The Crock of Gold, James Stephens [best mobile ebook reader txt] 📗

and bit, and kicked, and struck at him. So furiously sudden was his attack that the man went staggering back against the wall, then he plucked at the boy and whirled him across the room. In an instant the two dogs leaped at him snarling with rage—one of these he kicked into a corner, from which it rebounded again bristling and red-eyed; the other dog was caught by the woman, and after a few frantic seconds she gripped the first dog also. To a horrible chorus of howls and snapping teeth the men hustled outside and slammed the door.

“Shawn,” the sergeant bawled, “have you got a good grip of that man?”

“I have so,” said Shawn.

“If he gets away I’ll kick the belly out of you; mind that now! Come along with you and no more of your slouching.”

They marched down the road in a tingling silence.

“Dogs,” said the Philosopher, “are a most intelligent race of people—”

“People, my granny!” said the sergeant.

“From the earliest ages their intelligence has been observed and recorded, so that ancient literatures are bulky with references to their sagacity and fidelity—”

“Will you shut your old jaw?” said the sergeant.

“I will not,” said the Philosopher. “Elephants also are credited with an extreme intelligence and devotion to their masters, and they will build a wall or nurse a baby with equal skill and happiness. Horses have received high recommendations in this respect, but crocodiles, hens, beetles, armadillos, and fish do not evince any remarkable partiality for man—”

“I wish,” said the sergeant bitterly, “that all them beasts were stuffed down your throttle the way you’d have to hold your prate.”

“It doesn’t matter,” said the Philosopher. “I do not know why these animals should attach themselves to men with gentleness and love and yet be able to preserve intact their initial bloodthirstiness, so that while they will allow their masters to misuse them in any way they will yet fight most willingly with each other, and are never really happy saving in the conduct of some private and nonsensical battle of their own. I do not believe that it is fear which tames these creatures into mildness, but that the most savage animal has a capacity for love which has not been sufficiently noted, and which, if more intelligent attention had been directed upon it, would have raised them to the status of intellectual animals as against intelligent ones, and, perhaps, have opened to us a correspondence which could not have been other than beneficial.”

“Keep your eyes out for that gap in the trees, Shawn,” said the sergeant.

“I’m doing that,” said Shawn.

The Philosopher continued:

“Why can I not exchange ideas with a cow? I am amazed at the incompleteness of my growth when I and a fellow-creature stand dumbly before each other without one glimmer of comprehension, locked and barred from all friendship and intercourse—”

“Shawn,” cried the sergeant.

“Don’t interrupt,” said the Philosopher; “you are always talking.—The lower animals, as they are foolishly called, have abilities at which we can only wonder. The mind of an ant is one to which I would readily go to school. Birds have atmospheric and levitational information which millions of years will not render accessible to us; who that has seen a spider weaving his labyrinth, or a bee voyaging safely in the trackless air, can refuse to credit that a vivid, trained intelligence animates these small enigmas? and the commonest earthworm is the heir to a culture before which I bow with the profoundest veneration—”

“Shawn,” said the sergeant, “say something for goodness’ sake to take the sound of that man’s clack out of my ear.”

“I wouldn’t know what to be talking about,” said Shawn, “for I never was much of a hand at conversation, and, barring my prayers, I got no education—I think myself that he was making a remark about a dog. Did you ever own a dog, sergeant?”

“You are doing very well, Shawn,” said the sergeant, “keep it up now.”

“I knew a man had a dog would count up to a hundred for you. He won lots of money in bets about it, and he’d have made a fortune, only that I noticed one day he used to be winking at the dog, and when he’d stop winking the dog would stop counting. We made him turn his back after that, and got the dog to count sixpence, but he barked for more than five shillings, he did so, and he would have counted up to a pound, maybe, only that his master turned round and hit him a kick. Every person that ever paid him a bet said they wanted their money back, but the man went away to America in the night, and I expect he’s doing well there for he took the dog with him. It was a wire-haired terrier bitch, and it was the devil for having pups.”

“It is astonishing,” said the Philosopher, “on what slender compulsion people will go to America—”

“Keep it up, Shawn,” said the sergeant, “you are doing me a favour.”

“I will so,” said Shawn. “I had a cat one time and it used to have kittens every two months.”

The Philosopher’s voice arose:

“If there was any periodicity about these migrations one could understand them. Birds, for example, migrate from their homes in the late autumn and seek abroad the sustenance and warmth which the winter would withhold if they remained in their native lands. The salmon also, a dignified fish with a pink skin, emigrates from the Atlantic Ocean, and betakes himself inland to the streams and lakes, where he recuperates for a season, and is often surprised by net, angle, or spear—”

“Cut in now, Shawn,” said the sergeant anxiously.

Shawn began to gabble with amazing speed and in a mighty voice:

“Cats sometimes eat their kittens, and sometimes they don’t. A cat that eats its kittens is a heartless brute. I knew a cat used to eat its kittens—it had four legs and a long tail, and it used to get the head-staggers every time it had eaten its kittens. I killed it myself one day with a hammer for I couldn’t stand the smell it made, so I couldn’t—”

“Shawn,” said the sergeant, “can’t you talk about something else besides cats and dogs?”

“Sure, I don’t know what to talk about,” said Shawn. “I’m sweating this minute trying to please you, so I arm. If you’ll tell me what to talk about I’ll do my endeavours.”

“You’re a fool,” said the sergeant sorrowfully; “you’ll never make a constable. I’m thinking that I would sooner listen to the man himself than to you. Have you got a good hold of him now?”

“I have so,” said Shawn.

“Well, step out and maybe we’ll reach the barracks this night, unless this is a road that there isn’t any end to at all. What was that? Did you hear a noise?”

“I didn’t hear