No one understood, not even Villa Kennan.  But Michael understood.  He was looking for that vanished world which had rushed back upon him at sound of his old-time name.  If this name could come to him out of the Nothingness, as this woman had whom once he had seen treading the beach at Tulagi, then could all other things of Tulagi and the Nothingness come to him.  As she was there, before him in the living flesh, uttering his name, so might Captain Kellar, and Mister Haggin, and Jerry be there, somewhere in the very room or just outside the door.

He ran to the door, whimpering as he scratched at it.

“Maybe he thinks there is something outside,” said Jacob Henderson, opening the door for him.

And Michael did so think.  As a matter of course, through that open door, he was prepared to have the South-Pacific Ocean flow in, bearing on its bosom schooners and ships, islands and reefs, and all men and animals and things he once had known and still remembered.

But no past flowed in through the door.  Outside was the usual present.  He came back dejectedly to the woman, who still called him Michael as she petted him.  She, at any rate, was real.  Next he carefully smelled and identified the man with the beach of Tulagi and the deck of the Ariel, and again his excitement began to mount.

“Oh, Harley, I know it is he!” Villa cried.  “Can’t you test him?  Can’t you prove him?”

“But how?” Harley pondered.  “He seems to recognize his name.  It excites him.  And though he never knew us very well, he seems to remember us and to be excited by us, too.  If only he could talk . . . "

“Oh, talk!  Talk!” Villa pleaded with Michael, catching both sides of his head and jaws in her hands and swaying him back and forth.

“Be careful, madam,” Jacob Henderson warned.  “He is a very sour dog; and he don’t let people take such liberties.”

“He does me,” she laughed, half-hysterically.  “Because he knows me. . . .  Harley!” She broke off as the great idea dawned on her.  “I have a test.  Listen!  Remember, Jerry was a nigger-chaser before we got him.  And Michael was a nigger-chaser.  You talk in beche-de-mer.  Appear angry with some black boy, and see how it will affect him.”

“I’ll have to remember hard to resurrect any beche-de-mer,” Harley said, nodding approval of the suggestion.

“At the same time I’ll distract him,” she rushed on.

Sitting down and bending forward to Michael so that his head was buried in her arms and breast, she began swaying him and crooning to him as was her wont with Jerry.  Nor did he resent the liberty she took, and, like Jerry, he yielded to her crooning and softly began to croon with her.  She signalled Harley with her eyes.

“My word!” he began in tones of wrath.  “What name you fella boy stop ’m along this fella place?  You make ’m me cross along you any amount!”