Jerry of the Islands

Published：2026-07-30 02:08:14 Source: gift engineering kits for 3 year olds Author: RC Helicopters

Transcribed from the 1917 Mills & Boon edition by David Price,carnival toys for 13 year olds under 10 dollarsemail [email protected]

JERRY OF THE ISLANDS

FOREWORD

It is a misfortune to some fiction-writers that fiction and unveracityin the average person’s mind mean one and the same thing. Several years ago I published a South Sea novel.  The action wasplaced in the Solomon Islands.  The action was praised by the criticsand reviewers as a highly creditable effort of the imagination. As regards reality—they said there wasn’t any.  Ofcourse, as every one knew, kinky-haired cannibals no longer obtainedon the earth’s surface, much less ran around with nothing on,chopping off one another’s heads, and, on occasion, a white man’shead as well.

Now listen.  I am writing these lines in Honolulu, Hawaii. Yesterday, on the beach at Waikiki, a stranger spoke to me.  Hementioned a mutual friend, Captain Kellar.  When I was wreckedin the Solomons on the blackbirder, the Minota, it was CaptainKellar, master of the blackbirder, the Eugénie, who rescuedme.  The blacks had taken Captain Kellar’s head, the strangertold me.  He knew.  He had represented Captain Kellar’smother in settling up the estate.

Listen.  I received a letter the other day from Mr. C. M. Woodford,Resident Commissioner of the British Solomons.  He was back athis post, after a long furlough to England, where he had entered hisson into Oxford.  A search of the shelves of almost any publiclibrary will bring to light a book entitled, “A Naturalist Amongthe Head Hunters.”  Mr. C. M. Woodford is the naturalist. He wrote the book.

To return to his letter.  In the course of the day’s workhe casually and briefly mentioned a particular job he had just got offhis hands.  His absence in England had been the cause of delay. The job had been to make a punitive expedition to a neighbouring island,and, incidentally, to recover the heads of some mutual friends of ours—awhite-trader, his white wife and children, and his white clerk. The expedition was successful, and Mr. Woodford concluded his accountof the episode with a statement to the effect: “What especiallystruck me was the absence of pain and terror in their faces, which seemedto express, rather, serenity and repose”—this, mind you,of men and women of his own race whom he knew well and who had sat atdinner with him in his own house.

Other friends, with whom I have sat at dinner in the brave, rollickingdays in the Solomons have since passed out—by the same way. My goodness!  I sailed in the teak-built ketch, the Minota,on a blackbirding cruise to Malaita, and I took my wife along. The hatchet-marks were still raw on the door of our tiny stateroom advertisingan event of a few months before.  The event was the taking of CaptainMackenzie’s head, Captain Mackenzie, at that time, being masterof the Minota.  As we sailed in to Langa-Langa, the British cruiser,the Cambrian, steamed out from the shelling of a village.

It is not expedient to burden this preliminary to my story with furtherdetails, which I do make asseveration I possess a-plenty.  I hopeI have given some assurance that the adventures of my dog hero in thisnovel are real adventures in a very real cannibal world.  Blessyou!—when I took my wife along on the cruise of the Minota,we found on board a nigger-chasing, adorable Irish terrier puppy, whowas smooth-coated like Jerry, and whose name was Peggy.  Had itnot been for Peggy, this book would never have been written.  Shewas the chattel of the Minota’ssplendid skipper. So much did Mrs. London and I come to love her, that Mrs. London, afterthe wreck of the Minota, deliberately and shamelessly stole herfrom the Minota’sskipper.  I do further admit thatI did, deliberately and shamelessly, compound my wife’s felony. We loved Peggy so!  Dear royal, glorious little dog, buried atsea off the east coast of Australia!

I must add that Peggy, like Jerry, was born at Meringe Lagoon, onMeringe Plantation, which is of the Island of Ysabel, said Ysabel Islandlying next north of Florida Island, where is the seat of governmentand where dwells the Resident Commissioner, Mr. C. M. Woodford. Still further and finally, I knew Peggy’s mother and father well,and have often known the warm surge in the heart of me at the sightof that faithful couple running side by side along the beach. Terrence was his real name.  Her name was Biddy.

JACK LONDON
WAIKIKI BEACH,
HONOLULU, OAHU, T.H.
June 5, 1915

CHAPTER I

Not until MisterHaggin abruptly picked him up under one armand stepped into the sternsheets of the waiting whaleboat, did Jerrydream that anything untoward was to happen to him.  MisterHaggin was Jerry’s beloved master, and had been his beloved masterfor the six months of Jerry’s life.  Jerry did not know MisterHaggin as “master,” for “master” had no placein Jerry’s vocabulary, Jerry being a smooth-coated, golden-sorrelIrish terrier.

But in Jerry’s vocabulary, “MisterHaggin”possessed all the definiteness of sound and meaning that the word “master”possesses in the vocabularies of humans in relation to their dogs. “MisterHaggin” was the sound Jerry had always hearduttered by Bob, the clerk, and by Derby, the foreman on the plantation,when they addressed his master.  Also, Jerry had always heard therare visiting two-legged man-creatures such as came on the Arangi,address his master as MisterHaggin.

But dogs being dogs, in their dim, inarticulate, brilliant, and heroic-worshippingways misappraising humans, dogs think of their masters, and love theirmasters, more than the facts warrant.  “Master” meansto them, as “Mister” Haggin meant to Jerry, a dealmore, and a great deal more, than it means to humans.  The humanconsiders himself as “master” to his dog, but the dog considershis master “God.”

Now “God” was no word in Jerry’s vocabulary, despitethe fact that he already possessed a definite and fairly large vocabulary. “MisterHaggin” was the sound that meant “God.” In Jerry’s heart and head, in the mysterious centre of all hisactivities that is called consciousness, the sound, “MisterHaggin,” occupied the same place that “God” occupiesin human consciousness.  By word and sound, to Jerry, “MisterHaggin” had the same connotation that “God” has toGod-worshipping humans.  In short, MisterHaggin was Jerry’sGod.

And so, when MisterHaggin, or God, or call it what one willwith the limitations of language, picked Jerry up with imperative abruptness,tucked him under his arm, and stepped into the whaleboat, whose blackcrew immediately bent to the oars, Jerry was instantly and nervouslyaware that the unusual had begun to happen.  Never before had hegone out on board the Arangi, which he could see growing largerand closer to each lip-hissing stroke of the oars of the blacks.

Only an hour before, Jerry had come down from the plantation houseto the beach to see the Arangidepart.  Twice before, inhis half-year of life, had he had this delectable experience. Delectable it truly was, running up and down the white beach of sand-poundedcoral, and, under the wise guidance of Biddy and Terrence, taking partin the excitement of the beach and even adding to it.

There was the nigger-chasing.  Jerry had been born to hate niggers. His first experiences in the world as a puling puppy, had taught himthat Biddy, his mother, and his father Terrence, hated niggers. A nigger was something to be snarled at.  A nigger, unless he werea house-boy, was something to be attacked and bitten and torn if heinvaded the compound.  Biddy did it.  Terrence did it. In doing it, they served their God—MisterHaggin. Niggers were two-legged lesser creatures who toiled and slaved for theirtwo-legged white lords, who lived in the labour barracks afar off, andwho were so much lesser and lower that they must not dare come nearthe habitation of their lords.

And nigger-chasing was adventure.  Not long after he had learnedto sprawl, Jerry had learned that.  One took his chances. As long as MisterHaggin, or Derby, or Bob, was about, the niggerstook their chasing.  But there were times when the white lordswere not about.  Then it was “’Ware niggers!” One must dare to chase only with due precaution.  Because then,beyond the white lord’s eyes, the niggers had a way, not merelyof scowling and muttering, but of attacking four-legged dogs with stonesand clubs.  Jerry had seen his mother so mishandled, and, ere hehad learned discretion, alone in the high grass had been himself club-mauledby Godarmy, the black who wore a china door-knob suspended on his chestfrom his neck on a string of sennit braided from cocoanut fibre. More.  Jerry remembered another high-grass adventure, when he andhis brother Michael had fought Owmi, another black distinguishable forthe cogged wheels of an alarm clock on his chest.  Michael hadbeen so severely struck on his head that for ever after his left earhad remained sore and had withered into a peculiar wilted and twistedupward cock.

Still more.  There had been his brother Patsy, and his sisterKathleen, who had disappeared two months before, who had ceased andno longer were.  The great god, MisterHaggin, had ragedup and down the plantation.  The bush had been searched. Half a dozen niggers had been whipped.  And MisterHagginhad failed to solve the mystery of Patsy’s and Kathleen’sdisappearance.  But Biddy and Terrence knew.  So did Michaeland Jerry.  The four-months’ old Patsy and Kathleen had goneinto the cooking-pot at the barracks, and their puppy-soft skins hadbeen destroyed in the fire.  Jerry knew this, as did his fatherand mother and brother, for they had smelled the unmistakable burnt-meatsmell, and Terrence, in his rage of knowledge, had even attacked Mogomthe house-boy, and been reprimanded and cuffed by MisterHaggin,who had not smelled and did not understand, and who had always to impressdiscipline on all creatures under his roof-tree.

But on the beach, when the blacks, whose terms of service were upcame down with their trade-boxes on their heads to depart on the Arangi,was the time when nigger-chasing was not dangerous.  Old scorescould be settled, and it was the last chance, for the blacks who departedon the Aranginever came back.  As an instance, this verymorning Biddy, remembering a secret mauling at the hands of Lerumie,laid teeth into his naked calf and threw him sprawling into the water,trade-box, earthly possessions and all, and then laughed at him, surein the protection of MisterHaggin who grinned at the episode.

Then, too, there was usually at least one bush-dog on the Arangiat which Jerry and Michael, from the beach, could bark their heads off. Once, Terrence, who was nearly as large as an Airedale and fully aslion-hearted—Terrence the Magnificent, as Tom Haggin called him—hadcaught such a bush-dog trespassing on the beach and given him a delightfulthrashing, in which Jerry and Michael, and Patsy and Kathleen, who wereat the time alive, had joined with many shrill yelps and sharp nips. Jerry had never forgotten the ecstasy of the hair, unmistakably doggyin scent, which had filled his mouth at his one successful nip. Bush-dogs were dogs—he recognized them as his kind; but they weresomehow different from his own lordly breed, different and lesser, justas the blacks were compared with MisterHaggin, Derby, and Bob.

But Jerry did not continue to gaze at the nearing Arangi. Biddy, wise with previous bitter bereavements, had sat down on the edgeof the sand, her fore-feet in the water, and was mouthing her woe. That this concerned him, Jerry knew, for her grief tore sharply, albeitvaguely, at his sensitive, passionate heart.  What it presagedhe knew not, save that it was disaster and catastrophe connected withhim.  As he looked back at her, rough-coated and grief-stricken,he could see Terrence hovering solicitously near her.  He, too,was rough-coated, as was Michael, and as Patsy and Kathleen had been,Jerry being the one smooth-coated member of the family.

Further, although Jerry did not know it and Tom Haggin did, Terrencewas a royal lover and a devoted spouse.  Jerry, from his earliestimpressions, could remember the way Terrence had of running with Biddy,miles and miles along the beaches or through the avenues of cocoanuts,side by side with her, both with laughing mouths of sheer delight. As these were the only dogs, besides his brothers and sisters and theseveral eruptions of strange bush-dogs that Jerry knew, it did not enterhis head otherwise than that this was the way of dogs, male and female,wedded and faithful.  But Tom Haggin knew its unusualness. “Proper affinities,” he declared, and repeatedly declared,with warm voice and moist eyes of appreciation.  “A gentleman,that Terrence, and a four-legged proper man.  A man-dog, if thereever was one, four-square as the legs on the four corners of him. And prepotent!  My word!  His blood’d breed true fora thousand generations, and the cool head and the kindly brave heartof him.”

Terrence did not voice his sorrow, if sorrow he had; but his hoveringabout Biddy tokened his anxiety for her.  Michael, however, yieldingto the contagion, sat beside his mother and barked angrily out acrossthe increasing stretch of water as he would have barked at any dangerthat crept and rustled in the jungle.  This, too, sank to Jerry’sheart, adding weight to his sure intuition that dire fate, he knew notwhat, was upon him.

For his six months of life, Jerry knew a great deal and knew verylittle.  He knew, without thinking about it, without knowing thathe knew, why Biddy, the wise as well as the brave, did not act uponall the message that her heart voiced to him, and spring into the waterand swim after him.  She had protected him like a lioness whenthe big puarka(which, in Jerry’s vocabulary, along withgrunts and squeals, was the combination of sound, or word, for “pig”)had tried to devour him where he was cornered under the high-piled plantationhouse.  Like a lioness, when the cook-boy had struck him with astick to drive him out of the kitchen, had Biddy sprung upon the black,receiving without wince or whimper one straight blow from the stick,and then downing him and mauling him among his pots and pans until dragged(for the first time snarling) away by the unchiding MisterHaggin,who; however, administered sharp words to the cook-boy for daring tolift hand against a four-legged dog belonging to a god.

Jerry knew why his mother did not plunge into the water after him. The salt sea, as well as the lagoons that led out of the salt sea, weretaboo.  “Taboo,” as word or sound, had no place inJerry’s vocabulary.  But its definition, or significance,was there in the quickest part of his consciousness.  He possesseda dim, vague, imperative knowingness that it was not merely not good,but supremely disastrous, leading to the mistily glimpsed sense of utterendingness for a dog, for any dog, to go into the water where slippedand slid and noiselessly paddled, sometimes on top, sometimes emergingfrom the depths, great scaly monsters, huge-jawed and horribly-toothed,that snapped down and engulfed a dog in an instant just as the fowlsof MisterHaggin snapped and engulfed grains of corn.

Often he had heard his father and mother, on the safety of the sand,bark and rage their hatred of those terrible sea-dwellers, when, closeto the beach, they appeared on the surface like logs awash.  “Crocodile”was no word in Jerry’s vocabulary.  It was an image, an imageof a log awash that was different from any log in that it was alive. Jerry, who heard, registered, and recognized many words that were astruly tools of thought to him as they were to humans, but who, by inarticulatenessof birth and breed, could not utter these many words, nevertheless inhis mental processes, used images just as articulate men use words intheir own mental processes.  And after all, articulate men, inthe act of thinking, willy nilly use images that correspond to wordsand that amplify words.

Perhaps, in Jerry’s brain, the rising into the foreground ofconsciousness of an image of a log awash connoted more intimate andfuller comprehension of the thing being thought about, than did theword “crocodile,” and its accompanying image, in the foregroundof a human’s consciousness.  For Jerry really did know moreabout crocodiles than the average human.  He could smell a crocodilefarther off and more differentiatingly than could any man, than couldeven a salt-water black or a bushman smell one.  He could tellwhen a crocodile, hauled up from the lagoon, lay without sound or movement,and perhaps asleep, a hundred feet away on the floor mat of jungle.

He knew more of the language of crocodiles than did any man. He had better means and opportunities of knowing.  He knew theirmany noises that were as grunts and slubbers.  He knew their angernoises, their fear noises, their food noises, their love noises. And these noises were as definitely words in his vocabulary as are wordsin a human’s vocabulary.  And these crocodile noises weretools of thought.  By them he weighed and judged and determinedhis own consequent courses of action, just like any human; or, justlike any human, lazily resolved upon no course of action, but merelynoted and registered a clear comprehension of something that was goingon about him that did not require a correspondence of action on hispart.

And yet, what Jerry did not know was very much.  He did notknow the size of the world.  He did not know that this MeringeLagoon, backed by high, forested mountains and fronted and shelteredby the off-shore coral islets, was anything else than the entire world. He did not know that it was a mere fractional part of the great islandof Ysabel, that was again one island of a thousand, many of them greater,that composed the Solomon Islands that men marked on charts as a groupof specks in the vastitude of the far-western South Pacific.

It was true, there was a somewhere else or a something beyond ofwhich he was dimly aware.  But whatever it was, it was mystery. Out of it, things that had not been, suddenly were.  Chickens andpuarkas and cats, that he had never seen before, had a way of abruptlyappearing on Meringe Plantation.  Once, even, had there been aneruption of strange four-legged, horned and hairy creatures, the imagesof which, registered in his brain, would have been identifiable in thebrains of humans with what humans worded “goats.”

It was the same way with the blacks.  Out of the unknown, fromthe somewhere and something else, too unconditional for him to knowany of the conditions, instantly they appeared, full-statured, walkingabout Meringe Plantation with loin-cloths about their middles and bonebodkins through their noses, and being put to work by MisterHaggin, Derby, and Bob.  That their appearance was coincidentalwith the arrival of the Arangiwas an association that occurredas a matter of course in Jerry’s brain.  Further, he didnot bother, save that there was a companion association, namely, thattheir occasional disappearances into the beyond was likewise coincidentalwith the Arangi’sdeparture.

Jerry did not query these appearances and disappearances.  Itnever entered his golden-sorrel head to be curious about the affairor to attempt to solve it.  He accepted it in much the way he acceptedthe wetness of water and the heat of the sun.  It was the way oflife and of the world he knew.  His hazy awareness was no morethan an awareness of something—which, by the way, correspondsvery fairly with the hazy awareness of the average human of the mysteriesof birth and death and of the beyondness about which they have no definitenessof comprehension.

For all that any man may gainsay, the ketch Arangi, traderand blackbirder in the Solomon Islands, may have signified in Jerry’smind as much the mysterious boat that traffics between the two worlds,as, at one time, the boat that Charon sculled across the Styx signifiedto the human mind.  Out of the nothingness men came.  Intothe nothingness they went.  And they came and went always on theArangi.

And to the Arangi, this hot-white tropic morning, Jerry wenton the whaleboat under the arm of his MisterHaggin, while onthe beach Biddy moaned her woe, and Michael, not sophisticated, barkedthe eternal challenge of youth to the Unknown.

CHAPTER II

From the whaleboat, up the low side of the Arangi, and overher six-inch rail of teak to her teak deck, was but a step, and TomHaggin made it easily with Jerry still under his arm.  The deckwas cluttered with an exciting crowd.  Exciting the crowd wouldhave been to untravelled humans of civilization, and exciting it wasto Jerry; although to Tom Haggin and Captain Van Horn it was a merecommonplace of everyday life.

The deck was small because the Arangiwas small.  Originallya teak-built, gentleman’s yacht, brass-fitted, copper-fastened,angle-ironed, sheathed in man-of-war copper and with a fin-keel of bronze,she had been sold into the Solomon Islands’ trade for the purposeof blackbirding or nigger-running.  Under the law, however, thistraffic was dignified by being called “recruiting.”

The Arangiwas a labour-recruit ship that carried the new-caught,cannibal blacks from remote islands to labour on the new plantationswhere white men turned dank and pestilential swamp and jungle into richand stately cocoanut groves.  The Arangi’stwo mastswere of Oregon cedar, so scraped and hot-paraffined that they shonelike tan opals in the glare of sun.  Her excessive sail plan enabledher to sail like a witch, and, on occasion, gave Captain Van Horn, hiswhite mate, and his fifteen black boat’s crew as much as theycould handle.  She was sixty feet over all, and the cross beamsof her crown deck had not been weakened by deck-houses.  The onlybreaks—and no beams had been cut for them—were the maincabin skylight and companionway, the booby hatch for’ard overthe tiny forecastle, and the small hatch aft that let down into thestore-room.

And on this small deck, in addition to the crew, were the “return”niggers from three far-flung plantations.  By “return”was meant that their three years of contract labour was up, and that,according to contract, they were being returned to their home villageson the wild island of Malaita.  Twenty of them—familiar,all, to Jerry—were from Meringe; thirty of them came from theBay of a Thousand Ships, in the Russell Isles; and the remaining twelvewere from Pennduffryn on the east coast of Guadalcanar.  In additionto these—and they were all on deck, chattering and piping in queer,almost elfish, falsetto voices—were the two white men, CaptainVan Horn and his Danish mate, Borckman, making a total of seventy-ninesouls.

“Thought your heart ’d failed you at the last moment,”was Captain Van Horn’s greeting, a quick pleasure light glowinginto his eyes as they noted Jerry.

“It was sure near to doin’ it,” Tom Haggin answered. “It’s only for you I’d a done it, annyways. Jerry’s the best of the litter, barrin’ Michael, of course,the two of them bein’ all that’s left and no better thanthem that was lost.  Now that Kathleen was a sweet dog, the spitof Biddy if she’d lived.—Here, take ’m.”

With a jerk of abruptness, he deposited Jerry in Van Horn’sarms and turned away along the deck.

“An’ if bad luck comes to him I’ll never forgiveyou, Skipper,” he flung roughly over his shoulder.

“They’ll have to take my head first,” the skipperchuckled.

“An’ not unlikely, my brave laddy buck,” Haggingrowled.  “Meringe owes Somo four heads, three from the dysentery,an’ another wan from a tree fallin’ on him the last fortnight. He was the son of a chief at that.”

“Yes, and there’s two heads more that the Arangiowes Somo,” Van Horn nodded.  “You recollect, downto the south’ard last year, a chap named Hawkins was lost in hiswhaleboat running the Arli Passage?”  Haggin, returning alongthe deck, nodded.  “Two of his boat’s crew were Somoboys.  I’d recruited them for Ugi Plantation.  Withyour boys, that makes six heads the Arangiowes.  But whatof it?  There’s one salt-water village, acrost on the weathercoast, where the Arangiowes eighteen.  I recruited themfor Aolo, and being salt-water men they put them on the Sandflythat was lost on the way to the Santa Cruz.  They’ve gota jack-pot over there on the weather coast—my word, the boy thatcould get my head would be a second Carnegie!  A hundred and fiftypigs and shell money no end the village’s collected for the chapthat gets me and delivers.”

“And they ain’t—yet,” Haggin snorted.

“No fear,” was the cheerful retort.

“You talk like Arbuckle used to talk,” Haggin censured. “Manny’s the time I’ve heard him string it off. Poor old Arbuckle.  The most sure and most precautious chap thatever handled niggers.  He never went to sleep without spreadin’a box of tacks on the floor, and when it wasn’t them it was crumplednewspapers.  I remember me well, bein’ under the same roofat the time on Florida, when a big tomcat chased a cockroach into thepapers.  And it was blim, blam, blim, six times an’ twiceover, with his two big horse-pistols, an’ the house perforatedlike a cullender.  Likewise there was a dead tom-cat.  Hecould shoot in the dark with never an aim, pullin’ trigger withthe second finger and pointing with the first finger laid straight alongthe barrel.

“No, sir, my laddy buck.  He was the bully boy with theglass eye.  The nigger didn’t live that’d lift hishead.  But they got ’m.  They got ’m.  Helasted fourteen years, too.  It was his cook-boy.  Hatcheted’m before breakfast.  An’ it’s well I rememberour second trip into the bush after what was left of ’m.”

“I saw his head after you’d turned it over to the Commissionerat Tulagi,” Van Horn supplemented.

“An’ the peaceful, quiet, everyday face of him on it,with almost the same old smile I’d seen a thousand times. It dried on ’m that way over the smokin’ fire.  Butthey got ’m, if it did take fourteen years.  There’smanny’s the head that goes to Malaita, manny’s the timeuntooken; but, like the old pitcher, it’s tooken in the end.”

“But I’ve got their goat,” the captain insisted. “When trouble’s hatching, I go straight to them and tellthem what.  They can’t get the hang of it.  Think I’vegot some powerful devil-devil medicine.”

Tom Haggin thrust out his hand in abrupt good-bye, resolutely keepinghis eyes from dropping to Jerry in the other’s arms.

“Keep your eye on my return boys,” he cautioned, as hewent over the side, “till you land the last mother’s sonof ’m.  They’ve got no cause to love Jerry or his breed,an’ I’d hate ill to happen ’m at a nigger’shands.  An’ in the dark of the night ’tis like as nothe can do a fare-you-well overside.  Don’t take your eyeoff ’m till you’re quit of the last of ’m.”

At sight of big MisterHaggin deserting him and being pulledaway in the whaleboat, Jerry wriggled and voiced his anxiety in a low,whimpering whine.  Captain Van Horn snuggled him closer in hisarm with a caress of his free hand.

“Don’t forget the agreement,” Tom Haggin calledback across the widening water.  “If aught happens you, Jerry’sto come back to me.”

“I’ll make a paper to that same and put it with the ship’sarticles,” was Van Horn’s reply.

Among the many words possessed by Jerry was his own name; and inthe talk of the two men he had recognised it repeatedly, and he wasaware, vaguely, that the talk was related to the vague and unguessablyterrible thing that was happening to him.  He wriggled more determinedly,and Van Horn set him down on the deck.  He sprang to the rail withmore quickness than was to be expected of an awkward puppy of six months,and not the quick attempt of Van Horn to cheek him would have succeeded. But Jerry recoiled from the open water lapping the Arangi’sside.  The taboo was upon him.  It was the image of the logawash that was not a log but that was alive, luminous in his brain,that checked him.  It was not reason on his part, but inhibitionwhich had become habit.

He plumped down on his bob tail, lifted golden muzzle skyward, andemitted a long puppy-wail of dismay and grief.

“It’s all right, Jerry, old man, brace up and be a man-dog,”Van Horn soothed him.

But Jerry was not to be reconciled.  While this indubitablywas a white-skinned god, it was not his god.  MisterHagginwas his god, and a superior god at that.  Even he, without thinkingabout it at all, recognized that.  His MisterHaggin worepants and shoes.  This god on the deck beside him was more likea black.  Not only did he not wear pants, and was barefooted andbarelegged, but about his middle, just like any black, he wore a brilliant-colouredloin-cloth, that, like a kilt, fell nearly to his sunburnt knees.

Captain Van Horn was a handsome man and a striking man, althoughJerry did not know it.  If ever a Holland Dutchman stepped outof a Rembrandt frame, Captain Van Horn was that one, despite the factthat he was New York born, as had been his knickerbocker ancestors beforehim clear back to the time when New York was not New York but New Amsterdam. To complete his costume, a floppy felt hat, distinctly Rembrandtishin effect, perched half on his head and mostly over one ear; a sixpenny,white cotton undershirt covered his torso; and from a belt about hismiddle dangled a tobacco pouch, a sheath-knife, filled clips of cartridges,and a huge automatic pistol in a leather holster.

On the beach, Biddy, who had hushed her grief, lifted it again whenshe heard Jerry’s wail.  And Jerry, desisting a moment tolisten, heard Michael beside her, barking his challenge, and saw, withoutbeing conscious of it, Michael’s withered ear with its persistentupward cock.  Again, while Captain Van Horn and the mate, Borckman,gave orders, and while the Arangi’smainsail and spankerbegan to rise up the masts, Jerry loosed all his heart of woe in whatBob told Derby on the beach was the “grandest vocal effort”he had ever heard from any dog, and that, except for being a bit thin,Caruso didn’t have anything on Jerry.  But the song was toomuch for Haggin, who, as soon as he had landed, whistled Biddy to himand strode rapidly away from the beach.

At sight of her disappearing, Jerry was guilty of even more Caruso-likeeffects, which gave great joy to a Pennduffryn return boy who stoodbeside him.  He laughed and jeered at Jerry with falsetto chucklingsthat were more like the jungle-noises of tree-dwelling creatures, half-birdand half-man, than of a man, all man, and therefore a god.  Thisserved as an excellent counter-irritant.  Indignation that a mereblack should laugh at him mastered Jerry, and the next moment his puppyteeth, sharp-pointed as needles, had scored the astonished black’snaked calf in long parallel scratches from each of which leaped theinstant blood.  The black sprang away in trepidation, but the bloodof Terrence the Magnificent was true in Jerry, and, like his fatherbefore him, he followed up, slashing the black’s other calf intoa ruddy pattern.

At this moment, anchor broken out and headsails running up, CaptainVan Horn, whose quick eye had missed no detail of the incident, withan order to the black helmsman turned to applaud Jerry.

“Go to it, Jerry!” he encouraged.  “Get him! Shake him down!  Sick him!  Get him!  Get him!”

The black, in defence, aimed a kick at Jerry, who, leaping in insteadof away—another inheritance from Terrence—avoided the barefoot and printed a further red series of parallel lines on the darkleg.  This was too much, and the black, afraid more of Van Hornthan of Jerry, turned and fled for’ard, leaping to safety on topof the eight Lee-Enfield rifles that lay on top of the cabin skylightand that were guarded by one member of the boat’s crew. About the skylight Jerry stormed, leaping up and falling back, untilCaptain Van Horn called him off.

“Some nigger-chaser, that pup, somenigger-chaser!”Van Horn confided to Borckman, as he bent to pat Jerry and give himdue reward of praise.

And Jerry, under this caressing hand of a god, albeit it did notwear pants, forgot for a moment longer the fate that was upon him.

“He’s a lion-dog—more like an Airedale than anIrish terrier,” Van Horn went on to his mate, still petting. “Look at the size of him already.  Look at the bone of him. Some chest that.  He’s got the endurance.  And he’llbe some dog when he grows up to those feet of his.”

Jerry had just remembered his grief and was starting a rush acrossthe deck to the rail to gaze at Meringe growing smaller every secondin the distance, when a gust of the South-east Trade smote the sailsand pressed the Arangidown.  And down the deck, slantedfor the moment to forty-five degrees, Jerry slipped and slid, vainlyclawing at the smooth surface for a hold.  He fetched up againstthe foot of the mizzenmast, while Captain Van Horn, with the sailor’seye for the coral patch under his bow, gave the order “Hard a-lee!”

Borckman and the black steersman echoed his words, and, as the wheelspun down, the Arangi, with the swiftness of a witch, roundedinto the wind and attained a momentary even keel to the flapping ofher headsails and a shifting of headsheets.

Jerry, still intent on Meringe, took advantage of the level footingto recover himself and scramble toward the rail.  But he was deflectedby the crash of the mainsheet blocks on the stout deck-traveller, asthe mainsail, emptied of the wind and feeling the wind on the otherside, swung crazily across above him.  He cleared the danger ofthe mainsheet with a wild leap (although no less wild had been Van Horn’sleap to rescue him), and found himself directly under the mainboom withthe huge sail looming above him as if about to fall upon him and crushhim.

It was Jerry’s first experience with sails of any sort. He did not know the beasts, much less the way of them, but, in his vividrecollection, when he had been a tiny puppy, burned the memory of thehawk, in the middle of the compound, that had dropped down upon himfrom out of the sky.  Under that colossal threatened impact hecrouched down to the deck.  Above him, falling upon him like abolt from the blue, was a winged hawk unthinkably vaster than the onehe had encountered.  But in his crouch was no hint of cower. His crouch was a gathering together, an assembling of all the partsof him under the rule of the spirit of him, for the spring upward tomeet in mid career this monstrous, menacing thing.

But, the succeeding fraction of a moment, so that Jerry, leaping,missed even the shadow of it, the mainsail, with a second crash of blockson traveller, had swung across and filled on the other tack.

Van Horn had missed nothing of it.  Before, in his time, hehad seen young dogs frightened into genuine fits by their first encounterswith heaven-filling, sky-obscuring, down-impending sails.  Thiswas the first dog he had seen leap with bared teeth, undismayed, tograpple with the huge unknown.

With spontaneity of admiration, Van Horn swept Jerry from the deckand gathered him into his arms.

CHAPTER III

Jerry quite forgot Meringe for the time being.  As he well remembered,the hawk had been sharp of beak and claw.  This air-flapping, thunder-crashingmonster needed watching.  And Jerry, crouching for the spring andever struggling to maintain his footing on the slippery, heeling deck,kept his eyes on the mainsail and uttered low growls at any displayof movement on its part.

The Arangiwas beating out between the coral patches of thenarrow channel into the teeth of the brisk trade wind.  This necessitatedfrequent tacks, so that, overhead, the mainsail was ever swooping acrossfrom port tack to starboard tack and back again, making air-noises likethe swish of wings, sharply rat-tat-tatting its reef points and loudlycrashing its mainsheet gear along the traveller.  Half a dozentimes, as it swooped overhead, Jerry leaped for it, mouth open to grip,lips writhed clear of the clean puppy teeth that shone in the sun likegems of ivory.

Failing in every leap, Jerry achieved a judgment.  In passing,it must be noted that this judgment was only arrived at by a definiteact of reasoning.  Out of a series of observations of the thing,in which it had threatened, always in the same way, a series of attacks,he had found that it had not hurt him nor come in contact with him atall.  Therefore—although he did not stop to think that hewas thinking—it was not the dangerous, destroying thing he hadfirst deemed it.  It might be well to be wary of it, though alreadyit had taken its place in his classification of things that appearedterrible but were not terrible.  Thus, he had learned not to fearthe roar of the wind among the palms when he lay snug on the plantation-houseveranda, nor the onslaught of the waves, hissing and rumbling into harmlessfoam on the beach at his feet.

Many times, in the course of the day, alertly and nonchalantly, almostwith a quizzical knowingness, Jerry cocked his head at the mainsailwhen it made sudden swooping movements or slacked and tautened its crashingsheet-gear.  But he no longer crouched to spring for it. That had been the first lesson, and quickly mastered.

Having settled the mainsail, Jerry returned in mind to Meringe. But there was no Meringe, no Biddy and Terrence and Michael on the beach;no MisterHaggin and Derby and Bob; no beach: no land with thepalm-trees near and the mountains afar off everlastingly lifting theirgreen peaks into the sky.  Always, to starboard or to port, atthe bow or over the stern, when he stood up resting his fore-feet onthe six-inch rail and gazing, he saw only the ocean, broken-faced andturbulent, yet orderly marching its white-crested seas before the driveof the trade.

Had he had the eyes of a man, nearly two yards higher than his ownfrom the deck, and had they been the trained eyes of a man, sailor-manat that, Jerry could have seen the low blur of Ysabel to the north andthe blur of Florida to the south, ever taking on definiteness of detailas the Arangisagged close-hauled, with a good full, port-tackedto the south-east trade.  And had he had the advantage of the marineglasses with which Captain Van Horn elongated the range of his eyes,he could have seen, to the east, the far peaks of Malaita lifting life-shadowedpink cloud-puffs above the sea-rim.

But the present was very immediate with Jerry.  He had earlylearned the iron law of the immediate, and to accept what waswhen it was, rather than to strain after far other things.  Thesea was.  The land no longer was.  The Arangicertainlywas, along with the life that cluttered her deck.  And he proceededto get acquainted with what was—in short, to know and to adjusthimself to his new environment.

His first discovery was delightful—a wild-dog puppy from theYsabel bush, being taken back to Malaita by one of the Meringe returnboys.  In age they were the same, but their breeding was different. The wild-dog was what he was, a wild-dog, cringing and sneaking, hisears for ever down, his tail for ever between his legs, for ever apprehendingfresh misfortune and ill-treatment to fall on him, for ever fearingand resentful, fending off threatened hurt with lips curling malignantlyfrom his puppy fangs, cringing under a blow, squalling his fear andhis pain, and ready always for a treacherous slash if luck and safetyfavoured.

The wild-dog was maturer than Jerry, larger-bodied, and wiser inwickedness; but Jerry was blue-blooded, right-selected, and valiant. The wild-dog had come out of a selection equally rigid; but it was adifferent sort of selection.  The bush ancestors from whom he haddescended had survived by being fear-selected.  They had nevervoluntarily fought against odds.  In the open they had never attackedsave when the prey was weak or defenceless.  In place of courage,they had lived by creeping, and slinking, and hiding from danger. They had been selected blindly by nature, in a cruel and ignoble environment,where the prize of living was to be gained, in the main, by the cunningof cowardice, and, on occasion, by desperateness of defence when ina corner.

But Jerry had been love-selected and courage-selected.  Hisancestors had been deliberately and consciously chosen by men, who,somewhere in the forgotten past, had taken the wild-dog and made itinto the thing they visioned and admired and desired it to be. It must never fight like a rat in a corner, because it must never berat-like and slink into a corner.  Retreat must be unthinkable. The dogs in the past who retreated had been rejected by men.  Theyhad not become Jerry’s ancestors.  The dogs selected forJerry’s ancestors had been the brave ones, the up-standing andout-dashing ones, who flew into the face of danger and battled and died,but who never gave ground.  And, since it is the way of kind tobeget kind, Jerry was what Terrence was before him, and what Terrence’sforefathers had been for a long way back.

So it was that Jerry, when he chanced upon the wild-dog stowed shrewdlyaway from the wind in the lee-corner made by the mainmast and the cabinskylight, did not stop to consider whether the creature was bigger orfiercer than he.  All he knew was that it was the ancient enemy—thewild-dog that had not come in to the fires of man.  With a wildpaean of joy that attracted Captain Van Horn’s all-hearing earsand all-seeing eyes, Jerry sprang to the attack.  The wild puppygained his feet in full retreat with incredible swiftness, but was caughtby the rush of Jerry’s body and rolled over and over on the slopingdeck.  And as he rolled, and felt sharp teeth pricking him, hesnapped and snarled, alternating snarls with whimperings and squallingsof terror, pain, and abject humility.

And Jerry was a gentleman, which is to say he was a gentle dog. He had been so selected.  Because the thing did not fight back,because it was abject and whining, because it was helpless under him,he abandoned the attack, disengaging himself from the top of the tangleinto which he had slid in the lee scuppers.  He did not think aboutit.  He did it because he was so made.  He stood up on thereeling deck, feeling excellently satisfied with the delicious, wild-doggysmell of hair in his mouth and consciousness, and in his ears and consciousnessthe praising cry of Captain Van Horn: “Good boy, Jerry! You’re the goods, Jerry!  Some dog, eh!  Somedog!”

As he stalked away, it must be admitted that Jerry displayed pridein himself, his gait being a trifle stiff-legged, the cocking of hishead back over his shoulder at the whining wild-dog having all the articulatenessof: “Well, I guess I gave you enough this time.  You’llkeep out of my way after this.”

Jerry continued the exploration of his new and tiny world that wasnever at rest, for ever lifting, heeling, and lunging on the rollingface of the sea.  There were the Meringe return boys.  Hemade it a point to identify all of them, receiving, while he did so,scowls and mutterings, and reciprocating with cocky bullyings and threatenings. Being so trained, he walked on his four legs superior to them, two-leggedthough they were; for he had moved and lived always under the aegisof the great two-legged and be-trousered god, MisterHaggin.

Then there were the strange return boys, from Pennduffryn and theBay of a Thousand Ships.  He insisted on knowing them all. He might need to know them in some future time.  He did not thinkthis.  He merely equipped himself with knowledge of his environmentwithout any awareness of provision or without bothering about the future.

In his own way of acquiring knowledge, he quickly discovered, justas on the plantation house-boys were different from field-boys, thaton the Arangithere was a classification of boys different fromthe return boys.  This was the boat’s crew.  The fifteenblacks who composed it were closer than the others to Captain Van Horn. They seemed more directly to belong to the Arangiand to him. They laboured under him at word of command, steering at the wheel, pullingand hauling on ropes, healing water upon the deck from overside andscrubbing with brooms.

Just as Jerry had learned from MisterHaggin that he mustbe more tolerant of the house-boys than of the field-boys if they trespassedon the compound, so, from Captain Van Horn, he learned that he mustbe more tolerant of the boat’s crew than of the return boys. He had less license with them, more license with the others.  Aslong as Captain Van Horn did not want his boat’s crew chased,it was Jerry’s duty not to chase.  On the other hand he neverforgot that he was a white-god’s dog.  While he might notchase these particular blacks, he declined familiarity with them. He kept his eye on them.  He had seen blacks as tolerated as these,lined up and whipped by MisterHaggin.  They occupied anintermediate place in the scheme of things, and they were to be watchedin case they did not keep their place.  He accorded them room,but he did not accord them equality.  At the best, he could bestand-offishly considerate of them.

He made thorough examination of the galley, a rude affair, open onthe open deck, exposed to wind and rain and storm, a small stove thatwas not even a ship’s stove, on which somehow, aided by stringsand wedges, commingled with much smoke, two blacks managed to cook thefood for the four-score persons on board.

Next, he was interested by a strange proceeding on the part of theboat’s crew.  Upright pipes, serving as stanchions, werebeing screwed into the top of the Arangi’srail so thatthey served to support three strands of barbed wire that ran completelyaround the vessel, being broken only at the gangway for a narrow spaceof fifteen inches.  That this was a precaution against danger,Jerry sensed without a passing thought to it.  All his life, fromhis first impressions of life, had been passed in the heart of danger,ever-impending, from the blacks.  In the plantation house at Meringe,always the several white men had looked askance at the many blacks whotoiled for them and belonged to them.  In the living-room, wherewere the eating-table, the billiard-table, and the phonograph, stoodstands of rifles, and in each bedroom, beside each bed, ready to hand,had been revolvers and rifles.  As well, MisterHaggin andDerby and Bob had always carried revolvers in their belts when theyleft the house to go among their blacks.

Jerry knew these noise-making things for what they were—instrumentsof destruction and death.  He had seen live things destroyed bythem, such as puarkas, goats, birds, and crocodiles.  By meansof such things the white-gods by their will crossed space without crossingit with their bodies, and destroyed live things.  Now he, in orderto damage anything, had to cross space with his body to get to it. He was different.  He was limited.  All impossible thingswere possible to the unlimited, two-legged white-gods.  In a way,this ability of theirs to destroy across space was an elongation ofclaw and fang.  Without pondering it, or being conscious of it,he accepted it as he accepted the rest of the mysterious world abouthim.

Once, even, had Jerry seen his MisterHaggin deal death ata distance in another noise-way.  From the veranda he had seenhim fling sticks of exploding dynamite into a screeching mass of blackswho had come raiding from the Beyond in the long war canoes, beakedand black, carved and inlaid with mother-of-pearl, which they had lefthauled up on the beach at the door of Meringe.

Many precautions by the white-gods had Jerry been aware of, and so,sensing it almost in intangible ways, as a matter of course he acceptedthis barbed-wire fence on the floating world as a mark of the persistenceof danger.  Disaster and death hovered close about, waiting thechance to leap upon life and drag it down.  Life had to be veryalive in order to live was the law Jerry had learned from the littleof life he knew.

Watching the rigging up of the barbed wire, Jerry’s next adventurewas an encounter with Lerumie, the return boy from Meringe, who, onlythat morning, on the beach embarking, had been rolled by Biddy, alongwith his possessions into the surf.  The encounter occurred onthe starboard side of the skylight, alongside of which Lerumie was standingas he gazed into a cheap trade-mirror and combed his kinky hair witha hand-carved comb of wood.

Jerry, scarcely aware of Lerumie’s presence, was trotting paston his way aft to where Borckman, the mate, was superintending the stringingof the barbed wire to the stanchions.  And Lerumie, with a side-longlook to see if the deed meditated for his foot was screened from observation,aimed a kick at the son of his four-legged enemy.  His bare footcaught Jerry on the sensitive end of his recently bobbed tail, and Jerry,outraged, with the sense of sacrilege committed upon him, went instantlywild.

Captain Van Horn, standing aft on the port quarter, gauging the slantof the wind on the sails and the inadequate steering of the black atthe wheel, had not seen Jerry because of the intervening skylight. But his eyes had taken in the shoulder movement of Lerumie that advertisedthe balancing on one foot while the other foot had kicked.  Andfrom what followed, he divined what had already occurred.

Jerry’s outcry, as he sprawled, whirled, sprang, and slashed,was a veritable puppy-scream of indignation.  He slashed ankleand foot as he received the second kick in mid-air; and, although heslid clear down the slope of deck into the scuppers, he left on theblack skin the red tracery of his puppy-needle teeth.  Still screaminghis indignation, he clawed his way back up the steep wooden hill.

Lerumie, with another side-long look, knew that he was observed andthat he dare not go to extremes.  He fled along the skylight toescape down the companionway, but was caught by Jerry’s sharpteeth in his calf.  Jerry, attacking blindly, got in the way ofthe black’s feet.  A long, stumbling fall, accelerated bya sudden increase of wind in the sails, ensued, and Lerumie, vainlytrying to catch his footing, fetched up against the three strands ofbarbed wire on the lee rail.

The deck-full of blacks shrieked their merriment, and Jerry, hisrage undiminished, his immediate antagonist out of the battle, mistakinghimself as the object of the laughter of the blacks, turned upon them,charging and slashing the many legs that fled before him.  Theydropped down the cabin and forecastle companionways, ran out the bowsprit,and sprang into the rigging till they were perched everywhere in theair like monstrous birds.  In the end, the deck belonged to Jerry,save for the boat’s crew; for he had already learned to differentiate. Captain Van Horn was hilariously vocal of his praise, calling Jerryto him and giving him man-thumps of joyful admiration.  Next, thecaptain turned to his many passengers and orated in bêche-de-merEnglish.

“Hey!  You fella boy!  I make ’m big fellatalk.  This fella dog he belong along me.  One fella boy hurt’m that fella dog—my word!—me cross too much alongthat fella boy.  I knock ’m seven bells outa that fella boy. You take ’m care leg belong you.  I take ’m care dogbelong me.  Savve?”

And the passengers, still perched in the air, with gleaming blackeyes and with querulerus chirpings one to another, accepted the whiteman’s law.  Even Lerumie, variously lacerated by the barbedwire, did not scowl nor mutter threats.  Instead, and bringinga roar of laughter from his fellows and a twinkle into the skipper’seyes, he rubbed questing fingers over his scratches and murmured: “Myword!  Some big fella dog that fella!”

It was not that Jerry was unkindly.  Like Biddy and Terrence,he was fierce and unafraid; which attributes were wrapped up in hisheredity.  And, like Biddy and Terrence, he delighted in nigger-chasing,which, in turn, was a matter of training.  From his earliest puppyhoodhe had been so trained.  Niggers were niggers, but white men weregods, and it was the white-gods who had trained him to chase niggersand keep them in their proper lesser place in the world.  All theworld was held in the hollow of the white man’s hands.  Theniggers—well, had not he seen them always compelled to remainin their lesser place?  Had he not seen them, on occasion, tricedup to the palm-trees of the Meringe compound and their backs lashedto ribbons by the white-gods?  Small wonder that a high-born Irishterrier, in the arms of love of the white-god, should look at niggersthrough white-god’s eyes, and act toward niggers in the way thatearned the white-god’s reward of praise.

It was a busy day for Jerry.  Everything about the Arangiwas new and strange, and so crowded was she that exciting things werecontinually happening.  He had another encounter with the wild-dog,who treacherously attacked him in flank from ambuscade.  Tradeboxes belonging to the blacks had been irregularly piled so that a smallspace was left between two boxes in the lower tier.  From thishole, as Jerry trotted past in response to a call from the skipper,the wild-dog sprang, scratched his sharp puppy-teeth into Jerry’syellow-velvet hide, and scuttled back into his lair.

Again Jerry’s feelings were outraged.  He could understandflank attack.  Often he and Michael had played at that, althoughit had only been playing.  But to retreat without fighting froma fight once started was alien to Jerry’s ways and nature. With righteous wrath he charged into the hole after his enemy. But this was where the wild-dog fought to best advantage—in acorner.  When Jerry sprang up in the confined space he bumped hishead on the box above, and the next moment felt the snarling impactof the other’s teeth against his own teeth and jaw.

There was no getting at the wild-dog, no chance to rush against himwhole heartedly, with generous full weight in the attack.  AllJerry could do was to crawl and squirm and belly forward, and alwayshe was met by a snarling mouthful of teeth.  Even so, he wouldhave got the wild-dog in the end, had not Borckman, in passing, reachedin and dragged Jerry out by a hind-leg.  Again came Captain VanHorn’s call, and Jerry, obedient, trotted on aft.

A meal was being served on deck in the shade of the spanker, andJerry, sitting between the two men received his share.  Alreadyhe had made the generalization that of the two, the captain was thesuperior god, giving many orders that the mate obeyed.  The mate,on the other hand, gave orders to the blacks, but never did he giveorders to the captain.  Furthermore, Jerry was developing a likingfor the captain, so he snuggled close to him.  When he put hisnose 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 heapingspoonful of sugar.  After that, on occasion, he gave him morselsof buttered bread and slivers of fried fish from which he first carefullypicked the tiny bones.

His beloved MisterHaggin had never fed him from the tableat meal time, and Jerry was beside himself with the joy of this delightfulexperience.  And, being young, he allowed his eagerness to takepossession of him, so that soon he was unduly urging the captain formore pieces of fish and of bread and butter.  Once, he even barkedhis demand.  This put the idea into the captain’s head, whobegan immediately to teach him to “speak.”

At the end of five minutes he had learned to speak softly, and tospeak 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 mustsit down whenever he spoke, and that he must speak without jumping ormoving from the sitting position, and then must wait until the pieceof food was passed to him.

Further, he had added three words to his vocabulary.  For everafter, “speak” would mean to him “speak,” and“sit down” would mean “sit down” and would notmean “lie down.”  The third addition to his vocabularywas “Skipper.”  That was the name he had heard themate repeatedly call Captain Van Horn.  And just as Jerry knewthat when a human called “Michael,” that the call referredto Michael and not to Biddy, or Terrence, or himself, so he knew thatSkipperwas the name of the two-legged white master of this newfloating world.

“That isn’t just a dog,” was Van Horn’s conclusionto the mate.  “There’s a sure enough human brain therebehind those brown eyes.  He’s six months old.  Anyboy of six years would be an infant phenomenon to learn in five minutesall that he’s just learned.  Why, Gott-fer-dang, a dog’sbrain has to be like a man’s.  If he does things like a man,he’s got to think like a man.”

CHAPTER IV

The companionway into the main cabin was a steep ladder, and downthis, after his meal, Jerry was carried by the captain.  The cabinwas a long room, extending for the full width of the Arangifroma lazarette aft to a tiny room for’ard.  For’ard ofthis room, separated by a tight bulkhead, was the forecastle where livedthe boat’s crew.  The tiny room was shared between Van Hornand Borckman, while the main cabin was occupied by the three-score andodd return boys.  They squatted about and lay everywhere on thefloor and on the long low bunks that ran the full length of the cabinalong either side.

In the little stateroom the captain tossed a blanket on the floorin a corner, and he did not find it difficult to get Jerry to understandthat that was his bed.  Nor did Jerry, with a full stomach andweary from so much excitement, find it difficult to fall immediatelyasleep.

An hour later he was awakened by the entrance of Borckman. When he wagged his stub of a tail and smiled friendly with his eyes,the mate scowled at him and muttered angrily in his throat.  Jerrymade no further overtures, but lay quietly watching.  The matehad come to take a drink.  In truth, he was stealing the drinkfrom Van Horn’s supply.  Jerry did not know this.  Often,on the plantation, he had seen the white men take drinks.  Butthere was something somehow different in the manner of Borckman’staking a drink.  Jerry was aware, vaguely, that there was somethingsurreptitious about it.  What was wrong he did not know, yet hesensed the wrongness and watched suspiciously.

After the mate departed, Jerry would have slept again had not thecarelessly latched door swung open with a bang.  Opening his eyes,prepared for any hostile invasion from the unknown, he fell to watchinga large cockroach crawling down the wall.  When he got to his feetand warily stalked toward it, the cockroach scuttled away with a slightrustling noise and disappeared into a crack.  Jerry had been acquaintedwith cockroaches all his life, but he was destined to learn new thingsabout them from the particular breed that dwelt on the Arangi.

After a cursory examination of the stateroom he wandered out intothe cabin.  The blacks, sprawled about everywhere, but, conceivingit to be his duty to his Skipper, Jerry made it a point to identifyeach one.  They scowled and uttered low threatening noises whenhe sniffed close to them.  One dared to menace him with a blow,but Jerry, instead of slinking away, showed his teeth and prepared tospring.  The black hastily dropped the offending hand to his sideand made soothing, penitent noises, while others chuckled; and Jerrypassed on his way.  It was nothing new.  Always a blow wasto be expected from blacks when white men were not around.  Boththe mate and the captain were on deck, and Jerry, though unafraid, continuedhis investigations cautiously.

But at the doorless entrance to the lazarette aft, he threw cautionto the winds and darted in in pursuit of the new scent that came tohis nostrils.  A strange person was in the low, dark space whomhe had never smelled.  Clad in a single shift and lying on a coarsegrass-mat spread upon a pile of tobacco cases and fifty-pound tins offlour, was a young black girl.

There was something furtive and lurking about her that Jerry didnot fail to sense, and he had long since learned that something waswrong when any black lurked or skulked.  She cried out with fearas he barked an alarm and pounced upon her.  Even though his teethscratched her bare arm, she did not strike at him.  Not did shecry out again.  She cowered down and trembled and did not fightback.  Keeping his teeth locked in the hold he had got on her flimsyshift, he shook and dragged at her, all the while growling and scoldingfor her benefit and yelping a high clamour to bring Skipper or the mate.

In the course of the struggle the girl over-balanced on the boxesand tins and the entire heap collapsed.  This caused Jerry to yelpa more frenzied alarm, while the blacks, peering in from the cabin,laughed with cruel enjoyment.

When Skipper arrived, Jerry wagged his stump tail and, with earslaid back, dragged and tugged harder than ever at the thin cotton ofthe girl’s garment.  He expected praise for what he had done,but when Skipper merely told him to let go, he obeyed with the realizationthat this lurking, fear-struck creature was somehow different, and mustbe treated differently, from other lurking creatures.

Fear-struck she was, as it is given to few humans to be and stilllive.  Van Horn called her his parcel of trouble, and he was anxiousto be rid of the parcel, without, however, the utter annihilation ofthe parcel.  It was this annihilation which he had saved her fromwhen he bought her in even exchange for a fat pig.

Stupid, worthless, spiritless, sick, not more than a dozen yearsold, no delight in the eyes of the young men of her village, she hadbeen consigned by her disappointed parents to the cooking-pot. When Captain Van Horn first encountered her had been when she was thecentral figure in a lugubrious procession on the banks of the BalebuliRiver.

Anything but a beauty—had been his appraisal when he haltedthe procession for a pow-wow.  Lean from sickness, her skin mangywith the dry scales of the disease called bukua, she was tiedhand and foot and, like a pig, slung from a stout pole that rested onthe shoulders of the bearers, who intended to dine off of her. Too hopeless to expect mercy, she made no appeal for help, though thehorrible fear that possessed her was eloquent in her wild-staring eyes.

In the universal bêche-de-mer English, Captain Van Horn hadlearned that she was not regarded with relish by her companions, andthat they were on their way to stake her out up to her neck in the runningwater of the Balebuli.  But first, before they staked her, theirplan was to dislocate her joints and break the big bones of the armsand legs.  This was no religious rite, no placation of the brutishjungle gods.  Merely was it a matter of gastronomy.  Livingmeat, so treated, was made tender and tasty, and, as her companionspointed out, she certainly needed to be put through such a process. Two days in the water, they told the captain, ought to do the business. Then they would kill her, build the fire, and invite in a few friends.

After half an hour of bargaining, during which Captain Van Horn hadinsisted on the worthlessness of the parcel, he had bought a fat pigworth five dollars and exchanged it for her.  Thus, since he hadpaid for the pig in trade goods, and since trade goods were rated ata hundred per cent. profit, the girl had actually cost him two dollarsand fifty cents.

And then Captain Van Horn’s troubles had begun.  He couldnot get rid of the girl.  Too well he knew the natives of Malaitato turn her over to them anywhere on the island.  Chief Ishikolaof Su’u had offered five twenties of drinking coconuts for her,and Bau, a bush chief, had offered two chickens on the beach at Malu. But this last offer had been accompanied by a sneer, and had tokenedthe old rascal’s scorn of the girl’s scrawniness. Failing to connect with the missionary brig, the WesternCross,on which she would not have been eaten, Captain Van Horn had been compelledto keep her in the cramped quarters of the Arangiagainst a problematicalfuture time when he would be able to turn her over to the missionaries.

But toward him the girl had no heart of gratitude because she hadno brain of understanding.  She, who had been sold for a fat pig,considered her pitiful rôle in the world to be unchanged. Eatee she had been.  Eatee she remained.  Her destinationmerely had been changed, and this big fella white marster of the Arangiwould undoubtedly be her destination when she had sufficiently fattened. His designs on her had been transparent from the first, when he hadtried to feed her up.  And she had outwitted him by resolutelyeating no more than would barely keep her alive.

As a result, she, who had lived in the bush all her days and neverso much as set foot in a canoe, rocked and rolled unendingly over thebroad ocean in a perpetual nightmare of fear.  In the bêche-de-merthat was current among the blacks of a thousand islands and ten thousanddialects, the Arangi’sprocession of passengers assuredher of her fate.  “My word, you fella Mary,” one wouldsay to her, “short time little bit that big fella white marsterkai-kai along you.”  Or, another: “Big fella whitemarster kai-kai along you, my word, belly belong him walk about toomuch.”

Kai-kai was the bêche-de-mer for “eat.”  EvenJerry knew that.  “Eat” did not obtain in his vocabulary;but kai-kai did, and it meant all and more than “eat,” forit served for both noun and verb.

But the girl never replied to the jeering of the blacks.  Forthat matter, she never spoke at all, not even to Captain Van Horn, whodid not so much as know her name.

It was late afternoon, after discovering the girl in the lazarette,when Jerry again came on deck.  Scarcely had Skipper, who had carriedhim up the steep ladder, dropped him on deck than Jerry made a new discovery—land. He did not see it, but he smelled it.  His nose went up in theair and quested to windward along the wind that brought the message,and he read the air with his nose as a man might read a newspaper—thesalt smells of the seashore and of the dank muck of mangrove swampsat low tide, the spicy fragrances of tropic vegetation, and the faint,most faint, acrid tingle of smoke from smudgy fires.

The trade, which had laid the Arangiwell up under the leeof this outjutting point of Malaita, was now failing, so that she beganto roll in the easy swells with crashings of sheets and tackles andthunderous flappings of her sails.  Jerry no more than cocked acontemptuous quizzical eye at the mainsail anticking above him. He knew already the empty windiness of its threats, but he was carefulof the mainsheet blocks, and walked around the traveller instead ofover it.

While Captain Van Horn, taking advantage of the calm to exercisethe boat’s crew with the fire-arms and to limber up the weapons,was passing out the Lee-Enfields from their place on top the cabin skylight,Jerry suddenly crouched and began to stalk stiff-legged.  But thewild-dog, three feet from his lair under the trade-boxes, was not unobservant. He watched and snarled threateningly.  It was not a nice snarl. In fact, it was as nasty and savage a snarl as all his life had beennasty and savage.  Most small creatures were afraid of that snarl,but it had no deterrent effect on Jerry, who continued his steady stalking. When the wild-dog sprang for the hole under the boxes, Jerry sprangafter, missing his enemy by inches.  Tossing overboard bits ofwood, bottles and empty tins, Captain Van Horn ordered the eight eagerboat’s crew with rifles to turn loose.  Jerry was excitedand delighted with the fusillade, and added his puppy yelpings to thenoise.  As the empty brass cartridges were ejected, the returnboys scrambled on the deck for them, esteeming them as very preciousobjects and thrusting them, still warm, into the empty holes in theirears.  Their ears were perforated with many of these holes, thesmallest capable of receiving a cartridge, while the larger ones contained-claypipes, sticks of tobacco, and even boxes of matches.  Some of theholes in the ear-lobes were so huge that they were plugged with carvedwooden cylinders three inches in diameter.

Mate and captain carried automatics in their belts, and with thesethey turned loose, shooting away clip after clip to the breathless admirationof the blacks for such marvellous rapidity of fire.  The boat’screw were not even fair shots, but Van Horn, like every captain in theSolomons, knew that the bush natives and salt-water men were so muchworse shots, and knew that the shooting of his boat’s crew couldbe depended upon—if the boat’s crew itself did not turnagainst the ship in a pinch.

At first, Borckman’s automatic jammed, and he received a cautionfrom Van Horn for his carelessness in not keeping it clean and thin-oiled. Also, Borckman was twittingly asked how many drinks he had taken, andif that was what accounted for his shooting being under his average. Borckman explained that he had a touch of fever, and Van Horn deferredstating his doubts until a few minutes later, squatting in the shadeof the spanker with Jerry in his arms, he told Jerry all about it.

“The trouble with him is the schnapps, Jerry,” he explained. “Gott-fer-dang, it makes me keep all my watches and half of his. And he says it’s the fever.  Never believe it, Jerry. It’s the schnapps—just the plain s-c-h-n-a-p-p-s schnapps. An’ he’s a good sailor-man, Jerry, when he’s sober. But when he’s schnappy he’s sheer lunatic.  Then hisnoddle goes pinwheeling and he’s a blighted fool, and he’dsnore in a gale and suffer for sleep in a dead calm.—Jerry, you’rejust beginning to pad those four little soft feet of yours into theworld, so take the advice of one who knows and leave the schnapps alone. Believe me, Jerry, boy—listen to your father—schnapps willnever buy you anything.”

Whereupon, leaving Jerry on deck to stalk the wild-dog, Captain VanHorn went below into the tiny stateroom and took a long drink from thevery bottle from which Borckman was stealing.

The stalking of the wild-dog became a game, at least to Jerry, whowas so made that his heart bore no malice, and who hugely enjoyed it. Also, it gave him a delightful consciousness of his own mastery, forthe wild-dog always fled from him.  At least so far as dogs wereconcerned, Jerry was cock of the deck of the Arangi.  Itdid not enter his head to query how his conduct affected the wild-dog,though, in truth, he led that individual a wretched existence. Never, except when Jerry was below, did the wild one dare venture morethan several feet from his retreat, and he went about in fear and tremblingof the fat roly-poly puppy who was unafraid of his snarl.

In the late afternoon, Jerry trotted aft, after having administeredanother lesson to the wild-dog, and found Skipper seated on the deck,back against the low rail, knees drawn up, and gazing absently off toleeward.  Jerry sniffed his bare calf—not that he neededto identify it, but just because he liked to, and in a sort of friendlygreeting.  But Van Horn took no notice, continuing to stare outacross the sea.  Nor was he aware of the puppy’s presence.

Jerry rested the length of his chin on Skipper’s knee and gazedlong and earnestly into Skipper’s face.  This time Skipperknew, and was pleasantly thrilled; but still he gave no sign. Jerry tried a new tack.  Skipper’s hand drooped idly, halfopen, from where the forearm rested on the other knee.  Into thepart-open hand Jerry thrust his soft golden muzzle to the eyes and remainedquite still.  Had he been situated to see, he would have seen atwinkle in Skipper’s eyes, which had been withdrawn from the seaand were looking down upon him.  But Jerry could not see. He kept quiet a little longer, and then gave a prodigious sniff.

This was too much for Skipper, who laughed with such genial heartinessas to lay Jerry’s silky ears back and down in self-deprecationof affection and pleadingness to bask in the sunshine of the god’ssmile.  Also, Skipper’s laughter set Jerry’s tail wildlybobbing.  The half-open hand closed in a firm grip that gatheredin the slack of the skin of one side of Jerry’s head and jowl. Then the hand began to shake him back and forth with such good willthat he was compelled to balance back and forth on all his four feet.

It was bliss to Jerry.  Nay, more, it was ecstasy.  ForJerry knew there was neither anger nor danger in the roughness of theshake, and that it was play of the sort that he and Michael had indulgedin.  On occasion, he had so played with Biddy and lovingly mauledher about.  And, on very rare occasion, MisterHaggin hadlovingly mauled him about.  It was speech to Jerry, full of unmistakablemeaning.

As the shake grew rougher, Jerry emitted his most ferocious growl,which grew more ferocious with the increasing violence of the shaking. But that, too, was play, a making believe to hurt the one he liked toowell to hurt.  He strained and tugged at the grip, trying to twisthis jowl in the slack of skin so as to reach a bite.

When Skipper, with a quick thrust, released him and shoved him clear,he came back, all teeth and growl, to be again caught and shaken. The play continued, with rising excitement to Jerry.  Once, tooquick for Skipper, he caught his hand between teeth; but he did notbring them together.  They pressed lovingly, denting the skin,but there was no bite in them.

The play grew rougher, and Jerry lost himself in the play. Still playing, he grew so excited that all that had been feigned becameactual.  This was battle a struggle against the hand that seizedand shook him and thrust him away.  The make-believe of ferocitypassed out of his growls; the ferocity in them became real.  Also,in the moments when he was shoved away and was springing back to theattack, he yelped in high-pitched puppy hysteria.  And CaptainVan Horn, realizing, suddenly, instead of clutching, extended his handwide open in the peace sign that is as ancient as the human hand. At the same time his voice rang out the single word, “Jerry!” In it was all the imperativeness of reproof and command and all thesolicitous insistence of love.

Jerry knew and was checked back to himself.  He was instantlycontrite, all soft humility, ears laid back with pleadingness for forgivenessand protestation of a warm throbbing heart of love.  Instantly,from an open-mouthed, fang-bristling dog in full career of attack, hemelted into a bundle of softness and silkiness, that trotted to theopen hand and kissed it with a tongue that flashed out between whitegleaming teeth like a rose-red jewel.  And the next moment he wasin Skipper’s arms, jowl against cheek, and the tongue was againflashing out in all the articulateness possible for a creature deniedspeech.  It was a veritable love-feast, as dear to one as to theother.

“Gott-fer-dang!” Captain Van Horn crooned.  “You’renothing but a bunch of high-strung sensitiveness, with a golden heartin the middle and a golden coat wrapped all around.  Gott-fer-dang,Jerry, you’re gold, pure gold, inside and out, and no dog wasever minted like you in all the world.  You’re heart of gold,you golden dog, and be good to me and love me as I shall always be goodto you and love you for ever and for ever.”

And Captain Van Horn, who ruled the Arangiin bare legs, aloin cloth, and a sixpenny under-shirt, and ran cannibal blacks backand forth in the blackbird trade with an automatic strapped to his bodywaking and sleeping and with his head forfeit in scores of salt-watervillages and bush strongholds, and who was esteemed the toughest skipperin the Solomons where only men who are tough may continue to live andesteem toughness, blinked with sudden moisture in his eyes, and couldnot see for the moment the puppy that quivered all its body of lovein his arms and kissed away the salty softness of his eyes.

CHAPTER V

And swift tropic night smote the Arangi, as she alternatelyrolled in calms and heeled and plunged ahead in squalls under the leeof the cannibal island of Malaita.  It was a stoppage of the south-easttrade wind that made for variable weather, and that made cooking onthe exposed deck galley a misery and sent the return boys, who had nothingto wet but their skins, scuttling below.

The first watch, from eight to twelve, was the mate’s; andCaptain Van Horn, forced below by the driving wet of a heavy rain squall,took Jerry with him to sleep in the tiny stateroom.  Jerry wasweary from the manifold excitements of the most exciting day in hislife; and he was asleep and kicking and growling in his sleep, ere Skipper,with a last look at him and a grin as he turned the lamp low, mutteredaloud: “It’s that wild-dog, Jerry.  Get him. Shake him.  Shake him hard.”

So soundly did Jerry sleep, that when the rain, having robbed theatmosphere of its last breath of wind, ceased and left the staterooma steaming, suffocating furnace, he did not know when Skipper, pantingfor air, his loin cloth and undershirt soaked with sweat, arose, tuckedblanket and pillow under his arm, and went on deck.

Jerry only awakened when a huge three-inch cockroach nibbled at thesensitive and hairless skin between his toes.  He awoke kickingthe offended foot, and gazed at the cockroach that did not scuttle,but that walked dignifiedly away.  He watched it join other cockroachesthat paraded the floor.  Never had he seen so many gathered togetherat one time, and never had he seen such large ones.  They wereall of a size, and they were everywhere.  Long lines of them pouredout of cracks in the walls and descended to join their fellows on thefloor.

The thing was indecent—at least, in Jerry’s mind, itwas not to be tolerated.  MisterHaggin, Derby, and Bobhad never tolerated cockroaches, and their rules were his rules. The cockroach was the eternal tropic enemy.  He sprang at the nearest,pouncing to crush it to the floor under his paws.  But the thingdid what he had never known a cockroach to do.  It arose in theair strong-flighted as a bird.  And as if at a signal, all themultitude of cockroaches took wings of flight and filled the room withtheir flutterings and circlings.

He attacked the winged host, leaping into the air, snapping at theflying vermin, trying to knock them down with his paws.  Occasionallyhe succeeded and destroyed one; nor did the combat cease until all thecockroaches, as if at another signal, disappeared into the many cracks,leaving the room to him.

Quickly, his next thought was: Where is Skipper?  He knew hewas not in the room, though he stood up on his hind-legs and investigatedthe low bunk, his keen little nose quivering delightedly while he madelittle sniffs of delight as he smelled the recent presence of Skipper. And what made his nose quiver and sniff, likewise made his stump ofa tail bob back and forth.

ButwherewasSkipper?  It was athought in his brain that was as sharp and definite as a similar thoughtwould be in a human brain.  And it similarly preceded action. The door had been left hooked open, and Jerry trotted out into the cabinwhere half a hundred blacks made queer sleep-moanings, and sighings,and snorings.  They were packed closely together, covering thefloor as well as the long sweep of bunks, so that he was compelled tocrawl over their naked legs.  And there was no white god aboutto protect him.  He knew it, but was unafraid.

Having made sure that Skipper was not in the cabin, Jerry preparedfor the perilous ascent of the steep steps that were almost a ladder,then recollected the lazarette.  In he trotted and sniffed at thesleeping girl in the cotton shift who believed that Van Horn was goingto eat her if he could succeed in fattening her.

Back at the ladder-steps, he looked up and waited in the hope thatSkipper might appear from above and carry him up.  Skipper hadpassed that way, he knew, and he knew for two reasons.  It wasthe only way he could have passed, and Jerry’s nose told him thathe had passed.  His first attempt to climb the steps began well. Not until a third of the way up, as the Arangirolled in a seaand recovered with a jerk, did he slip and fall.  Two or threeboys awoke and watched him while they prepared and chewed betel nutand lime wrapped in green leaves.

Twice, barely started, Jerry slipped back, and more boys, awakenedby their fellows, sat up and enjoyed his plight.  In the fourthattempt he managed to gain half way up before he fell, coming down heavilyon his side.  This was hailed with low laughter and querulous chirpingsthat might well have come from the throats of huge birds.  He regainedhis feet, absurdly bristled the hair on his shoulders and absurdly growledhis high disdain of these lesser, two-legged things that came and wentand obeyed the wills of great, white-skinned, two-legged gods such asSkipper and Mister Haggin.

Undeterred by his heavy fall, Jerry essayed the ladder again. A temporary easement of the Arangi’srolling gave him hisopportunity, so that his forefeet were over the high combing of thecompanion when the next big roll came.  He held on by main strengthof his bent forelegs, then scrambled over and out on deck.

Amidships, squatting on the deck near the sky-light, he investigatedseveral of the boat’s crew and Lerumie.  He identified themcircumspectly, going suddenly stiff-legged as Lerumie made a low, hissing,menacing noise.  Aft, at the wheel, he found a black steering,and, near him, the mate keeping the watch.  Just as the mate spoketo him and stooped to pat him, Jerry whiffed Skipper somewhere nearat hand.  With a conciliating, apologetic bob of his tail, he trottedon up wind and came upon Skipper on his back, rolled in a blanket sothat only his head stuck out, and sound asleep.

First of all Jerry needs must joyfully sniff him and joyfully waghis tail.  But Skipper did not awake and a fine spray of rain,almost as thin as mist, made Jerry curl up and press closely into theangle formed by Skipper’s head and shoulder.  This did awakehim, for he uttered “Jerry” in a low, crooning voice, andJerry responded with a touch of his cold damp nose to the other’scheek.  And then Skipper went to sleep again.  But not Jerry. He lifted the edge of the blanket with his nose and crawled across theshoulder until he was altogether inside.  This roused Skipper,who, half-asleep, helped him to curl up.

Still Jerry was not satisfied, and he squirmed around until he layin the hollow of Skipper’s arm, his head resting on Skipper’sshoulder, when, with a profound sigh of content, he fell asleep.

Several times the noises made by the boat’s crew in trimmingthe sheets to the shifting draught of air roused Van Horn, and eachtime, remembering the puppy, he pressed him caressingly with his hollowedarm.  And each time, in his sleep, Jerry stirred responsively andsnuggled cosily to him.

For all that he was a remarkable puppy, Jerry had his limitations,and he could never know the effect produced on the hard-bitten captainby the soft warm contact of his velvet body.  But it made the captainremember back across the years to his own girl babe asleep on his arm. And so poignantly did he remember, that he became wide awake, and manypictures, beginning, with the girl babe, burned their torment in hisbrain.  No white man in the Solomons knew what he carried aboutwith him, waking and often sleeping; and it was because of these picturesthat he had come to the Solomons in a vain effort to erase them.

First, memory-prodded by the soft puppy in his arm, he saw the girland the mother in the little Harlem flat.  Small, it was true,but tight-packed with the happiness of three that made it heaven.

He saw the girl’s flaxen-yellow hair darken to her mother’sgold as it lengthened into curls and ringlets until finally it becametwo thick long braids.  From striving not to see these many pictureshe came even to dwelling upon them in the effort so to fill his consciousnessas to keep out the one picture he did not want to see.

He remembered his work, the wrecking car, and the wrecking crew thathad toiled under him, and he wondered what had become of Clancey, hisright-hand man.  Came the long day, when, routed from bed at threein the morning to dig a surface car out of the wrecked show windowsof a drug store and get it back on the track, they had laboured allday clearing up a half-dozen smash-ups and arrived at the car houseat nine at night just as another call came in.

“Glory be!” said Clancey, who lived in the next blockfrom him.  He could see him saying it and wiping the sweat fromhis grimy face.  “Glory be, ’tis a small matter atmost, an’ right in our neighbourhood—not a dozen blocksaway.  Soon as it’s done we can beat it for home an’let the down-town boys take the car back to the shop.”

“We’ve only to jack her up for a moment,” he hadanswered.

“What is it?” Billy Jaffers, another of the crew, asked.

“Somebody run over—can’t get them out,” hesaid, as they swung on board the wrecking-car and started.

He saw again all the incidents of the long run, not omitting thedelay caused by hose-carts and a hook-and-ladder running to a cross-townfire, during which time he and Clancey had joked Jaffers over the dateswith various fictitious damsels out of which he had been cheated bythe night’s extra work.

Came the long line of stalled street-cars, the crowd, the policeholding it back, the two ambulances drawn up and waiting their freight,and the young policeman, whose beat it was, white and shaken, greetinghim with: “It’s horrible, man.  It’s fair sickening. Two of them.  We can’t get them out.  I tried. One was still living, I think.”

But he, strong man and hearty, used to such work, weary with thehard day and with a pleasant picture of the bright little flat waitinghim a dozen blocks away when the job was done, spoke cheerfully, confidently,saying that he’d have them out in a jiffy, as he stooped and crawledunder the car on hands and knees.

Again he saw himself as he pressed the switch of his electric torchand looked.  Again he saw the twin braids of heavy golden hairere his thumb relaxed from the switch, leaving him in darkness.

“Is the one alive yet?” the shaken policeman asked.

And the question was repeated, while he struggled for will powersufficient to press on the light.

He heard himself reply, “I’ll tell you in a minute.”

Again he saw himself look.  For a long minute he looked.

“Both dead,” he answered quietly.  “Clancey,pass in a number three jack, and get under yourself with another atthe other end of the truck.”

He lay on his back, staring straight up at one single star that rockedmistily through a thinning of cloud-stuff overhead.  The old achewas in his throat, the old harsh dryness in mouth and eyes.  Andhe knew—what no other man knew—why he was in the Solomons,skipper of the teak-built yacht Arangi, running niggers, riskinghis head, and drinking more Scotch whiskey than was good for any man.

Not since that night had he looked with warm eyes on any woman. And he had been noted by other whites as notoriously cold toward pickanninnieswhite or black.

But, having visioned the ultimate horror of memory, Van Horn wassoon able to fall asleep again, delightfully aware, as he drowsed off,of Jerry’s head on his shoulder.  Once, when Jerry, dreamingof the beach at Meringe and of MisterHaggin, Biddy, Terrence,and Michael, set up a low whimpering, Van Horn roused sufficiently tosoothe him closer to him, and to mutter ominously: “Any niggerthat’d hurt that pup. . . ”

At midnight when the mate touched him on the shoulder, in the momentof awakening and before he was awake Van Horn did two things automaticallyand swiftly.  He darted his right hand down to the pistol at hiship, and muttered: “Any nigger that’d hurt that pup . ..”

“That’ll be Kopo Point abreast,” Borckman explained,as both men stared to windward at the high loom of the land.  “Shehasn’t made more than ten miles, and no promise of anything steady.”

“There’s plenty of stuff making up there, if it’llever come down,” Van Horn said, as both men transferred theirgaze to the clouds drifting with many breaks across the dim stars.

Scarcely had the mate fetched a blanket from below and turned inon deck, than a brisk steady breeze sprang up from off the land, sendingthe Arangithrough the smooth water at a nine-knot clip. For a time Jerry tried to stand the watch with Skipper, but he sooncurled up and dozed off, partly on the deck and partly on Skipper’sbare feet.

When Skipper carried him to the blanket and rolled him in, he wasquickly asleep again; and he was quickly awake, out of the blanket,and padding after along the deck as Skipper paced up and down. Here began another lesson, and in five minutes Jerry learned it wasthe will of Skipper that he should remain in the blanket, that everythingwas all right, and that Skipper would be up and down and near him allthe time.

At four the mate took charge of the deck.

“Reeled off thirty miles,” Van Horn told him.  “Butnow it is baffling again.  Keep an eye for squalls under the land. Better throw the halyards down on deck and make the watch stand by. Of course they’ll sleep, but make them sleep on the halyards andsheets.”

Jerry roused to Skipper’s entrance under the blanket, and,quite as if it were a long-established custom, curled in between hisarm and side, and, after one happy sniff and one kiss of his cool littletongue, as Skipper pressed his cheek against him caressingly, dozedoff to sleep.

Half an hour later, to all intents and purposes, so far as Jerrycould or could not comprehend, the world might well have seemed suddenlycoming to an end.  What awoke him was the flying leap of Skipperthat sent the blanket one way and Jerry the other.  The deck ofthe Arangihad become a wall, down which Jerry slipped throughthe roaring dark.  Every rope and shroud was thrumming and screechingin resistance to the fierce weight of the squall.

“Stand by main halyards!—Jump!” he could hear Skippershouting loudly; also he heard the high note of the mainsheet screamingacross the sheaves as Van Horn, bending braces in the dark, was swiftlyslacking the sheet through his scorching palms with a single turn onthe cleat.

While all this, along with many other noises, squealings of boat-boysand shouts of Borckman, was impacting on Jerry’s ear-drums, hewas still sliding down the steep deck of his new and unstable world. But he did not bring up against the rail where his fragile ribs mightwell have been broken.  Instead, the warm ocean water, pouringinboard across the buried rail in a flood of pale phosphorescent fire,cushioned his fall.  A raffle of trailing ropes entangled him ashe struck out to swim.

And he swam, not to save his life, not with the fear of death uponhim.  There was but one idea in his mind.  WherewasSkipper?  Not that he had any thought of trying to saveSkipper, nor that he might be of assistance to him.  It was theheart of love that drives one always toward the beloved.  As themother in catastrophe tries to gain her babe, as the Greek who, dying,remembered sweet Argos, as soldiers on a stricken field pass with thenames of their women upon their lips, so Jerry, in this wreck of a world,yearned toward Skipper.

The squall ceased as abruptly as it had struck.  The Arangirighted with a jerk to an even keel, leaving Jerry stranded in the starboardscuppers.  He trotted across the level deck to Skipper, who, standingerect on wide-spread legs, the bight of the mainsheet still in his hand,was exclaiming:

“Gott-fer-dang!  Wind he go!  Rain he no come!”

He felt Jerry’s cool nose against his bare calf, heard hisjoyous sniff, and bent and caressed him.  In the darkness he couldnot see, but his heart warmed with knowledge that Jerry’s tailwas surely bobbing.

Many of the frightened return boys had crowded on deck, and theirplaintive, querulous voices sounded like the sleepy noises of a roostof birds.  Borckman came and stood by Van Horn’s shoulder,and both men, strung to their tones in the tenseness of apprehension,strove to penetrate the surrounding blackness with their eyes, whilethey listened with all their ears for any message of the elements fromsea and air.

“Where’s the rain?” Borckman demanded peevishly. “Always wind first, the rain follows and kills the wind. There is no rain.”

Van Horn still stared and listened, and made no answer.

The anxiety of the two men was sensed by Jerry, who, too, was onhis toes.  He pressed his cool nose to Skipper’s leg, andthe rose-kiss of his tongue brought him the salt taste of sea-water.

Skipper bent suddenly, rolled Jerry with quick toughness into theblanket, and deposited him in the hollow between two sacks of yams lashedon deck aft of the mizzenmast.  As an afterthought, he fastenedthe blanket with a piece of rope yarn, so that Jerry was as if tiedin a sack.

Scarcely was this finished when the spanker smashed across overhead,the headsails thundered with a sudden filling, and the great mainsail,with all the scope in the boom-tackle caused by Van Horn’s givingof the sheet, came across and fetched up to tautness on the tackle witha crash that shook the vessel and heeled her violently to port. This second knock-down had come from the opposite direction, and itwas mightier than the first.

Jerry heard Skipper’s voice ring out, first, to the mate: “Standby main-halyards!  Throw off the turns!  I’ll take careof the tackle!”; and, next, to some of the boat’s crew:“Batto! you fella slack spanker tackle quick fella!  Ranga!you fella let go spanker sheet!”

Here Van Horn was swept off his legs by an avalanche of return boyswho had cluttered the deck with the first squall.  The squirmingmass, of which he was part, slid down into the barbed wire of the portrail beneath the surface of the sea.

Jerry was so secure in his nook that he did not roll away. But when he heard Skipper’s commands cease, and, seconds later,heard his cursings in the barbed wire, he set up a shrill yelping andclawed and scratched frantically at the blanket to get out.  Somethinghad happened to Skipper.  He knew that.  It was all that heknew, for he had no thought of himself in the chaos of the ruining world.

But he ceased his yelping to listen to a new noise—a thunderousslatting of canvas accompanied by shouts and cries.  He sensed,and sensed wrongly, that it boded ill, for he did not know that it wasthe mainsail being lowered on the run after Skipper had slashed theboom-tackle across with his sheath-knife.

As the pandemonium grew, he added his own yelping to it until hefelt a fumbling hand without the blanket.  He stilled and sniffed. No, it was not Skipper.  He sniffed again and recognized the person. It was Lerumie, the black whom he had seen rolled on the beach by Biddyonly the previous morning, who, still were recently, had kicked himon his stub of a tail, and who not more than a week before he had seenthrow a rock at Terrence.

The rope yarn had been parted, and Lerumie’s fingers were feelinginside the blanket for him.  Jerry snarled his wickedest. The thing was sacrilege.  He, as a white man’s dog, was tabooto all blacks.  He had early learned the law that no nigger mustever touch a white-god’s dog.  Yet Lerumie, who was all ofevil, at this moment when the world crashed about their ears, was daringto touch him.

And when the fingers touched him, his teeth closed upon them. Next, he was clouted by the black’s free hand with such forceas to tear his clenched teeth down the fingers through skin and fleshuntil the fingers went clear.

Raging like a tiny fiend, Jerry found himself picked up by the neck,half-throttled, and flung through the air.  And while flying throughthe air, he continued to squall his rage.  He fell into the seaand went under, gulping a mouthful of salt water into his lungs, andcame up strangling but swimming.  Swimming was one of the thingshe did not have to think about.  He had never had to learn to swim,any more than he had had to learn to breathe.  In fact, he hadbeen compelled to learn to walk; but he swam as a matter of course.

The wind screamed about him.  Flying froth, driven on the wind’sbreath, filled his mouth and nostrils and beat into his eyes, stingingand blinding him.  In the struggle to breathe he, all unlearnedin the ways of the sea, lifted his muzzle high in the air to get outof the suffocating welter.  As a result, off the horizontal, thechurning of his legs no longer sustained him, and he went down and underperpendicularly.  Again he emerged, strangling with more salt waterin his windpipe.  This time, without reasoning it out, merely movingalong the line of least resistance, which was to him the line of greatestcomfort, he straightened out in the sea and continued so to swim asto remain straightened out.

Through the darkness, as the squall spent itself, came the slattingof the half-lowered mainsail, the shrill voices of the boat’screw, a curse of Borckman’s, and, dominating all, Skipper’svoice, shouting:

“Grab the leech, you fella boys!  Hang on!  Dragdown strong fella!  Come in mainsheet two blocks!  Jump, damnyou, jump!”

CHAPTER VI

At recognition of Skipper’s voice, Jerry, floundering in thestiff and crisping sea that sprang up with the easement of the wind,yelped eagerly and yearningly, all his love for his new-found belovedeloquent in his throat.  But quickly all sounds died away as theArangidrifted from him.  And then, in the loneliness ofthe dark, on the heaving breast of the sea that he recognized as onemore of the eternal enemies, he began to whimper and cry plaintivelylike a lost child.

Further, by the dim, shadowy ways of intuition, he knew his weaknessin that merciless sea with no heart of warmth, that threatened the unknowablething, vaguely but terribly guessed, namely, death.  As regardedhimself, he did not comprehend death.  He, who had never knownthe time when he was not alive, could not conceive of the time whenhe would cease to be alive.

Yet it was there, shouting its message of warning through every tissuecell, every nerve quickness and brain sensitivity of him—a totalityof sensation that foreboded the ultimate catastrophe of life about whichhe knew nothing at all, but which, nevertheless, he feltto bethe conclusive supreme disaster.  Although he did not comprehendit, he apprehended it no less poignantly than do men who know and generalizefar more deeply and widely than mere four-legged dogs.

As a man struggles in the throes of nightmare, so Jerry struggledin the vexed, salt-suffocating sea.  And so he whimpered and cried,lost child, lost puppy-dog that he was, only half a year existent inthe fair world sharp with joy and suffering.  And he wantedSkipper.  Skipper was a god.

* * * *

On board the Arangi, relieved by the lowering of her mainsail,as the fierceness went out of the wind and the cloudburst of tropicrain began to fall, Van Horn and Borckman lurched toward each otherin the blackness.

“A double squall,” said Van Horn.  “Hit usto starboard and to port.”

“Must a-split in half just before she hit us,” the mateconcurred.

“And kept all the rain in the second half—”

Van Horn broke off with an oath.

“Hey!  What’s the matter along you fella boy?”he shouted to the man at the wheel.

For the ketch, under her spanker which had just then been flat-hauled,had come into the wind, emptying her after-sail and permitting her headsailsto fill on the other tack.  The Arangiwas beginning towork back approximately over the course she had just traversed. And this meant that she was going back toward Jerry floundering in thesea.  Thus, the balance, on which his life titubated, was inclinedin his favour by the blunder of a black steersman.

Keeping the Arangion the new tack, Van Horn set Borckmanclearing the mess of ropes on deck, himself, squatting in the rain,undertaking to long-splice the tackle he had cut.  As the rainthinned, so that the crackle of it on deck became less noisy, he wasattracted by a sound from out over the water.  He suspended thework of his hands to listen, and, when he recognized Jerry’s wailing,sprang to his feet, galvanized into action.

“The pup’s overboard!” he shouted to Borckman. “Back your jib to wind’ard!”

He sprang aft, scattering a cluster of return boys right and left.

“Hey!  You fella boat’s crew!  Come in spankersheet!  Flatten her down good fella!”

He darted a look into the binnacle and took a hurried compass bearingof the sounds Jerry was making.

“Hard down your wheel!” he ordered the helmsman, thenleaped to the wheel and put it down himself, repeating over and overaloud, “Nor’east by east a quarter, nor’east by easta quarter.”

Back and peering into the binnacle, he listened vainly for anotherwail from Jerry in the hope of verifying his first hasty bearing. But not long he waited.  Despite the fact that by his manoeuvrethe Arangihad been hove to, he knew that windage and sea-driftagewould quickly send her away from the swimming puppy.  He shoutedBorckman to come aft and haul in the whaleboat, while he hurried belowfor his electric torch and a boat compass.

The ketch was so small that she was compelled to tow her one whaleboatastern on long double painters, and by the time the mate had it hauledin under the stern, Van Horn was back.  He was undeterred by thebarbed wire, lifting boy after boy of the boat’s crew over itand dropping them sprawling into the boat, following himself, as thelast, by swinging over on the spanker boom, and calling his last instructionsas the painters were cast off.

“Get a riding light on deck, Borckman.  Keep her hoveto.  Don’t hoist the mainsail.  Clean up the decks andbend the watch tackle on the main boom.”

He took the steering-sweep and encouraged the rowers with: “Washee-washee,good fella, washee-washee!”—which is the bêche-de-merfor “row hard.”

As he steered, he kept flashing the torch on the boat compass sothat he could keep headed north-east by east a quarter east.  Thenhe remembered that the boat compass, on such course, deviated two wholepoints from the Arangi’scompass, and altered his own courseaccordingly.

Occasionally he bade the rowers cease, while he listened and calledfor Jerry.  He had them row in circles, and work back and forth,up to windward and down to leeward, over the area of dark sea that hereasoned must contain the puppy.

“Now you fella boy listen ear belong you,” he said, towardthe first.  “Maybe one fella boy hear ’m pickaninnydog sing out, I give ’m that fella boy five fathom calico, twoten sticks tobacco.”

At the end of half an hour he was offering “Two ten fathomscalico and ten ten sticks tobacco” to the boy who first heard“pickaninny dog sing out.”

* * * *

Jerry was in bad shape.  Not accustomed to swimming, strangledby the salt water that lapped into his open mouth, he was getting loggywhen first he chanced to see the flash of the captain’s torch. This, however, he did not connect with Skipper, and so took no morenotice of it than he did of the first stars showing in the sky. It never entered his mind that it might be a star nor even that it mightnot be a star.  He continued to wail and to strangle with moresalt water.  But when he at length heard Skipper’s voicehe went immediately wild.  He attempted to stand up and to resthis forepaws on Skipper’s voice coming out of the darkness, ashe would have rested his forepaws on Skipper’s leg had he beennear.  The result was disastrous.  Out of the horizontal,he sank down and under, coming up with a new spasm of strangling.

This lasted for a short time, during which the strangling preventedhim from answering Skipper’s cry, which continued to reach him. But when he could answer he burst forth in a joyous yelp.  Skipperwas coming to take him out of the stinging, biting sea that blindedhis eyes and hurt him to breathe.  Skipper was truly a god, hisgod, with a god’s power to save.

Soon he heard the rhythmic clack of the oars on the thole-pins, andthe joy in his own yelp was duplicated by the joy in Skipper’svoice, which kept up a running encouragement, broken by objurgationsto the rowers.

“All right, Jerry, old man.  All right, Jerry.  Allright.—Washee-washee, you fella boy!—Coming, Jerry, coming. Stick it out, old man.  Stay with it.—Washee-washee likehell!—Here we are, Jerry.  Stay with it.  Hang on, oldboy, we’ll get you.—Easy . . . easy.  ’Vast washee.”

And then, with amazing abruptness, Jerry saw the whaleboat dimlyemerge from the gloom close upon him, was blinded by the stab of thetorch full in his eyes, and, even as he yelped his joy, felt and recognizedSkipper’s hand clutching him by the slack of the neck and liftinghim into the air.

He landed wet and soppily against Skipper’s rain-wet chest,his tail bobbing frantically against Skipper’s containing arm,his body wriggling, his tongue dabbing madly all over Skipper’schin and mouth and cheeks and nose.  And Skipper did not know thathe was himself wet, and that he was in the first shock of recurrentmalaria precipitated by the wet and the excitement.  He knew onlythat the puppy-dog, given him only the previous morning, was safe backin his arms.

While the boat’s crew bent to the oars, he steered with thesweep between his arm and his side in order that he might hold Jerrywith the other arm.

“You little son of a gun,” he crooned, and continuedto croon, over and over.  “You little son of a gun.”

And Jerry responded with tongue-kisses, whimpering and crying asis the way of lost children immediately after they are found. Also, he shivered violently.  But it was not from the cold. Rather was it due to his over-strung, sensitive nerves.

Again on board, Van Horn stated his reasoning to the mate.

“The pup didn’t just calmly walk overboard.  Norwas he washed overboard.  I had him fast and triced in the blanketwith a rope yarn.”

He walked over, the centre of the boat’s crew and of the three-scorereturn boys who were all on deck, and flashed his torch on the blanketstill lying on the yams.

“That proves it.  The rope-yarn’s cut.  Theknot’s still in it.  Now what nigger is responsible?”

He looked about at the circle of dark faces, flashing the light onthem, and such was the accusation and anger in his eyes, that all eyesfell before his or looked away.

“If only the pup could speak,” he complained.  “He’dtell who it was.”

He bent suddenly down to Jerry, who was standing as close againsthis legs as he could, so close that his wet forepaws rested on Skipper’sbare feet.

“You know ’m, Jerry, you known the black fella boy,”he said, his words quick and exciting, his hand moving in questing circlestoward the blacks.

Jerry was all alive on the instant, jumping about, barking with shortyelps of eagerness.

“I do believe the dog could lead me to him,” Van Hornconfided to the mate.  “Come on, Jerry, find ’m, sick’m, shake ’m down.  Where is he, Jerry?  Find’m.  Find ’m.”

All that Jerry knew was that Skipper wanted something.  He mustfind something that Skipper wanted, and he was eager to serve. He pranced about aimlessly and willingly for a space, while Skipper’surging cries increased his excitement.  Then he was struck by anidea, and a most definite idea it was.  The circle of boys broketo let him through as he raced for’ard along the starboard sideto the tight-lashed heap of trade-boxes.  He put his nose intothe opening where the wild-dog laired, and sniffed.  Yes, the wild-dogwas inside.  Not only did he smell him, but he heard the menaceof his snarl.

He looked up to Skipper questioningly.  Was it that Skipperwanted him to go in after the wild-dog?  But Skipper laughed andwaved his hand to show that he wanted him to search in other placesfor something else.

He leaped away, sniffing in likely places where experience had taughthim cockroaches and rats might be.  Yet it quickly dawned on himthat it was not such things Skipper was after.  His heart was wildwith desire to serve, and, without clear purpose, he began sniffinglegs of black boys.

This brought livelier urgings and encouragements from Skipper, andmade him almost frantic.  That was it.  He must identify theboat’s crew and the return boys by their legs.  He hurriedthe task, passing swiftly from boy to boy, until he came to Lerumie.

And then he forgot that Skipper wanted him to do something. All he knew was that it was Lerumie who had broken the taboo of hissacred person by laying hands on him, and that it was Lerumie who hadthrown him overboard.

With a cry of rage, a flash of white teeth, and a bristle of shortneck-hair, he sprang for the black.  Lerumie fled down the deck,and Jerry pursued amid the laughter of all the blacks.  Severaltimes, in making the circuit of the deck, he managed to scratch theflying calves with his teeth.  Then Lerumie took to the main rigging,leaving Jerry impotently to rage on the deck beneath him.

About this point the blacks grouped in a semi-circle at a respectfuldistance, with Van Horn to the fore beside Jerry.  Van Horn centredhis electric torch on the black in the rigging, and saw the long parallelscratches on the fingers of the hand that had invaded Jerry’sblanket.  He pointed them out significantly to Borckman, who stoodoutside the circle so that no black should be able to come at his back.

Skipper picked Jerry up and soothed his anger with:

“Good boy, Jerry.  You marked and sealed him.  Somedog, you, some big man-dog.”

He turned back to Lerumie, illuminating him as he clung in the rigging,and his voice was harsh and cold as he addressed him.

“What name belong along you fella boy?” he demanded.

“Me fella Lerumie,” came the chirping, quavering answer.

“You come along Pennduffryn?”

“Me come along Meringe.”

Captain Van Horn debated the while he fondled the puppy in his arms. After all, it was a return boy.  In a day, in two days at most,he would have him landed and be quit of him.

“My word,” he harangued, “me angry along you. Me angry big fella too much along you.  Me angry along you anyamount.  What name you fella boy make ’m pickaninny dog belongalong me walk about along water?”

Lerumie was unable to answer.  He rolled his eyes helplessly,resigned to receive a whipping such as he had long since bitterly learnedwhite masters were wont to administer.

Captain Van Horn repeated the question, and the black repeated thehelpless rolling of his eyes.

“For two sticks tobacco I knock ’m seven bells outa you,”the skipper bullied.  “Now me give you strong fella talktoo much.  You look ’m eye belong you one time along thisfella dog belong me, I knock ’m seven bells and whole starboardwatch outa you.  Savve?”

“Me savve,” Lerumie, plaintively replied; and the episodewas closed.

The return boys went below to sleep in the cabin.  Borckmanand the boat’s crew hoisted the mainsail and put the Arangion her course.  And Skipper, under a dry blanket from below, laydown to sleep with Jerry, head on his shoulder, in the hollow of hisarm.

CHAPTER VII

At seven in the morning, when Skipper rolled him out of the blanketand got up, Jerry celebrated the new day by chasing the wild-dog backinto his hole and by drawing a snicker from the blacks on deck, when,with a growl and a flash of teeth, he made Lerumie side-step half adozen feet and yield the deck to him.

He shared breakfast with Skipper, who, instead of eating, washeddown with a cup of coffee fifty grains of quinine wrapped in a cigarettepaper, and who complained to the mate that he would have to get underthe blankets and sweat out the fever that was attacking him.  Despitehis chill, and despite his teeth that were already beginning to chatterwhile the burning sun extracted the moisture in curling mist-wreathsfrom the deck planking, Van Horn cuddled Jerry in his arms and calledhim princeling, and prince, and a king, and a son of kings.

For Van Horn had often listened to the recitals of Jerry’spedigree by Tom Haggin, over Scotch-and-sodas, when it was too pestilentiallyhot to go to bed.  And the pedigree was as royal-blooded as waspossible for an Irish terrier to possess, whose breed, beginning withthe ancient Irish wolf-hound, had been moulded and established by manin less than two generations of men.

There was Terrence the Magnificent—descended, as Van Horn remembered,from the American-bred Milton Droleen, out of the Queen of County Antrim,Breda Muddler, which royal bitch, as every one who is familiar withthe stud book knows, goes back as far as the almost mythical Spuds,with along the way no primrose dallyings with black-and-tan KilleneyBoys and Welsh nondescripts.  And did not Biddy trace to Erin,mother and star of the breed, through a long descendant out of BredaMixer, herself an ancestress of Breda Muddler?  Nor could be omittedfrom the purple record the later ancestress, Moya Doolen.

So Jerry knew the ecstasy of loving and of being loved in the armsof his love-god, although little he knew of such phrases as “king’sson” and “son of kings,” save that they connoted lovefor him in the same way that Lerumie’s hissing noises connotedhate.  One thing Jerry knew without knowing that he knew, namely,that in the few hours he had been with Skipper he loved him more thanhe had loved Derby and Bob, who, with the exception of Mister Haggin,were the only other white-gods he had ever known.  He was not consciousof this.  He merely loved, merely acted on the prompting of hisheart, or head, or whatever organic or anatomical part of him that developedthe mysterious, delicious, and insatiable hunger called “love.”

Skipper went below.  He went all unheeding of Jerry, who paddedsoftly at his heels until the companionway was reached.  Skipperwas unheeding of Jerry because of the fever that wrenched his fleshand chilled his bones, that made his head seem to swell monstrously,that glazed the world to his swimming eyes and made him walk feeblyand totteringly like a drunken man or a man very aged.  And Jerrysensed that something was wrong with Skipper.

Skipper, beginning the babblings of delirium which alternated withsilent moments of control in order to get below and under blankets,descended the ladder-like stairs, and Jerry, all-yearning, controlledhimself in silence and watched the slow descent with the hope that whenSkipper reached the bottom he would raise his arms and lift him down. But Skipper was too far gone to remember that Jerry existed.  Hestaggered, with wide-spread arms to keep from falling, along the cabinfloor for’ard to the bunk in the tiny stateroom.

Jerry was truly of a kingly line.  He wanted to call out andbeg to be taken down.  But he did not.  He controlled himself,he knew not why, save that he was possessed by a nebulous awarenessthat Skipper must be considered as a god should be considered, and thatthis was no time to obtrude himself on Skipper.  His heart wastorn with desire, although he made no sound, and he continued only toyearn over the companion combing and to listen to the faint sounds ofSkipper’s progress for’ard.

But even kings and their descendants have their limitations, andat the end of a quarter of an hour Jerry was ripe to cease from hissilence.  With the going below of Skipper, evidently in great trouble,the light had gone out of the day for Jerry.  He might have stalkedthe wild-dog, but no inducement lay there.  Lerumie passed by unnoticed,although he knew he could bully him and make him give deck space. The myriad scents of the land entered his keen nostrils, but he madeno note of them.  Not even the flopping, bellying mainsail overhead,as the Arangirolled becalmed, could draw a glance of quizzicalregard from him.

Just as it was tremblingly imperative that Jerry must suddenly squatdown, point his nose at the zenith, and vocalize his heart-rending woe,an idea came to him.  There is no explaining how this idea came. No more can it be explained than can a human explain why, at luncheonto-day, he selects green peas and rejects string beans, when only yesterdayhe elected to choose string beans and to reject green peas.  Nomore can it be explained than can a human judge, sentencing a convictedcriminal and imposing eight years imprisonment instead of the five ornine years that also at the same time floated upward in his brain, explainwhy he categorically determined on eight years as the just, adequatepunishment.  Since not even humans, who are almost half-gods, canfathom the mystery of the genesis of ideas and the dictates of choice,appearing in their consciousness as ideas, it is not to be expectedof a more dog to know the why of the ideas that animate it to definiteacts toward definite ends.

And so Jerry.  Just as he must immediately howl, he was awarethat the idea, an entirely different idea, was there, in the innermostcentre of the quick-thinkingness of him, with all its compulsion. He obeyed the idea as a marionette obeys the strings, and started forthwithdown the deck aft in quest of the mate.

He had an appeal to make to Borckman.  Borckman was also a two-leggedwhite-god.  Easily could Borckman lift him down the precipitousladder, which was to him, unaided, a taboo, the violation of which waspregnant with disaster.  But Borckman had in him little of theheart of love, which is understanding.  Also, Borckman was busy. Besides overseeing the continuous adjustment, by trimming of sails andorders to the helmsman, of the Arangito her way on the sea,and overseeing the boat’s crew at its task of washing deck andpolishing brasswork, he was engaged in steadily nipping from a stolenbottle of his captain’s whiskey which he had stowed away in thehollow between the two sacks of yams lashed on deck aft the mizzenmast.

Borckman was on his way for another nip, after having thickly threatenedto knock seven bells and the ten commandments out of the black at thewheel for faulty steering, when Jerry appeared before him and blockedthe way to his desire.  But Jerry did not block him as he wouldhave blocked Lerumie, for instance.  There was no showing of teeth,no bristling of neck hair.  Instead, Jerry was all placation andappeal, all softness of pleading in a body denied speech that neverthelesswas articulate, from wagging tail and wriggling sides to flat-laid earsand eyes that almost spoke, to any human sensitive of understanding.

But Borckman saw in his way only a four-legged creature of the bruteworld, which, in his arrogant brutalness he esteemed more brute thanhimself.  All the pretty picture of the soft puppy, instinct withcommunicativeness, bursting with tenderness of petition, was veiledto his vision.  What he saw was merely a four-legged animal tobe thrust aside while he continued his lordly two-legged progress towardthe bottle that could set maggots crawling in his brain and make himdream dreams that he was prince, not peasant, that he was a master ofmatter rather than a slave of matter.

And thrust aside Jerry was, by a rough and naked foot, as harsh andunfeeling in its impact as an inanimate breaking sea on a beach-jutof insensate rock.  He half-sprawled on the slippery deck, regainedhis balance, and stood still and looked at the white-god who had treatedhim so cavalierly.  The meanness and unfairness had brought fromJerry no snarling threat of retaliation, such as he would have offeredLerumie or any other black.  Nor in his brain was any thought ofretaliation.  This was no Lerumie.  This was a superior god,two-legged, white-skinned, like Skipper, like Mister Haggin and thecouple of other superior gods he had known.  Only did he know hurt,such as any child knows under the blow of a thoughtless or unlovingmother.

In the hurt was mingled a resentment.  He was keenly aware thatthere were two sorts of roughness.  There was the kindly roughnessof love, such as when Skipper gripped him by the jowl, shook him tillhis teeth rattled, and thrust him away with an unmistakable invitationto come back and be so shaken again.  Such roughness, to Jerry,was heaven.  In it was the intimacy of contact with a beloved godwho in such manner elected to express a reciprocal love.

But this roughness of Borckman was different.  It was the otherkind of roughness in which resided no warm affection, no heart-touchof love.  Jerry did not quite understand, but he sensed the differenceand resented, without expressing in action, the wrongness and unfairnessof it.  So he stood, after regaining balance, and soberly regarded,in a vain effort to understand, the mate with a bottle-bottom invertedskyward, the mouth to his lips, the while his throat made gulping contractionsand noises.  And soberly he continued to regard the mate when hewent aft and threatened to knock the “Song of Songs” andthe rest of the Old Testament out of the black helmsman whose smileof teeth was as humbly gentle and placating as Jerry’s had beenwhen he made his appeal.

Leaving this god as a god unliked and not understood, Jerry sadlytrotted back to the companionway and yearned his head over the combingin the direction in which he had seen Skipper disappear.  Whatbit at his consciousness and was a painful incitement in it, was hisdesire to be with Skipper who was not right, and who was in trouble. He wanted Skipper.  He wanted to be with him, first and sharply,because he loved him, and, second and dimly, because he might servehim.  And, wanting Skipper, in his helplessness and youngness inexperience of the world, he whimpered and cried his heart out acrossthe companion combing, and was too clean and direct in his sorrow tobe deflected by an outburst of anger against the niggers, on deck andbelow, who chuckled at him and derided him.

From the crest of the combing to the cabin floor was seven feet. He had, only a few hours before, climbed the precipitous stairway; butit was impossible, and he knew it, to descend the stairway.  Andyet, at the last, he dared it.  So compulsive was the prod of hisheart to gain to Skipper at any cost, so clear was his comprehensionthat he could not climb down the ladder head first, with no grippingnessof legs and feet and muscles such as were possible in the ascent, thathe did not attempt it.  He launched outward and down, in one magnificentand love-heroic leap.  He knew that he was violating a taboo oflife, just as he knew he was violating a taboo if he sprang into MeringeLagoon where swam the dreadful crocodiles.  Great love is alwayscapable of expressing itself in sacrifice and self-immolation. And only for love, and for no lesser reason, could Jerry have made theleap.

He struck on his side and head.  The one impact knocked thebreath out of him; the other stunned him.  Even in his unconsciousness,lying on his side and quivering, he made rapid, spasmodic movementsof his legs as if running for’ard to Skipper.  The boys lookedon and laughed, and when he no longer quivered and churned his legsthey continued to laugh.  Born in savagery, having lived in savageryall their lives and known naught else, their sense of humour was correspondinglysavage.  To them, the sight of a stunned and possibly dead puppywas a side-splitting, ludicrous event.

Not until the fourth minute ticked off did returning consciousnessenable Jerry to crawl to his feet and with wide-spread legs and swimmingeyes adjust himself to the Arangi’sroll.  Yet withthe first glimmerings of consciousness persisted the one idea that hemust gain to Skipper.  Blacks?  In his anxiety and solicitudeand love they did not count.  He ignored the chuckling, grinning,girding black boys, who, but for the fact that he was under the terribleaegis of the big fella white marster, would have delighted to kill andeat the puppy who, in the process of training, was proving a most capablenigger-chaser.  Without a turn of head or roll of eye, aristocraticallypositing their non-existingness to their faces, he trotted for’ardalong the cabin floor and into the stateroom where Skipper babbled maniacallyin the bunk.

Jerry, who had never had malaria, did not understand.  But inhis heart he knew great trouble in that Skipper was in trouble. Skipper did not recognize him, even when he sprang into the bunk, walkedacross Skipper’s heaving chest, and licked the acrid sweat offever from Skipper’s face.  Instead, Skipper’s wildly-thrashingarms brushed him away and flung him violently against the side of thebunk.

This was roughness that was not love-roughness.  Nor was itthe roughness of Borckman spurning him away with his foot.  Itwas part of Skipper’s trouble.  Jerry did not reason thisconclusion.  But, and to the point, he acted upon it as if he hadreasoned it.  In truth, through inadequacy of one of the most adequatelanguages in the world, it can only be said that Jerry sensedthe new difference of this roughness.

He sat up, just out of range of one restless, beating arm, yearnedto come closer and lick again the face of the god who knew him not,and who, he knew, loved him well, and palpitatingly shared and sufferedall Skipper’s trouble.

“Eh, Clancey,” Skipper babbled.  “It’sa fine job this day, and no better crew to clean up after the dubs ofmotormen. . . . Number three jack, Clancey.  Get under the for’ardend.”  And, as the spectres of his nightmare metamorphosed:“Hush, darling, talking to your dad like that, telling him thecombing of your sweet and golden hair.  As if I couldn’t,that have combed it these seven years—better than your mother,darling, better than your mother.  I’m the one gold-medalprize-winner in the combing of his lovely daughter’s lovely hair.. . . She’s broken out!  Give her the wheel aft there! Jib and fore-topsail halyards!  Full and by, there!  A goodfull! . . . Ah, she takes it like the beauty fairy boat that she isupon the sea. . . I’ll just lift that—sure, the limit. Blackey, when you pay as much to see my cards as I’m going topay to see yours, you’re going to see some cards, believe me!”

And so the farrago of unrelated memories continued to rise vocalon Skipper’s lips to the heave of his body and the beat of hisarms, while Jerry, crouched against the side of the bunk mourned andmourned his grief and inability to be of help.  All that was occurringwas beyond him.  He knew no more of poker hands than did he knowof getting ships under way, of clearing up surface car wrecks in NewYork, or of combing the long yellow hair of a loved daughter in a Harlemflat.

“Both dead,” Skipper said in a change of delirium. He said it quietly, as if announcing the time of day, then wailed: “But,oh, the bonnie, bonnie braids of all the golden hair of her!”

He lay motionlessly for a space and sobbed out a breaking heart. This was Jerry’s chance.  He crept inside the arm that tossed,snuggled against Skipper’s side, laid his head on Skipper’sshoulder, his cool nose barely touching Skipper’s cheek, and feltthe arm curl about him and press him closer.  The hand bent fromthe wrist and caressed him protectingly, and the warm contact of hisvelvet body put a change in Skipper’s sick dreams, for he beganto mutter in cold and bitter ominousness: “Any nigger that asmuch as bats an eye at that puppy. . .”

CHAPTER VIII

When, in half an hour, Van Horn’s sweat culminated in profusion,it marked the breaking of the malarial attack.  Great physicalrelief was his, and the last mists of delirium ebbed from his brain. But he was left limply weak, and, after tossing off the blankets andrecognizing Jerry, he fell into a refreshing natural sleep.

Not till two hours later did he awake and start to go on deck. Half-way up the companion, he deposited Jerry on deck and went backto the stateroom for a forgotten bottle of quinine.  But he didnot immediately return to Jerry.  The long drawer under Borckman’sbunk caught his eye.  The wooden button that held it shut was gone,and it was far out and hanging at an angle that jammed it and preventedit from falling to the floor.  The matter was serious.  Therewas little doubt in his mind, had the drawer, in the midst of the squallof the previous night, fallen to the floor, that no Arangiandno soul of the eighty souls on board would have been left.  Forthe drawer was filled with a heterogeneous mess of dynamite sticks,boxes of fulminating caps, coils of fuses, lead sinkers, iron tools,and many boxes of rifle, revolver and pistol cartridges.  He sortedand arranged the varied contents, and with a screwdriver and a longerscrew reattached the button.

In the meantime, Jerry was encountering new adventure not of thepleasantest.  While waiting for Skipper to return, Jerry chancedto see the wild-dog brazenly lying on deck a dozen feet from his lairin the trade-boxes.  Instantly stiffly crouching, Jerry began tostalk.  Success seemed assured, for the wild-dog, with closed eyes,was apparently asleep.

And at this moment the mate, two-legging it along the deck from for’ardin the direction of the bottle stored between the yam sacks, called,“Jerry,” in a remarkably husky voice.  Jerry flattenedhis filbert-shaped ears and wagged his tail in acknowledgment, but advertisedhis intention of continuing to stalk his enemy.  And at sound ofthe mate’s voice the wild-dog flung quick-opened eyes in Jerry’sdirection and flashed into his burrow, where he immediately turned around,thrust his head out with a show of teeth, and snarled triumphant defiance.

Baulked of his quarry by the inconsiderateness of the mate, Jerrytrotted back to the head of the companion to wait for Skipper. But Borckman, whose brain was well a-crawl by virtue of the many nips,clung to a petty idea after the fashion of drunken men.  Twiceagain, imperatively, he called Jerry to him, and twice again, with flattenedears of gentleness and wagging tail, Jerry good-naturedly expressedhis disinclination.  Next, he yearned his head over the comingand into the cabin after Skipper.

Borckman remembered his first idea and continued to the bottle, whichhe generously inverted skyward.  But the second idea, petty asit was, persisted; and, after swaying and mumbling to himself for atime, after unseeingly making believe to study the crisp fresh breezethat filled the Arangi’ssails and slanted her deck, and,after sillily attempting on the helmsman to portray eagle-like vigilancein his drink-swimming eyes, he lurched amidships toward Jerry.

Jerry’s first intimation of Borckman’s arrival was acruel and painful clutch on his flank and groin that made him cry outin pain and whirl around.  Next, as the mate had seen Skipper doin play, Jerry had his jowls seized in a tooth-clattering shake thatwas absolutely different from the Skipper’s rough love-shake. His head and body were shaken, his teeth clattered painfully, and withthe roughest of roughness he was flung part way down the slippery slopeof deck.

Now Jerry was a gentleman.  All the soul of courtesy was inhim, for equals and superiors.  After all, even in an inferiorlike the wild-dog, he did not consciously press an advantage very far—neverextremely far.  In his stalking and rushing of the wild-dog, hehad been more sound and fury than an overbearing bully.  But witha superior, with a two-legged white-god like Borckman, there was morea demand upon his control, restraint, and inhibition of primitive promptings. He did not want to play with the mate a game that he ecstatically playedwith Skipper, because he had experienced no similar liking for the mate,two-legged white-god that he was.

And still Jerry was all gentleness.  He came back in a feebleimitation rush of the whole-hearted rush that he had learned to makeon Skipper.  He was, in truth, acting, play-acting, attemptingto do what he had no heart-prompting to do.  He made believe toplay, and uttered simulated growls that failed of the verity of simulation.

He bobbed his tail good-naturedly and friendly, and growled ferociouslyand friendly; but the keenness of the drunkenness of the mate discernedthe difference and aroused in him, vaguely, the intuition of difference,of play-acting, of cheating.  Jerry was cheating—out of hisheart of consideration.  Borckman drunkenly recognized the cheatingwithout crediting the heart of good behind it.  On the instanthe was antagonistic.  Forgetting that he was only a brute, he positedthat this was no more than a brute with which he strove to play in thegenial comradely way that the Skipper played.

Red war was inevitable—not first on Jerry’s part, buton Borckman’s part.  Borckman felt the abysmal urgings ofthe beast, as a beast, to prove himself master of this four-legged beast. Jerry felt his jowl and jaw clutched still more harshly and hardly,and, with increase of harshness and hardness, he was flung farther downthe deck, which, on account of its growing slant due to heavier gustsof wind, had become a steep and slippery hill.

He came back, clawing frantically up the slope that gave him littlefooting; and he came back, no longer with poorly attempted simulationof ferocity, but impelled by the first flickerings of real ferocity. He did not know this.  If he thought at all, he was under the impressionthat he was playing the game as he had played it with Skipper. In short, he was taking an interest in the game, although a radicallydifferent interest from what he had taken with Skipper.

This time his teeth flashed quicker and with deeper intent at thejowl-clutching hand, and, missing, he was seized and flung down thesmooth incline harder and farther than before.  He was growingangry, as he clawed back, though he was not conscious of it.  Butthe mate, being a man, albeit a drunken one, sensed the change in Jerry’sattack ere Jerry dreamed there was any change in it.  And not onlydid Borckman sense it, but it served as a spur to drive him back intoprimitive beastliness, and to fight to master this puppy as a primitiveman, under dissimilar provocation, might have fought with the membersof the first litter stolen from a wolf-den among the rocks.

True, Jerry could trace as far back.  His ancient ancestorshad been Irish wolf-hounds, and, long before that, the ancestors ofthe wolf-hounds had been wolves.  The note in Jerry’s growlschanged.  The unforgotten and ineffaceable past strummed the fibresof his throat.  His teeth flashed with fierce intent, in the desireof sinking as deep in the man’s hand as passion could drive. For Jerry by this time was all passion.  He had leaped back intothe dark stark rawness of the early world almost as swiftly as had Borckman. And this time his teeth scored, ripping the tender and sensitive andflesh of all the inside of the first and second joints of Borckman’sright hand.  Jerry’s teeth were needles that stung, and Borckman,gaining the grasp on Jerry’s jaw, flung him away and down so thatalmost he hit the Arangi’stiny-rail ere his clawing feetstopped him.

And Van Horn, having finished his rearrangement and repair of theexplosive-filled drawer under the mate’s bunk, climbed up thecompanion steps, saw the battle, paused, and quietly looked on.

But he looked across a million years, at two mad creatures who hadslipped the leach of the generations and who were back in the darknessof spawning life ere dawning intelligence had modified the chemistryof such life to softness of consideration.  What stirred in thebrain crypts of Borckman’s heredity, stirred in the brain-cryptsof Jerry’s heredity.  Time had gone backward for both. All the endeavour and achievement of the ten thousand generations wasnot, and, as wolf-dog and wild-man, the combat was between Jerry andthe mate.  Neither saw Van Horn, who was inside the companionwayhatch, his eyes level with the combing.

To Jerry, Borckman was now no more a god than was he himself a mere,smooth-coated Irish terrier.  Both had forgotten the million yearsstamped into their heredity more feebly, less eraseably, than what hadbeen stamped in prior to the million years.  Jerry did not knowdrunkenness, but he did know unfairness; and it was with raging indignationthat he knew it.  Borckman fumbled his next counter to Jerry’sattack, missed, and had both hands slashed in quick succession ere hemanaged to send the puppy sliding.

And still Jerry came back.  As any screaming creature of thejungle, he hysterically squalled his indignation.  But he madeno whimper.  Nor did he wince or cringe to the blows.  Hebored straight in, striving, without avoiding a blow, to beat and meetthe blow with his teeth.  So hard was he flung down the last timethat his side smashed painfully against the rail, and Van Horn criedout:

“Cut that out, Borckman!  Leave the puppy alone!”

The mate turned in the startle of surprise at being observed. The sharp, authoritative words of Van Horn were a call across the millionyears.  Borckman’s anger-convulsed face ludicrously attempteda sheepish, deprecating grin, and he was just mumbling, “We wasonly playing,” when Jerry arrived back, leaped in the air, andsank his teeth into the offending hand.

Borckman immediately and insanely went back across the million years. An attempted kick got his ankle scored for his pains.  He gibberedhis own rage and hurt, and, stooping, dealt Jerry a tremendous blowalongside the head and neck.  Being in mid-leap when he receivedthe blow Jerry was twistingly somersaulted sidewise before he struckthe deck on his back.  As swiftly as he could scramble to footingand charge, he returned to the attack, but was checked by Skipper’s:

“Jerry!  Stop it!  Come here!”

He obeyed, but only by prodigious effort, his neck bristling andhis lips writhing clear of his teeth as he passed the mate.  Forthe first time there was a whimper in his throat; but it was not thewhimper of fear, nor of pain, but of outrage, and of desire to continuethe battle which he struggled to control at Skipper’s behest.

Stepping out on deck, Skipper picked him up and patted and soothedhim the while he expressed his mind to the mate.

“Borckman, you ought to be ashamed.  You ought to be shotor have your block knocked off for this.  A puppy, a little puppyscarcely weaned.  For two cents I’d give you what-for myself. The idea of it.  A little puppy, a weanling little puppy. Glad your hands are ripped.  You deserved it.  Hope you getblood-poisoning in them.  Besides, you’re drunk.  Gobelow and turn in, and don’t you dare come on deck until you’resober.  Savve?”

And Jerry, far-journeyer across life and across the history of alllife that goes to make the world, strugglingly mastering the abysmalslime of the prehistoric with the love that had come into existenceand had become warp and woof of him in far later time, his wrath ofancientness still faintly reverberating in his throat like the rumblingsof a passing thunder-storm, knew, in the wide warm ways of feeling,the augustness and righteousness of Skipper.  Skipper was in trutha god who did right, who was fair, who protected, and who imperiouslycommanded this other and lesser god that slunk away before his anger.

CHAPTER IX

Jerry and Skipper shared the long afternoon-watch together, the latterbeing guilty of recurrent chuckles and exclamations such as: “Gott-fer-dang,Jerry, believe me, you’re some fighter and all dog”;or, “You’re a proper man’s dog, you are, a lion dog. I bet the lion don’t live that could get your goat.”

And Jerry, understanding none of the words, with the exception ofhis own name, nevertheless knew that the sounds made by Skipper werebroad of praise and warm of love.  And when Skipper stooped andrubbed his ears, or received a rose-kiss on extended fingers, or caughthim up in his arms, Jerry’s heart was nigh to bursting. For what greater ecstasy can be the portion of any creature than thatit be loved by a god?  This was just precisely Jerry’s ecstasy. This was a god, a tangible, real, three-dimensioned god, who went aboutand ruled his world in a loin-cloth and on two bare legs, and who lovedhim with crooning noises in throat and mouth and with two wide-spreadarms that folded him in.

At four o’clock, measuring a glance at the afternoon sun andgauging the speed of the Arangithrough the water in relationto the closeness of Su’u, Van Horn went below and roughly shookthe mate awake.  Until both returned, Jerry held the deck alone. But for the fact that the white-gods were there below and were certainto be back at any moment, not many moments would Jerry have held thedeck, for every lessened mile between the return boys and Malaita contributeda rising of their spirits, and under the imminence of their old-timeindependence, Lerumie, as an instance of many of them, with strong gustatorysensations and a positive drooling at the mouth, regarded Jerry in termsof food and vengeance that were identical.

Flat-hauled on the crisp breeze, the Arangiclosed in rapidlywith the land.  Jerry peered through the barbed wire, sniffingthe air, Skipper beside him and giving orders to the mate and helmsman. The heap of trade-boxes was now unlashed, and the boys began openingand shutting them.  What gave them particular delight was the ringingof the bell with which each box was equipped and which rang whenevera lid was raised.  Their pleasure in the toy-like contrivance wasthat of children, and each went back again and again to unlock his ownbox and make the bell ring.

Fifteen of the boys were to be landed at Su’u and with wildgesticulations and cries they began to recognize and point out the infinitesimaldetails of the landfall of the only spot they had known on earth priorto the day, three years before, when they had been sold into slaveryby their fathers, uncles, and chiefs.

A narrow neck of water, scarcely a hundred yards across, gave entranceto a long and tiny bay.  The shore was massed with mangroves anddense, tropical vegetation.  There was no sign of houses nor ofhuman occupancy, although Van Horn, staring at the dense jungle so closeat hand, knew as a matter of course that scores, and perhaps hundreds,of pairs of human eyes were looking at him.

“Smell ’m, Jerry, smell ’m,” he encouraged.

And Jerry’s hair bristled as he barked at the mangrove wall,for truly his keen scent informed him of lurking niggers.

“If I could smell like him,” the captain said to themate, “there wouldn’t be any risk at all of my ever losingmy head.”

But Borckman made no reply and sullenly went about his work. There was little wind in the bay, and the Arangislowly forgedin and dropped anchor in thirty fathoms.  So steep was the slopeof the harbour bed from the beach that even in such excessive depththe Arangi’sstern swung in within a hundred feet of themangroves.

Van Horn continued to cast anxious glances at the wooded shore. For Su’u had an evil name.  Since the schooner FairHathaway, recruiting labour for the Queensland plantations, hadbeen captured by the natives and all hands slain fifteen years before,no vessel, with the exception of the Arangi, had dared to ventureinto Su’u.  And most white men condemned Van Horn’srecklessness for so venturing.

Far up the mountains, that towered many thousands of feet into thetrade-wind clouds, arose many signal smokes that advertised the comingof the vessel.  Far and near, the Arangi’spresencewas known; yet from the jungle so near at hand only shrieks of parrotsand chatterings of cockatoos could be heard.

The whaleboat, manned with six of the boat’s crew, was drawnalongside, and the fifteen Su’u boys and their boxes were loadedin.  Under the canvas flaps along the thwarts, ready to hand forthe rowers, were laid five of the Lee-Enfields.  On deck, anotherof the boat’s crew, rifle in hand, guarded the remaining weapons. Borckman had brought up his own rifle to be ready for instant use. Van Horn’s rifle lay handy in the stern sheets where he stoodnear Tambi, who steered with a long sweep.  Jerry raised a lowwhine and yearned over the rail after Skipper, who yielded and liftedhim down.

The place of danger was in the boat; for there was little likelihood,at this particular time, of a rising of the return boys on the Arangi. Being of Somo, No-ola, Langa-Langa, and far Malu they were in wholesomefear, did they lose the protection of their white masters, of beingeaten by the Su’u folk, just as the Su’u boys would havefeared being eaten by the Somo and Langa-Langa and No-ola folk.

What increased the danger of the boat was the absence of a coveringboat.  The invariable custom of the larger recruiting vessels wasto send two boats on any shore errand.  While one landed on thebeach, the other lay off a short distance to cover the retreat of theshore party, if trouble broke out.  Too small to carry one boaton deck, the Arangicould not conveniently tow two astern; soVan Horn, who was the most daring of the recruiters, lacked this essentialsafeguard.

Tambi, under Van Horn’s low-uttered commands, steered a parallelcourse along the shore.  Where the mangroves ceased, and wherehigh ground and a beaten runway came down to the water’s edge,Van Horn motioned the rowers to back water and lay on their oars. High palms and lofty, wide-branched trees rose above the jungle at thisspot, and the runway showed like the entrance of a tunnel into the dense,green wall of tropical vegetation.

Van Horn, regarding the shore for some sign of life, lighted a cigarand put one hand to the waist-line of his loin-cloth to reassure himselfof the presence of the stick of dynamite that was tucked between theloin-cloth and his skin.  The lighted cigar was for the purpose,if emergency arose, of igniting the fuse of the dynamite.  Andthe fuse was so short, with its end split to accommodate the insertedhead of a safety match, that between the time of touching it off withthe live cigar to the time of the explosion not more than three secondscould elapse.  This required quick cool work on Van Horn’spart, in case need arose.  In three seconds he would have to lightthe fuse and throw the sputtering stick with directed aim to its objective. However, he did not expect to use it, and had it ready merely as a precautionarymeasure.

Five minutes passed, and the silence of the shore remained profound. Jerry sniffed Skipper’s bare leg as if to assure him that he wasbeside him no matter what threatened from the hostile silence of theland, then stood up with his forepaws on the gunwale and continued tosniff eagerly and audibly, to prick his neck hair, and to utter lowgrowls.

“They’re there, all right,” Skipper confided tohim; and Jerry, with a sideward glance of smiling eyes, with a bobbingof his tail and a quick love-flattening of his ears, turned his noseshoreward again and resumed his reading of the jungle tale that waswafted to him on the light fans of the stifling and almost stagnantair.

“Hey!” Van Horn suddenly shouted.  “Hey, youfella boy stick ’m head out belong you!”

As if in a transformation scene, the apparently tenantless junglespawned into life.  On the instant a hundred stark savages appeared. They broke forth everywhere from the vegetation.  All were armed,some with Snider rifles and ancient horse pistols, others with bowsand arrows, with long throwing spears, with war-clubs, and with long-handledtomahawks.  In a flash, one of them leaped into the sunlight inthe open space where runway and water met.  Save for decorations,he was naked as Adam before the Fall.  A solitary white featheruprose from his kinky, glossy, black hair.  A polished bodkin ofwhite petrified shell, with sharp-pointed ends, thrust through a holein the partition of his nostrils, extended five inches across his face. About his neck, from a cord of twisted coconut sennit, hung an ivory-whitenecklace of wild-boar’s tusks.  A garter of white cowrieshells encircled one leg just below the knee.  A flaming scarletflower was coquettishly stuck over one ear, and through a hole in theother ear was threaded a pig’s tail so recently severed that itstill bled.

As this dandy of Melanesia leaped into the sunshine, the Snider riflein his hands came into position, aimed from his hip, the generous muzzlebearing directly on Van Horn.  No less quick was Van Horn. With equal speed he had snatched his rifle and brought it to bear fromhis hip.  So they stood and faced each other, death in their finger-tips,forty feet apart.  The million years between barbarism and civilizationalso yawned between them across that narrow gulf of forty feet. The hardest thing for modern, evolved man to do is to forget his ancienttraining.  Easiest of all things is it for him to forget his modernityand slip back across time to the howling ages.  A lie in the teeth,a blow in the face, a love-thrust of jealousy to the heart, in a fractionof an instant can turn a twentieth-century philosopher into an ape-likearborean pounding his chest, gnashing his teeth, and seeing red.

So Van Horn.  But with a difference.  He straddled time. He was at one and the same instant all modern, all imminently primitive,capable of fighting in redness of tooth and claw, desirous of remainingmodern for as long as he could with his will master the study of ebonblack of skin and dazzling white of decoration that confronted him.

A long ten seconds of silence endured.  Even Jerry, he knewnot why, stilled the growl in his throat.  Five score of head-huntingcannibals on the fringe of the jungle, fifteen Su’u return blacksin the boat, seven black boat’s crew, and a solitary white manwith a cigar in his mouth, a rifle at his hip, and an Irish terrierbristling against his bare calf, kept the solemn pact of those ten seconds,and no one of them knew or guessed what the outcome would be.

One of the return boys, in the bow of the whaleboat, made the peacesign with his palm extended outward and weaponless, and began to chirpin the unknown Su’u dialect.  Van Horn held his aim and waited. The dandy lowered his Snider, and breath came more easily to the chestsof all who composed the picture.

“Me good fella boy,” the dandy piped, half bird-likeand half elf.

“You big fella fool too much,” Van Horn retorted harshly,dropping his gun into the stern-sheets, motioning to rowers and steersmanto turn the boat around, and puffing his cigar as carelessly casualas if, the moment before, life and death had not been the debate.

“My word,” he went on with fine irritable assumption. “What name you stick ’m gun along me?  Me no kai-kai(eat) along you.  Me kai-kai along you, stomach belong me walkabout.  You kai-kai along me, stomach belong you walk about. You no like ’m kai-kai Su’u boy belong along you? Su’u boy belong you all the same brother along you.  Longtime before, three monsoon before, me speak ’m true speak. Me say three monsoon boy come back.  My word, three monsoon finish,boy stop along me come back.”

By this time the boat had swung around, reversing bow and stern,Van Horn pivoting so as to face the Snider-armed dandy.  At anothersignal from Van Horn the rowers backed water and forced the boat, sternin, up to the solid ground of the runway.  And each rower, hisoar in position in case of attack, privily felt under the canvas flapto make sure of the exact location of his concealed Lee-Enfield.

“All right boy belong you walk about?” Van Horn queriedof the dandy, who signified the affirmative in the Solomon Islands fashionby half-closing his eyes and nodding his head upward, in a queer, perkyway;

“No kai-kai ’m Su’u fella boy suppose walk aboutalong you?”

“No fear,” the dandy answered.  “Suppose ’mSu’u fella boy, all right.  Suppose ’m no fella Su’uboy, my word, big trouble.  Ishikola, big fella black marster alongthis place, him talk ’m me talk along you.  Him say any amountbad fella boy stop ’m along bush.  Him say big fella whitemarster no walk about.  Him say jolly good big fella white marsterstop ’m along ship.”

Van Horn nodded in an off-hand way, as if the information were oflittle value, although he knew that for this time Su’u would furnishhim no fresh recruits.  One at a time, compelling the others toremain in their places, he directed the return boys astern and ashore. It was Solomon Islands tactics.  Crowding was dangerous. Never could the blacks be risked to confusion in numbers.  AndVan Horn, smoking his cigar in lordly indifferent fashion, kept hisapparently uninterested eyes glued to each boy who made his way aft,box on shoulder, and stepped out on the land.  One by one theydisappeared into the runway tunnel, and when the last was ashore heordered the boat back to the ship.

“Nothing doing here this trip,” he told the mate. “We’ll up hook and out in the morning.”

The quick tropic twilight swiftly blent day and darkness.  Overheadall stars were out.  No faintest breath of air moved over the water,and the humid heat beaded the faces and bodies of both men with profusesweat.  They ate their deck-spread supper languidly and ever andanon used their forearms to wipe the stinging sweat from their eyes.

“Why a man should come to the Solomons—beastly hole,”the mate complained.

“Or stay on,” the captain rejoined.

“I’m too rotten with fever,” the mate grumbled. “I’d die if I left.  Remember, I tried it two yearsago.  It takes the cold weather to bring out the fever.  Iarrived in Sydney on my back.  They had to take me to hospitalin an ambulance.  I got worse and worse.  The doctors toldme the only thing to do was to head back where I got the fever. If I did I might live a long time.  If I hung on in Sydney it meanta quick finish.  They packed me on board in another ambulance. And that’s all I saw of Australia for my holiday.  I don’twant to stay in the Solomons.  It’s plain hell.  ButI got to, or croak.”

He rolled, at a rough estimate, thirty grains of quinine in a cigarettepaper, regarded the result sourly for a moment, then swallowed it ata gulp.  This reminded Van Horn, who reached for the bottle andtook a similar dose.

“Better put up a covering cloth,” he suggested.

Borckman directed several of the boat’s crew in the riggingup of a thin tarpaulin, like a curtain along the shore side of the Arangi. This was a precaution against any bushwhacking bullet from the mangrovesonly a hundred feet away.

Van Horn sent Tambi below to bring up the small phonograph and runoff the dozen or so scratchy, screechy records that had already beenunder the needle a thousand times.  Between records, Van Horn recollectedthe girl, and had her haled out of her dark hole in the lazarette tolisten to the music.  She obeyed in fear, apprehensive that hertime had come.  She looked dumbly at the big fella white master,her eyes large with fright; nor did the trembling of her body ceasefor a long time after he had made her lie down.  The phonographmeant nothing to her.  She knew only fear—fear of this terriblewhite man that she was certain was destined to eat her.

Jerry left the caressing hand of Skipper for a moment to go overand sniff her.  This was an act of duty.  He was identifyingher once again.  No matter what happened, no matter what monthsor years might elapse, he would know her again and for ever know heragain.  He returned to the free hand of Skipper that resumed itscaressing.  The other hand held the cigar which he was smoking.

The wet sultry heat grew more oppressive.  The air was nauseouswith the dank mucky odour that cooked out of the mangrove swamp. Rowelled by the squeaky music to recollection of old-world ports andplaces, Borckman lay on his face on the hot planking, beat a tattoowith his naked toes, and gutturally muttered an unending monologue ofcurses.  But Van Horn, with Jerry panting under his hand, placidlyand philosophically continued to smoke, lighting a fresh cigar whenthe first gave out.

He roused abruptly at the faint wash of paddles which he was thefirst on board to hear.  In fact, it was Jerry’s low growland neck-rippling of hair that had keyed Van Horn to hear.  Pullingthe stick of dynamite out from the twist of his loin cloth and glancingat the cigar to be certain it was alight, he rose to his feet with leisurelyswiftness and with leisurely swiftness gained the rail.

“What name belong you?” was his challenge to the dark.

“Me fella Ishikola,” came the answer in the quaveringfalsetto of age.

Van Horn, before speaking again, loosened his automatic pistol halfout of its holster, and slipped the holster around from his hip tillit rested on his groin conveniently close to his hand.

“How many fella boy stop along you?” he demanded.

“One fella ten-boy altogether he stop,” came the agedvoice.

“Come alongside then.”  Without turning his head,his right hand unconsciously dropping close to the butt of the automatic,Van Horn commanded: “You fella Tambi.  Fetch ’m lantern. No fetch ’m this place.  Fetch ’m aft along mizzenrigging and look sharp eye belong you.”

Tambi obeyed, exposing the lantern twenty feet away from where hiscaptain stood.  This gave Van Horn the advantage over the approachingcanoe-men, for the lantern, suspended through the barbed wire acrossthe rail and well down, would clearly illuminate the occupants of thecanoe while he was left in semi-darkness and shadow.

“Washee-washee!” he urged peremptorily, while those inthe invisible canoe still hesitated.

Came the sound of paddles, and, next, emerging into the lantern’sarea of light, the high, black bow of a war canoe, curved like a gondola,inlaid with silvery-glistening mother-of-pearl; the long lean lengthof the canoe which was without outrigger; the shining eyes and the black-shiningbodies of the stark blacks who knelt in the bottom and paddled; Ishikola,the old chief, squatting amidships and not paddling, an unlighted, empty-bowled,short-stemmed clay pipe upside-down between his toothless gums; and,in the stern, as coxswain, the dandy, all nakedness of blackness, allwhiteness of decoration, save for the pig’s tail in one ear andthe scarlet hibiscus that still flamed over the other ear.

Less than ten blacks had been known to rush a blackbirder officeredby no more than two white men, and Van Horn’s hand closed on thebutt of his automatic, although he did not pull it clear of the holster,and although, with his left hand, he directed the cigar to his mouthand puffed it lively alight.

“Hello, Ishikola, you blooming old blighter,” was VanHorn’s greeting to the old chief, as the dandy, with a pry ofhis steering-paddle against the side of the canoe and part under itsbottom, brought the dug-out broadside-on to the Arangiso thatthe sides of both crafts touched.

Ishikola smiled upward in the lantern light.  He smiled withhis right eye, which was all he had, the left having been destroyedby an arrow in a youthful jungle-skirmish.

“My word!” he greeted back.  “Long time youno stop eye belong me.”

Van Horn joked him in understandable terms about the latest wiveshe had added to his harem and what price he had paid for them in pigs.

“My word,” he concluded, “you rich fella too muchtogether.”

“Me like ’m come on board gammon along you,” Ishikolameekly suggested.

“My word, night he stop,” the captain objected, thenadded, as a concession against the known rule that visitors were notpermitted aboard after nightfall: “You come on board, boy stop’m along boat.”

Van Horn gallantly helped the old man to clamber to the rail, straddlethe barbed wire, and gain the deck.  Ishikola was a dirty old savage. One of his tambos (tambo being bêche-de-mer and Melanesian for“taboo”) was that water unavoidable must never touch hisskin.  He who lived by the salt sea, in a land of tropic downpour,religiously shunned contact with water.  He never went swimmingor wading, and always fled to shelter from a shower.  Not thatthis was true of the rest of his tribe.  It was the peculiar tambolaid upon him by the devil-devil doctors.  Other tribesmen thedevil-devil doctors tabooed against eating shark, or handling turtle,or contacting with crocodiles or the fossil remains of crocodiles, orfrom ever being smirched by the profanity of a woman’s touch orof a woman’s shadow cast across the path.

So Ishikola, whose tambo was water, was crusted with the filth ofyears.  He was sealed like a leper, and, weazen-faced and age-shrunken,he hobbled horribly from an ancient spear-thrust to the thigh that twistedhis torso droopingly out of the vertical.  But his one eye gleamedbrightly and wickedly, and Van Horn knew that it observed as much asdid both his own eyes.

Van Horn shook hands with him—an honour he accorded only chiefs—andmotioned him to squat down on deck on his hams close to the fear-struckgirl, who began trembling again at recollection of having once heardIshikola offer five twenties of drinking coconuts for the meat of herfor a dinner.

Jerry needs must sniff, for future identification purposes, thisgraceless, limping, naked, one-eyed old man.  And, when he hadsniffed and registered the particular odour, Jerry must growl intimidatinglyand win a quick eye-glance of approval from Skipper.

“My word, good fella kai-kai dog,” said Ishikola. “Me give ’m half-fathom shell money that fella dog.”

For a mere puppy this offer was generous, because half a fathom ofshell-money, strung on a thread of twisted coconut fibres, was equivalentin cash to half a sovereign in English currency, to two dollars anda half in American, or, in live-pig currency, to half of a fair-sizedfat pig.

“One fathom shell-money that fella dog,” Van Horn countered,in his heart knowing that he would not sell Jerry for a hundred fathoms,or for any fabulous price from any black, but in his head offering sosmall a price over par as not to arouse suspicion among the blacks asto how highly he really valued the golden-coated son of Biddy and Terrence.

Ishikola next averred that the girl had grown much thinner, and thathe, as a practical judge of meat, did not feel justified this time inbidding more than three twenty-strings of drinking coconuts.

After these amenities, the white master and the black talked of manythings, the one bluffing with the white-man’s superiority of intellectand knowledge, the other feeling and guessing, primitive statesman thathe was, in an effort to ascertain the balance of human and politicalforces that bore upon his Su’u territory, ten miles square, boundedby the sea and by landward lines of an inter-tribal warfare that wasolder than the oldest Su’u myth.  Eternally, heads had beentaken and bodies eaten, now on one side, now on the other, by the temporarilyvictorious tribes.  The boundaries had remained the same. Ishikola, in crude bêche-de-mer, tried to learn the Solomon Islandsgeneral situation in relation to Su’u, and Van Horn was not aboveplaying the unfair diplomatic game as it is unfairly played in all thechancellories of the world powers.

“My word,” Van Horn concluded; “you bad fella toomuch along this place.  Too many heads you fella take; too muchkai-kai long pig along you.”  (Long pig, meaning barbecuedhuman flesh.)

“What name, long time black fella belong Su’u take ’mheads, kai-kai along long pig?” Ishikola countered.

“My word,” Van Horn came back, “too much alongthis place.  Bime by, close up, big fella warship stop ’malong Su’u, knock seven balls outa Su’u.”

“What name him big fella warship stop ’m along Solomons?”Ishikola demanded.

“Big fella Cambrian, him fella name belong ship,”Van Horn lied, too well aware that no British cruiser had been in theSolomons for the past two years.

The conversation was becoming rather a farcical dissertation uponthe relations that should obtain between states, irrespective of size,when it was broken off by a cry from Tambi, who, with another lanternhanging overside at the end of his arm had made a discovery.

“Skipper, gun he stop along canoe!” was his cry.

Van Horn, with a leap, was at the rail and peering down over thebarbed wire.  Ishikola, despite his twisted body, was only secondsbehind him.

“What name that fella gun stop ’m along bottom?”Van Horn indignantly demanded.

The dandy, in the stern, with a careless look upward, tried withhis foot to shove over the green leaves so as to cover the out-juttingbutts of several rifles, but made the matter worse by exposing themmore fully.  He bent to rake the leaves over with his hand, butsat swiftly upright when Van Horn roared at him:

“Stand clear!  Keep ’m fella hand belong you longway big bit!”

Van Horn turned on Ishikola, and simulated wrath which he did notfeel against the ancient and ever-recurrent trick.

“What name you come alongside, gun he stop along canoe belongyou?” he demanded.

The old salt-water chief rolled his one eye and blinked a fair simulationof stupidity and innocence.

“My word, me cross along you too much,” Van Horn continued. “Ishikola, you plenty bad fella boy.  You get ’m tohell overside.”

The old fellow limped across the deck with more agility than he haddisplayed coming aboard, straddled the barbed wire without assistance,and without assistance dropped into the canoe, cleverly receiving hisweight on his uninjured leg.  He blinked up for forgiveness andin reassertion of innocence.  Van Horn turned his face aside tohide a grin, and then grinned outright when the old rascal, showinghis empty pipe, wheedled up:

“Suppose ’m five stick tobacco you give ’m alongme?”

While Borckman went below for the tobacco, Van Horn orated to Ishikolaon the sacred solemnity of truth and promises.  Next, he leanedacross the barbed wire and handed down the five sticks of tobacco.

“My word,” he threatened.  “Somo day, Ishikola,I finish along you altogether.  You no good friend stop along salt-water. You big fool stop along bush.”

When Ishikola attempted protest, he shut him off with, “Myword, you gammon along me too much.”

Still the canoe lingered.  The dandy’s toe strayed privilyto feel out the butts of the Sniders under the green leaves, and Ishikolawas loth to depart.

“Washee-washee!” Van Horn cried with imperative suddenness.

The paddlers, without command from chief or dandy, involuntarilyobeyed, and with deep, strong strokes sent the canoe into the encirclingdarkness.  Just as quickly Van Horn changed his position on deckto the tune of a dozen yards, so that no hazarded bullet might reachhim.  He crouched low and listened to the wash of paddles fadeaway in the distance.

“All right, you fella Tambi,” he ordered quietly. “Make ’m music he fella walk about.”

And while “Red Wing” screeched its cheap and pretty rhythm,he reclined elbow on deck, smoked his cigar, and gathered Jerry intocaressing inclosure.

As he smoked he watched the abrupt misting of the stars by a rain-squallthat made to windward or to where windward might vaguely be configured. While he gauged the minutes ere he must order Tambi below with the phonographand records, he noted the bush-girl gazing at him in dumb fear. He nodded consent with half-closed eyes and up-tilting face, clinchinghis consent with a wave of hand toward the companionway.  She obeyedas a beaten dog, spirit-broken, might have obeyed, dragging herselfto her feet, trembling afresh, and with backward glances of her perpetualterror of the big white master that she was convinced would some dayeat her.  In such fashion, stabbing Van Horn to the heart becauseof his inability to convey his kindness to her across the abyss of theages that separated them, she slunk away to the companionway and crawleddown it feet-first like some enormous, large-headed worm.

After he had sent Tambi to follow her with the precious phonograph,Van Horn continued to smoke on while the sharp, needle-like spray ofthe rain impacted soothingly on his heated body.

Only for five minutes did the rain descend.  Then, as the starsdrifted back in the sky, the smell of steam seemed to stench forth fromdeck and mangrove swamp, and the suffocating heat wrapped all about.

Van Horn knew better, but ill health, save for fever, had never concernedhim; so he did not bother for a blanket to shelter him.

“Yours the first watch,” he told Borckman.  “I’llhave her under way in the morning, before I call you.”

He tucked his head on the biceps of his right arm, with the hollowof the left snuggling Jerry in against his chest, and dozed off to sleep.

And thus adventuring, white men and indigenous black men from dayto day lived life in the Solomons, bickering and trafficking, the whitesstriving to maintain their heads on their shoulders, the blacks striving,no less single-heartedly, to remove the whites’ heads from theirshoulders and at the same time to keep their own anatomies intact.

And Jerry, who knew only the world of Meringe Lagoon, learning thatthese new worlds of the ship Arangiand of the island of Malaitawere essentially the same, regarded the perpetual game between the whiteand the black with some slight sort of understanding.

CHAPTER X

Daylight saw the Arangiunder way, her sails drooping heavilyin the dead air while the boat’s crew toiled at the oars of thewhaleboat to tow her out through the narrow entrance.  Once, whenthe ketch, swerved by some vagrant current, came close to the breakof the shore-surf, the blacks on board drew toward one another in apprehensionakin to that of startled sheep in a fold when a wild woods marauderhowls outside.  Nor was there any need for Van Horn’s shoutto the whaleboat: “Washee-washee!  Damn your hides!” The boat’s crew lifted themselves clear of the thwarts as theythrew all their weight into each stroke.  They knew what dire fatewas certain if ever the sea-washed coral rock gripped the Arangi’skeel.  And they knew fear precisely of the same sort as that ofthe fear-struck girl below in the lazarette.  In the past morethan one Langa-Langa and Somo boy had gone to make a Su’u feastday, just as Su’u boys, on occasion, had similarly served feastsat Langa-Langa and at Somo.

“My word,” Tambi, at the wheel, addressed Van Horn asthe period of tension passed and the Arangiwent clear. “Brother belong my father, long time before he come boat’screw along this place.  Big fella schooner brother belong my fatherhe come along.  All finish this place Su’u.  Brotherbelong my father Su’u boys kai-kai along him altogether.”

Van Horn recollected the FairHathawayof fifteen yearsbefore, looted and burned by the people of Su’u after all handshad been killed.  Truly, the Solomons at this beginning of thetwentieth century were savage, and truly, of the Solomons, this greatisland of Malaita was savagest of all.

He cast his eyes speculatively up the slopes of the island to theseaman’s landmark, Mount Kolorat, green-forested to its cloud-cappedsummit four thousand feet in the air.  Even as he looked, thinsmoke-columns were rising along the slopes and lesser peaks, and morewere beginning to rise.

“My word,” Tambi grinned.  “Plenty boy stop’m bush lookout along you eye belong him.”

Van Horn smiled understandingly.  He knew, by the ancient telegraphyof smoke-signalling, the message was being conveyed from village tovillage and tribe to tribe that a labour-recruiter was on the leewardcoast.

All morning, under a brisk beam wind which had sprung up with therising of the sun, the Arangiflew north, her course continuouslyadvertised by the increasing smoke-talk that gossiped along the greensummits.  At high noon, with Van Horn, ever-attended by Jerry,standing for’ard and conning, the Arangiheaded into thewind to thread the passage between two palm-tufted islets.  Therewas need for conning.  Coral patches uprose everywhere from theturquoise depths, running the gamut of green from deepest jade to palesttourmaline, over which the sea filtered changing shades, creamed lazily,or burst into white fountains of sun-flashed spray.

The smoke columns along the heights became garrulous, and long beforethe Arangiwas through the passage the entire leeward coast,from the salt-water men of the shore to the remotest bush villagers,knew that the labour recruiter was going in to Langa-Langa.  Asthe lagoon, formed by the chain of islets lying off shore, opened out,Jerry began to smell the reef-villages.  Canoes, many canoes, urgedby paddles or sailed before the wind by the weight of the fresheningSouth East trade on spread fronds of coconut palms, moved across thesmooth surface of the lagoon.  Jerry barked intimidatingly at thosethat came closest, bristling his neck and making a ferocious simulationof an efficient protector of the white god who stood beside him. And after each such warning, he would softly dab his cool damp muzzleagainst the sun-heated skin of Skipper’s leg.

Once inside the lagoon, the Arangifilled away with the winda-beam.  At the end of a swift half-mile she rounded to, with head-sailstrimming down and with a great flapping of main and mizzen, and droppedanchor in fifty feet of water so clear that every huge fluted clamshellwas visible on the coral floor.  The whaleboat was not necessaryto put the Langa-Langa return boys ashore.  Hundreds of canoeslay twenty deep along both sides of the Arangi, and each boy,with his box and bell, was clamoured for by scores of relatives andfriends.

In such height of excitement, Van Horn permitted no one on board. Melanesians, unlike cattle, are as prone to stampede to attack as toretreat.  Two of the boat’s crew stood beside the Lee-Enfieldson the skylight.  Borckman, with half the boat’s crew, wentabout the ship’s work.  Van Horn, Jerry at his heels, carefulthat no one should get at his back, superintended the departure of theLanga-Langa returns and kept a vigilant eye on the remaining half ofthe boat’s crew that guarded the barbed-wire rails.  Andeach Somo boy sat on his trade-box to prevent it from being tossed intothe waiting canoes by some Langa-Langa boy.

In half an hour the riot departed ashore.  Only several canoeslingered, and from one of these Van Horn beckoned aboard Nau-hau, thebiggest chief of the stronghold of Langa-Langa.  Unlike most ofthe big chiefs, Nau-hau was young, and, unlike most of the Melanesians,he was handsome, even beautiful.

“Hello, King o’ Babylon,” was Van Horn’sgreeting, for so he had named him because of fancied Semitic resemblanceblended with the crude power that marked his visage and informed hisbearing.

Born and trained to nakedness, Nau-hau trod the deck boldly and unashamed. His sole gear of clothing was a length of trunk strap buckled abouthis waist.  Between this and his bare skin was thrust the nakedblade of a ten-inch ripping knife.  His sole decoration was a whiteChina soup-plate, perforated and strung on coconut sennit, suspendedfrom about his neck so that it rested flat on his chest and half-concealedthe generous swell of muscles.  It was the greatest of treasures. No man of Malaita he had ever heard of possessed an unbroken soup-plate.

Nor was he any more ridiculous because of the soup-plate than washe ludicrous because of his nakedness.  He was royal.  Hisfather had been a king before him, and he had proved himself greaterthan his father.  Life and death he bore in his hands and head. Often he had exercised it, chirping to his subjects in the tongue ofLanga-Langa: “Slay here,” and “Slay there”;“Thou shalt die,” and “Thou shalt live.” Because his father, a year abdicated, had chosen foolishly to interferewith his son’s government, he had called two boys and had themtwist a cord of coconut around his father’s neck so that thereafterhe never breathed again.  Because his favourite wife, mother ofhis eldest born, had dared out of silliness of affection to violateone of his kingly tamboos, he had had her killed and had himself selfishlyand religiously eaten the last of her even to the marrow of her crackedjoints, sharing no morsel with his boonest of comrades.

Royal he was, by nature, by training, by deed.  He carried himselfwith consciousness of royalty.  He looked royal—as a magnificentstallion may look royal, as a lion on a painted tawny desert may lookroyal.  He was as splendid a brute—an adumbration of thesplendid human conquerors and rulers, higher on the ladder of evolution,who have appeared in other times and places.  His pose of body,of chest, of shoulders, of head, was royal.  Royal was the heavy-lidded,lazy, insolent way he looked out of his eyes.

Royal in courage was he, this moment on the Arangi, despitethe fact that he knew he walked on dynamite.  As he had long sincebitterly learned, any white man was as much dynamite as was the mysteriousdeath-dealing missile he sometimes employed.  When a stripling,he had made one of the canoe force that attacked the sandalwood-cutterthat had been even smaller than the Arangi.  He had neverforgotten that mystery.  Two of the three white men he had seenslain and their heads removed on deck.  The third, still fighting,had but the minute before fled below.  Then the cutter, along withall her wealth of hoop-iron, tobacco, knives and calico, had gone upinto the air and fallen back into the sea in scattered and fragmentednothingness.  It had been dynamite—the MYSTERY.  Andhe, who had been hurled uninjured through the air by a miracle of fortune,had divined that white men in themselves were truly dynamite, compoundedof the same mystery as the substance with which they shot the swift-dartingschools of mullet, or blow up, in extremity, themselves and the shipson which they voyaged the sea from far places.  And yet on thisunstable and death-terrific substance of which he was well aware VanHorn was composed, he trod heavily with his personality, daring, tothe verge of detonation, to impact it with his insolence.

“My word,” he began, “what name you make ’mboy belong me stop along you too much?”  Which was a trueand correct charge that the boys which Van Horn had just returned hadbeen away three years and a half instead of three years.

“You talk that fella talk I get cross too much along you,”Van Horn bristled back, and then added, diplomatically, dipping intoa half-case of tobacco sawed across and proffering a handful of sticktobacco: “Much better you smoke ’m up and talk ’mgood fella talk.”

But Nau-hau grandly waved aside the gift for which he hungered.

“Plenty tobacco stop along me,” he lied.  “Whatname one fella boy go way no come back?” he demanded.

Van Horn pulled the long slender account book out of the twist ofhis loin-cloth, and, while he skimmed its pages, impressed Nau-hau withthe dynamite of the white man’s superior powers which enabledhim to remember correctly inside the scrawled sheets of a book insteadof inside his head.

“Sati,” Van Horn read, his finger marking the place,his eyes alternating watchfully between the writing and the black chiefbefore him, while the black chief himself speculated and studied thechance of getting behind him and, with the single knife-thrust he knewso well, of severing the other’s spinal cord at the base of theneck.

“Sati,” Van Horn read.  “Last monsoon beginabout this time, him fella Sati get ’m sick belly belong him toomuch; bime by him fella Sati finish altogether,” he translatedinto bêche-de-mer the written information: DiedofdysenteryJuly4th, 1901.

“Plenty work him fella Sati, long time,” Nau-hau droveto the point.  “What come along money belong him?”

Van Horn did mental arithmetic from the account.

“Altogether him make ’m six tens pounds and two fellapounds gold money,” was his translation of sixty-two pounds ofwages.  “I pay advance father belong him one ten pounds andfive fella pounds.  Him finish altogether four tens pounds andseven fella pounds.”

“What name stop four tens pounds and seven fella pounds?”Nau-hau demanded, his tongue, but not his brain, encompassing so prodigiousa sum.

Van Horn held up his hand.

“Too much hurry you fella Nau-hau.  Him fella Sati buy’m slop chest along plantation two tens pounds and one fella pound. Belong Sati he finish altogether two tens pounds and six fella pounds.”

“What name stop two tens pounds and six fella pounds?”Nau-hau continued inflexibly.

“Stop ’m along me,” the captain answered curtly.

“Give ’m me two tens pounds and six fella pounds.”

“Give ’m you hell,” Van Horn refused, and in theblue of his eyes the black chief sensed the impression of the dynamiteout of which white men seemed made, and felt his brain quicken to thevision of the bloody day he first encountered an explosion of dynamiteand was hurled through the air.

“What name that old fella boy stop ’m along canoe?”Van Horn asked, pointing to an old man in a canoe alongside.  “Himfather belong Sati?”

“Him father belong Sati,” Nau-hau affirmed.

Van Horn motioned the old man in and on board, beckoned Borckmanto take charge of the deck and of Nau-hau, and went below to get themoney from his strong-box.  When he returned, cavalierly ignoringthe chief, he addressed himself to the old man.

“What name belong you?”

“Me fella Nino,” was the quavering response.  “Himfella Sati belong along me.”

Van Horn glanced for verification to Nau-hau, who nodded affirmationin the reverse Solomon way; whereupon Van Horn counted twenty-six goldsovereigns into the hand of Sati’s father.

Immediately thereafter Nau-hau extended his hand and received thesum.  Twenty gold pieces the chief retained for himself, returningto the old man the remaining six.  It was no quarrel of Van Horn’s. He had fulfilled his duty and paid properly.  The tyranny of achief over a subject was none of his business.

Both masters, white and black, were fairly contented with themselves. Van Horn had paid the money where it was due; Nau-hau, by virtue ofkingship, had robbed Sati’s father of Sati’s labour beforeVan Horn’s eyes.  But Nau-hau was not above strutting. He declined a proffered present of tobacco, bought a case of stick tobaccofrom Van Horn, paying him five pounds for it, and insisted on havingit sawed open so that he could fill his pipe.

“Plenty good boy stop along Langa-Langa?” Van Horn, unperturbed,politely queried, in order to make conversation and advertise nonchalance.

The King o’ Babylon grinned, but did not deign to reply.

“Maybe I go ashore and walk about?” Van Horn challengedwith tentative emphasis.

“Maybe too much trouble along you,” Nau-hau challengedback.  “Maybe plenty bad fella boy kai-kai along you.”

Although Van Horn did not know it, at this challenge he experiencedthe hair-pricking sensations in his scalp that Jerry experienced whenhe bristled his back.

“Hey, Borckman,” he called.  “Man the whaleboat.”

When the whaleboat was alongside, he descended into it first, superiorly,then invited Nau-hau to accompany him.

“My word, King o’ Babylon,” he muttered in thechief’s ears as the boat’s crew bent to the oars, “onefella boy make ’m trouble, I shoot ’m hell outa you firstthing.  Next thing I shoot ’m hell outa Langa-Langa. All the time you me fella walk about, you walk about along me. You no like walk about along me, you finish close up altogether.”

And ashore, a white man alone, attended by an Irish terrier puppywith a heart flooded with love and by a black king resentfully respectfulof the dynamite of the white man, Van Horn went, swashbuckling bareleggedthrough a stronghold of three thousand souls, while his white mate,addicted to schnapps, held the deck of the tiny craft at anchor offshore, and while his black boat’s crew, oars in hands, held thewhaleboat stern-on to the beach to receive the expected flying leapof the man they served but did not love, and whose head they would eagerlytake any time were it not for fear of him.

Van Horn had had no intention of going ashore, and that he went ashoreat the black chief’s insolent challenge was merely a matter ofbusiness.  For an hour he strolled about, his right hand neverfar from the butt of the automatic that lay along his groin, his eyesnever too far from the unwilling Nau-hau beside him.  For Nau-hau,in sullen volcanic rage, was ripe to erupt at the slightest opportunity. And, so strolling, Van Horn was given to see what few white men haveseen, for Langa-Langa and her sister islets, beautiful beads strungalong the lee coast of Malaita, were as unique as they were unexplored.

Originally these islets had been mere sand-banks and coral reefsawash in the sea or shallowly covered by the sea.  Only a hunted,wretched creature, enduring incredible hardship, could have eked outa miserable existence upon them.  But such hunted, wretched creatures,survivors of village massacres, escapes from the wrath of chiefs andfrom the long-pig fate of the cooking-pot, did come, and did endure. They, who knew only the bush, learned the salt water and developed thesalt-water-man breed.  They learned the ways of the fish and theshell-fish, and they invented hooks and lines, nets and fish-traps,and all the diverse cunning ways by which swimming meat can be garneredfrom the shifting, unstable sea.

Such refugees stole women from the mainland, and increased and multiplied. With herculean labour, under the burning sun, they conquered the sea. They walled the confines of their coral reefs and sand-banks with coral-rockstolen from the mainland on dark nights.  Fine masonry, withoutmortar or cutting chisel, they builded to withstand the ocean surge. Likewise stolen from the mainland, as mice steal from human habitationswhen humans sleep, they stole canoe-loads, and millions of canoe-loads,of fat, rich soil.

Generations and centuries passed, and, behold, in place of nakedsandbanks half awash were walled citadels, perforated with launching-waysfor the long canoes, protected against the mainland by the lagoons thatwere to them their narrow seas.  Coconut palms, banana trees, andlofty breadfruit trees gave food and sun-shelter.  Their gardensprospered.  Their long, lean war-canoes ravaged the coasts andvisited vengeance for their forefathers upon the descendants of themthat had persecuted and desired to eat.

Like the refugees and renegades who slunk away in the salt marshesof the Adriatic and builded the palaces of powerful Venice on her deep-sunkpiles, so these wretched hunted blacks builded power until they becamemasters of the mainland, controlling traffic and trade-routes, compellingthe bushmen for ever after to remain in the bush and never to dare attemptthe salt-water.

And here, amidst the fat success and insolence of the sea-people,Van Horn swaggered his way, taking his chance, incapable of believingthat he might swiftly die, knowing that he was building good futurebusiness in the matter of recruiting labour for the plantations of otheradventuring white men on far islands who dared only less greatly thanhe.

And when, at the end of an hour, Van Horn passed Jerry into the sternsheetsof the whaleboat and followed, he left on the beach a stunned and wonderingroyal black, who, more than ever before, was respectful of the dynamite-compoundedwhite men who brought to him stick tobacco, calico, knives and hatchets,and inexorably extracted from such trade a profit.

CHAPTER XI

Back on board, Van Horn immediately hove short, hoisted sail, brokeout the anchor, and filled away for the ten-mile beat up the lagoonto windward that would fetch Somo.  On the way, he stopped at Binuto greet Chief Johnny and land a few Binu returns.  Then it wason to Somo, and to the end of voyaging for ever of the Arangiand of many that were aboard of her.

Quite the opposite to his treatment at Langa-Langa was that accordedVan Horn at Somo.  Once the return boys were put ashore, and thiswas accomplished no later than three-thirty in the afternoon, he invitedChief Bashti on board.  And Chief Bashti came, very nimble andactive despite his great age, and very good-natured—so good-natured,in fact, that he insisted on bringing three of his elderly wives onboard with him.  This was unprecedented.  Never had he permittedany of his wives to appear before a white man, and Van Horn felt sohonoured that he presented each of them with a gay clay pipe and a dozensticks of tobacco.

Late as the afternoon was, trade was brisk, and Bashti, who had takenthe lion’s share of the wages due to the fathers of two boys whohad died, bought liberally of the Arangi’sstock. When Bashti promised plenty of fresh recruits, Van Horn, used to thechangeableness of the savage mind, urged signing them up right away. Bashti demurred, and suggested next day.  Van Horn insisted thatthere was no time like the present, and so well did he insist that theold chief sent a canoe ashore to round up the boys who had been selectedto go away to the plantations.

“Now, what do you think?” Van Horn asked of Borckman,whose eyes were remarkably fishy.  “I never saw the old rascalso friendly.  Has he got something up his sleeve?”

The mate stared at the many canoes alongside, noted the numbers ofwomen in them, and shook his head.

“When they’re starting anything they always send theMarys into the bush,” he said.

“You never can tell about these niggers,” the captaingrumbled.  “They may be short on imagination, but once ina while they do figure out something new.  Now Bashti’s thesmartest old nigger I’ve ever seen.  What’s to preventhis figuring out that very bet and playing it in reverse?  Justbecause they’ve never had their women around when trouble wason the carpet is no reason that they will always keep that practice.”

“Not even Bashti’s got the savvee to pull a trick likethat,” Borckman objected.  “He’s just feelinggood and liberal.  Why, he’s bought forty pounds of goodsfrom you already.  That’s why he wants to sign on a new batchof boys with us, and I’ll bet he’s hoping half of them dieso’s he can have the spending of their wages.”

All of which was most reasonable.  Nevertheless, Van Horn shookhis head.

“All the same keep your eyes sharp on everything,” hecautioned.  “And remember, the two of us mustn’t everbe below at the same time.  And no more schnapps, mind, until we’reclear of the whole kit and caboodle.”

Bashti was incredibly lean and prodigiously old.  He did notknow how old he was himself, although he did know that no person inhis tribe had been alive when he was a young boy in the village. He remembered the days when some of the old men, still alive, had beenborn; and, unlike him, they were now decrepit, shaken with palsy, blear-eyed,toothless of mouth, deaf of ear, or paralysed.  All his own facultiesremained unimpaired.  He even boasted a dozen worn fangs of teeth,gum-level, on which he could still chew.  Although he no longerhad the physical endurance of youth, his thinking was as original andclear as it had always been.  It was due to his thinking that hefound his tribe stronger than when he had first come to rule it. In his small way he had been a Melanesian Napoleon.  As a warrior,the play of his mind had enabled him to beat back the bushmen’sboundaries.  The scars on his withered body attested that he hadfought to the fore.  As a Law-giver, he had encouraged and achievedstrength and efficiency within his tribe.  As a statesman, he hadalways kept one thought ahead of the thoughts of the neighbouring chiefsin the making of treaties and the granting of concessions.

And with his mind, still keenly alive, he had but just evolved ascheme whereby he might outwit Van Horn and get the better of the vastBritish Empire about which he guessed little and know less.

For Somo had a history.  It was that queer anomaly, a salt-watertribe that lived on the lagoon mainland where only bushmen were supposedto live.  Far back into the darkness of time, the folk-lore ofSomo cast a glimmering light.  On a day, so far back that therewas no way of estimating its distance, one, Somo, son of Loti, who wasthe chief of the island fortress of Umbo, had quarrelled with his fatherand fled from his wrath along with a dozen canoe-loads of young men. For two monsoons they had engaged in an odyssey.  It was in themyth that they circumnavigated Malaita twice, and forayed as far asUgi and San Cristobal across the wide seas.

Women they had inevitably stolen after successful combats, and, inthe end, being burdened with women and progeny, Somo had descended uponthe mainland shore, driven the bushmen back, and established the salt-waterfortress of Somo.  Built it was, on its sea-front, like any islandfortress, with walled coral-rock to oppose the sea and chance maraudersfrom the sea, and with launching ways through the walls for the longcanoes.  To the rear, where it encroached on the jungle, it waslike any scattered bush village.  But Somo, the wide-seeing fatherof the new tribe, had established his boundaries far up in the bushon the shoulders of the lesser mountains, and on each shoulder had planteda village.  Only the greatly daring that fled to him had Somo permittedto join the new tribe.  The weaklings and cowards they had promptlyeaten, and the unbelievable tale of their many heads adorning the canoe-houseswas part of the myth.

And this tribe, territory, and stronghold, at the latter end of time,Bashti had inherited, and he had bettered his inheritance.  Norwas he above continuing to better it.  For a long time he had reasonedclosely and carefully in maturing the plan that itched in his brainfor fulfilment.  Three years before, the tribe of Ano Ano, milesdown the coast, had captured a recruiter, destroyed her and all hands,and gained a fabulous store of tobacco, calico, beads, and all mannerof trade goods, rifles and ammunition.

Little enough had happened in the way of price that was paid. Half a year after, a war vessel had poked her nose into the lagoon,shelled Ano Ano, and sent its inhabitants scurrying into the bush. The landing-party that followed had futilely pursued along the junglerunways.  In the end it had contented itself with killing fortyfat pigs and chopping down a hundred coconut trees.  Scarcely hadthe war vessel passed out to open sea, when the people of Ano Ano wereback from the bush to the village.  Shell fire on flimsy grasshouses is not especially destructive.  A few hours’ labourof the women put that little matter right.  As for the forty deadpigs, the entire tribe fell upon the carcasses, roasted them under theground with hot stones, and feasted.  The tender tips of the fallenpalms were likewise eaten, while the thousands of coconuts were huskedand split and sun-dried and smoke-cured into copra to be sold to thenext passing trader.

Thus, the penalty exacted had proved a picnic and a feast—allof which appealed to the thrifty, calculating brain of Bashti. And what was good for Ano Ano, in his judgment was surely good for Somo. Since such were white men’s ways who sailed under the Britishflag and killed pigs and cut down coconuts in cancellation of blood-debtsand headtakings, Bashti saw no valid reason why he should not profitas Ano Ano had profited.  The price to be paid at some possiblefuture time was absurdly disproportionate to the immediate wealth tobe gained.  Besides, it had been over two years since the lastBritish war vessel had appeared in the Solomons.

And thus, Bashti, with a fine fresh idea inside his head, bowed hischief’s head in consent that his people could flock aboard andtrade.  Very few of them knew what his idea was or that he evenhad an idea.

Trade grew still brisker as more canoes came alongside and blackmen and women thronged the deck.  Then came the recruits, new-caught,young, savage things, timid as deer, yet yielding to stern parentaland tribal law and going down into the Arangi’scabin,one by one, their fathers and mothers and relatives accompanying themin family groups, to confront the big fella white marster, who wrotetheir names down in a mysterious book, had them ratify the three years’contract of their labour by a touch of the right hand to the pen withwhich he wrote, and who paid the first year’s advance in tradegoods to the heads of their respective families.

Old Bashti sat near, taking his customary heavy tithes out of eachadvance, his three old wives squatting humbly at his feet and by theirmere presence giving confidence to Van Horn, who was elated by the strokeof business.  At such rate his cruise on Malaita would be a shortone, when he would sail away with a full ship.

On deck, where Borckman kept a sharp eye out against danger, Jerryprowled about, sniffing the many legs of the many blacks he had neverencountered before.  The wild-dog had gone ashore with the returnboys, and of the return boys only one had come back.  It was Lerumie,past whom Jerry repeatedly and stiff-leggedly bristled without gainingresponse of recognition.  Lerumie coolly ignored him, went downbelow once and purchased a trade hand-mirror, and, with a look of theeyes, assured old Bashti that all was ready and ripe to break at thefirst favourable moment.

On deck, Borckman gave this favourable moment.  Nor would hehave so given it had he not been guilty of carelessness and of disobedienceto his captain’s orders.  He did not leave the schnapps alone. Be did not sense what was impending all about him.  Aft, wherehe stood, the deck was almost deserted.  Amidships and for’ard,gamming with the boat’s crew, the deck was crowded with blacksof both sexes.  He made his way to the yam sacks lashed abaft themizzenmast and got his bottle.  Just before he drank, with a shredof caution, he cast a glance behind him.  Near him stood a harmlessMary, middle-aged, fat, squat, asymmetrical, unlovely, a sucking childof two years astride her hip and taking nourishment.  Surely noharm was to be apprehended there.  Furthermore, she was patentlya weaponless Mary, for she wore no stitch of clothing that otherwisemight have concealed a weapon.  Over against the rail, ten feetto one side, stood Lerumie, smirking into the trade mirror he had justbought.

It was in the trade mirror that Lerumie saw Borckman bend to theyam-sacks, return to the erect, throw his head back, the mouth of thebottle glued to his lips, the bottom elevated skyward.  Lerumielifted his right hand in signal to a woman in a canoe alongside. She bent swiftly for something that she tossed to Lerumie.  Itwas a long-handled tomahawk, the head of it an ordinary shingler’shatchet, the haft of it, native-made, a black and polished piece ofhard wood, inlaid in rude designs with mother-of-pearl and wrapped withcoconut sennit to make a hand grip.  The blade of the hatchet hadbeen ground to razor-edge.

As the tomahawk flew noiselessly through the air to Lerumie’shand, just as noiselessly, the next instant, it flew through the airfrom his hand into the hand of the fat Mary with the nursing child whostood behind the mate.  She clutched the handle with both hands,while the child, astride her hip, held on to her with both small armspart way about her.

Still she waited the stroke, for with Borckman’s head thrownback was no time to strive to sever the spinal cord at the neck. Many eyes beheld the impending tragedy.  Jerry saw, but did notunderstand.  With all his hostility to niggers he had not divinedthe attack from the air.  Tambi, who chanced to be near the skylight,saw, and, seeing, reached for a Lee-Enfield.  Lerumie saw Tambi’saction and hissed haste to the Mary.

Borckman, as unaware of this, his last second of life, as he hadbeen of his first second of birth, lowered the bottle and straightenedforward his head.  The keen edge sank home.  What, in thatflash of instant when his brain was severed from the rest of his body,Borckman may have felt or thought, if he felt or thought at all, isa mystery unsolvable to living man.  No man, his spinal cord sosevered, has ever given one word or whisper of testimony as to whatwere his sensations and impressions.  No less swift than the hatchetstroke was the limp placidity into which Borckman’s body meltedto the deck.  He did not reel or pitch.  He melted,as a sack of wind suddenly emptied, as a bladder of air suddenly punctured. The bottle fell from his dead hand upon the yams without breaking, althoughthe remnant of its contents gurgled gently out upon the deck.

So quick was the occurrence of action, that the first shot from Tambi’smusket missed the Mary ere Borckman had quite melted to the deck. There was no time for a second shot, for the Mary, dropping the tomahawk,holding her child in both her hands and plunging to the rail, was inthe air and overboard, her fall capsizing the canoe which chanced tobe beneath her.

Scores of actions were simultaneous.  From the canoes on bothsides uprose a glittering, glistening rain of mother-of-pearl-handledtomahawks that descended into the waiting hands of the Somo men on deck,while the Marys on deck crouched down and scrambled out of the fray. At the same time that the Mary who had killed Borckman leapt the rail,Lerumie bent for the tomahawk she had dropped, and Jerry, aware of redwar, slashed the hand that reached for the tomahawk.  Lerumie stoodupright and loosed loudly, in a howl, all the pent rage and hatred,of months which he had cherished against the puppy.  Also, as hegained the perpendicular and as Jerry flew at his legs, he launcheda kick with all his might that caught and lifted Jerry squarely underthe middle.

And in the next second, or fraction of second, as Jerry lifted andsoared through the air, over the barbed wire of the rail and overboard,while Sniders were being passed up overside from the canoes, Tambi firedhis next hasty shot.  And Lerumie, the foot with which he had kickednot yet returned to the deck as again he was in mid-action of stoopingto pick up the tomahawk, received the bullet squarely in the heart andpitched down to melt with Borckman into the softness of death.

Ere Jerry struck the water, the glory of Tambi’s marvellouslylucky shot was over for Tambi; for, at the moment he pressed triggerto the successful shot, a tomahawk bit across his skull at the baseof the brain and darkened from his eyes for ever the bright vision ofthe sea-washed, sun-blazoned tropic world.  As swiftly, all occurringalmost simultaneously, did the rest of the boat’s crew pass andthe deck became a shambles.

It was to the reports of the Sniders and the noises of the deathscuffle that Jerry’s head emerged from the water.  A man’shand reached over a canoe-side and dragged him in by the scruff of theneck, and, although he snarled and struggled to bite his rescuer, hewas not so much enraged as was he torn by the wildest solicitude forSkipper.  He knew, without thinking about it, that the Arangihad been boarded by the hazily sensed supreme disaster of life thatall life intuitively apprehends and that only man knows and calls bythe name of “death.”  Borckman he had seen struck down. Lerumie he had heard struck down.  And now he was hearing the explosionsof rifles and the yells and screeches of triumph and fear.

So it was, helpless, suspended in the air by the nape of the neck,that he bawled and squalled and choked and coughed till the black, disgusted,flung him down roughly in the canoe’s bottom.  He scrambledto his feet and made two leaps: one upon the gunwale of the canoe; thenext, despairing and hopeless, without consideration of self, for therail of the Arangi.

His forefeet missed the rail by a yard, and he plunged down intothe sea.  He came up, swimming frantically, swallowing and stranglingsalt water because he still yelped and wailed and barked his yearningto be on board with Skipper.

But a boy of twelve, in another canoe, having witnessed the firstblack’s adventure with Jerry, treated him without ceremony, laying,first the flat, and next the edge, of a paddle upon his head while hestill swam.  And the darkness of unconsciousness welled over hisbright little love-suffering brain, so that it was a limp and motionlesspuppy that the black boy dragged into his canoe.

In the meantime, down below in the Arangi’scabin, ereever Jerry hit the water from Lerumie’s kick, even while he wasin the air, Van Horn, in one great flashing profound fraction of aninstant, had known his death.  Not for nothing had old Bashti livedlongest of any living man in his tribe, and ruled wisest of all thelong line of rulers since Somo’s time.  Had he been placedmore generously in earth space and time, he might well have proved anAlexander, a Napoleon, or a swarthy Kahehameha.  As it was, heperformed well, and splendidly well, in his limited little kingdom onthe leeward coast of the dark cannibal island of Malaita.

And such a performance!  In cool good nature in rigid maintenanceof his chiefship rights, he had smiled at Van Horn, given royal permissionto his young men to sign on for three years of plantation slavery, andexacted his share of each year’s advance.  Aora, who mightbe described as his prime minister and treasurer, had received the tithesas fast as they were paid over, and filled them into large, fine-nettedbags of coconut sennit.  At Bashti’s back, squatting on thebunk-boards, a slim and smooth-skinned maid of thirteen had flappedthe flies away from his royal head with the royal fly-flapper. At his feet had squatted his three old wives, the oldest of them, toothlessand somewhat palsied, ever presenting to his hand, at his head nod,a basket rough-woven of pandanus leaf.

And Bashti, his keen old ears pitched for the first untoward soundfrom on deck, had continually nodded his head and dipped his hand intothe proffered basket—now for betel-nut, and lime-box, and theinvariable green leaf with which to wrap the mouthful; now for tobaccowith which to fill his short clay pipe; and, again, for matches withwhich to light the pipe which seemed not to draw well and which frequentlywent out.

Toward the last the basket had hovered constantly close to his hand,and, at the last, he made one final dip.  It was at the momentwhen the Mary’s axe, on deck, had struck Borckman down and whenTambi loosed the first shot at her from his Lee-Enfield.  And Bashti’swithered ancient hand, the back of it netted with a complex of largeup-standing veins from which the flesh had shrunk away, dipped out ahuge pistol of such remote vintage that one of Cromwell’s round-headsmight well have carried it or that it might well have voyaged with Quirosor La Perouse.  It was a flint-lock, as long as a man’s forearm,and it had been loaded that afternoon by no less a person than Bashtihimself.

Quick as Bashti had been, Van Horn was almost as quick, but not quitequick enough.  Even as his hand leapt to the modern automatic lyingout of it’s holster and loose on his knees, the pistol of thecenturies went off.  Loaded with two slugs and a round bullet,its effect was that of a sawed-off shotgun.  And Van Horn knewthe blaze and the black of death, even as “Gott fer dang!”died unuttered on his lips and as his fingers relaxed from the part-liftedautomatic, dropping it to the floor.

Surcharged with black powder, the ancient weapon had other effect. It burst in Bashti’s hand.  While Aora, with a knife producedapparently from nowhere, proceeded to hack off the white master’shead, Bashti looked quizzically at his right forefinger dangling bya strip of skin.  He seized it with his left hand, with a quickpull and twist wrenched it off, and grinningly tossed it, as a joke,into the pandanus basket which still his wife with one hand held beforehim while with the other she clutched her forehead bleeding from a flyingfragment of pistol.

Collaterally with this, three of the young recruits, joined by theirfathers and uncles, had downed, and were finishing off the only oneof the boat’s crew that was below.  Bashti, who had livedso long that he was a philosopher who minded pain little and the lossof a finger less, chuckled and chirped his satisfaction and pride ofachievement in the outcome, while his three old wives, who lived onlyat the nod of his head, fawned under him on the floor in the abjectnessof servile congratulation and worship.  Long had they lived, andthey had lived long only by his kingly whim.  They floundered andgibbered and mowed at his feet, lord of life and death that he was,infinitely wise as he had so often proved himself, as he had this timeproved himself again.

And the lean, fear-stricken girl, like a frightened rabbit in themouth of its burrow, on hands and knees peered forth upon the scenefrom the lazarette and knew that the cooking-pot and the end of timehad come for her.

CHAPTER XII

What happened aboard the ArangiJerry never knew.  Hedid know that it was a world destroyed, for he saw it destroyed. The boy who had knocked him on the head with the paddle, tied his legssecurely and tossed him out on the beach ere he forgot him in the excitementof looting the Arangi.

With great shouting and song, the pretty teak-built yacht was towedin by the long canoes and beached close to where Jerry lay just beyondthe confines of the coral-stone walls.  Fires blazed on the beach,lanterns were lighted on board, and, amid a great feasting, the Arangiwas gutted and stripped.  Everything portable was taken ashore,from her pigs of iron ballast to her running gear and sails.  Noone in Somo slept that night.  Even the tiniest of children toddledabout the feasting fires or sprawled surfeited on the sands.  Attwo in the morning, at Bashti’s command, the shell of the boatwas fired.  And Jerry, thirsting for water, having whimpered andwailed himself to exhaustion, lying helpless, leg-tied, on his side,saw the floating world he had known so short a time go up in flame andsmoke.

And by the light of her burning, old Bashti apportioned the loot. No one of the tribe was too mean to receive nothing.  Even thewretched bush-slaves, who had trembled through all the time of theircaptivity from fear of being eaten, received each a clay pipe and severalsticks of tobacco.  The main bulk of the trade goods, which wasnot distributed, Bashti had carried up to his own large grass house. All the wealth of gear was stored in the several canoe houses. While in the devil devil houses the devil devil doctors set to workcuring the many heads over slow smudges; for, along with the boat’screw there were a round dozen of No-ola return boys and several Maluboys which Van Horn had not yet delivered.

Not all these had been slain, however.  Bashti had issued sterninjunctions against wholesale slaughter.  But this was not becausehis heart was kind.  Rather was it because his head was shrewd. Slain they would all be in the end.  Bashti had never seen ice,did not know it existed, and was unversed in the science of refrigeration. The only way he knew to keep meat was to keep it alive.  And inthe biggest canoe house, the club house of the stags, where no Marymight come under penalty of death by torture, the captives were stored.

Tied or trussed like fowls or pigs, they were tumbled on the hard-packedearthen floor, beneath which, shallowly buried, lay the remains of ancientchiefs, while, overhead, in wrappings of grass mats, swung all thatwas left of several of Bashti’s immediate predecessors, his fatherlatest among them and so swinging for two full generations.  Here,too, since she was to be eaten and since the taboo had no bearing uponone condemned to be cooked, the thin little Mary from the lazarettewas tumbled trussed upon the floor among the many blacks who had teasedand mocked her for being fattened by Van Horn for the eating.

And to this canoe house Jerry was also brought to join the otherson the floor.  Agno, chief of the devil devil doctors, had stumbledacross him on the beach, and, despite the protestations of the boy whoclaimed him as personal trove, had ordered him to the canoe house. Carried past the fires of the feasting, his keen nostrils had told himof what the feast consisted.  And, new as the experience was, hehad bristled and snarled and struggled against his bonds to be free. Likewise, at first, tossed down in the canoe house, he had bristledand snarled at his fellow captives, not realizing their plight, and,since always he had been trained to look upon niggers as the eternalenemy, considering them responsible for the catastrophe to the Arangiand to Skipper.

For Jerry was only a little dog, with a dog’s limitations,and very young in the world.  But not for long did he throat hisrage at them.  In vague ways it was borne in upon him that they,too, were not happy.  Some had been cruelly wounded, and kept upa moaning and groaning.  Without any clearness of concept, neverthelessJerry had a realization that they were as painfully circumstanced ashimself.  And painful indeed was his own circumstance.  Helay on his side, the cords that bound his legs so tight as to bite intohis tender flesh and shut off the circulation.  Also, he was perishingfor water, and panted, dry-tongued, dry-mouthed, in the stagnant heat.

A dolorous place it was, this canoe house, filled with groans andsighs, corpses beneath the floor and composing the floor, creaturessoon to be corpses upon the floor, corpses swinging in aerial sepulchreoverhead, long black canoes, high-ended like beaked predatory monsters,dimly looming in the light of a slow fire where sat an ancient of thetribe of Somo at his interminable task of smoke-curing a bushman’shead.  He was withered, and blind, and senile, gibbering and mowinglike some huge ape as ever he turned and twisted, and twisted back again,the suspended head in the pungent smoke, and handful by handful addedrotten punk of wood to the smudge fire.

Sixty feet in the clear, the dim fire occasionally lighted, throughshadowy cross-beams, the ridge-pole that was covered with sennit ofcoconut that was braided in barbaric designs of black and white andthat was stained by the smoke of years almost to a monochrome of dirtybrown.  From the lofty cross-beams, on long sennit strings, hungthe heads of enemies taken aforetime in jungle raid and sea foray. The place breathed the very atmosphere of decay and death, and the imbecileancient, curing in the smoke the token of death, was himself palsiedlyshaking into the disintegration of the grave.

Toward daylight, with great shouting and heaving and pull and haul,scores of Somo men brought in another of the big war canoes.  Theymade way with foot and hand, kicking and thrusting dragging and shoving,the bound captives to either side of the space which the canoe was tooccupy.  They were anything but gentle to the meat with which theyhad been favoured by good fortune and the wisdom of Bashti.

For a time they sat about, all pulling at clay pipes and chirrupingand laughing in queer thin falsettos at the events of the night andthe previous afternoon.  Now one and now another stretched outand slept without covering; for so, directly under the path of the sun,had they slept nakedly from the time they were born.

Remained awake, as dawn paled the dark, only the grievously woundedor the too-tightly bound, and the decrepit ancient who was not so oldas Bashti.  When the boy who had stunned Jerry with his paddle-bladeand who claimed him as his own stole into the canoe house, the ancientdid not hear him.  Being blind, he did not see him.  He continuedgibbering and chuckling dementedly, to twist the bushman’s headback and forth and to feed the smudge with punk-wood.  This wasno night-task for any man, nor even for him who had forgotten how todo aught else.  But the excitement of cutting out the Arangihad been communicated to his addled brain, and, with vague reminiscentflashes of the strength of life triumphant, he shared deliriously inthis triumph of Somo by applying himself to the curing of the head thatwas in itself the concrete expression of triumph.

But the twelve-year-old lad who stole in and cautiously stepped overthe sleepers and threaded his way among the captives, did so with hisheart in his mouth.  He knew what taboos he was violating. Not old enough even to leave his father’s grass roof and sleepin the youths’ canoe house, much less to sleep with the youngbachelors in their canoe house, he knew that he took his life, withall of its dimly guessed mysteries and arrogances, in his hand thusto trespass into the sacred precinct of the full-made, full-realized,full-statured men of Somo.

But he wanted Jerry and he got him.  Only the lean little Mary,trussed for the cooking, staring through her wide eyes of fear, sawthe boy pick Jerry up by his tied legs and carry him out and away fromthe booty of meat of which she was part.  Jerry’s heroiclittle heart of courage would have made him snarl and resent such treatmentof handling had he not been too exhausted and had not his mouth andthroat been too dry for sound.  As it was, miserably and helplessly,not half himself, a puppet dreamer in a half-nightmare, he knew, asa restless sleeper awakening between vexing dreams, that he was beingtransported head-downward out of the canoe house that stank of death,through the village that was only less noisome, and up a path underlofty, wide-spreading trees that were beginning languidly to stir withthe first breathings of the morning wind.

CHAPTER XIII

The boy’s name, as Jerry was to learn, was Lamai, and to Lamai’shouse Jerry was carried.  It was not much of a house, even as cannibalgrass-houses go.  On an earthen floor, hard-packed of the filthof years, lived Lamai’s father and mother and a spawn of fouryounger brothers and sisters.  A thatched roof that leaked in everyheavy shower leaned to a wabbly ridge-pole over the floor.  Thewalls were even more pervious to a driving rain.  In fact, thehouse of Lamai, who was the father of Lumai, was the most miserablehouse in all Somo.

Lumai, the house-master and family head, unlike most Malaitans, wasfat.  And of his fatness it would seem had been begotten his goodnature with its allied laziness.  But as the fly in his ointmentof jovial irresponsibility was his wife, Lenerengo—the prize shrewof Somo, who was as lean about the middle and all the rest of her asher husband was rotund; who was as remarkably sharp-spoken as he wassoft-spoken; who was as ceaselessly energetic as he was unceasinglyidle; and who had been born with a taste for the world as sour in hermouth as it was sweet in his.

The boy merely peered into the house as he passed around it to therear, and he saw his father and mother, at opposite corners, sleepingwithout covering, and, in the middle of the floor, his four naked brothersand sisters curled together in a tangle like a litter of puppies. All about the house, which in truth was scarcely more than an animallair, was an earthly paradise.  The air was spicily and sweetlyheavy with the scents of wild aromatic plants and gorgeous tropic blooms. Overhead three breadfruit trees interlaced their noble branches. Banana and plantain trees were burdened with great bunches of ripeningfruit.  And huge, golden melons of the papaia, ready for the eating,globuled directly from the slender-trunked trees not one-tenth the girthof the fruits they bore.  And, for Jerry, most delightful of all,there was the gurgle and plash of a brooklet that pursued its invisibleway over mossy stones under a garmenture of tender and delicate ferns. No conservatory of a king could compare with this wild wantonness ofsun-generous vegetation.

Maddened by the sound of the water, Jerry had first to endure anembracing and hugging from the boy, who, squatted on his hams, rockedback and forth and mumbled a strange little crooning song.  AndJerry, lacking articulate speech, had no way of telling him of the thirstof which he was perishing.

Next, Lamai tied him securely with a sennit cord about the neck anduntied the cords that bit into his legs.  So numb was Jerry fromlack of circulation, and so weak from lack of water through part ofa tropic day and all of a tropic night, that he stood up, tottered andfell, and, time and again, essaying to stand, floundered and fell. And Lamai understood, or tentatively guessed.  He caught up a coconutcalabash attached to the end of a stick of bamboo, dipped into the greeneryof ferns, and presented to Jerry the calabash brimming with the preciouswater.

Jerry lay on his side at first as he drank, until, with the moisture,life flowed back into the parched channels of him, so that, soon, stillweak and shaky, he was up and braced on all his four wide-spread legsand still eagerly lapping.  The boy chuckled and chirped his delightin the spectacle, and Jerry found surcease and easement sufficient toenable him to speak with his tongue after the heart-eloquent mannerof dogs.  He took his nose out of the calabash and with his rose-ribbonstrip of tongue licked Lamai’s hand.  And Lamai, in ecstasyover this establishment of common speech, urged the calabash back underJerry’s nose, and Jerry drank again.

He continued to drink.  He drank until his sun-shrunken sidesstood out like the walls of a balloon, although longer were the intervalsfrom the drinking in which, with his tongue of gratefulness, he spokeagainst the black skin of Lamai’s hand.  And all went well,and would have continued to go well, had not Lamai’s mother, Lenerengo,just awakened, stepped across her black litter of progeny and raisedher voice in shrill protest against her eldest born’s introducingof one more mouth and much more nuisance into the household.

A squabble of human speech followed, of which Jerry knew no wordbut of which he sensed the significance.  Lamai was with him andfor him.  Lamai’s mother was against him.  She shrilledand shrewed her firm conviction that her son was a fool and worse becausehe had neither the consideration nor the silly sense of a fool’ssolicitude for a hard-worked mother.  She appealed to the sleepingLumai, who awoke heavily and fatly, who muttered and mumbled easy termsof Somo dialect to the effect that it was a most decent world, thatall puppy dogs and eldest-born sons were right delightful things topossess, that he had never yet starved to death, and that peace andsleep were the finest things that ever befell the lot of mortal man—and,in token thereof, back into the peace of sleep, he snuggled his noseinto the biceps of his arm for a pillow and proceeded to snore.

But Lamai, eyes stubbornly sullen, with mutinous foot-stampings anda perfect knowledge that all was clear behind him to leap and flee awayif his mother rushed upon him, persisted in retaining his puppy dog. In the end, after an harangue upon the worthlessness of Lamai’sfather, she went back to sleep.

Ideas beget ideas.  Lamai had learned how astonishingly thirstyJerry had been.  This engendered the idea that he might be equallyhungry.  So he applied dry branches of wood to the smoulderingcoals he dug out of the ashes of the cooking-fire, and builded a largefire.  Into this, as it gained strength, he placed many stonesfrom a convenient pile, each fire-blackened in token that it had beensimilarly used many times.  Next, hidden under the water of thebrook in a netted hand-bag, he brought to light the carcass of a fatwood-pigeon he had snared the previous day.  He wrapped the pigeonin green leaves, and, surrounding it with the hot stones from the fire,covered pigeon and stones with earth.

When, after a time, he removed the pigeon and stripped from it thescorched wrappings of leaves, it gave forth a scent so savoury as toprick up Jerry’s ears and set his nostrils to quivering. When the boy had torn the steaming carcass across and cooled it, Jerry’smeal began; nor did the meal cease till the last sliver of meat hadbeen stripped and tongued from the bones and the bones crunched andcrackled to fragments and swallowed.  And throughout the meal Lamaimade love to Jerry, crooning over and over his little song, and pattingand caressing him.

On the other hand, refreshed by the water and the meat, Jerry didnot reciprocate so heartily in the love-making.  He was polite,and received his petting with soft-shining eyes, tail-waggings and thecustomary body-wrigglings; but he was restless, and continually listenedto distant sounds and yearned away to be gone.  This was not lostupon the boy, who, before he curled himself down to sleep, securelytied to a tree the end of the cord that was about Jerry’s neck.

After straining against the cord for a time, Jerry surrendered andslept.  But not for long.  Skipper was too much with him. He knew, and yet he did not know, the irretrievable ultimate disasterto Skipper.  So it was, after low whinings and whimperings, thathe applied his sharp first-teeth to the sennit cord and chewed uponit till it parted.

Free, like a homing pigeon, he headed blindly and directly for thebeach and the salt sea over which had floated the Arangi, onher deck Skipper in command.  Somo was largely deserted, and thosethat were in it were sunk in sleep.  So no one vexed him as hetrotted through the winding pathways between the many houses and pastthe obscene kingposts of totemic heraldry, where the forms of men, carvedfrom single tree trunks, were seated in the gaping jaws of carved sharks. For Somo, tracing back to Somo its founder, worshipped the shark-godand the salt-water deities as well as the deities of the bush and swampand mountain.

Turning to the right until he was past the sea-wall, Jerry came ondown to the beach.  No Arangiwas to be seen on the placidsurface of the lagoon.  All about him was the debris of the feast,and he scented the smouldering odours of dying fires and burnt meat. Many of the feasters had not troubled to return to their houses, butlay about on the sand, in the mid-morning sunshine, men, women, andchildren and entire families, wherever they had yielded to slumber.

Down by the water’s edge, so close that his fore-feet restedin the water, Jerry sat down, his heart bursting for Skipper, thrusthis nose heavenward at the sun, and wailed his woe as dogs have everwailed since they came in from the wild woods to the fires of men.

And here Lamai found him, hushed his grief against his breast withcuddling arms, and carried him back to the grass house by the brook. Water he offered, but Jerry could drink no more.  Love he offered,but Jerry could not forget his torment of desire for Skipper. In the end, disgusted with so unreasonable a puppy, Lamai forgot hislove in his boyish savageness, clouted Jerry over the head, right sideand left, and tied him as few whites men’s dogs have ever beentied.  For, in his way, Lamai was a genius.  He had neverseen the thing done with any dog, yet he devised, on the spur of themoment, the invention of tying Jerry with a stick.  The stick wasof bamboo, four feet long.  One end he tied shortly to Jerry’sneck, the other end, just as shortly to a tree.  All that Jerry’steeth could reach was the stick, and dry and seasoned bamboo can defythe teeth of any dog.

CHAPTER XIV

For many days, tied by the stick, Jerry remained Lamai’s prisoner. It was not a happy time, for the house of Lumai was a house of perpetualbickering and quarrelling.  Lamai fought pitched battles with hisbrothers and sisters for teasing Jerry, and these battles invariablyculminated in Lenerengo taking a hand and impartially punishing allher progeny.

After that, as a matter of course and on general principles, shewould have it out with Lumai, whose soft voice always was for quietand repose, and who always, at the end of a tongue-lashing, took himselfoff to the canoe house for a couple of days.  Here, Lenerengo washelpless.  Into the canoe house of the stags no Mary might venture. Lenerengo had never forgotten the fate of the last Mary who had brokenthe taboo.  It had occurred many years before, when she was a girl,and the recollection was ever vivid of the unfortunate woman hangingup in the sun by one arm for all of a day, and for all of a second dayby the other arm.  After that she had been feasted upon by thestags of the canoe house, and for long afterward all women had talkedsoftly before their husbands.

Jerry did discover liking for Lamai, but it was not strong nor passionate. Rather was it out of gratitude, for only Lamai saw to it that he receivedfood and water.  Yet this boy was no Skipper, no Mister Haggin. Nor was he even a Derby or a Bob.  He was that inferior man-creature,a nigger, and Jerry had been thoroughly trained all his brief days tothe law that the white men were the superior two-legged gods.

He did not fail to recognize, however, the intelligence and powerthat resided in the niggers.  He did not reason it out.  Heaccepted it.  They had power of command over other objects, couldpropel sticks and stones through the air, could even tie him a prisonerto a stick that rendered him helpless.  Inferior as they mightbe to the white-gods, still they were gods of a sort.

It was the first time in his life that Jerry had been tied up, andhe did not like it.  Vainly he hurt his teeth, some of which wereloosening under the pressure of the second teeth rising underneath. The stick was stronger than he.  Although he did not forget Skipper,the poignancy of his loss faded with the passage of time, until uppermostin his mind was the desire to be free.

But when the day came that he was freed, he failed to take advantageof it and scuttle away for the beach.  It chanced that Lenerengoreleased him.  She did it deliberately, desiring to be quit ofhim.  But when she untied Jerry, he stopped to thank her, wagginghis tail and smiling up at her with his hazel-brown eyes.  Shestamped her foot at him to be gone, and uttered a harsh and intimidatingcry.  This Jerry did not understand, and so unused was he to fearthat he could not be frightened into running away.  He ceased wagginghis tail, and, though he continued to look up at her, his eyes no longersmiled.  Her action and noise he identified as unfriendly, andhe became alert and watchful, prepared for whatever hostile act shemight next commit.

Again she cried out and stamped her foot.  The only effect onJerry was to make him transfer his watchfulness to the foot.  Thisslowness in getting away, now that she had released him, was too muchfor her short temper.  She launched the kick, and Jerry, avoidingit, slashed her ankle.

War broke on the instant, and that she might have killed Jerry inher rage was highly probable had not Lamai appeared on the scene. The stick untied from Jerry’s neck told the tale of her perfidyand incensed Lamai, who sprang between and deflected the blow with astone poi-pounder that might have brained Jerry.

Lamai was now the one in danger of grievous damage, and his motherhad just knocked him down with a clout alongside the head when poorLumai, roused from sleep by the uproar, ventured out to make peace. Lenerengo, as usual, forgot everything else in the fiercer pleasureof berating her spouse.

The conclusion of the affair was harmless enough.  The childrenstopped their crying, Lamai retied Jerry with the stick, Lenerengo haranguedherself breathless, and Lumai departed with hurt feelings for the canoehouse where stags could sleep in peace and Marys pestered not.

That night, in the circle of his fellow stags, Lumai recited hissorrows and told the cause of them—the puppy dog which had comeon the Arangi.  It chanced that Agno, chief of the devildevil doctors, or high priest, heard the tale, and recollected thathe had sent Jerry to the canoe house along with the rest of the captives. Half an hour later he was having it out with Lamai.  Beyond doubt,the boy had broken the taboos, and privily he told him so, until Lamaitrembled and wept and squirmed abjectly at his feet, for the penaltywas death.

It was too good an opportunity to get a hold over the boy for Agnoto misplay it.  A dead boy was worth nothing to him, but a livingboy whose life he carried in his hand would serve him well.  Sinceno one else knew of the broken taboo, he could afford to keep quiet. So he ordered Lamai forthright down to live in the youths’ canoehouse, there to begin his novitiate in the long series of tasks, testsand ceremonies that would graduate him into the bachelors’ canoehouse and half way along toward being a recognized man.

* * * *

In the morning, obeying the devil devil doctor’s commands,Lenerengo tied Jerry’s feet together, not without a struggle inwhich his head was banged about and her hands were scratched. Then she carried him down through the village on the way to deliverhim at Agno’s house.  On the way, in the open centre of thevillage where stood the kingposts, she left him lying on the groundin order to join in the hilarity of the population.

Not only was old Bashti a stern law-giver, but he was a unique one. He had selected this day at the one time to administer punishment totwo quarrelling women, to give a lesson to all other women, and to makeall his subjects glad once again that they had him for ruler. Tiha and Wiwau, the two women, were squat and stout and young, and hadlong been a scandal because of their incessant quarrelling.  Bashtihad set them a race to run.  But such a race.  It was side-splitting. Men, women, and children, beholding, howled with delight.  Evenelderly matrons and greybeards with a foot in the grave screeched andshrilled their joy in the spectacle.

The half-mile course lay the length of the village, through its heart,from the beach where the Arangihad been burned to the beachat the other end of the sea-wall.  It had to be covered once ineach direction by Tiha and Wiwau, in each case one of them urging speedon the other and the other desiring speed that was unattainable.

Only the mind of Bashti could have devised the show.  First,two round coral stones, weighing fully forty pounds each, were placedin Tiha’s arms.  She was compelled to clasp them tightlyagainst her sides in order that they might not roll to the ground. Behind her, Bashti placed Wiwau, who was armed with a bristle of bamboosplints mounted on a light long shaft of bamboo.  The splints weresharp as needles, being indeed the needles used in tattooing, and onthe end of the pole they were intended to be applied to Tiha’sback in the same way that men apply ox-goads to oxen.  No seriousdamage, but much pain, could be inflicted, which was just what Bashtihad intended.

Wiwau prodded with the goad, and Tiha stumbled and wabbled in gymnasticefforts to make speed.  Since, when the farther beach had beenreached, the positions would be reversed and Wiwau would carry the stonesback while Tiha prodded, and since Wiwau knew that for what she gaveTiha would then try to give more, Wiwau exerted herself to give theutmost while yet she could.  The perspiration ran down both theirfaces.  Each had her partisans in the crowd, who encouraged andheaped ridicule with every prod.

Ludicrous as it was, behind it lay iron savage law.  The twostones were to be carried the entire course.  The woman who proddedmust do so with conviction and dispatch.  The woman who was proddedmust not lose her temper and fight her tormentor.  As they hadbeen duly forewarned by Bashti, the penalty for infraction of the ruleshe had laid down was staking out on the reef at low tide to be eatenby the fish-sharks.

As the contestants came opposite where Bashti and Aora his primeminister stood, they redoubled their efforts, Wiwau goading enthusiastically,Tiha jumping with every thrust to the imminent danger of dropping thestones.  At their heels trooped the children of the village andall the village dogs, whooping and yelping with excitement.

“Long time you fella Tiha no sit ’m along canoe,”Aora bawled to the victim and set Bashti cackling again.

At an unusually urgent prod, Tiha dropped a stone and was duly goadedwhile she sank to her knees and with one arm scooped it in against herside, regained her feet, and waddled on.

Once, in stark mutiny at so much pain, she deliberately stopped andaddressed her tormentor.

“Me cross along you too much,” she told Wiwau. “Bime by, close—”

But she never completed the threat.  A warmly administered prodbroke through her stoicism and started her tottering along.

The shouting of the rabble ebbed away as the queer race ran on towardthe beach.  But in a few minutes it could be heard flooding back,this time Wiwau panting with the weight of coral stone and Tiha, a-smartwith what she had endured, trying more than to even the score.

Opposite Bashti, Wiwau lost one of the stones, and, in the effortto recover it, lost the other, which rolled a dozen feet away from thefirst.  Tiha became a whirlwind of avenging fury.  And allSomo went wild.  Bashti held his lean sides with merriment whiletears of purest joy ran down his prodigiously wrinkled cheeks.

And when all was over, quoth Bashti to his people: “Thus shallall women fight when they desire over much to fight.”

Only he did not say it in this way.  Nor did he say it in theSomo tongue.  What he did say was in bêche-de-mer, and hiswords were:

“Any fella Mary he like ’m fight, all fella Mary alongSomo fight ’m this fella way.”

CHAPTER XV

For some time after the conclusion of the race, Bashti stood talkingwith his head men, Agno among them.  Lenerengo was similarly engagedwith several old cronies.  As Jerry lay off to one side where shehad forgotten him, the wild-dog he had bullied on the Arangicame up and sniffed at him.  At first he sniffed at a distance,ready for instant flight.  Then he drew cautiously closer. Jerry watched him with smouldering eyes.  At the moment wild-dog’snose touched him, he uttered a warning growl.  Wild-dog sprangback and whirled away in headlong flight for a score of yards beforehe learned that he was not pursued.

Again he came back cautiously, as it was the instinct in him to stalkwild game, crouching so close to the ground that almost his belly touched. He lifted and dropped his feet with the lithe softness of a cat, andfrom time to time glanced to right and to left as if in apprehensionof some flank attack.  A noisy outburst of boys’ laughterin the distance caused him to crouch suddenly down, his claws thrustinto the ground for purchase, his muscles tense springs for the leaphe knew not in what direction, from the danger he knew not what thatmight threaten him.  Then he identified the noise, know that noharm impended, and resumed his stealthy advance on the Irish terrier.

What might have happened there is no telling, for at that momentBashti’s eyes chanced to rest on the golden puppy for the firsttime since the capture of the Arangi.  In the rush of eventsBashti had forgotten the puppy.

“What name that fella dog?” he cried out sharply, causingwild-dog to crouch down again and attracting Lenerengo’s attention.

She cringed in fear to the ground before the terrible old chief andquavered a recital of the facts.  Her good-for-nothing boy Lamaihad picked the dog from the water.  It had been the cause of muchtrouble in her house.  But now Lamai had gone to live with theyouths, and she was carrying the dog to Agno’s house at Agno’sexpress command.

“What name that dog stop along you?” Bashti demandeddirectly of Agno.

“Me kai-kai along him,” came the answer.  “Himfat fella dog.  Him good fella dog kai-kai.”

Into Bashti’s alert old brain flashed an idea that had beenlong maturing.

“Him good fella dog too much,” he announced.  “Betteryou eat ’m bush fella dog,” he advised, pointing at wild-dog.

Agno shook his head.  “Bush fella dog no good kai-kai.”

“Bush fella dog no good too much,” was Bashti’sjudgment.  “Bush fella dog too much fright.  Plentyfella bush dog too much fright.  White marster’s dog no fright. Bush dog no fight.  White marster’s dog fight like hell. Bush dog run like hell.  You look ’m eye belong you, yousee.”

Bashti stepped over to Jerry and cut the cords that tied his legs. And Jerry, upon his feet in a surge, was for once in too great hasteto pause to give thanks.  He hurled himself after wild-dog, caughthim in mid-flight, and rolled him over and over in a cloud of dust. Ever wild-dog strove to escape, and ever Jerry cornered him, rolledhim, and bit him, while Bashti applauded and called on his head mento behold.

By this time Jerry had become a raging little demon.  Firedby all his wrongs, from the bloody day on the Arangiand theloss of Skipper down to this latest tying of his legs, he was avenginghimself on wild-dog for everything.  The owner of wild-dog, a returnboy, made the mistake of trying to kick Jerry away.  Jerry wasupon him in a flash scratching his calves with his teeth, in the suddennessof his onslaught getting between the black’s legs and tumblinghim to the ground.

“What name!” Bashti cried in a rage at the offender,who lay fear-stricken where he had fallen, trembling for what next wordsmight fall from his chief’s lips.

But Bashti was already doubling with laughter at sight of wild-dogrunning for his life down the street with Jerry a hundred feet behindand tearing up the dust.

As they disappeared, Bashti expounded his idea.  If men plantedbanana trees, it ran, what they would get would be bananas.  Ifthey planted yams, yams would be produced, not sweet potatoes or plantains,but yams, nothing but yams.  The same with dogs.  Since allblack men’s dogs were cowards, all the breeding of all black men’sdogs would produce cowards.  White men’s dogs were courageousfighters.  When they were bred they produced courageous fighters. Very well, and to the conclusion, namely, here was a white man’sdog in their possession.  The height of foolishness would be toeat it and to destroy for all time the courage that resided in it. The wise thing to do was to regard it as a seed dog, to keep it alive,so that in the coming generations of Somo dogs its courage would berepeated over and over and spread until all Somo dogs would be strongand brave.

Further, Bashti commanded his chief devil devil doctor to take chargeof Jerry and guard him well.  Also, he sent his word forth to allthe tribe that Jerry was taboo.  No man, woman, or child was tothrow spear or stone at him, strike him with club or tomahawk, or hurthim in any way.

* * * *

Thenceforth, and until Jerry himself violated one of the greatestof taboos, he had a happy time in Agno’s gloomy grass house. For Bashti, unlike most chiefs, ruled his devil devil doctors with aniron hand.  Other chiefs, even Nau-hau of Langa-Langa, were ruledby their devil devil doctors.  For that matter, the populationof Somo believed that Bashti was so ruled.  But the Somo folk didnot know what went on behind the scenes, when Bashti, a sheer infidel,talked alone now with one doctor and now with another.

In these private talks he demonstrated that he knew their game aswell as they did, and that he was no slave to the dark superstitionsand gross impostures with which they kept the people in submission. Also, he exposited the theory, as ancient as priests and rulers, thatpriests and rulers must work together in the orderly governance of thepeople.  He was content that the people should believe that thegods, and the priests who were the mouth-pieces of the gods, had thelast word, but he would have the priests know that in private the lastword was his.  Little as they believed in their trickery, he toldthem, he believed less.

He knew taboo, and the truth behind taboo.  He explained hispersonal taboos, and how they came to be.  Never must he eat clam-meat,he told Agno.  It was so selected by himself because he did notlike clam-meat.  It was old Nino, high priest before Agno, withan ear open to the voice of the shark-god, who had so laid the taboo. But, he, Bashti, had privily commanded Nino to lay the taboo againstclam-meat upon him, because he, Bashti, did not like clam-meat and hadnever liked clam-meat.

Still further, since he had lived longer than the oldest priest ofthem, his had been the appointing of every one of them.  He knewthem, had made them, had placed them, and they lived by his pleasure. And they would continue to take program from him, as they had alwaystaken it, or else they would swiftly and suddenly pass.  He hadbut to remind them of the passing of Kori, the devil devil doctor whohad believed himself stronger than his chief, and who, for his mistake,had screamed in pain for a week ere what composed him had ceased toscream and for ever ceased to scream.

* * * *

In Agno’s large grass house was little light and much mystery. There was no mystery there for Jerry, who merely knew things, or didnot know things, and who never bothered about what he did not know. Dried heads and other cured and mouldy portions of human carcasses impressedhim no more than the dried alligators and dried fish that contributedto the festooning of Agno’s dark abode.

Jerry found himself well cared for.  No children nor wives clutteredthe devil devil doctor’s house.  Several old women, a fly-flappinggirl of eleven, and two young men who had graduated from the canoe houseof the youths and who were studying priestcraft under the master, composedthe household and waited upon Jerry.  Food of the choicest washis.  After Agno had eaten first-cut of pig, Jerry was served second. Even the two acolytes and the fly-flapping maid ate after him, leavingthe debris for the several old women.  And, unlike the mere bushdogs, who stole shelter from the rain under overhanging eaves, Jerrywas given a dry place under the roof where the heads of bushmen andof forgotten sandalwood traders hung down from above in the midst ofa dusty confusion of dried viscera of sharks, crocodile skulls, andskeletons of Solomons rats that measured two-thirds of a yard in lengthfrom bone-tip of nose to bone-tip of tail.

A number of times, all freedom being his, Jerry stole away acrossthe village to the house of Lumai.  But never did he find Lamai,who, since Skipper, was the only human he had met that had placed abid to his heart.  Jerry never appeared openly, but from the thickfern of the brookside observed the house and scented out its occupants. No scent of Lamai did he ever obtain, and, after a time, he gave uphis vain visits and accepted the devil devil doctor’s house ashis home and the devil devil doctor as his master.

But he bore no love for this master.  Agno, who had ruled byfear so long in his house of mystery, did not know love.  Nor wasaffection any part of him, nor was geniality.  He had no senseof humour, and was as frostily cruel as an icicle.  Next to Bashtihe stood in power, and all his days had been embittered in that he wasnot first in power.  He had no softness for Jerry.  Becausehe feared Bashti he feared to harm Jerry.

The months passed, and Jerry got his firm, massive second teeth andincreased in weight and size.  He came as near to being spoiledas is possible for a dog.  Himself taboo, he quickly learned tolord it over the Somo folk and to have his way and will in all matters. No one dared to dispute with him with stick or stone.  Agno hatedhim—he knew that; but also he gleaned the knowledge that Agnofeared him and would not dare to hurt him.  But Agno was a chill-bloodedphilosopher and bided his time, being different from Jerry in that hepossessed human prevision and could adjust his actions to remote ends.

From the edge of the lagoon, into the waters of which, rememberingthe crocodile taboo he had learned on Meringe, he never ventured, Jerryranged to the outlying bush villages of Bashti’s domain. All made way for him.  All fed him when he desired food. For the taboo was upon him, and he might unchidden invade their sleeping-matsor food calabashes.  He might bully as he pleased, and be arrogantbeyond decency, and there was no one to say him nay.  Even hadBashti’s word gone forth that if Jerry were attacked by the full-grownbush dogs, it was the duty of the Somo folk to take his part and kickand stone and beat the bush dogs.  And thus his own four-leggedcousins came painfully to know that he was taboo.

And Jerry prospered.  Fat to stupidity he might well have become,had it not been for his high-strung nerves and his insatiable, eagercuriosity.  With the freedom of all Somo his, he was ever a-footover it, learning its metes and bounds and the ways of the wild creaturesthat inhabited its swamps and forests and that did not acknowledge histaboo.

Many were his adventures.  He fought two battles with the wood-ratsthat were almost of his size, and that, being mature and wild and cornered,fought him as he had never been fought before.  The first he hadkilled, unaware that it was an old and feeble rat.  The second,in prime of vigour, had so punished him that he crawled back, weak andsick to the devil devil doctor’s house, where, for a week, underthe dried emblems of death, he licked his wounds and slowly came backto life and health.

He stole upon the dugong and joyed to stampede that silly timid creatureby sudden ferocious onslaughts which he knew himself to be all soundand fury, but which tickled him and made him laugh with the consciousnessof playing a successful joke.  He chased the unmigratory tropi-ducksfrom their shrewd-hidden nests, walked circumspectly among the crocodileshauled out of water for slumber, and crept under the jungle-roof andspied upon the snow-white saucy cockatoos, the fierce ospreys, the heavy-flightedbuzzards, the lories and kingfishers, and the absurdly garrulous littlepygmy parrots.

Thrice, beyond the boundaries of Somo, he encountered the littleblack bushmen who were more like ghosts than men, so noiseless and unperceivablewere they, and who, guarding the wild-pig runways of the jungle, missedspearing him on the three memorable occasions.  As the wood-ratshad taught him discretion, so did these two-legged lurkers in the jungletwilight.  He had not fought with them, although they tried tospear him.  He quickly came to know that these were other folkthan Somo folk, that his taboo did not extend to them, and that, evenof a sort, they were two-legged gods who carried flying death in theirhands that reached farther than their hands and bridged distance.

As he ran the jungle, so Jerry ran the village.  No place wassacred to him.  In the devil devil houses, where, before the faceof mystery men and women crawled in fear and trembling, he walked stiff-leggedand bristling; for fresh heads were suspended there—heads hiseyes and keen nostrils identified as those of once living blacks hehad known on board the Arangi.  In the biggest devil devilhouse he encountered the head of Borckman, and snarled at it, withoutreceiving response, in recollection of the fight he had fought withthe schnapps-addled mate on the deck of the Arangi.

Once, however, in Bashti’s house, he chanced upon all thatremained on earth of Skipper.  Bashti had lived very long, hadlived most wisely and thought much, and was thoroughly aware that, havinglived far beyond the span of man his own span was very short. And he was curious about it all—the meaning and purpose of life. He loved the world and life, into which he had been fortunately born,both as to constitution and to place, which latter, for him, had beenthe high place over hie priests and people.  He was not afraidto die, but he wondered if he might live again.  He discountedthe silly views of the tricky priests, and he was very much alone inthe chaos of the confusing problem.

For he had lived so long, and so luckily, that he had watched thewaning to extinction of all the vigorous appetites and desires. He had known wives and children, and the keen-edge of youthful hunger. He had seen his children grow to manhood and womanhood and become fathersand grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers.  But having known woman,and love, and fatherhood, and the belly-delights of eating, he had passedon beyond.  Food?  Scarcely did he know its meaning, so littledid he eat.  Hunger, that bit him like a spur when he was youngand lusty, had long since ceased to stir and prod him.  He ateout of a sense of necessity and duty, and cared little for what he ate,save for one thing: the eggs of the megapodes that were, in season,laid in his private, personal, strictly tabooed megapode laying-yard. Here was left to him his last lingering flesh thrill.  As for therest, he lived in his intellect, ruling his people, seeking out datafrom which to induce laws that would make his people stronger and rivethis people’s clinch upon life.

But he realized clearly the difference between that abstract thing,the tribe, and that most concrete of things, the individual.  Thetribe persisted.  Its members passed.  The tribe was a memoryof the history and habits of all previous members, which the livingmembers carried on until they passed and became history and memory inthe intangible sum that was the tribe.  He, as a member, soon orlate, and late was very near, must pass.  But pass to what? There was the rub.  And so it was, on occasion, that he orderedall forth from his big grass house, and, alone with his problem, loweredfrom the roof-beams the matting-wrapped parcels of heads of men he hadonce seen live and who had passed into the mysterious nothingness ofdeath.

Not as a miser had he collected these heads, and not as a miser countinghis secret hoard did he ponder these heads, unwrapped, held in his twohands or lying on his knees.  He wanted to know.  He wantedto know what he guessed they might know, now that they had long sincegone into the darkness that rounds the end of life.

Various were the heads Bashti thus interrogated—in his hands,on his knees, in his dim-lighted grasshouse, while the overhead sunblazed down and the fading south-east sighed through the palm-frondsand breadfruit branches.  There was the head of a Japanese—theonly one he had ever seen or heard of.  Before he was born it hadbeen taken by his father.  Ill-cured it was, and battered and marredwith ancientness and rough usage.  Yet he studied its features,decided that it had once had two lips as live as his own and a mouthas vocal and hungry as his had often been in the past.  Two eyesand a nose it had, a thatched crown of roof, and a pair of ears liketo his own.  Two legs and a body it must once have had, and desiresand lusts.  Heats of wrath and of love, so he decided, had alsobeen its once on a time when it never thought to die.

A head that amazed him much, whose history went back before his father’sand grandfather’s time, was the head of a Frenchman, althoughBashti knew it not.  Nor did he know it was the head of La Perouse,the doughty old navigator, who had left his bones, the bones of hiscrews, and the bones of his two frigates, the Astrolabeand theBoussole, on the shores of the cannibal Solomons.  Anotherhead—for Bashti was a confirmed head-collector—went backtwo centuries before La Perouse to Alvaro de Mendana, the Spaniard. It was the head of one of Mendana’s armourers, lost in a beachscrimmage to one of Bashti’s remote ancestors.

Still another head, the history of which was vague, was a white woman’shead.  What wife of what navigator there was no telling. But earrings of gold and emerald still clung to the withered ears, andthe hair, two-thirds of a fathom long, a shimmering silk of golden floss,flowed from the scalp that covered what had once been the wit and willof her that Bashti reasoned had in her ancient time been quick withlove in the arms of man.

Ordinary heads, of bushmen and salt-water men, and even of schnapps-drinkingwhite men like Borckman, he relegated to the canoe houses and devildevil houses.  For he was a connoisseur in the matter of heads. There was a strange head of a German that lured him much.  Red-beardedit was, and red-haired, but even in dried death there was an ironnessof feature and a massive brow that hinted to him of mastery of secretsbeyond his ken.  No more than did he know it once had been a German,did he know it was a German professor’s head, an astronomer’shead, a head that in its time had carried within its content profoundknowledge of the stars in the vasty heavens, of the way of star-directedships upon the sea, and of the way of the earth on its starry coursethrough space that was a myriad million times beyond the slight conceptof space that he possessed.

Last of all, sharpest of bite in his thought, was the head of VanHorn.  And it was the head of Van Horn that lay on his knees underhis contemplation when Jerry, who possessed the freedom of Somo, trottedinto Bashti’s grass house, scented and identified the mortal remnantof Skipper, wailed first in woe over it, then bristled into rage.

Bashti did not notice at first, for he was deep in interrogationof Van Horn’s head.  Only short months before this head hadbeen alive, he pondered, quick with wit, attached to a two-legged bodythat stood erect and that swaggered about, a loincloth and a beltedautomatic around its middle, more powerful, therefrom, than Bashti,but with less wit, for had not he, Bashti, with an ancient pistol, putdarkness inside that skull where wit resided, and removed that skullfrom the soddenly relaxed framework of flesh and bone on which it hadbeen supported to tread the earth and the deck of the Arangi?

What had become of that wit?  Had that wit been all of the arrogant,upstanding Van Horn, and had it gone out as the flickering flame ofa splinter of wood goes out when it is quite burnt to a powder-fluffof ash?  Had all that made Van Horn passed like the flame of thesplinter?  Had he passed into the darkness for ever into whichthe beast passed, into which passed the speared crocodile, the hookedbonita, the netted mullet, the slain pig that was fat to eat? Was Van Horn’s darkness as the darkness of the blue-bottle flythat his fly-flapping maid smashed and disrupted in mid-flight of theair?—as the darkness into which passed the mosquito that knewthe secret of flying, and that, despite its perfectness of flight, withalmost an unthought action, he squashed with the flat of his hand againstthe back of his neck when it bit him?

What was true of this white man’s head, so recently alive anderectly dominant, Bashti knew was true of himself.  What had happenedto this white man, after going through the dark gate of death, wouldhappen to him.  Wherefore he questioned the head, as if its dumblips might speak to him from out of the mystery and tell him the meaningof life, and the meaning of death that inevitably laid life by the heels.

Jerry’s long-drawn howl of woe at sight and scent of all thatwas left of Skipper, roused Bashti from his reverie.  He lookedat the sturdy, golden-brown puppy, and immediately included it in hisreverie.  It was alive.  It was like man.  It knew hunger,and pain, anger and love.  It had blood in its veins, like man,that a thrust of a knife could make redly gush forth and denude it todeath.  Like the race of man it loved its kind, and birthed andbreast-nourished its young.  And passed.  Ay, it passed; formany a dog, as well as a human, had he, Bashti, devoured in his hey-deyof appetite and youth, when he knew only motion and strength, and fedmotion and strength out of the calabashes of feasting.

But from woe Jerry went on into anger.  He stalked stiff-legged,with a snarl writhen on his lips, and with recurrent waves of hair-bristlingalong his back and up his shoulders and neck.  And he stalked notthe head of Skipper, where rested his love, but Bashti, who held thehead on his knees.  As the wild wolf in the upland pasture stalksthe mare mother with her newly delivered colt, so Jerry stalked Bashti. And Bashti, who had never feared death all his long life and who hadlaughed a joke with his forefinger blown off by the bursting flint-lockpistol, smiled gleefully to himself, for his glee was intellectual andin admiration of this half-grown puppy whom he rapped on the nose witha short, hardwood stick and compelled to keep distance.  No matterhow often and fiercely Jerry rushed him, he met the rush with the stick,and chuckled aloud, understanding the puppy’s courage, marvellingat the stupidity of life that impelled him continually to thrust hisnose to the hurt of the stick, and that drove him, by passion of remembranceof a dead man to dare the pain of the stick again and again.

This, too, was life, Bashti meditated, as he deftly rapped the screamingpuppy away from him.  Four-legged life it was, young and sillyand hot, heart-prompted, that was like any young man making love tohis woman in the twilight, or like any young man fighting to the deathwith any other young man over a matter of passion, hurt pride, or thwarteddesire.  As much as in the dead head of Van Horn or of any man,he realized that in this live puppy might reside the clue to existence,the solution of the riddle.

So he continued to rap Jerry on the nose away from him, and to marvelat the persistence of the vital something within him that impelled himto leap forward always to the stick that hurt him and made him recoil. The valour and motion, the strength and the unreasoning of youth heknew it to be, and he admired it sadly, and envied it, willing to exchangefor it all his lean grey wisdom if only he could find the way.

“Some dog, that dog, sure some dog,” he might have utteredin Van Horn’s fashion of speech.  Instead, in bêche-de-mer,which was as habitual to him as his own Somo speech, he thought:

“My word, that fella dog no fright along me.”

But age wearied sooner of the play, and Bashti put an end to it byrapping Jerry heavily behind the ear and stretching him out stunned. The spectacle of the puppy, so alive and raging the moment before, and,the moment after, lying as if dead, caught Bashti’s speculativefancy.  The stick, with a single sharp rap of it, had effectedthe change.  Where had gone the anger and wit of the puppy? Was that all it was, the flame of the splinter that could be quenchedby any chance gust of air?  One instant Jerry had raged and suffered,snarled and leaped, willed and directed his actions.  The nextinstant he lay limp and crumpled in the little death of unconsciousness. In a brief space, Bashti knew, consciousness, sensation, motion, anddirection would flow back into the wilted little carcass.  Butwhere, in the meanwhile, at the impact of the stick, had gone all theconsciousness, and sensitiveness, and will?

Bashti sighed wearily, and wearily wrapped the heads in their grass-matcoverings—all but Van Horn’s; and hoisted them up in theair to hang from the roof-beams—to hang as he debated, long afterhe was dead and out if it, even as some of them had so hung from longbefore his father’s and his grandfather’s time.  Thehead of Van Horn he left lying on the floor, while he stole out himselfto peer in through a crack and see what next the puppy might do.

Jerry quivered at first, and in the matter of a minute struggledfeebly to his feet where he stood swaying and dizzy; and thus Bashti,his eye to the crack, saw the miracle of life flow back through thechannels of the inert body and stiffen the legs to upstanding, and sawconsciousness, the mystery of mysteries, flood back inside the headof bone that was covered with hair, smoulder and glow in the openingeyes, and direct the lips to writhe away from the teeth and the throatto vibrate to the snarl that had been interrupted when the stick smashedhim down into darkness.

And more Bashti saw.  At first, Jerry looked about for his enemy,growling and bristling his neck hair.  Next, in lieu of his enemy,he saw Skipper’s head, and crept to it and loved it, kissing withhis tongue the hard cheeks, the closed lids of the eyes that his lovecould not open, the immobile lips that would not utter one of the love-wordsthey had been used to utter to the little dog.

Next, in profound desolation, Jerry set down before Skipper’shead, pointed his nose toward the lofty ridge-pole, and howled mournfullyand long.  Finally, sick and subdued, he crept out of the houseand away to the house of his devil devil master, where, for the roundof twenty-four hours, he waked and slept and dreamed centuries of nightmares.

For ever after in Somo, Jerry feared that grass house of Bashti. He was not in fear of Bashti.  His fear was indescribable and unthinkable. In that house was the nothingness of what once was Skipper.  Itwas the token of the ultimate catastrophe to life that was wrapped andtwisted into every fibre of his heredity.  One step advanced beyondthis, Jerry’s uttermost, the folk of Somo, from the contemplationof death, had achieved concepts of the spirits of the dead still livingin immaterial and supersensuous realms.

And thereafter Jerry hated Bashti intensely, as a lord of life whopossessed and laid on his knees the nothingness of Skipper.  Notthat Jerry reasoned it out.  All dim and vague it was, a sensation,an emotion, a feeling, an instinct, an intuition, name it mistily asone will in the misty nomenclature of speech wherein words cheat withthe impression of definiteness and lie to the brain an understandingwhich the brain does not possess.

CHAPTER XVI

Three months more passed; the north-west monsoon, after its half-yearof breath, had given way to the south-east trade; and Jerry still continuedto live in the house of Agno and to have the run of the village. He had put on weight, increased in size, and, protected by the taboo,had become self-confident almost to lordliness.  But he had foundno master.  Agno had never won a heart-throb from him.  Forthat matter, Agno had never tried to win him.  Nor, in his cold-bloodedway, had he ever betrayed his hatred of Jerry.

Not even the several old women, the two acolytes, and the fly-flappingmaid in Agno’s house dreamed that the devil devil doctor hatedJerry.  Nor did Jerry dream it.  To him Agno was a neutralsort of person, a person who did not count.  Those of the householdJerry recognized as slaves or servants to Agno, and he knew when theyfed him that the food he ate proceeded from Agno and was Agno’sfood.  Save himself, taboo protected, all of them feared Agno,and his house was truly a house of fear in which could bloom no lovefor a stray puppy dog.  The eleven-years’ maid might haveplaced a bid for Jerry’s affection, had she not been deterredat the start by Agno, who reprimanded her sternly for presuming to touchor fondle a dog of such high taboo.

What delayed Agno’s plot against Jerry for the half-year ofthe monsoon was the fact that the season of egg-laying for the megapodesin Bashti’s private laying-yard did not begin until the periodof the south-east trades.  And Agno, having early conceived hisplot, with the patience that was characteristic of him was content towait the time.

Now the megapode of the Solomons is a distant cousin to the brushturkey of Australia.  No larger than a large pigeon, it lays anegg the size of a domestic duck’s.  The megapode, with nosense of fear, is so silly that it would have been annihilated hundredsof centuries before had it not been preserved by the taboos of the chiefsand priests.  As it was, the chiefs were compelled to keep clearedpatches of sand for it, and to fence out the dogs.  It buried itseggs two feet deep, depending on the heat of the sun for the hatching. And it would dig and lay, and continue to dig and lay, while a blackdug out its eggs within two or three feet of it.

The laying-yard was Bashti’s.  During the season, he livedalmost entirely on megapode eggs.  On rare occasion he even hadmegapodes that were near to finishing their laying killed for his kai-kai. This was no more than a whim, however, prompted by pride in such exclusivenessof diet only possible to one in such high place.  In truth, hecared no more for megapode meat than for any other meat.  All meattasted alike to him, for his taste for meat was one of the vanishedpleasures in the limbo of memory.

But the eggs!  He liked to eat them.  They were the onlyarticle of food he liked to eat, They gave him reminiscent thrills ofthe ancient food-desires of his youth.  Actually was he hungrywhen he had megapode eggs, and the well-nigh dried founts of salivaand of internal digestive juices were stimulated to flow again at contemplationof a megapode egg prepared for the eating.  Wherefore, he aloneof all Somo, barred rigidly by taboo, ate megapode eggs.  And,since the taboo was essentially religious, to Agno was deputed the ecclesiasticaltask of guarding and cherishing and caring for the royal laying-yard.

But Agno was no longer young.  The acid bite of belly desirehad long since deserted him, and he, too, ate from a sense of duty,all meat tasting alike to him.  Megapode eggs only stung his tastealive and stimulated the flow of his juices.  Thus it was thathe broke the taboos he imposed, and, privily, before the eyes of noman, woman, or child ate the eggs he stole from Bashti’s privatepreserve.

So it was, as the laying season began, and when both Bashti and Agnowere acutely egg-yearning after six months of abstinence, that Agnoled Jerry along the taboo path through the mangroves, where they steppedfrom root to root above the muck that ever steamed and stank in thestagnant air where the wind never penetrated.

The path, which was not an ordinary path and which consisted, fora man, in wide strides from root to root, and for a dog in four-leggedleaps and plunges, was new to Jerry.  In all his ranging of Somo,because it was so unusual a path, he had never discovered it. The unbending of Agno, thus to lead him, was a surprise and a delightto Jerry, who, without reasoning about it, in a vague way felt the preliminarysensations that possibly Agno, in a small way, might prove the masterwhich his dog’s soul continually sought.

Emerging from the swamp of mangroves, abruptly they came upon a patchof sand, still so salt and inhospitable from the sea’s depositthat no great trees rooted and interposed their branches between itand the sun’s heat.  A primitive gate gave entrance, butAgno did not take Jerry through it.  Instead, with weird littlechirrupings of encouragement and excitation, he persuaded Jerry to diga tunnel beneath the rude palisade of fence.  He helped with hisown hands, dragging out the sand in quantities, but imposing on Jerrythe leaving of the indubitable marks of a dog’s paws and claws.

And, when Jerry was inside, Agno, passing through the gate, enticedand seduced him into digging out the eggs.  But Jerry had no tasteof the eggs.  Eight of them Agno sucked raw, and two of them hetucked whole into his arm-pits to take back to his house of the devildevils.  The shells of the eight he sucked he broke to fragmentsas a dog might break them, and, to build the picture he had long visioned,of the eighth egg he reserved a tiny portion which he spread, not onJerry’s jowls where his tongue could have erased it, but highup about his eyes and above them, where it would remain and stand witnessagainst him according to the plot he had planned.

Even worse, in high priestly sacrilege, he encouraged Jerry to attacka megapode hen in the act of laying.  And, while Jerry slew it,knowing that the lust of killing, once started, would lead him to continuekilling the silly birds, Agno left the laying-yard to hot-foot it throughthe mangrove swamp and present to Bashti an ecclesiastical quandary. The taboo of the dog, as he expounded it, had prevented him from interferingwith the taboo dog when it ate the taboo egg-layers.  Which taboomight be the greater was beyond him.  And Bashti, who had not tasteda megapode egg in half a year, and who was keen for the one recrudescentthrill of remote youth still left to him, led the way back across themangrove swamp at so prodigious a pace as quite to wind his high priestwho was many years younger than he.

And he arrived at the laying-yard and caught Jerry, red-pawed andred-mouthed, in the midst of his fourth kill of an egg-layer, the rawyellow yolk of the portion of one egg, plastered by Agno to representmany eggs, still about his eyes and above his eyes to the bulge of hisforehead.  In vain Bashti looked about for one egg, the six months’hunger stronger than ever upon him in the thick of the disaster. And Jerry, under the consent and encouragement of Agno, wagged his tailto Bashti in a bid for recognition, of prowess, and laughed with hisred-dripping jowls and yellow plastered eyes.

Bashti did not rage as he would have done had he been alone. Before the eyes of his chief priest he disdained to lower himself tosuch commonness of humanity.  Thus it is always with those in thehigh places, ever temporising with their natural desires, ever maskingtheir ordinariness under a show of disinterest.  So it was thatBashti displayed no vexation at the disappointment to his appetite. Agno was a shade less controlled, for he could not quite chase awaythe eager light in his eyes.  Bashti glimpsed it and mistook itfor simple curiosity of observation not guessing its real nature. Which goes to show two things of those in the high place: one, thatthey may fool those beneath them; the other, that they may be fooledby those beneath them.

Bashti regarded Jerry quizzically, as if the matter were a joke,and shot a careless side glance to note the disappointment in his priest’seyes.  Ah, ha, thought Bashti; I have fooled him.

“Which is the high taboo?” Agno queried in the Somo tongue.

“As you should ask.  Of a surety, the megapode.”

“And the dog?” was Agno’s next query.

“Must pay for breaking the taboo.  It is a high taboo. It is my taboo.  It was so placed by Somo, the ancient father andfirst ruler of all of us, and it has been ever since the taboo of thechiefs.  The dog must die.”

He paused and considered the matter, while Jerry returned to diggingthe sand where the scent was auspicious.  Agno made to stop him,but Bashti interposed.

“Let be,” he said.  “Let the dog convict himselfbefore my eyes.”

And Jerry did, uncovering two eggs, breaking them and lapping thatportion of their precious contents which was not spilled and wastedin the sand.  Bashti’s eyes were quite lack-lustre as heasked

“The feast of dogs for the men is to-day?”

“To-morrow, at midday,” Agno answered.  “Alreadyare the dogs coming in.  There will be at least fifty of them.”

“Fifty and one,” was Bashti’s verdict, as he noddedat Jerry.

The priest made a quick movement of impulse to capture Jerry.

“Why now?” the chief demanded.  “You willbut have to carry him through the swamp.  Let him trot back onhis own legs, and when he is before the canoe house tie his legs there.”

Across the swamp and approaching the canoe house, Jerry, trottinghappily at the heels of the two men, heard the wailing and sorrowingof many dogs that spelt unmistakable woe and pain.  He developedinstant suspicion that was, however, without direct apprehension forhimself.  And at that moment, his ears cocked forward and his nosequesting for further information in the matter, Bashti seized him bythe nape of the neck and held him in the air while Agno proceeded totie his legs.

No whimper, nor sound, nor sign of fear, came from Jerry—onlychoking growls of ferociousness, intermingled with snarls of anger,and a belligerent up-clawing of hind-legs.  But a dog, clutchedby the neck from the back, can never be a match for two men, giftedwith the intelligence and deftness of men, each of them two-handed withfour fingers and an opposable thumb to each hand.

His fore-legs and hind-legs tied lengthwise and crosswise, he wascarried head-downward the short distance to the place of slaughter andcooking, and flung to the earth in the midst of the score or more ofdogs similarly tied and helpless.  Although it was mid-afternoon,a number of them had so lain since early morning in the hot sun. They were all bush dogs or wild-dogs, and so small was their couragethat their thirst and physical pain from cords drawn too tight acrossveins and arteries, and their dim apprehension of the fate such treatmentforeboded, led them to whimper and wail and howl their despair and suffering.

The next thirty hours were bad hours for Jerry.  The word hadgone forth immediately that the taboo on him had been removed, and ofthe men and boys none was so low as to do him reverence.  Abouthim, till night-fall, persisted a circle of teasers and tormenters. They harangued him for his fall, sneered and jeered at him, rooted himabout contemptuously with their feet, made a hollow in the sand outof which he could not roll and desposited him in it on his back, hisfour tied legs sticking ignominiously in the air above him.

And all he could do was growl and rage his helplessness.  For,unlike the other dogs, he would not howl or whimper his pain. A year old now, the last six months had gone far toward maturing him,and it was the nature of his breed to be fearless and stoical. And, much as he had been taught by his white masters to hate and despiseniggers, he learned in the course of these thirty hours an especiallybitter and undying hatred.

His torturers stopped at nothing.  Even they brought wild-dogand set him upon Jerry.  But it was contrary to wild-dog’snature to attack an enemy that could not move, even if the enemy wasJerry who had so often bullied him and rolled him on the deck. Had Jerry, with a broken leg or so, still retained power of movement,then he would have mauled him, perhaps to death.  But this utterhelplessness was different.  So the expected show proved a failure. When Jerry snarled and growled, wild-dog snarled and growled back andstrutted and bullied around him, him to persuasion of the blacks couldinduce but no sink his teeth into Jerry.

The killing-ground before the canoe house was a bedlam of horror. From time to time more bound dogs were brought in and flung down. There was a continuous howling, especially contributed to by those whichhad lain in the sun since early morning and had no water.  At times,all joined in, the control of the quietest breaking down before thewave of excitement and fear that swept spasmodically over all of them. This howling, rising and falling, but never ceasing, continued throughoutthe night, and by morning all were suffering from the intolerable thirst.

The sun blazing down upon them in the white sand and almost parboilingthem, brought anything but relief.  The circle of torturers formedabout Jerry again, and again was wreaked upon him all abusive contemptfor having lost his taboo.  What drove Jerry the maddest were notthe blows and physical torment, but the laughter.  No dog enjoysbeing laughed at, and Jerry, least of all, could restrain his wrathwhen they jeered him and cackled close in his face.

Although he had not howled once, his snarling and growling, combinedwith his thirst, had hoarsened his throat and dried the mucous membranesof his mouth so that he was incapable, except under the sheerest provocation,of further sound.  His tongue hung out of his mouth, and the eighto’clock sun began slowly to burn it.

It was at this time that one of the boys cruelly outraged him. He rolled Jerry out of the hollow in which he had lain all night onhis back, turned him over on his side, and presented to him a smallcalabash filled with water.  Jerry lapped it so fanatically thatnot for half a minute did he become aware that the boy had squeezedinto it many hot seeds of ripe red peppers.  The circle shriekedwith glee, and what Jerry’s thirst had been before was as nothingcompared with this new thirst to which had been added the stinging agonyof pepper.

Next in event, and a most important event it was to prove, came Nalasu. Nalasu was an old man of three-score years, and he was blind, walkingwith a large staff with which he prodded his path.  In his freehand he carried a small pig by its tied legs.

“They say the white master’s dog is to be eaten,”he said in the Somo speech.  “Where is the white master’sdog?  Show him to me.”

Agno, who had just arrived, stood beside him as he bent over Jerryand examined him with his fingers.  Nor did Jerry offer to snarlor bite, although the blind man’s hands came within reach of histeeth more than once.  For Jerry sensed no enmity in the fingersthat passed so softly over him.  Next, Nalasu felt over the pig,and several times, as if calculating, alternated between Jerry and thepig.

Nalasu stood up and voiced judgment:

“The pig is as small as the dog.  They are of a size,but the pig has more meat on it for the eating.  Take the pig andI shall take the dog.”

“Nay,” said Agno.  “The white master’sdog has broken the taboo.  It must be eaten.  Take any otherdog and leave the pig.  Take a big dog.”

“I will have the white master’s dog,” Nalasu persisted. “Only the white master’s dog and no other.”

The matter was at a deadlock when Bashti chanced upon the scene andstood listening.

“Take the dog, Nalasu,” he said finally.  “Itis a good pig, and I shall myself eat it.”

“But he has broken the taboo, your great taboo of the laying-yard,and must go to the eating,” Agno interposed quickly.

Too quickly, Bashti thought, while a vague suspicion arose in hismind of he knew not what.

“The taboo must be paid in blood and cooking,” Agno continued.

“Very well,” said Bashti.  “I shall eat thesmall pig.  Let its throat be cut and its body know the fire.”

“I but speak the law of the taboo.  Life must pay forthe breaking.”

“There is another law,” Bashti grinned.  “Longhas it been since ever Somo built these walls that life may buy life.”

“But of life of man and life of woman,” Agno qualified.

“I know the law,” Bashti held steadily on.  “Somomade the law.  Never has it been said that animal life may notbuy animal life.”

“It has never been practised,” was the devil devil doctor’sfling.

“And for reason enough,” the old chief retorted. “Never before has a man been fool enough to give a pig for a dog. It is a young pig, and it is fat and tender.  Take the dog, Nalasu. Take the dog now.”

But the devil devil doctor was not satisfied.

“As you said, O Bashti, in your very great wisdom, he is theseed dog of strength and courage.  Let him be slain.  Whenhe comes from the fire, his body shall be divided into many small piecesso that every man may eat of him and thereby get his portion of strengthand courage.  Better is it for Somo that its men be strong andbrave rather than its dogs.”

But Bashti held no anger against Jerry.  He had lived too longand too philosophically to lay blame on a dog for breaking a taboo whichit did not know.  Of course, dogs often were slain for breakingthe taboos.  But he allowed this to be done because the dogs themselvesin nowise interested him, and because their deaths emphasized the sacrednessof the taboo.  Further, Jerry had more than slightly interestedhim.  Often, since, Jerry had attacked him because of Van Horn’shead, he had pondered the incident.  Baffling as it was, as allmanifestations of life were baffling, it had given him food for thought. Then there was his admiration for Jerry’s courage and that inexplicablesomething in him that prevented him crying out from the pain of thestick.  And, without thinking of it as beauty, the beauty of lineand colour of Jerry had insensibly penetrated him with a sense of pleasantness. It was good to look upon.

There was another angle to Bashti’s conduct.  He wonderedwhy his devil devil doctor so earnestly desired a mere dog’s death. There were many dogs.  Then why this particular dog?  Thatthe weight of something was on the other’s mind was patent, althoughwhat it was Bashti could not gauge, guess—unless it might be revengeincubated the day he had prevented Agno from eating the dog.  Ifsuch were the case, it was a state of mind he could not tolerate inany of his tribespeople.  But whatever was the motive, guardingas he always did against the unknown, he thought it well to disciplinehis priest and demonstrate once again whose word was the last word inSomo.  Wherefore Bashti replied:

“I have lived long and eaten many pigs.  What man maydare say that the many pigs have entered into me and made me a pig?”

He paused and cast a challenging eye around the circle of his audience;but no man spoke.  Instead, some men grinned sheepishly and wererestless on their feet, while Agno’s expression advertised sturdyunbelief that there was anything pig-like about his chief.

“I have eaten much fish,” Bashti continued.  “Neverhas one scale of a fish grown out on my skin.  Never has a gillappeared on my throat.  As you all know, by the looking, neverhave I sprouted one fin out of my backbone.—Nalasu, take the dog.—Aga,carry the pig to my house.  I shall eat it to-day.—Agno,let the killing of the dogs begin so that the canoe-men shall eat atdue time.”

Then, as he turned to go, he lapsed into bêche-de-mer Englishand flung sternly over his shoulder, “My word, you make ’mme cross along you.”

CHAPTER XVII

As blind Nalasu slowly plodded away, with one hand tapping the pathbefore him and with the other carrying Jerry head-downward suspendedby his tied legs, Jerry heard a sudden increase in the wild howlingof the dogs as the killing began and they realized that death was uponthem.

But, unlike the boy Lamai, who had known no better, the old man didnot carry Jerry all the way to his house.  At the first streampouring down between the low hills of the rising land, he paused andput Jerry down to drink.  And Jerry knew only the delight of thewet coolness on his tongue, all about his mouth, and down his throat. Nevertheless, in his subconsciousness was being planted the impressionthat, kinder than Lamai, than Agno, than Bashti, this was the kindestblack he had encountered in Somo.

When he had drunk till for the moment he could drink no more, hethanked Nalasu with his tongue—not warmly nor ecstatically ashad it been Skipper’s hand, but with due gratefulness for thelife-giving draught.  The old man chuckled in a pleased way, rolledJerry’s parched body into the water, and, keeping his head abovethe surface, rubbed the water into his dry skin and let him lie therefor long blissful minutes.

From the stream to Nalasu’s house, a goodly distance, Nalasustill carried him with bound legs, although not head-downward but claspedin one arm against his chest.  His idea was to love the dog tohim.  For Nalasu, having sat in the lonely dark for many years,had thought far more about the world around him and knew it far betterthan had he been able to see it.  For his own special purpose hehad need of a dog.  Several bush dogs he had tried, but they hadshown little appreciation of his kindness and had invariably run away. The last had remained longest because he had treated it with the greatestkindness, but run away it had before he had trained it to his purpose. But the white master’s dog, he had heard, was different. It never ran away in fear, while it was said to be more intelligentthan the dogs of Somo.

The invention Lamai had made of tying Jerry with a stick had beennoised abroad in the village, and by a stick, in Nalasu’s house,Jerry found himself again tied.  But with a difference.  Neveronce was the blind man impatient, while he spent hours each day in squattingon his hams and petting Jerry.  Yet, had he not done this, Jerry,who ate his food and who was growing accustomed to changing his masters,would have accepted Nalasu for master.  Further, it was fairlydefinite in Jerry’s mind, after the devil devil doctor’stying him and flinging him amongst the other helpless dogs on the killing-ground,that all mastership of Agno had ceased.  And Jerry, who had neverbeen without a master since his first days in the world, felt the imperativeneed of a master.

So it was, when the day came that the stick was untied from him,that Jerry remained, voluntarily in Nalasu’s house.  Whenthe old man was satisfied there would be no running away, he began Jerry’straining.  By slow degrees he advanced the training until hoursa day were devoted to it.

First of all Jerry learned a new name for himself, which was Bao,and he was taught to respond to it from an ever-increasing distanceno matter how softly it was uttered, and Nalasu continued to utter itmore softly until it no longer was a spoken word, but a whisper. Jerry’s ears were keen, but Nalasu’s, from long use, werealmost as keen.

Further, Jerry’s own hearing was trained to still greater acuteness. Hours at a time, sitting by Nalasu or standing apart from him, he wastaught to catch the slightest sounds or rustlings from the bush. Still further, he was taught to differentiate between the bush noisesand between the ways he growled warnings to Nalasu.  If a rustletook place that Jerry identified as a pig or a chicken, he did not growlat all.  If he did not identify the noise, he growled fairly softly. But if the noise were made by a man or boy who moved softly and thereforesuspiciously, Jerry learned to growl loudly; if the noise were loudand careless, then Jerry’s growl was soft.

It never entered Jerry’s mind to question why he was taughtall this.  He merely did it because it was this latest master’sdesire that he should.  All this, and much more, at a cost of interminabletime and patience, Nalasu taught him, and much more he taught him, increasinghis vocabulary so that, at a distance, they could hold quick and sharplydefinite conversations.

Thus, at fifty feet away, Jerry would “Whuff!” softlythe information that there was a noise he did not know; and Nalasu,with different sibilances, would hiss to him to stand still, to whuffmore softly, or to keep silent, or to come to him noiselessly, or togo into the bush and investigate the source of the strange noise, or,barking loudly, to rush and attack it.

Perhaps, if from the opposite direction Nalasu’s sharp earsalone caught a strange sound, he would ask Jerry if he had heard it. And Jerry, alert to his toes to listen, by an alteration in the quantityor quality of his whuff, would tell Nalasu that he did not hear; next,that he did hear; and, perhaps finally, that it was a strange dog, ora wood-rat, or a man, or a boy—all in the softest of sounds thatwere scarcely more than breath-exhalations, all monosyllables, a veritableshorthand of speech.

Nalasu was a strange old man.  He lived by himself in a smallgrass house on the edge of the village.  The nearest house wasquite a distance away, while his own stood in a clearing in the thickjungle which approached no where nearer than sixty feet.  Also,this cleared space he kept continually free from the fast-growing vegetation. Apparently he had no friends.  At least no visitors ever came tohis dwelling.  Years had passed since he discouraged the last. Further, he had no kindred.  His wife was long since dead, andhis three sons, not yet married, in a foray behind the bounds of Somohad lost their heads in the jungle runways of the higher hills and beendevoured by their bushman slayers.

For a blind man he was very busy.  He asked favour of no oneand was self-supporting.  In his house-clearing he grew yams, sweetpotatoes, and taro.  In another clearing—because it was hispolicy to have no trees close to his house—he had plantains, bananas,and half a dozen coconut palms.  Fruits and vegetables he exchangeddown in the village for meat and fish and tobacco.

He spent a good portion of his time on Jerry’s education, and,on occasion, would make bows and arrows that were so esteemed by histribespeople as to command a steady sale.  Scarcely a day passedin which he did not himself practise with bow and arrow.  He shotonly by direction of sound; and whenever a noise or rustle was heardin the jungle, and when Jerry had informed him of its nature, he wouldshoot an arrow at it.  Then it was Jerry’s duty cautiouslyto retrieve the arrow had it missed the mark.

A curious thing about Nalasu was that he slept no more than threehours in the twenty-four, that he never slept at night, and that hisbrief daylight sleep never took place in the house.  Hidden inthe thickest part of the neighbouring jungle was a sort of nest to whichled no path.  He never entered nor left by the same way, so thatthe tropic growth on the rich soil, being so rarely trod upon, everobliterated the slightest sign of his having passed that way. Whenever he slept, Jerry was trained to remain on guard and never togo to sleep.

Reason enough there was and to spare for Nalasu’s infiniteprecaution.  The oldest of his three sons had slain one, Ao, ina quarrel.  Ao had been one of six brothers of the family of Annowhich dwelt in one of the upper villages.  According to Somo law,the Anno family was privileged to collect the blood-debt from the Nalasufamily, but had been balked of it by the deaths of Nalasu’s threesons in the bush.  And, since the Somo code was a life for a life,and since Nalasu alone remained alive of his family, it was well knownthroughout the tribe that the Annos would never be content until theyhad taken the blind man’s life.

But Nalasu had been famous as a great fighter, as well as havingbeen the progenitor of three such warlike sons.  Twice had theAnnos sought to collect, the first time while Nalasu still retainedhis eyesight.  Nalasu had discovered their trap, circled aboutit, and in the rear encountered and slain Anno himself, the father,thus doubling the blood-debt.

Then had come his accident.  While refilling many-times usedSnider cartridges, an explosion of black powder put out both his eyes. Immediately thereafter, while he sat nursing his wounds, the Annos haddescended upon him—just what he had expected.  And for whichhe had made due preparation.  That night two uncles and anotherbrother stepped on poisoned thorns and died horribly.  Thus thesum of lives owing the Annos had increased to five, with only a blindman from whom to collect.

Thenceforth the Annos had feared the thorns too greatly to dare again,although ever their vindictiveness smouldered and they lived in hopeof the day when Nalasu’s head should adorn their ridgepole. In the meantime the state of affairs was not that of a truce but ofa stalemate.  The old man could not proceed against them, and theywere afraid to proceed against him.  Nor did the day come untilafter Jerry’s adoption, when one of the Annos made an inventionthe like of which had never been known in all Malaita.

CHAPTER XVIII

Meanwhile the months slipped by, the south-east trade blew itselfout, the monsoon had begun to breathe, and Jerry added to himself sixmonths of time, weight, stature, and thickness of bone.  An easytime his half-year with the blind man had been, despite the fact thatNalasu was a rigid disciplinarian who insisted on training Jerry forlonger hours, day in and day out, than falls to the lot of most dogs. Never did Jerry receive from him a blow, never a harsh word.  Thisman, who had slain four of the Annos, three of them after he had goneblind, who had slain still more men in his savage youth, never raisedhis voice in anger to Jerry and ruled him by nothing severer than thegentlest of chidings.

Mentally, the persistent education Jerry received, in this periodof late puppyhood, fixed in him increased brain power for all his life. Possibly no dog in all the world had ever been so vocal as he, and forthree reasons: his own intelligence, the genius for teaching that wasNalasu’s, and the long hours devoted to the teaching.

His shorthand vocabulary, for a dog, was prodigious.  Almostmight it be said that he and the man could talk by the hour, althoughfew and simple were the abstractions they could talk; very little ofthe immediate concrete past, and scarcely anything of the immediateconcrete future, entered into their conversations.  Jerry couldno more tell him of Meringe, nor of the Arangi, than could hetell him of the great love he had borne Skipper, or of his reason forhating Bashti.  By the same token, Nalasu could not tell Jerryof the blood-feud with the Annos, nor of how he had lost his eyesight.

Practically all their conversation was confined to the instant present,although they could compass a little of the very immediate past. Nalasu would give Jerry a series of instructions, such as, going ona scout by himself, to go to the nest, then circle about it widely,to continue to the other clearing where were the fruit trees, to crossthe jungle to the main path, to proceed down the main path toward thevillage till he came to the great banyan tree, and then to return alongthe small path to Nalasu and Nalasu’s house.  All of whichJerry would carry out to the letter, and, arrived back, would make report. As, thus: at the nest nothing unusual save that a buzzard was near it;in the other clearing three coconuts had fallen to the ground—forJerry could count unerringly up to five; between the other clearingand the main path were four pigs; along the main path he had passeda dog, more than five women, and two children; and on the small pathhome he had noted a cockatoo and two boys.

But he could not tell Nalasu his states of mind and heart that preventedhim from being fully contented in his present situation.  For Nalasuwas not a white-god, but only a mere nigger god.  And Jerry hatedand despised all niggers save for the two exceptions of Lamai and Nalasu. He tolerated them, and, for Nalasu, had even developed a placid andsweet affection.  Love him he did not and could not.

At the best, they were only second-rate gods, and he could not forgetthe great white-gods such as Skipper and Mister Haggin, and, of thesame breed, Derby and Bob.  They were something else, somethingother, something better than all this black savagery in which he lived. They were above and beyond, in an unattainable paradise which he vividlyremembered, for which he yearned, but to which he did not know the way,and which, dimly sensing the ending that comes to all things, mighthave passed into the ultimate nothingness which had already overtakenSkipper and the Arangi.

In vain did the old man play to gain Jerry’s heart of love. He could not bid against Jerry’s many reservations and memories,although he did win absolute faithfulness and loyalty.  Not passionately,as he would have fought to the death for Skipper, but devotedly wouldhe have fought to the death for Nalasu.  And the old man neverdreamed but what he had won all of Jerry’s heart.

* * * *

Came the day of the Annos, when one of them made the invention, whichwas thick-plaited sandals to armour the soles of their feet againstthe poisoned thorns with which Nalasu had taken three of their lives. The day, in truth, was the night, a black night, a night so black undera cloud-palled sky that a tree-trunk could not be seen an eighth ofan inch beyond one’s nose.  And the Annos descended on Nalasu’sclearing, a dozen of them, armed with Sniders, horse pistols, tomahawksand war clubs, walking gingerly, despite their thick sandals, becauseof fear of the thorns which Nalasu no longer planted.

Jerry, sitting between Nalasu’s knees and nodding sleepily,gave the first warning to Nalasu, who sat outside his door, wide-eyed,ear-strung, as he had sat through all the nights of the many years. He listened still more tensely through long minutes in which he heardnothing, at the same time whispering to Jerry for information and commandinghim to be soft-spoken; and Jerry, with whuffs and whiffs and all theshort-hand breath-exhalations of speech he had been taught, told himthat men approached, many men, more men than five.

Nalasu reached the bow beside him, strung an arrow, and waited. At last his own ears caught the slightest of rustlings, now here, nowthere, advancing upon him in the circle of the compass.  Stillspeaking for softness, he demanded verification from Jerry, whose neckhair rose bristling under Nalasu’s sensitive fingers, and who,by this time, was reading the night air with his nose as well as hisears.  And Jerry, as softly as Nalasu, informed him again thatit was men, many men, more men than five.

With the patience of age Nalasu sat on without movement, until, closeat hand, on the very edge of the jungle, sixty feet away, he locateda particular noise of a particular man.  He stretched his bow,loosed the arrow, and was rewarded by a gasp and a groan strangely commingled. First he restrained Jerry from retrieving the arrow, which he knew hadgone home; and next he fitted a fresh arrow to the bow string.

Fifteen minutes of silence passed, the blind man as if carven ofstone, the dog, trembling with eagerness under the articulate touchof his fingers, obeying the bidding to make no sound.  For Jerry,as well as Nalasu, knew that death rustled and lurked in the encirclingdark.  Again came a softness of movement, nearer than before; butthe sped arrow missed.  They heard its impact against a tree trunkbeyond and a confusion of small sounds caused by the target’shasty retreat.  Next, after a time of silence, Nalasu told Jerrysilently to retrieve the arrow.  He had been well trained and longtrained, for with no sound even to Nalasu’s ears keener than seeingmen’s ears, he followed the direction of the arrow’s impactagainst the tree and brought the arrow back in his mouth.

Again Nalasu waited, until the rustlings of a fresh drawing-in ofthe circle could be heard, whereupon Nalasu, Jerry accompanying him,picked up all his arrows and moved soundlessly half-way around the circle. Even as they moved, a Snider exploded that was aimed in the generaldirection of the spot just vacated.

And the blind man and the dog, from midnight to dawn, successfullyfought off twelve men equipped with the thunder of gunpowder and thewide-spreading, deep-penetrating, mushroom bullets of soft lead. And the blind man defended himself only with a bow and a hundred arrows. He discharged many hundreds of arrows which Jerry retrieved for himand which he discharged over and over.  But Jerry aided valiantlyand well, adding to Nalasu’s acute hearing his own acuter hearing,circling noiselessly about the house and reporting where the attackpressed closest.

Much of their precious powder the Annos wasted, for the affair waslike a game of invisible ghosts.  Never was anything seen savethe flashes of the rifles.  Never did they see Jerry, althoughthey became quickly aware of his movements close to them as he searchedout the arrows.  Once, as one of them felt for an arrow which hadnarrowly missed him, he encountered Jerry’s back with his handand acknowledged the sharp slash of Jerry’s teeth with a wildyell of terror.  They tried firing at the twang of Nalasu’sbowstring, but every time Nalasu fired he instantly changed position. Several times, warned of Jerry’s nearness, they fired at him,and, once even, was his nose slightly powder burned.

When day broke, in the quick tropic grey that marks the leap fromdark to sun, the Annos retreated, while Nalasu, withdrawn from the lightinto his house, still possessed eighty arrows, thanks to Jerry. The net result to Nalasu was one dead man and no telling how many arrow-prickedwounded men who dragged themselves away.

And half the day Nalasu crouched over Jerry, fondling and caressinghim for what he had done.  Then he went abroad, Jerry with him,and told of the battle.  Bashti paid him a visit ere the day wasdone, and talked with him earnestly.

“As an old man to an old man, I talk,” was Bashti’sbeginning.  “I am older than you, O Nalasu; I have ever beenunafraid.  Yet never have I been braver than you.  I wouldthat every man of the tribe were as brave as you.  Yet do you giveme great sorrow.  Of what worth are your courage and cunning, whenyou have no seed to make your courage and cunning live again?”

“I am an old man,” Nalasu began.

“Not so old as I am,” Bashti interrupted.  “Nottoo old to marry so that your seed will add strength to the tribe.”

“I was married, and long married, and I fathered three bravesons.  But they are dead.  I shall not live so long as you. I think of my young days as pleasant dreams remembered after sleep. More I think of death, and the end.  Of marriage I think not atall.  I am too old to marry.  I am old enough to make readyto die, and a great curiousness have I about what will happen to mewhen I am dead.  Will I be for ever dead?  Will I live againin a land of dreams—a shadow of a dream myself that will stillremember the days when I lived in the warm world, the quick juices ofhunger in my mouth, in the chest of the body of me the love of woman?”

Bashti shrugged his shoulders.

“I too, have thought much on the matter,” he said. “Yet do I arrive nowhere.  I do not know.  You do notknow.  We will not know until we are dead, if it happens that weknow anything when what we are we no longer are.  But this we know,you and I: the tribe lives.  The tribe never dies.  Wherefore,if there be meaning at all to our living, we must make the tribe strong. Your work in the tribe is not done.  You must marry so that yourcunning and your courage live after you.  I have a wife for you—nay,two wives, for your days are short and I shall surely live to see youhang with my fathers from the canoe-house ridgepole.”

“I will not pay for a wife,” Nalasu protested. “I will not pay for any wife.  I would not pay a stick oftobacco or a cracked coconut for the best woman in Somo.”

“Worry not,” Bashti went on placidly.  “Ishall pay you for the price of the wife, of the two wives.  Thereis Bubu.  For half a case of tobacco shall I buy her for you. She is broad and square, round-legged, broad-hipped, with generous breastsof richness.  There is Nena.  Her father sets a stiff priceupon her—a whole case of tobacco.  I will buy her for youas well.  Your time is short.  We must hurry.”

“I will not marry,” the old blind man proclaimed hysterically.

“You will.  I have spoken.”

“No, I say, and say again, no, no, no, no.  Wives arenuisances.  They are young things, and their heads are filled withfoolishness.  Their tongues are loose with idleness of speech. I am old, I am quiet in my ways, the fires of life have departed fromme, I prefer to sit alone in the dark and think.  Chattering youngthings about me, with nothing but foam and spume in their heads, ontheir tongues, would drive me mad.  Of a surety they would driveme mad—so mad that I will spit into every clam shell, make facesat the moon, and bite my veins and howl.”

“And if you do, what of it?  So long as your seed doesnot perish.  I shall pay for the wives to their fathers and sendthem to you in three days.”

“I will have nothing to do with them,” Nalasu assertedwildly.

“You will,” Bashti insisted calmly.  “Becauseif you do not you will have to pay me.  It will be a sore, harddebt.  I will have every joint of you unhinged so that you willbe like a jelly-fish, like a fat pig with the bones removed, and I willthen stake you out in the midmost centre of the dog-killing ground toswell in pain under the sun.  And what is left of you I shall flingto the dogs to eat.  Your seed shall not perish out of Somo. I, Bashti, so tell you.  In three days I shall send to you yourtwo wives. . . . ”

He paused, and a long silence fell upon them.

“Well?” Bashti reiterated.  “It is wives orstaking out unhinged in the sun.  You choose, but think well beforeyou choose the unhinging.”

“At my age, with all the vexations of youngness so far behindme!” Nalasu complained.

“Choose.  You will find there is vexation, and livelinessand much of it, in the centre of the dog-killing yard when the sun cooksyour sore joints till the grease of the leanness of you bubbles likethe tender fat of a cooked sucking-pig.”

“Then send me the wives,” Nalasu managed to utter aftera long pause.  “But send them in three days, not in two,nor to-morrow.”

“It is well,” Bashti nodded gravely.  “Youhave lived at all only because of those before you, now long in thedark, who worked so that the tribe might live and you might come tobe.  You are.  They paid the price for you.  It is yourdebt.  You came into being with this debt upon you.  You willpay the debt before you pass out of being.  It is the law. It is very well.”

CHAPTER XIX

And had Bashti hastened delivery of the wives by one day, or by eventwo days, Nalasu would have entered the feared, purgatory of matrimony. But Bashti kept his word, and on the third day was too busy, with amore momentous problem, to deliver Bubu and Nena to the blind old manwho apprehensively waited their coming.  For the morning of thethird day all the summits of leeward Malaita smoked into speech. A warship was on the coast—so the tale ran; a big warship thatwas heading in through the reef islands at Langa-Langa.  The talegrew.  The warship was not stopping at Langa-Langa.  The warshipwas not stopping at Binu.  It was directing its course toward Somo.

Nalasu, blind, could not see this smoke speech written in the air. Because of the isolation of his house, no one came and told him. His first warning was when shrill voices of women, cries of children,and wailings of babes in nameless fear came to him from the main paththat led from the village to the upland boundaries of Somo.  Heread only fear and panic from the sounds, deduced that the village wasfleeing to its mountain fastnesses, but did not know the cause of theflight.

He called Jerry to him and instructed him to scout to the great banyantree, where Nalasu’s path and the main path joined, and to observeand report.  And Jerry sat under the banyan tree and observed theflight of all Somo.  Men, women, and children, the young and theaged, babes at breast and patriarchs leaning on sticks and staffs passedbefore his eyes, betraying the greatest haste and alarm.  The villagedogs were as frightened, whimpering and whining as they ran.  Andthe contagion of terror was strong upon Jerry.  He knew the prodof impulse to join in this rush away from some unthinkably catastrophicevent that impended and that stirred his intuitive apprehensions ofdeath.  But he mastered the impulse with his sense of loyalty tothe blind man who had fed him and caressed him for a long six months.

Back with Nalasu, sitting between his knees, he made his report. It was impossible for him to count more than five, although he knewthe fleeing population numbered many times more than five.  Sohe signified five men, and more; five women, and more five children,and more; five babies, and more; five dogs, and more—even of pigsdid he announce five and more.  Nalasu’s ears told him thatit was many, many times more, and he asked for names.  Jerry knowthe names of Bashti, of Agno, and of Lamai, and Lumai.  He didnot pronounce them with the slightest of resemblance to their customarysoundings, but pronounced them in the whiff-whuff of shorthand speechthat Nalasu had taught him.

Nalasu named over many other names that Jerry knew by ear but couldnot himself evoke in sound, and he answered yes to most of them by simultaneouslynodding his head and advancing his right paw.  To some names heremained without movement in token that he did not know them. And to other names, which he recognized, but the owners of which hehad not seen, he answered no by advancing his left paw.

And Nalasu, beyond knowing that something terrible was impending—somethinghorribly more terrible than any foray of neighbouring salt-water tribes,which Somo, behind her walls, could easily fend off, divined that itwas the long-expected punitive man-of-war.  Despite his three-scoreyears, he had never experienced a village shelling.  He had heardvague talk of what had happened in the matter of shell-fire in othervillages, but he had no conception of it save that it must be, bulletson a larger scale than Snider bullets that could be fired correspondinglylonger distances through the air.

But it was given to him to know shell-fire before he died. Bashti, who had long waited the cruiser that was to avenge the destructionof the Arangiand the taking of the heads of the two white men,and who had long calculated the damage to be wrought, had given thecommand to his people to flee to the mountains.  First in the vanguard,borne by a dozen young men, went his mat-wrapped parcels of heads. The last slow trailers in the rear of the exodus were just passing,and Nalasu, his bow and his eighty arrows clutched to him, Jerry athis heels, made his first step to follow, when the air above him wasrent by a prodigiousness of sound.

Nalasu sat down abruptly.  It was his first shell, and it wasa thousand times more terrible than he had imagined.  It was arip-snorting, sky-splitting sound as of a cosmic fabric being torn asunderbetween the hands of some powerful god.  For all the world it waslike the roughest tearing across of sheets that were thick as blankets,that were broad as the earth and wide as the sky.

Not only did he sit down just outside his door, but he crouched hishead to his knees and shielded it with the arch of his arms.  AndJerry, who had never heard shell-fire, much less imagined what it waslike, was impressed with the awfulness of it.  It was to him anatural catastrophe such as had happened to the Arangiwhen shewas flung down reeling on her side by the shouting wind.  But,true to his nature, he did not crouch down under the shriek of thatfirst shell.  On the contrary, he bristled his hair and snarledup with menacing teeth at whatever the thing was which was so enormouslypresent and yet invisible to his eyes.

Nalasu crouched closer when the shell burst beyond, and Jerry snarledand rippled his hair afresh.  Each repeated his actions with eachfresh shell, for, while they screamed no more loudly, they burst inthe jungle more closely.  And Nalasu, who had lived a long lifemost bravely in the midst of perils he had known, was destined to diea coward out of his fear of the thing unknown, the chemically propelledmissile of the white masters.  As the dropping shells burst nearerand nearer, what final self-control he possessed left him.  Suchwas his utter panic that he might well have bitten his veins and howled. With a lunatic scream, he sprang to his feet and rushed inside the houseas if forsooth its grass thatch could protect his head from such hugeprojectiles.  He collided with the door-jamb, and, ere Jerry couldfollow him, whirled around in a part circle into the centre of the floorjust in time to receive the next shell squarely upon his head.

Jerry had just gained the doorway when the shell exploded. The house went into flying fragments, and Nalasu flew into fragmentswith it.  Jerry, in the doorway, caught in the out-draught of theexplosion, was flung a score of feet away.  All in the same fractionof an instant, earthquake, tidal wave, volcanic eruption, the thunderof the heavens and the fire-flashing of an electric bolt from the skysmote him and smote consciousness out of him.

He had no conception of how long he lay.  Five minutes passedbefore his legs made their first spasmodic movements, and, as he stumbledto his feet and rocked giddily, he had no thought of the passage oftime.  He had no thought about time at all.  As a matter ofcourse, his own idea, on which he proceeded to act without being awareof it, was that, a part of a second before, he had been struck a terrificblow magnified incalculable times beyond the blow of a stick at a nigger’shands.

His throat and lungs filled with the pungent stifling smoke of powder,his nostrils with earth and dust, he frantically wheezed and sneezed,leaping about, falling drunkenly, leaping into the air again, staggeringon his hind-legs, dabbing with his forepaws at his nose head-downwardbetween his forelegs, and even rubbing his nose into the ground. He had no thought for anything save to remove the biting pain from hisnose and mouth, the suffocation from his lungs.

By a miracle he had escaped being struck by the flying splintersof iron, and, thanks to his strong heart, had escaped being killed bythe shock of the explosion.  Not until the end of five minutesof mad struggling, in which he behaved for all the world like a beheadedchicken, did he find life tolerable again.  The maximum of stiflingand of agony passed, and, although he was still weak and giddy, he totteredin the direction of the house and of Nalasu.  And there was nohouse and no Nalasu—only a debris intermingled of both.

While the shells continued to shriek and explode, now near, now far,Jerry investigated the happening.  As surely as the house was gone,just as surely was Nalasu gone.  Upon both had descended the ultimatenothingness.  All the immediate world seemed doomed to nothingness. Life promised only somewhere else, in the high hills and remote bushwhither the tribe had already fled.  Loyal he was to his salt,to the master whom he had obeyed so long, nigger that he was, who solong had fed him, and for whom he had entertained a true affection. But this master no longer was.

Retreat Jerry did, but he was not hasty in retreat.  For a timehe snarled at every shell-scream in the air and every shell-burst inthe bush.  But after a time, while the awareness of them continueduncomfortably with him, the hair on his neck remained laid down andhe neither uttered a snarl nor bared his teeth.

And when he parted from what had been and which had ceased to be,not like the bush dogs did he whimper and run.  Instead, he trottedalong the path at a regular and dignified pace.  When he emergedupon the main path, he found it deserted.  The last refugee hadpassed.  The path, always travelled from daylight to dark, andwhich he had so recently seen glutted with humans, now in its emptinessaffected him profoundly with the impression of the endingness of allthings in a perishing world.  So it was that he did not sit downunder the banyan tree, but trotted along at the far rear of the tribe.

With his nose he read the narrative of the flight.  Only oncedid he encounter what advertised its terror.  It was an entiregroup annihilated by a shell.  There were: an old man of fifty,with a crutch because of the leg which had been slashed off by a sharkwhen he was a young boy; a dead Mary with a dead babe at her breastand a dead child of three clutching her hand; and two dead pigs, hugeand fat, which the woman had been herding to safety.

And Jerry’s nose told him of how the stream of the fugitiveshad split and flooded past on each side and flowed together again beyond. Incidents of the flight he did encounter: a part-chewed joint of sugar-canesome child had dropped; a clay pipe, the stem short from successivebreakages; a single feather from some young man’s hair, and acalabash, full of cooked yams and sweet potatoes, deposited carefullybeside the trail by some Mary for whom its weight had proved too great.

The shell-fire ceased as Jerry trotted along; next he heard the rifle-firefrom the landing-party, as it shot down the domestic pigs on Somo’sstreets.  He did not hear, however, the chopping down of the coconuttrees, any more than did he ever return to behold what damage the axeshad wrought.

For right here occurred with Jerry a wonderful thing that thinkersof the world have not explained.  He manifested in his dog’sbrain the free agency of life, by which all the generations of metaphysicianshave postulated God, and by which all the deterministic philosophershave been led by the nose despite their clear denouncement of it assheer illusion.  What Jerry did he did.  He did not know howor why he did it any more than does the philosopher know how or whyhe decides on mush and cream for breakfast instead of two soft-boiledeggs.

What Jerry did was to yield in action to a brain impulse to do, notwhat seemed the easier and more usual thing, but to do what seemed theharder and more unusual thing.  Since it is easier to endure theknown than to fly to the unknown; since both misery and fear love company;the apparent easiest thing for Jerry to have done would have been tofollow the tribe of Somo into its fastnesses.  Yet what Jerry didwas to diverge from the line of retreat and to start northward, acrossthe bounds of Somo, and continue northward into a strange land of theunknown.

Had Nalasu not been struck down by the ultimate nothingness, Jerrywould have remained.  This is true, and this, perhaps, to the onewho considers his action, might have been the way he reasoned. But he did not reason it, did not reason at all; he acted on impulse. He could count five objects, and pronounce them by name and number,but he was incapable of reasoning that he would remain in Somo if Nalasulived, depart from Somo if Nalasu died.  He merely departed fromSomo because Nalasu was dead, and the terrible shell-fire passed quicklyinto the past of his consciousness, while the present became vivid afterthe way of the present.  Almost on his toes did he tread the wildbushmen’s trails, tense with apprehension of the lurking deathhe know infested such paths, his ears cocked alertly for jungle sounds,his eyes following his ears to discern what made the sounds.

No more doughty nor daring was Columbus, venturing all that he wasto the unknown, than was Jerry in venturing this jungle-darkness ofblack Malaita.  And this wonderful thing, this seeming great deedof free will, he performed in much the same way that the itching offeet and tickle of fancy have led the feet of men over all the earth.

Though Jerry never laid eyes on Somo again, Bashti returned withhis tribe the same day, grinning and chuckling as he appraised the damage. Only a few grass houses had been damaged by the shells.  Only afew coconuts had been chopped down.  And as for the slain pigs,lest they spoil, he made of their carcasses a great feast.  Oneshell had knocked a hole through his sea-wall.  He enlarged itfor a launching-ways, faced the sides of it with dry-fitted coral rock,and gave orders for the building of an additional canoe-house. The only vexation he suffered was the death of Nalasu and the disappearanceof Jerry—his two experiments in primitive eugenics.

CHAPTER XX

A week Jerry spent in the bush, deterred always from penetratingto the mountains by the bushmen who ever guarded the runways. And it would have gone hard with him in the matter of food, had he not,on the second day, encountered a lone small pig, evidently lost fromits litter.  It was his first hunting adventure for a living, andit prevented him from travelling farther, for, true to his instinct,he remained by his kill until it was nearly devoured.

True, he ranged widely about the neighbourhood, finding no otherfood he could capture.  But always, until it was gone, he returnedto the slain pig.  Yet he was not happy in his freedom.  Hewas too domesticated, too civilized.  Too many thousands of yearshad elapsed since his ancestors had run freely wild.  He was lonely. He could not get along without man.  Too long had he, and the generationsbefore him, lived in intimate relationship with the two-legged gods. Too long had his kind loved man, served him for love, endured for love,died for love, and, in return, been partly appreciated, less understood,and roughly loved.

So great was Jerry’s loneliness that even a two-legged black-godwas desirable, since white-gods had long since faded into the limboof the past.  For all he might have known, had he been capableof conjecturing, the only white-gods in existence had perished. Acting on the assumption that a black-god was better than no god, whenhe had quite finished the little pig, he deflected his course to theleft, down-hill, toward the sea.  He did this, again without reasoning,merely because, in the subtle processes of his brain, experience worked. His experience had been to live always close by the sea; humans he hadalways encountered close by the sea; and down-hill had invariably ledto the sea.

He came out upon the shore of the reef-sheltered lagoon where ruinedgrass houses told him men had lived.  The jungle ran riot throughthe place.  Six-inch trees, throated with rotten remnants of thatchedroofs through which they had aspired toward the sun, rose about him. Quick-growing trees had shadowed the kingposts so that the idols andtotems, seated in carved shark jaws, grinned greenly and monstrouslyat the futility of man through a rime of moss and mottled fungus. A poor little sea-wall, never much at its best, sprawled in ruin fromthe coconut roots to the placid sea.  Bananas, plantains, and breadfruitlay rotting on the ground.  Bones lay about, human bones, and Jerrynosed them out, knowing them for what they were, emblems of the nothingnessof life.  Skulls he did not encounter, for the skulls that belongedto the scattered bones ornamented the devil devil houses in the uplandbush villages.

The salt tang of the sea gladdened his nostrils, and he snorted withthe pleasure of the stench of the mangrove swamp.  But, anotherCrusoe chancing upon the footprint of another man Friday, his nose,not his eyes, shocked him electrically alert as he smelled the freshcontact of a living man’s foot with the ground.  It was anigger’s foot, but it was alive, it was immediate; and, as hetraced it a score of yards, he came upon another foot-scent, indubitablya white man’s.

Had there been an onlooker, he would have thought Jerry had gonesuddenly mad.  He rushed frantically about, turning and twistinghis course, now his nose to the ground, now up in the air, whining asfrantically as he rushed, leaping abruptly at right angles as new scentsreached him, scurrying here and there and everywhere as if in a gameof tag with some invisible playfellow.

But he was reading the full report which many men had written onthe ground.  A white man had been there, he learned, and a numberof blacks.  Here a black had climbed a coconut tree and cast downthe nuts.  There a banana tree had been despoiled of its clusteredfruit; and, beyond, it was evident that a similar event had happenedto a breadfruit tree.  One thing, however, puzzled him—ascent new to him that was neither black man’s nor white man’s. Had he had the necessary knowledge and the wit of eye-observance, hewould have noted that the footprint was smaller than a man’s andthat the toeprints were different from a Mary’s in that they wereclose together and did not press deeply into the earth.  What botheredhim in his smelling was his ignorance of talcum powder.  Pungentit was in his nostrils, but never, since first he had smelled out thefootprints of man, had he encountered such a scent.  And with thiswere combined other and fainter scents that were equally strange tohim.

Not long did he interest himself in such mystery.  A white man’sfootprints he had smelled, and through the maze of all the other printshe followed the one print down through a breach of sea-wall to the sea-poundedcoral sand lapped by the sea.  Here the latest freshness of manyfeet drew together where the nose of a boat had rested on the beachand where men had disembarked and embarked again.  He smelled upall the story, and, his forelegs in the water till it touched his shoulders,he gazed out across the lagoon where the disappearing trail was lostto his nose.

Had he been half an hour sooner he would have seen a boat, withoutoars, gasoline-propelled, shooting across the quiet water.  Whathe did see was an Arangi.  True, it was far larger thanthe Arangihe had known, but it was white, it was long, it hadmasts, and it floated on the surface of the sea.  It had threemasts, sky-lofty and all of a size; but his observation was not trainedto note the difference between them and the one long and the one shortmast of the Arangi.  The one floating world he had knownwas the white-painted Arangi.  And, since, without a quiverof doubt, this was the Arangi, then, on board, would be his belovedSkipper.  If Arangiscould resurrect, then could Skippersresurrect, and in utter faith that the head of nothingness he had lastseen on Bashti’s knees he would find again rejoined to its bodyand its two legs on the deck of the white-painted floating world, hewaded out to his depth, and, swimming dared the sea.

He greatly dared, for in venturing the water he broke one of thegreatest and earliest taboos he had learned.  In his vocabularywas no word for “crocodile”; yet in his thought, as potentas any utterable word, was an image of dreadful import—an imageof a log awash that was not a log and that was alive, that could swimupon the surface, under the surface, and haul out across the dry land,that was huge-toothed, mighty-mawed, and certain death to a swimmingdog.

But he continued the breaking of the taboo without fear.  Unlikea man who can be simultaneously conscious of two states of mind, andwho, swimming, would have known both the fear and the high courage withwhich he overrode the fear, Jerry, as he swam, knew only one state ofmind, which was that he was swimming to the Arangiand to Skipper. At the moment preceding the first stroke of his paws in the water outof his depth, he had known all the terribleness of the taboo he deliberatelybroke.  But, launched out, the decision made, the line of leastresistance taken, he knew, single-thoughted, single-hearted, only thathe was going to Skipper.

Little practised as he was in swimming, he swam with all his strength,whimpering in a sort of chant his eager love for Skipper who indubitablymust be aboard the white yacht half a mile away.  His little songof love, fraught with keenness of anxiety, came to the ears of a manand woman lounging in deck-chairs under the awning; and it was the quick-eyedwoman who first saw the golden head of Jerry and cried out what shesaw.

“Lower a boat, Husband-Man,” she commanded.  “It’sa little dog.  He mustn’t drown.”

“Dogs don’t drown that easily,” was “Husband-Man’s”reply.  “He’ll make it all right.  But what underthe sun a dog’s doing out here . . . ”  He lifted hismarine glasses to his eyes and stared a moment.  “And a whiteman’s dog at that!”

Jerry beat the water with his paws and moved steadily along, straininghis eyes at the growing yacht until suddenly warned by a sensing ofimmediate danger.  The taboo smote him.  This that moved towardhim was the log awash that was not a log but a live thing of peril. Part of it he saw above the surface moving sluggishly, and ere thatprojecting part sank, he had an awareness that somehow it was differentfrom a log awash.

Next, something brushed past him, and he encountered it with a snarland a splashing of his forepaws.  He was half-whirled about inthe vortex of the thing’s passage caused by the alarmed flirtof its tail.  Shark it was, and not crocodile, and not so timidlywould it have sheered clear but for the fact that it was fairly fullwith a recent feed of a huge sea turtle too feeble with age to escape.

Although he could not see it, Jerry sensed that the thing, the instrumentof nothingness, lurked about him.  Nor did he see the dorsal finbreak surface and approach him from the rear.  From the yacht heheard rifle-shots in quick succession.  From the rear a panic splashcame to his ears.  That was all.  The peril passed and wasforgotten.  Nor did he connect the rifle-shots with the passingof the peril.  He did not know, and he was never to know, thatone, known to men as Harley Kennan, but known as “Husband-Man”by the woman he called “Wife-Woman,” who owned the three-topmastschooner yacht Ariel, had saved his life by sending a thirty-thirtyMarlin bullet through the base of a shark’s fin.

But Jerry was to know Harley Kennan, and quickly, for it was HarleyKennan, a bowline around his body under his arm-pits, lowered by a coupleof seamen down the generous freeboard of the Ariel, who gatheredin by the nape of the neck the smooth-coated Irish terrier that, treadingwater perpendicularly, had no eyes for him so eagerly did he gaze atthe line of faces along the rail in quest of the one face.

No pause for thanks did he make when he was dropped down upon thedeck.  Instead, shaking himself instinctively as he ran, he scurriedalong the deck for Skipper.  The man and his wife laughed at thespectacle.

“He acts as if he were demented with delight at being rescued,”Mrs. Kennan observed.

And Mr. Kennan: “It’s not that.  He must have ascrew loose somewhere.  Perhaps he’s one of those creatureswho’ve slipped the ratchet off the motion cog.  Maybe hecan’t stop running till he runs down.”

In the meantime Jerry continued to run, up port side and down starboardside, from stern to bow and back again, wagging his stump tail and laughingfriendliness to the many two-legged gods he encountered.  Had hebeen able to think to such abstraction he would have been astoundedat the number of white-gods.  Thirty there were at least of them,not counting other gods that were neither black nor white, but thatstill, two-legged, upright and garmented, were beyond all peradventuregods.  Likewise, had he been capable of such generalization, hewould have decided that the white-gods had not yet all of them passedinto the nothingness.  As it was, he realized all this withoutbeing aware that he realized it.

But there was no Skipper.  He sniffed down the forecastle hatch,sniffed into the galley where two Chinese cooks jabbered unintelligiblyto him, sniffed down the cabin companionway, sniffed down the engine-roomskylight and for the first time knew gasoline and engine oil; but sniffas he would, wherever he ran, no scent did he catch of Skipper.

Aft, at the wheel, he would have sat down and howled his heartbreakof disappointment, had not a white-god, evidently of command, in gold-decoratedwhite duck cap and uniform, spoken to him.  Instantly, always agentleman, Jerry smiled with flattened ears of courtesy, wagged histail, and approached.  The hand of this high god had almost caressedhis head when the woman’s voice came down the deck in speech thatJerry did not understand.  The words and terms of it were beyondhim.  But he sensed power of command in it, which was verifiedby the quick withdrawal of the hand of the god in white and gold whohad almost caressed him.  This god, stiffened electrically andpointed Jerry along the deck, and, with mouth encouragements and urgingsthe import of which Jerry could only guess, directed him toward theone who so commanded by saying:

“Send him, please, along to me, Captain Winters.”

Jerry wriggled his body in delight of obeying, and would loyallyhave presented his head to her outreaching caress of hand, had not thestrangeness and difference of her deterred him.  He broke off inmid-approach and with a show of teeth snarled himself back and awayfrom the windblown skirt of her.  The only human females he hadknown were naked Marys.  This skirt, flapping in the wind likea sail, reminded him of the menacing mainsail of the Arangiwhenit had jarred and crashed and swooped above his head.  The noisesher mouth made were gentle and ingratiating, but the fearsome skirtstill flapped in the breeze.

“You ridiculous dog!” she laughed.  “I’mnot going to bite you.”

But her husband thrust out a rough, sure hand and drew Jerry in tohim.  And Jerry wriggled in ecstasy under the god’s caress,kissing the hand with a red flicker of tongue.  Next, Harley Kennandirected him toward the woman sitting up in the deck-chair and bendingforward, with hovering hands of greeting.  Jerry obeyed. He advanced with flattened ears and laughing mouth: but, just ere shecould touch him, the wind fluttered the skirt again and he backed awaywith a snarl.

“It’s not you that he’s afraid of, Villa,”he said.  “But of your skirt.  Perhaps he’s neverseen a skirt before.”

“You mean,” Villa Kennan challenged, “that thesehead-hunting cannibals ashore here keep records of pedigrees and maintainkennels; for surely this absurd adventurer of a dog is as proper anIrish terrier as the Arielis an Oregon-pine-planked schooner.”

Harley Kennan laughed in acknowledgment.  Villa Kennan laughedtoo; and Jerry knew that these were a pair of happy gods, and himselflaughed with them.

Of his own initiative, he approached the lady god again, attractedby the talcum powder and other minor fragrances he had already identifiedas the strange scents encountered on the beach.  But the unfortunatetrade wind again fluttered her skirt, and again he backed away—notso far, this time, with much less of a bristle of his neck and shoulderhair, and with no more of a snarl than a mere half-baring of his fangs.

“He’s afraid of your skirt,” Harley insisted. “Look at him!  He wants to come to you, but the skirt keepshim away.  Tuck it under you so that it won’t flutter, andsee what happens.”

Villa Kennan carried out the suggestion, and Jerry came circumspectly,bent his head to her hand and writhed his back under it, the while hesniffed her feet, stocking-clad and shoe-covered, and knew them as thefeet which had trod uncovered the ruined ways of the village ashore.

“No doubt of it,” Harley agreed.  “He’swhite-man selected, white-man bred and born.  He has a history. He knows adventure from the ground-roots up.  If he could tellhis story, we’d sit listening entranced for days.  Dependon it, he’s not known blacks all his life.  Let’s tryhim on Johnny.”

Johnny, whom Kennan beckoned up to him, was a loan from the ResidentCommissioner of the British Solomons at Tulagi, who had come along aspilot and guide to Kennan rather than as philosopher and friend. Johnny approached grinning, and Jerry’s demeanour immediatelychanged.  His body stiffened under Villa Kennan’s hand ashe drew away from her and stalked stiff-legged to the black.  Jerry’sears did not flatten, nor did he laugh fellowship with his mouth, ashe inspected Johnny and smelt his calves for future reference. Cavalier he was to the extreme, and, after the briefest of inspection,he turned back to Villa Kennan.

“What did I say?” her husband exulted.  “Heknows the colour line.  He’s a white man’s dog thathas been trained to it.”

“My word,” spoke up Johnny.  “Me know ’mthat fella dog.  Me know ’m papa and mamma belong along him. Big fella white marster Mister Haggin stop along Meringe, mamma andpapa stop along him that fella place.”

Harley Kennan uttered a sharp exclamation.

“Of course,” he cried.  “The Commissionertold me all about it.  The Arangi, that the Somo peoplecaptured, sailed last from Meringe Plantation.  Johnny recognizesthe dog as the same breed as the pair Haggin, of Meringe, must possess. But that was a long time ago.  He must have been a little puppy. Of course he’s a white man’s dog.”

“And yet you’ve overlooked the crowning proof of it,”Villa Kennan teased.  “The dog carries the evidence aroundwith him.”

Harley looked Jerry over carefully.

“Indisputable evidence,” she insisted.

After another prolonged scrutiny, Kennan shook his head.

“Blamed if I can see anything so indisputable as to leave conjectureout.”

“The tail,” his wife gurgled.  “Surely thenatives do not bob the tails of their dogs.—Do they, Johnny? Do black man stop along Malaita chop ’m off tail along dog.”

“No chop ’m off,” Johnny agreed.  “MisterHaggin along Meringe he chop ’m off.  My word, he chop ’mthat fella tail, you bet.”

“Then he’s the sole survivor of the Arangi,”Villa Kennan concluded.  “Don’t you agree, Mr. SherlockHolmes Kennan?”

“I salute you, Mrs. S. Holmes,” her husband acknowledgedgallantly.  “And all that remains is for you to lead me directlyto the head of La Perouse himself.  The sailing directions recordthat he left it somewhere in these islands.”

Little did they guess that Jerry had lived on intimate terms withone Bashti, not many miles away along the shore, who, in Somo, at thatvery moment, sat in his grass house pondering over a head on his witheredknees that had once been the head of the great navigator, the historyof which had been forgotten by the sons of the chief who had taken it.

CHAPTER XXI

The fine, three-topmast schooner Ariel, on a cruise aroundthe world, had already been out a year from San Francisco when Jerryboarded her.  As a world, and as a white-god world, she was tohim beyond compare.  She was not small like the Arangi,nor was she cluttered fore and aft, on deck and below, with a spawnof niggers.  The only black Jerry found on her was Johnny; whileher spaciousness was filled principally with two-legged white-gods.

He met them everywhere, at the wheel, on lookout, washing decks,polishing brass-work, running aloft, or tailing on to sheets and tackleshalf a dozen at a time.  But there was a difference.  Therewere gods and gods, and Jerry was not long in learning that in the hierarchyof the heaven of these white-gods on the Ariel, the sailorizing,ship-working ones were far beneath the captain and his two white-and-gold-cladofficers.  These, in turn, were less than Harley Kennan and VillaKennan; for them, it came quickly to him, Harley Kennan commanded. Nevertheless, there was one thing he did not learn and was destinednever to learn, namely, the supreme god over all on the Ariel. Although he never tried to know, being unable to think to such a distance,he never came to know whether it was Harley Kennan who commanded Villa,or Villa Kennan who commanded Harley.  In a way, without vexinghimself with the problem, he accepted their over-lordship of the worldas dual.  Neither out-ranked the other.  They seemed to ruleco-equal, while all others bowed before them.

It is not true that to feed a dog is to win a dog’s heart. Never did Harley or Villa feed Jerry; yet it was to them he electedto belong, them he elected to love and serve rather than to the Japanesesteward who regularly fed him.  For that matter, Jerry, like anydog, was able to differentiate between the mere direct food-giver andthe food source.  That is, subconsciously, he was aware that notalone his own food, but the food of all on board found its source inthe man and woman.  They it was who fed all and ruled all. Captain Winters might give orders to the sailors, but Captain Winterstook orders from Harley Kennan.  Jerry knew this as indubitablyas he acted upon it, although all the while it never entered his headas an item of conscious knowledge.

And, as he had been accustomed, all his life, as with Mister Haggin,Skipper, and even with Bashti and the chief devil devil doctor of Somo,he attached himself to the high gods themselves, and from the gods underthem received deference accordingly.  As Skipper, on the Arangi,and Bashti in Somo, had promulgated taboos, so the man and the womanon the Arielprotected Jerry with taboos.  From Sano, theJapanese steward, and from him alone, did Jerry receive food. Not from any sailor in whaleboat or launch could he accept, or wouldhe be offered, a bit of biscuit or an invitation to go ashore for arun.  Nor did they offer it.  Nor were they permitted to becomeintimate, to the extent of romping and playing with him, nor even ofwhistling to him along the deck.

By nature a “one-man” dog, all this was very acceptableto Jerry.  Differences of degree there were, of course; but noone more delicately and definitely knew those differences than did Jerryhimself.  Thus, it was permissible for the two officers to greethim with a “Hello,” or a “Good morning,” andeven to touch a hand in a brief and friendly pat to his head. With Captain Winters, however, greater familiarity obtained.  CaptainWinters could rub his ears, shake hands with his, scratch his back,and even roughly catch him by the jowls.  But Captain Winters invariablysurrendered him up when the one man and the one woman appeared on deck.

When it came to liberties, delicious, wanton liberties, Jerry aloneof all on board could take them with the man and woman, and, on theother hand, they were the only two to whom he permitted liberties. Any indignity that Villa Kennan chose to inflict upon him he was throbbinglyglad to receive, such as doubling his ears inside out till they stuck,at the same time making him sit upright, with helpless forefeet paddlingthe air for equilibrium, while she blew roguishly in his face and nostrils. As bad was Harley Kennan’s trick of catching him gloriously asleepon an edge of Villa’s skirt and of tickling the hair between histoes and making him kick involuntarily in his sleep, until he kickedhimself awake to hearing of gurgles and snickers of laughter at hisexpense.

In turn, at night on deck, wriggling her toes at him under a rugto simulate some strange and crawling creature of an invader, he woulddare to simulate his own befoolment and quite disrupt Villa’sbed with his frantic ferocious attack on the thing that he knew wasonly her toes.  In gales of laughter, intermingled with half-genuinecries of alarm as almost his teeth caught her toes, she always concludedby gathering him into her arms and laughing the last of her laughteraway into his flattened ears of joy and love.  Who else, of allon board the Ariel, would have dared such devilishness with thelady-god’s bed?  This question it never entered his mindto ask himself; yet he was fully aware of how exclusively favoured hewas.

Another of his deliberate tricks was one discovered by accident. Thrusting his muzzle to meet her in love, he chanced to encounter herface with his soft-hard little nose with such force as to make her recoiland cry out.  When, another time, in all innocence this happenedagain, he became conscious of it and of its effect upon her; and thereafter,when she grew too wildly wild, too wantonly facetious in her teasingplayful love of him, he would thrust his muzzle at her face and makeher throw her head back to escape him.  After a time, learningthat if he persisted, she would settle the situation by gathering himinto her arms and gurgling into his ears, he made it a point to acthis part until such delectable surrender and joyful culmination wereachieved.

Never, by accident, in this deliberate game, did he hurt her chinor cheek so severely as he hurt his own tender nose, but in the hurtitself he found more of delight than pain.  All of fun it was,all through, and, in addition, it was love fun.  Such hurt wasmore than fun.  Such pain was heart-pleasure.

All dogs are god-worshippers.  More fortunate than most dogs,Jerry won to a pair of gods that, no matter how much they commanded,loved more.  Although his nose might threaten grievously to hurtthe cheek of his adored god, rather than have it really hurt he wouldhave spilled out all the love-tide of his heart that constituted thelife of him.  He did not live for food, for shelter, for a comfortableplace between the darknesses that rounded existence.  He livedfor love.  And as surely as he gladly lived for love, would hehave died gladly for love.

Not quickly, in Somo, had Jerry’s memory of Skipper and MisterHaggin faded.  Life in the cannibal village had been too unsatisfying. There had been too little love.  Only love can erase the memoryof love, or rather, the hurt of lost love.  And on board the Arielsuch erasement occurred quickly.  Jerry did not forget Skipperand Mister Haggin.  But at the moments he remembered them the yearningthat accompanied the memory grew less pronounced and painful. The intervals between the moments widened, nor did Skipper and MisterHaggin take form and reality so frequently in his dreams; for, afterthe manner of dogs, he dreamed much and vividly.

CHAPTER XXII

Northward, along the leeward coast of Malaita, the Arielworkedher leisurely way, threading the colour-riotous lagoon that lay betweenthe shore-reefs and outer-reefs, daring passages so narrow and coral-patchedthat Captain Winters averred each day added a thousand grey hairs tohis head, and dropping anchor off every walled inlet of the outer reefand every mangrove swamp of the mainland that looked promising of canniballife.  For Harley and Villa Kennan were in no hurry.  So longas the way was interesting, they dared not how long it proved from anywhereto anywhere.

During this time Jerry learned a new name for himself—or, rather,an entire series of names for himself.  This was because of anaversion on Harley Kennan’s part against renaming a named thing.

“A name he must have had,” he argued to Villa. “Haggin must have named him before he sailed on the Arangi. Therefore, nameless he must be until we get back to Tulagi and findout his real name.”

“What’s in a name?” Villa had begun to tease.

“Everything,” her husband retorted.  “Thinkof yourself, shipwrecked, called by your rescuers ‘Mrs. Riggs,’or ‘Mademoiselle de Maupin,’ or just plain ‘Topsy.’ And think of me being called ‘Benedict Arnold,’ or ‘Judas,’ or . . . or . . . ‘Haman.’  No, keephim nameless, until we find out his original name.”

“Must call him something,” she objected.  “Can’tthink of him without thinking something.”

“Then call him many names, but never the same name twice. Call him ‘Dog’ to-day, and ‘Mister Dog’ to-morrow,and the next day something else.”

So it was, more by tone and emphasis and context of situation thanby anything else, that Jerry came hazily to identify himself with namessuch as: Dog, Mister Dog, Adventurer, Strong Useful One, Sing Song Silly,Noname, and Quivering Love-Heart.  These were a few of the manynames lavished on him by Villa.  Harley, in turn, addressed himas: Man-Dog, Incorruptible One, Brass Tacks, Then Some, Sin of Gold,South Sea Satrap, Nimrod, Young Nick, and Lion-Slayer.  In brief,the man and woman competed with each other to name him most withoutnaming him ever the same.  And Jerry, less by sound and syllablethan by what of their hearts vibrated in their throats, soon learnedto know himself by any name they chose to address to him.  He nolonger thought of himself as Jerry, but, instead, as any sound thatsounded nice or was love-sounded.

His great disappointment (if “disappointment” may beconsidered to describe an unconsciousness of failure to realize theexpected) was in the matter of language.  No one on board, noteven Harley and Villa, talked Nalasu’s talk.  All Jerry’slarge vocabulary, all his proficiency in the use of it, which wouldhave set him apart as a marvel beyond all other dogs in the masteryof speech, was wasted on those of the Ariel.  They did notspeak, much less guess, the existence of the whiff-whuff shorthand languagewhich Nalasu had taught him, and which, Nalasu dead, Jerry alone knewof all living creatures in the world.

In vain Jerry tried it on the lady-god.  Sitting squatted onhis haunches, his head bowed forward and held between her hands, hewould talk and talk and elicit never a responsive word from her. With tiny whines and thin whimperings, with whiffs and whuffs and growlysorts of noises down in his throat, he would try to tell her somewhatof his tale.  She was all meltingness of sympathy; she would holdher ear so near to the articulate mouth of him as almost to drown himin the flowing fragrance of her hair; and yet her brain told her nothingof what he uttered, although her heart surely sensed his intent.

“Bless me, Husband-Man!” she would cry out.  “TheDog is talking.  I know he is talking.  He is telling me allabout himself.  The story of his life is mine, could I but understand. It’s right here pouring into my miserable inadequate ears, onlyI can’t catch it.”

Harley was sceptical, but her woman’s intuition guessed aright.

“I know it!” she would assure her husband.  “Itell you he could tell the tale of all his adventures if only we hadunderstanding.  No other dog has ever talked this way to me. There’s a tale there.  I feel its touches.  Sometimesalmost do I know he is telling of joy, of love, of high elation, andcombat.  Again, it is indignation, hurt of outrage, despair andsadness.”

“Naturally,” Harley agreed quietly.  “A whiteman’s dog, adrift among the anthropophagi of Malaita, would experienceall such sensations and, just as naturally, a white man’s woman,a Wife-Woman, a dear, delightful Villa Kennan woman, can of herselfimagine such a dog’s experiences and deem his silly noises a recitalof them, failing to recognize them as projections of her own delicious,sensitive, sympathetic self.  The song of the sea from the lipsof the shell—Pshaw!  The song oneself makes of the sea andputs into the shell.”

“Just the same—”

“Always the same,” he gallantly cut her off.  “Alwaysright, especially when most wrong.  Not in navigation, of course,nor in affairs such as the multiplication table, where the brass tacksof reality stud the way of one’s ship among the rocks and shoalsof the sea; but right, truth beyond truth to truth higher than truth,namely, intuitional truth.”

“Now you are laughing at me with your superior man-wisdom,”she retorted.  “But I know—” she paused for thestrength of words she needed, and words forsook her, so that her quicksweeping gesture of hand-touch to heart named authority that overrodeall speech.

“We agree—I salute,” he laughed gaily.  “Itwas just precisely what I was saying.  Our hearts can talk ourheads down almost any time, and, best all, our hearts are always rightdespite the statistic that they are mostly wrong.”

Harley Kennan did not believe, and never did believe, his wife’sreport of the tales Jerry told.  And through all his days to thelast one of them, he considered the whole matter a pleasant fancy, allpoesy of sentiment, on Villa’s part.

But Jerry, four-legged, smooth-coated, Irish terrier that he was,had the gift of tongues.  If he could not teach languages, at leasthe could learn languages.  Without effort, and quickly, practicallywith no teaching, he began picking up the language of the Ariel. Unfortunately, it was not a whiff-whuff, dog-possible language suchas Nalasu had invented.  While Jerry came to understand much thatwas spoken on the Ariel, he could speak none of it.  Threenames, at least, he had for the lady-god: “Villa,” “Wife-Woman,”“Missis Kennan,” for so he heard her variously called. But he could not so call her.  This was god-language entire, whichonly gods could talk.  It was unlike the language of Nalasu’sdevising, which had been a compromise between god-talk and dog-talk,so that a god and a dog could talk in the common medium.

In the same way he learned many names for the one-man god: “MisterKennan,” “Harley,” “Captain Kennan,” and“Skipper.”  Only in the intimacy of the three of themalone did Jerry hear him called: “Husband-Man,” “MyMan,” “Patient One,” “Dear Man,” “Lover,”and “This Woman’s Delight.”  But in no way couldJerry utter these names in address of the one-man nor the many namesin address of the one-woman.  Yet on a quiet night with no windamong the trees, often and often had he whispered to Nalasu, by whiff-whuffof name, from a hundred feet away.

One day, bending over him, her hair (drying from a salt-water swim)flying about him, the one-woman, her two hands holding his head andjowls so that his ribbon of kissing tongue just missed her nose in theempty air, sang to him: “‘Don’t know what to callhim, but he’s mighty lak’ a rose!’”

On another day she repeated this, at the same time singing most ofthe song to him softly in his ear.  In the midst of it Jerry surprisedher.  Equally true might be the statement that he surprised himself. Never, had he consciously done such a thing before.  And he didit without volition.  He never intended to do it.  For thatmatter, the very thing he did was what mastered him into doing it. No more than could he refrain from shaking the water from his back aftera swim, or from kicking in his sleep when his feet were tickled, couldhe have avoided doing this imperative thing.

As her voice, in the song, made soft vibrations in his ears, it seemedto him that she grew dim and vague before him, and that somehow, underthe soft searching prod of her song, he was otherwhere.  So muchwas he otherwhere that he did the surprising thing.  He sat downabruptly, almost cataleptically, drew his head away from the clutchof her hands and out of the entanglement of her hair, and, his nosethrust upward at an angle of forty-five degrees, he began to quiverand to breathe audibly in rhythm to the rhythm of her singing. With a quick jerk, cataleptically, his nose pointed to the zenith, hismouth opened, and a flood of sound poured forth, running swiftly upwardin crescendo and slowly falling as it died away.

This howl was the beginning, and it led to the calling him “SingSong Silly.”  For Villa Kennan was quick to seize upon thehowling her singing induced and to develop it.  Never did he hangback when she sat down, extended her welcoming hands to him, and invited:“Come on, Sing Song Silly.”  He would come to her,sit down with the loved fragrance of her hair in his nostrils, lay theside of his head against hers, point his nose past her ear, and almostimmediately follow her when she began her low singing.  Minor strainswere especially provocative in getting him started, and, once started,he would sing with her as long as she wished.

Singing it truly was.  Apt in all ways of speech, he quicklylearned to soften and subdue his howl till it was mellow and golden. Even could he manage it to die away almost to a whisper, and to riseand fall, accelerate and retard, in obedience to her own voice and inaccord with it.

Jerry enjoyed the singing much in the same way the opium eater enjoyshis dreams.  For dream he did, vaguely and indistinctly, eyes wideopen and awake, the lady-god’s hair in a faint-scented cloud abouthim, her voice mourning with his, his consciousness drowning in thedreams of otherwhereness that came to him of the singing and that wasthe singing.  Memories of pain were his, but of pain so long forgottenthat it was no longer pain.  Rather did it permeate him with adelicious sadness, and lift him away and out of the Ariel(lyingat anchor in some coral lagoon) to that unreal place of Otherwhere.

For visions were his at such times.  In the cold bleakness ofnight, it would seem he sat on a bare hill and raised his howl to thestars, while out of the dark, from far away, would drift to him an answeringhowl.  And other howls, near and far, would drift along until thenight was vocal with his kind.  His kind it was.  Withoutknowing it he knewit, this camaraderie of the land of Otherwhere.

Nalasu, in teaching him the whiff-whuff language, deliberately hadgone into the intelligence of him; but Villa, unwitting of what shewas doing, went into the heart of him, and into the heart of his heredity,touching the profoundest chords of ancient memories and making themrespond.

As instance: dim shapes and shadowy forms would sometimes appearto him out of the night, and as they flitted spectrally past he wouldhear, as in a dream, the hunting cries of the pack; and, as his pulsequickened, his own hunting instinct would rouse until his controlledsoft-howling in the song broke into eager whinings.  His head wouldlower out of the entanglement of the woman’s hair; his feet wouldbegin making restless, spasmodic movements as if running; and Presto,in a flash, he would be out and away, across the face of time, out ofreality and into the dream, himself running in the midst of those shadowyforms in the hunting fellowship of the pack.

And as men have ever desired the dust of the poppy and the juiceof the hemp, so Jerry desired the joys that were his when Villa Kennanopened her arms to him, embraced him with her hair, and sang him acrosstime and space into the dream of his ancient kind.

Not always, however, were such experiences his when they sang together. Usually, unaccompanied by visions, he knew no more than vaguenessesof sensations, sadly sweet, ghosts of memories that they were. At other times, incited by such sadness, images of Skipper and MisterHaggin would throng his mind; images, too, of Terrence, and Biddy, andMichael, and the rest of the long-vanished life at Meringe Plantation.

“My dear,” Harley said to Villa at the conclusion ofone such singing, “it’s fortunate for him that you are notan animal trainer, or, rather, I suppose, it would be better called‘trained animal show-woman’; for you’d be toppingthe bill in all the music-halls and vaudeville houses of the world.”

“If I did,” she replied, “I know he’d justlove to do it with me—”

“Which would make it a very unusual turn,” Harley caughther up.

“You mean . . .?”

“That in about one turn in a hundred does the animal love itswork or is the animal loved by its trainer.”

“I thought all the cruelty had been done away with long ago,”she contended.

“So the audience thinks, and the audience is ninety-nine timeswrong.”

Villa heaved a great sigh of renunciation as she said, “ThenI suppose I must abandon such promising and lucrative career right nowin the very moment you have discovered it for me.  Just the samethe billboards would look splendid with my name in the hugest letters—”

“Villa Kennan the Thrush-throated Songstress, and Sing SongSilly the Irish-Terrier Tenor,” her husband pictured the head-linesfor her.

And with dancing eyes and lolling tongue Jerry joined in the laughter,not because he knew what it was about, but because it tokened they werehappy and his love prompted him to be happy with them.

For Jerry had found, and in the uttermost, what his nature craved—thelove of a god.  Recognizing the duality of their lordship overthe Ariel, he loved the pair of them; yet, somehow, perhaps becauseshe had penetrated deepest into his heart with her magic voice thattransported him to the land of Otherwhere, he loved the lady-god beyondall love he had ever known, not even excluding his love for Skipper.

CHAPTER XXIII

One thing Jerry learned early on the Ariel, namely, that nigger-chasingwas not permitted.  Eager to please and serve his new gods, hetook advantage of the first opportunity to worry a canoe-load of blackswho came visiting on board.  The quick chiding of Villa and thecommand of Harley made him pause in amazement.  Fully believinghe had been mistaken, he resumed his ragging of the particular blackhe had picked upon.  This time Harley’s voice was peremptory,and Jerry came to him, his wagging tail and wriggling body all eagernessof apology, as was his rose-strip of tongue that kissed the hand offorgiveness with which Harley patted him.

Next, Villa called him to her.  Holding him close to her withher hands on his jowls, eye to eye and nose to nose, she talked to himearnestly about the sin of nigger-chasing.  She told him that hewas no common bush-dog, but a blooded Irish gentleman, and that no dogthat was a gentleman ever did such things as chase unoffending blackmen.  To all of which he listened with unblinking serious eyes,understanding little of what she said, yet comprehending all. “Naughty” was a word in the Ariellanguage he hadalready learned, and she used it several times.  “Naughty,”to him, meant “must not,” and was by way of expressing ataboo.

Since it was their way and their will, who was he, he might wellhave asked himself, to disobey their rule or question it?  If niggerswere not to be chased, then chase them he would not, despite the factthat Skipper had encouraged him to chase them.  Not in such setterms did Jerry consider the matter; but in his own way he acceptedthe conclusions.

Love of a god, with him, implied service.  It pleased him toplease with service.  And the foundation-stone of service, in hiscase, was obedience.  Yet it strained him sore for a time to refrainfrom snarl and snap when the legs of strange and presumptuous blackspassed near him along the Ariel’swhite deck.

But there were times and times, as he was to learn, and the timecame when Villa Kennan wanted a bath, a real bath in fresh, rain-descended,running water, and when Johnny, the black pilot from Tulagi, made amistake.  The chart showed a mile of the Suli river where it emptiedinto the sea.  Why it showed only a mile was because no white manhad ever explored it farther.  When Villa proposed the bath, herhusband advised with Johnny.  Johnny shook his head.

“No fella boy stop ’m along that place,” he said. “No make ’m trouble along you.  Bush fella boy stop’m long way too much.”

So it was that the launch went ashore, and, while its crew lolledin the shade of the beach coconuts, Villa, Harley, and Jerry followedthe river inland a quarter of a mile to the first likely pool.

“One can never be too sure,” Harley said, taking hisautomatic pistol from its holster and placing it on top his heap ofclothes.  “A stray bunch of blacks might just happen to surpriseus.”

Villa stepped into the water to her knees, looked up at the darkjungle roof high overhead through which only occasional shafts of sunlightpenetrated, and shuddered.

“An appropriate setting for a dark deed,” she smiled,then scooped a handful of chill water against her husband, who plungedin in pursuit.

For a time Jerry sat by their clothes and watched the frolic. Then the drifting shadow of a huge butterfly attracted his attention,and soon he was nosing through the jungle on the trail of a wood-rat. It was not a very fresh trail.  He knew that well enough; but inthe deeps of him were all his instincts of ancient training—instinctsto hunt, to prowl, to pursue living things, in short, to play the gameof getting his own meat though for ages man had got the meat for himand his kind.

So it was, exercising faculties that were no longer necessary, butthat were still alive in him and clamorous for exercise, he followedthe long-since passed wood-rat with all the soft-footed crouching craftof the meat-pursuer and with utmost fineness of reading the scent. The trail crossed a fresh trail, a trail very fresh, very immediatelyfresh.  As if a rope had been attached to it, his head was jerkedabruptly to right angles with his body.  The unmistakable smellof a black was in his nostrils.  Further, it was a strange black,for he did not identify it with the many he possessed filed away inthe pigeon-holes of his brain.

Forgotten was the stale wood-rat as he followed the new trail. Curiosity and play impelled him.  He had no thought of apprehensionfor Villa and Harley—not even when he reached the spot where theblack, evidently startled by bearing their voices, had stood and debated,and so left a very strong scent.  From this point the trail swervedoff toward the pool.  Nervously alert, strung to extreme tension,but without alarm, still playing at the game of tracking, Jerry followed.

From the pool came occasional cries and laughter, and each time theyreached his ears Jerry experienced glad little thrills.  Had hebeen asked, and had he been able to express the sensations of emotionin terms of thought, he would have said that the sweetest sound in theworld was any sound of Villa Kennan’s voice, and that, next sweetest,was any sound of Harley Kennan’s voice.  Their voices thrilledhim, always, reminding him of his love for them and that he was belovedof them.

With the first sight of the strange black, which occurred close tothe pool, Jerry’s suspicions were aroused.  He was not conductinghimself as an ordinary black, not on evil intent, should conduct himself. Instead, he betrayed all the actions of one who lurked in the perpetrationof harm.  He crouched on the jungle floor, peering around a greatroot of a board tree.  Jerry bristled and himself crouched as hewatched.

Once, the black raised his rifle half-way to his shoulder; but, withan outburst of splashing and laughter, his unconscious victims evidentlyremoved themselves from his field of vision.  His rifle was noold-fashioned Snider, but a modern, repeating Winchester; and he showedhabituation to firing it from his shoulder rather than from the hipafter the manner of most Malaitans.

Not satisfied with his position by the board tree, he lowered hisgun to his side and crept closer to the pool.  Jerry crouched lowand followed.  So low did he crouch that his head, extended horizontallyforward, was much lower than his shoulders which were humped up queerlyand composed the highest part of him.  When the black paused, Jerrypaused, as if instantly frozen.  When the black moved, he moved,but more swiftly, cutting down the distance between them.  Andall the while the hair of his neck and shoulders bristled in recurrentwaves of ferocity and wrath.  No golden dog this, ears flattenedand tongue laughing in the arms of the lady-god, no Sing Song Sillychanting ancient memories in the cloud-entanglement of her hair; buta four-legged creature of battle, a fanged killer ripe to rend and destroy.

Jerry intended to attack as soon as he had crept sufficiently near. He was unaware of the Arieltaboo against nigger-chasing. At that moment it had no place in his consciousness.  All he knewwas that harm threatened the man and woman and that this nigger intendedthis harm.

So much had Jerry gained on his quarry, that when again the blacksquatted for his shot, Jerry deemed he was near enough to rush. The rifle was coming to shoulder when he sprang forward.  Swiftlyas he sprang, he made no sound, and his victim’s first warningwas when Jerry’s body, launched like a projectile, smote the blacksquarely between the shoulders.  At the same moment his teeth enteredthe back of the neck, but too near the base in the lumpy shoulder musclesto permit the fangs to penetrate to the spinal cord.

In the first fright of surprise, the black’s finger pulledthe trigger and his throat loosed an unearthly yell.  Knocked forwardon his face, he rolled over and grappled with Jerry, who slashed cheek-boneand cheek and ribboned an ear; for it is the way of an Irish terrierto bite repeatedly and quickly rather than to hold a bulldog grip.

When Harley Kennan, automatic in hand and naked as Adam, reachedthe spot, he found dog and man locked together and tearing up the forestmould in their struggle.  The black, his face streaming blood,was throttling Jerry with both hands around his neck; and Jerry, snorting,choking, snarling, was scratching for dear life with the claws of hishind feet.  No puppy claws were they, but the stout claws of amature dog that were stiffened by a backing of hard muscles.  Andthey ripped naked chest and abdomen full length again and again untilthe whole front of the man was streaming red.  Harley Kennan didnot dare chance a shot, so closely were the combatants locked. Instead, stepping in close; he smashed down the butt of his automaticupon the side of the man’s head.  Released by the relaxingof the stunned black’s hands, Jerry flung himself in a flash uponthe exposed throat, and only Harley’s hand on his neck and Harley’ssharp command made him cease and stand clear.  He trembled withrage and continued to snarl ferociously, although he would desist longenough to glance up with his eyes, flatten his ears, and wag his taileach time Harley uttered “Good boy.”

“Good boy” he knew for praise; and he knew beyond anydoubt, by Harley’s repetition of it, that he had served him andserved him well.

“Do you know the beggar intended to bush-whack us,” Harleytold Villa, who, half-dressed and still dressing, had joined him. “It wasn’t fifty feet and he couldn’t have missed. Look at the Winchester.  No old smooth bore.  And a fellowwith a gun like that would know how to use it.”

“But why didn’t he?” she queried.

Her husband pointed to Jerry.

Villa’s eyes brightened with quick comprehension.  “Youmean . . . ?” she began.

He nodded.  “Just that.  Sing Song Silly beat himto it.”  He bent, rolled the man over, and discovered thelacerated back of the neck.  “That’s where he landedon him first, and he must have had his finger on the trigger, drawingdown on you and me, most likely me first, when Sing Song Silly brokeup his calculations.”

Villa was only half hearing, for she had Jerry in her arms and wascalling him “Blessed Dog,” the while she stilled his snarlingand soothed down the last bristling hair.

But Jerry snarled again and was for leaping upon the black when hestirred restlessly and dizzily sat up.  Harley removed a knifefrom between the bare skin and a belt.

“What name belong you?” he demanded.

But the black had eyes only for Jerry, staring at him in wonderingamaze until he pieced the situation together in his growing clarityof brain and realized that such a small chunky animal had spoiled hisgame.

“My word,” he grinned to Harley, “that fella dogput ’m crimp along me any amount.”

He felt out the wounds of his neck and face, while his eyes embracedthe fact that the white master was in possession of his rifle.

“You give ’m musket belong me,” he said impudently.

“I give ’m you bang alongside head,” was Harley’sanswer.

“He doesn’t seem to me to be a regular Malaitan,”he told Villa.  “In the first place, where would he get arifle like that?  Then think of his nerve.  He must have seenus drop anchor, and he must have known our launch was on the beach. Yet he played to take our heads and get away with them back into thebush—”

“What name belong you?” he again demanded.

But not until Johnny and the launch crew arrived breathless fromtheir run, did he learn.  Johnny’s eyes gloated when he beheldthe prisoner, and he addressed Kennan in evident excitement.

“You give ’m me that fella boy,” he begged. “Eh?  You give ’m me that fella boy.”

“What name you want ’m?”

Not for some time would Johnny answer this question, and then onlywhen Kennan told him that there was no harm done and that he intendedto let the black go.  At this Johnny protested vehemently.

“Maybe you fetch ’m that fella boy along Government House,Tulagi, Government House give ’m you twenty pounds.  Himplenty bad fella boy too much.  Makawao he name stop along him. Bad fella boy too much.  Him Queensland boy—”

“What name Queensland?” Kennan interrupted.  “Hebelong that fella place?”

Johnny shook his head.

“Him belong along Malaita first time.  Long time beforetoo much he recruit ’m along schooner go work along Queensland.”

“He’s a return Queenslander,” Harley interpretedto Villa.  “You know, when Australia went ‘all white,’the Queensland plantations had to send all the black birds back. This Makawao is evidently one of them, and a hard case as well, if there’sanything in Johnny’s gammon about twenty pounds reward for him. That’s a big price for a black.”

Johnny continued his explanation which, reduced to flat and soberEnglish, was to the effect that Makawao had always borne a bad character. In Queensland he had served a total of four years in jail for thefts,robberies, and attempted murder.  Returned to the Solomons by theAustralian government, he had recruited on Buli Plantation for the purpose—aswas afterwards proved—of getting arms and ammunition.  Foran attempt to kill the manager he had received fifty lashes at Tulagiand served a year.  Returned to Buli Plantation to finish his labourservice, he had contrived to kill the owner in the manager’s absenceand to escape in a whaleboat.

In the whaleboat with him he had taken all the weapons and ammunitionof the plantation, the owner’s head, ten Malaita recruits, andtwo recruits from San Cristobal—the two last because they weresalt-water men and could handle the whaleboat.  Himself and theten Malaitans, being bushmen, were too ignorant of the sea to dare thelong passage from Guadalcanar.

On the way, he had raided the little islet of Ugi, sacked the store,and taken the head of the solitary trader, a gentle-souled half-castefrom Norfolk Island who traced back directly to a Pitcairn ancestrystraight from the loins of McCoy of the Bounty.  Arrived safelyat Malaita, he and his fellows, no longer having any use for the twoSan Cristobal boys, had taken their heads and eaten their bodies.

“My word, him bad fella boy any amount,” Johnny finishedhis tale.  “Government House, Tulagi, damn glad give ’mtwenty pounds along that fella.”

“You blessed Sing Song Silly,” Villa, murmured in Jerry’sears.  “If it hadn’t been for you—”

“Your head and mine would even now be galumping through thebush as Makawao hit the high places for home,” Harley concludedfor her.  “My word, some fella dog that, any amount,”he added lightly.  “And I gave him merry Ned just the otherday for nigger-chasing, and he knew his business better than I did allthe time.”

“If anybody tries to claim him—” Villa threatened.

Harley confirmed her muttered sentiment with a nod.

“Any way,” he said, with a smile, “there wouldhave been one consolation if your head had gone up into the bush.”

“Consolation!” she cried, throaty with indignation.

“Why, yes; because in that case my head would have gone along.”

“You dear and blessed Husband-Man,” she murmured, a quickcloudiness of moisture in her eyes, as with her eyes she embraced him,her arms still around Jerry, who, sensing the ecstasy of the moment,kissed her fragrant cheek with his ribbon-tongue of love.

CHAPTER XXIV

When the Arielcleared from Malu, on the north-west coastof Malaita, Malaita sank down beneath the sea-rim astern and, so faras Jerry’s life was concerned, remained sunk for ever—anothervanished world, that, in his consciousness, partook of the ultimatenothingness that had befallen Skipper.  For all Jerry might haveknown, though he pondered it not, Malaita was a universe, beheaded andresting on the knees of some brooding lesser god, himself vastly mightierthan Bashti whose knees bore the brooding weight of Skipper’ssun-dried, smoke-cured head, this lesser god vexed and questing, feelingand guessing at the dual twin-mysteries of time and space and of motionand matter, above, beneath, around, and beyond him.

Only, in Jerry’s case, there was no pondering of the problem,no awareness of the existence of such mysteries.  He merely acceptedMalaita as another world that had ceased to be.  He rememberedit as he remembered dreams.  Himself a live thing, solid and substantial,possessed of weight and dimension, a reality incontrovertible, he movedthrough the space and place of being, concrete, hard, quick, convincing,an absoluteness of something surrounded by the shades and shadows ofthe fluxing phantasmagoria of nothing.

He took his worlds one by one.  One by one his worlds evaporated,rose beyond his vision as vapours in the hot alembic of the sun, sankfor ever beneath sea-levels, themselves unreal and passing as the phantomsof a dream.  The totality of the minute, simple world of the humans,microscopic and negligible as it was in the siderial universe, was asfar beyond his guessing as is the siderial universe beyond the starriestguesses and most abysmal imaginings of man.

Jerry was never to see the dark island of savagery again, althoughoften in his sleeping dreams it was to return to him in vivid illusion,as he relived his days upon it, from the destruction of the Arangiand the man-eating orgy on the beach to his flight from the shell-scatteredhouse and flesh of Nalasu.  These dream episodes constituted forhim another land of Otherwhere, mysterious, unreal, and evanescent asclouds drifting across the sky or bubbles taking iridescent form andbursting on the surface of the sea.  Froth and foam it was, quick-vanishingas he awoke, non-existent as Skipper, Skipper’s head on the witheredknees of Bashti in the lofty grass house.  Malaita the real, Malaitathe concrete and ponderable, vanished and vanished for ever, as Meringehad vanished, as Skipper had vanished, into the nothingness.

From Malaita the Arielsteered west of north to Ongtong Javaand to Tasman—great atolls that sweltered under the Line not quiteawash in the vast waste of the West South Pacific.  After Tasmanwas another wide sea-stretch to the high island of Bougainville. Thence, bearing generally south-east and making slow progress in thedead beat to windward, the Arieldropped anchor in nearly everyharbour of the Solomons, from Choiseul and Ronongo islands, to the islandsof Kulambangra, Vangunu, Pavuvu, and New Georgia.  Even did sheride to anchor, desolately lonely, in the Bay of a Thousand Ships.

Last of all, so far as concerned the Solomons, her anchor rumbleddown and bit into the coral-sanded bottom of the harbour of Tulagi,where, ashore on Florida Island, lived and ruled the Resident Commissioner.

To the Commissioner, Harley Kennan duly turned over Makawao, whowas committed to a grass-house jail, well guarded, to sit in leg-ironsagainst the time of trial for his many crimes.  And Johnny, thepilot, ere he returned to the service of the Commissioner, receiveda fair portion of the twenty pounds of head money that Kennan dividedamong the members of the launch crew who had raced through the jungleto the rescue the day Jerry had taken Makawao by the back of the neckand startled him into pulling the trigger of his unaimed rifle.

“I’ll tell you his name,” the Commissioner said,as they sat on the wide veranda of his bungalow.  “It’sone of Haggin’s terriers—Haggin of Meringe Lagoon. The dog’s father is Terrence, the mother is Biddy.  The dog’sown name is Jerry, for I was present at the christening before everhis eyes were open.  Better yet, I’ll show you his brother. His brother’s name is Michael.  He’s nigger-chaseron the Eugénie, the two-topmast schooner that rides abreastof you.  Captain Kellar is the skipper.  I’ll have himbring Michael ashore.  Beyond all doubt, this Jerry is the solesurvivor of the Arangi.”

“When I get the time, and a sufficient margin of funds, I shallpay a visit to Chief Bashti—oh, no British cruiser program. I’ll charter a couple of trading ketches, take my own black policeforce and as many white men as I cannot prevent from volunteering. There won’t be any shelling of grass houses.  I’llland my shore party down the coast and cut in and come down upon Somofrom the rear, timing my vessels to arrive on Somo’s sea-frontat the same time.”

“You will answer slaughter with slaughter?” Villa Kennanobjected.

“I will answer slaughter with law,” the Commissionerreplied.  “I will teach Somo law.  I hope that no accidentswill occur.  I hope that no life will be lost on either side. I know, however, that I shall recover Captain Van Horn’s head,and his mate Borckman’s, and bring them back to Tulagi for Christianburial.  I know that I shall get old Bashti by the scruff of theneck and sit him down while I pump law and square-dealing into him. Of course . . . ”

The Commissioner, ascetic-looking, an Oxford graduate, narrow-shoulderedand elderly, tired-eyed and bespectacled like the scholar he was, likethe scientist he was, shrugged his shoulders.  “Of course,if they are not amenable to reason, there may be trouble, and some ofthem and some of us will get hurt.  But, one way or the other,the conclusion will be the same.  Old Bashti will learn that itis expedient to maintain white men’s heads on their shoulders.”

“But how will he learn?” Villa Kennan asked.  “Ifhe is shrewd enough not to fight you, and merely sits and listens toyour English law, it will be no more than a huge joke to him. He will no more than pay the price of listening to a lecture for anyatrocity he commits.”

“On the contrary, my dear Mrs. Kennan.  If he listenspeaceably to the lecture, I shall fine him only a hundred thousand coconuts,five tons of ivory nut, one hundred fathoms of shell money, and twentyfat pigs.  If he refuses to listen to the lecture and goes on thewar path, then, unpleasantly for me, I assure you, I shall be compelledto thrash him and his village, first: and, next, I shall triple thefine he must pay and lecture the law into him a trifle more compendiously.”

“Suppose he doesn’t fight, stops his ears to the lecture,and declines to pay?” Villa Kennan persisted.

“Then he shall be my guest, here in Tulagi, until he changeshis mind and heart, and does pay, and listens to an entire course oflectures.”

* * * *

So it was that Jerry came to hear his old-time name on the lips ofVilla and Harley, and saw once again his full-brother Michael.

“Say nothing,” Harley muttered to Villa, as they madeout, peering over the bow of the shore-coming whaleboat, the rough coat,red-wheaten in colour, of Michael.  “We won’t knowanything about anything, and we won’t even let on we’rewatching what they do.”

Jerry, feigning interest in digging a hole in the sand as if he wereon a fresh scent, was unaware of Michael’s nearness.  Infact, so well had Jerry feigned that he had forgotten it was all a game,and his interest was very real as he sniffed and snorted joyously inthe bottom of the hole he had dug.  So deep was it, that all heshowed of himself was his hind-legs, his rump, and an intelligent andstiffly erect stump of a tail.

Little wonder that he and Michael failed to see each other. And Michael, spilling over with unused vitality from the cramped spaceof the Eugénie’sdeck, scampered down the beachin a hurly-burly of joy, scenting a thousand intimate land-scents ashe ran, and describing a jerky and eccentric course as he made shortdashes and good-natured snaps at the coconut crabs that scuttled acrosshis path to the safety of the water or reared up and menaced him withformidable claws and a spluttering and foaming of the shell-lids oftheir mouths.

The beach was only so long.  The end of it reached where rosethe rugged wall of a headland, and while the Commissioner introducedCaptain Kellar to Mr. and Mrs. Kennan, Michael came tearing back acrossthe wet-hard sand.  So interested was he in everything that hefailed to notice the small rear-end portion of Jerry that was visibleabove the level surface of the beach.  Jerry’s ears had givenhim warning, and, the precise instant that he backed hurriedly up andout of the hole, Michael collided with him.  As Jerry was rolled,and as Michael fell clear over him, both erupted into ferocious snarlsand growls.  They regained their legs, bristled and showed teethat each other, and stalked stiff-leggedly, in a stately and dignifiedsort of way, as they drew intimidating semi-circles about each other.

But they were fooling all the while, and were more than a trifleembarrassed.  For in each of their brains were bright identificationpictures of the plantation house and compound and beach of Meringe. They knew, but they were reticent of recognition.  No longer puppies,vaguely proud of the sedateness of maturity, they strove to be proudand sedate while all their impulse was to rush together in a franticecstasy.

Michael it was, less travelled in the world than Jerry, by naturenot so self-controlled, who threw the play-acting of dignity to thewind, and, with shrill whinings of emotion, with body-wrigglings ofdelight, flashed out his tongue of love and shouldered his brother roughlyin eagerness to get near to him.

Jerry responded as eagerly with kiss of tongue and contact of shoulder;then both, springing apart, looked at each other, alert and querying,almost in half challenge, Jerry’s ears pricked into living interrogations,Michael’s one good ear similarly questioning, his withered earretaining its permanent queer and crinkly cock in the tip of it. As one, they sprang away in a wild scurry down the beach, side by side,laughing to each other and occasionally striking their shoulders togetheras they ran.

“No doubt of it,” said the Commissioner.  “Thevery way their father and mother run.  I have watched them often.”

* * * *

But, after ten days of comradeship, came the parting.  It wasMichael’s first visit on the Ariel, and he and Jerry hadspent a frolicking half-hour on her white deck amid the sound and commotionof hoisting in boats, making sail, and heaving out anchor.  Asthe Arielbegan to move through the water and heeled to the fillingof her canvas by the brisk trade-wind, the Commissioner and CaptainKellar shook last farewells and scrambled down the gang-plank to theirwaiting whaleboats.  At the last moment Captain Kellar had caughtMichael up, tucked him under an arm, and with him dropped into the,sternsheets of his whaleboat.

Painters were cast off, and in the sternsheets of each boat solitarywhite men were standing up, heads bared in graciousness of conduct tothe furnace-stab of the tropic sun, as they waved additional and finalfarewells.  And Michael, swept by the contagion of excitement,barked and barked again, as if it were a festival of the gods beingcelebrated.

“Say good-bye to your brother, Jerry,” Villa Kennan promptedin Jerry’s ear, as she held him, his quivering flanks betweenher two palms, on the rail where she had lifted him.

And Jerry, not understanding her speech, torn about with conflictingdesires, acknowledged her speech with wriggling body, a quick back-tossof head, and a red flash of kissing tongue, and, the next moment, hishead over the rail and lowered to see the swiftly diminishing Michael,was mouthing grief and woe very much akin to the grief and woe his mother,Biddy, had mouthed in the long ago, on the beach of Meringe, when hehad sailed away with Skipper.

For Jerry had learned partings, and beyond all peradventure thiswas a parting, though little he dreamed that he would again meet Michaelacross the years and across the world, in a fabled valley of far California,where they would live out their days in the hearts and arms of the belovedgods.

Michael, his forefeet on the gunwale, barked to him in a puzzled,questioning sort of way, and Jerry whimpered back incommunicable understanding. The lady-god pressed his two flanks together reassuringly, and he turnedto her, his cool nose touched questioningly to her cheek.  Shegathered his body close against her breast in one encircling arm, herfree hand resting on the rail, half-closed, a pink-and-white heart offlower, fragrant and seducing.  Jerry’s nose quested theway of it.  The aperture invited.  With snuggling, budging,and nudging-movements he spread the fingers slightly wider as his nosepenetrated into the sheer delight and loveliness of her hand.

He came to rest, his golden muzzle soft-enfolded to the eyes, andwas very still, all forgetful of the Arielshowing her copperto the sun under the press of the wind, all forgetful of Michael growingsmall in the distance as the whaleboat grew small astern.  No lessstill was Villa.  Both were playing the game, although to her itwas new.

As long as he could possibly contain himself, Jerry maintained hisstiffness.  And then, his love bursting beyond the control of him,he gave a sniff—as prodigious a one as he had sniffed into thetunnel of Skipper’s hand in the long ago on the deck of the Arangi. And, as Skipper had relaxed into the laughter of love, so did the lady-godnow.  She gurgled gleefully.  Her fingers tightened, in acaress that almost hurt, on Jerry’s muzzle.  Her other handand arm crushed him against her till he gasped.  Yet all the whilehis stump of tail valiantly bobbed back and forth, and, when releasedfrom such blissful contact, his silky ears flattened back and down as,with first a scarlet slash of tongue to cheek, he seized her hand betweenhis teeth and dented the soft skin with a love bite that did not hurt.

And so, for Jerry, vanished Tulagi, its Commissioner’s bungalowon top of the hill, its vessels riding to anchor in the harbour, andMichael, his full blood-brother.  He had grown accustomed to suchvanishments.  In such way had vanished as in the mirage of a dream,Meringe, Somo, and the Arangi.  In such way had vanishedall the worlds and harbours and roadsteads and atoll lagoons where theArielhad lifted her laid anchor and gone on across and overthe erasing sea-rim.

Related articles