Finn the wolfhound

by A. J. Dawson

And then the Master would say something about the Mistress of the Kennels, and Finn would beat the deck with his thirty-inch tail, which was as thick and strong at its roots as a man's arm. Or perhaps, if the weather were calm as well as fine, the Mistress herself would come along and join them, seated in a low deck chair; and then, though Finn's eyes would take on a momentarily anxious look if her hand touched the Master, he would yet be very happy, stretched out between them, with the half of one dark eye to spare for one of them, and his whole big heart shining out upon the Master in the gaze which held his head always turned the one way.

Just as something always seems to strike a balance in the affairs of men-folk, so the gods who watch over the affairs of Finn's kind are wont to provide compensations. For months, before this sea voyage, Finn's whole being had been absorbed by the interests of the half-tame wild, in the country beside the Sussex Downs. Dreaming and waking, the hunt had held his thoughts, and solitary roaming had been his delight. Here aboard the great steamer he was suddenly and completely cut off from all these things; but something else had come to take possession of his active nature, his busy mind, his growing heart; and the great love of the Master which grew in him now effectually shut out anything like regret for the old life, by making the new life all-sufficing and more compact of interest, of satisfying fullness, than ever the home life had been at its best.

If it had not been for this remarkable development of Finn's character which was brought about by his confinement on board a ship with the Master, he would never have played the part he did in what was really the most important event of his life up till this time; and one, too, which taught the Master a good deal, regarding his own relationship to the great Wolfhound he had bred. It all happened on a Sunday morning when, the weather being very hot, the captain held service on the upper deck, under awnings, of course. Half a dozen children were allowed, during the latter part of the service, to withdraw, and play quietly by themselves, twenty yards away from the last row of chairs occupied by the congregation. At one end of this last row the Master sat, with Finn beside him on the deck. Among the children, one, a curly-headed rascal of a boy named Tim, aged eight, was everybody's favourite, and the leader of the rest in most kinds of mischief. Exactly how he managed it was never rightly understood, but when the piercing sound of a childish scream smote upon the Master's ears, through the droning periods of the captain's read sermon, Tim was in mid-air, half-way between the ship's rail and the sea, and the other children were staring, horror-stricken, at the place he had occupied a moment before, with his chubby arms about the stem of a boat's davit, and his brown legs astride the rail.

The Master was a man given to acting swiftly upon impulse. Finn had leaped to his feet at sound of the scream. The Master followed on the instant, and reached the ship's side within a second or two of Finn's arrival there. Finn's muzzle was thrust out between the white rails, and he saw the tiny figure of Tim in the smoothly eddying water a little abaft of the ship's beam. The Master saw it, too, and, turning, with one urgent hand on Finn's neck, he shouted--

"Over and fetch him, Finn! Over boy! Over!"

There was no mistaking his meaning. Finn had instant understanding of that. But Finn was no water dog. The sea was very far below. He let out two short nasal whimpers. The Master swung one arm excitedly.

"Over, boy! Fetch Tim! Over, then!"

Then the growing love of the past few weeks spoke strongly in Finn, overriding instinct in him, and, with a whining sort of bark of protest against the order his new love forced him to obey, he leaped over the white rail, and down, down, down through five-and-thirty feet of space into the smooth, blue sea, where it swirled and rippled past the high steel walls of the ship.

This exhausted the Master's first impulse. Instantly then there flashed through his mind knowledge of the fact that Finn was no water dog; that he had never been trained to fetch from the water, or to handle human beings gently with his teeth. The Master had never even seen Finn swim. That was a great love, a wonderful trust which had shone out from Finn's eyes, when, instinct protesting in his whining bark, he had leaped the rail in obedience to orders given on the impulse, and without thought. Would Finn be able to help the child who had often played with him about the deck? And how if that whining bark were a last good-bye?

In the next moment the Master acted on his second impulse, regardless of the shouts he heard behind him. His shoes and coat were shed from him in a moment, and he, too, leaped the rail, reaching the warm, blue water feet first, and striking out at once towards Finn and the child. As a swimmer his powers were not at all above the average.