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the heart that made it a happiness for him to serve. Steward was a god
who was kind, who loved him with voice and lip, who loved him with touch
of hand, rub of nose, or enfolding arm. As all service flourishes in the
soil of love, so with Michael. Had Steward commanded him to forego the
chicken bone after it was in the corner, he would have served him by
foregoing. Which is the way of the dog, the only animal that will
cheerfully and gladly, with leaping body of joy, leave its food uneaten
in order to accompany or to serve its human master.

Practically all his waking time off duty, Dag Daughtry spent with the
imprisoned Michael, who, at command, had quickly learned to refrain from
whining and barking. And during these hours of companionship Michael
learned many things. Daughtry found that he already understood and
obeyed simple things such as "no," "yes," "get up," and "lie down," and
he improved on them, teaching him, "Go into the bunk and lie down," "Go
under the bunk," "Bring one shoe," "Bring two shoes." And almost without
any work at all, he taught him to roll over, to say his prayers, to play
dead, to sit up and smoke a pipe with a hat on his head, and not merely
to stand up on his hind legs but to walk on them.

Then, too, was the trick of "no can and can do." Placing a savoury, nose-
tantalising bit of meat or cheese on the edge of the bunk on a level with
Michael's nose, Daughtry would simply say, "No can." Nor would Michael
touch the food till he received the welcome, "Can do." Daughtry, with
the "no can" still in force, would leave the stateroom, and, though he
remained away half an hour or half a dozen hours, on his return he would
find the food untouched and Michael, perhaps, asleep in the corner at the
head of the bunk which had been allotted him for a bed. Early in this
trick once when the steward had left the room and Michael's eager nose
was within an inch of the prohibited morsel, Kwaque, playfully inclined,
reached for the morsel himself and received a lacerated hand from the
quick flash and clip of Michael's jaws.

None of the tricks that he was ever eager to do for Steward, would
Michael do for Kwaque, despite the fact that Kwaque had no touch of
meanness or viciousness in him. The point was that Michael had been
trained, from his first dawn of consciousness, to differentiate between
black men and white men. Black men were always the servants of white
men--or such had been his exp