tly on the floor near Del Mar's feet, making no
overtures of friendliness, by the same token making no demonstration of
the repulsion of the man's personality engendered in him. For Harry Del
Mar, who was base, and who had been further abased by his money-making
desire for the possession of Michael, had had his baseness sensed by
Michael from the beginning. That first meeting in the Barbary Coast
cabaret, Michael had bristled at him, and stiffened belligerently, when
he laid his hand on Michael's head. Nor had Michael thought about the
man at all, much less attempted any analysis of him. Something had been
wrong with that hand--the perfunctory way in which it had touched him
under a show of heartiness that could well deceive the onlooker. The
_feel_ of it had not been right. There had been no warmth in it, no
heart, no communication of genuine good approach from the brain and the
soul of the man of which it was the telegraphic tentacle and transmitter.
In short, the message or feel had not been a good message or feel, and
Michael had bristled and stiffened without thinking, but by mere
_knowing_, which is what men call "intuition."

Electric lights, a shed-covered wharf, mountains of luggage and freight,
the noisy toil of 'longshoremen and sailors, the staccato snorts of
donkey engines and the whining sheaves as running lines ran through the
blocks, a crowd of white-coated stewards carrying hand-baggage, the
quartermaster at the gangway foot, the gangway sloping steeply up to the
_Umatilla's_ promenade deck, more quartermasters and gold-laced ship's
officers at the head of the gangway, and more crowd and confusion
blocking the narrow deck--thus Michael knew, beyond all peradventure,
that he had come back to the sea and its ships, where he had first met
Steward, where he had been always with Steward, save for the recent
nightmare period in the great city. Nor was there absent from the
flashing visions of his consciousness the images and memories of Kwaque
and Cocky. Whining eagerly, he strained at the leash, risking his tender
toes among the many inconsiderate, restless, leather-shod feet of the
humans, as he quested and scented for Cocky and Kwaque, and, most of all,
for Steward.

Michael accepted his disappointment in not immediately meeting them, for
from the dawn of consciousness, the limitations and restrictions of dogs
in relation to humans had been hammered into him in the form of concepts
of patience. T