Part 9

“‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I am taking him with me; he is so intelligent that he soon accustoms himself to new surroundings; besides, he would die if I left him behind.’

“I remarked that I had heard of dogs being devoted to their masters to that extent. There was no skepticism in my voice, but he was so sensitive that he flushed like a girl.

“‘I speak from experience,’ said he, quickly. ‘I once left him for a fortnight and then had to return, as they wrote me that he had not eaten since I left. When I got back he was as thin as a coyote. I always took him with me after that.’

“We talked together for a little while, and it did not take me long to discover that the master was as thoroughbred as the hound; in fact, he impressed one as a trifle too finely bred—_in_bred, possibly. He was _too_ delicately charming—six feet in height, gracefully and slenderly built, very fair, with the pure complexion and blue eyes of a very pretty girl. I almost laughed when he presently confided in me that he was taking the voyage in the hope of overcoming the liquor habit. I suspected that there was a girl in the case—that Claud was in love and had conceived that he was in danger of becoming addicted to the vice because he sometimes drank a glass of beer when in college.

“As we were chatting together the hound walked suddenly to me and raised his handsome head as if inviting a caress.

“‘That is unusual,’ said Claud. ‘His reception of people is often embarrassing. He will not go near Captain Deshay. He is too polite to growl; he simply gets out of the way, but he can’t keep his hair from bristling a little.’

“I asked Claud presently if he had met the mate, and he said that he had not, that he had not even seen him, which I thought rather singular. Claud told me that we had another fellow-passenger, a Professor Lentz, a scientist, not a mere collector like myself. He added that Professor Lentz was below, engaged in storing a wagon-load of instruments for recording everything from a falling star to his last bottle of beer. A little while later I met him, and he proved to be a genial, if somewhat secretive, old crank, who apparently had some complex theory regarding ocean currents which he was afraid that some of us might try to steal.

“Captain Deshay came aboard at noon, and with him came a squat, heavily bearded individual, who proved to be the mate. Deshay himself was a well-educated man, of very finished manners and strikingly handsome in a rather animal way. The casual observer would have described his face as strong, but it was not—it was well-featured; but he had a lumpish jaw, which is different from a masterful jaw, and his eyes were petulant rather than determined. His manner was inclined to be loud, authoritative and with a coarse _bonhomie_ always repellant to me. The most assertive thing about him was a big voice, and a big voice is scarcely ever associated with cold-blooded courage; it belongs to the blustering, bullying kind.

“It was at once evident to me that Deshay was very nervous about something; we were anchored half a mile out, and I noticed that he frequently scanned the water-front while getting under way. His crew appeared to be the scrapings of the wharves, a sulky-looking lot of ragamuffins, but Deshay seemed to have them well in hand.

“As the weather had been cold and raw, we three passengers went below, and as soon as we got under way Deshay left the deck to his mate and joined us. He called at once for spirits and the steward brought whiskey. I noticed an expression of surprised resentment in Claud’s face at this proceeding; it appears that Deshay had given him to understand that he did not drink himself and that he did not expect any other passengers, and therefore he might never be subjected to temptation. I was not aware of this at the time; nevertheless, I knew that there was a struggle going on. You are aware, Doctor, of the faculty possessed by certain people of placing themselves in a condition receptive to the more potent impulses of another; it is an inherent faculty, but can by training be developed to an amazing extent—a faculty with which women are more generously endowed than men, but in most cases a woman possessing this will depend upon it to the exclusion of logic; more than that, she abuses it, overworks it, lazily attempts to make it do the work of her mind to a point where it is no longer accurate, hence a negative benefit. A diplomat must possess it; the best diplomats develop it, just as a great musician of rich natural talent must develop this by years of arduous practice; perhaps an explorer or collector like myself may possess it even most of all, because he must be a trained observer, which enables him to buttress the psychic and the mental with a precise faculty for grasping subtle physical signs.

“Therefore, Doctor, in the brief moment in which the whiskey was brought I knew that Claud felt himself to be tricked, and I was curious to see what he would do about it, because, in spite of his effeminacy, my instinct told me that he was not weak. The whiskey was set upon the table. Lentz helped himself; I did likewise, and as I did so I heard Claud’s feet scuffle a trifle on the rug, and knew that his impulse was to arise and leave the table. I knew that he was staring indignantly at Deshay; there was a reflection of this look in the lurking gleam of contempt in Deshay’s dark eyes and the sardonic lines at the corners of his mouth, and when he spoke, in the pleasantest voice which one can conceive, the words and the expression which accompanied them was the drop in excess needed to crystallize the solution of my dislike and distrust of Deshay.

“‘Oh, come, Dillingham,’ said he, lightly, ‘we all know that you’re on a swear-off, but just a glass for _bon voyage_ will do you no harm. Once we’re under way you can settle down to a life of undiluted virtue—say _when_.’

“He reached across the table, decanter in hand, and began to pour the liquor slowly into Claud’s glass, while I with difficulty repressed an inclination to knock the vessel out of his hand—not that I laid much importance on Claud’s breaking his resolution, but because he was in danger of breaking it not through his _own will_, and I knew that if he sagged at this moment he would have an up-hill fight to get back his own while aboard that schooner, and the agonizing part of it all to me was that Deshay was _not_ a strong character; he was a pine post painted to look like granite, and Claud had not enough knowledge of men to recognize the paint.

“‘No, thank you, Captain,’ said Claud, in a voice of such weak determination that it positively brought the blood to my face. ‘I’m off for good,’ he said, and threw the inflection on the wrong words, as a man will when trying to show a determination which is lacking in him.

“‘Of course you are,’ said Deshay, in a big, good-humored voice which seemed to jar the glasses, ‘but the swear-off starts with the voyage, and a voyage out of ‘Frisco is not begun until you get through the Golden Gate. Come, now, matey, just one to bring us fair winds.’ One cannot describe the large persuasion of his tone.

“‘Really, I’d rather not,’ replied Claud, with a school-boy squirm. It was a beastly spectacle, Doctor—an immoral spectacle; had Deshay been overcoming the scruples of a woman it would have been less offensive, because such an act is prompted by animal impulse, whereas this was purely Satanic—the violation of an unproved entity. I was strongly tempted to interfere, but many years of contact with all sorts of people have so confirmed me in the habit of minding my own business that very often I do not interfere when perhaps I should.

“‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Deshay, and there was in his full voice the slightest hint of the imperative, and his eyes, as they fixed themselves on Claud, were insolently authoritative. If he had looked at me in that way I should have planted my fist in his face; with Claud I think that it was less lack of will than the obedience of a hyper-sensitive mind to a dominant suggestion. At any rate, Deshay poured out some Scotch and added some water, and Claud raised the glass, drained it, then sprang suddenly to his feet and left the saloon, nor did I see him again until dinner-time, and, Doctor, I knew that from that moment this brute Deshay, whom I correctly estimated as a creature of animal cunning, utter lack of principle and an amazing effrontery substituting strength, had one of his coarse, clumsy paws on the gold bags of Claud Dillingham, senior, and, barring accident, would squeeze out many a yellow coin before he allowed the son to escape from his clutches. Do not misunderstand me, Doctor; this free-booter was simply after gold.

“The following morning I happened to be talking with Deshay, for at sea dislike of a shipmate is no reason for not getting what entertainment there is in him, and while we were talking Claud came up and requested a few words with him.

“‘Anything personal?’ I asked. Claud hesitated for a moment, apparently embarrassed.

“‘Oh, no,’ said he, and went on, stammering like a school-boy who had forgotten his recitation. ‘You see, Doctor Leyden,’ said he, ‘when I engaged my passage I was afraid that I might be seasick, so I made an arrangement with Captain Deshay by which he was to drop me at Honolulu if I wished it. He—he—told me that there were to be no other passengers.’”

“‘But you are not seasick, are you?’ said I.

“‘No,’ he answered, ‘but I am—I am—I am _home_sick.’ Upon my word, he gulped like a little girl the first day in school and his blue eyes filled with tears; he could not have been under twenty years of age.

“‘I do not think that you have dealt quite fairly with me, Captain,’ said he, in a voice which he tried to make cold and assertive, but would have been only contemptible if one had not been sorry for him—and then as he looked at our faces and saw scant sympathy in either, he crumbled.

“‘To tell the truth, Captain,’ he continued, with a rather nervous laugh, ‘I’m afraid that I’ve lost my nerve; I’m sick of the voyage already and want to get back home. Of course, I’ll defray any additional expense due to taking you out of your course,’ he concluded, with a sort of shy eagerness.

“‘Oh, come, old fellow,’ said Deshay, coaxingly, and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘The first twenty-four hours——’

“‘Look out for your dog!’ I cried suddenly, for as Deshay’s hand fell upon Claud’s shoulder I had happened to glance at Dixie. The dog was standing quietly enough at his master’s heel, and at Deshay’s action had made none of the usual canine expressions of displeasure, and it was this absence which made him so alarming, for as I glanced at his great, dark, intelligent eye it seemed filled with such a smouldering, slumbering intensity of hate that it gave me a positive start. The fine, silky hair was not even ruffled, there was not the slightest twitch to the velvet lips, but I could see that every muscle of the beautifully moulded body was tense as our weather shrouds and there was a fine quiver to the strong flanks. Have you ever, Doctor, closely watched a woman who is married to a man she hates, loathes, despises, as her husband enters the room? Perhaps he is a plausible brute who only shows the cloven hoof after he has shot the bolt of her bedroom door; no one else may guess it unless one watches the wife. The dilatation of the pupil, the faintest quiver of the nostrils, the little shiver—Dixie had all of these, but, as Claud had said, he was too self-contained, too much of a gentleman, to further reveal his emotions.

“I could see Claud shrivel at Deshay’s familiarity. One guessed that he longed to throw off the man’s hand, which still clutched his shoulder good-humoredly, but he was too sensitive, too fearful of giving offense, not through any liking for the man, but because it seemed _gauche_, boorish, and would fill the air with a sort of rough impulse, shocking to his fine sensitiveness. No doubt he had suffered at times from rebuffs to his own timid advances, and had not enough knowledge of the world and men to keep from putting a coarse, thick-skinned brute like Deshay in his own class of emotions.

“His class—_ach!_ the nervous sensibilities of those two were about as similar as those of a Kentucky thoroughbred and a Galapagos turtle! There are some men who can never get it through their heads that the only way to hurt another man’s feelings is with a club.

“When I spoke, Claud glanced down at Dixie, and he saw the danger in the animal’s eyes, to which Deshay was quite blind.

“‘Dixie!’ said Claud, reprovingly; that was all, but Dixie understood and his beautiful head dropped contritely.

“‘Oh, Dixie’s all right,’ said Deshay, carelessly, and, will you believe it, he swung down and took the dog’s two forepaws, raised him up on his hind legs, while he pulled his ears playfully, and, taking the sensitive muzzle in his coarse hand, shook it back and forth! _Ach!_ I have never been so overcome with admiration for the self-control of any living creature as I was for its amazing exhibition by that bloodhound! One saw him shudder, half close his eyes, as if in a disgust too deep for any expression. I really believe, Doctor, that the dog and master were at the psychological instant of Deshay’s caress possessed of precisely the same emotions. Do you know, I believe that the hound accepted the human animal’s familiarity less through discipline than a high-minded sense of courtesy which forbade his rejecting overtures which had the semblance of good will, for at first Deshay actually liked Dixie, and was unable to see that the dog had loathed him from the start.

“Deshay turned to Claud. ‘There’s a good chap,’ he said; ‘you don’t mind sticking it out to Samoa, do you, now?’

“‘I’m sorry,’ began Claud.

“‘Oh, come,’ said Deshay, and again there was in his voice that imperative note which had struck me so unpleasantly the day before. ‘You can’t tell yet whether you’re going to like the cruise or not; you will begin to enjoy it in a couple of days—you know you will.’ He fastened his lustrous eyes fixedly on the seraphic blue ones of the boy. ‘You know you will like it—don’t you, now?’ There was in his voice a peremptory assertion.

“‘Perhaps you are right,’ said Claud, and looked over the rail.

“‘Of course I am right,’ said Deshay, loudly, and clapped him on the shoulder again. ‘Now, let’s have a drink to show there’s no hard feeling. Steward!’ he bellowed down the companionway.

“‘But, look here, Captain,’ said Claud, feebly, ‘you seem to forget that I’ve given up drinking.’

“‘Not a bit of it,’ said Deshay, ‘but there’s a big difference between a man’s giving up drinking and a man’s never taking a drink. If you only drink at my suggestion you’ll never come to any harm. Will you join us, Leyden?’

“‘No, thanks,’ I answered.

“‘Oh, yes, you will,’ said Deshay, in his large way.

“I shrugged my shoulders and, turning on my heel, walked aft. To tell the truth, Doctor, although I am a mild-mannered man who will make a very great detour to avoid a quarrel, I think that just at that moment——”

Eight bells were struck forward, and Leyden paused to hold the stump of his cigar to the dial of the taffrail-log.

“A little more than ten,” he muttered; “that schooner did better for days on end!” He drummed softly with his fingers until I grew irritated at his abstraction, which emotion he perceived, for he flicked the stump of his cigar into the wake and resumed.

“Doctor, have you ever witnessed the spectacle of a strong will and high courage becoming completely and utterly dominated, less through lack of strength than excess of imagination, by a creature of far inferior qualities, but overwhelming impudence? These are the conditions which often give the bully his amazing autocracy; his victims are auto-hypnotized by the sheer impudence of his assertions, until some day the bubble is pricked by an individual more practical and less imaginative and the reign of terror is at an end. In a week’s time Deshay had Claud, and Dixie, too, for that matter, as entirely cowed and subjugated as if he had broken their spirits with a cat-o’-nine-tails, and the harrowing part of it was that, in spite of their high degree of sensitiveness, neither the dog nor the master were weak. I had studied Claud and felt his underlying force; he was of that high-bred, nervous type, vacillating in little things, but, deeper, of the resistance of chilled steel; like the bulkheads in the ward-room of a battle-ship, white and gold on the surface, but able to stand the pressure of hundreds of tons. If the petty aggressions of Deshay had all been combined into a solid weight, requiring a forceful resistance, he could no more have held Claud than he could have held a handful of guncotton detonated in his clenched fist; that is, he could not have done so at first, and his animal cunning told him this, so that he began by accustoming his victim to yield in minor matters until he had given him the _yielding habit_; but as I watched the whole thing I was convinced that Deshay was too crude a production and too lacking in finesse to continue his course successfully, and I awaited the denouement with interest. Deshay had already shown his lack of cleverness by not taking the trouble to conceal the aversion that he had come to feel for Dixie, and the silent hate of the dog for him was a thing as extraordinary to contemplate as the animal’s marvellous dignity and self-control. Deshay had come to openly maltreat him, but not as yet in Claud’s presence; he maltreated him once in mine, and _only_ once, for I said a few words to him, at which he stared into my eyes and first blustered and then laughed and then went out with a sizzle—and we understood one another perfectly. On this occasion he had kicked the dog across the deck because the poor brute had placed both paws on the polished teak rail in a longing effort to discover land, and the dog had neither yelped nor growled nor become abject; he had simply walked away, albeit with a slight limp, but without the drooping tail and other signs of canine dejection. Perhaps you have seen a gentleman, Doctor, a fearless man, avoid a quarrel thrust upon him by a low fellow, and avoid it quietly and without loss of dignity. This was Dixie’s behavior.

“We were not a pleasant party on that schooner. I had come to detest Deshay, and he knew it; Lentz would no longer speak to him; the old fellow simply grunted when Deshay addressed him, as if he considered the captain a swine and able to understand the language. Claud did not hate him; he simply _loathed_ him, and yet was dominated by him, and the same was true of Dixie. The air was heavily pregnant with possibilities, and, Doctor, when the denouement finally arrived it was as funny as the grin on the face of a corpse. Who do you suppose it was that pulled out the boat-plug? Why, none other than that black-browed humorist of a mate, who was, it seems, a murderer escaped from the Santa Clara county jail, and who had paid Deshay a good price for his billet.

“We were down in the neighborhood of Christmas Island, when we cut in close to some other little island; to this day I don’t know what it was. Our course would trim it close, so at Deshay’s suggestion we hove to and he and Lentz and Claud, Dixie and myself went in with two sailors to pull the boat. Possibly it was his plan to get Lentz and me ashore and leave us there, but he never had the chance, for no sooner had we struck the beach than Mister Mate up with his headsails, up stick and away!

“I must have a bizarre sense of humor, for I will confess that I dropped in a heap on the sand and laughed until the tears came. It was such a tremendous joke on the lot of us—especially upon Deshay.

“Deshay was like a crazy man; he tore up and down the beach and shook his fists and raved until his face was blue. He was an edifying sight, and we white people sat in a little row in our proscenium box and admired the exhibition. You see, he was three-quarters white, and that gave him imagination; but the other quarter, which should have been self-control, was Kanaka, and that knocked up the pawls and let his line run off the reel, so to speak.

“We were really badly off, Doctor; the island was very small and offered no food that we could see. There was a small cluster of dwarfed palms, and they bore a few immature nuts; aside from these trees there was no shelter. We had not even a boat-sail. Fortunately there was water on this island—brackish, but potable.

“Deshay pulled himself together after a while, but he was savage and morose. I managed to get out of him the pleasing news that the next island was over one hundred miles distant, and probably no better than the one which we were on. Fancy our condition, Doctor!—our utter lack of everything but bad feeling. All of us, including the two sailors who had pulled the boat, hated Deshay; Deshay returned the sentiment; the two sailors, with their mates, had from the first been insolent to Claud, of whom they said rough things owing to his subjugation by Deshay; and on this, as well as from personal causes, both Lentz and I had more than once fallen foul of them. Within the last fortnight the tedium of the voyage had begun to tell upon Lentz, and the old fellow had grown peevish and sulky; both of us had incurred Deshay’s dislike by having very little to say to him. Conceive, then, the delights of the first few days of hardship with such a company.

“It was, I believe, the morning of the third day that I was awakened by hearing Deshay cry out: ‘Where’s that cursed dog?’ I rolled over and saw that he held in his hand one of the heavy oak stretchers of the boat and was looking savagely about him. Near by sat Claud, his face in his hands.

“Deshay snarled out: ‘Where’s that dog, you droolin’ baby?’

“Claud mumbled something, without looking up, and then I heard him say: ‘We haven’t come to that—_yet_,’ and he said it with a groan, and I could see his face working painfully.

‘Deshay walked toward him, talking as he went. He said: ‘You’ll see if we haven’t when I find the cur, you chicken-livered little milksop!’ and at that moment there came from up the beach a musical bay which tolled out like a church-bell and died lingeringly away, to be drowned in the crash of the breakers; again this mournful note welled forth, rising like the voice of a bell-buoy above the roar of the surf, and this time it ended in a series of short, excited barks—such a bark as a hound gives when he has ‘treed.’

“Claud sprang to his feet. ‘He’s found something!’ he cried, and began to run down the beach. Deshay and I followed, and soon we came upon Dixie, who was very carefully uncovering a nest of new-laid turtle’s eggs.

“Deshay was for eating his fill then and there, but this I would not permit, so we gathered them up and carried them back to the others, where we proceeded to divide them.

“‘Give Dixie his share,’ said I to Deshay, who had undertaken the division.

“‘Give Dixie nothin’,’ he snarled back at me. And then he added: ‘Why, you Dutch fat-head, d’ye think I’m goin’ to give good food to a dog?’

“He had carelessly dropped the boat-stretcher beside him, and before he could lay down the eggs it was in my hand. There is an etiquette, Doctor, to be observed even upon a desert island, and if Lentz had not grasped the other end of the stick I fancy that Dixie could have had Deshay’s share.

“‘Ve must not qvarrel,’ said Lentz; ‘ve haf troobles enough alretty. Der hound found der eggs; gif him von or two.’

“Deshay growled, but I had frightened him, and he did as he was told, giving Dixie two of the eggs. The dog ate one of them, the other he carried to Claud; I saw Claud give it to Deshay.