Dingo was very large. It was a magnificent example of his kind. Standing on hind legs, it was as tall as a man. This dog was like a panther. Its fine shaggy coat was a dark tawny colour, its long bushy tail was as strong as a lion’s. If he was angry, no doubt he became a most formidable foe.
Dingo was unsociable, but it was not savage. Old Tom said that, on board the “Waldeck,” Dingo had particular dislike to negroes; it uniformly avoided them.
The five men were profoundly grateful to their kind-hearted benefactors; poor negroes utterly resigned the hope to repay the debt which they owed their deliverers.
Chapter V
Dingo’s Sagacity
Meantime the “Pilgrim” pursued its course, it was keeping as much as possible to the east, and soon the hull of the “Waldeck” was out of sight.
Captain Hull still continued to feel uneasy. Not that for himself he cared much about the delay of a week or two in a voyage from New Zealand to Valparaiso, but he was disappointed at the inconvenience it caused to his lady passenger. Mrs. Weldon, however, did not utter a word of complaint.
The captain’s next care was to think about the accommodation for Tom and his four associates. There was no room for them in the crew’s quarters, so that their berths were under the forecastle.
After this incident of the discovery of the wreck, life on board the “Pilgrim” relapsed into its ordinary routine. The good-natured negroes were always ready to help; the strongest of them was Hercules, a great fellow, six feet high.
Hercules became at once little Jack’s friend; and when the giant lifted him like a doll in his stalwart arms, the child fairly shrieked with delight.
“Higher! higher! very high!” Jack was saying.
“There you are, then, Master Jack,” Hercules was replying.
“Am I heavy?” asked the child,
“As heavy as a feather.”
“Then lift me higher still,” cried Jack.
Besides Dick Sand and Hercules, Jack admitted a third friend to his companionship. This was Dingo. The dog was one of those animals that are fond of children. It allowed Jack to do with him almost anything he pleased. Jack found a live dog infinitely more entertaining than his old toy upon its four wheels, and his great delight was to mount upon Dingo’s back. Dingo was the delight of all the crew excepting Negoro, who cautiously avoided the animal who showed unmistakable symptoms of hostility.
But Jack did not forget his old friend Dick Sand, who devoted all his leisure time to him. Mrs. Weldon regarded their intimacy with the greatest satisfaction, and one day made a remark in the presence of Captain Hull.
“You are right, madam,” said the captain cordially; “Dick will be a first-rate sailor. He has an instinct which is a little short of genius.”
“Certainly for his age,” assented Mrs. Weldon, “he is singularly advanced. He may be able to become a captain.”
The eyes of the two speakers turned in the direction where Dick Sand was standing. He was at the helm.
“Look at him now!” said the captain; “nothing distracts him from his duty; he acts as the most experienced helmsman.”
Just at this instant Cousin Benedict emerged from the stern-cabin, and began to wander up and down the deck, peering into the interstices of the network, drawing his long fingers along the cracks in the floor.
“Well, Benedict, how are you getting on?” asked Mrs Weldon.
“I? Oh, well enough, thank you,” he replied dreamily.
“What were you looking for under that bench?” said Captain Hull.
“Insects, of course,” answered Benedict; “I am always looking for insects.”
“But don’t you know, Benedict,” said Mrs. Weldon, “that Captain Hull does not allow any vermin on the deck of his vessel?”
Captain Hull smiled and said, -
“Mrs Weldon is very complimentary.”
Cousin Benedict shrugged his shoulders.
“However,” continued the captain, “I dare say down in the hold you can find some cockroaches.”
“I can see, sir,” replied Benedict, “that you are not an entomologist!”
“Not at all,” said the captain good-humouredly.
“Are you not satisfied,” Mrs. Weldon interposed; “with the result of your explorations in New Zealand?”
“Yes, yes,” answered Benedict, with reluctance; “I must not say I was dissatisfied. But, you know, an entomologist is always craving for fresh additions to his collection.”
While he was speaking, Dingo came and jumped on Benedict, and began to fawn on him.
“Get away, you brute!” he exclaimed, thrusting the dog aside.
“Poor Dingo! good dog!” cried Jack, running up and taking the animal’s huge head between his tiny hands.
“Your interest in cockroaches, Mr. Benedict,” observed the captain, “does not seem to extend to dogs.”
“This creature,” answered Benedict; “ disappointed me.”
“What do you mean? You cannot catalogue it?” asked Mrs Weldon laughingly.
“I understand that this dog was found on the West Coast of Africa,” replied Benedict, “and I hoped that it had some African insects in its coat. I searched its coat well, over and over again, but I could not find a single specimen.”
Captain Hull and Mrs. Weldon laughed.
Such were the conversations throughout the monotonous hours of smooth sailing, while the “Pilgrim” was making its headway to the east.
Cousin Benedict began to teach Hercules entomology. He was studying the extensive collection of stag-beetles, tiger-beetles and lady-birds.
Mrs. Weldon was giving her attention to the education of Master Jack. She was teaching her son to read and write, Dick Sand taught him arithmetic. The child made a rapid progress. Mrs. Weldon used a set of cubes, on the sides of which the various letters were painted in red. There were more than fifty cubes, which, besides the alphabet, included all the digits. It was astonishing how quickly the child advanced, and how many hours he spent in the cabin and on deck. Mrs. Weldon was very satisfied.
On the morning of the 9th an incident occurred. Jack was half lying, half sitting on the deck, amusing himself with his letters. He made a word with which he intended to puzzle old Tom. All at once, Dingo, who was gambolling round the child, made a sudden pause, lifted his right paw, and wagged his tail convulsively. Then the animal seized a capital S in his mouth, and carried it some paces away.
“Oh, Dingo, Dingo! you mustn’t eat my letters!” shouted the child.
But the dog came back again, and picked up another letter. This time it was a capital V. Jack uttered an exclamation of astonishment which brought to his side not only his mother, but the captain and Dick. Jack cried out in the greatest excitement that Dingo knew how to read.
Dick Sand smiled and stooped to take back the letters. Dingo snarled and showed his teeth, but the apprentice was not frightened. He replaced the two blocks among the rest. Dingo in an instant pounced upon them again, and laid a paw upon each of them.
“It is very strange,” said Mrs. Weldon; “he has picked out S V again.”
“S V!” repeated the captain thoughtfully; “are not those the letters that form the initials on his collar?”
He turned to the old negro, and continued,
“Tom didn’t you say that this dog did not always belong to the captain of the ‘Waldeck’?”
“I often heard from the captain,” replied Tom, “that he found the dog at the mouth of the Congo[13].”
Mrs. Weldon asked, -
“Do you recall these letters, captain?”
“Mrs. Weldon,” the captain replied; “I can associate them with the fate of a brave explorer.”
“Whom do you mean?” said the lady.
“In 1871, just two years ago,” the captain continued, “a French traveller set out to cross Africa from west to east. His starting-point was the mouth of the Congo, and his exit was Cape Deldago, at the mouth of the River Rovouma[14]. The name of this man was Samuel Vernon. These letters – Vernon’s initials – are engraved on Dingo’s collar.”
“What do we know about this traveller?” asked Mrs. Weldon.
“Nothing. I think that he failed to reach the east coast. He died upon his way, or he was made prisoner[15] by the natives. Did this dog belong to him?”
“But you have no reason to suppose, Captain Hull, that Vernon ever owned a dog?”
“I never heard of it,” said the captain; “but the dog knows these letters. Look at the animal, madam! It does not only read the letters for himself, but invites us to come and read them with him.”
Whilst Mrs. Weldon was watching the dog with much amusement, Dick Sand asked the captain whether the traveller Vernon started on his expedition quite alone.
“That is really more than I can tell you, my boy,” answered Captain Hull.
Meanwhile Negoro quietly appeared on deck. The dog caught sight of the cook and began to bristle with rage. Negoro withdrew immediately to his room.
The incident did not escape the captain’s observation.
“No doubt,” he said, “there is some mystery here.”
“Don’t you think, sir, it’s strange that this dog knows the alphabet?”
“My mamma told me about a dog whose name was Munito, who could read as well as a schoolmaster, and could play dominoes,” said Jack.
Mrs. Weldon smiled.
“I am afraid, my child, the dog’s master, who was a clever American, taught Munito some curious tricks.”
“The more I think of it, the more strange it is,” said Captain Hull; “Dingo evidently has no acquaintance with any other letters except the two S V. Some circumstance which we cannot guess made the animal familiar with them.”
“What a pity Dingo cannot talk!” exclaimed the apprentice.
Chapter VI
A Whale
The dog’s manners repeatedly formed a subject of conversation between Mrs. Weldon, the captain, and Dick. The young apprentice does not trust Negoro, although the man’s conduct in general gave no grounds for suspicion.
Dingo soon gained the reputation of the cleverest dog in the world.
“Perhaps Dingo can,” suggested Bolton, the helmsman, “some fine day predict which way the wind lies.”
“Ah! why not?” assented another sailor; “parrots talk, and magpies talk; why can’t a dog? I think it is easier to speak with a mouth than with a beak.”
“Of course it is,” said Howick, the boatswain; “but who knows a talking dog?”
Thus Dingo became a hero. On several occasions Captain Hull repeated the experiment with the blocks, invariably with the same result; the dog never failed.
But Cousin Benedict took no interest in that.
“You cannot suppose,” he said to Captain Hull, after various repetitions of the trick, “that dogs are the only animals endowed with intelligence. Rats, you know, always leave a sinking ship, and beavers invariably raise their dams before the approach of a flood. And insects! Are not the structures of ants the very models for the architects of a city? And cannot fleas go through a drill and fire a gun as well as the artillerymen? This Dingo is not very interesting. Perhaps one day or other it may be identified as the ‘canis alphabeticus[16]’ of New Zealand.”
Anyway, Dingo was regarded as a phenomenon. This feeling was not shared by Negoro. He studiously avoided the animal, and Dick Sand was quite convinced that the cook’s hatred of the dog became still more intense.
This portion of the Pacific is almost always deserted. It is out of the line of the American and Australian steamers.
Sometimes white petrels congregated near the schooner; and sometimes petrels with brown borders on their wings came in sight.
On the day the wind shifted, Mrs. Weldon was walking up and down on the “Pilgrim’s” stern, when her attention was attracted by a strange phenomenon. Both Dick and Jack were standing close behind her, and she cried, -
“Look, Dick, look! The sea is all red. Is a seaweed making the water so strange?”
“No,” answered Dick, “it is not a weed; it is what the sailors call whales’ food. These are innumerable myriads of minute crustacea.”
“Crustacea,” replied Mrs. Weldon, “but they must be so small that they are mere insects. Cousin Benedict no doubt will like to see them.”
She called aloud, -
“Benedict! Benedict! Come here! We have here something interesting for you.”
The amateur naturalist slowly emerged from his cabin followed by Captain Hull.
“Ah! Yes, I see!” said the captain; “whales’ food; just the opportunity for you, Mr. Benedict, to study one of the most curious of the crustacea.”
“Nonsense!” ejaculated Benedict contemptuously; “utter nonsense!”
“Why? What do you mean, Mr. Benedict?” retorted the captain.
“Are you not aware, sir, that I am an entomologist?”
Captain Hull was unable to repress a smile, and turning to Mrs. Weldon, he continued, -
“When a whale gets into the middle of them it just opens its jaws, and, in a minute, hundreds of thousands of these minute creatures are inside the fringe or whalebone around its palate.”
Then they heard a shout from one of the sailors,”A whale!”
“There’s the whale!” repeated the captain. He hurried to the bow, followed by all the passengers. Even Cousin Benedict took a share in the general interest.
There was no doubt about the matter. An unusual commotion in the water showed the presence of a whale. Captain Hull and his crew gazed at the animal.
The captain’s eye soon enabled him to observe a column of water and vapour from the nostrils. “It isn’t a real whale,” he said; “the whale’s spout is small and rises high in the air. Dick, tell me, what do you think about it?”
With a critical eye Dick Sand looked long and steadily at the spout.
“I think it is a finback, sir,” said the apprentice, “But it is a very large finback.”
“Seventy feet, at least!” rejoined the captain.
“What a big fellow!” said Jack.
“Yes,” said the boatswain; “this one, if only we can get him, will fill our empty barrels.”
“Rather rough work, you know,” said Dick, “to attack a finback!”
“You are right, Dick,” answered the captain.
“But the profit is worth the risk, captain, isn’t it?”
“You are right again, Dick,” replied Captain Hull, and as he spoke, he clambered on to the bowsprit in order to get a better view of the whale.
The crew were as eager as their captain. They scanned the movements of their prey in the distance.
“Mamma!” cried little Jack, “I want to see a whale close, quite close, you know.”
“And so you will, my boy,” replied the captain, who was standing by. He turned to his crew,
“My men! What do you think? Remember, we are all alone; we have no whalemen to help us; we must rely upon ourselves. I can throw a harpoon; what do you say?”
The crew responded with a ringing cheer,
“Ay, ay, sir! Ay, ay!”
Chapter VII
Preparations for an Attack
Great was the excitement, and the question of an attempt to capture the sea-monster became the theme of conversation. The captain lost no time. He knew that the pursuit of a finback was always a matter of some peril.
The weather was excellent for the enterprise. The sea was calm, and the wind was moderate. The captain said,”Now, Dick, I am going to leave you for a few hours: while I am away, I hope that it will not be necessary for you to make any movement whatever. However, you must be on the watch. It is not very likely, but it is possible that this finback may carry us out to some distance. If so, you will follow us; and in that case, I am sure you may rely upon Tom and his friends for assistance.”
The negroes assured the captain of their willingness to obey Dick’s instructions, they were ready for immediate action.
The captain went on, “The weather is beautifully fine, Dick; but you must not leave the ship. If I want you to follow us, I will hoist a flag on the boat-hook.”
“You may trust me, sir,” answered Dick.
“All right, my lad; keep a cool head and a good heart. You are second captain now, you know!”
Dick blushed, and the bright flush spoke more than words.
“I can trust the lad,” murmured the captain to himself; “he is as modest as he is courageous.”
The captain was aware of the danger to which he was exposing himself, but his fisherman’s instinct was very keen. And so he finally prepared to start.