Michael, Brother of Jerry. Джек Лондон

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СКАЧАТЬ the corner of the deck-house to the stairs, made his hind feet slip and slide across the smooth planks.

      Almost in a trice he was back, both slippers in his mouth, which he deposited at the steward’s feet.

      “The more I know dogs the more amazin’ marvellous they are to me,” Dag Daughtry, after he had compassed his fourth bottle, confided in monologue to the Shortlands planter that night just before bedtime. “Take Killeny Boy. He don’t do things for me mechanically, just because he’s learned to do ’m. There’s more to it. He does ’m because he likes me. I can’t give you the hang of it, but I feel it, I know it.

      “Maybe, this is what I’m drivin’ at. Killeny can’t talk, as you ’n’ me talk, I mean; so he can’t tell me how he loves me, an’ he’s all love, every last hair of ’m. An’ actions speakin’ louder ’n’ words, he tells me how he loves me by doin’ these things for me. Tricks? Sure. But they make human speeches of eloquence cheaper ’n dirt. Sure it’s speech. Dog-talk that’s tongue-tied. Don’t I know? Sure as I’m a livin’ man born to trouble as the sparks fly upward, just as sure am I that it makes ’m happy to do tricks for me.. just as it makes a man happy to lend a hand to a pal in a ticklish place, or a lover happy to put his coat around the girl he loves to keep her warm. I tell you.. ”

      Here, Dag Daughtry broke down from inability to express the concepts fluttering in his beer-excited, beer-sodden brain, and, with a stutter or two, made a fresh start.

      “You know, it’s all in the matter of talkin’, an’ Killeny can’t talk. He’s got thoughts inside that head of his – you can see ’m shinin’ in his lovely brown eyes – but he can’t get ’em across to me. Why, I see ’m tryin’ to tell me sometimes so hard that he almost busts. There’s a big hole between him an’ me, an’ language is about the only bridge, and he can’t get over the hole, though he’s got all kinds of ideas an’ feelings just like mine.

      “But, say! The time we get closest together is when I play the harmonica an’ he yow-yows. Music comes closest to makin’ the bridge. It’s a regular song without words. And.. I can’t explain how.. but just the same, when we’ve finished our song, I know we’ve passed a lot over to each other that don’t need words for the passin’.”

      “Why, d’ye know, when I’m playin’ an’ he’s singin’, it’s a regular duet of what the sky-pilots ’d call religion an’ knowin’ God. Sure, when we sing together I’m absorbin’ religion an’ gettin’ pretty close up to God. An’ it’s big, I tell you. Big as the earth an’ ocean an’ sky an’ all the stars. I just seem to get hold of a sense that we’re all the same stuff after all – you, me, Killeny Boy, mountains, sand, salt water, worms, mosquitoes, suns, an’ shootin’ stars an’ blazin comets.. ”

      Day Daughtry left his flight as beyond his own grasp of speech, and concluded, his half embarrassment masked by braggadocio over Michael:

      “Oh, believe me, they don’t make dogs like him every day in the week. Sure, I stole ’m. He looked good to me. An’ if I had it over, knowin’ as I do known ’m now, I’d steal ’m again if I lost a leg doin’ it. That’s the kind of a dog he is.”

      CHAPTER IX

      The morning the Makambo entered Sydney harbour, Captain Duncan had another try for Michael. The port doctor’s launch was coming alongside, when he nodded up to Daughtry, who was passing along the deck:

      “Steward, I’ll give you twenty pounds.”

      “No, sir, thank you, sir,” was Dag Daughtry’s answer. “I couldn’t bear to part with him.”

      “Twenty-five pounds, then. I can’t go beyond that. Besides, there are plenty more Irish terriers in the world.”

      “That’s what I’m thinkin’, sir. An’ I’ll get one for you. Right here in Sydney. An’ it won’t cost you a penny, sir.”

      “But I want Killeny Boy,” the captain persisted.

      “An’ so do I, which is the worst of it, sir. Besides, I got him first.”

      “Twenty-five sovereigns is a lot of money.. for a dog,” Captain Duncan said.

      “An’ Killeny Boy’s a lot of dog.. for the money,” the steward retorted. “Why, sir, cuttin’ out all sentiment, his tricks is worth more ’n that. Him not recognizing me when I don’t want ’m to is worth fifty pounds of itself. An’ there’s his countin’ an’ his singin’, an’ all the rest of his tricks. Now, no matter how I got him, he didn’t have them tricks. Them tricks are mine. I taught him them. He ain’t the dog he was when he come on board. He’s a whole lot of me now, an’ sellin’ him would be like sellin’ a piece of myself.”

      “Thirty pounds,” said the captain with finality.

      “No, sir, thankin’ you just the same, sir,” was Daughtry’s refusal.

      And Captain Duncan was forced to turn away in order to greet the port doctor coming over the side.

      Scarcely had the Makambo passed quarantine, and while on her way up harbour to dock, when a trim man-of-war launch darted in to her side and a trim lieutenant mounted the Makambo’s boarding-ladder. His mission was quickly explained. The Albatross, British cruiser of the second class, of which he was fourth lieutenant, had called in at Tulagi with dispatches from the High Commissioner of the English South Seas. A scant twelve hours having intervened between her arrival and the Makambo’s departure, the Commissioner of the Solomons and Captain Kellar had been of the opinion that the missing dog had been carried away on the steamer. Knowing that the Albatross would beat her to Sydney, the captain of the Albatross had undertaken to look up the dog. Was the dog, an Irish terrier answering to the name of Michael, on board?

      Captain Duncan truthfully admitted that it was, though he most unveraciously shielded Dag Daughtry by repeating his yarn of the dog coming on board of itself. How to return the dog to Captain Kellar? – was the next question; for the Albatross was bound on to New Zealand. Captain Duncan settled the matter.

      “The Makambo will be back in Tulagi in eight weeks,” he told the lieutenant, “and I’ll undertake personally to deliver the dog to its owner. In the meantime we’ll take good care of it. Our steward has sort of adopted it, so it will be in good hands.”

* * * * *

      “Seems we don’t either of us get the dog,” Daughtry commented resignedly, when Captain Duncan had explained the situation.

      But when Daughtry turned his back and started off along the deck, his constitutional obstinacy tightened his brows so that the Shortlands planter, observing it, wondered what the captain had been rowing him about.

* * * * *

      Despite his six quarts a day and all his easy-goingness of disposition, Dag Daughtry possessed certain integrities. Though he could steal a dog, or a cat, without a twinge of conscience, he could not but be faithful to his salt, being so made. He could not draw wages for being a ship steward without faithfully performing the functions of ship steward. Though his mind was firmly made up, during the several days of the Makambo in Sydney, lying alongside the Burns Philp Dock, he saw to every detail of the cleaning up after the last crowd of outgoing passengers, and to every detail of preparation for the next crowd of incoming passengers who had tickets bought for the passage far away to the coral seas and the cannibal isles.

      In the midst of this devotion to his duty, he took a night off and part of two afternoons. The night off was СКАЧАТЬ