“You’ll get your whack, steward, if it comes out of my share,” he frequently assured Daughtry at times of special kindness on the latter’s part.  “There’s oodles of it, and oodles of it, and, without kith or kin, I have so little time longer to live that I shall not need it much or much of it.”

And so the Ship of Fools sailed on, all aft fooling and befouling, from the guileless-eyed, gentle-souled Finnish mate, who, with the scent of treasure pungent in his nostrils, with a duplicate key stole the ship’s daily position from Captain Doane’s locked desk, to Ah Moy, the cook, who kept Kwaque at a distance and never whispered warning to the others of the risk they ran from continual contact with the carrier of the terrible disease.

Kwaque himself had neither thought nor worry of the matter.  He knew the thing as a thing that occasionally happened to human creatures.  It bothered him, from the pain standpoint, scarcely at all, and it never entered his kinky head that his master did not know about it.  For the same reason he never suspected why Ah Moy kept him so at a distance.  Nor had Kwaque other worries.  His god, over all gods of sea and jungle, he worshipped, and, himself ever intimately allowed in the presence, paradise was wherever he and his god, the steward, might be.

And so Michael.  Much in the same way that Kwaque loved and worshipped did he love and worship the six-quart man.  To Michael and Kwaque, the daily, even hourly, recognition and consideration of Dag Daughtry was tantamount to resting continuously in the bosom of Abraham.  The god of Messrs. Doane, Nishikanta, and Grimshaw was a graven god whose name was Gold.  The god of Kwaque and Michael was a living god, whose voice could be always heard, whose arms could be always warm, the pulse of whose heart could be always felt throbbing in a myriad acts and touches.

No greater joy was Michael’s than to sit by the hour with Steward and sing with him all songs and tunes he sang or hummed.  With a quantity or pitch even more of genius or unusualness in him than in Jerry, Michael learned more quickly, and since the way of his education was singing, he came to sing far beyond the best Villa Kennan ever taught Jerry.

Michael could howl, or sing, rather (because his howling was so mellow and so controlled), any air that was not beyond his register that Steward elected to sing with him.  In addition, he could sing by himself, and unmistakably, such simple airs as “Home, Sweet Home,” “God save the King,” and “The Sweet By and By.”  Even alone, prompted by Steward a score of feet away from him, could he lift up his muzzle and sing “Shenandoah” and “Roll me down to Rio.”

Kwaque, on stolen occasions when Steward was not around, would get out his Jews’ harp and by the sheer compellingness of the primitive instrument make Michael sing with him the barbaric and devil-devil rhythms of King William Island.  Another master of song, but one in whom Michael delighted, came to rule over him.  This master’s name was Cocky.  He so introduced himself to Michael at their first meeting.