He became confidential with me after a pousse café or two.
“We faire ze chose économique, Virginie y mi,” he said. “Maybee som’ day we weesh avoir leetle farm en France. En vérité, mon ami, I forget ze vegetable an’ ze meat because I beat McHenry at écarté in ze Cercle Bougainville, jus’ avant we go ’way from Papeete. I nevaire play ze carte on ze schoonaire! Jamais de la vie!”
The captain had aboard a brown pup, a mongrel he had found in the Marquesas Islands. He had named him Chocolat, and passed hours each day in teaching him tricks—to lie down and sit up at command, to stand and to bark. The dog liked to run over the roof of the cabin and to crouch upon the low rail at the stern. As any roll or pitch of the vessel might toss him into the ocean, I feared for his longevity, but Chocolat—pronounced by Moet “Shockolah”—was able to fall inboard whenever the motion jeopardized his safety.
“Eh, petit chien,” Jean Moet would cry, when Chocolat skated down the inclined deck into the scuppers, or hung for a moment indecisively on the rail, “you by ’n’ by goin’-a be eat by ze requin. Ze big shark getta you, perrillo, an’ you forget all my teach you, mi querido!”
He whipped Chocolat many times a day, when the puppy let down from “attention” before told, or when he attacked his food before a certain whistled note.
“What will you do with him when his education is complete?” I asked Moet.
“When he ees educate, hein? He will be like ze saircuss animal. One year old, maybe, he make turnover, fight ze boxe, drink wine, an’, puedeser, he talk leetle. Zen I sell heem some tourist, some crazee Americain who zink he do for heem like me. I sharge five hunder franc.”
McHenry, who kicked Chocolat whenever he had an opportunity unseen, ridiculed Moet’s dream of gain.
“You will like hell!” said McHenry. “When you’ve got the dirty little bastard sayin’, ‘Good mornin’, ‘nice an’ proper, he’ll sneak ashore in some boat-load o’ truck, an’ some Paumotuan ’ll hotpot him. Wait till he’s fat! You know what they’ll do for fresh meat.”
“Non, non!” answered the captain, angrily. “I am not afraid of zat. I teach heem I keel heem he go in boat, but maybe you take heem an’ sell heem on ze quiet, McHenry.”