CHAPTER I
But Michael never sailed out of Tulagi, nigger-chaser on the _Eugenie_.Once in five weeks the steamer _Makambo_ made Tulagi its port of call onthe way from New Guinea and the Shortlands to Australia. And on thenight of her belated arrival Captain Kellar forgot Michael on the beach.In itself, this was nothing, for, at midnight, Captain Kellar was back onthe beach, himself climbing the high hill to the Commissioner's bungalowwhile the boat's crew vainly rummaged the landscape and canoe houses.
In fact, an hour earlier, as the _Makambo's_ anchor was heaving out andwhile Captain Kellar was descending the port gang-plank, Michael wascoming on board through a starboard port-hole. This was because Michaelwas inexperienced in the world, because he was expecting to meet Jerry onboard this boat since the last he had seen of him was on a boat, andbecause he had made a friend.
Dag Daughtry was a steward on the _Makambo_, who should have known betterand who would have known better and done better had he not beenfascinated by his own particular and peculiar reputation. By luck ofbirth possessed of a genial but soft disposition and a splendidconstitution, his reputation was that for twenty years he had nevermissed his day's work nor his six daily quarts of bottled beer, even, ashe bragged, when in the German islands, where each bottle of beer carriedten grains of quinine in solution as a specific against malaria.
The captain of the _Makambo_ (and, before that, the captains of the_Moresby_, the _Masena_, the _Sir Edward Grace_, and various others ofthe queerly named Burns Philp Company steamers had done the same) wasused to pointing him out proudly to the passengers as a man-thing noveland unique in the annals of the sea. And at such times Dag Daughtry,below on the for'ard deck, feigning unawareness as he went about hiswork, would steal side-glances up at the bridge where the captain and hispassengers stared down on him, and his breast would swell pridefully,because he knew that the captain was saying: "See him! that's DagDaughtry, the human tank. Never's been drunk or sober in twenty years,and has never missed his six quarts of beer per diem. You wouldn't thinkit, to look at him, but I assure you it's so. I can't understand. Getsmy admiration. Always does his time, his time-and-a-half and his double-time over time. Why, a single glass of beer would give me heartburn andspoil my next good meal. But he flourishes on it. Look at him! Look athim!"
And so, knowing his captain's speech, swollen with pride in his ownprowess, Dag Daughtry would continue his ship-work with extra vigour andpunish a seventh quart for the day in advertisement of his remarkableconstitution. It was a queer sort of fame, as queer as some men are; andDag Daughtry found in it his justification of existence.
Wherefore he devoted his energy and the soul of him to the maintenance ofhis reputation as a six-quart man. That was why he made, in odd momentsof off-duty, turtle-shell combs and hair ornaments for profit, and wasprettily crooked in such a matter as stealing another man's dog. Somebodyhad to pay for the six quarts, which, multiplied by thirty, amounted to atidy sum in the course of the month; and, since that man was DagDaughtry, he found it necessary to pass Michael inboard on the _Makambo_through a starboard port-hole.
On the beach, that night at Tulagi, vainly wondering what had become ofthe whaleboat, Michael had met the squat, thick, hair-grizzled ship'ssteward. The friendship between them was established almost instantly,for Michael, from a merry puppy, had matured into a merry dog. Farbeyond Jerry, was he a sociable good fellow, and this, despite the factthat he had known very few white men. First, there had been MisterHaggin, Derby and Bob, of Meringe; next, Captain Kellar and CaptainKellar's mate of the _Eugenie_; and, finally, Harley Kennan and theofficers of the _Ariel_. Without exception, he had found them alldifferent, and delightfully different, from the hordes of blacks he hadbeen taught to despise and to lord it over.
And Dag Daughtry had proved no exception from his first greeting of"Hello, you white man's dog, what 'r' you doin' herein nigger country?"Michael had responded coyly with an assumption of dignified aloofnessthat was given the lie by the eager tilt of his ears and the good-humourthat shone in his eyes. Nothing of this was missed by Dag Daughtry, whoknew a dog when he saw one, as he studied Michael in the light of thelanterns held by black boys where the whaleboats were landing cargo.
Two estimates the steward quickly made of Michael: he was a likable dog,genial-natured on the face of it, and he was a valuable dog. Because ofthose estimates Dag Daughtry glanced about him quickly. No one wasobserving. For the moment, only blacks stood about, and their eyes wereturned seaward where the sound of oars out of the darkness warned them tostand ready to receive the next cargo-laden boat. Off to the right,under another lantern, he could make out the Resident Commissioner'sclerk and the _Makambo's_ super-cargo heatedly discussing some error inthe bill of lading.
The steward flung another quick glance over Michael and made up his mind.He turned away casually and strolled along the beach out of the circle oflantern light. A hundred yards away he sat down in the sand and waited.
"Worth twenty pounds if a penny," he muttered to himself. "If I couldn'tget ten pounds for him, just like that, with a thank-you-ma'am, I'm asucker that don't know a terrier from a greyhound.--Sure, ten pounds, inany pub on Sydney beach."
And ten pounds, metamorphosed into quart bottles of beer, reared animmense and radiant vision, very like a brewery, inside his head.
A scurry of feet in the sand, and low sniffings, stiffened him toalertness. It was as he had hoped. The dog had liked him from thestart, and had followed him.
For Dag Daughtry had a way with him, as Michael was quickly to learn,when the man's hand reached out and clutched him, half by the jowl, halfby the slack of the neck under the ear. There was no threat in thatreach, nothing tentative nor timorous. It was hearty, all-confident, andit produced confidence in Michael. It was roughness without hurt,assertion without threat, surety without seduction. To him it was themost natural thing in the world thus to be familiarly seized and shakenabout by a total stranger, while a jovial voice muttered: "That's right,dog. Stick around, stick around, and you'll wear diamonds, maybe."
Certainly, Michael had never met a man so immediately likable. DagDaughtry knew, instinctively to be sure, how to get on with dogs. Bynature there was no cruelty in him. He never exceeded in peremptoriness,nor in petting. He did not overbid for Michael's friendliness. He didbid, but in a manner that conveyed no sense of bidding. Scarcely had hegiven Michael that introductory jowl-shake, when he released him andapparently forgot all about him.
He proceeded to light his pipe, using several matches as if the wind blewthem out. But while they burned close up to his fingers, and while hemade a simulation of prodigious puffing, his keen little blue eyes, undershaggy, grizzled brows, intently studied Michael. And Michael, earscocked and eyes intent, gazed at this stranger who seemed never to havebeen a stranger at all.
If anything, it was disappointment Michael experienced, in that thisdelightful, two-legged god took no further notice of him. He evenchallenged him to closer acquaintance with an invitation to play, with anabrupt movement lifting his paws from the ground and striking them down,stretched out well before, his body bent down from the rump in such acurve that almost his chest touched the sand, his stump of a tail wavingsignals of good nature while he uttered a sharp, inviting bark. And theman was uninterested, pulling stolidly away at his pipe, in the darknessfollowing upon the third match.
Never was there a more consummate love-making, with all the base intentof betrayal, than this cavalier seduction of Michael by the elderly, six-quart ship's steward. When Michael, not entirely unwitting of the snubof the man's lack of interest, stirred restlessly with a threat todepart, he had flung at him gruffly:
"Stick around, dog, stick around."
Dag Daughtry chuckled to himself, as Michael, advancing, sniffed histrousers' legs long and earnestly. And the man took advantage of hisnearness to study him some more, lighting his pipe and running over thedog's excellent lines.
"Some dog, some point
s," he said aloud approvingly. "Say, dog, you couldpull down ribbons like a candy-kid in any bench show anywheres. Onlything against you is that ear, and I could almost iron it out myself. Avet. could do it."
Carelessly he dropped a hand to Michael's ear, and, with tips of fingersinstinct with sensuous sympathy, began to manipulate the base of the earwhere its roots bedded in the tightness of skin-stretch over the skull.And Michael liked it. Never had a man's hand been so intimate with hisear without hurting it. But these fingers were provocative only ofphysical pleasure so keen that he twisted and writhed his whole body inacknowledgment.
Next came a long, steady, upward pull of the ear, the ear slipping slowlythrough the fingers to the very tip of it while it tingled exquisitelydown to its roots. Now to one ear, now to the other, this happened, andall the while the man uttered low words that Michael did not understandbut which he accepted as addressed to him.
"Head all right, good 'n' flat," Dag Daughtry murmured, first sliding hisfingers over it, and then lighting a match. "An' no wrinkles, 'n' somejaw, good 'n' punishing, an' not a shade too full in the cheek or tooempty."
He ran his fingers inside Michael's mouth and noted the strength andevenness of the teeth, measured the breadth of shoulders and depth ofchest, and picked up a foot. In the light of another match he examinedall four feet.
"Black, all black, every nail of them," said Daughtry, "an' as clean feetas ever a dog walked on, straight-out toes with the proper arch 'n' small'n' not too small. I bet your daddy and your mother cantered away withthe ribbons in their day."
Michael was for growing restless at such searching examination, butDaughtry, in the midst of feeling out the lines and build of the thighsand hocks, paused and took Michael's tail in his magic fingers, exploringthe muscles among which it rooted, pressing and prodding the adjacentspinal column from which it sprang, and twisting it about in a mostdaringly intimate way. And Michael was in an ecstasy, bracing hishindquarters to one side or the other against the caressing fingers. Withopen hands laid along his sides and partly under him, the man suddenlylifted him from the ground. But before he could feel alarm he was backon the ground again.
"Twenty-six or -seven--you're over twenty-five right now, I'll bet you onit, shillings to ha'pennies, and you'll make thirty when you get yourfull weight," Dag Daughtry told him. "But what of it? Lots of thejudges fancy the thirty-mark. An' you could always train off a fewounces. You're all dog n' all correct conformation. You've got theracing build and the fighting weight, an' there ain't no feathers on yourlegs."
"No, sir, Mr. Dog, your weight's to the good, and that ear can be ironedout by any respectable dog--doctor. I bet there's a hundred men inSydney right now that would fork over twenty quid for the right ofcalling you his."
And then, just that Michael should not make the mistake of thinking hewas being much made over, Daughtry leaned back, relighted his pipe, andapparently forgot his existence. Instead of bidding for good will, hewas bent on making Michael do the bidding.
And Michael did, bumping his flanks against Daughtry's knee; nudging hishead against Daughtry's hand, in solicitation for more of the blissfulear-rubbing and tail-twisting. Daughtry caught him by the jowl insteadand slowly moved his head back and forth as he addressed him:
"What man's dog are you? Maybe you're a nigger's dog, an' that ain'tright. Maybe some nigger's stole you, an' that'd be awful. Think of thecruel fates that sometimes happens to dogs. It's a damn shame. No whiteman's stand for a nigger ownin' the likes of you, an' here's one whiteman that ain't goin' to stand for it. The idea! A nigger ownin' you an'not knowin' how to train you. Of course a nigger stole you. If I laideyes on him right now I'd up and knock seven bells and the Saint Paulchimes out of 'm. Sure thing I would. Just show 'm to me, that's all,an' see what I'd do to him. The idea of you takin' orders from a niggeran' fetchin' 'n' carryin' for him! No, sir, dog, you ain't goin' to doit any more. You're comin' along of me, an' I reckon I won't have tourge you."
Dag Daughtry stood up and turned carelessly along the beach. Michaellooked after him, but did not follow. He was eager to, but had receivedno invitation. At last Daughtry made a low kissing sound with his lips.So low was it that he scarcely heard it himself and almost took it onfaith, or on the testimony of his lips rather than of his ears, that hehad made it. No human being could have heard it across the distance toMichael; but Michael heard it, and sprang away after in a great delightedrush.