CHAPTER II
As it happened, Miss Libby was a child of decided views. One of the most decided of her views proved to be that a seal pup, with very little voice and that little by no means melodious, was no substitute for a canary. She refused to look at the Pup at all, until her father, much disappointed, assured her that she should have a canary also without further delay. And even then, though she could not remain quite indifferent to the Pup’s soft eyes and confiding friendliness, she never developed any real enthusiasm for him. She would minister amiably to his wants, and laugh at his antics, and praise his good temper, and stroke his sleek, round head, but she stuck resolutely to her first notion, that he was quite too “queer” for her to really love. She could never approve of his having flippers instead of fore paws, and of his lying down all the time even when he walked. As for his hind feet, which stuck out always straight behind him and close together, like a sort of double-barrelled tail, she was quite sure they had been fixed that way by mistake, and 217 she could not, in spite of all her father’s explanations as to the advantages, for a seal, of that arrangement, ever bring herself to accept them as normal.
Miss Libby’s mother proved even less cordial. Her notions of natural history being of the most primitive, at first view she had jumped to the conclusion that the Pup was a species of fish; and in this opinion nothing could ever shake her.
“Well, I never!” she had exclaimed. “If that ain’t just like you, Eph Barnes. As if it wa’n’t enough to have to eat fish, an’ talk fish, an’ smell fish, year in an’ year out, but you must go an’ bring a live fish home to flop aroun’ the house an’ keep gittin’ under a body’s feet every way they turn! An’ what’s he goin’ to eat, anyways, I’d like to know?”
“He eats fish, but he ain’t no manner of fish himself, mother, no more than you nor I be!” explained Captain Ephraim, with a grin. “An’ he won’t be in your way a mite, for he’ll live out in the yard, an’ I’ll sink the half of a molasses hogshead out there an’ fill it with salt water for him to play in. He’s an amusin’ little beggar, an’ gentle as a kitten.”
“Well, I’d have you know that I wash my hands of him, Ephraim!” declared Mrs. Barnes, 218 with emphasis. And so it came about that the Pup presently found himself, not Libby’s special pet, but Captain Ephraim’s.
Two important members of the Barnes family were a large yellow cat and a small, tangle-haired, blue-gray mop of a Skye terrier. At the first glimpse of the Pup, the yellow cat had fled, with tail as big as a bottle-brush, to the top of the kitchen dresser, where she crouched growling, with eyes like green full moons. The terrier, on the other hand, whose name was Toby, had shown himself rather hospitable to the mild-eyed stranger. Unacquainted with fear, and always inclined to be scornful of whatever conduct the yellow cat might indulge in, he had approached the newcomer with a friendly wagging of his long-haired stump of a tail, and sniffed at him with pleased curiosity. The Pup, his lonely heart hungering for comradeship, had met this civil advance with effusion; and thenceforward the two were fast friends.
By the time the yellow cat and Mrs. Barnes had both got over regarding the Pup as a stranger, he had become an object of rather distant interest to them. When he played at wrestling matches with Toby in the yard,—which always ended by the Pup rolling indulgently on his back, while Toby, with yelps of 219 excitement, mounted triumphantly between his fanning flippers,—the yellow cat would crouch upon the woodpile close by and regard the proceedings with intent but non-committal eye. Mrs. Barnes, for her part, would open the kitchen door and surreptitiously coax the Pup in, with the lure of a dish of warm milk, which he loved extravagantly. Then—this being while Libby was at school and Captain Ephraim away on the water—she would seat herself in the rocking-chair by the window with her knitting and watch the Pup and Toby at their play. The young seal was an endless source of speculation to her.
“To think, now,” she would mutter to herself, “that I’d be a-settin’ here day after day a-studyin’ out a critter like that, what’s no more’n jest plain fish says I, if he do flop roun’ the house an’ drink milk like a cat. He’s right uncanny; but there ain’t no denyin’ but what he’s as good as a circus when he gits to playin’ with Toby.”
As Mrs. Barnes had a very good opinion of Toby’s intelligence, declaring him to be the smartest dog in Maine, she gradually imbibed a certain degree of respect for Toby’s friend. And so it came about that the Pup acquired a taste which no seal was ever intended to acquire—a 220 taste for the luxurious glow of the kitchen fire.
When at last the real Atlantic winter had settled down upon the coast, binding it with bitter frost and scourging it with storm, then Captain Ephraim spent most of his time at home in his snug cottage. He had once, on a flying visit to New York, seen a troupe of performing seals, which had opened his eyes to the marvellous intelligence of these amphibians. It now became his chief occupation, in the long winter evenings, to teach tricks to the Pup. And stimulated by abundant prizes in the shape of fresh herrings and warm milk, right generously did the Pup respond. He learned so fast that before spring the accomplished Toby was outstripped; and as for the canary,—an aristocratic golden fellow who had come all the way from Boston,—Miss Libby was constrained to admit that, except when it came to a question of singing, her pet was “not in it” with her father’s. Mrs. Barnes’ verdict was that “canaries seemed more natural-like, but couldn’t rightly be called so interestin’.”
Between Libby and her father there was always a lot of gay banter going on, and now Captain Ephraim declared that he would teach the Pup to sing as well as the canary. The 221 obliging animal had already acquired a repertoire of tricks that would have made him something of a star in any troupe. The new demand upon his wits did not disturb him, so long as it meant more fish, more milk, and more petting. Captain Ephraim took a large tin bucket, turned it upside down on the floor, and made the Pup rest his chest upon the bottom. Then, tying a tin plate to each flipper, he taught the animal to pound the plates vigorously against the sides of the bucket, with a noise that put the shrill canary to shamefaced silence and drove the yellow cat in frantic amazement from the kitchen. This lesson it took weeks to perfect, because the Pup himself always seemed mortified at the blatant discords which he made. When it was all achieved, however, it was not singing, but mere instrumental music, as Libby triumphantly proclaimed. Her father straightway swore that he was not to be downed by any canary. A few weeks more, and he had taught the Pup to point his muzzle skyward and emit long, agonizing groans, the while he kept flapping the two tin plates against the bucket. It was a wonderful achievement, which made Toby retreat behind the kitchen stove and gaze forth upon his friend with grieved surprise. But it obliged Libby, who was a fair-minded child, to 222 confess to her father that she and her pet were vanquished.
All this while the Pup was growing, as perhaps no harbor seal of his months had grown before. When spring came, he saw less of Captain Ephraim, but he had compensation, for the good captain now diverted into his modest grounds a no-account little brook which was going begging, and dug a snug little basin at the foot of the garden for the Pup to disport himself therein. All through the summer he continued to grow and was happy, playing with Toby, offending the yellow cat, amusing Miss Libby, and affording food for speculation to Mrs. Barnes over her knitting. In the winter Captain Ephraim polished him up in his old tricks, and taught him some new ones. But by this time he had grown so big that Mrs. Barnes began to grumble at him for taking up too much room. He was, as ever, a model of confiding amiability, in spite of his ample jaws and formidable teeth. But one day toward spring he showed that this good nature of his would not stand the test of seeing a friend ill-used.
It happened in this way. Toby, who was an impudent little dog, had managed to incur the enmity of a vicious half-breed mastiff, which lived on a farm some distance out of Eastport. 223 The brute was known to have killed several smaller dogs; so whenever he passed the Barnes’ gate, and snarled his threats at Toby, Toby would content himself with a scornful growl from the doorstep.
But one morning, as the big mongrel went by at the tail of his master’s sled, Toby chanced to be very busy in the snow near the gate digging up a precious buried bone. The big dog crept up on tiptoe, and went over the gate with a scrambling bound. Toby had just time to lift his shaggy little head out of the snow and turn to face the assault. His heart was great, and there was no terror in the growl with which he darted under the foe’s huge body and sank his teeth strategically into the nearest hind paw. But the life would have been crushed out of him in half a minute, had not the Pup, at this critical juncture, come flopping up awkwardly to see how his little friend was faring.
Now the Pup, as we have seen, was simply overflowing with good-will towards dogs, and cats, and every one. But that was because he thought they were all friendly. He was amazed to find here a dog that seemed unfriendly. Then all at once he realized that something very serious was happening to his playmate. His eyes reddened and blazed; and with one mighty lunge 224 he flung himself forward upon the enemy. With that terrific speed of action which could snap up a darting mackerel, he caught the mastiff in the neck, close behind the jaw. His teeth were built to hold the writhings of the biggest salmon, and his grip was that of a bulldog—except that it cut far deeper.
The mastiff yelped, snapped wildly at his strange antagonist, and then, finding himself held so that he could not by any possibility get a grip, strove to leap into the air and shake his assailant off. But the Pup held him down inexorably, his long teeth cutting deeper and deeper with every struggle. For perhaps half a minute the fight continued, the mad contortions of the entangled three (for Toby still clung to his grip on the foe’s hind paw) tearing up the snow for a dozen feet in every direction. The snow was flecked with crimson,—but suddenly, with a throbbing gush, it was flooded scarlet. The Pup’s teeth had torn through the great artery of his opponent’s neck. With a cough the brute fell over, limp and unresisting as a half-filled bran sack.
At this moment the mastiff’s owner, belatedly aware that the tables were being turned on his vicious favorite, came yelling and cursing over the gate, brandishing a sled stake in his hands. 225 But at the same time arrived Captain Ephraim, rushing bareheaded from the kitchen, and stepped in front of the new arrival. One glance had shown him that the fight was over.
“Hold hard there, Baiseley!” he ordered in curt tones. Then he continued more slowly—“It ain’t no use makin’ a fuss. That murderin’ brute of yourn begun it, an’ come into my yard to kill my own little tike here. He’s got just what he deserved. An’ if the Pup here hadn’t ’a’ done it, I’d ’a’ done it myself. See?”
Baiseley, like his mongrel follower, was a bully. But he had discretion. He calmed down.
“That there dog o’ mine, Captain Ephraim, was a good dog, an’ worth money. I reckon ye’ll hev to pay me ten dollars for that dog, an’ we’ll call it square.”
“Reckon I’ll have to owe it to ye, Hank! Mebbe I’ll pay it some day when you git han’somer ’n you are now!” laughed Captain Ephraim dryly. He gave a piercing whistle through his teeth. Straightway Toby, sadly bedraggled, came limping up to him. The Pup let go of his dead enemy, and lifted his head to eye his master inquiringly. His whole front was streaming with blood.
“Go wash yerself!” ordered the captain 226 picking up a chip and hurling it into the pond, which was now half empty of ice.
The Pup floundered off obediently to get the chip, and Baiseley, muttering inarticulate abuse, slouched away to his sled.