“Cocky,” he said bravely, without a quiver of fear or flight, when Michael had charged upon him at sight to destroy him.  And the human voice, the voice of a god, issuing from the throat of the tiny, snow-white bird, had made Michael go back on his haunches, while, with eyes and nostrils, he quested the steerage for the human who had spoken.  And there was no human . . . only a small cockatoo that twisted his head impudently and sidewise at him and repeated, “Cocky.”

The taboo of the chicken Michael had been well taught in his earliest days at Meringe.  Chickens, esteemed by Mister Haggin and his white-god fellows, were things that dogs must even defend instead of ever attack.  But this thing, itself no chicken, with the seeming of a wild feathered thing of the jungle that was fair game for any dog, talked to him with the voice of a god.

“Get off your foot,” it commanded so peremptorily, so humanly, as again to startle Michael and made him quest about the steerage for the god-throat that had uttered it.

“Get off your foot, or I’ll throw the leg of Moses at you,” was the next command from the tiny feathered thing.

After that came a farrago of Chinese, so like the voice of Ah Moy, that again, though for the last time, Michael sought about the steerage for the utterer.

At this Cocky burst into such wild and fantastic shrieks of laughter that Michael, ears pricked, head cocked to one side, identified in the fibres of the laughter the fibres of the various voices he had just previously heard.

And Cocky, only a few ounces in weight, less than half a pound, a tiny framework of fragile bone covered with a handful of feathers and incasing a heart that was as big in pluck as any heart on the Mary Turner, became almost immediately Michael’s friend and comrade, as well as ruler.  Minute morsel of daring and courage that Cocky was, he commanded Michael’s respect from the first.  And Michael, who with a single careless paw-stroke could have broken Cocky’s slender neck and put out for ever the brave brightness of Cocky’s eyes, was careful of him from the first.  And he permitted him a myriad liberties that he would never have permitted Kwaque.

Ingrained in Michael’s heredity, from the very beginning of four-legged dogs on earth, was the defence of the meat.  He never reasoned it.  Automatic and involuntary as his heart-beating and air-breathing, was his defence of his meat once he had his paw on it, his teeth in it.  Only to Steward, by an extreme effort of will and control, could he accord the right to touch his meat once he had himself touched it.  Even Kwaque, who most usually fed him under Steward’s instructions, knew that the safety of fingers and flesh resided in having nothing further whatever to do with anything of food once in Michael’s possession.  But Cocky, a bit of feathery down, a morsel-flash of light and life with the throat of a god, violated with sheer impudence and daring Michael’s taboo, the defence of the meat.