ose-bending
face.

"He will remember," Daughtry told the scow-schooner captain.

"Not if we talk," was the reply. "Now we will fool your bow-wow. I will
say that the job is yours when I smash Hanson. And you will say it is
for me to smash Hanson now. And I will say Hanson must give me reason
first to smash him. And then we will argue like two fools with mouths
full of much noise. Are you ready?"

Daughtry nodded, and thereupon ensued a loud-voiced discussion that drew
Michael's earnest attention from one talker to the other.

"I got you," Captain Jorgensen announced, as he saw the waiter
approaching with but a single schooner of beer. "The bow-wow has forgot,
if he ever remembered. He thinks you an' me is fighting. The place in
his mind for _one_ beer, and _two_, is wiped out, like a wave on the
beach wipes out the writing in the sand."

"I guess he ain't goin' to forget arithmetic no matter how much noise you
shouts," Daughtry argued aloud against his sinking spirits. "An' I ain't
goin' to butt in," he added hopefully. "You just watch 'm for himself."

The tall, schooner-glass of beer was placed before the captain, who laid
a swift, containing hand around it. And Michael, strung as a taut
string, knowing that something was expected of him, on his toes to serve,
remembered his ancient lessons on the _Makambo_, vainly looked into the
impassive face of Steward for a sign, then looked about and saw, not
_two_ glasses, but _one_ glass. So well had he learned the difference
between one and two that it came to him--how the profoundest psychologist
can no more state than can he state what thought is in itself--that there
was one glass only when two glasses had been commanded. With an abrupt
upspring, his throat half harsh with anger, he placed both forepaws on
the table and barked at the waiter.

Captain Jorgensen crashed his fist down.

"You win!" he roared. "I pay for the beer! Waiter, bring one more."

Michael looked to Steward for verification, and Steward's hand on his
head gave adequate reply.

"We try again," said the captain, very much awake and interested, with
the back of his hand wiping the beer-foam from his moustache. "Maybe he
knows one an' two. How about three? And four?"

"Just the same, Skipper. He counts up to five, and knows more than five
when it is more than five, though he don't know the figures by name after
five."

"Oh, Hanson!" Captain Jorgensen bellowed across the bar-