“Try him,” was the answer.

The steward put out his hand to pat him on the head, but withdrew it hastily as Michael, with bristle and growl, viciously bared his teeth.

“Go on, go on, he won’t hurt you,” the delighted passengers urged.

This time the steward’s hand was barely missed by a snap, and he leaped back as Michael ferociously sprang the length of the rope at him.

“Take ’m away!” Dag Daughtry roared angrily.  “The treacherous beast!  I wouldn’t take ’m for gift!”

And as they obeyed, Michael strained backward in a paroxysm of rage, making fierce short jumps to the end of the tether as he snarled and growled with utmost fierceness at the steward.

“Eh?  Who’d say he ever seen me in his life?” Daughtry demanded triumphantly.  “It’s a trick I never seen played myself, but I’ve heard tell about it.  The old-time poachers in England used to do it with their lurcher dogs.  If they did get the dog of a strange poacher, no gamekeeper or constable could identify ’m by the dog—­mum was the word.”

“Tell you what, he knows things, that Killeny.  He knows English.  Right now, in my room, with the door open, an’ so as he can find ’m, is shoes, slippers, cap, towel, hair-brush, an’ tobacco pouch.  What’ll it be?  Name it an’ he’ll fetch it.”

So immediately and variously did the passengers respond that every article was called for.

“Just one of you choose,” the steward advised.  “The rest of you pick ’m out.”

“Slipper,” said Captain Duncan, selected by acclamation.

“One or both?” Daughtry asked.

“Both.”

“Come here, Killeny,” Daughtry began, bending toward him but leaping back from the snap of jaws that clipped together close to his nose.

“My mistake,” he apologized.  “I ain’t told him the other game was over.  Now just listen an, watch. ‘n’ see if you can catch on to the tip I’m goin’ to give ’m.”

No one saw anything, heard anything, yet Michael, with a whine of eagerness and joy, with laughing mouth and wriggling body, was upon the steward, licking his hands madly, squirming and twisting in the embrace of the loved hands he had so recently threatened, making attempts at short upward leaps as he flashed his tongue upward toward his lord’s face.  For hard it was on Michael, a nerve and mental strain of the severest for him so to control himself as to play-act anger and threat of hurt to his beloved Steward.

“Takes him a little time to get over a thing like that,” Daughtry explained, as he soothed Michael down.

“Now, Killeny!  Go fetch ’m slipper!  Wait!  Fetch ’m one slipper.  Fetch ’m two slipper.”

Michael looked up with pricked ears, and with eyes filled with query as all his intelligent consciousness suffused them.

“Two slipper!  Fetch ’m quick!”

He was off and away in a scurry of speed that seemed to flatten him close to the deck, and that, as he turned the corner of the deck-house to the stairs, made his hind feet slip and slide across the smooth planks.