h
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 noth