by Jack London
CHAPTER V
For a number of days Michael saw only Steward and Kwaque. This wasbecause he was confined to the steward's stateroom. Nobody else knewthat he was on board, and Dag Daughtry, thoroughly aware that he hadstolen a white man's dog, hoped to keep his presence secret and smugglehim ashore when the _Makambo_ docked in Sydney.
Quickly the steward learned Michael's pre-eminent teachableness. In thecourse of his careful feeding of him, he gave him an occasional chickenbone. Two lessons, which would scarcely be called lessons, since both ofthem occurred within five minutes and each was not over half a minute induration, sufficed to teach Michael that only on the floor of the room inthe corner nearest the door could he chew chicken bones. Thereafter,without prompting, as a matter of course when handed a bone, he carriedit to the corner.
And why not? He had the wit to grasp what Steward desired of him; he hadthe heart that made it a happiness for him to serve. Steward was a godwho was kind, who loved him with voice and lip, who loved him with touchof hand, rub of nose, or enfolding arm. As all service flourishes in thesoil of love, so with Michael. Had Steward commanded him to forego thechicken bone after it was in the corner, he would have served him byforegoing. Which is the way of the dog, the only animal that willcheerfully and gladly, with leaping body of joy, leave its food uneatenin order to accompany or to serve its human master.
Practically all his waking time off duty, Dag Daughtry spent with theimprisoned Michael, who, at command, had quickly learned to refrain fromwhining and barking. And during these hours of companionship Michaellearned many things. Daughtry found that he already understood andobeyed simple things such as "no," "yes," "get up," and "lie down," andhe improved on them, teaching him, "Go into the bunk and lie down," "Gounder the bunk," "Bring one shoe," "Bring two shoes." And almost withoutany work at all, he taught him to roll over, to say his prayers, to playdead, to sit up and smoke a pipe with a hat on his head, and not merelyto 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 withMichael's nose, Daughtry would simply say, "No can." Nor would Michaeltouch the food till he received the welcome, "Can do." Daughtry, withthe "no can" still in force, would leave the stateroom, and, though heremained away half an hour or half a dozen hours, on his return he wouldfind the food untouched and Michael, perhaps, asleep in the corner at thehead of the bunk which had been allotted him for a bed. Early in thistrick once when the steward had left the room and Michael's eager nosewas within an inch of the prohibited morsel, Kwaque, playfully inclined,reached for the morsel himself and received a lacerated hand from thequick flash and clip of Michael's jaws.
None of the tricks that he was ever eager to do for Steward, wouldMichael do for Kwaque, despite the fact that Kwaque had no touch ofmeanness or viciousness in him. The point was that Michael had beentrained, from his first dawn of consciousness, to differentiate betweenblack men and white men. Black men were always the servants of whitemen--or such had been his experience; and always they were objects ofsuspicion, ever bent on wreaking mischief and requiring careful watching.The cardinal duty of a dog was to serve his white god by keeping avigilant eye on all blacks that came about.
Yet Michael permitted Kwaque to serve him in matters of food, water, andother offices, at first in the absence of Steward attending to his shipduties, and, later, at any time. For he realized, without thinking aboutit at all, that whatever Kwaque did for him, whatever food Kwaque spreadfor him, really proceeded, not from Kwaque, but from Kwaque's master whowas also his master. Yet Kwaque bore no grudge against Michael, and washimself so interested in his lord's welfare and comfort--this lord whohad saved his life that terrible day on King William Island from the twogrief-stricken pig-owners--that he cherished Michael for his lord's sake.Seeing the dog growing into his master's affection, Kwaque himselfdeveloped a genuine affection for Michael--much in the same way that heworshipped anything of the steward's, whether the shoes he polished forhim, the clothes he brushed and cleaned for him, or the six bottles ofbeer he put into the ice-chest each day for him.
In truth, there was nothing of the master-quality in Kwaque, whileMichael was a natural aristocrat. Michael, out of love, would serveSteward, but Michael lorded it over the kinky-head. Kwaque possessedoverwhelmingly the slave-nature, while in Michael there was little moreof the slave-nature than was found in the North American Indians when thevain attempt was made to make them into slaves on the plantations ofCuba. All of which was no personal vice of Kwaque or virtue of Michael.Michael's heredity, rigidly selected for ages by man, was chieflycomposed of fierceness and faithfulness. And fierceness andfaithfulness, together, invariably produce pride. And pride cannot existwithout honour, nor can honour without poise.
Michael's crowning achievement, under Daughtry's tutelage, in the firstdays in the stateroom, was to learn to count up to five. Many hours ofwork were required, however, in spite of his unusual high endowment ofintelligence. 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 fetchthree, and neither two, nor four, but three would Michael bring forth anddeliver into his hand. When Daughtry threw three under the bunk anddemanded four, Michael would deliver the three, search about vainly forthe fourth, then dance pleadingly with bobs of tail and half-leaps aboutSteward, and finally leap into the bed and secure the fourth from underthe pillow or among the blankets.
It was the same with other known objects. Up to five, whether shoes orshirts or pillow-slips, Michael would fetch the number requested. Andbetween the mathematical mind of Michael, who counted to five, and themind of the ancient black at Tulagi, who counted sticks of tobacco inunits of five, was a distance shorter than that between Michael and DagDaughtry who could do multiplication and long division. In the samemanner, up the same ladder of mathematical ability, a still greaterdistance separated Dag Daughtry from Captain Duncan, who by mathematicsnavigated the _Makambo_. Greatest mathematical distance of all was thatbetween Captain Duncan's mind and the mind of an astronomer who chartedthe heavens and navigated a thousand million miles away among the starsand who tossed, a mere morsel of his mathematical knowledge, the fewshreds of information to Captain Duncan that enabled him to know from dayto 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 thesteward grew wearisome, he could transport himself to King William Islandby thrusting the primitive instrument between his jaws and fanning weirdrhythms from it with his hand, and when he thus crossed space and time,Michael sang--or howled, rather, though his howl possessed the same softmellowness as Jerry's. Michael did not want to howl, but the chemistryof his being was such that he reacted to music as compulsively aselements react on one another in the laboratory.
While he lay perdu in Steward's stateroom, his voice was the one thingthat was not to be heard, so Kwaque was forced to seek the solace of hisjews' harp in the sweltering heat of the gratings over the fire-room. Butthis did not continue long, for, either according to blind chance, or tothe lines of fate written in the book of life ere ever the foundations ofthe world were laid, Michael was scheduled for an adventure that wasprofoundly to affect, not alone his own destiny, but the destinies ofKwaque and Dag Daughtry and determine the very place of their death andburial.