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.
