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.
