ella think?"

And Kwaque, too awed by the spaciousness to speak, eloquently rolled his
eyes in agreement.

"You likee this piecee bunk?" the cook, a little old Chinaman, asked the
steward with eager humility, inviting the white man's acceptance of his
own bunk with a wave of arm.

Daughtry shook his head. He had early learned that it was wise to get
along well with sea-cooks, since sea-cocks were notoriously given to
going suddenly lunatic and slicing and hacking up their shipmates with
butcher knives and meat cleavers on the slightest remembered provocation.
Besides, there was an equally good bunk all the way across the width of
the steerage from the Chinaman's. The bunk next on the port side to the
cook's and abaft of it Daughtry allotted to Kwaque. Thus he retained for
himself and Michael the entire starboard side with its three bunks. The
next one abaft of his own he named "Killeny Boy's," and called on Kwaque
and the cook to take notice. Daughtry had a sense that the cook, whose
name had been quickly volunteered as Ah Moy, was not entirely satisfied
with the arrangement; but it affected him no more than a momentary
curiosity about a Chinaman who drew the line at a dog taking a bunk in
the same apartment with him.

Half an hour later, returning, from setting the cabin aright, to the
steerage for Kwaque to serve him with a bottle of beer, Daughtry observed
that Ah Moy had moved his entire bunk belongings across the steerage to
the third bunk on the starboard side. This had put him with Daughtry and
Michael and left Kwaque with half the steerage to himself. Daughtry's
curiosity recrudesced.

"What name along that fella Chink?" he demanded of Kwaque. "He no like
'm you fella boy stop 'm along same fella side along him. What for? My
word! What name? That fella Chink make 'm me cross along him too much!"

"Suppose 'm that fella Chink maybe he think 'm me kai-kai along him,"
Kwaque grinned in one of his rare jokes.

"All right," the steward concluded. "We find out. You move 'm along my
bunk, I move 'm along that fella Chink's bunk."

This accomplished, so that Kwaque, Michael, and Ah Moy occupied the
starboard side and Daughtry alone bunked on the port side, he went on
deck and aft to his duties. On his next return he found Ah Moy had
transferred back to the port side, but this time into the last bunk aft.

"Seems the beggar's taken a fancy to me," the steward smiled to himself.

Nor was he capab