dog recoiled from the impact.  The other succeeded in taking Michael in flank, fetching blood and hurt with his teeth.  With an instant curve, that was almost spasmodic, of his body, Michael flung his flank clear, leaving the other’s mouth full of his hair, and at the same moment drove his teeth through an ear till they met.  The fox-terrier, with a shrill yelp of pain, sprang back so impetuously as to ribbon its ear as Michael’s teeth combed through it.

The first terrier was back upon him, and he was whirling to meet it, when a new and equally unprovoked assault was made upon him.  This time it was Captain Duncan, in a rage at sight of his slain cat.  The instep of his foot caught Michael squarely under the chest, half knocking the breath out of him and wholly lifting him into the air, so that he fell heavily on his side.  The two terriers were upon him, filling their mouths with his straight, wiry hair as they sank their teeth in.  Still on his side, as he was beginning to struggle to his feet, he clipped his jaws together on a leg of one, who screamed with pain and retreated on three legs, holding up the fourth, a fore leg, the bone of which Michael’s teeth had all but crushed.

Twice Michael slashed the other four-footed foe and then pursued him in a circle with Captain Duncan pursuing him in turn.  Shortening the distance by leaping across a chord of the arc of the other’s flight, Michael closed his jaws on the back and side of the neck.  Such abrupt arrest in mid-flight by the heavier dog brought the fox-terrier down on deck with, a heavy thump.  Simultaneous with this, Captain Duncan’s second kick landed, communicating such propulsion to Michael as to tear his clenched teeth through the flesh and out of the flesh of the fox-terrier.

And Michael turned on the Captain.  What if he were a white god?  In his rage at so many assaults of so many enemies, Michael, who had been peacefully looking for Kwaque and Steward, did not stop to reckon.  Besides, it was a strange white god upon whom he had never before laid eyes.

At the beginning he had snarled and growled.  But it was a more serious affair to attack a god, and no sound came from him as he leaped to meet the leg flying toward him in another kick.  As with the cat, he did not leap straight at it.  To the side to avoid, and in with a curve of body as it passed, was his way.  He had learned the trick with many blacks at Meringe and on board the Eugenie, so that as often he succeeded as failed at it.  His teeth came together in the slack of the white duck trousers.  The consequent jerk on Captain Duncan’s leg made that infuriated mariner lose his balance.  Almost he fell forward on his face, part recovered himself with a violent effort, stumbled over Michael who was in for another bite, tottered wildly around, and sat down on the deck.

How long he might have sat there to recover his breath is problematical, for he rose as rapidly as his stoutness would permit, spurred on by Michael’s teeth already sunk into the fleshy part of his shoulder.  Michael missed his calf as he uprose, but tore the other leg of the trousers to shreds and received a kick that lifted him a yard above the deck in a half-somersault and landed him on his back on deck.