“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.