by Jack London
CHAPTER XI
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 agreat laugh rechristened the schooner "the Ship of Fools." But that wassome weeks after. In the meantime he so fulfilled his duties that noteven Captain Doane could conjure a shadow of complaint.
Especially did the steward attend upon the Ancient Mariner, for whom hehad come to conceive a strong admiration, if not affection. The oldfellow 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 appreciatethe spaciousness of the Ancient Mariner, who had evidently livedspaciously and who was ever for sharing the treasure they sought.
"You'll get your whack, steward, if it comes out of my share," hefrequently assured Daughtry at times of special kindness on the latter'spart. "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 ormuch of it."
And so the Ship of Fools sailed on, all aft fooling and befouling, fromthe guileless-eyed, gentle-souled Finnish mate, who, with the scent oftreasure pungent in his nostrils, with a duplicate key stole the ship'sdaily position from Captain Doane's locked desk, to Ah Moy, the cook, whokept Kwaque at a distance and never whispered warning to the others ofthe risk they ran from continual contact with the carrier of the terribledisease.
Kwaque himself had neither thought nor worry of the matter. He knew thething as a thing that occasionally happened to human creatures. Itbothered him, from the pain standpoint, scarcely at all, and it neverentered his kinky head that his master did not know about it. For thesame reason he never suspected why Ah Moy kept him so at a distance. Norhad Kwaque other worries. His god, over all gods of sea and jungle, heworshipped, 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 worshippeddid he love and worship the six-quart man. To Michael and Kwaque, thedaily, even hourly, recognition and consideration of Dag Daughtry wastantamount to resting continuously in the bosom of Abraham. The god ofMessrs. Doane, Nishikanta, and Grimshaw was a graven god whose name wasGold. The god of Kwaque and Michael was a living god, whose voice couldbe always heard, whose arms could be always warm, the pulse of whoseheart 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 andsing with him all songs and tunes he sang or hummed. With a quantity orpitch even more of genius or unusualness in him than in Jerry, Michaellearned more quickly, and since the way of his education was singing, hecame to sing far beyond the best Villa Kennan ever taught Jerry.
Michael could howl, or sing, rather (because his howling was so mellowand so controlled), any air that was not beyond his register that Stewardelected to sing with him. In addition, he could sing by himself, andunmistakably, such simple airs as "Home, Sweet Home," "God save theKing," and "The Sweet By and By." Even alone, prompted by Steward ascore 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 outhis Jews' harp and by the sheer compellingness of the primitiveinstrument make Michael sing with him the barbaric and devil-devilrhythms of King William Island. Another master of song, but one in whomMichael 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, whenMichael had charged upon him at sight to destroy him. And the humanvoice, the voice of a god, issuing from the throat of the tiny,snow-white bird, had made Michael go back on his haunches, while, witheyes and nostrils, he quested the steerage for the human who had spoken.And there was no human . . . only a small cockatoo that twisted his headimpudently and sidewise at him and repeated, "Cocky."
The taboo of the chicken Michael had been well taught in his earliestdays at Meringe. Chickens, esteemed by _Mister_ Haggin and his white-godfellows, were things that dogs must even defend instead of ever attack.But this thing, itself no chicken, with the seeming of a wild featheredthing of the jungle that was fair game for any dog, talked to him withthe voice of a god.
"Get off your foot," it commanded so peremptorily, so humanly, as againto startle Michael and made him quest about the steerage for thegod-throat that had uttered it.
"Get off your foot, or I'll throw the leg of Moses at you," was the nextcommand from the tiny feathered thing.
After that came a farrago of Chinese, so like the voice of Ah Moy, thatagain, though for the last time, Michael sought about the steerage forthe utterer.
At this Cocky burst into such wild and fantastic shrieks of laughter thatMichael, ears pricked, head cocked to one side, identified in the fibresof the laughter the fibres of the various voices he had just previouslyheard.
And Cocky, only a few ounces in weight, less than half a pound, a tinyframework of fragile bone covered with a handful of feathers and incasinga 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 commandedMichael's respect from the first. And Michael, who with a singlecareless paw-stroke could have broken Cocky's slender neck and put outfor ever the brave brightness of Cocky's eyes, was careful of him fromthe first. And he permitted him a myriad liberties that he would neverhave permitted Kwaque.
Ingrained in Michael's heredity, from the very beginning of four-leggeddogs on earth, was the _defence of the meat_. He never reasoned it.Automatic and involuntary as his heart-beating and air-breathing, was hisdefence of his meat once he had his paw on it, his teeth in it. Only toSteward, by an extreme effort of will and control, could he accord theright to touch his meat once he had himself touched it. Even Kwaque, whomost usually fed him under Steward's instructions, knew that the safetyof fingers and flesh resided in having nothing further whatever to dowith anything of food once in Michael's possession. But Cocky, a bit offeathery 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 ofthe meat.
Perched on the rim of Michael's pannikin, this inconsiderable adventurerfrom out of the dark into the sun of life, a mere spark and mote betweenthe darks, by a ruffing of his salmon-pink crest, a swift and enormousdilation of his bead-black pupils, and a raucous imperative cry, as ofall the gods, in his throat, could make Michael give back and permit thefastidious selection of the choicest tidbits of his dish.
For Cocky had a way with him, and ways and ways. He, who was sheerbladed steel in the imperious flashing of his will, could swashbuckle andbully like any over-seas roisterer, or wheedle as wickedly winningly asthe first woman out of Eden or the last woman of that descent. WhenCocky, balanced on one leg, the other leg in the air as the foot of itheld 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'swill or whimsey so delivered.
Cocky became more intimately Michael's because, very early, Ah Moy washedhis hands of the bird. Ah Moy had bought him in Sydney from a sailor foreighteen shillings and chaffered an hour over the bargain. And when hesaw Cocky, one day, perched and voluble, on the twisted fingers ofKwaque's left hand, Ah Moy discovered such instant distaste for the birdthat not even eighteen shillings, coupled with possession of Cocky andpossible contact, had any value to him.
"You likee him? You wanchee?" he proffered.
"Changee for changee!" Kwaque queried back, taking for granted that itwas an offer to exchange and wondering whether the little old cook hadbecome 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 Englishwas already adding pidgin English. "Suppose 'm me fella no got 'm whatyou fella likee?"
"No fashion changee," Ah Moy reiterated. "You wanchee, you likee he stopalong 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 thejungle roof of the island of Santo, in the New Hebrides, who had beennetted by a two-legged black man-eater and sold for six sticks of tobaccoand a shingle hatchet to a Scotch trader dying of malaria, and in turnhad 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 oldSpanish design, for the appraised value of six shillings and sixpence ina poker game in the firemen's forecastle, for a second-hand accordionworth at least twenty shillings, and on for eighteen shillings cash to alittle old withered Chinaman--so did pass Cocky, as mortal or as immortalas 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 inMacao for cause and fled away to sea, to Kwaque, a leprous Black Papuanwho was slave to one, Dag Daughtry, himself a servant of other men towhom he humbly admitted "Yes, sir," and "No, sir," and "Thank you, sir."
One other comrade Michael found, although Cocky was no party to thefriendship. This was Scraps, the awkward young Newfoundland puppy, whowas the property of no one, unless of the schooner _Mary Turner_ herself,for no man, fore or aft, claimed ownership, while every man disclaimedhaving brought him on board. So he was called Scraps, and, since he wasnobody's dog, was everybody's dog--so much so, that Mr. Jackson promisedto knock Ah Moy's block off if he did not feed the puppy well, whileSigurd Halvorsen, in the forecastle, did his best to knock off HenrikGjertsen's block when the latter was guilty of kicking Scraps out of hisway. Yea, even more. When Simon Nishikanta, huge and gross as in theflesh he was and for ever painting delicate, insipid, feministic water-colours, when he threw his deck-chair at Scraps for clumsily knockingover his easel, he found the ham-like hand of Grimshaw so instant andheavy on his shoulder as to whirl him half about, almost fling him to thedeck, and leave him lame-muscled and black-and-blued for days.
Michael, full grown, mature, was so merry-hearted an individual that hefound all delight in interminable romps with Scraps. So strong was theplay-instinct in him, as well as was his constitution strong, that hecontinually outplayed Scraps to abject weariness, so that he could onlylie on the deck and pant and laugh through air-draughty lips and dabfutilely in the air with weak forepaws at Michael's continued ferocious-acted onslaughts. And this, despite the fact that Scraps out-bullied himand out-scaled him at least three times, and was as careless andunwitting of the weight of his legs or shoulders as a baby elephant on alawn of daisies. Given his breath back again, Scraps was as ripe as everfor another frolic, and Michael was just as ripe to meet him. All ofwhich was splendid training for Michael, keeping him in the tiptop ofphysical condition and mental wholesomeness.