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."
