The Ship-Dwellers: A Story of a Happy Cruise

by Albert Bigelow Paine

The type of these dogs impresses me. They have reverted to the original pattern—they are wolf-dogs. They vary only in color—usually some tone of grizzly gray—and not widely in that. They have returned to race—to the old wild breed that made his bed in the grass and revolved three times before he was ready to lie down. One might expect them to be ugly and dangerous, but they are not. They are the kindest, gentlest members of the dog family notwithstanding the harsh treatment they receive, and the most intelligent. No one really human can study them without sympathy and admiration.

I have watched these dogs a good deal since we came here, and a lady of Constantinople, the wife of a foreign minister, has added largely to my information on the subject.

They are quite wonderful in many ways. They have divided themselves into groups or squads, and their territory into districts, with borders exactly defined. They know just about how much substance each district will supply and the squads are not allowed to grow. There is a captain to each of these companies, and his rule is absolute. When the garbage from each house is brought out and dumped into the street, he oversees the distribution and keeps order. He keeps it, too. There is no fighting and very little discord, unless some outlaw dog from a neighboring group attempts to make an incursion. Then there is a wild outbreak, and if the dog escapes undamaged he is lucky.

The captain of a group is a sultan with the power of life and death over his subjects. When puppies come along he designates the few—the very few—that are to live, and one mother nurses several of the reduced litters—the different mothers taking turns. When a dog gets too old to be useful in the strenuous round—when he is no longer valuable to the band—he is systematically put out of the way by starvation. A day comes when the captain issues some kind of an edict that he is no longer to have food. From that moment, until his death, not a morsel passes his lips. With longing eyes he looks at the others eating, but he makes no attempt to join them. Now and again a bit of something falls his way. The temptation is too strong—he reaches toward the morsel. The captain, who overlooks nothing, gives a low growl. The dying creature shrinks back without a murmur. He knows the law. Perhaps he, too, was once a captain.

The minister's wife told me that she had tried to feed one of those dying dogs, but that even when the food was placed in front of him he would only look pleadingly at the captain and refuse to touch it. She brought him inside, at last, where he was no longer under that deadly surveillance. He ate then, but lived only a little while. Perhaps it was too late; perhaps the decree was not to be disobeyed, even there.

As a rule, it is unwise to show kindness or the least attention to these dogs, she said. The slightest word or notice unlocks such a store-house of gratitude and heart-hunger in those poor creatures that one can never venture near that neighborhood again without being fairly overwhelmed with devotion. Speak a word to one of them and he will desert his companions and follow you for miles.

The minister's wife told how once a male member of her household had shown some mark of attention to one of the dogs of their neighborhood group. A day or two later she set out for a walk, carrying her parasol, holding it downward. Suddenly she felt it taken from her hand. Looking down, she saw a dog walking by her side, carrying it. It was the favored animal, trying to make return to any one who came out of that heavenly house.

She told me how in the winter the dogs pile up in pyramids to keep warm, and how those underneath, when they have smothered as long as they can, will work out and get to the top of the heap and let the others have a chance to get warm and smothered too.

Once, when some excavations were going on in her neighborhood the dogs of several bands, made kin by a vigorous touch of nature, cold, had packed themselves into a sort of tunnel which the workmen had made. One dog who had come a little late was left outside. He made one or two efforts to get a position, but it was no use. He reflected upon the situation and presently set up a loud barking. That was too much for those other dogs. They came tumbling out to see what had happened, but before they had a chance to find out, the late arrival had slipped quietly in and established himself in the warmest place.

Once a pasha visited a certain neighborhood in Pera, and the dogs kept him awake. In his irritation he issued an order that the dogs of that environment should be killed. The order was carried out, and for a day and a night there was silence there. But then the word had gone forth that a section of rich territory had been vacated, and there was a rush for it that was like the occupation of the Oklahoma strip.