"Who's goin' to keep that there Menace?"

There was an almost universal chorus of "Me!" I say "almost universal"
because Jones, who is R.N.V.R. and educated, probably said, "I," and
the Chief Engineer was lighting his pipe and merely succeeded in
blowing the match out.

"You can't all have him," said the Third Hand, "so I think I'll take
him along with me. I knows a bit about dawgs."

There was instant and clamant disapproval, each one of us urging an
unquestionable claim to the guardianship of the orphan Menace. The
Steward said he was the only one with the ghost of a right to the dog;
had it not always been the Menace's custom to help him wash up the
plates and dishes? A Deck Hand, however, protested that as he had
eaten one of his mittens the Silent Menace was already in part his
property. The Mate and the Second-Engineer nearly came to blows about
it.

The question was still unsettled when the warrants arrived. As time
was short it was finally decided that whomsoever he should follow was
to be adjudged his future owner. We climbed ashore and spread out
fanwise, looking back and uttering those noises best calculated to
incline the unyielding heart of the Menace towards us. He himself rose
from the deck and strolled on to the wharf, where he stood coolly
regarding us. Without emotion his Cyclopean orb directed its gaze
from one to another till, midway between the Third Hand and
the Second-Engineer, it was observed to irradiate a sudden and
unaccustomed luminosity.