Furthermore, Jerry was developing a liking for the captain, so he
snuggled close to him. When he put his nose into the captain's plate, he
was gently reprimanded. But once, when he merely sniffed at the mate's
steaming tea-cup, her received a snub on the nose from the mate's grimy
forefinger. Also, the mate did not offer him food.

Captain Van Horn gave him, first of all, a pannikin of oatmeal mush,
generously flooded with condensed cream and sweetened with a heaping
spoonful of sugar. After that, on occasion, he gave him morsels of
buttered bread and slivers of fried fish from which he first carefully
picked the tiny bones.

His beloved _Mister_ Haggin had never fed him from the table at meal
time, and Jerry was beside himself with the joy of this delightful
experience. And, being young, he allowed his eagerness to take
possession of him, so that soon he was unduly urging the captain for more
pieces of fish and of bread and butter. Once, he even barked his demand.
This put the idea into the captain's head, who began immediately to teach
him to "speak."

At the end of five minutes he had learned to speak softly, and to speak
only once--a low, mellow, bell-like bark of a single syllable. Also, in
this first five minutes, he had learned to "sit down," as distinctly
different from "lie down"; and that he must sit down whenever he spoke,
and that he must speak without jumping or moving from the sitting
position, and then must wait until the piece of food was passed to him.

Further, he had added three words to his vocabulary. For ever after,
"speak" would mean to him "speak," and "sit down" would mean "sit down"
and would not mean "lie down." The third addition to his vocabulary was