubby ears. The +astounded leopard upreared, with his fore-paws striking and +ripping at the little demon that would not let go. + +The fight and the life in the little green monkey lasted a short +ten seconds. But this was sufficient for Collins to get the door +ajar and with a quick clutch on Michael's hind-leg jerk him out +and to the ground. + + + +CHAPTER XXX + + + +No rough-and-ready surgery of the Del Mar sort obtained at +Cedarwild, else Michael would not have lived. A real surgeon, +skilful and audacious, came very close to vivisecting him as he +radically repaired the ruin of a shoulder, doing things he would +not have dared with a human but which proved to be correct for +Michael. + +"He'll always be lame," the surgeon said, wiping his hands and +gazing down at Michael, who lay, for the most part of him, a +motionless prisoner set in plaster of Paris. "All the healing, +and there's plenty of it, will have to be by first intention. If +his temperature shoots up we'll have to put him out of his misery. +What's he worth?" + +"He has no tricks," Collins answered. "Possibly fifty dollars, +and certainly not that now. Lame dogs are not worth teaching +tricks to." + +Time was to prove both men wrong. Michael was not destined to +permanent lameness, although in after-years his shoulder was +always tender, and, on occasion, when the weather was damp, he was +compelled to ease it with a slight limp. On the other hand, he +was destined to appreciate to a great price and to become the star +performer Harry Del Mar had predicted of him. + +In the meantime he lay for many weary days in the plaster and +abstained from raising a dangerous temperature. The care taken of +him was excellent. But not out of love and affection was it +given. It was merely a part of the system at Cedarwild which made +the institution such a success. When he was taken out of the +plaster, he was still denied that instinctive pleasure which all +animals take in licking their wounds, for shrewdly arranged +bandages were wrapped and buckled on him. And when they were +finally removed, there were no wounds to lick; though deep in the +shoulder was a pain that required months in which to die out. + +Harris Collins bothered him no more with trying to teach him +tricks, and, one day, loaned him as a filler-in to a man and woman +who had lost three of their dog-troupe by pneumonia. + +"If he makes out you can have him for twenty dollars," Collins +told the man, Wilton Davis. + +"And if he croaks?" Davis queried. + +Collins shrugged his shoulders. "I won't sit up nights worrying +about him. He's unteachable." + +And when Michael departed from Cedarwild in a crate on an express +wagon, he might well have never returned, for Wilton Davis was +notorious among trained-animal men for his cruelty to dogs. Some +care he might take of a particular dog with a particularly +valuable trick, but mere fillers-in came too cheaply. They cost +from three to five dollars apiece. Worse than that, so far as he +was concerned, Michael had cost nothing. And if he died it meant +nothing to Davis except the trouble of finding another dog. + +The first stage of Michael's new adventure involved no unusual +hardship, despite the fact that he was so cramped in his crate +that he could not stand up and that the jolting and handling of +the crate sent countless twinges of pain shooting through his +shoulder. The journey was only to Brooklyn, where he was duly +delivered to a second-rate theatre, Wilton Davis being so +indifferent a second-rate animal man that he could never succeed +in getting time with the big circuits. + +The hardship of the cramped crate began after Michael had been +carried into a big room above the stage and deposited with nearly +a score of similarly crated dogs. A sorry lot they were, all of +them scrubs and most of them spirit-broken and miserable. Several +had bad sores on their heads from being knocked about by Davis. +No care was taken of these sores, and they were not improved by +the whitening that was put on them for concealment whenever they +performed. Some of them howled lamentably at times, and every +little while, as if it were all that remained for them to do in +their narrow cells, all of them would break out into barking. + +Michael was the only one who did not join in these choruses. Long +since, as one feature of his developing moroseness, he had ceased +from barking. He had become too unsociable for any such +demonstrations; nor did he pattern after the example of some of +the sourer-tempered dogs in the room, who were for ever bickering +and snarling through the slats of their cages. In fact, Michael's +sourness of temper had become too profound even for quarrelling. +All he desired was to be let alone, and of this he had a surfeit +for the first forty-eight hours. + +Wilton Davis had assembled his troupe ahead of time, so that the +change of programme was five days away. Having taken advantage of +this to go to see his wife's people over in New Jersey, he had +hired one of the stage-hands to feed and water his dogs. This the +stage-hand would have done, had he not had the misfortune to get +into an altercation with a barkeeper which culminated in a +fractured skull and an ambulance ride to the receiving hospital. +To make the situation perfect for what followed, the theatre was +closed for three days in order to make certain alterations +demanded by the Fire Commissioners. + +No one came near the room, and after several hours Michael grew +aware of hunger and thirst. The time passed, and the desire for +food was supplanted by the desire for water. By nightfall the +barking and yelping became continuous, changing through the long +night hours to whimpering and whining. Michael alone made no +sound, suffering dumbly in the bedlam of misery. + +Morning of the second day dawned; the slow hours dragged by to the +second night; and the darkness of the second night drew down upon +a scene behind the scenes, sufficient of itself to condemn all +trained-animal acts in all theatres and show-tents of all the +world. Whether Michael dreamed or was in semi-delirium, there is +no telling; but, whichever it was, he lived most of his past life +over again. Again he played as a puppy on the broad verandas of +MISTER Haggin's plantation bungalow at Meringe; or, with Jerry, +stalked the edges of the jungle down by the river-bank to spy upon +the crocodiles; or, learning from MISTER Haggin and Bob, and +patterning after Biddy and Terrence, to consider black men as +lesser and despised gods who must for ever be kept strictly in +their places. + +On the schooner Eugenie he sailed with Captain Kellar, his second +master, and on the beach at Tulagi lost his heart to Steward of +the magic fingers and sailed away with him and Kwaque on the +steamer Makambo. Steward was most in his visions, against a hazy +background of vessels, and of individuals like the Ancient +Mariner, Simon Nishikanta, Grimshaw, Captain Doane, and little old +Ah Moy. Nor least of all did Scraps appear, and Cocky, the +valiant-hearted little fluff of life gallantly bearing himself +through his brief adventure in the sun. And it would seem to +Michael that on one side, clinging to him, Cocky talked farrago in +his ear, and on the other side Sara clung to him and chattered an +interminable and incommunicable tale. And then, deep about the +roots of his ears would seem to prod the magic, caressing fingers +of Steward the beloved. + +"I just don't I have no luck," Wilton Davis mourned, gazing about +at his dogs, the air still vibrating with the string of oaths he +had at first ripped out. + +"That comes of trusting a drunken stage-hand," his wife remarked +placidly. "I wouldn't be surprised if half of them died on us +now." + +"Well, this is no time for talk," Davis snarled, proceeding to +take off his coat. "Get busy, my love, and learn the worst. +Water's what they need. I'll give them a tub of it." + +Bucketful by bucketful, from the tap at the sink in the corner, he +filled a large galvanized-iron tub. At sound of the running water +the dogs began whimpering and yelping and moaning. Some tried to +lick his hands with their swollen tongues as he dragged them +roughly out of their cages. The weaker ones crawled and bellied +toward the tub, and were over-trod by the stronger ones. There +was not room for all, and the stronger ones drank first, with much +fighting and squabbling and slashing of fangs. Into the foremost +of this was Michael, slashing and being slashed, but managing to +get hasty gulps of the life-saving fluid. Davis danced about +among them, kicking right and left, so that all might have a +chance. His wife took a hand, laying about her with a mop. It +was a pandemonium of pain, for, their parched throats softened by +the water, they were again able to yelp and cry out loudly all +their hurt and woe. + +Several were too weak to get to the water, so it was carried to +them and doused and splashed into their mouths. It seemed that +they would never be satisfied. They lay in collapse all about the +room, but every little while one or another would crawl over to +the tub and try to drink more. In the meantime Davis had started +a fire and filled a caldron with potatoes. + +"The place stinks like a den of skunks," Mrs. Davis observed, +pausing from dabbing the end of her nose with a powder-puff. +"Dearest, we'll just have to wash them." + +"All right, sweetheart," her husband agreed. "And the quicker the +better. We can get through with it while the potatoes are boiling +and cooling. I'll scrub them and you dry them. Remember that +pneumonia, and do it thoroughly." + +It was quick, rough bathing. Reaching out for the dogs nearest +him, he flung them in turn into the tub from which they had drunk. +When they were frightened, or when they objected in any way, he +rapped them on the head with the scrubbing brush or the bar of +yellow laundry soap with which he was lathering them. Several +minutes sufficed for a dog. + +"Drink, damn you, drink--have some more," he would say, as he +shoved their heads down and under the dirty, soapy water. + +He seemed to hold them responsible for their horrible condition, +to look upon their filthiness as a personal affront. + +Michael yielded to being flung into the tub. He recognized that +baths were necessary and compulsory, although they were +administered in much better fashion at Cedarwild, while Kwaque and +Steward had made a sort of love function of it when they bathed +him. So he did his best to endure the scrubbing, and all might +have been well had not Davis soused him under. Michael jerked his +head up with a warning growl. Davis suspended half-way the blow +he was delivering with the heavy brush, and emitted a low whistle +of surprise. + +"Hello!" he said. "And look who's here!--Lovey, this is the Irish +terrier I got from Collins. He's no good. Collins said so. Just +a fill-in.--Get out!" he commanded Michael. "That's all you get +now, Mr. Fresh Dog. But take it from me pretty soon you'll be +getting it fast enough to make you dizzy." + +While the potatoes were cooling, Mrs. Davis kept the hungry dogs +warned away by sharp cries. Michael lay down sullenly to one +side, and took no part in the rush for the trough when permission +was given. Again Davis danced among them, kicking away the +stronger and the more eager. + +"If they get to fighting after all we've done for them, kick in +their ribs, lovey," he told his wife. + +"There! You would, would you?"--this to a large black dog, +accompanied by a savage kick in the side. The animal yelped its +pain as it fled away, and, from a safe distance, looked on +piteously at the steaming food. + +"Well, after this they can't say I don't never give my dogs a +bath," Davis remarked from the sink, where he was rinsing his +arms. What d'ye say we call it a day's work, my dear?" Mrs. +Davis nodded agreement. "We can rehearse them to-morrow and next +day. That will be plenty of time. I'll run in to-night and boil +them some bran. They'll need an extra meal after fasting two +days." + +The potatoes finished, the dogs were put back in their cages for +another twenty-four hours of close confinement. Water was poured +into their drinking-tins, and, in the evening, still in their +cages, they were served liberally with boiled bran and dog- +biscuit. This was Michael's first food, for he had sulkily +refused to go near the potatoes. + + +The rehearsing took place on the stage, and for Michael trouble +came at the very start. The drop-curtain was supposed to go up +and reveal the twenty dogs seated on chairs in a semi-circle. +Because, while they were being thus arranged, the preceding turn +was taking place in front of the drop-curtain, it was imperative +that rigid silence should be kept. Next, when the curtain rose on +full stage, the dogs were trained to make a great barking. + +As a filler-in, Michael had nothing to do but sit on a chair. But +he had to get upon the chair, first, and when Davis so ordered him +he accompanied the order with a clout on the side of the head. +Michael growled warningly. + +"Oh, ho, eh?" the man sneered. "It's Fresh Dog looking for +trouble. Well, you might as well get it over with now so your +name can be changed to Good Dog.--My dear, just keep the rest of +them in order while I teach Fresh Dog lesson number one." + +Of the beating that followed, the least said the better. Michael +put up a fight that was hopeless, and was thoroughly beaten in +return. Bruised and bleeding, he sat on the chair, taking no part +in the performance and only sullenly engendering a deeper and +bitterer sourness. To keep silent before the curtain went up was +no hardship for him. But when the curtain did go up, he declined +to join the rest of the dogs in their frantic barking and yelping. + +The dogs, sometimes alone and sometimes in couples and trios and +groups, left their chairs at command and performed the +conventional dog tricks such as walking on hind-legs, hopping, +limping, waltzing, and throwing somersaults. Wilton Davis's +temper was short and his hand heavy throughout the rehearsal, as +the shrill yelps of pain from the lagging and stupid attested. + +In all, during that day and the forenoon of the next, three long +rehearsals took place. Michael's troubles ceased for the time +being. At command, he silently got on the chair and silently sat +there. "Which shows, dearest, what a bit of the stick will do," +Davis bragged to his wife. Nor did the pair of them dream of the +scandalizing part Michael was going to play in their first +performance. + +Behind the curtain all was ready on the full stage. The dogs sat +on their chairs in abject silence with Davis and his wife menacing +them to remain silent, while, in front of the curtain, Dick and +Daisy Bell delighted the matinee audience with their singing and +dancing. And all went well, and no one in the audience would have +suspected the full stage of dogs behind the curtain had not Dick +and Daisy, accompanied by the orchestra, begun to sing "Roll Me +Down to Rio." + +Michael could not help it. Even as Kwaque had long before +mastered him by the jews' harp, and Steward by love, and Harry Del +Mar by the harmonica, so now was he mastered by the strains of the +orchestra and the voices of the man and woman lifting the old +familiar rhythm, taught him by Steward, of "Roll Me Down to Rio." +Despite himself, despite his sullenness, the forces compulsive +opened his jaws and set all his throat vibrating in accompaniment. + +From beyond the curtain came a titter of children and women that +grew into a roar and drowned out the voices of Dick and Daisy. +Wilton Davis cursed unbelievably as he sprang down the stage to +Michael. But Michael howled on, and the audience laughed on. +Michael was still howling when the short club smote him. The +shock and hurt of it made him break off and yelp an involuntary +cry of pain. + +"Knock his block off, dearest," Mrs. Davis counselled. + +And then ensued battle royal. Davis struck shrewd blows that +could be heard, as were heard the snarls and growls of Michael. +The audience, under the sway of the comic, ignored Dick and Daisy +Bell. Their turn was spoiled. The Davis turn was "queered," as +Wilton impressed it. Michael's block was knocked off within the +meaning of the term. And the audience, on the other side of the +curtain, was edified and delighted. + +Dick and Daisy could not continue. The audience wanted what was +behind the curtain, not in front of it. Michael was taken off +stage thoroughly throttled by one of the stage-hands, and the +curtain arose on the full set--full, save for the one empty chair. +The boys in the audience first realized the connection between the +empty chair and the previous uproar, and began clamouring for the +absent dog. The audience took up the cry, the dogs barked more +excitedly, and five minutes of hilarity delayed the turn which, +when at last started, was marked by rustiness and erraticness on +the part of the dogs and by great peevishness on the part of +Wilton Davis. + +"Never mind, honey," his imperturbable wife assured him in a stage +whisper. "We'll just ditch that dog and get a regular one. And, +anyway, we've put one over on that Daisy Bell. I ain't told you +yet what she said about me, only last week, to some of my +friends." + +Several minutes later, still on the stage and handling his +animals, the husband managed a chance to mutter to his wife: +"It's the dog. It's him I'm after. I'm going to lay him out." + +"Yes, dearest," she agreed. + +The curtain down, with a gleeful audience in front and with the +dogs back in the room over the stage, Wilton Davis descended to +look for Michael, who, instead of cowering in some corner, stood +between the legs of the stage-hand, quivering yet from his +mishandling and threatening to fight as hard as ever if attacked. +On his way, Davis encountered the song-and-dance couple. The +woman was in a tearful rage, the man in a dry one. + +"You're a peach of a dog man, you are," he announced +belligerently. "Here's where you get yours." + +"You keep away from me, or I'll lay you out," Wilton Davis +responded desperately, brandishing a short iron bar in his right +hand. "Besides, you just wait if you want to, and I'll lay you +out afterward. But first of all I'm going to lay out that dog. +Come on along and see--damn him! How was I to know? He was a new +one. He never peeped in rehearsal. How was I to know he was +going to yap when we arranged the set behind you?" + +"You've raised hell," the manager of the theatre greeted Davis, as +the latter, trailed by Dick Bell, came upon Michael bristling from +between the legs of the stage-hand. + +"Nothing to what I'm going to raise," Davis retorted, shortening +his grip on the iron bar and raising it. "I'm going to kill 'm. +I'm going to beat the life out of him. You just watch." + +Michael snarled acknowledgment of the threat, crouched to spring, +and kept his eyes on the iron weapon. + +"I just guess you ain't goin' to do anything of the sort," the +stage-hand assured Davis. + +"It's my property," the latter asserted with an air of legal +convincingness. + +"And against it I'm goin' to stack up my common sense," was the +stage-hand's reply. "You tap him once, and see what you'll get. +Dogs is dogs, and men is men, but I'm damned if I know what you +are. You can't pull off rough stuff on that dog. First time he +was on a stage in his life, after being starved and thirsted for +two days. Oh, I know, Mr. Manager." + +"If you kill the dog it'll cost you a dollar to the garbage man to +get rid of the carcass," the manager took up. + +"I'll pay it gladly," Davis said, again lifting the iron bar. +"I've got some come-back, ain't I?" + +"You animal guys make me sick," the stage-hand uttered. "You just +make me draw the line somewheres. And here it is: you tap him +once with that baby crowbar, and I'll tap you hard enough to lose +me my job and to send you to hospital." + +"Now look here, Jackson . . . " the manager began threateningly. + +"You can't say nothin' to me," was the retort. "My mind's made +up. If that cheap guy lays a finger on that dog I'm just sure +goin' to lose my job. I'm gettin tired anyway of seein' these +skates beatin' up their animals. They've made me sick clean +through." + +The manager looked to Davis and shrugged his shoulders helplessly. + +"There's no use pulling off a rough-house," he counselled. "I +don't want to lose Jackson and he'll put you into hospital if he +ever gets started. Send the dog back where you got him. Your +wife's told me about him. Stick him into a box and send him back +collect. Collins won't mind. He'll take the singing out of him +and work him into something." + +Davis, with another glance at the truculent Jackson, wavered. + +"I'll tell you what," the manager went on persuasively. "Jackson +will attend to the whole thing, box him up, ship him, everything-- +won't you, Jackson?" + +The stage-hand nodded curtly, then reached down and gently +caressed Michael's bruised head. + +"Well," Davis gave in, turning on his heel, "they can make fools +of themselves over dogs, them that wants to. But when they've +been in the business as long as I have . . . " + + + +CHAPTER XXXI + + + +A post card from Davis to Collins explained the reasons for +Michael's return. "He sings too much to suit my fancy," was +Davis's way of putting it, thereby unwittingly giving the clue to +what Collins had vainly sought, and which Collins as unwittingly +failed to grasp. As he told Johnny: + +"From the looks of the beatings he's got no wonder he's been +singing. That's the trouble with these animal people. They don't +know how to take care of their property. They hammer its head off +and get grouched because it ain't an angel of obedience.--Put him +away, Johnny. Wash him clean, and put on the regular dressing +wherever the skin's broken. I give him up myself, but I'll find +some place for him in the next bunch of dogs." + +Two weeks later, by sheerest accident, Harris Collins made the +discovery for himself of what Michael was good for. In a spare +moment in the arena, he had sent for him to be tried out by a dog +man who needed several fillers-in. Beyond what he knew, such as +at command to stand up, to lie down, to come here and go there, +Michael had done nothing. He had refused to learn the most +elementary things a show-dog should know, and Collins had left him +to go over to another part of the arena where a monkey band, on a +sort of mimic stage, was being arranged and broken in. + +Frightened and mutinous, nevertheless the monkeys were compelled +to perform by being tied to their seats and instruments and by +being pulled and jerked from off stage by wires fastened to their +bodies. The leader of the orchestra, an irascible elderly monkey, +sat on a revolving stool to which he was securely attached. When +poked from off the stage by means of long poles, he flew into +ecstasies of rage. At the same time, by a rope arrangement, his +chair was whirled around and around. To an audience the effect +would be that he was angered by the blunders of his fellow- +musicians. And to an audience such anger would be highly +ludicrous. As Collins said: + +"A monkey band is always a winner. It fetches the laugh, and the +money's in the laugh. Humans just have to laugh at monkeys +because they're so similar and because the human has the advantage +and feels himself superior. Suppose we're walking along the +street, you and me, and you slip and fall down. Of course I +laugh. That's because I'm superior to you. I didn't fall down. +Same thing if your hat blows off. I laugh while you chase it down +the street. I'm superior. My hat's still on my head. Same thing +with the monkey band. All the fool things of it make us feel so +superior. We don't see ourselves as foolish. That's why we pay +to see the monkeys behave foolish." + +It was scarcely a matter of training the monkeys. Rather was it +the training of the men who operated the concealed mechanisms that +made the monkeys perform. To this Harris Collins was devoting his +effort. + +"There isn't any reason why you fellows can't make them play a +real tune. It's up to you, just according to how you pull the +wires. Come on. It's worth going in for. Let's try something +you all know. And remember, the regular orchestra will always +help you out. Now, what do you all know? Something simple, and +something the audience'll know, too?" + +He became absorbed in trying out the idea, and even borrowed a +circus rider whose act was to play the violin while standing on +the back of a galloping horse and to throw somersaults on such +precarious platform while still playing the violin. This man he +got merely to play simple airs in slow time, so that the +assistants could keep the time and the air and pull the wires +accordingly. + +"Of course, if you make a howling mistake," Collins told them, +"that's when you all pull the wires like mad and poke the leader +and whirl him around. That always brings down the house. They +think he's got a real musical ear and is mad at his orchestra for +the discord." + +In the midst of the work, Johnny and Michael came along. + +"That guy says he wouldn't take him for a gift," Johnny reported +to his employer. + +"All right, all right, put him back in the kennels," Collins +ordered hurriedly.--"Now, you fellows, all ready! 'Home, Sweet +Home!' Go to it, Fisher! Now keep the time the rest of you! . . +. That's it. With a full orchestra you're making motions like the +tune.--Faster, you, Simmons. You drag behind all the time." + +And the accident happened. Johnny, instead of immediately obeying +the order and taking Michael back to the kennels, lingered in the +hope of seeing the orchestra leader whirled chattering around on +his stool. The violinist, within a yard of where Michael sat +squatted on his haunches, played the notes of "Home, Sweet Home" +with loud slow exactitude and emphasis. + +And Michael could not help it. No more could he help it than +could he help responding with a snarl when threatened by a club; +no more could he help it than when he had spoiled the turn of Dick +and Daisy Bell when swept by the strains of "Roll Me Down to Rio"; +no more could he help it than could Jerry, on the deck of the +Ariel, help singing when Villa Kennan put her arms around him, +smothered him deliciously in her cloud of hair, and sang his +memory back into time and the fellowship of the ancient pack. As +with Jerry, was it with Michael. Music was a drug of dream. He, +too, remembered the lost pack and sought it, seeing the bare hills +of snow and the stars glimmering overhead through the frosty +darkness of night, hearing the faint answering howls from other +hills as the pack assembled. Lost the pack was, through the +thousands of years Michael's ancestors had lived by the fires of +men; yet remembered always it was when the magic of rhythm poured +through him and flooded his being with visions and sensations of +that Otherwhere which in his own life he had never known. + +Compounded with the waking dream of Otherwhere, was the memory of +Steward and the love of Steward, with whom he had learned to sing +the very series of notes that now were being reproduced by the +circus-rider violinist. And Michael's jaw dropped down, his +throat vibrated, his forefeet made restless little movements as if +in the body he were running, as truly he was running in the mind, +back to Steward, back through all the ages to the lost pack, and +with the shadowy lost pack itself across the snowy wastes and +through the forest aisles in the hunt of the meat. + +The spectral forms of the lost pack were all about him as he sang +and ran in open-eyed dream; the violinist paused in surprise; the +men poked the monkey leader of the monkey orchestra and whirled +him about wildly raging on his revolving stool; and Johnny +laughed. But Harris Collins took note. He had heard Michael +accurately follow the air. He had heard him sing--not merely +howl, but SING. + +Silence fell. The monkey leader ceased revolving and chattering. +The men who had poked him held poles and wires suspended in their +hands. The rest of the monkey orchestra merely shivered in +apprehension of what next atrocity should be perpetrated. The +violinist stared. Johnny still heaved from his laughter. But +Harris Collins pondered, scratched his head, and continued to +ponder. + +"You can't tell me . . . " he began vaguely. "I know it. I heard +it. That dog carried the tune. Didn't he now? I leave it to all +of you. Didn't he? The damned dog sang. I'll stake my life on +it.--Hold on, you fellows; rest the monkeys off. This is worth +following up.--Mr. Violinist, play that over again, now, 'Home, +Sweet Home,'--let her go. Press her strong, and loud, and slow.-- +Now watch, all of you, and listen, and tell me if I'm crazy, or if +that dog ain't carrying the tune.--There! What d'ye call it? +Ain't it?" + +There was no discussion. Michael's jaw dropped and his forefeet +began their restless lifting after several measures had been +played. And Harris Collins stepped close to him and sang with him +and in accord. + +"Harry Del Mar was right when he said that dog was the limit and +sold his troupe. He knew. The dog's a dog Caruso. No howling +chorus of mutts such as Kingman used to carry around with him, but +a real singer, a soloist. No wonder he wouldn't learn tricks. He +had his specially all the time. And just to think of it! I as +good as gave him away to that dog-killing Wilton Davis. Only he +came back.--Johnny, take extra care of him after this. Bring him +up to the house this afternoon, and I'll give him a real try-out. +My daughter plays the violin. We'll see what music he'll sing +with her. There's a mint of money in him, take it from me." + + +Thus was Michael discovered. The afternoon's try-out was +partially successful. After vainly attempting strange music on +him, Collins found that he could sing, and would sing, "God Save +the King" and "Sweet Bye and Bye." Many hours of many days were +spent in the quest. Vainly he tried to teach Michael new airs. +Michael put no heart of love in the effort and sullenly abstained. +But whenever one of the songs he had learned from Steward was +played, he responded. He could not help responding. The magic +was stronger than he. In the end, Collins discovered five of the +six songs he knew: "God Save the King," "Sweet Bye and Bye," +"Lead, Kindly Light," "Home, Sweet Home," and "Roll Me Down to +Rio." Michael never sang "Shenandoah," because Collins and +Collins's daughter did not know the old sea-chanty and therefore +were unable to suggest it to him. + +"Five songs are enough, if he won't never learn another note," +Collins concluded. "They'll make him a bill-topper anywhere. +There's a mint in him. Hang me if I wouldn't take him out on the +road myself if only I was young and footloose." + + + +CHAPTER XXXII + + + +And so Michael was ultimately sold to one Jacob Henderson for two +thousand dollars. "And I'm giving him away to you at that," said +Collins. "If you don't refuse five thousand for him before six +months, I don't know anything about the show game. He'll skin +that last arithmetic dog of yours to a finish and you won't have +to show yourself and work every minute of the turn. And if you +don't insure him for fifty thousand as soon as he's made good +you'll be a fool. Why, I wouldn't ask anything better, if I was +young and footloose, than to take him out on the road myself." + +Henderson proved totally different from any master Michael had +had. The man was a neutral sort of creature. He was neither good +nor evil. He neither drank, smoked, nor swore; nor did he go to +church or belong to the Y.M.C.A. He was a vegetarian without +being a bigoted one, liked moving pictures when they were +concerned with travel, and spent most of his spare time in reading +Swedenborg. He had no temper whatever. Nobody had ever witnessed +anger in him, and all said he had the patience of Job. He was +even timid of policemen, freight agents, and conductors, though he +was not afraid of them. He was not afraid of anything, any more +than was he enamoured of anything save Swedenborg. He was as +colourless of character as the neutral-coloured clothes he wore, +as the neutral-coloured hair that sprawled upon his crown, as the +neutral-coloured eyes with which he observed the world. Nor was +he a fool any more than was he a wise man or a scholar. He gave +little to life, asked little of life, and, in the show business, +was a recluse in the very heart of life. + +Michael neither liked nor disliked him, but, rather, merely +accepted him. They travelled the United States over together, and +they never had a quarrel. Not once did Henderson raise his voice +sharply to Michael, and not once did Michael snarl a warning at +him. They simply endured together, existed together, because the +currents of life had drifted them together. Of course, there was +no heart-bond between them. Henderson was master. Michael was +Henderson's chattel. Michael was as dead to him as he was himself +dead to all things. + +Yet Jacob Henderson was fair and square, business-like and +methodical. Once each day, when not travelling on the +interminable trains, he gave Michael a thorough bath and +thoroughly dried him afterward. He was never harsh nor hasty in +the bathing. Michael never was aware whether he liked or disliked +the bathing function. It was all one, part of his own fate in the +world as it was part of Henderson's fate to bathe him every so +often. + +Michael's own work was tolerably easy, though monotonous. Leaving +out the eternal travelling, the never-ending jumps from town to +town and from city to city, he appeared on the stage once each +night for seven nights in the week and for two afternoon +performances in the week. The curtain went up, leaving him alone +on the stage in the full set that befitted a bill-topper. +Henderson stood in the wings, unseen by the audience, and looked +on. The orchestra played four of the pieces Michael had been +taught by Steward, and Michael sang them, for his modulated +howling was truly singing. He never responded to more than one +encore, which was always "Home, Sweet Home." After that, while +the audience clapped and stamped its approval and delight of the +dog Caruso, Jacob Henderson would appear on the stage, bowing and +smiling in stereotyped gladness and gratefulness, rest his right +hand on Michael's shoulders with a play-acted assumption of +comradeliness, whereupon both Henderson and Michael would bow ere +the final curtain went down. + +And yet Michael was a prisoner, a life-prisoner. Fed well, bathed +well, exercised well, he never knew a moment of freedom. When +travelling, days and nights he spent in the cage, which, however, +was generous enough to allow him to stand at full height and to +turn around without too uncomfortable squirming. Sometimes, in +hotels in country towns, out of the crate he shared Henderson's +room with him. Otherwise, unless other animals were hewing on the +same circuit time, he had, outside his cage, the freedom of the +animal room attached to the particular theatre where he performed +for from three days to a week. + +But there was never a chance, never a moment, when he might run +free of a cage about him, of the walls of a room restricting him, +of a chain shackled to the collar about his throat. In good +weather, in the afternoons, Henderson often took him for a walk. +But always it was at the end of a chain. And almost always the +way led to some park, where Henderson fastened the other end of +the chain to the bench on which he sat and browsed Swedenborg. +Not one act of free agency was left to Michael. Other dogs ran +free, playing with one another, or behaving bellicosely. If they +approached him for purposes of investigation or acquaintance, +Henderson invariably ceased from his reading long enough to drive +them away. + +A life prisoner to a lifeless gaoler, life was all grey to +Michael. His moroseness changed to a deep-seated melancholy. He +ceased to be interested in life and in the freedom of life. Not +that he regarded the play of life about him with a jaundiced eye, +but, rather, that his eyes became unseeing. Debarred from life, +he ignored life. He permitted himself to become a sheer puppet +slave, eating, taking his baths, travelling in his cage, +performing regularly, and sleeping much. + +He had pride--the pride of the thoroughbred; the pride of the +North American Indian enslaved on the plantations of the West +Indies who died uncomplaining and unbroken. So Michael. He +submitted to the cage and the iron of the chain because they were +too strong for his muscles and teeth. He did his slave-task of +performance and rendered obedience to Jacob Henderson; but he +neither loved nor feared that master. And because of this his +spirit turned in on itself. He slept much, brooded much, and +suffered unprotestingly a great loneliness. Had Henderson made a +bid for his heart, he would surely have responded; but Henderson +had a heart only for the fantastic mental gyrations of Swedenborg, +and merely made his living out of Michael. + +Sometimes there were hardships. Michael accepted them. +Especially hard did he find railroad travel in winter-time, when, +on occasion, fresh from the last night's performance in a town, he +remained for hours in his crate on a truck waiting for the train +that would take him to the next town of performance. There was a +night on a station platform in Minnesota, when two dogs of a +troupe, on the next truck to his, froze to death. He was himself +well frosted, and the cold bit abominably into his shoulder +wounded by the leopard; but a better constitution and better +general care of him enabled him to survive. + +Compared with other show animals, he was well treated. And much +of the ill-treatment accorded other animals on the same turn with +him he did not comprehend or guess. One turn, with which he +played for three months, was a scandal amongst all vaudeville +performers. Even the hardiest of them heartily disliked the turn +and the man, although Duckworth, and Duckworth's Trained Cats and +Rats, were an invariable popular success. + +"Trained cats!" sniffed dainty little Pearl La Pearle, the +bicyclist. "Crushed cats, that's what they are. All the cat has +been beaten out of their blood, and they've become rats. You +can't tell me. I know." + +"Trained rats!" Manuel Fonseca, the contortionist, exploded in the +bar-room of the Hotel Annandale, after refusing to drink with +Duckworth. "Doped rats, believe me. Why don't they jump off when +they crawl along the tight rope with a cat in front and a cat +behind? Because they ain't got the life in 'm to jump. They're +doped, straight doped when they're fresh, and starved afterward so +as to making a saving on the dope. They never are fed. You can't +tell me. I know. Else why does he use up anywhere to forty or +fifty rats a week! I know his express shipments, when he can't +buy 'm in the towns." + +"My Gawd!" protested Miss Merle Merryweather, the Accordion Girl, +who looked like sixteen on the stage, but who, in private life +among her grand-children, acknowledged forty-eight. "My Gawd, how +the public can fall for it gets my honest-to-Gawd goat. I looked +myself yesterday morning early. Out of thirty rats there were +seven dead,--starved to death. He never feeds them. They're +dying rats, dying of starvation, when they crawl along that rope. +That's why they crawl. If they had a bit of bread and cheese in +their tummies they'd jump and run to get away from the cats. +They're dying, they're dying right there on the rope, trying to +crawl as a dying man would try to crawl away from a tiger that was +eating him. And my Gawd! The bonehead audience sits there and +applauds the show as an educational act!" + +But the audience! "Wonderful things kindness will do with +animals," said a member of one, a banker and a deacon. "Even +human love can be taught to them by kindness. The cat and the rat +have been enemies since the world began. Yet here, tonight, we +have seen them doing highly trained feats together, and neither a +cat committed one hostile or overt act against a rat, nor ever a +rat showed it was afraid of a cat. Human kindness! The power of +human kindness!" + +"The lion and the lamb," said another. "We have it that when the +millennium comes the lion and the lamb will lie down together--and +outside each other, my dear, outside each other. And this is a +forecast, a proving up, by man, ahead of the day. Cats and rats! +Think of it. And it shows conclusively the power of kindness. I +shall see to it at once that we get pets for our own children, our +palm branches. They shall learn kindness early, to the dog, the +cat, yes, even the rat, and the pretty linnet in its cage." + +"But," said his dear, beside him, "you remember what Blake said: + + +"'A Robin Redbreast in a cage +Puts all heaven in a rage.'" + + +"Ah--but not when it is treated truly with kindness, my dear. I +shall immediately order some rabbits, and a canary or two, and-- +what sort of a dog would you prefer our dear little ones to have +to play with, my sweet?" + +And his dear looked at him in all his imperturbable, complacent +self-consciousness of kindness, and saw herself the little rural +school-teacher who, with Ella Wheeler Wilcox and Lord Byron as her +idols, and with the dream of herself writing "Poems of Passion," +had come up to Topeka Town to be beaten by the game into marrying +the solid, substantial business man beside her, who enjoyed +delight in the spectacle of cats and rats walking the tight-rope +in amity, and who was blissfully unaware that she was the Robin +Redbreast in a cage that put all heaven in a rage. + +"The rats are bad enough," said Miss Merle Merryweather. "But +look how he uses up the cats. He's had three die on him in the +last two weeks to my certain knowledge. They're only alley-cats, +but they've got feelings. It's that boxing match that does for +them." + +The boxing match, sure always of a great hand from the audience, +invariably concluded Duckworth's turn. Two cats, with small +boxing-gloves, were put on a table for a friendly bout. +Naturally, the cats that performed with the rats were too cowed +for this. It was the fresh cats he used, the ones with spunk and +spirit . . . until they lost all spunk and spirit or sickened and +died. To the audience it was a side-splitting, playful encounter +between four-legged creatures who thus displayed a ridiculous +resemblance to superior, two-legged man. But it was not playful +to the cats. They were always excited into starting a real fight +with each other off stage just before they were brought on. In +the blows they struck were anger and pain and bewilderment and +fear. And the gloves just would come off, so that they were +ripping and tearing at each other, biting as well as making the +fur fly, like furies, when the curtain went down. In the eyes of +the audience this apparent impromptu was always the ultimate +scream, and the laughter and applause would compel the curtain up +again to reveal Duckworth and an assistant stage-hand, as if +caught by surprise, fanning the two belligerents with towels. + +But the cats themselves were so continually torn and scratched +that the wounds never had a chance to heal and became infected +until they were a mass of sores. On occasion they died, or, when +they had become too abjectly spiritless to attack even a rat, were +set to work on the tight-rope with the doped starved rats that +were too near dead to run away from them. And, as Miss Merle +Merryweather said: the bonehead audiences, tickled to death, +applauded Duckworth's Trained Cats and Rats as an educational act! + +A big chimpanzee that covered one of the circuits with Michael had +an antipathy for clothes. Like a horse that fights the putting on +of the bridle, and, after it is on, takes no further notice of it, +so the big chimpanzee fought the putting on the clothes. Once on, +it was ready to go out on the stage and through its turn. But the +rub was in putting on the clothes. It took the owner and two +stage-hands, pulling him up to a ring in the wall and throttling +him, to dress him--and this, despite the fact that the owner had +long since knocked out his incisors. + +All this cruelty Michael sensed without knowing. And he accepted +it as the way of life, as he accepted the daylight and the dark, +the bite of the frost on bleak and windy station platforms, the +mysterious land of Otherwhere that he knew in dreams and song, the +equally mysterious Nothingness into which had vanished Meringe +Plantation and ships and oceans and men and Steward. + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII + + + +For two years Michael sang his way over the United States, to fame +for himself and to fortune for Jacob Henderson. There was never +any time off. So great was his success, that Henderson refused +flattering offers to cross the Atlantic to show in Europe. But +off-time did come to Michael when Henderson fell ill of typhoid in +Chicago. + +It was a three-months' vacation for Michael, who, well treated but +still a prisoner, spent it in a caged kennel in Mulcachy's Animal +Home. Mulcachy, one of Harris Collins's brightest graduates, had +emulated his master by setting up in business in Chicago, where he +ran everything with the same rigid cleanliness, sanitation, and +scientific cruelty. Michael received nothing but the excellent +food and the cleanliness; but, a solitary and brooding prisoner in +his cage, he could not help but sense the atmosphere of pain and +terror about him of the animals being broken for the delight of +men. + +Mulcachy had originated aphorisms of his own which he continually +enunciated, among which were: + +"Take it from me, when an animal won't give way to pain, it can't +be broke. Pain is the only school-teacher." + +"Just as you got to take the buck out of a broncho, you've got to +take the bite out of a lion." + +"You can't break animals with a feather duster. The thicker the +skull the thicker the crowbar." + +"They'll always beat you in argument. First thing is to club the +argument out of them." + +"Heart-bonds between trainers and animals! Son, that's dope for +the newspaper interviewer. The only heart-bond I know is a stout +stick with some iron on the end of it." + +"Sure you can make 'm eat outa your hand. But the thing to watch +out for is that they don't eat your hand. A blank cartridge in +the nose just about that time is the best preventive I know." + +There were days when all the air was vexed with roars and squalls +of ferocity and agony from the arena, until the last animal in the +cages was excited and ill at ease. In truth, since it was +Mulcachy's boast that he could break the best animal living, no +end of the hardest cases fell to his hand. He had built a +reputation for succeeding where others failed, and, endowed with +fearlessness, callousness, and cunning, he never let his +reputation wane. There was nothing he dared not tackle, and, when +he gave up an animal, the last word was said. For it, remained +nothing but to be a cage-animal, in solitary confinement, pacing +ever up and down, embittered with all the world of man and roaring +its bitterness to the most delicious enthrillment of the pay- +spectators. + +During the three months spent by Michael in Mulcachy's Animal +Home, occurred two especially hard cases. Of course, the daily +chant of ordinary pain of training went on all the time through +the working hours, such as of "good" bears and lions and tigers +that were made amenable under stress, and of elephants derricked +and gaffed into making the head-stand or into the beating of a +bass drum. But the two cases that were exceptional, put a mood of +depression and fear into all the listening animals, such as humans +might experience in an ante-room of hell, listening to the +flailing and the flaying of their fellows who had preceded them +into the torture-chamber. + +The first was of the big Indian tiger. Free-born in the jungle, +and free all his days, master, according to his nature and +prowess, of all other living creatures including his fellow- +tigers, he had come to grief in the end; and, from the trap to the +cramped cage, by elephant-back and railroad and steamship, ever in +the cramped cage, he had journeyed across seas and continents to +Mulcachy's Animal Home. Prospective buyers had examined but not +dared to purchase. But Mulcachy had been undeterred. His own +fighting blood leapt hot at sight of the magnificent striped cat. +It was a challenge of the brute in him to excel. And, two weeks +of hell, for the great tiger and for all the other animals, were +required to teach him his first lesson. + +Ben Bolt he had been named, and he arrived indomitable and +irreconcilable, though almost paralysed from eight weeks of cramp +in his narrow cage which had restricted all movement. Mulcachy +should have undertaken the job immediately, but two weeks were +lost by the fact that he had got married and honeymooned for that +length of time. And in that time, in a large cage of concrete and +iron, Ben Bolt had exercised and recovered the use of his muscles, +and added to his hatred of the two-legged things, puny against him +in themselves, who by trick and wile had so helplessly imprisoned +him. + +So, on this morning when hell yawned for him, he was ready and +eager to meet all comers. They came, equipped with formulas, +nooses, and forked iron bars. Five of them tossed nooses in +through the bars upon the floor of his cage. He snarled and +struck at the curling ropes, and for ten minutes was a grand and +impossible wild creature, lacking in nothing save the wit and the +patience possessed by the miserable two-legged things. And then, +impatient and careless of the inanimate ropes, he paused, snarling +at the men, with one hind foot resting inside a noose. The next +moment, craftily lifted up about the girth of his leg by an iron +fork, the noose tightened and the bite of it sank home into his +flesh and pride. He leaped, he roared, he was a maniac of +ferocity. Again and again, almost burning their palms, he tore +the rope smoking through their hands. But ever they took in the +slack and paid it out again, until, ere he was aware, a similar +noose tightened on his fore-leg. What he had done was nothing to +what he now did. But he was stupid and impatient. The man- +creatures were wise and patient, and a third leg and a fourth leg +were finally noosed, so that, with many men tailing on to the +ropes, he was dragged ignominiously on his side to the bars, and, +ignominiously, through the bars were hauled his four legs, his +chiefest weapons of offence after his terribly fanged jaws. + +And then a puny man-creature, Mulcachy himself, dared openly and +brazenly to enter the cage and approach him. He sprang to be at +him, or, rather, strove so to spring, but was withstrained by his +four legs through the bars which he could not draw back and get +under him. And Mulcachy knelt beside him, dared kneel beside him, +and helped the fifth noose over his head and round his neck. Then +his head was drawn to the bars as helplessly as his legs had been +drawn through. Next, Mulcachy laid hands on him, on his head, on +his ears, on his very nose within an inch of his fangs; and he +could do nothing but snarl and roar and pant for breath as the +noose shut off his breathing. + +Quivering, not with fear but with rage, Ben Bolt perforce endured +the buckling around his throat of a thick, broad collar of leather +to which was attached a very stout and a very long trailing rope. +After that, when Mulcachy had left the cage, one by one the five +nooses were artfully manipulated off his legs and his neck. +Again, after this prodigious indignity, he was free--within his +cage. He went up into the air. With returning breath he roared +his rage. He struck at the trailing rope that offended his +nerves, clawed at the trap of the collar that encased his neck, +fell, rolled over, offended his body-nerves more and more by +entangling contacts with the rope, and for half an hour exhausted +himself in the futile battle with the inanimate thing. Thus +tigers are broken. + +At the last, wearied, even with sensations of sickness from the +nervous strain put upon himself by his own anger, he lay down in +the middle of the floor, lashing his tail, hating with his eyes, +and accepting the clinging thing about his neck which he had +learned he could not get rid of. + +To his amazement, if such a thing be possible in the mental +processes of a tiger, the rear door to his cage was thrown open +and left open. He regarded the aperture with belligerent +suspicion. No one and no threatening danger appeared in the +doorway. But his suspicion grew. Always, among these man- +animals, occurred what he did not know and could not comprehend. +His preference was to remain where he was, but from behind, +through the bars of the cage, came shouts and yells, the lash of +whips, and the painful thrusts of the long iron forks. Dragging +the rope behind him, with no thought of escape, but in the hope +that he would get at his tormentors, he leaped into the rear +passage that ran behind the circle of permanent cages. The +passage way was deserted and dark, but ahead he saw light. With +great leaps and roars, he rushed in that direction, arousing a +pandemonium of roars and screams from the animals in the cages. + +He bounded through the light, and into the light, dazzled by the +brightness of it, and crouched down, with long, lashing tail, to +orient himself to the situation. But it was only another and +larger cage that he was in, a very large cage, a big, bright +performing-arena that was all cage. Save for himself, the arena +was deserted, although, overhead, suspended from the roof-bars, +were block-and-tackle and seven strong iron chairs that drew his +instant suspicion and caused him to roar at them. + +For half an hour he roamed the arena, which was the greatest area +of restricted freedom he had known in the ten weeks of his +captivity. Then, a hooked iron rod, thrust through the bars, +caught and drew the bight of his trailing rope into the hands of +the men outside. Immediately ten of them had hold of it, and he +would have charged up to the bars at them had not, at that moment, +Mulcachy entered the arena through a door on the opposite side. +No bars stood between Ben Bolt and this creature, and Ben Bolt +charged him. Even as he charged he was aware of suspicion in that +the small, fragile man-creature before him did not flee or crouch +down, but stood awaiting him. + +Ben Bolt never reached him. First, with an access of caution, he +craftily ceased from his charge, and, crouching, with lashing +tail, studied the man who seemed so easily his. Mulcachy was +equipped with a long-lashed whip and a sharp-pronged fork of iron. + +In his belt, loaded with blank cartridges, was a revolver. + +Bellying closer to the ground, Ben Bolt advanced upon him, +creeping slowly like a cat stalking a mouse. When he came to his +next pause, which was within certain leaping distance, he crouched +lower, gathered himself for the leap, then turned his head to +regard the men at his back outside the cage. The trailing rope in +their hands, to his neck, he had forgotten. + +"Now you might as well be good, old man," Mulcachy addressed him +in soft, caressing tones, taking a step toward him and holding in +advance the iron fork. + +This merely incensed the huge, magnificent creature. He rumbled a +low, tense growl, flattened his ears back, and soared into the +air, his paws spread so that the claws stood out like talons, his +tail behind him as stiff and straight as a rod. Neither did the +man crouch or flee, nor did the beast attain to him. At the +height of his leap the rope tightened taut on his neck, causing +him to describe a somersault and fall heavily to the floor on his +side. + +Before he could regain his feet, Mulcachy was upon him, shouting +to his small audience: "Here's where we pound the argument out of +him!" And pound he did, on the nose with the butt of the whip, +and jab he did, with the iron fork to the ribs. He rained a +hurricane of blows and jabs on the animal's most sensitive parts. +Ever Ben Bolt leaped to retaliate, but was thrown by the ten men +tailed on to the rope, and, each time, even as he struck the floor +on his side, Mulcachy was upon him, pounding, smashing, jabbing. +His pain was exquisite, especially that of his tender nose. And +the creature who inflicted the pain was as fierce and terrible as +he, even more so because he was more intelligent. In but few +minutes, dazed by the pain, appalled by his inability to rend and +destroy the man who inflicted it, Ben Bolt lost his courage. He +fled ignominiously before the little, two-legged creature who was +more terrible than himself who was a full-grown Royal Bengal +tiger. He leaped high in the air in sheer panic; he ran here and +there, with lowered head, to avoid the rain of pain. He even +charged the sides of the arena, springing up and vainly trying to +climb the slippery vertical bars. + +Ever, like an avenging devil, Mulcachy pursued and smashed and +jabbed, gritting through his teeth: "You will argue, will you? +I'll teach you what argument is! There! Take that! And that! +And that!" + +"Now I've got him afraid of me, and the rest ought to be easy," he +announced, resting off and panting hard from his exertions, while +the great tiger crouched and quivered and shrank back from him +against the base of the arena-bars. "Take a five-minute spell, +you fellows, and we'll got our breaths." + +Lowering one of the iron chairs, and attaching it firmly in its +place on the floor, Mulcachy prepared for the teaching of the +first trick. Ben Bolt, jungle-born and jungle-reared, was to be +compelled to sit in the chair in ludicrous and tragic imitation of +man-creatures. But Mulcachy was not quite ready. The first +lesson of fear of him must be reiterated and driven home. + +Stepping to a near safe distance, he lashed Ben Bolt on the nose. +He repeated it. He did it a score of times, and scores of times. +Turn his head as he would, ever Ben Bolt received the bite of the +whip on his fearfully bruised nose; for Mulcachy was as expert as +a stage-driver in his manipulation of the whip, and unerringly the +lash snapped and cracked and stung Ben Bolt's nose wherever Ben +Bolt at the moment might have it. + +When it became maddeningly unendurable, he sprang, only to be +jerked back by the ten strong men who held the rope to his neck. +And wrath, and ferocity, and intent to destroy, passed out utterly +from the tiger's inflamed brain, until he knew fear, again and +again, always fear and only fear, utter and abject fear, of this +human mite who searched him with such pain. + +Then the lesson of the first trick was taken up. Mulcachy tapped +the chair sharply with the butt of the whip to draw the animal's +attention to it, then flicked the whip-lash sharply on his nose. +At the same moment, an attendant, through the bars behind, drove +an iron fork into his ribs to force him away from the bars and +toward the chair. He crouched forward, then shrank back against +the side-bars. Again the chair was rapped, his nose was lashed, +his ribs were jabbed, and he was forced by pain toward the chair. +This went on interminably--for a quarter of an hour, for half an +hour, for an hour; for the men-animals had the patience of gods +while he was only a jungle-brute. Thus tigers are broken. And +the verb means just what it means. A performing animal is BROKEN. +Something BREAKS in an animal of the wild ere such an animal +submits to do tricks before pay-audiences. + +Mulcachy ordered an assistant to enter the arena with him. Since +he could not compel the tiger directly to sit in the chair, he +must employ other means. The rope about Ben Bolt's neck was +passed up through the bars and rove through the block-and-tackle. +At signal from Mulcachy, the ten men hauled away. Snarling, +struggling, choking, in a fresh madness of terror at this new +outrage, Ben Bolt was slowly hoisted by his neck up from the +floor, until, quite clear of it, whirling, squirming, battling, +suspended by his neck like a man being hanged, his wind was shut +off and he began to suffocate. He coiled and twisted, the +splendid muscles of his body enabling him almost to tie knots in +it. + +The block-and-tackle, running like a trolley on the overhead +track, made it possible for the assistant to seize his tail and +drag him through the air till he was above the chair. His +helpless body guided thus by the tail, his chest jabbed by the +iron fork in Mulcachy's hands, the rope was suddenly lowered, and +Ben Bolt, with swimming brain, found himself seated in the chair. +On the instant he leaped for the floor, received a blow on the +nose from the heavy whip-handle, and had a blank cartridge fired +straight into his nostril. His madness of pain and fear was +multiplied. He sprang away in flight, but Mulcachy's voice rang +out, "Hoist him!" and he slowly rose in the air again, hanging by +his neck, and began to strangle. + +Once more he was swung into position by his tail, jabbed in the +chest, and lowered suddenly on the run--but so suddenly, with a +frantic twist of his body on his part, that he fell violently +across the chair on his belly. What little wind was left him from +the strangling, seemed to have been ruined out of him by the +violence of the fall. The glare in his eyes was maniacal and +swimming. He panted frightfully, and his head rolled back and +forth. Slaver dripped from his mouth, blood ran from his nose. + +"Hoist away!" Mulcachy shouted. + +And again, struggling frantically as the tightening collar shut +off his wind, Ben Bolt was slowly lifted into the air. So wildly +did he struggle that, ere his hind feet were off the floor, he +pranced back and forth, so that when he was heaved clear his body +swung like a huge pendulum. Over the chair, he was dropped, and +for a fraction of a second the posture was his of a man sitting in +a chair. Then he uttered a terrible cry and sprang. + +It was neither snarl, nor growl, nor roar, that cry, but a sheer +scream, as if something had broken inside of him. He missed +Mulcachy by inches, as another blank cartridge exploded up his +other nostril and as the men with the rope snapped him back so +abruptly as almost to break his neck. + +This time, lowered quickly, he sank into the chair like a half- +empty sack of meal, and continued so to sink, until, crumpling at +the middle, his great tawny head falling forward, he lay on the +floor unconscious. His tongue, black and swollen, lolled out of +his mouth. As buckets of water were poured on him he groaned and +moaned. And here ended the first lesson. + +"It's all right," Mulcachy said, day after day, as the teaching +went on. "Patience and hard work will pull off the trick. I've +got his goat. He's afraid of me. All that's required is time, +and time adds to value with an animal like him." + +Not on that first day, nor on the second, nor on the third, did +the requisite something really break inside Ben Bolt. But at the +end of a fortnight it did break. For the day came when Mulcachy +rapped the chair with his whip-butt, when the attendant through +the bars jabbed the iron fork into Ben Bolt's ribs, and when Ben +Bolt, anything but royal, slinking like a beaten alley-cat, in +pitiable terror, crawled over to the chair and sat down in it like +a man. He now was an "educated" tiger. The sight of him, so +sitting, tragically travestying man, has been considered, and is +considered, "educative" by multitudinous audiences. + +The second case, that of St. Elias, was a harder one, and it was +marked down against Mulcachy as one of his rare failures, though +all admitted that it was an unavoidable failure. St. Elias was a +huge monster of an Alaskan bear, who was good-natured and even +facetious and humorous after the way of bears. But he had a will +of his own that was correspondingly as stubborn as his bulk. He +could be persuaded to do things, but he would not tolerate being +compelled to do things. And in the trained-animal world, where +turns must go off like clockwork, is little or no space for +persuasion. An animal must do its turn, and do it promptly. +Audiences will not brook the delay of waiting while a trainer +tries to persuade a crusty or roguish beast to do what the +audience has paid to see it do. + +So St. Elias received his first lesson in compulsion. It was also +his last lesson, and it never progressed so far as the training- +arena, for it took place in his own cage. + +Noosed in the customary way, his four legs dragged through the +bars, and his head, by means of a "choke" collar, drawn against +the bars, he was first of all manicured. Each one of his great +claws was cut off flush with his flesh. The men outside did this. +Then Mulcachy, on the inside, punched his nose. Not lightly as it +sounds was this operation. The punch was a perforation. +Thrusting the instrument into the huge bear's nostril, Mulcachy +cut a clean round chunk of living meat out of one side of it. +Mulcachy knew the bear business. At all times, to make an +untrained bear obey, one must be fast to some sensitive portion of +the bear. The ears, the nose, and the eyes are the accessible +sensitive parts, and, the eyes being out of the question, remain +the nose and the ears as the parts to which to make fast. + +Through the perforation Mulcachy immediately clamped a metal ring. +To the ring he fastened a long "lunge"-rope, which was well named. +Any unruly lunge, at any time during all the subsequent life of +St. Elias, could thus be checked by the man who held the lunge- +rope. His destiny was patent and ordained. For ever, as long as +he lived and breathed, would he be a prisoner and slave to the +rope in the ring in his nostril. + +The nooses were slipped, and St. Elias was at liberty, within the +confines of his cage, to get acquainted with the ring in his nose. +With his powerful fore-paws, standing erect and roaring, he +proceeded to get acquainted with the ring. It certainly was not a +thing persuasible. It was living fire. And he tore at it with +his paws as he would have torn at the stings of bees when raiding +a honey-tree. He tore the thing out, ripping the ring clear +through the flesh and transforming the round perforation into a +ragged chasm of pain. + +Mulcachy cursed. "Here's where hell coughs," he said. The nooses +were introduced again. Again St. Elias, helpless on his side +against and partly through the bars, had his nose punched. This +time it was the other nostril. And hell coughed. As before, the +moment he was released, he tore the ring out through his flesh. + +Mulcachy was disgusted. "Listen to reason, won't you?" he +objurgated, as, this time, the reason he referred to was the +introduction of the ring clear through both nostrils, higher up, +and through the central dividing wall of cartilage. But St. Elias +was unreasonable. Unlike Ben Bolt, there was nothing inside of +him weak enough, or nervous enough, or high-strung enough, to +break. The moment he was free he ripped the ring away with half +of his nose along with it. Mulcachy punched St. Elias's right +ear. St. Elias tore his right ear to shreds. Mulcachy punched +his left ear. He tore his left ear to shreds. And Mulcachy gave +in. He had to. As he said plaintively: + +"We're beaten. There ain't nothing left to make fast to." + +Later, when St. Elias was condemned to be a "cage-animal" all his +days, Mulcachy was wont to grumble: + +"He was the most unreasonable animal! Couldn't do a thing with +him. Couldn't ever get anything to make fast to." + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV + + + +It was in the Orpheum Theatre, of Oakland, California; and Harley +Kennan was in the act of reaching under his seat for his hat, when +his wife said: + +"Why, this isn't the interval. There's one more turn yet." + +"A dog turn," he answered, and thereby explained; for it was his +practice to leave a theatre during the period of the performance +of an animal-act. + +Villa Kennan glanced hastily at the programme. + +"Of course," she said, then added: "But it's a singing dog. A +dog Caruso. And it points out that there is no one on the stage +with the dog. Let us stay for once, and see how he compares with +Jerry." + +"Some poor brute tormented into howling," Harley grumbled. + +"But it has the stage to itself," Villa urged. "Besides, if it is +painful, then we can go out. I'll go out with you. But I just +would like to see how much better Jerry sings than does he. And +it says an Irish terrier, too." + +So Harley Kennan remained. The two burnt-cork comedians finished +their turn and their three encores, and the curtain behind them +went up on a full set of an empty stage. A rough-coated Irish +terrier entered at a sedate walk, sedately walked forward to the +centre, nearly to the footlights, and faced the leader of the +orchestra. As the programme had stated, he had the stage to +himself + +The orchestra played the opening strains of "Sweet Bye and Bye." +The dog yawned and sat down. But the orchestra was thoroughly +instructed to play the opening strains over and over, until the +dog responded, and then to follow on with him. By the third time, +the dog opened his mouth and began. It was not a mere howling. +For that matter, it was too mellow to be classified as a howl at +all. Nor was it merely rhythmic. The notes the dog sang were of +the air, and they were correct. + +But Villa Kennan scarcely heard. + +"He has Jerry beaten a mile," Harley muttered to her. + +"Listen," she replied, in tense whispers. "Did you ever see that +dog before?" + +Harley shook his head. + +"You have seen him before," she insisted. "Look at that crinkled +ear. Think! Think back! Remember!" + +Still her husband shook his head. + +"Remember the Solomons," she pressed. "Remember the Ariel. +Remember when we came back from Malaita, where we picked Jerry up, +to Tulagi, that he had a brother there, a nigger-chaser on a +schooner." + +"And his name was Michael--go on." + +"And he had that self-same crinkled ear," she hurried. "And he +was rough-coated. And he was full brother to Jerry. And their +father and mother were Terrence and Biddy of Meringe. And Jerry +is our Sing Song Silly. And this dog sings. And he has a +crinkled ear. And his name is Michael." + +"Impossible," said Harley. + +"It is when the impossible comes true that life proves worth +while," she retorted. "And this is one of those worth-whiles of +impossibles. I know it." + +Still the man of him said impossible, and still the woman of her +insisted that this was an impossible come true. By this time the +dog on the stage was singing "God Save the King." + +"That shows I am right," Villa contended. "No American, in +America, would teach a dog 'God Save the King.' An Englishman +originally owned that dog and taught it. The Solomons are +British." + +"That's a far cry," he smiled. "But what gets me is that ear. I +remember it now. I remember the day when we were on the beach at +Tulagi with Jerry, and when his brother came ashore from the +Eugenie in a whaleboat. And his brother had that self-same, +loppy, crinkled ear." + +"And more," Villa argued. "How many singing dogs have we ever +known! Only one--Jerry. Evidently such a type occurs rarely. +The same family would more likely produce similar types than +different families. The family of Terrence and Biddy produced +Jerry. And this is Michael." + +"He WAS rough-coated, along with a crinkly ear," Harley meditated +back. "I see him distinctly as he stood up in the bow of the +whaleboat and as he ran along the beach side by side with Jerry." + +"If Jerry should to-morrow run side by side with him you would be +convinced?" she queried. + +"It was their trick, and the trick of Terrence and Biddy before +them," he agreed. "But it's a far cry from the Solomons to the +United States." + +"Jerry is such a far cry," she replied. "And if Jerry won from +the Solomons to California, then is there anything more remarkable +in Michael so winning?--Oh, listen!" + +For the dog on the stage, now responding to its one encore, was +singing "Home, Sweet Home." This finished, Jacob Henderson, to +tumultuous applause., came on the stage from the wings and joined +the dog in bowing. Villa and Harley sat in silence for a moment. +Then Villa said, apropos of nothing: + +"I have been sitting here and feeling very grateful for one +particular thing." + +He waited. + +"It is that we are so abominably wealthy," she concluded. + +"Which means that you want the dog, must have him, and are going +to got him, just because I can afford to do it for you," he +teased. + +"Because you can't afford not to," she answered. "You must know +he is Jerry's brother. At least, you must have a sneaking +suspicion . . . ?" + +"I have," he nodded. "The thing that can't sometimes does, and +there is a chance that this may be one of those times. Of course, +it isn't Michael; but, on the other hand, what's to prevent it +from being Michael? Let us go behind and find out." + + +"More agents of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to +Animals," was Jacob Henderson's thought, as the man and woman, +accompanied by the manager of the theatre, were shown into his +tiny dressing-room. Michael, on a chair and half asleep, took no +notice of them. While Harley talked with Henderson, Villa +investigated Michael; and Michael scarcely opened his eyes ere he +closed them again. Too sour on the human world, and too glum in +his own soured nature, he was anything save his old courtly self +to chance humans who broke in upon him to pat his head, and say +silly things, and go their way never to be seen by him again. + +Villa Kennan, with a pang of disappointment at such rebuff, +forwent her overtures for the moment, and listened to what tale +Jacob Henderson could tell of his dog. Harry Del Mar, a trained- +animal man, had picked the dog up somewhere on the Pacific Coast, +most probably in San Francisco, she learned; but, having taken the +dog east with him, Harry Del Mar had died by accident in New York +before telling anybody anything about the animal. That was all, +except that Henderson had paid two thousand dollars to one Harris +Collins, and had found the investment the finest he had ever made. + +Villa turned back to the dog. + +"Michael," she called, caressingly, almost in a whisper. + +And Michael's eyes partly opened, the base-muscles of his ears +stiffened, and his body quivered. + +"Michael," she repeated. + +This time raising his head, the eyes open and the ears stiffly +erect, Michael looked at her. Not since on the beach at Tulagi +had he heard that name uttered. Across the years and the seas the +word came to him out of the past. Its effect was electrical, for +on the instant all the connotations of "Michael" flooded his +consciousness. He saw again Captain Kellar, of the Eugenie, who +had last called him it, and MISTER Haggin, and Derby, and Bob of +Meringe Plantation, and Biddy and Terrence, and, not least among +these shades of the vanished past, his brother Jerry. + +But was it the vanished past? The name which had ceased for +years, had come back. It had entered the room along with this man +and woman. All this he did not reason; but indubitably, as if he +had so reasoned, he acted upon it. + +He jumped from the chair and ran to the woman. He smelled her +hand, and smelled her as she patted him. Then, as he recognized +her, he went wild. He sprang away, dashing around and around the +room, sniffing under the washstand and smelling out the corners. +As in a frenzy he was back to the woman, whimpering eagerly as she +strove to pet him. The next moment, stiff in a frenzy, he was +away again, scurrying about the room and still whimpering. + +Jacob Henderson looked on with mild disapproval. + +"He never cuts up that way," he said. "He is a very quiet dog. +Maybe it is a fit he is going to have, though he never has fits." + +No one understood, not even Villa Kennan. But Michael understood. +He was looking for that vanished world which had rushed back upon +him at sound of his old-time name. If this name could come to him +out of the Nothingness, as this woman had whom once he had seen +treading the beach at Tulagi, then could all other things of +Tulagi and the Nothingness come to him. As she was there, before +him in the living flesh, uttering his name, so might Captain +Kellar, and MISTER Haggin, and Jerry be there, somewhere in the +very room or just outside the door. + +He ran to the door, whimpering as he scratched at it. + +"Maybe he thinks there is something outside," said Jacob +Henderson, opening the door for him. + +And Michael did so think. As a matter of course, through that +open door, he was prepared to have the South-Pacific Ocean flow +in, bearing on its bosom schooners and ships, islands and reefs, +and all men and animals and things he once had known and still +remembered. + +But no past flowed in through the door. Outside was the usual +present. He came back dejectedly to the woman, who still called +him Michael as she petted him. She, at any rate, was real. Next +he carefully smelled and identified the man with the beach of +Tulagi and the deck of the Ariel, and again his excitement began +to mount. + +"Oh, Harley, I know it is he!" Villa cried. "Can't you test him? +Can't you prove him?" + +"But how?" Harley pondered. "He seems to recognize his name. It +excites him. And though he never knew us very well, he seems to +remember us and to be excited by us, too. If only he could talk . +. . " + +"Oh, talk! Talk!" Villa pleaded with Michael, catching both sides +of his head and jaws in her hands and swaying him back and forth. + +"Be careful, madam," Jacob Henderson warned. "He is a very sour +dog; and he don't let people take such liberties." + +"He does me," she laughed, half-hysterically. "Because he knows +me. . . . Harley!" She broke off as the great idea dawned on her. +"I have a test. Listen! Remember, Jerry was a nigger-chaser +before we got him. And Michael was a nigger-chaser. You talk in +beche-de-mer. Appear angry with some black boy, and see how it +will affect him." + +"I'll have to remember hard to resurrect any beche-de-mer," Harley +said, nodding approval of the suggestion. + +"At the same time I'll distract him," she rushed on. + +Sitting down and bending forward to Michael so that his head was +buried in her arms and breast, she began swaying him and crooning +to him as was her wont with Jerry. Nor did he resent the liberty +she took, and, like Jerry, he yielded to her crooning and softly +began to croon with her. She signalled Harley with her eyes. + +"My word!" he began in tones of wrath. "What name you fella boy +stop 'm along this fella place? You make 'm me cross along you +any amount!" + +And at the words Michael bristled, dragged himself clear of the +woman's detaining hands, and, with a snarl, whirled about to get a +look at the black boy who must have just then entered the room and +aroused the white god's ire. But there was no black boy. He +looked on, still bristling, to the door. Harley transferred his +own gaze to the door, and Michael knew, beyond all doubt, that +outside the door was standing a Solomons nigger. + +"Hey! Michael!" Harley shouted. "Chase 'm that black fella boy +overside!" + +With a roaring snarl, Michael flung himself at the door. Such was +the fury and weight of his onslaught that the latch flew loose and +the door swung open. The emptiness of the space which he had +expected to see occupied, was appalling, and he shrank down, sick +and dizzy with the baffling apparitional past that thus vexed his +consciousness. + +"And now," said Harley to Jacob Henderson, "we will talk business +. . . " + + + +CHAPTER XXXV + + + +When the train arrived at Glen Ellen, in the Valley of the Moon, +it was Harley Kennan himself, at the side-door of the baggage-car, +who caught hold of Michael and swung him to the ground. For the +first time Michael had performed a railroad journey uncrated. +Merely with collar and chain had he travelled up from Oakland. In +the waiting automobile he found Villa Kennan, and, chain removed, +sat beside her and between her and Harley + +As the machine purred along the two miles of road that wound up +the side of Sonoma Mountain, Michael scarcely looked at the +forest-trees and vistas of wandering glades. He had been in the +United States three years, during which time he had been kept a +close prisoner. Cage and crate and chain had been his portion, +and narrow rooms, baggage cars, and station platforms. The +nearest he had come to the country was when chained to benches in +the various parks while Jacob Henderson studied Swedenborg. So +that trees and hills and fields had ceased to mean anything. They +were something inaccessible, as inaccessible as the blue of the +sky or the drifting cloud-fleeces. Thus did he regard the trees +and hills and fields, if the negative act of not regarding a thing +at all can be considered a state of mind. + +"Don't seem to be enthusiastic over the ranch, eh, Michael?" +Harley remarked. + +He looked up at sound of his old name, and made acknowledgment by +flattening his ears a quivering trifle and by touching his nose +against Harley's shoulder. + +"Nor does he seem demonstrative," was Villa's judgment. "At +least, nothing like Jerry," + +"Wait till they meet," Harley smiled in anticipation. "Jerry will +furnish enough excitement for both of them." + +"If they remember each other after all this time," said Villa. "I +wonder if they will." + +"They did at Tulagi," he reminded her. "And they were full grown +and hadn't seen each other since they were puppies. Remember how +they barked and scampered all about the beach. Michael was the +hurly-burly one. At least he made twice as much noise." + +"But he seems dreadfully grown-up and subdued now." + +"Three years ought to have subdued him," Harley insisted. + +But Villa shook her head. + +As the machine drew up at the house and Kennan first stepped out, +a dog's whimperingly joyous bark of welcome struck Michael as not +altogether unfamiliar. The joyous bark turned to a suspicious and +jealous snarl as Jerry scented the other dog's presence from +Harley's caressing hand. The next moment he had traced the +original source of the scent into the limousine and sprung in +after it. With snarl and forward leap Michael met the snarling +rush less than half-way, and was rolled over on the bottom of the +car. + +The Irish terrier, under all circumstances amenable to the control +of the master as are few breeds of dogs, was instantly manifest in +Jerry and Michael an Harley Kennan's voice rang out. They +separated, and, despite the rumbling of low growling in their +throats, refrained from attacking each other as they plunged out +to the ground. The little set-to had occurred in so few seconds, +or fractions of seconds, that they had not begun to betray +recognition of each other until they were out of the machine. +They were still comically stiff-legged and bristly as they aloofly +sniffed noses. + +"They know each other!" Villa cried. "Let's wait and see what +they will do." + +As for Michael, he accepted, without surprise, the indubitable +fact that Jerry had come back out of the Nothingness. Things of +this sort had begun to happen rapidly, but it was not the things +themselves, but the connotations of them, that almost stunned him. +If the man and woman, whom he had last seen at Tulagi, and, +likewise, Jerry, had come back from the Nothingness, then could +come, and might come at any moment, the beloved Steward. + +Instead of responding to Jerry, Michael sniffed and glanced about +in quest of Steward. Jerry's first expression of greeting and +friendliness took the form of a desire to run. He barked +invitation to his brother, scampered away half a dozen jumps, +scampered back, and dabbed playfully at Michael with one fore-paw +in added emphasis of invitation ere he scampered away again. + +For so many years had Michael not run with another dog, that at +first Jerry's invitation had little meaning to him. Nevertheless, +such running was an habitual expression of happiness and +friendliness in dogdom, and especially strong had been his +inheritance of it from Terrence and Biddy, the noted love-runners +of the Solomons. + +The next time Jerry dabbed at him with a paw, barked, and scurried +away in an enticing semicircle, Michael started involuntarily +though slowly after him. But Michael did not bark; and, after +half a dozen leaps, he came to a full stop and looked to Villa and +Harley for permission. + +"All right, Michael," Harley called heartily, deliberately turning +his shoulder in the non-interest of consent as he extended his +hand to help Villa from the machine. + +Michael sprang away again, and was numbly aware of an ancient joy +as he shouldered Jerry who shouldered against him as they ran side +by side. But most of the joy was Jerry's, as was the wildest of +the skurrying and the racing and the shouldering, of the body- +wriggling, and ear-pricking, and yelping cries. Also, Jerry +barked; and Michael did not bark. + +"He used to bark," said Villa. + +"Much more than Jerry," Harley supplemented. + +"Then they have taken the bark out of him," she concluded. "He +must have gone through terrible experiences to have lost his +bark." + + +The green California spring merged into tawny summer, as Jerry, +ever running afield, made Michael acquainted with the farthest and +highest reaches of the Kennan ranch in the Valley of the Moon. +The pageant of the wild flowers vanished until all that lingered +on the burnt hillsides were orange poppies faded to palest gold, +and Mariposa lilies, wind-blown on slender stems amidst the +desiccated grasses, that smouldered like ornate spotted moths +fluttering in rest for a space between flight and flight. + +And Michael, a follower always where the exuberant Jerry led, +sought throughout the passing year for what he could not find. + +"Looking for something, looking for something," Harley would say +to Villa. "It is not alive. It is not here. Now just what is it +he is always looking for?" + +Steward it was, and Michael never found him. The Nothingness held +him and would not yield him up, although, could Michael have +journeyed a ten-days' steamer-journey into the South Pacific to +the Marquesas, Steward he would have found, and, along with him, +Kwaque and the Ancient Mariner, all three living like lotus-eaters +on the beach-paradise of Taiohae. Also, in and about their grass- +thatched bungalow under the lofty avocado trees, Michael would +have found other pet--cats, and kittens, and pigs, donkeys and +ponies, a pair of love-birds, and a mischievous monkey or two; but +never a dog and never a cockatoo. For Dag Daughtry, with violence +of language, had laid a taboo upon dogs. After Killeny Boy, he +averred, there should be no other dog. And Kwaque, without +averring anything at all, resolutely refrained from possessing +himself of the white cockatoos brought ashore by the sailors off +the trading schooners. + +But Michael was long in giving over his search for Steward, and, +running the mountain trails or scrambling and sliding down into +the deep canyons, was ever expectant and ready for Steward to step +forth before him, or to pick up the unmistakable scent that would +lead him to him. + +"Looking for something, looking for something," Harley Kennan +would chant curiously, as he rode beside Villa and observed +Michael's unending search. "Now Jerry's after rabbits, and fox- +trails; but you'll notice they don't interest Michael much. +They're not what he's after. He behaves like one who has lost a +great treasure and doesn't know where he lost it nor where to look +for it." + +Much Michael learned from Jerry of the varied life of the forest +and fields. To run with Jerry seemed the one pleasure he took, +for he never played. Play had passed out of him. He was not +precisely morose or gloomy from his years on the trained-animal +stage and in Harris Collins's college of pain, but he was sobered, +subdued. The spring and the spontaneity had gone out of him. +Just as the leopard had claw-marked his shoulder so that damp and +frosty weather made the pain of the old wound come back, so was +his mind marked by what he had gone through. He liked Jerry, was +glad to be with him and to run with him; but it was Jerry who was +ever in the lead, who ever raised the hue and cry of hunting +pursuit, who barked indignation and eager yearning at a tree'd +squirrel in refuge forty feet above the ground. Michael looked on +and listened, but took no part in such antics of enthusiasm. + +In the same way he looked on when Jerry fought fearful comic +battles with Norman Chief, the great Percheron stallion. It was +only play, for Jerry and Norman Chief were tried friends; and, +though the huge horse, ears laid back, mouth open to bite, pursued +Jerry in mad gyrations all about the paddock, it was with no +thought of inflicting hurt, but merely to act up to his part in +the sham battle. Yet no invitation of Jerry's could induce +Michael to join in the fun. He contented himself with sitting +down outside the rails and looking on. + +"Why play?" might Michael have asked, who had had all play taken +out of him. + +But when it came to serious work, he was there even ahead of +Jerry. On account of foot-and-mouth disease and of hog-cholera, +strange dogs were taboo on the Kennan ranch. It did not take +Michael long to learn this, and stray dogs got short shrift from +him. With never a warning bark nor growl, in deadly silence, he +rushed them, slashed and bit them, rolled them over and over in +the dust, and drove them from the place. It was like nigger- +chasing, a service to perform for the gods whom he loved and who +willed such chasing. + +No wild passion of love, such as he had had for Steward, did he +bear Villa and Harley, but he did develop for them a great, sober +love. He did not go out of his way to express it with overtures +of wrigglings and squirmings and whimpering yelpings. Jerry could +be depended upon for that. But he was always seriously glad to be +with Villa and Harley and to receive recognition from them next +after Jerry. Some of his deepest moments of content, before the +fireplace, were to sit beside Villa or Harley and lean his head +against a knee and have a hand, on occasion, drop down on his head +or gently twist his crinkled ear. + +Jerry was even guilty of playing with children who happened at +times to be under the Kennan aegis. Michael endured children for +as long as they left him alone. If they waxed familiar, he would +warn them with a bristling of his neck-hair and a throaty rumbling +and get up and stalk away. + +"I can't understand it," Villa would say. "He was the fullest of +play, and spirits, and all foolishness. He was much sillier and +much more excitable than Jerry and certainly noisier. He must +have some terrible story to tell, if only he could, of all that +happened between Tulagi and the time we found him on the Orpheum +stage." + +"And that may be the least little hint of it," Harley would reply, +pointing to Michael's shoulder where the leopard had scarred it on +the day Jack, the Airedale, and Sara, the little green monkey, had +died. + +"He used to bark, I know he used to bark," Villa would continue. +"Why doesn't he bark now?" + +And Harley would point to the scarred shoulder and say, "That may +account for it, and most possibly a hundred other things like it +of which we cannot see the marks." + +But the time was to come when they were to hear him bark again-- +not once, but twice. And both times were to be but an earnest of +another and graver time when, without barking at all, he would +express in action the measure of his love and worship of them who +had taken him from the crate and the footlights and given him the +freedom of the Valley of the Moon. + +And in the meantime, running endlessly with Jerry over the ranch, +he learned all the ways of it and all the life of it from the +chickenyards and the duck-ponds to the highest pitch of Sonoma +Mountain. He learned where the wild deer, in their season, were +to be found; when they raided the prune-orchard, the vineyards, +and the apple-trees; when they sought the deepest canyons and most +secret coverts; and when they stamped out in open glades and on +bare hillsides and crashed and clattered their antlers together in +combat. Under Jerry's leadership, always running second and after +on the narrow trails as a subdued dog should, he learned the ways +and habits of the foxes, the coons, the weasels, and the ring-tail +cats that seemed compounded of cat and coon and weasel. He came +to know the ground-nesting birds and the difference between the +customs of the valley quail, the mountain quail, and the +pheasants. The traits and lairs of the domestic cats gone wild he +also learned, as did he learn the wild loves of mountain farm-dogs +with the free-roving coyotes. + +He knew of the presence of the mountain lion, adrift down from +Mendocino County, ere the first shorthorn calf was slain, and came +home from the encounter, torn and bleeding, to attest what he had +discovered and to be the cause of Harley Kennan riding trail next +day with a rifle across his pommel. Likewise Michael came to know +what Harley Kennan never did know and always denied as existing on +his ranch--the one rocky outcrop, in the dense heart of the +mountain forest, where a score of rattlesnakes denned through the +winters and warmed themselves in the sun. + + + +CHAPTER XXXVI + + + +Winter came on in its delectable way in the Valley of the Moon. +The last Mariposa lily vanished from the burnt grasses as the +California Indian summer dreamed itself out in purple mists on the +windless air. Soft rain-showers first broke the spell. Snow fell +on the summit of Sonoma Mountain. At the ranch house the morning +air was crisp and brittle, yet midday made the shade welcome, and +in the open, under the winter sun, roses bloomed and oranges, +grape-fruit, and lemons turned to golden yellow ripeness. Yet, a +thousand feet beneath, on the floor of the valley, the mornings +were white with frost. + +And Michael barked twice. The first time was when Harley Kennan, +astride a hot-blooded sorrel colt, tried to make it leap a narrow +stream. Villa reined in her steed at the crest beyond, and, +looking back into the little valley, waited for the colt to +receive its lesson. Michael waited, too, but closer at hand. At +first he lay down, panting from his run, by the stream-edge. But +he did not know horses very well, and soon his anxiety for the +welfare of Harley Kennan brought him to his feet. + +Harley was gentle and persuasive and all patience as he strove to +make the colt take the leap. The urge of voice and rein was of +the mildest; but the animal balked the take-off each time, and the +hot thoroughbredness in its veins made it sweat and lather. The +velvet of young grass was torn up by its hoofs, and its terror of +the stream was such, that, when fetched to the edge at a canter, +it stiffened and crouched to an abrupt stop, then reared on its +hind-legs. Which was too much for Michael. + +He sprang at the horse's head as it came down with fore-feet to +earth, and as he sprang he barked. In his bark was censure and +menace, and, as the horse reared again, he leaped into the air +after it, his teeth clipping together as he just barely missed its +nose. + +Villa rode back down the slope to the opposite bank of the stream. + +"Mercy!" she cried. "Listen to him! He's actually barking." + +"He thinks the colt is trying to do some damage to me," Harley +said. "That's his provocation. He hasn't forgotten how to bark. +He's reading the colt a lecture." + +"If he gets him by the nose it will be more than a lecture," Villa +warned. "Be careful, Harley, or he will." + +"Now, Michael, lie down and be good," Harley commanded. "It's all +right, I tell you. It's an right. Lie down." + +Michael sank down obediently, but protestingly; and he had eyes +only for the horse's antics, while all his muscles were gathered +tensely to spring in case the horse threatened injury to Harley +again. + +"I can't give in to him now, or he never will jump anything," +Harley said to his wife, as he whirled about to gallop back to a +distance. "Either I lift him over or I take a cropper." + +He came back at full speed, and the colt, despite himself, unable +to stop, lifted into the leap that would avoid the stream he +feared, so that he cleared it with a good two yards to spare on +the other side. + +The next time Michael barked was when Harley, on the same hot- +blood mount, strove to close a poorly hung gate on the steep pitch +of a mountain wood-road. Michael endured the danger to his man- +god as long as he could, then flew at the colt's head in a frenzy +of barking. + +"Anyway, his barking helped," Harley conceded, as he managed to +close the gate. "Michael must certainly have told the colt that +he'd give him what-for if he didn't behave." + +"At any rate, he's not tongue-tied," Villa laughed, "even if he +isn't very loquacious." + +And Michael's loquacity never went farther. Only on these two +occasions, when his master-god seemed to be in peril, was he known +to bark. He never barked at the moon, nor at hillside echoes, nor +at any prowling thing. A particular echo, to be heard directly +from the ranch-house, was an unfailing source of exercise for +Jerry's lungs. At such times that Jerry barked, Michael, with a +bored expression, would lie down and wait until the duet was over. +Nor did he bark when he attacked strange dogs that strayed upon +the ranch. + +"He fights like a veteran," Harley remarked, after witnessing one +such encounter. "He's cold-blooded. There's no excitement in +him." + +"He's old before his time," Villa said. "There is no heart of +play left in him, and no desire for speech. Just the same I know +he loves me, and you--" + +"Without having to be voluble about it," her husband completed for +her. + +"You can see it shining in those quiet eyes of his," she +supplemented. + +"Reminds me of one of the survivors of Lieutenant Greeley's +Expedition I used to know," he agreed. "He was an enlisted +soldier and one of the handful of survivors. He had been through +so much that he was just as subdued as Michael and just as +taciturn. He bored most people, who could not understand him. Of +course, the truth was the other way around. They bored him. They +knew so little of life that he knew the last word of. And one +could scarcely get any word out of him. It was not that he had +forgotten how to speak, but that he could not see any reason for +speaking when nobody could understand. He was really crusty from +too-bitter wise experience. But all you had to do was look at him +in his tremendous repose and know that he had been through the +thousand hells, including all the frozen ones. His eyes had the +same quietness of Michael's. And they had the same wisdom. I'd +give almost anything to know how he got his shoulder scarred. It +must have been a tiger or a lion." + + +The man, like the mountain lion whom Michael had encountered up +the mountain, had strayed down from the wilds of Mendocino County, +following the ruggedest mountain stretches, and, at night, +crossing the farmed valley spaces where the presence of man was a +danger to him. Like the mountain lion, the man was an enemy to +man, and all men were his enemies, seeking his life which he had +forfeited in ways more terrible than the lion which had merely +killed calves for food. + +Like the mountain lion, the man was a killer. But, unlike the +lion, his vague description and the narrative of his deeds was in +all the newspapers, and mankind was a vast deal more interested in +him than in the lion. The lion had slain calves in upland +pastures. But the man, for purposes of robbery, had slain an +entire family--the postmaster, his wife, and their three children, +in the upstairs over the post office in the mountain village of +Chisholm. + +For two weeks the man had eluded and exceeded pursuit. His last +crossing had been from the mountains of the Russian River, across +wide-farmed Santa Rosa Valley, to Sonoma Mountain. For two days +he had laired and rested, sleeping much, in the wildest and most +inaccessible precincts of the Kennan Ranch. With him he had +carried coffee stolen from the last house he had raided. One of +Harley Kennan's angora goats had furnished him with meat. Four +times he had slept the clock around from exhaustion, rousing on +occasion, like any animal, to eat voraciously of the goat-meat, to +drink large quantities of the coffee hot or cold, and to sink down +into heavy but nightmare-ridden sleep. + +And in the meantime civilization, with its efficient organization +and intricate inventions, including electricity, had closed in on +him. Electricity had surrounded him. The spoken word had located +him in the wild canyons of Sonoma Mountain and fringed the +mountain with posses of peace-officers and detachments of armed +farmers. More terrible to them than any mountain lion was a man- +killing man astray in their landscape. The telephone on the +Kennan Ranch, and the telephones on all other ranches abutting on +Sonoma Mountain, had rung often and transmitted purposeful +conversations and arrangements. + +So it happened, when the posses had begun to penetrate the +mountain, and when the man was compelled to make a daylight dash +down into the Valley of the Moon to cross over to the mountain +fastnesses that lay between it and Napa Valley, that Harley Kennan +rode out on the hot-blooded colt he was training. He was not in +pursuit of the man who had slain the postmaster of Chisholm and +his family. The mountain was alive with man-hunters, as he well +knew, for a score had bedded and eaten at the ranch house the +night before. So the meeting of Harley Kennan with the man was +unplanned and eventful. + +It was not the first meeting with men the man had had that day. +During the preceding night he had noted the campfires of several +posses. At dawn, attempting to break forth down the south-western +slopes of the mountain toward Petaluma, he had encountered not +less than five separate detachments of dairy-ranchers all armed +with Winchesters and shotguns. Breaking back to cover, the chase +hot on his heels, he had run full tilt into a party of village +youths from Glen Ellen and Caliente. Their squirrel and deer +rifles had missed him, but his back had been peppered with +birdshot in a score of places, the leaden pellets penetrating +maddeningly in a score of places just under the skin. + +In the rush of his retreat down the canyon slope, he had plunged +into a bunch of shorthorn steers, who, far more startled than he, +had rolled him on the forest floor, trampled over him in their +panic, and smashed his rifle under their hoofs. Weaponless, +desperate, stinging and aching from his superficial wounds and +bruises, he had circled the forest slopes along deer-paths, +crossed two canyons, and begun to descend the horse-trail he found +in the third canyon. + +It was on this trail, going down, that he met the reporter coming +up. The reporter was--well, just a reporter, from the city, +knowing only city ways, who had never before engaged in a man- +hunt. The livery horse he had rented down in the valley was a +broken-kneed, jaded, and spiritless creature, that stood calmly +while its rider was dragged from its back by the wild-looking and +violently impetuous man who sprang out around a sharp turn of the +trail. The reporter struck at his assailant once with his riding- +whip. Then he received a beating, such as he had often written up +about sailor-rows and saloon-frequenters in his cub-reporter days, +but which for the first time it was his lot to experience. + +To the man's disgust he found the reporter unarmed save for a +pencil and a wad of copy paper. Out of his disappointment in not +securing a weapon, he beat the reporter up some more, left him +wailing among the ferns, and, astride the reporter's horse, urging +it on with the reporter's whip, continued down the trail. + +Jerry, ever keenest on the hunting, had ranged farther afield than +Michael as the pair of them accompanied Harley Kennan on his early +morning ride. Even so, Michael, at the heels of his master's +horse, did not see nor understand the beginning of the +catastrophe. For that matter, neither did Harley. Where a steep, +eight-foot bank came down to the edge of the road along which he +was riding, Harley and the hot-blood colt were startled by an +eruption through the screen of manzanita bushes above. Looking +up, he saw a reluctant horse and a forceful rider plunging in mid- +air down upon him. In that flashing glimpse, even as he reined +and spurred to make his own horse leap sidewise out from under, +Harley Kennan observed the scratched skin and torn clothing, the +wild-burning eyes, and the haggardness under the scraggly growth +of beard, of the man-hunted man. + +The livery horse was justifiably reluctant to make that leap out +and down the bank. Too painfully aware of the penalty its broken +knees and rheumatic joints must pay, it dug its hoofs into the +steep slope of moss and only sprang out and clear in the air in +order to avoid a fall. Even so, its shoulder impacted against the +shoulder of the whirling colt below it, overthrowing the latter. +Harley Kennan's leg, caught under against the earth, snapped, and +the colt, twisted and twisting as it struck the ground, snapped +its backbone. + +To his utter disgust, the man, pursued by an armed countryside, +found Harley Kennan, his latest victim, like the reporter, to be +weaponless. Dismounted, he snarled in his rage and disappointment +and deliberately kicked the helpless man in the side. He had +drawn back his foot for the second kick, when Michael took a hand- +-or a leg, rather, sinking his teeth into the calf of the back- +drawn leg about to administer the kick. + +With a curse the man jerked his leg clear, Michael's teeth +ribboning flesh and trousers. + +"Good boy, Michael!" Harley applauded from where he lay helplessly +pinioned under his horse. "Hey! Michael!" he continued, lapsing +back into beche-de-mer, "chase 'm that white fella marster to hell +outa here along bush!" + +"I'll kick your head off for that," the man gritted at Harley +through his teeth. + +Savage as were his acts and utterance, the man was nearly ready to +cry. The long pursuit, his hand against all mankind and all +mankind against him, had begun to break his stamina. He was +surrounded by enemies. Even youths had risen up and peppered his +back with birdshot, and beef cattle had trod him underfoot and +smashed his rifle. Everything conspired against him. And now it +was a dog that had slashed down his leg. He was on the death- +road. Never before had this impressed him with such clear +certainty. Everything was against him. His desire to cry was +hysterical, and hysteria, in a desperate man, is prone to express +itself in terrible savage ways. Without rhyme or reason he was +prepared to carry out his threat to kick Harley Kennan to death. +Not that Kennan had done anything to him. On the contrary, it was +he who had attacked Kennan, hurling him down on the road and +breaking his leg under his horse. But Harley Kennan was a man, +and all mankind was his enemy; and, in killing Kennan, in some +vague way it appeared to him that he was avenging himself, at +least in part, on mankind in general. Going down himself in +death, he would drag what he could with him into the red ruin. + +But ere he could kick the man on the ground, Michael was back upon +him. His other calf and trousers' leg were ribboned as he tore +clear. Then, catching Michael in mid-leap with a kick that +reached him under the chest, he sent him flying through the air +off the road and down the slope. As mischance would have it, +Michael did not reach the ground. Crashing through a scrub +manzanita bush, his body was caught and pinched in an acute fork a +yard above the ground. + +"Now," the man announced grimly to Harley, "I'm going to do what I +said. I'm just going to kick your head clean off." + +"And I haven't done a thing to you," Harley parleyed. "I don't so +much mind being murdered, but I'd like to know what I'm being +murdered for." + +"Chasing me for my life," the man snarled, as he advanced. "I +know your kind. You've all got it in for me, and I ain't got a +chance except to give you yours. I'll take a whole lot of it out +on you." + +Kennan was thoroughly aware of the gravity of his peril. Helpless +himself, a man-killing lunatic was about to kill him and to kill +him most horribly. Michael, a prisoner in the bush, hanging head- +downward in the manzanita from his loins squeezed in the fork, and +struggling vainly, could not come to his defence. + +The man's first kick, aimed at Harley's face, he blocked with his +fore-arm; and, before the man could make a second kick, Jerry +erupted on the scene. Nor did he need encouragement or direction +from his love-master. He flashed at the man, sinking his teeth +harmlessly into the slack of the man's trousers at the waist-band +above the hip, but by his weight dragging him half down to the +ground. + +And upon Jerry the man turned with an increase of madness. In +truth all the world was against him. The very landscape rained +dogs upon him. But from above, from the slopes of Sonoma +Mountain, the cries and calls of the trailing poses caught his +ear, and deflected his intention. They were the pursuing death, +and it was from them he must escape. With another kick at Jerry, +hurling him clear, he leaped astride the reporter's horse which +had continued to stand, without movement or excitement, in utter +apathy, where he had dismounted from it. + +The horse went into a reluctant and stiff-legged gallop, while +Jerry followed, snarling and growling wrath at so high a pitch +that almost he squalled. + +"It's all right, Michael," Harley soothed. "Take it easy. Don't +hurt yourself. The trouble's over. Anybody'll happen along any +time now and get us out of this fix." + +But the smaller branch of the two composing the fork broke, and +Michael fell to the ground, landing in momentary confusion on his +head and shoulders. The next moment he was on his feet and +tearing down the road in the direction of Jerry's noisy pursuit. +Jerry's noise broke in a sharp cry of pain that added wings to +Michael's feet. Michael passed him rolling helplessly on the +road. What had happened was that the livery horse, in its stiff- +jointed, broken-kneed gallop, had stumbled, nearly fallen, and, in +its sprawling recovery, had accidentally stepped on Jerry, +bruising and breaking his fore-leg. + +And the man, looking back and seeing Michael close upon him, +decided that it was still another dog attacking him. But he had +no fear of dogs. It was men, with their rifles and shot-guns, +that might bring him to ultimate grief. Nevertheless, the pain of +his bleeding legs, lacerated by Jerry and Michael, maintained his +rage against dogs. + +"More dogs," was his bitter thought, as he leaned out and brought +his whip down across Michael's face. + +To his surprise, the dog did not wince under the blow. Nor for +that matter did he yelp or cry out from the pain. Nor did he bark +or growl or snarl. He closed in as though he had not received the +blow, and as though the whip was not brandished above him. As +Michael leaped for his right leg he swung the whip down, striking +him squarely on the muzzle midway between nose and eyes. +Deflected by the blow, Michael dropped back to earth and ran on +with his longest leaps to catch up and make his next spring. + +But the man had noticed another thing. At such close range, +bringing his whip down, he could not help noting that Michael had +kept his eyes open under the blow. Neither had he winced nor +blinked as the whip slashed down on him. The thing was uncanny. +It was something new in the way of dogs. Michael sprang again, +the man timed him again with the whip, and he saw the uncanny +thing repeated. By neither wince nor blink had the dog +acknowledged the blow. + +And then an entirely new kind of fear came upon the man. Was this +the end for him, after all he had gone through? Was this deadly +silent, rough-coated terrier the thing destined to destroy him +where men had failed? He did not even know that the dog was real. +Might it not be some terrible avenger, out of the mystery beyond +life, placed to beset him and finish him finally on this road that +he was convinced was surely the death-road? The dog was not real. +It could not be real. The dog did not live that could take a +full-arm whip-slash without wince or flinch. + +Twice again, as the dog sprang, he deflected it with accurately +delivered blows. And the dog came on with the same surety and +silence. The man surrendered to his terror, clapping heels to his +horse's old ribs, beating it over the head and under the belly +with the whip until it galloped as it had not galloped in years. +Even on that apathetic steed the terror descended. It was not +terror of the dog, which it knew to be only a dog, but terror of +the rider. In the past its knees had been broken and its joints +stiffened for ever, by drunken-mad riders who had hired him from +the stables. And here was another such drunken-mad rider--for the +horse sensed the man's terror--who ached his ribs with the weight +of his heels and beat him cruelly over face and nose and ears. + +The best speed of the horse was not very great, not great enough +to out-distance Michael, although it was fast enough to give the +latter only infrequent opportunities to spring for the man's leg. +But each spring was met by the unvarying whip-blow that by its +very weight deflected him in the air. Though his teeth each time +clipped together perilously close to the man's leg, each time he +fell back to earth he had to gather himself together and run at +his own top speed in order to overtake the terror-stricken man on +the crazy-galloping horse. + +Enrico Piccolomini saw the chase and was himself in at the finish; +and the affair, his one great adventure in the world, gave him +wealth as well as material for conversation to the end of his +days. Enrico Piccolomini was a wood-chopper on the Kennan Ranch. +On a rounded knoll, overlooking the road, he had first heard the +galloping hoofs of the horse and the crack of the whip-blows on +its body. Next, he had seen the running battle of the man, the +horse, and the dog. When directly beneath him, not twenty feet +distant, he saw the dog leap, in its queer silent way, straight up +and in to the down-smash of the whip, and sink its teeth in the +rider's leg. He saw the dog, with its weight, as it fell back to +earth, drag the man half out of the saddle. He saw the man, in an +effort to recover his balance, put his own weight on the bridle- +reins. And he saw the horse, half-rearing, half-tottering and +stumbling, overthrow the last shred of the man's balance so that +he followed the dog to the ground. + +"And then they are like two dogs, like two beasts," Piccolomini +was wont to tell in after-years over a glass of wine in his little +hotel in Glen Ellen. "The dog lets go the man's leg and jumps for +the man's throat. And the man, rolling over, is at the dog's +throat. Both his hands--so--he fastens about the throat of this +dog. And the dog makes no sound. He never makes sound, before or +after. After the two hands of the man stop his breath he can not +make sound. But he is not that kind of a dog. He will not make +sound anyway. And the horse stands and looks on, and the horse +coughs. It is very strange all that I see. + +"And the man is mad. Only a madman will do what I see him do. I +see the man show his teeth like any dog, and bite the dog on the +paw, on the nose, on the body. And when he bites the dog on the +nose, the dog bites him on the check. And the man and the dog +fight like hell, and the dog gets his hind legs up like a cat. +And like a cat he tears the man's shirt away from his chest, and +tears the skin of the chest with his claws till it is all red with +bleeding. And the man yow-yowls, and makes noises like a wild +mountain lion. And always he chokes the dog. It is a hell of a +fight. + +"And the dog is Mister Kennan's dog, a fine man, and I have worked +for him two years. So I will not stand there and see Mister +Kennan's dog all killed to pieces by the man who fights like a +mountain lion. I run down the hill, but I am excited and forget +my axe. I run down the hill, maybe from this door to that door, +twenty feet or maybe thirty feet. And it is nearly all finished +for the dog. His tongue is a long ways out, and his eyes like +covered with cobwebs; but still he scratches the man's chest with +his hind-feet and the man yow-yowls like a hen of the mountains. + +"What can I do? I have forgotten the axe. The man will kill the +dog. I look for a big rock. There are no rocks. I look for a +club. I cannot find a club. And the man is killing the dog. I +tell you what I do. I am no fool. I kick the man. My shoes are +very heavy--not like shoes I wear now. They are the shoes of the +woodchopper, very thick on the sole with hard leather, with many +iron nails. I kick the man on the side of the face, on the neck, +right under the ear. I kick once. It is a good kick. It is +enough. I know the place--right under the ear. + +"And the man lets go of the dog. He shuts his eyes, and opens his +mouth, and lies very still. And the dog begins once more to +breathe. And with the breath comes the life, and right away he +wants to kill the man. But I say 'No,' though I am very much +afraid of the dog. And the man begins to become alive. He opens +his eyes and he looks at me like a mountain lion. And his mouth +makes a noise like a mountain lion. And I am afraid of him like I +am afraid of the dog. What am I to do? I have forgotten the axe. +I tell you what I do. I kick the man once again under the ear. +Then I take my belt, and my bandana handkerchief, and I tie him. +I tie his hands. I tie his legs, too. And all the time I am +saying 'No,' to the dog, and that he must leave the man alone. +And the dog looks. He knows I am his friend and am tying the man. +And he does not bite me, though I am very much afraid. The dog is +a terrible dog. Do I not know? Have I not seen him take a strong +man out of the saddle?--a man that is like a mountain lion? + +"And then the men come. They all have guns-rifles, shotguns, +revolvers, pistols. And I think, first, that justice is very +quick in the United States. Only just now have I kicked a man in +the head, and, one-two-three, just like that, men come with guns +to take me to jail for kicking a man in the head. At first I do +not understand. The many men are angry with me. They call me +names, and say bad things; but they do not arrest me. Ah! I +begin to understand! I hear them talk about three thousand +dollars. I have robbed them of three thousand dollars. It is not +true. I say so. I say never have I robbed a man of one cent. +Then they laugh. And I feel better and I understand better. The +three thousand dollars is the reward of the Government for this +man I have tied up with my belt and my bandana. And the three +thousand dollars is mine because I kicked the man in the head and +tied his hands and his feet. + +"So I do not work for Mister Kennan any more. I am a rich man. +Three thousand dollars, all mine, from the Government, and Mister +Kennan sees that it is paid to me by the Government and not robbed +from me by the men with the guns. Just because I kicked the man +in the head who was like a mountain lion! It is fortune. It is +America. And I am glad that I have left Italy and come to chop +wood on Mister Kennan's ranch. And I start this hotel in Glen +Ellen with the three thousand dollars. I know there is large +money in the hotel business. When I was a little boy, did not my +father have a hotel in Napoli? I have now two daughters in high +school. Also I own an automobile." + + +"Mercy me, the whole ranch is a hospital!" cried Villa Kennan, two +days later, as she came out on the broad sleeping-porch and +regarded Harley and Jerry stretched out, the one with his leg in +splints, the other with his leg in a plaster cast. "Look at +Michael," she continued. "You're not the only ones with broken +bones. I've only just discovered that if his nose isn't broken, +it ought to be, from the blow he must have received on it. I've +had hot compresses on it for the last hour. Look at it!" + +Michael, who had followed in at her invitation, betrayed a +ridiculously swollen nose as he sniffed noses with Jerry, wagged +his bobtail to Harley in greeting, and was greeted in turn with a +blissful hand laid on his head. + +"Must have got it in the fight," Harley said. "The fellow struck +him with the whip many times, so Piccolomini says, and, naturally, +it would be right across the nose when he jumped for him." + +"And Piccolomini says he never cried out when he was struck, but +went on running and jumping," Villa took up enthusiastically. +"Think of it! A dog no bigger than Michael dragging out of the +saddle a man-killing outlaw whom scores of officers could not +catch!" + +"So far as we are concerned, he did better than that," Harley +commented quietly. "If it hadn't been for Michael, and for Jerry, +too--if it hadn't been for the pair of them, I do verily believe +that that lunatic would have kicked my head off as he promised." + +"The blessed pair of them!" Villa cried, with shining eyes, as her +hand flashed out to her husband's in a quick press of heart- +thankfulness. "The last word has not been said upon the wonder of +dogs," she added, as, with a quick winking of her eyelashes to +overcome the impending moistness, she controlled her emotion. + +"The last word of the wonder of dogs will never be said," Harley +spoke, returning the pressure of her hand and releasing it in +order to help her. + +"And just for that were going to say something right now," she +smiled. "Jerry, and Michael, and I. We've been practising it in +secret for a surprise for you. You just lie there and listen. +It's the Doxology. Don't Laugh. No pun intended." + +She bent forward from the stool on which she sat, and drew Michael +to her so that he sat between her knees, her two hands holding his +head and jowls, his nose half-buried in her hair. + +"Now Jerry!" she called sharply, as a singing teacher might call, +so that Jerry turned his head in attention, looked at her, smiled +understanding with his eyes, and waited. + +It was Villa who started and pitched the Doxology, but quickly the +two dogs joined with their own soft, mellow howling, if howling it +may be called when it was so soft and mellow and true. And all +that had vanished into the Nothingness was in the minds of the two +dogs as they sang, and they sang back through the Nothingness to +the land of Otherwhere, and ran once again with the Lost Pack, and +yet were not entirely unaware of the present and of the +indubitable two-legged god who was called Villa and who sang with +them and loved them. + +"No reason we shouldn't make a quartette of it," remarked Harley +Kennan, as with his own voice he joined in. + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext Michael, Brother of Jerry by Jack London + diff --git a/old/mcjer10.zip b/old/mcjer10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..36fe458 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/mcjer10.zip |