On his way below, he encountered Captain Duncan, who saw fit to warn him:
“No shannigan with Killeny Boy, Steward1. He must go back to Tulagi with us.”
“Yes, sir,” the steward agreed. “An’ I’m keepin’ him tight in my room to make safe. Want to see him, sir?”
The very frankness of the invitation made the captain suspicious, and the thought flashed through his mind that perhaps Killeny Boy was already hidden ashore2 somewhere by the dog-stealing steward.
“Yes, indeed I’d like to say how-do-you-do to him,” Captain Duncan answered.
And his was genuine surprise, on entering the steward’s room, to behold3 Michael just rousing from his curled-up sleep on the floor. But when he left, his surprise would have been shocking could he have seen through the closed door what immediately began to take place. Out through the open port-hole, in a steady stream, Daughtry was passing the contents of the room. Everything went that belonged to him, including the turtle-shell and the photographs and calendars on the wall. Michael, with the command of silence laid upon him, went last. Remained only a sea-chest and two suit-cases, themselves too large for the port-hole but bare of contents.
When Daughtry sauntered along the main deck a few minutes later and paused for a gossip with the customs officer and a quartermaster at the head of the gang-plank4, Captain Duncan little dreamed that his casual glance was resting on his steward for the last time. He watched him go down the gang-plank empty-handed, with no dog at his heels, and stroll off along the wharf5 under the electric lights.
Ten minutes after Captain Duncan saw the last of his broad back, Daughtry, in the launch with his belongings6 and heading for Jackson Bay, was hunched7 over Michael and caressing8 him, while Kwaque, crooning with joy under his breath that he was with all that was precious to him in the world, felt once again in the side-pocket of his flimsy coat to make sure that his beloved jews’ harp9 had not been left behind.
Dag Daughtry was paying for Michael, and paying well. Among other things, he had not cared to arouse suspicion by drawing his wages from Burns Philp. The twenty pounds due him he had abandoned, and this was the very sum, that night on the beach at Tulagi, he had decided10 he could realize from the sale of Michael. He had stolen him to sell. He was paying for him the sales price that had tempted11 him.
For, as one has well said: the horse abases12 the base, ennobles the noble. Likewise the dog. The theft of a dog to sell for a price had been the abasement13 worked by Michael on Dag Daughtry. To pay the price out of sheer heart-love that could recognize no price too great to pay, had been the ennoblement of Dag Daughtry which Michael had worked. And as the launch chug-chugged across the quiet harbour under the southern stars, Dag Daughtry would have risked and tossed his life into the bargain in a battle to continue to have and to hold the dog he had originally conceived of as being interchangeable for so many dozens of beer.
* * * * *
The Mary Turner, towed out by a tug14, sailed shortly after daybreak, and Daughtry, Kwaque, and Michael looked their last for ever on Sydney Harbour.
“Once again these old eyes have seen this fair haven,” the Ancient Mariner15, beside them gazing, babbled16; and Daughtry could not help but notice the way the wheat-farmer and the pawnbroker17 pricked18 their ears to listen and glanced each to the other with scant19 eyes. “It was in ’52, in 1852, on such a day as this, all drinking and singing along the decks, we cleared from Sydney in the Wide Awake. A pretty craft, oh sirs, a most clever and pretty craft. A crew, a brave crew, all youngsters, all of us, fore20 and aft, no man was forty, a mad, gay crew. The captain was an elderly gentleman of twenty-eight, the third officer another of eighteen, the down, untouched of steel, like so much young velvet21 on his cheek. He, too, died in the longboat. And the captain gasped22 out his last under the palm trees of the isle23 unnamable while the brown maidens24 wept about him and fanned the air to his parching25 lungs.”
Dag Daughtry heard no more, for he turned below to take up his new routine of duty. But while he made up bunks27 with fresh linen28 and directed Kwaque’s efforts to cleaning long-neglected floors, he shook his head to himself and muttered, “He’s a keen ’un. He’s a keen ’un. All ain’t fools that look it.”
The fine lines of the Mary Turner were explained by the fact that she had been built for seal-hunting; and for the same reason on board of her was room and to spare. The forecastle with bunk26-space for twelve, bedded but eight Scandinavian seamen29. The five staterooms of the cabin accommodated the three treasure-hunters, the Ancient Mariner, and the mate—the latter a large-bodied, gentle-souled Russian-Finn, known as Mr. Jackson through inability of his shipmates to pronounce the name he had signed on the ship’s articles.
Remained the steerage, just for’ard of the cabin, separated from it by a stout30 bulkhead and entered by a companionway on the main deck. On this deck, between the break of the poop and the steerage companion, stood the galley31. In the steerage itself, which possessed32 a far larger living-space than the cabin, were six capacious bunks, each double the width of the forecastle bunks, and each curtained and with no bunk above it.
“Some fella glory-hole, eh, Kwaque?” Daughtry told his seventeen-years-old brown-skinned Papuan with the withered33 ancient face of a centenarian, the legs of a living skeleton, and the huge-stomached torso of an elderly Japanese wrestler34. “Eh, Kwaque! What you fella think?”
And Kwaque, too awed35 by the spaciousness36 to speak, eloquently37 rolled his eyes in agreement.
“You likee this piecee bunk?” the cook, a little old Chinaman, asked the steward with eager humility38, inviting39 the white man’s acceptance of his own bunk with a wave of arm.
Daughtry shook his head. He had early learned that it was wise to get along well with sea-cooks, since sea-cocks were notoriously given to going suddenly lunatic and slicing and hacking40 up their shipmates with butcher knives and meat cleavers41 on the slightest remembered provocation42. Besides, there was an equally good bunk all the way across the width of the steerage from the Chinaman’s. The bunk next on the port side to the cook’s and abaft43 of it Daughtry allotted44 to Kwaque. Thus he retained for himself and Michael the entire starboard side with its three bunks. The next one abaft of his own he named “Killeny Boy’s,” and called on Kwaque and the cook to take notice. Daughtry had a sense that the cook, whose name had been quickly volunteered as Ah Moy, was not entirely45 satisfied with the arrangement; but it affected47 him no more than a momentary48 curiosity about a Chinaman who drew the line at a dog taking a bunk in the same apartment with him.
Half an hour later, returning, from setting the cabin aright, to the steerage for Kwaque to serve him with a bottle of beer, Daughtry observed that Ah Moy had moved his entire bunk belongings across the steerage to the third bunk on the starboard side. This had put him with Daughtry and Michael and left Kwaque with half the steerage to himself. Daughtry’s curiosity recrudesced.
“What name along that fella Chink?” he demanded of Kwaque. “He no like ’m you fella boy stop ’m along same fella side along him. What for? My word! What name? That fella Chink make ’m me cross along him too much!”
“Suppose ’m that fella Chink maybe he think ’m me kai-kai along him,” Kwaque grinned in one of his rare jokes.
“All right,” the steward concluded. “We find out. You move ’m along my bunk, I move ’m along that fella Chink’s bunk.”
This accomplished49, so that Kwaque, Michael, and Ah Moy occupied the starboard side and Daughtry alone bunked50 on the port side, he went on deck and aft to his duties. On his next return he found Ah Moy had transferred back to the port side, but this time into the last bunk aft.
“Seems the beggar’s taken a fancy to me,” the steward smiled to himself.
Nor was he capable of guessing Ah Moy’s reason for bunking51 always on the opposite side from Kwaque.
“I changee,” the little old cook explained, with anxious eyes to please and placate52, in response to Daughtry’s direct question. “All the time like that, changee, plentee changee. You savvee?”
Daughtry did not savvee, and shook his head, while Ah Moy’s
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