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.