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If Killeny failed him it meant that the rent-money would be broken in upon. But Killeny couldn't and wouldn't fail him, he reasoned, as he answered: "I'll bet you the price of two beers." The waiter was summoned, and, when he had received his secret instructions, Michael was called over from where he lay at Kwaque's feet in a corner.
"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."
Two serious conversations were held by the steward toward the close of the voyage: one with Captain Duncan and one with Michael. "It's this way, Killeny," Daughtry began, one evening, Michael's head resting on his lord's knees as he gazed adoringly up into his lord's face, understanding no whit of what was spoken but loving the intimacy the sounds betokened.
Here, Dag Daughtry broke down from inability to express the concepts fluttering in his beer-excited, beer-sodden brain, and, with a stutter or two, made a fresh start. "You know, it's all in the matter of talkin', an' Killeny can't talk. He's got thoughts inside that head of his you can see 'm shinin' in his lovely brown eyes but he can't get 'em across to me.
"Take it from me, Killeny, that old gentleman knows what he's talkin' about, an' has been some hummer in his days. Men don't lose the fingers off their hands and get their faces chopped open just for nothing nor sport rings that makes a Jew pawnbroker's mouth water."
A fortunate kick hurled Michael away and enabled the sailor to intervene once again with the mop. And upon the scene came Dag Daughtry, to behold his captain, frayed and bleeding and breathing apoplectically, Michael raging in ghastly silence at the end of a mop, and a large Persian mother- cat writhing with a broken back. "Killeny Boy!" the steward cried imperatively.
"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.
Sure, when we sing together I'm absorbin' religion an' gettin' pretty close up to God. An' it's big, I tell you. Big as the earth an' ocean an' sky an' all the stars. I just seem to get hold of a sense that we're all the same stuff after all you, me, Killeny Boy, mountains, sand, salt water, worms, mosquitoes, suns, an' shootin' stars an' blazin comets . . . "
There's more to it. He does 'm because he likes me. I can't give you the hang of it, but I feel it, I know it. "Maybe, this is what I'm drivin' at. Killeny can't talk, as you 'n' me talk, I mean; so he can't tell me how he loves me, an' he's all love, every last hair of 'm. An' actions speakin' louder 'n' words, he tells me how he loves me by doin' these things for me. Tricks? Sure.
"He sees one man without beer. That's all. He knows every man should ought to have a glass. That's why he barks." "Better than that," Daughtry boasted. "There are three of us. We will order four. Then each man will have his glass, but Killeny will talk to the waiter just the same." True enough, now thoroughly aware of the game, Michael made outcry to the waiter till the fourth glass was brought.
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