A roar of laughter from the passengers greeted the capsizing of the fox-terrier and the good-natured gravity of Michael.  But not alone at this did they laugh, for at the moment of the snap and the turning over, Captain Duncan’s unstrung nerves had exploded, causing him to jump as he tensed his whole body.

“Why, sir,” the steward went on with growing confidence, “I bet I can make him friends with you, too, by this time to-morrow . . . "

“By this time five minutes he’ll be overboard,” the captain answered.  “Bo’s’n!  Over with him!”

The boatswain advanced a tentative step, while murmurs of protest arose from the passengers.

“Look at my cat, and look at me,” Captain Duncan defended his action.

The boatswain made another step, and Dag Daughtry glared a threat at him.

“Go on!” the Captain commanded.

“Hold on!” spoke up the Shortlands planter.  “Give the dog a square deal.  I saw the whole thing.  He wasn’t looking for trouble.  First the cat jumped him.  She had to jump twice before he turned loose.  She’d have scratched his eyes out.  Then the two dogs jumped him.  He hadn’t bothered them.  Then you jumped him.  He hadn’t bothered you.  And then came that sailor with the mop.  And now you want the bo’s’n to jump him and throw him overboard.  Give him a square deal.  He’s only been defending himself.  What do you expect any dog that is a dog to do?—­lie down and be walked over by every strange dog and cat that comes along?  Play the game, Skipper.  You gave him some mighty hard kicks.  He only defended himself.”

“He’s some defender,” Captain Duncan grinned, with a hint of the return of his ordinary geniality, at the same time tenderly pressing his bleeding shoulder and looking woefully down at his tattered duck trousers.  “All right, Steward.  If you can make him friends with me in five minutes, he stays on board.  But you’ll have to make it up to me with a new pair of trousers.”

“And gladly, sir, thank you, sir,” Daughtry cried.  “And I’ll make it up with a new cat as well, sir—­Come on, Killeny Boy.  This big fella marster he all right, you bet.”

And Michael listened.  Not with the smouldering, smothering, choking hysteria that still worked in the fox-terriers did he listen, nor with quivering of muscles and jumps of over-wrought nerves, but coolly, composedly, as if no battle royal had just taken place and no rips of teeth and kicks of feet still burned and ached his body.

He could not help bristling, however, when first he sniffed a trousers’ leg into which his teeth had so recently torn.

“Put your hand down on him, sir,” Daughtry begged.

And Captain Duncan, his own good self once more, bent and rested a firm, unhesitating hand on Michael’s head.  Nay, more; he even caressed the ears and rubbed about the roots of them.  And Michael the merry-hearted, who fought like a lion and forgave and forgot like a man, laid his neck hair smoothly down, wagged his stump tail, smiled with his eyes and ears and mouth, and kissed with his tongue the hand with which a short time before he had been at war.