“Come here, Killeny!”

Michael obeyed—­not crouching cringingly, but trotting eagerly, gladly, to Steward’s feet.

“Lie down, Boy.”

He turned half around as he flumped himself down with a sigh of relief, and, with a red flash of tongue, kissed Steward’s foot.

“Your dog, Steward?” Captain Duncan demanded in a smothered voice wherein struggled anger and shortness of breath.

“Yes, sir.  My dog.  What’s he been up to, sir?”

The totality of what Michael had been up to choked the Captain completely.  He could only gesture around from the dying cat to his torn clothes and bleeding wounds and the fox-terriers licking their injuries and whimpering at his feet.

“It’s too bad, sir . . . " Daughtry began.

“Too bad, hell!” the captain shut him off.  “Bo’s’n!  Throw that dog overboard.”

“Throw the dog overboard, sir, yes, sir,” the boatswain repeated, but hesitated.

Dag Daughtry’s face hardened unconsciously with the stiffening of his will to dogged opposition, which, in its own slow quiet way, would go to any length to have its way.  But he answered respectfully enough, his features, by a shrewd effort, relaxing into a seeming of his customary good-nature.

“He’s a good dog, sir, and an unoffending dog.  I can’t imagine what could a-made ’m break loose this way.  He must a-had cause, sir—­”

“He had,” one of the passengers, a coconut planter from the Shortlands, interjected.

The steward threw him a grateful glance and continued.

“He’s a good dog, sir, a most obedient dog, sir—­look at the way he minded me right in the thick of the scrap an’ come ‘n’ lay down.  He’s smart as chain-lightnin’, sir; do anything I tell him.  I’ll make him make friends.  See. . . "

Stepping over to the two hysterical terriers, Daughtry called Michael to him.

“He’s all right, savvee, Killeny, he all right,” he crooned, at the same time resting one hand on a terrier and the other on Michael.

The terrier whimpered and backed solidly against Captain Duncan’s legs, but Michael, with a slow bob of tail and unbelligerent ears, advanced to him, looked up to Steward to make sure, then sniffed his late antagonist, and even ran out his tongue in a caress to the side of the other’s ear.

“See, sir, no bad feelings,” Daughtry exulted.  “He plays the game, sir.  He’s a proper dog, he’s a man-dog.—­Here, Killeny!  The other one.  He all right.  Kiss and make up.  That’s the stuff.”

The other fox-terrier, the one with the injured foreleg, endured Michael’s sniff with no more than hysterical growls deep in the throat; but the flipping out of Michael’s tongue was too much.  The wounded terrier exploded in a futile snap at Michael’s tongue and nose.

“He all right, Killeny, he all right, sure,” Steward warned quickly.

With a bob of his tail in token of understanding, without a shade of resentment, Michael lifted a paw and with a playful casual stroke, dab-like, brought its weight on the other’s neck and rolled him, head-downward, over on the deck.  Though he snarled wrathily, Michael turned away composedly and looked up into Steward’s face for approval.