Jerry of the Islands.............................................................................................................................................1

It is a misfortune to some fictionwriters that fiction and unveracity in the average person's mind mean one

and the same thing. Several years ago I published a South Sea novel. The action was placed in the Solomon

Islands. The action was praised by the critics and reviewers as a highly creditable effort of the imagination.

As regards realitythey said there wasn't any. Of course, as every one knew, kinkyhaired cannibals no

longer obtained on the earth's surface, much less ran around with nothing on, chopping off one another's

Now listen. I am writing these lines in Honolulu, Hawaii. Yesterday, on the beach at Waikiki, a stranger

spoke to me. He mentioned a mutual friend, Captain Kellar. When I was wrecked in the Solomons on the

blackbirder, the Minota, it was Captain Kellar, master of the blackbirder, the Eugenie, who rescued me. The

blacks had taken Captain Kellar's head, the stranger told me. He knew. He had represented Captain Kellar's

Listen. I received a letter the other day from Mr. C. M. Woodford, Resident Commissioner of the British

Solomons. He was back at his post, after a long furlough to England, where he had entered his son into

Oxford. A search of the shelves of almost any public library will bring to light a book entitled, "A Naturalist

Among the 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 work he casually and briefly mentioned a particular job he

had just got off his 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

oursa whitetrader, his white wife and children, and his white clerk. The expedition was successful, and

Mr. Woodford concluded his account of the episode with a statement to the effect: "What especially struck

me was the absence of pain and terror in their faces, which seemed to express, rather, serenity and

repose"this, mind you, of men and women of his own race whom he knew well and who had sat at dinner

Other friends, with whom I have sat at dinner in the brave, rollicking days in the Solomons have since passed

outby the same way. My goodness! I sailed in the teakbuilt ketch, the Minota, on a blackbirding cruise to

Malaita, and I took my wife along. The hatchetmarks were still raw on the door of our tiny stateroom

advertising an event of a few months before. The event was the taking of Captain Mackenzie's head, Captain

Mackenzie, at that time, being master of the Minota. As we sailed in to LangaLanga, the British cruiser, the

It is not expedient to burden this preliminary to my story with further details, which I do make asseveration I

possess aplenty. I hope I have given some assurance that the adventures of my dog hero in this novel are

real adventures in a very real cannibal world. Bless you!when I took my wife along on the cruise of the

Minota, we found on board a niggerchasing, adorable Irish terrier puppy, who was smoothcoated like

Jerry, and whose name was Peggy. Had it not been for Peggy, this book would never have been written. She

was the chattel of the Minota's splendid skipper. So much did Mrs. London and I come to love her, that Mrs.

London, after the wreck of the Minota, deliberately and shamelessly stole her from the Minota's skipper. I do

further admit that I did, deliberately and shamelessly, compound my wife's felony. We loved Peggy so! Dear

I must add that Peggy, like Jerry, was born at Meringe Lagoon, on Meringe Plantation, which is of the Island

of Ysabel, said Ysabel Island lying next north of Florida Island, where is the seat of government and 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 sight of that faithful couple

running side by side along the beach. Terrence was his real name. Her name was Biddy.

Not until Mister Haggin abruptly picked him up under one arm and stepped into the sternsheets of the waiting

whaleboat, did Jerry dream that anything untoward was to happen to him. Mister Haggin was Jerry's beloved

master, and had been his beloved master for the six months of Jerry's life. Jerry did not know Mister Haggin

as "master," for "master" had no place in Jerry's vocabulary, Jerry being a smoothcoated, goldensorrel Irish

But in Jerry's vocabulary, "Mister Haggin" possessed all the definiteness of sound and meaning that the word

"master" possesses in the vocabularies of humans in relation to their dogs. "Mister Haggin" was the sound

Jerry had always heard uttered by Bob, the clerk, and by Derby, the foreman on the plantation, when they

addressed his master. Also, Jerry had always heard the rare visiting twolegged mancreatures such as came

But dogs being dogs, in their dim, inarticulate, brilliant, and heroicworshipping ways misappraising

humans, dogs think of their masters, and love their masters, more than the facts warrant. "Master" means to

them, as "Mister" Haggin meant to Jerry, a deal more, and a great deal more, than it means to humans. The

human considers himself as "master" to his dog, but the dog considers his master "God."

Now "God" was no word in Jerry's vocabulary, despite the fact that he already possessed a definite and fairly

large vocabulary. "Mister Haggin" was the sound that meant "God." In Jerry's heart and head, in the

mysterious centre of all his activities that is called consciousness, the sound, "Mister Haggin," occupied the

same place that "God" occupies in human consciousness. By word and sound, to Jerry, "Mister Haggin" had

the same connotation that "God" has to Godworshipping humans. In short, Mister Haggin was Jerry's God.

And so, when Mister Haggin, or God, or call it what one will with the limitations of language, picked Jerry

up with imperative abruptness, tucked him under his arm, and stepped into the whaleboat, whose black crew

immediately bent to the oars, Jerry was instantly and nervously aware that the unusual had begun to happen.

Never before had he gone out on board the Arangi, which he could see growing larger and closer to each

Only an hour before, Jerry had come down from the plantation house to the beach to see the Arangi depart.

Twice before, in his half year of life, had he had this delectable experience. Delectable it truly was, running

up and down the white beach of sandpounded coral, and, under the wise guidance of Biddy and Terrence,

There was the niggerchasing. Jerry had been born to hate niggers. His first experiences in the world as a

puling puppy, had taught him that Biddy, his mother, and his father Terrence, hated niggers. A nigger was

something to be snarled at. A nigger, unless he were a houseboy, was something to be attacked and bitten

and torn if he invaded the compound. Biddy did it. Terrence did it. In doing it, they served their GodMister

Haggin. Niggers were twolegged lesser creatures who toiled and slaved for their twolegged white lords,

who lived in the labour barracks afar off, and who were so much lesser and lower that they must not dare

And niggerchasing was adventure. Not long after he had learned to sprawl, Jerry had learned that. One took

his chances. As long as Mister Haggin, or Derby, or Bob, was about, the niggers took their chasing. But there

were times when the white lords were 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 merely of

scowling and muttering, but of attacking fourlegged dogs with stones and clubs. Jerry had seen his mother

so mishandled, and, ere he had learned discretion, alone in the high grass had been himself clubmauled by

Godarmy, the black who wore a china doorknob suspended on his chest from his neck on a string of sennit

braided from cocoanut fibre. More. Jerry remembered another highgrass adventure, when he and his brother

Michael had fought Owmi, another black distinguishable for the cogged wheels of an alarm clock on his

chest. Michael had been so severely struck on his head that for ever after his left ear had remained sore and

Still more. There had been his brother Patsy, and his sister Kathleen, who had disappeared two months

before, who had ceased and no longer were. The great god, Mister Haggin, had raged up and down the

plantation. The bush had been searched. Half a dozen niggers had been whipped. And Mister Haggin had

failed to solve the mystery of Patsy's and Kathleen's disappearance. But Biddy and Terrence knew. So did

Michael and Jerry. The fourmonths' old Patsy and Kathleen had gone into the cookingpot at the barracks,

and their puppysoft skins had been destroyed in the fire. Jerry knew this, as did his father and mother and

brother, for they had smelled the unmistakable burntmeat smell, and Terrence, in his rage of knowledge, had

even attacked Mogom the houseboy, and been reprimanded and cuffed by Mister Haggin, who had not

smelled and did not understand, and who had always to impress discipline on all creatures under his

But on the beach, when the blacks, whose terms of service were up came down with their tradeboxes on

their heads to depart on the Arangi, was the time when niggerchasing was not dangerous. Old scores could

be settled, and it was the last chance, for the blacks who departed on the Arangi never came back. As an

instance, this very morning Biddy, remembering a secret mauling at the hands of Lerumie, laid teeth into his

naked calf and threw him sprawling into the water, tradebox, earthly possessions and all, and then laughed

Then, too, there was usually at least one bushdog on the Arangi at which Jerry and Michael, from the beach,

could bark their heads off. Once, Terrence, who was nearly as large as an Airedale and fully as

lionheartedTerrence the Magnificent, as Tom Haggin called him had caught such a bushdog

trespassing on the beach and given him a delightful thrashing, in which Jerry and Michael, and Patsy and

Kathleen, who were at the time alive, had joined with many shrill yelps and sharp nips. Jerry had never

forgotten the ecstasy of the hair, unmistakably doggy in scent, which had filled his mouth at his one

successful nip. Bushdogs were dogshe recognized them as his kind; but they were somehow different

from his own lordly breed, different and lesser, just as the blacks were compared with Mister Haggin, Derby,

But Jerry did not continue to gaze at the nearing Arangi. Biddy, wise with previous bitter bereavements, had

sat down on the edge of the sand, her forefeet in the water, and was mouthing her woe. That this concerned

him, Jerry knew, for her grief tore sharply, albeit vaguely, at his sensitive, passionate heart. What it presaged

he knew not, save that it was disaster and catastrophe connected with him. As he looked back at her,

roughcoated and griefstricken, he could see Terrence hovering solicitously near her. He, too, was

roughcoated, as was Michael, and as Patsy and Kathleen had been, Jerry being the one smoothcoated

Further, although Jerry did not know it and Tom Haggin did, Terrence was a royal lover and a devoted

spouse. Jerry, from his earliest impressions, 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 the several

eruptions of strange bushdogs that Jerry knew, it did not enter his 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 fourlegged proper man. A mandog, if there ever was one, foursquare as the legs on the

four corners of him. And prepotent! My word! His blood'd breed true for a thousand generations, and the cool

Terrence did not voice his sorrow, if sorrow he had; but his hovering about Biddy tokened his anxiety for her.

Michael, however, yielding to the contagion, sat beside his mother and barked angrily out across the

increasing stretch of water as he would have barked at any danger that crept and rustled in the jungle. This,

too, sank to Jerry's heart, adding weight to his sure intuition that dire fate, he knew not what, was upon him.

For his six months of life, Jerry knew a great deal and knew very little. He knew, without thinking about it,

without knowing that he knew, why Biddy, the wise as well as the brave, did not act upon all the message

that her heart voiced to him, and spring into the water and swim after him. She had protected him like a

lioness when the big puarka (which, in Jerry's vocabulary, along with grunts and squeals, was the

combination of sound, or word, for "pig") had tried to devour him where he was cornered under the

highpiled plantation house. Like a lioness, when the cookboy had struck him with a stick 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 Mister Haggin, who; however, administered sharp words to the cook boy

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, were taboo. "Taboo," as word or sound, had no place in Jerry's vocabulary. But its

definition, or significance, was there in the quickest part of his consciousness. He possessed a dim, vague,

imperative knowingness that it was not merely not good, but supremely disastrous, leading to the mistily

glimpsed sense of utter endingness for a dog, for any dog, to go into the water where slipped and slid and

noiselessly paddled, sometimes on top, sometimes emerging from the depths, great scaly monsters,

hugejawed and horriblytoothed, that snapped down and engulfed a dog in an instant just as the fowls of

Often he had heard his father and mother, on the safety of the sand, bark and rage their hatred of those terrible

seadwellers, when, close to the beach, they appeared on the surface like logs awash. "Crocodile" was no

word in Jerry's vocabulary. It was an image, an image of a log awash that was different from any log in that it

was alive. Jerry, who heard, registered, and recognized many words that were as truly tools of thought to him

as they were to humans, but who, by inarticulateness of birth and breed, could not utter these many words,

nevertheless in his mental processes, used images just as articulate men use words in their own mental

processes. And after all, articulate men, in the act of thinking, willy nilly use images that correspond to words

Perhaps, in Jerry's brain, the rising into the foreground of consciousness of an image of a log awash connoted

more intimate and fuller comprehension of the thing being thought about, than did the word "crocodile," and

its accompanying image, in the foreground of a human's consciousness. For Jerry really did know more about

crocodiles than the average human. He could smell a crocodile farther off and more differentiatingly than

could any man, than could even a saltwater black or a bushman smell one. He could tell when a crocodile,

hauled up from the lagoon, lay without sound or movement, and perhaps asleep, a hundred feet away on the

He knew more of the language of crocodiles than did any man. He had better means and opportunities of

knowing. He knew their many noises that were as grunts and slubbers. He knew their anger noises, their fear

noises, their food noises, their love noises. And these noises were as definitely words in his vocabulary as are

words in a human's vocabulary. And these crocodile noises were tools of thought. By them he weighed and

judged and determined his own consequent courses of action, just like any human; or, just like any human,

lazily resolved upon no course of action, but merely noted and registered a clear comprehension of something

that was going on about him that did not require a correspondence of action on his part.

And yet, what Jerry did not know was very much. He did not know the size of the world. He did not know

that this Meringe Lagoon, backed by high, forested mountains and fronted and sheltered by 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 island of 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 group of specks in the vastitude of the farwestern South

It was true, there was a somewhere else or a something beyond of which he was dimly aware. But whatever it

was, it was mystery. Out of it, things that had not been, suddenly were. Chickens and puarkas and cats, that

he had never seen before, had a way of abruptly appearing on Meringe Plantation. Once, even, had there been

an eruption of strange fourlegged, horned and hairy creatures, the images of which, registered in his brain,

would have been identifiable in the brains of humans with what humans worded "goats."

It was the same way with the blacks. Out of the unknown, from the somewhere and something else, too

unconditional for him to know any of the conditions, instantly they appeared, fullstatured, walking about

Meringe Plantation with loincloths about their middles and bone bodkins through their noses, and being put

to work by Mister Haggin, Derby, and Bob. That their appearance was coincidental with the arrival of the

Arangi was an association that occurred as a matter of course in Jerry's brain. Further, he did not bother, save

that there was a companion association, namely, that their occasional disappearances into the beyond was

Jerry did not query these appearances and disappearances. It never entered his goldensorrel head to be

curious about the affair or to attempt to solve it. He accepted it in much the way he accepted the wetness of

water and the heat of the sun. It was the way of life and of the world he knew. His hazy awareness was no

more than an awareness of somethingwhich, by the way, corresponds very fairly with the hazy awareness

of the average human of the mysteries of birth and death and of the beyondness about which they have no

For all that any man may gainsay, the ketch Arangi, trader and blackbirder in the Solomon Islands, may have

signified in Jerry's mind as much the mysterious boat that traffics between the two worlds, as, at one time, the

boat that Charon sculled across the Styx signified to the human mind. Out of the nothingness men came. Into

And to the Arangi, this hotwhite tropic morning, Jerry went on the whaleboat under the arm of his Mister

Haggin, while on the beach Biddy moaned her woe, and Michael, not sophisticated, barked the eternal

From the whaleboat, up the low side of the Arangi, and over her six inch rail of teak to her teak deck, was

but a step, and Tom Haggin made it easily with Jerry still under his arm. The deck was cluttered with an

exciting crowd. Exciting the crowd would have been to untravelled humans of civilization, and exciting it

was to Jerry; although to Tom Haggin and Captain Van Horn it was a mere commonplace of everyday life.

The deck was small because the Arangi was small. Originally a teak built, gentleman's yacht, brassfitted,

copperfastened, angle ironed, sheathed in manofwar copper and with a finkeel of bronze, she had been

sold into the Solomon Islands' trade for the purpose of blackbirding or niggerrunning. Under the law,

The Arangi was a labourrecruit ship that carried the newcaught, cannibal blacks from remote islands to

labour on the new plantations where white men turned dank and pestilential swamp and jungle into rich and

stately cocoanut groves. The Arangi's two masts were of Oregon cedar, so scraped and hotparaffined that

they shone like tan opals in the glare of sun. Her excessive sail plan enabled her to sail like a witch, and, on

occasion, gave Captain Van Horn, his white mate, and his fifteen black boat's crew as much as they could

handle. She was sixty feet over all, and the cross beams of her crown deck had not been weakened by

deckhouses. The only breaks and no beams had been cut for themwere the main cabin skylight and

companionway, the booby hatch for'ard over the tiny forecastle, and the small hatch aft that let down into the

And on this small deck, in addition to the crew, were the "return" niggers from three farflung 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 villages on the wild island of Malaita. Twenty of themfamiliar, all, to

Jerrywere from Meringe; thirty of them came from the Bay of a Thousand Ships, in the Russell Isles; and

the remaining twelve were from Pennduffryn on the east coast of Guadalcanar. In addition to theseand

they were all on deck, chattering and piping in queer, almost elfish, falsetto voiceswere the two white men,

Captain Van Horn and his Danish mate, Borckman, making a total of seventynine souls.

"Thought your heart 'd failed you at the last moment," was Captain Van Horn's greeting, a quick pleasure

"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 than them that was

lost. Now that Kathleen was a sweet dog, the spit of Biddy if she'd lived.Here, take 'm."

With a jerk of abruptness, he deposited Jerry in Van Horn's arms and turned away along the deck.

"An' if bad luck comes to him I'll never forgive you, Skipper," he flung roughly over his shoulder.

"An' not unlikely, my brave laddy buck," Haggin growled. "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 Arangi owes Somo," Van Horn nodded. "You recollect, down to

the south'ard last year, a chap named Hawkins was lost in his whaleboat running the Arli Passage?" Haggin,

returning along the deck, nodded. "Two of his boat's crew were Somo boys. I'd recruited them for Ugi

Plantation. With your boys, that makes six heads the Arangi owes. But what of it? There's one saltwater

village, acrost on the weather coast, where the Arangi owes eighteen. I recruited them for Aolo, and being

saltwater men they put them on the Sandfly that was lost on the way to the Santa Cruz. They've got a

jackpot over there on the weather coastmy word, the boy that could get my head would be a second

Carnegie! A hundred and fifty pigs and shell money no end the village's collected for the chap that gets me

"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 that ever handled niggers. He never went to sleep

without spreadin' a box of tacks on the floor, and when it wasn't them it was crumpled newspapers. I

remember me well, bein' under the same roof at the time on Florida, when a big tomcat chased a cockroach

into the papers. And it was blim, blam, blim, six times an' twice over, with his two big horsepistols, an' the

house perforated like a cullender. Likewise there was a dead tom cat. He could shoot in the dark with never

an aim, pullin' trigger with the second finger and pointing with the first finger laid straight along the barrel.

"No, sir, my laddy buck. He was the bully boy with the glass eye. The nigger didn't live that'd lift his head.

But they got 'm. They got 'm. He lasted fourteen years, too. It was his cookboy. Hatcheted 'm before

breakfast. An' it's well I remember our second trip into the bush after what was left of 'm."

"I saw his head after you'd turned it over to the Commissioner at 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. But they got 'm, if it did take fourteen years. There's manny's the

head that goes to Malaita, manny's the time untooken; 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 tell them

what. They can't get the hang of it. Think I've got some powerful devildevil medicine."

Tom Haggin thrust out his hand in abrupt goodbye, resolutely keeping his eyes from dropping to Jerry in the

"Keep your eye on my return boys," he cautioned, as he went over the side, "till you land the last mother's son

of 'm. They've got no cause to love Jerry or his breed, an' I'd hate ill to happen 'm at a nigger's hands. An' in

the dark of the night 'tis like as not he can do a fareyouwell overside. Don't take your eye off 'm till you're

At sight of big Mister Haggin deserting him and being pulled away in the whaleboat, Jerry wriggled and

voiced his anxiety in a low, whimpering whine. Captain Van Horn snuggled him closer in his arm with a

"Don't forget the agreement," Tom Haggin called back across the widening water. "If aught happens you,

"I'll make a paper to that same and put it with the ship's articles," was Van Horn's reply.

Among the many words possessed by Jerry was his own name; and in the talk of the two men he had

recognised it repeatedly, and he was aware, vaguely, that the talk was related to the vague and unguessably

terrible thing that was happening to him. He wriggled more determinedly, and Van Horn set him down on the

deck. He sprang to the rail with more 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's side. The taboo was upon him. It was the image of the log awash that was not a log

but that was alive, luminous in his brain, that checked him. It was not reason on his part, but inhibition which

He plumped down on his bob tail, lifted golden muzzle skyward, and emitted a long puppywail of dismay

"It's all right, Jerry, old man, brace up and be a mandog," Van Horn soothed him.

But Jerry was not to be reconciled. While this indubitably was a whiteskinned god, it was not his god.

Mister Haggin was his god, and a superior god at that. Even he, without thinking about it at all, recognized

that. His Mister Haggin wore pants and shoes. This god on the deck beside him was more like a black. Not

only did he not wear pants, and was barefooted and barelegged, but about his middle, just like any black, he

wore a brilliantcoloured loin cloth, that, like a kilt, fell nearly to his sunburnt knees.

Captain Van Horn was a handsome man and a striking man, although Jerry did not know it. If ever a Holland

Dutchman stepped out of a Rembrandt frame, Captain Van Horn was that one, despite the fact that he was

New York born, as had been his knickerbocker ancestors before him clear back to the time when New York

was not New York but New Amsterdam. To complete his costume, a floppy felt hat, distinctly Rembrandtish

in effect, perched half on his head and mostly over one ear; a sixpenny, white cotton undershirt covered his

torso; and from a belt about his middle dangled a tobacco pouch, a sheathknife, filled clips of cartridges,

On the beach, Biddy, who had hushed her grief, lifted it again when she heard Jerry's wail. And Jerry,

desisting a moment to listen, heard Michael beside her, barking his challenge, and saw, without being

conscious of it, Michael's withered ear with its persistent upward cock. Again, while Captain Van Horn and

the mate, Borckman, gave orders, and while the Arangi's mainsail and spanker began to rise up the masts,

Jerry loosed all his heart of woe in what Bob 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 too much for Haggin, who, as soon as he had landed, whistled Biddy to him and strode rapidly

At sight of her disappearing, Jerry was guilty of even more Caruso like effects, which gave great joy to a

Pennduffryn return boy who stood beside him. He laughed and jeered at Jerry with falsetto chucklings that

were more like the junglenoises of treedwelling creatures, halfbird and halfman, than of a man, all man,

and therefore a god. This served as an excellent counterirritant. Indignation that a mere black should laugh

at him mastered Jerry, and the next moment his puppy teeth, sharppointed as needles, had scored the

astonished black's naked calf in long parallel scratches from each of which leaped the instant blood. The

black sprang away in trepidation, but the blood of Terrence the Magnificent was true in Jerry, and, like his

father before him, he followed up, slashing the black's other calf into a ruddy pattern.

At this moment, anchor broken out and headsails running up, Captain Van Horn, whose quick eye had missed

no detail of the incident, with an 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 instead of awayanother inheritance from

Terrenceavoided the bare foot and printed a further red series of parallel lines on the dark leg. This was too

much, and the black, afraid more of Van Horn than of Jerry, turned and fled for'ard, leaping to safety on top

of the eight LeeEnfield rifles that lay on top of the cabin skylight and that were guarded by one member of

the boat's crew. About the skylight Jerry stormed, leaping up and falling back, until Captain Van Horn called

"Some niggerchaser, that pup, some niggerchaser!" Van Horn confided to Borckman, as he bent to pat

And Jerry, under this caressing hand of a god, albeit it did not wear pants, forgot for a moment longer the fate

"He's a liondogmore like an Airedale than an Irish 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'll

Jerry had just remembered his grief and was starting a rush across the deck to the rail to gaze at Meringe

growing smaller every second in the distance, when a gust of the Southeast Trade smote the sails and

pressed the Arangi down. And down the deck, slanted for the moment to fortyfive degrees, Jerry slipped and

slid, vainly clawing at the smooth surface for a hold. He fetched up against the foot of the mizzenmast, while

Captain Van Horn, with the sailor's eye for the coral patch under his bow, gave the order "Hard alee!"

Borckman and the black steersman echoed his words, and, as the wheel spun down, the Arangi, with the

swiftness of a witch, rounded into the wind and attained a momentary even keel to the flapping of her

Jerry, still intent on Meringe, took advantage of the level footing to recover himself and scramble toward the

rail. But he was deflected by the crash of the mainsheet blocks on the stout deck traveller, as the mainsail,

emptied of the wind and feeling the wind on the other side, swung crazily across above him. He cleared the

danger of the mainsheet with a wild leap (although no less wild had been Van Horn's leap to rescue him), and

found himself directly under the mainboom with the huge sail looming above him as if about to fall upon him

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 vivid recollection, when he had been a tiny puppy, burned the memory of the hawk, in the middle

of the compound, that had dropped down upon him from out of the sky. Under that colossal threatened

impact he crouched down to the deck. Above him, falling upon him like a bolt from the blue, was a winged

hawk unthinkably vaster than the one he had encountered. But in his crouch was no hint of cower. His crouch

was a gathering together, an assembling of all the parts of him under the rule of the spirit of him, for the

But, the succeeding fraction of a moment, so that Jerry, leaping, missed even the shadow of it, the mainsail,

with a second crash of blocks on traveller, had swung across and filled on the other tack.

Van Horn had missed nothing of it. Before, in his time, he had seen young dogs frightened into genuine fits

by their first encounters with heavenfilling, skyobscuring, downimpending sails. This was the first dog he

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

Jerry quite forgot Meringe for the time being. As he well remembered, the hawk had been sharp of beak and

claw. This air flapping, thundercrashing monster needed watching. And Jerry, crouching for the spring and

ever struggling to maintain his footing on the slippery, heeling deck, kept his eyes on the mainsail and uttered

The Arangi was beating out between the coral patches of the narrow channel into the teeth of the brisk trade

wind. This necessitated frequent tacks, so that, overhead, the mainsail was ever swooping across from port

tack to starboard tack and back again, making air noises like the swish of wings, sharply rattattatting its

reef points and loudly crashing its mainsheet gear along the traveller. Half a dozen times, as it swooped

overhead, Jerry leaped for it, mouth open to grip, lips writhed clear of the clean puppy teeth that shone in the

Failing in every leap, Jerry achieved a judgment. In passing, it must be noted that this judgment was only

arrived at by a definite act 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 at all. Thereforealthough he did not stop to think that he was thinkingit was not the

dangerous, destroying thing he had first deemed it. It might be well to be wary of it, though already it had

taken its place in his classification of things that appeared terrible but were not terrible. Thus, he had learned

not to fear the roar of the wind among the palms when he lay snug on the plantationhouse veranda, nor the

onslaught of the waves, hissing and rumbling into harmless foam on the beach at his feet.

Many times, in the course of the day, alertly and nonchalantly, almost with a quizzical knowingness, Jerry

cocked his head at the mainsail when it made sudden swooping movements or slacked and tautened its

crashing sheetgear. But he no longer crouched to spring for it. That had been the first lesson, and quickly

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 Mister Haggin and Derby and Bob; no beach: no land with the

palmtrees near and the mountains afar off everlastingly lifting their green peaks into the sky. Always, to

starboard or to port, at the bow or over the stern, when he stood up resting his forefeet on the sixinch rail

and gazing, he saw only the ocean, brokenfaced and turbulent, yet orderly marching its whitecrested seas

Had he had the eyes of a man, nearly two yards higher than his own from the deck, and had they been the

trained eyes of a man, sailor man at that, Jerry could have seen the low blur of Ysabel to the north and the

blur of Florida to the south, ever taking on definiteness of detail as the Arangi sagged closehauled, with a

good full, porttacked to the southeast trade. And had he had the advantage of the marine glasses with

which Captain Van Horn elongated the range of his eyes, he could have seen, to the east, the far peaks of

But the present was very immediate with Jerry. He had early learned the iron law of the immediate, and to

accept what was when it was, rather than to strain after far other things. The sea was. The land no longer was.

The Arangi certainly was, along with the life that cluttered her deck. And he proceeded to get acquainted with

His first discovery was delightfula wilddog puppy from the Ysabel bush, being taken back to Malaita by

one of the Meringe return boys. In age they were the same, but their breeding was different. The wilddog

was what he was, a wilddog, cringing and sneaking, his ears for ever down, his tail for ever between his

legs, for ever apprehending fresh misfortune and illtreatment to fall on him, for ever fearing and resentful,

fending off threatened hurt with lips curling malignantly from his puppy fangs, cringing under a blow,

squalling his fear and his pain, and ready always for a treacherous slash if luck and safety favoured.

The wilddog was maturer than Jerry, largerbodied, and wiser in wickedness; but Jerry was blueblooded,

rightselected, and valiant. The wilddog had come out of a selection equally rigid; but it was a different sort

of selection. The bush ancestors from whom he had descended had survived by being fearselected. They had

never voluntarily fought against odds. In the open they had never attacked save 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 cunning of cowardice, and, on occasion, by desperateness of defence when in a

But Jerry had been loveselected and courageselected. His ancestors had been deliberately and consciously

chosen by men, who, somewhere in the forgotten past, had taken the wilddog and made it into 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 be

ratlike and slink into a corner. Retreat must be unthinkable. The dogs in the past who retreated had been

rejected by men. They had not become Jerry's ancestors. The dogs selected for Jerry's ancestors had been the

brave ones, the upstanding and outdashing 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 to beget kind, Jerry was what Terrence was before

So it was that Jerry, when he chanced upon the wilddog stowed shrewdly away from the wind in the

leecorner made by the mainmast and the cabin skylight, did not stop to consider whether the creature was

bigger or fiercer than he. All he knew was that it was the ancient enemythe wilddog that had not come in

to the fires of man. With a wild paean of joy that attracted Captain Van Horn's allhearing ears and

allseeing eyes, Jerry sprang to the attack. The wild puppy gained his feet in full retreat with incredible

swiftness, but was caught by the rush of Jerry's body and rolled over and over on the sloping deck. And as he

rolled, and felt sharp teeth pricking him, he snapped and snarled, alternating snarls with whimperings and

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 tangle into which he had slid in the lee scuppers. He did not

think about it. He did it because he was so made. He stood up on the reeling deck, feeling excellently satisfied

with the delicious, wilddoggy smell of hair in his mouth and consciousness, and in his ears and

consciousness the praising cry of Captain Van Horn: "Good boy, Jerry! You're the goods, Jerry! Some dog,

As he stalked away, it must be admitted that Jerry displayed pride in himself, his gait being a trifle

stifflegged, the cocking of his head back over his shoulder at the whining wilddog having all the

articulateness of: "Well, I guess I gave you enough this time. You'll keep out of my way after this."

Jerry continued the exploration of his new and tiny world that was never at rest, for ever lifting, heeling, and

lunging on the rolling face of the sea. There were the Meringe return boys. He made 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, twolegged though they were; for

he had moved and lived always under the aegis of the great twolegged and betrousered god, Mister

Then there were the strange return boys, from Pennduffryn and the Bay of a Thousand Ships. He insisted on

knowing them all. He might need to know them in some future time. He did not think this. He merely

equipped himself with knowledge of his environment without any awareness of provision or without

In his own way of acquiring knowledge, he quickly discovered, just as on the plantation houseboys were

different from fieldboys, that on the Arangi there was a classification of boys different from the return boys.

This was the boat's crew. The fifteen blacks who composed it were closer than the others to Captain Van

Horn. They seemed more directly to belong to the Arangi and to him. They laboured under him at word of

command, steering at the wheel, pulling and hauling on ropes, healing water upon the deck from overside and

Just as Jerry had learned from Mister Haggin that he must be more tolerant of the houseboys than of the

fieldboys if they trespassed on the compound, so, from Captain Van Horn, he learned that he must be more

tolerant of the boat's crew than of the return boys. He had less license with them, more license with the

others. As long 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 never forgot that he was a whitegod's dog. While he might not chase 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 Mister Haggin. They occupied an intermediate place in the scheme of things, and

they were to be watched in case they did not keep their place. He accorded them room, but he did not accord

He made thorough examination of the galley, a rude affair, open on the open deck, exposed to wind and rain

and storm, a small stove that was not even a ship's stove, on which somehow, aided by strings and wedges,

commingled with much smoke, two blacks managed to cook the food for the fourscore persons on board.

Next, he was interested by a strange proceeding on the part of the boat's crew. Upright pipes, serving as

stanchions, were being screwed into the top of the Arangi's rail so that they served to support three strands of

barbed wire that ran completely around the vessel, being broken only at the gangway for a narrow space of

fifteen inches. That this was a precaution against danger, Jerry sensed without a passing thought to it. All his

life, from his first impressions of life, had been passed in the heart of danger, everimpending, from the

blacks. In the plantation house at Meringe, always the several white men had looked askance at the many

blacks who toiled for them and belonged to them. In the living room, where were the eatingtable, the

billiardtable, and the phonograph, stood stands of rifles, and in each bedroom, beside each bed, ready to

hand, had been revolvers and rifles. As well, Mister Haggin and Derby and Bob had always carried revolvers

Jerry knew these noisemaking things for what they wereinstruments of destruction and death. He had

seen live things destroyed by them, such as puarkas, goats, birds, and crocodiles. By means of such things the

whitegods by their will crossed space without crossing it with their bodies, and destroyed live things. Now

he, in order to damage anything, had to cross space with his body to get to it. He was different. He was

limited. All impossible things were possible to the unlimited, twolegged whitegods. In a way, this ability

of theirs to destroy across space was an elongation of claw and fang. Without pondering it, or being

conscious of it, he accepted it as he accepted the rest of the mysterious world about him.

Once, even, had Jerry seen his Mister Haggin deal death at a distance in another noiseway. From the

veranda he had seen him fling sticks of exploding dynamite into a screeching mass of blacks who had come

raiding from the Beyond in the long war canoes, beaked and black, carved and inlaid with motherofpearl,

Many precautions by the whitegods had Jerry been aware of, and so, sensing it almost in intangible ways, as

a matter of course he accepted this barbedwire fence on the floating world as a mark of the persistence of

danger. Disaster and death hovered close about, waiting the chance to leap upon life and drag it down. Life

had to be very alive in order to live was the law Jerry had learned from the little of life he knew.

Watching the rigging up of the barbed wire, Jerry's next adventure was an encounter with Lerumie, the return

boy from Meringe, who, only that morning, on the beach embarking, had been rolled by Biddy, along with

his possessions into the surf. The encounter occurred on the starboard side of the skylight, alongside of which

Lerumie was standing as he gazed into a cheap trademirror and combed his kinky hair with a handcarved

Jerry, scarcely aware of Lerumie's presence, was trotting past on his way aft to where Borckman, the mate,

was superintending the stringing of the barbed wire to the stanchions. And Lerumie, with a sidelong look 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 foot caught Jerry on the sensitive end of his recently bobbed tail, and Jerry, outraged,

Captain Van Horn, standing aft on the port quarter, gauging the slant of the wind on the sails and the

inadequate steering of the black at the wheel, had not seen Jerry because of the intervening skylight. But his

eyes had taken in the shoulder movement of Lerumie that advertised the balancing on one foot while the

other foot had kicked. And from what followed, he divined what had already occurred.

Jerry's outcry, as he sprawled, whirled, sprang, and slashed, was a veritable puppyscream of indignation. He

slashed ankle and foot as he received the second kick in midair; and, although he slid clear down the slope

of deck into the scuppers, he left on the black skin the red tracery of his puppyneedle teeth. Still screaming

Lerumie, with another sidelong look, knew that he was observed and that he dare not go to extremes. He

fled along the skylight to escape down the companionway, but was caught by Jerry's sharp teeth in his calf.

Jerry, attacking blindly, got in the way of the black's feet. A long, stumbling fall, accelerated by a sudden

increase of wind in the sails, ensued, and Lerumie, vainly trying to catch his footing, fetched up against the

The deckfull of blacks shrieked their merriment, and Jerry, his rage undiminished, his immediate antagonist

out of the battle, mistaking himself as the object of the laughter of the blacks, turned upon them, charging and

slashing the many legs that fled before him. They dropped down the cabin and forecastle companionways,

ran out the bowsprit, and sprang into the rigging till they were perched everywhere in the air 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 Jerry to him and giving him

manthumps of joyful admiration. Next, the captain turned to his many passengers and orated in

"Hey! You fella boy! I make 'm big fella talk. This fella dog he belong along me. One fella boy hurt 'm that

fella dogmy word!me cross too much along that fella boy. I knock 'm seven bells outa that fella boy.

And the passengers, still perched in the air, with gleaming black eyes and with querulerus chirpings one to

another, accepted the white man's law. Even Lerumie, variously lacerated by the barbed wire, did not scowl

nor mutter threats. Instead, and bringing a roar of laughter from his fellows and a twinkle into the skipper's

eyes, he rubbed questing fingers over his scratches and murmured: "My word! 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 his heredity. And, like Biddy and Terrence, he delighted in nigger chasing, which, in

turn, was a matter of training. From his earliest puppyhood he had been so trained. Niggers were niggers, but

white men were gods, and it was the whitegods who had trained him to chase niggers and keep them in their

proper lesser place in the world. All the world was held in the hollow of the white man's hands. The

niggerswell, had not he seen them always compelled to remain in their lesser place? Had he not seen them,

on occasion, triced up to the palmtrees of the Meringe compound and their backs lashed to ribbons by the

whitegods? Small wonder that a highborn Irish terrier, in the arms of love of the whitegod, should look at

niggers through whitegod's eyes, and act toward niggers in the way that earned the whitegod's reward of

It was a busy day for Jerry. Everything about the Arangi was new and strange, and so crowded was she that

exciting things were continually happening. He had another encounter with the wilddog, who treacherously

attacked him in flank from ambuscade. Trade boxes belonging to the blacks had been irregularly piled so that

a small space was left between two boxes in the lower tier. From this hole, as Jerry trotted past in response to

a call from the skipper, the wilddog sprang, scratched his sharp puppyteeth into Jerry's yellowvelvet hide,

Again Jerry's feelings were outraged. He could understand flank attack. Often he and Michael had played at

that, although it had only been playing. But to retreat without fighting from a 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 wilddog fought to best advantagein a corner. When Jerry sprang up in the confined space he bumped

his head on the box above, and the next moment felt the snarling impact of the other's teeth against his own

There was no getting at the wilddog, no chance to rush against him whole heartedly, with generous full

weight in the attack. All Jerry could do was to crawl and squirm and belly forward, and always he was met by

a snarling mouthful of teeth. Even so, he would have got the wilddog in the end, had not Borckman, in

passing, reached in and dragged Jerry out by a hindleg. Again came Captain Van Horn's call, and Jerry,

A meal was being served on deck in the shade of the spanker, and Jerry, sitting between the two men received

his share. Already he had made the generalization that of the two, the captain was the superior god, giving

many orders that the mate obeyed. The mate, on the other hand, gave orders to the blacks, but never did he

give orders to the captain. Furthermore, Jerry was developing a liking for the captain, so he snuggled close to

him. When he put his nose into the captain's plate, he was gently reprimanded. But once, when he merely

sniffed at the mate's steaming teacup, her received a snub on the nose from the mate's grimy forefinger.

Captain Van Horn gave him, first of all, a pannikin of oatmeal mush, generously flooded with condensed

cream and sweetened with a heaping spoonful of sugar. After that, on occasion, he gave him morsels of

buttered bread and slivers of fried fish from which he first carefully picked the tiny bones.

His beloved Mister Haggin had never fed him from the table at meal time, and Jerry was beside himself with

the joy of this delightful experience. And, being young, he allowed his eagerness to take possession of him,

so that soon he was unduly urging the captain for more pieces of fish and of bread and butter. Once, he even

barked his demand. This put the idea into the captain's head, who began immediately to teach him to "speak."

At the end of five minutes he had learned to speak softly, and to speak only oncea low, mellow, belllike

bark of a single syllable. Also, in this first five minutes, he had learned to "sit down," as distinctly different

from "lie down"; and that he must sit down whenever he spoke, and that he must speak without jumping or

moving from the sitting position, and then must wait until the piece of food was passed to him.

Further, he had added three words to his vocabulary. For ever after, "speak" would mean to him "speak," and

"sit down" would mean "sit down" and would not mean "lie down." The third addition to his vocabulary was

"Skipper." That was the name he had heard the mate repeatedly call Captain Van Horn. And just as Jerry

knew that when a human called "Michael," that the call referred to Michael and not to Biddy, or Terrence, or

himself, so he knew that Skipper was the name of the twolegged white master of this new floating world.

"That isn't just a dog," was Van Horn's conclusion to the mate. "There's a sure enough human brain there

behind those brown eyes. He's six months old. Any boy of six years would be an infant phenomenon to learn

in five minutes all that he's just learned. Why, Gottferdang, a dog's brain has to be like a man's. If he does

The companionway into the main cabin was a steep ladder, and down this, after his meal, Jerry was carried

by the captain. The cabin was a long room, extending for the full width of the Arangi from a lazarette aft to a

tiny room for'ard. For'ard of this room, separated by a tight bulkhead, was the forecastle where lived the

boat's crew. The tiny room was shared between Van Horn and Borckman, while the main cabin was occupied

by the threescore and odd return boys. They squatted about and lay everywhere on the floor and on the long

In the little stateroom the captain tossed a blanket on the floor in a corner, and he did not find it difficult to

get Jerry to understand that that was his bed. Nor did Jerry, with a full stomach and weary from so much

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. Jerry made no further

overtures, but lay quietly watching. The mate had come to take a drink. In truth, he was stealing the drink

from Van Horn's supply. Jerry did not know this. Often, on the plantation, he had seen the white men take

drinks. But there was something somehow different in the manner of Borckman's taking a drink. Jerry was

aware, vaguely, that there was something surreptitious about it. What was wrong he did not know, yet he

After the mate departed, Jerry would have slept again had not the carelessly latched door swung open with a

bang. Opening his eyes, prepared for any hostile invasion from the unknown, he fell to watching a large

cockroach crawling down the wall. When he got to his feet and warily stalked toward it, the cockroach

scuttled away with a slight rustling noise and disappeared into a crack. Jerry had been acquainted with

cockroaches all his life, but he was destined to learn new things about them from the particular breed that

After a cursory examination of the stateroom he wandered out into the cabin. The blacks, sprawled about

everywhere, but, conceiving it to be his duty to his Skipper, Jerry made it a point to identify each one. They

scowled and uttered low threatening noises when he sniffed close to them. One dared to menace him with a

blow, but Jerry, instead of slinking away, showed his teeth and prepared to spring. The black hastily dropped

the offending hand to his side and made soothing, penitent noises, while others chuckled; and Jerry passed on

his way. It was nothing new. Always a blow was to be expected from blacks when white men were not

around. Both the mate and the captain were on deck, and Jerry, though unafraid, continued his investigations

But at the doorless entrance to the lazarette aft, he threw caution to the winds and darted in in pursuit of the

new scent that came to his nostrils. A strange person was in the low, dark space whom he had never smelled.

Clad in a single shift and lying on a coarse grassmat spread upon a pile of tobacco cases and fiftypound

There was something furtive and lurking about her that Jerry did not fail to sense, and he had long since

learned that something was wrong when any black lurked or skulked. She cried out with fear as he barked an

alarm and pounced upon her. Even though his teeth scratched her bare arm, she did not strike at him. Not did

she cry out again. She cowered down and trembled and did not fight back. Keeping his teeth locked in the

hold he had got on her flimsy shift, he shook and dragged at her, all the while growling and scolding for her

In the course of the struggle the girl overbalanced on the boxes and tins and the entire heap collapsed. This

caused Jerry to yelp a more frenzied alarm, while the blacks, peering in from the cabin, laughed with cruel

When Skipper arrived, Jerry wagged his stump tail and, with ears laid back, dragged and tugged harder than

ever at the thin cotton of the girl's garment. He expected praise for what he had done, but when Skipper

merely told him to let go, he obeyed with the realization that this lurking, fearstruck creature was somehow

Fearstruck she was, as it is given to few humans to be and still live. Van Horn called her his parcel of

trouble, and he was anxious to be rid of the parcel, without, however, the utter annihilation of the parcel. It

was this annihilation which he had saved her from when he bought her in even exchange for a fat pig.

Stupid, worthless, spiritless, sick, not more than a dozen years old, no delight in the eyes of the young men of

her village, she had been consigned by her disappointed parents to the cookingpot. When Captain Van Horn

first encountered her had been when she was the central figure in a lugubrious procession on the banks of the

Anything but a beautyhad been his appraisal when he halted the procession for a powwow. Lean from

sickness, her skin mangy with the dry scales of the disease called bukua, she was tied hand and foot and, like

a pig, slung from a stout pole that rested on the shoulders of the bearers, who intended to dine off of her. Too

hopeless to expect mercy, she made no appeal for help, though the horrible fear that possessed her was

In the universal bechedemer English, Captain Van Horn had learned that she was not regarded with relish

by her companions, and that they were on their way to stake her out up to her neck in the running water of the

Balebuli. But first, before they staked her, their plan was to dislocate her joints and break the big bones of the

arms and legs. This was no religious rite, no placation of the brutish jungle gods. Merely was it a matter of

gastronomy. Living meat, so treated, was made tender and tasty, and, as her companions pointed 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 had insisted on the worthlessness of the

parcel, he had bought a fat pig worth five dollars and exchanged it for her. Thus, since he had paid for the pig

in trade goods, and since trade goods were rated at a hundred per cent. profit, the girl had actually cost him

And then Captain Van Horn's troubles had begun. He could not get rid of the girl. Too well he knew the

natives of Malaita to turn her over to them anywhere on the island. Chief Ishikola of 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 tokened the old rascal's scorn of the girl's

scrawniness. Failing to connect with the missionary brig, the Western Cross, on which she would not have

been eaten, Captain Van Horn had been compelled to keep her in the cramped quarters of the Arangi against

a problematical future 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 had no brain of understanding. She, who had

been sold for a fat pig, considered her pitiful role in the world to be unchanged. Eatee she had been. Eatee she

remained. Her destination merely had been changed, and this big fella white marster of the Arangi would

undoubtedly be her destination when she had sufficiently fattened. His designs on her had been transparent

from the first, when he had tried to feed her up. And she had outwitted him by resolutely eating no more than

As a result, she, who had lived in the bush all her days and never so much as set foot in a canoe, rocked and

rolled unendingly over the broad ocean in a perpetual nightmare of fear. In the bechede mer that was

current among the blacks of a thousand islands and ten thousand dialects, the Arangi's procession of

passengers assured her of her fate. "My word, you fella Mary," one would say to her, "short time little bit that

big fella white marster kaikai along you." Or, another: "Big fella white marster kaikai along you, my word,

Kaikai was the bechedemer for "eat." Even Jerry knew that. "Eat" did not obtain in his vocabulary; but

kaikai did, and it meant all and more than "eat," for it served for both noun and verb.

But the girl never replied to the jeering of the blacks. For that matter, she never spoke at all, not even to

It was late afternoon, after discovering the girl in the lazarette, when Jerry again came on deck. Scarcely had

Skipper, who had carried him up the steep ladder, dropped him on deck than Jerry made a new

discoveryland. He did not see it, but he smelled it. His nose went up in the air 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

newspaperthe salt smells of the seashore and of the dank muck of mangrove swamps at 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 Arangi well up under the lee of this outjutting point of Malaita, was now

failing, so that she began to roll in the easy swells with crashings of sheets and tackles and thunderous

flappings of her sails. Jerry no more than cocked a contemptuous quizzical eye at the mainsail anticking

above him. He knew already the empty windiness of its threats, but he was careful of the mainsheet blocks,

While Captain Van Horn, taking advantage of the calm to exercise the boat's crew with the firearms and to

limber up the weapons, was passing out the LeeEnfields from their place on top the cabin skylight, Jerry

suddenly crouched and began to stalk stifflegged. But the wilddog, three feet from his lair under the

tradeboxes, 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 been nasty 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 wilddog

sprang for the hole under the boxes, Jerry sprang after, missing his enemy by inches. Tossing overboard bits

of wood, bottles and empty tins, Captain Van Horn ordered the eight eager boat's crew with rifles to turn

loose. Jerry was excited and delighted with the fusillade, and added his puppy yelpings to the noise. As the

empty brass cartridges were ejected, the return boys scrambled on the deck for them, esteeming them as very

precious objects and thrusting them, still warm, into the empty holes in their ears. Their ears were perforated

with many of these holes, the smallest capable of receiving a cartridge, while the larger ones containedclay

pipes, sticks of tobacco, and even boxes of matches. Some of the holes in the earlobes were so huge that

Mate and captain carried automatics in their belts, and with these they turned loose, shooting away clip after

clip to the breathless admiration of the blacks for such marvellous rapidity of fire. The boat's crew were not

even fair shots, but Van Horn, like every captain in the Solomons, knew that the bush natives and saltwater

men were so much worse shots, and knew that the shooting of his boat's crew could be depended uponif

At first, Borckman's automatic jammed, and he received a caution from Van Horn for his carelessness in not

keeping it clean and thin oiled. Also, Borckman was twittingly asked how many drinks he had taken, and if

that was what accounted for his shooting being under his average. Borckman explained that he had a touch of

fever, and Van Horn deferred stating his doubts until a few minutes later, squatting in the shade of the

"The trouble with him is the schnapps, Jerry," he explained. "Gott ferdang, 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

schnapps schnapps. An' he's a good sailor man, Jerry, when he's sober. But when he's schnappy

he's sheer lunatic. Then his noddle goes pinwheeling and he's a blighted fool, and he'd snore in a gale and

suffer for sleep in a dead calm. Jerry, you're just beginning to pad those four little soft feet of yours into

the world, so take the advice of one who knows and leave the schnapps alone. Believe me, Jerry, boylisten

Whereupon, leaving Jerry on deck to stalk the wilddog, Captain Van Horn went below into the tiny

stateroom and took a long drink from the very bottle from which Borckman was stealing.

The stalking of the wilddog became a game, at least to Jerry, who was so made that his heart bore no

malice, and who hugely enjoyed it. Also, it gave him a delightful consciousness of his own mastery, for the

wilddog always fled from him. At least so far as dogs were concerned, Jerry was cock of the deck of the

Arangi. It did 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 more

than several feet from his retreat, and he went about in fear and trembling of the fat rolypoly puppy who

In the late afternoon, Jerry trotted aft, after having administered another lesson to the wilddog, and found

Skipper seated on the deck, back against the low rail, knees drawn up, and gazing absently off to leeward.

Jerry sniffed his bare calfnot that he needed to identify it, but just because he liked to, and in a sort of

friendly greeting. But Van Horn took no notice, continuing to stare out across the sea. Nor was he aware of

Jerry rested the length of his chin on Skipper's knee and gazed long and earnestly into Skipper's face. This

time Skipper knew, and was pleasantly thrilled; but still he gave no sign. Jerry tried a new tack. Skipper's

hand drooped idly, half open, from where the forearm rested on the other knee. Into the partopen hand Jerry

thrust his soft golden muzzle to the eyes and remained quite still. Had he been situated to see, he would have

seen a twinkle in Skipper's eyes, which had been withdrawn from the sea and 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 heartiness as to lay Jerry's silky ears back and

down in self deprecation of affection and pleadingness to bask in the sunshine of the god's smile. Also,

Skipper's laughter set Jerry's tail wildly bobbing. The halfopen hand closed in a firm grip that gathered in

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 will that he was compelled to balance back and forth on all his four feet.

It was bliss to Jerry. Nay, more, it was ecstasy. For Jerry knew there was neither anger nor danger in the

roughness of the shake, and that it was play of the sort that he and Michael had indulged in. On occasion, he

had so played with Biddy and lovingly mauled her about. And, on very rare occasion, Mister Haggin had

lovingly mauled him about. It was speech to Jerry, full of unmistakable meaning.

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 too well

to hurt. He strained and tugged at the grip, trying to twist his 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, too quick for Skipper,

he caught his hand between teeth; but he did not bring them together. They pressed lovingly, denting the skin,

The play grew rougher, and Jerry lost himself in the play. Still playing, he grew so excited that all that had

been feigned became actual. This was battle a struggle against the hand that seized and shook him and thrust

him away. The makebelieve of ferocity passed out of his growls; the ferocity in them became real. Also, in

the moments when he was shoved away and was springing back to the attack, he yelped in highpitched

puppy hysteria. And Captain Van Horn, realizing, suddenly, instead of clutching, extended his hand wide

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 the solicitous insistence of

Jerry knew and was checked back to himself. He was instantly contrite, all soft humility, ears laid back with

pleadingness for forgiveness and protestation of a warm throbbing heart of love. Instantly, from an

openmouthed, fangbristling dog in full career of attack, he melted into a bundle of softness and silkiness,

that trotted to the open hand and kissed it with a tongue that flashed out between white gleaming teeth like a

rosered jewel. And the next moment he was in Skipper's arms, jowl against cheek, and the tongue was again

flashing out in all the articulateness possible for a creature denied speech. It was a veritable lovefeast, as

"Gottferdang!" Captain Van Horn crooned. "You're nothing but a bunch of highstrung sensitiveness, with

a golden heart in the middle and a golden coat wrapped all around. Gottferdang, Jerry, you're gold, pure

gold, inside and out, and no dog was ever 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 good to you and love you for ever and for ever."

And Captain Van Horn, who ruled the Arangi in bare legs, a loin cloth, and a sixpenny undershirt, and ran

cannibal blacks back and forth in the blackbird trade with an automatic strapped to his body waking and

sleeping and with his head forfeit in scores of salt water villages and bush strongholds, and who was

esteemed the toughest skipper in the Solomons where only men who are tough may continue to live and

esteem toughness, blinked with sudden moisture in his eyes, and could not see for the moment the puppy that

quivered all its body of love in his arms and kissed away the salty softness of his eyes.

And swift tropic night smote the Arangi, as she alternately rolled in calms and heeled and plunged ahead in

squalls under the lee of the cannibal island of Malaita. It was a stoppage of the southeast trade wind that

made for variable weather, and that made cooking on the exposed deck galley a misery and sent the return

The first watch, from eight to twelve, was the mate's; and Captain Van Horn, forced below by the driving wet

of a heavy rain squall, took Jerry with him to sleep in the tiny stateroom. Jerry was weary from the manifold

excitements of the most exciting day in his life; 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, muttered aloud: "It's that wilddog,

So soundly did Jerry sleep, that when the rain, having robbed the atmosphere of its last breath of wind, ceased

and left the stateroom a steaming, suffocating furnace, he did not know when Skipper, panting for air, his loin

cloth and undershirt soaked with sweat, arose, tucked blanket and pillow under his arm, and went on deck.

Jerry only awakened when a huge threeinch cockroach nibbled at the sensitive and hairless skin between his

toes. He awoke kicking the offended foot, and gazed at the cockroach that did not scuttle, but that walked

dignifiedly away. He watched it join other cockroaches that paraded the floor. Never had he seen so many

gathered together at one time, and never had he seen such large ones. They were all of a size, and they were

everywhere. Long lines of them poured out of cracks in the walls and descended to join their fellows on the

The thing was indecentat least, in Jerry's mind, it was not to be tolerated. Mister Haggin, Derby, and Bob

had 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 thing did what he had never

known a cockroach to do. It arose in the air strongflighted as a bird. And as if at a signal, all the multitude of

cockroaches took wings of flight and filled the room with their flutterings and circlings.

He attacked the winged host, leaping into the air, snapping at the flying vermin, trying to knock them down

with his paws. Occasionally he succeeded and destroyed one; nor did the combat cease until all the

cockroaches, 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 he was not in the room, though he stood up on his

hindlegs and investigated the low bunk, his keen little nose quivering delightedly while he made little sniffs

of delight as he smelled the recent presence of Skipper. And what made his nose quiver and sniff, likewise

But where was Skipper? It was a thought in his brain that was as sharp and definite as a similar thought

would be in a human brain. And it similarly preceded action. The door had been left hooked open, and Jerry

trotted out into the cabin where half a hundred blacks made queer sleepmoanings, and sighings, and

snorings. They were packed closely together, covering the floor as well as the long sweep of bunks, so that he

was compelled to crawl over their naked legs. And there was no white god about to protect him. He knew it,

Having made sure that Skipper was not in the cabin, Jerry prepared for the perilous ascent of the steep steps

that were almost a ladder, then recollected the lazarette. In he trotted and sniffed at the sleeping girl in the

cotton shift who believed that Van Horn was going to eat her if he could succeed in fattening her.

Back at the laddersteps, he looked up and waited in the hope that Skipper might appear from above and

carry him up. Skipper had passed that way, he knew, and he knew for two reasons. It was the only way he

could have passed, and Jerry's nose told him that he had passed. His first attempt to climb the steps began

well. Not until a third of the way up, as the Arangi rolled in a sea and recovered with a jerk, did he slip and

fall. Two or three boys awoke and watched him while they prepared and chewed betel nut and lime wrapped

Twice, barely started, Jerry slipped back, and more boys, awakened by their fellows, sat up and enjoyed his

plight. In the fourth attempt he managed to gain half way up before he fell, coming down heavily on his side.

This was hailed with low laughter and querulous chirpings that might well have come from the throats of

huge birds. He regained his feet, absurdly bristled the hair on his shoulders and absurdly growled his high

disdain of these lesser, twolegged things that came and went and obeyed the wills of great, whiteskinned,

Undeterred by his heavy fall, Jerry essayed the ladder again. A temporary easement of the Arangi's rolling

gave him his opportunity, so that his forefeet were over the high combing of the companion when the next

big roll came. He held on by main strength of his bent forelegs, then scrambled over and out on deck.

Amidships, squatting on the deck near the skylight, he investigated several of the boat's crew and Lerumie.

He identified them circumspectly, going suddenly stifflegged 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 spoke to him and stooped to pat him, Jerry whiffed Skipper somewhere near at hand. With a

conciliating, apologetic bob of his tail, he trotted on up wind and came upon Skipper on his back, rolled in a

First of all Jerry needs must joyfully sniff him and joyfully wag his 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 the angle formed by Skipper's

head and shoulder. This did awake him, for he uttered "Jerry" in a low, crooning voice, and Jerry responded

with a touch of his cold damp nose to the other's cheek. And then Skipper went to sleep again. But not Jerry.

He lifted the edge of the blanket with his nose and crawled across the shoulder until he was altogether inside.

Still Jerry was not satisfied, and he squirmed around until he lay in the hollow of Skipper's arm, his head

resting on Skipper's shoulder, when, with a profound sigh of content, he fell asleep.

Several times the noises made by the boat's crew in trimming the sheets to the shifting draught of air roused

Van Horn, and each time, remembering the puppy, he pressed him caressingly with his hollowed arm. And

For all that he was a remarkable puppy, Jerry had his limitations, and he could never know the effect

produced on the hardbitten captain by the soft warm contact of his velvet body. But it made the captain

remember 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 many pictures, beginning, with the girl babe, burned their torment in his

brain. No white man in the Solomons knew what he carried about with him, waking and often sleeping; and it

was because of these pictures that he had come to the Solomons in a vain effort to erase them.

First, memoryprodded by the soft puppy in his arm, he saw the girl and the mother in the little Harlem flat.

Small, it was true, but tightpacked with the happiness of three that made it heaven.

He saw the girl's flaxenyellow hair darken to her mother's gold as it lengthened into curls and ringlets until

finally it became two thick long braids. From striving not to see these many pictures he came even to

dwelling upon them in the effort so to fill his consciousness as to keep out the one picture he did not want to

He remembered his work, the wrecking car, and the wrecking crew that had toiled under him, and he

wondered what had become of Clancey, his righthand man. Came the long day, when, routed from bed at

three in the morning to dig a surface car out of the wrecked show windows of a drug store and get it back on

the track, they had laboured all day clearing up a halfdozen smashups and arrived at the car house at nine

"Glory be!" said Clancey, who lived in the next block from him. He could see him saying it and wiping the

sweat from his grimy face. "Glory be, 'tis a small matter at most, an' right in our neighbourhoodnot a dozen

blocks away. Soon as it's done we can beat it for home an' let the downtown boys take the car back to the

"Somebody run overcan't get them out," he said, as they swung on board the wreckingcar and started.

He saw again all the incidents of the long run, not omitting the delay caused by hosecarts and a

hookandladder running to a cross town fire, during which time he and Clancey had joked Jaffers over the

dates with various fictitious damsels out of which he had been cheated by the night's extra work.

Came the long line of stalled streetcars, the crowd, the police holding it back, the two ambulances drawn up

and waiting their freight, and the young policeman, whose beat it was, white and shaken, greeting him 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

But he, strong man and hearty, used to such work, weary with the hard day and with a pleasant picture of the

bright little flat waiting him 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 crawled under the car on hands and knees.

Again he saw himself as he pressed the switch of his electric torch and looked. Again he saw the twin braids

of heavy golden hair ere his thumb relaxed from the switch, leaving him in darkness.

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

"Both dead," he answered quietly. "Clancey, pass in a number three jack, and get under yourself with another

He lay on his back, staring straight up at one single star that rocked mistily through a thinning of cloudstuff

overhead. The old ache was in his throat, the old harsh dryness in mouth and eyes. And he knewwhat no

other man knewwhy he was in the Solomons, skipper of the teakbuilt yacht Arangi, running niggers,

Not since that night had he looked with warm eyes on any woman. And he had been noted by other whites as

But, having visioned the ultimate horror of memory, Van Horn was soon able to fall asleep again, delightfully

aware, as he drowsed off, of Jerry's head on his shoulder. Once, when Jerry, dreaming of the beach at

Meringe and of Mister Haggin, Biddy, Terrence, and Michael, set up a low whimpering, Van Horn roused

sufficiently to soothe him closer to him, and to mutter ominously: "Any nigger that'd hurt that pup. . . "

At midnight when the mate touched him on the shoulder, in the moment of awakening and before he was

awake Van Horn did two things automatically and swiftly. He darted his right hand down to the pistol at his

"That'll be Kopo Point abreast," Borckman explained, as both men stared to windward at the high loom of the

"There's plenty of stuff making up there, if it'll ever come down," Van Horn said, as both men transferred

Scarcely had the mate fetched a blanket from below and turned in on deck, than a brisk steady breeze sprang

up from off the land, sending the Arangi through the smooth water at a nineknot clip. For a time Jerry tried

to stand the watch with Skipper, but he soon curled up and dozed off, partly on the deck and partly on

When Skipper carried him to the blanket and rolled him in, he was quickly 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 was the will of Skipper that he should remain in the

blanket, that everything was all right, and that Skipper would be up and down and near him all the time.

"Reeled off thirty miles," Van Horn told him. "But now 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

Jerry roused to Skipper's entrance under the blanket, and, quite as if it were a longestablished custom, curled

in between his arm and side, and, after one happy sniff and one kiss of his cool little tongue, as Skipper

Half an hour later, to all intents and purposes, so far as Jerry could or could not comprehend, the world might

well have seemed suddenly coming to an end. What awoke him was the flying leap of Skipper that sent the

blanket one way and Jerry the other. The deck of the Arangi had become a wall, down which Jerry slipped

through the roaring dark. Every rope and shroud was thrumming and screeching in resistance to the fierce

"Stand by main halyards!Jump!" he could hear Skipper shouting loudly; also he heard the high note of the

mainsheet screaming across the sheaves as Van Horn, bending braces in the dark, was swiftly slacking the

While all this, along with many other noises, squealings of boat boys and shouts of Borckman, was

impacting on Jerry's eardrums, he was 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 might well have been broken. Instead, the warm

ocean water, pouring inboard across the buried rail in a flood of pale phosphorescent fire, cushioned his fall.

And he swam, not to save his life, not with the fear of death upon him. There was but one idea in his mind.

Where was Skipper? Not that he had any thought of trying to save Skipper, nor that he might be of assistance

to him. It was the heart of love that drives one always toward the beloved. As the mother in catastrophe tries

to gain her babe, as the Greek who, dying, remembered sweet Argos, as soldiers on a stricken field pass with

the names 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 Arangi righted with a jerk to an even keel, leaving Jerry

stranded in the starboard scuppers. He trotted across the level deck to Skipper, who, standing erect on

He felt Jerry's cool nose against his bare calf, heard his joyous sniff, and bent and caressed him. In the

darkness he could not see, but his heart warmed with knowledge that Jerry's tail was surely bobbing.

Many of the frightened return boys had crowded on deck, and their plaintive, querulous voices sounded like

the sleepy noises of a roost of 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,

while they listened with all their ears for any message of the elements from sea and air.

"Where's the rain?" Borckman demanded peevishly. "Always wind first, the rain follows and kills the wind.

The anxiety of the two men was sensed by Jerry, who, too, was on his toes. He pressed his cool nose to

Skipper's leg, and the rosekiss of his tongue brought him the salt taste of seawater.

Skipper bent suddenly, rolled Jerry with quick toughness into the blanket, and deposited him in the hollow

between two sacks of yams lashed on deck aft of the mizzenmast. As an afterthought, he fastened the blanket

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 boomtackle caused by Van Horn's giving of the

sheet, came across and fetched up to tautness on the tackle with a crash that shook the vessel and heeled her

violently to port. This second knockdown had come from the opposite direction, and it was mightier than

Jerry heard Skipper's voice ring out, first, to the mate: "Stand by mainhalyards! Throw off the turns! I'll take

care of the tackle!"; and, next, to some of the boat's crew: "Batto! you fella slack spanker tackle quick fella!

Here Van Horn was swept off his legs by an avalanche of return boys who had cluttered the deck with the

first squall. The squirming mass, of which he was part, slid down into the barbed wire of the port rail beneath

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 and clawed and scratched

frantically at the blanket to get out. Something had happened to Skipper. He knew that. It was all that he

But he ceased his yelping to listen to a new noisea thunderous slatting of canvas accompanied by shouts

and cries. He sensed, and sensed wrongly, that it boded ill, for he did not know that it was the mainsail being

lowered on the run after Skipper had slashed the boomtackle across with his sheathknife.

As the pandemonium grew, he added his own yelping to it until he felt 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 Biddy only the previous morning, who, still were

recently, had kicked him on his stub of a tail, and who not more than a week before he had seen throw a rock

The rope yarn had been parted, and Lerumie's fingers were feeling inside the blanket for him. Jerry snarled

his wickedest. The thing was sacrilege. He, as a white man's dog, was taboo to all blacks. He had early

learned the law that no nigger must ever touch a white god's dog. Yet Lerumie, who was all of evil, at this

And when the fingers touched him, his teeth closed upon them. Next, he was clouted by the black's free hand

with such force as to tear his clenched teeth down the fingers through skin and flesh until the fingers went

Raging like a tiny fiend, Jerry found himself picked up by the neck, halfthrottled, and flung through the air.

And while flying through the air, he continued to squall his rage. He fell into the sea and went under, gulping

a mouthful of salt water into his lungs, and came up strangling but swimming. Swimming was one of the

things he 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 had been compelled to learn to walk; but he swam as a matter of course.

The wind screamed about him. Flying froth, driven on the wind's breath, filled his mouth and nostrils and

beat into his eyes, stinging and blinding him. In the struggle to breathe he, all unlearned in the ways of the

sea, lifted his muzzle high in the air to get out of the suffocating welter. As a result, off the horizontal, the

churning of his legs no longer sustained him, and he went down and under perpendicularly. Again he

emerged, strangling with more salt water in his windpipe. This time, without reasoning it out, merely moving

along the line of least resistance, which was to him the line of greatest comfort, he straightened out in the sea

Through the darkness, as the squall spent itself, came the slatting of the halflowered mainsail, the shrill

voices of the boat's crew, a curse of Borckman's, and, dominating all, Skipper's voice, shouting:

"Grab the leech, you fella boys! Hang on! Drag down strong fella! Come in mainsheet two blocks! Jump,

At recognition of Skipper's voice, Jerry, floundering in the stiff and crisping sea that sprang up with the

easement of the wind, yelped eagerly and yearningly, all his love for his newfound beloved eloquent in his

throat. But quickly all sounds died away as the Arangi drifted from him. And then, in the loneliness of the

dark, on the heaving breast of the sea that he recognized as one more of the eternal enemies, he began to

Further, by the dim, shadowy ways of intuition, he knew his weakness in that merciless sea with no heart of

warmth, that threatened the unknowable thing, vaguely but terribly guessed, namely, death. As regarded

himself, he did not comprehend death. He, who had never known the time when he was not alive, could not

Yet it was there, shouting its message of warning through every tissue cell, every nerve quickness and brain

sensitivity of hima totality of sensation that foreboded the ultimate catastrophe of life about which he knew

nothing at all, but which, nevertheless, he felt to be the conclusive supreme disaster. Although he did not

comprehend it, he apprehended it no less poignantly than do men who know and generalize far more deeply

As a man struggles in the throes of nightmare, so Jerry struggled in the vexed, saltsuffocating sea. And so he

whimpered and cried, lost child, lost puppydog that he was, only half a year existent in the fair world sharp

On board the Arangi, relieved by the lowering of her mainsail, as the fierceness went out of the wind and the

cloudburst of tropic rain began to fall, Van Horn and Borckman lurched toward each other in the blackness.

"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

aftersail and permitting her headsails to fill on the other tack. The Arangi was beginning to work back

approximately over the course she had just traversed. And this meant that she was going back toward Jerry

floundering in the sea. Thus, the balance, on which his life titubated, was inclined in his favour by the blunder

Keeping the Arangi on the new tack, Van Horn set Borckman clearing the mess of ropes on deck, himself,

squatting in the rain, undertaking to longsplice the tackle he had cut. As the rain thinned, so that the crackle

of it on deck became less noisy, he was attracted by a sound from out over the water. He suspended the work

of his hands to listen, and, when he recognized Jerry's wailing, sprang to his feet, galvanized into action.

"Hey! You fella boat's crew! Come in spanker sheet! Flatten her down good fella!"

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

"Hard down your wheel!" he ordered the helmsman, then leaped to the wheel and put it down himself,

repeating over and over aloud, "Nor'east by east a quarter, nor'east by east a quarter."

Back and peering into the binnacle, he listened vainly for another wail from Jerry in the hope of verifying his

first hasty bearing. But not long he waited. Despite the fact that by his manoeuvre the Arangi had been hove

to, he knew that windage and seadriftage would quickly send her away from the swimming puppy. He

shouted Borckman to come aft and haul in the whaleboat, while he hurried below for his electric torch and a

The ketch was so small that she was compelled to tow her one whaleboat astern on long double painters, and

by the time the mate had it hauled in under the stern, Van Horn was back. He was undeterred by the barbed

wire, lifting boy after boy of the boat's crew over it and dropping them sprawling into the boat, following

himself, as the last, by swinging over on the spanker boom, and calling his last instructions as the painters

"Get a riding light on deck, Borckman. Keep her hove to. Don't hoist the mainsail. Clean up the decks and

He took the steeringsweep and encouraged the rowers with: "Washee washee, good fella,

As he steered, he kept flashing the torch on the boat compass so that he could keep headed northeast by east

a quarter east. Then he remembered that the boat compass, on such course, deviated two whole points from

Occasionally he bade the rowers cease, while he listened and called for 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 he reasoned must

"Now you fella boy listen ear belong you," he said, toward the first. "Maybe one fella boy hear 'm pickaninny

dog sing out, I give 'm that fella boy five fathom calico, two ten sticks tobacco."

At the end of half an hour he was offering "Two ten fathoms calico and ten ten sticks tobacco" to the boy

Jerry was in bad shape. Not accustomed to swimming, strangled by the salt water that lapped into his open

mouth, he was getting loggy when first he chanced to see the flash of the captain's torch. This, however, he

did not connect with Skipper, and so took no more notice 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 might not be a star. He continued to wail

and to strangle with more salt water. But when he at length heard Skipper's voice he went immediately wild.

He attempted to stand up and to rest his forepaws on Skipper's voice coming out of the darkness, as he would

have rested his forepaws on Skipper's leg had he been near. The result was disastrous. Out of the horizontal,

This lasted for a short time, during which the strangling prevented him from answering Skipper's cry, which

continued to reach him. But when he could answer he burst forth in a joyous yelp. Skipper was coming to

take him out of the stinging, biting sea that blinded his eyes and hurt him to breathe. Skipper was truly a god,

Soon he heard the rhythmic clack of the oars on the tholepins, and the joy in his own yelp was duplicated by

the joy in Skipper's voice, which kept up a running encouragement, broken by objurgations to the rowers.

"All right, Jerry, old man. All right, Jerry. All right.Washee washee, you fella boy!Coming, Jerry,

coming. Stick it out, old man. Stay with it.Washeewashee like hell!Here we are, Jerry. Stay with it.

And then, with amazing abruptness, Jerry saw the whaleboat dimly emerge from the gloom close upon him,

was blinded by the stab of the torch full in his eyes, and, even as he yelped his joy, felt and recognized

Skipper's hand clutching him by the slack of the neck and lifting him into the air.

He landed wet and soppily against Skipper's rainwet chest, his tail bobbing frantically against Skipper's

containing arm, his body wriggling, his tongue dabbing madly all over Skipper's chin and mouth and cheeks

and nose. And Skipper did not know that he was himself wet, and that he was in the first shock of recurrent

malaria precipitated by the wet and the excitement. He knew only that the puppydog, given him only the

While the boat's crew bent to the oars, he steered with the sweep between his arm and his side in order that he

"You little son of a gun," he crooned, and continued to croon, over and over. "You little son of a gun."

And Jerry responded with tonguekisses, whimpering and crying as is 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

"The pup didn't just calmly walk overboard. Nor was he washed overboard. I had him fast and triced in the

He walked over, the centre of the boat's crew and of the threescore return boys who were all on deck, and

"That proves it. The ropeyarn's cut. The knot's still in it. Now what nigger is responsible?"

He looked about at the circle of dark faces, flashing the light on them, and such was the accusation and anger

He bent suddenly down to Jerry, who was standing as close against his legs as he could, so close that his wet

"You know 'm, Jerry, you known the black fella boy," he said, his words quick and exciting, his hand moving

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

"I do believe the dog could lead me to him," Van Horn confided to the mate. "Come on, Jerry, find 'm, sick

All that Jerry knew was that Skipper wanted something. He must find something that Skipper wanted, and he

was eager to serve. He pranced about aimlessly and willingly for a space, while Skipper's urging cries

increased his excitement. Then he was struck by an idea, and a most definite idea it was. The circle of boys

broke to let him through as he raced for'ard along the starboard side to the tightlashed heap of tradeboxes.

He put his nose into the opening where the wilddog laired, and sniffed. Yes, the wilddog was inside. Not

He looked up to Skipper questioningly. Was it that Skipper wanted him to go in after the wilddog? But

Skipper laughed and waved his hand to show that he wanted him to search in other places for something else.

He leaped away, sniffing in likely places where experience had taught him cockroaches and rats might be.

Yet it quickly dawned on him that it was not such things Skipper was after. His heart was wild with desire to

This brought livelier urgings and encouragements from Skipper, and made him almost frantic. That was it. He

must identify the boat's crew and the return boys by their legs. He hurried the task, passing swiftly from boy

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 his sacred person by laying hands on him, and that it was Lerumie who had thrown him

With a cry of rage, a flash of white teeth, and a bristle of short neckhair, he sprang for the black. Lerumie

fled down the deck, and Jerry pursued amid the laughter of all the blacks. Several times, in making the circuit

of the deck, he managed to scratch the flying calves with his teeth. Then Lerumie took to the main rigging,

About this point the blacks grouped in a semicircle at a respectful distance, with Van Horn to the fore beside

Jerry. Van Horn centred his electric torch on the black in the rigging, and saw the long parallel scratches on

the fingers of the hand that had invaded Jerry's blanket. He pointed them out significantly to Borckman, who

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

Captain Van Horn debated the while he fondled the puppy in his arms. After all, it was a return boy. In a day,

"My word," he harangued, "me angry along you. Me angry big fella too much along you. Me angry along you

any amount. What name you fella boy make 'm pickaninny dog belong along me walk about along water?"

Lerumie was unable to answer. He rolled his eyes helplessly, resigned to receive a whipping such as he had

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

"For two sticks tobacco I knock 'm seven bells outa you," the skipper bullied. "Now me give you strong fella

talk too much. You look 'm eye belong you one time along this fella dog belong me, I knock 'm seven bells

The return boys went below to sleep in the cabin. Borckman and the boat's crew hoisted the mainsail and put

the Arangi on her course. And Skipper, under a dry blanket from below, lay down to sleep with Jerry, head

At seven in the morning, when Skipper rolled him out of the blanket and got up, Jerry celebrated the new day

by chasing the wilddog back into his hole and by drawing a snicker from the blacks on deck, when, with a

growl and a flash of teeth, he made Lerumie sidestep half a dozen feet and yield the deck to him.

He shared breakfast with Skipper, who, instead of eating, washed down with a cup of coffee fifty grains of

quinine wrapped in a cigarette paper, and who complained to the mate that he would have to get under the

blankets and sweat out the fever that was attacking him. Despite his chill, and despite his teeth that were

already beginning to chatter while the burning sun extracted the moisture in curling mistwreaths from the

deck planking, Van Horn cuddled Jerry in his arms and called him princeling, and prince, and a king, and a

For Van Horn had often listened to the recitals of Jerry's pedigree by Tom Haggin, over Scotchandsodas,

when it was too pestilentially hot to go to bed. And the pedigree was as royalblooded as was possible for an

Irish terrier to possess, whose breed, beginning with the ancient Irish wolfhound, had been moulded and

There was Terrence the Magnificentdescended, as Van Horn remembered, from the Americanbred

Milton Droleen, out of the Queen of County Antrim, Breda Muddler, which royal bitch, as every one who is

familiar with the stud book knows, goes back as far as the almost mythical Spuds, with along the way no

primrose dallyings with black andtan Killeney Boys and Welsh nondescripts. And did not Biddy trace to

Erin, mother and star of the breed, through a long descendant out of Breda Mixer, herself an ancestress of

Breda Muddler? Nor could be omitted from the purple record the later ancestress, Moya Doolen.

So Jerry knew the ecstasy of loving and of being loved in the arms of his lovegod, although little he knew of

such phrases as "king's son" and "son of kings," save that they connoted love for him in the same way that

Lerumie's hissing noises connoted hate. One thing Jerry knew without knowing that he knew, namely, that in

the few hours he had been with Skipper he loved him more than he had loved Derby and Bob, who, with the

exception of Mister Haggin, were the only other whitegods he had ever known. He was not conscious of

this. He merely loved, merely acted on the prompting of his heart, or head, or whatever organic or anatomical

part of him that developed the mysterious, delicious, and insatiable hunger called "love."

Skipper went below. He went all unheeding of Jerry, who padded softly at his heels until the companionway

was reached. Skipper was unheeding of Jerry because of the fever that wrenched his flesh and chilled his

bones, that made his head seem to swell monstrously, that glazed the world to his swimming eyes and made

him walk feebly and totteringly like a drunken man or a man very aged. And Jerry sensed that something was

Skipper, beginning the babblings of delirium which alternated with silent moments of control in order to get

below and under blankets, descended the ladderlike stairs, and Jerry, allyearning, controlled himself in

silence and watched the slow descent with the hope that when Skipper reached the bottom he would raise his

arms and lift him down. But Skipper was too far gone to remember that Jerry existed. He staggered, with

widespread arms to keep from falling, along the cabin floor for'ard to the bunk in the tiny stateroom.

Jerry was truly of a kingly line. He wanted to call out and beg to be taken down. But he did not. He controlled

himself, he knew not why, save that he was possessed by a nebulous awareness that Skipper must be

considered as a god should be considered, and that this was no time to obtrude himself on Skipper. His heart

was torn with desire, although he made no sound, and he continued only to yearn over the companion

But even kings and their descendants have their limitations, and at the end of a quarter of an hour Jerry was

ripe to cease from his silence. With the going below of Skipper, evidently in great trouble, the light had gone

out of the day for Jerry. He might have stalked the wilddog, 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 made no note of them. Not even the flopping, bellying mainsail

overhead, as the Arangi rolled becalmed, could draw a glance of quizzical regard from him.

Just as it was tremblingly imperative that Jerry must suddenly squat down, point his nose at the zenith, and

vocalize his heartrending 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 luncheon today, he selects green peas and rejects

string beans, when only yesterday he elected to choose string beans and to reject green peas. No more can it

be explained than can a human judge, sentencing a convicted criminal and imposing eight years

imprisonment instead of the five or nine years that also at the same time floated upward in his brain, explain

why he categorically determined on eight years as the just, adequate punishment. Since not even humans,

who are almost halfgods, can fathom the mystery of the genesis of ideas and the dictates of choice,

appearing in their consciousness as ideas, it is not to be expected of a more dog to know the why of the ideas

And so Jerry. Just as he must immediately howl, he was aware that the idea, an entirely different idea, was

there, in the innermost centre of the quickthinkingness of him, with all its compulsion. He obeyed the idea

as a marionette obeys the strings, and started forthwith down the deck aft in quest of the mate.

He had an appeal to make to Borckman. Borckman was also a two legged whitegod. Easily could

Borckman lift him down the precipitous ladder, which was to him, unaided, a taboo, the violation of which

was pregnant with disaster. But Borckman had in him little of the heart of love, which is understanding. Also,

Borckman was busy. Besides overseeing the continuous adjustment, by trimming of sails and orders to the

helmsman, of the Arangi to her way on the sea, and overseeing the boat's crew at its task of washing deck and

polishing brasswork, he was engaged in steadily nipping from a stolen bottle of his captain's whiskey which

he had stowed away in the hollow between the two sacks of yams lashed on deck aft the mizzenmast.

Borckman was on his way for another nip, after having thickly threatened to knock seven bells and the ten

commandments out of the black at the wheel for faulty steering, when Jerry appeared before him and blocked

the way to his desire. But Jerry did not block him as he would have blocked Lerumie, for instance. There was

no showing of teeth, no bristling of neck hair. Instead, Jerry was all placation and appeal, all softness of

pleading in a body denied speech that nevertheless was articulate, from wagging tail and wriggling sides to

flatlaid ears and eyes that almost spoke, to any human sensitive of understanding.

But Borckman saw in his way only a fourlegged creature of the brute world, which, in his arrogant

brutalness he esteemed more brute than himself. All the pretty picture of the soft puppy, instinct with

communicativeness, bursting with tenderness of petition, was veiled to his vision. What he saw was merely a

fourlegged animal to be thrust aside while he continued his lordly twolegged progress toward the bottle

that could set maggots crawling in his brain and make him dream dreams that he was prince, not peasant, that

And thrust aside Jerry was, by a rough and naked foot, as harsh and unfeeling in its impact as an inanimate

breaking sea on a beachjut of insensate rock. He halfsprawled on the slippery deck, regained his balance,

and stood still and looked at the whitegod who had treated him so cavalierly. The meanness and unfairness

had brought from Jerry no snarling threat of retaliation, such as he would have offered Lerumie or any other

black. Nor in his brain was any thought of retaliation. This was no Lerumie. This was a superior god,

twolegged, whiteskinned, like Skipper, like Mister Haggin and the couple of other superior gods he had

known. Only did he know hurt, such as any child knows under the blow of a thoughtless or unloving mother.

In the hurt was mingled a resentment. He was keenly aware that there were two sorts of roughness. There was

the kindly roughness of love, such as when Skipper gripped him by the jowl, shook him till his teeth rattled,

and thrust him away with an unmistakable invitation to come back and be so shaken again. Such roughness,

to Jerry, was heaven. In it was the intimacy of contact with a beloved god who in such manner elected to

But this roughness of Borckman was different. It was the other kind of roughness in which resided no warm

affection, no hearttouch of love. Jerry did not quite understand, but he sensed the difference and resented,

without expressing in action, the wrongness and unfairness of it. So he stood, after regaining balance, and

soberly regarded, in a vain effort to understand, the mate with a bottle bottom inverted skyward, the mouth

to his lips, the while his throat made gulping contractions and noises. And soberly he continued to regard the

mate when he went aft and threatened to knock the "Song of Songs" and the rest of the Old Testament out of

the black helmsman whose smile of teeth was as humbly gentle and placating as Jerry's had been when he

Leaving this god as a god unliked and not understood, Jerry sadly trotted back to the companionway and

yearned his head over the combing in the direction in which he had seen Skipper disappear. What bit at his

consciousness and was a painful incitement in it, was his desire 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 serve him. And, wanting Skipper, in his helplessness and youngness

in experience of the world, he whimpered and cried his heart out across the companion combing, and was too

clean and direct in his sorrow to be deflected by an outburst of anger against the niggers, on deck and below,

From the crest of the combing to the cabin floor was seven feet. He had, only a few hours before, climbed the

precipitous stairway; but it was impossible, and he knew it, to descend the stairway. And yet, at the last, he

dared it. So compulsive was the prod of his heart to gain to Skipper at any cost, so clear was his

comprehension that he could not climb down the ladder head first, with no grippingness of legs and feet and

muscles such as were possible in the ascent, that he did not attempt it. He launched outward and down, in one

magnificent and loveheroic leap. He knew that he was violating a taboo of life, just as he knew he was

violating a taboo if he sprang into Meringe Lagoon where swam the dreadful crocodiles. Great love is always

capable of expressing itself in sacrifice and selfimmolation. And only for love, and for no lesser reason,

He struck on his side and head. The one impact knocked the breath out of him; the other stunned him. Even in

his unconsciousness, lying on his side and quivering, he made rapid, spasmodic movements of his legs as if

running for'ard to Skipper. The boys looked on and laughed, and when he no longer quivered and churned his

legs they continued to laugh. Born in savagery, having lived in savagery all their lives and known naught

else, their sense of humour was correspondingly savage. To them, the sight of a stunned and possibly dead

Not until the fourth minute ticked off did returning consciousness enable Jerry to crawl to his feet and with

widespread legs and swimming eyes adjust himself to the Arangi's roll. Yet with the first glimmerings of

consciousness persisted the one idea that he must gain to Skipper. Blacks? In his anxiety and solicitude and

love they did not count. He ignored the chuckling, grinning, girding black boys, who, but for the fact that he

was under the terrible aegis of the big fella white marster, would have delighted to kill and eat the puppy

who, in the process of training, was proving a most capable niggerchaser. Without a turn of head or roll of

eye, aristocratically positing their nonexistingness to their faces, he trotted for'ard along the cabin floor and

Jerry, who had never had malaria, did not understand. But in his heart he knew great trouble in that Skipper

was in trouble. Skipper did not recognize him, even when he sprang into the bunk, walked across Skipper's

heaving chest, and licked the acrid sweat of fever from Skipper's face. Instead, Skipper's wildlythrashing

This was roughness that was not loveroughness. Nor was it the roughness of Borckman spurning him away

with his foot. It was part of Skipper's trouble. Jerry did not reason this conclusion. But, and to the point, he

acted upon it as if he had reasoned it. In truth, through inadequacy of one of the most adequate languages in

the world, it can only be said that Jerry sensed the new difference of this roughness.

He sat up, just out of range of one restless, beating arm, yearned to 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 suffered all Skipper's

"Eh, Clancey," Skipper babbled. "It's a fine job this day, and no better crew to clean up after the dubs of

motormen. . . . Number three jack, Clancey. Get under the for'ard end." And, as the spectres of his nightmare

metamorphosed: "Hush, darling, talking to your dad like that, telling him the combing 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 goldmedal prizewinner in the combing of his lovely daughter's lovely hair. .

. . She's broken out! Give her the wheel aft there! Jib and foretopsail halyards! Full and by, there! A good

full! . . . Ah, she takes it like the beauty fairy boat that she is upon the sea. . . I'll just lift thatsure, the limit.

Blackey, when you pay as much to see my cards as I'm going to pay to see yours, you're going to see some

And so the farrago of unrelated memories continued to rise vocal on Skipper's lips to the heave of his body

and the beat of his arms, while Jerry, crouched against the side of the bunk mourned and mourned his grief

and inability to be of help. All that was occurring was beyond him. He knew no more of poker hands than did

he know of getting ships under way, of clearing up surface car wrecks in New York, or of combing the long

"Both dead," Skipper said in a change of delirium. He said it quietly, as if announcing the time of day, then

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's shoulder, his cool nose barely

touching Skipper's cheek, and felt the arm curl about him and press him closer. The hand bent from the wrist

and caressed him protectingly, and the warm contact of his velvet body put a change in Skipper's sick dreams,

for he began to mutter in cold and bitter ominousness: "Any nigger that as much as bats an eye at that puppy.

When, in half an hour, Van Horn's sweat culminated in profusion, it marked the breaking of the malarial

attack. Great physical relief was his, and the last mists of delirium ebbed from his brain. But he was left

limply weak, and, after tossing off the blankets and recognizing Jerry, he fell into a refreshing natural sleep.

Not till two hours later did he awake and start to go on deck. Halfway up the companion, he deposited Jerry

on deck and went back to the stateroom for a forgotten bottle of quinine. But he did not immediately return to

Jerry. The long drawer under Borckman's bunk 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 prevented it from falling to the floor. The matter

was serious. There was little doubt in his mind, had the drawer, in the midst of the squall of the previous

night, fallen to the floor, that no Arangi and no soul of the eighty souls on board would have been left. For

the 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 sorted and arranged the

varied contents, and with a screwdriver and a longer screw reattached the button.

In the meantime, Jerry was encountering new adventure not of the pleasantest. While waiting for Skipper to

return, Jerry chanced to see the wilddog brazenly lying on deck a dozen feet from his lair in the

tradeboxes. Instantly stiffly crouching, Jerry began to stalk. Success seemed assured, for the wilddog, with

And at this moment the mate, twolegging it along the deck from for'ard in the direction of the bottle stored

between the yam sacks, called, "Jerry," in a remarkably husky voice. Jerry flattened his filbertshaped ears

and wagged his tail in acknowledgment, but advertised his intention of continuing to stalk his enemy. And at

sound of the mate's voice the wilddog flung quickopened eyes in Jerry's direction and flashed into his

burrow, where he immediately turned around, thrust his head out with a show of teeth, and snarled

Baulked of his quarry by the inconsiderateness of the mate, Jerry trotted back to the head of the companion to

wait for Skipper. But Borckman, whose brain was well acrawl by virtue of the many nips, clung to a petty

idea after the fashion of drunken men. Twice again, imperatively, he called Jerry to him, and twice again,

with flattened ears of gentleness and wagging tail, Jerry goodnaturedly expressed his disinclination. Next,

Borckman remembered his first idea and continued to the bottle, which he generously inverted skyward. But

the second idea, petty as it was, persisted; and, after swaying and mumbling to himself for a time, after

unseeingly making believe to study the crisp fresh breeze that filled the Arangi's sails and slanted her deck,

and, after sillily attempting on the helmsman to portray eaglelike vigilance in his drinkswimming eyes, he

Jerry's first intimation of Borckman's arrival was a cruel and painful clutch on his flank and groin that made

him cry out in pain and whirl around. Next, as the mate had seen Skipper do in play, Jerry had his jowls

seized in a toothclattering shake that was absolutely different from the Skipper's rough loveshake. His

head and body were shaken, his teeth clattered painfully, and with the roughest of roughness he was flung

Now Jerry was a gentleman. All the soul of courtesy was in him, for equals and superiors. After all, even in

an inferior like the wild dog, he did not consciously press an advantage very farnever extremely far. In

his stalking and rushing of the wilddog, he had been more sound and fury than an overbearing bully. But

with a superior, with a twolegged whitegod like Borckman, there was more a demand upon his control,

restraint, and inhibition of primitive promptings. He did not want to play with the mate a game that he

ecstatically played with Skipper, because he had experienced no similar liking for the mate, twolegged

And still Jerry was all gentleness. He came back in a feeble imitation rush of the wholehearted rush that he

had learned to make on Skipper. He was, in truth, acting, playacting, attempting to do what he had no

heartprompting to do. He made believe to play, and uttered simulated growls that failed of the verity of

He bobbed his tail goodnaturedly and friendly, and growled ferociously and friendly; but the keenness of

the drunkenness of the mate discerned the difference and aroused in him, vaguely, the intuition of difference,

of playacting, of cheating. Jerry was cheatingout of his heart of consideration. Borckman drunkenly

recognized the cheating without crediting the heart of good behind it. On the instant he was antagonistic.

Forgetting that he was only a brute, he posited that this was no more than a brute with which he strove to play

Red war was inevitablenot first on Jerry's part, but on Borckman's part. Borckman felt the abysmal urgings

of the beast, as a beast, to prove himself master of this fourlegged beast. Jerry felt his jowl and jaw clutched

still more harshly and hardly, and, with increase of harshness and hardness, he was flung farther down the

deck, which, on account of its growing slant due to heavier gusts of wind, had become a steep and slippery

He came back, clawing frantically up the slope that gave him little footing; and he came back, no longer with

poorly attempted simulation of ferocity, but impelled by the first flickerings of real ferocity. He did not know

this. If he thought at all, he was under the impression that he was playing the game as he had played it with

Skipper. In short, he was taking an interest in the game, although a radically different interest from what he

This time his teeth flashed quicker and with deeper intent at the jowlclutching hand, and, missing, he was

seized and flung down the smooth incline harder and farther than before. He was growing angry, as he

clawed back, though he was not conscious of it. But the mate, being a man, albeit a drunken one, sensed the

change in Jerry's attack ere Jerry dreamed there was any change in it. And not only did Borckman sense it,

but it served as a spur to drive him back into primitive beastliness, and to fight to master this puppy as a

primitive man, under dissimilar provocation, might have fought with the members of the first litter stolen

True, Jerry could trace as far back. His ancient ancestors had been Irish wolfhounds, and, long before that,

the ancestors of the wolf hounds had been wolves. The note in Jerry's growls changed. The unforgotten and

ineffaceable past strummed the fibres of his throat. His teeth flashed with fierce intent, in the desire of

sinking as deep in the man's hand as passion could drive. For Jerry by this time was all passion. He had

leaped back into the dark stark rawness of the early world almost as swiftly as had Borckman. And this time

his teeth scored, ripping the tender and sensitive and flesh of all the inside of the first and second joints of

Borckman's right hand. Jerry's teeth were needles that stung, and Borckman, gaining the grasp on Jerry's jaw,

flung him away and down so that almost he hit the Arangi's tinyrail ere his clawing feet stopped him.

And Van Horn, having finished his rearrangement and repair of the explosivefilled drawer under the mate's

bunk, climbed up the companion steps, saw the battle, paused, and quietly looked on.

But he looked across a million years, at two mad creatures who had slipped the leach of the generations and

who were back in the darkness of spawning life ere dawning intelligence had modified the chemistry of such

life to softness of consideration. What stirred in the brain crypts of Borckman's heredity, stirred in the brain

crypts of Jerry's heredity. Time had gone backward for both. All the endeavour and achievement of the ten

thousand generations was not, and, as wolfdog and wildman, the combat was between Jerry and the mate.

Neither saw Van Horn, who was inside the companionway hatch, his eyes level with the combing.

To Jerry, Borckman was now no more a god than was he himself a mere, smoothcoated Irish terrier. Both

had forgotten the million years stamped into their heredity more feebly, less eraseably, than what had been

stamped in prior to the million years. Jerry did not know drunkenness, but he did know unfairness; and it was

with raging indignation that he knew it. Borckman fumbled his next counter to Jerry's attack, missed, and had

both hands slashed in quick succession ere he managed to send the puppy sliding.

And still Jerry came back. As any screaming creature of the jungle, he hysterically squalled his indignation.

But he made no whimper. Nor did he wince or cringe to the blows. He bored straight in, striving, without

avoiding a blow, to beat and meet the blow with his teeth. So hard was he flung down the last time that his

The mate turned in the startle of surprise at being observed. The sharp, authoritative words of Van Horn were

a call across the million years. Borckman's angerconvulsed face ludicrously attempted a sheepish,

deprecating grin, and he was just mumbling, "We was only playing," when Jerry arrived back, leaped in the

Borckman immediately and insanely went back across the million years. An attempted kick got his ankle

scored for his pains. He gibbered his own rage and hurt, and, stooping, dealt Jerry a tremendous blow

alongside the head and neck. Being in midleap when he received the blow Jerry was twistingly

somersaulted sidewise before he struck the deck on his back. As swiftly as he could scramble to footing and

He obeyed, but only by prodigious effort, his neck bristling and his lips writhing clear of his teeth as he

passed the mate. For the first time there was a whimper in his throat; but it was not the whimper of fear, nor

of pain, but of outrage, and of desire to continue the battle which he struggled to control at Skipper's behest.

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

"Borckman, you ought to be ashamed. You ought to be shot or have your block knocked off for this. A

puppy, a little puppy scarcely weaned. For two cents I'd give you whatfor myself. The idea of it. A little

puppy, a weanling little puppy. Glad your hands are ripped. You deserved it. Hope you get bloodpoisoning

in them. Besides, you're drunk. Go below and turn in, and don't you dare come on deck until you're sober.

And Jerry, farjourneyer across life and across the history of all life that goes to make the world, strugglingly

mastering the abysmal slime of the prehistoric with the love that had come into existence and had become

warp and woof of him in far later time, his wrath of ancientness still faintly reverberating in his throat like the

rumblings of a passing thunderstorm, knew, in the wide warm ways of feeling, the augustness and

righteousness of Skipper. Skipper was in truth a god who did right, who was fair, who protected, and who

imperiously commanded this other and lesser god that slunk away before his anger.

Jerry and Skipper shared the long afternoonwatch together, the latter being guilty of recurrent chuckles and

exclamations such as: "Gottferdang, 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 of his own name, nevertheless knew that the

sounds made by Skipper were broad of praise and warm of love. And when Skipper stooped and rubbed his

ears, or received a rosekiss on extended fingers, or caught him up in his arms, Jerry's heart was nigh to

bursting. For what greater ecstasy can be the portion of any creature than that it be loved by a god? This was

just precisely Jerry's ecstasy. This was a god, a tangible, real, threedimensioned god, who went about and

ruled his world in a loincloth and on two bare legs, and who loved him with crooning noises in throat and

At four o'clock, measuring a glance at the afternoon sun and gauging the speed of the Arangi through the

water in relation to the closeness of Su'u, Van Horn went below and roughly shook the mate awake. Until

both returned, Jerry held the deck alone. But for the fact that the whitegods were there below and were

certain to be back at any moment, not many moments would Jerry have held the deck, for every lessened mile

between the return boys and Malaita contributed a rising of their spirits, and under the imminence of their

oldtime independence, Lerumie, as an instance of many of them, with strong gustatory sensations and a

positive drooling at the mouth, regarded Jerry in terms of food and vengeance that were identical.

Flathauled on the crisp breeze, the Arangi closed in rapidly with the land. Jerry peered through the barbed

wire, sniffing the air, Skipper beside him and giving orders to the mate and helmsman. The heap of

tradeboxes was now unlashed, and the boys began opening and shutting them. What gave them particular

delight was the ringing of the bell with which each box was equipped and which rang whenever a lid was

raised. Their pleasure in the toylike contrivance was that of children, and each went back again and again to

Fifteen of the boys were to be landed at Su'u and with wild gesticulations and cries they began to recognize

and point out the infinitesimal details of the landfall of the only spot they had known on earth prior to the

day, three years before, when they had been sold into slavery by their fathers, uncles, and chiefs.

A narrow neck of water, scarcely a hundred yards across, gave entrance to a long and tiny bay. The shore was

massed with mangroves and dense, tropical vegetation. There was no sign of houses nor of human

occupancy, although Van Horn, staring at the dense jungle so close at hand, knew as a matter of course that

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

"If I could smell like him," the captain said to the mate, "there wouldn't be any risk at all of my ever losing

But Borckman made no reply and sullenly went about his work. There was little wind in the bay, and the

Arangi slowly forged in and dropped anchor in thirty fathoms. So steep was the slope of the harbour bed from

the beach that even in such excessive depth the Arangi's stern swung in within a hundred feet of the

Van Horn continued to cast anxious glances at the wooded shore. For Su'u had an evil name. Since the

schooner Fair Hathaway, recruiting labour for the Queensland plantations, had been captured by the natives

and all hands slain fifteen years before, no vessel, with the exception of the Arangi, had dared to venture into

Far up the mountains, that towered many thousands of feet into the tradewind clouds, arose many signal

smokes that advertised the coming of the vessel. Far and near, the Arangi's presence was known; yet from the

jungle so near at hand only shrieks of parrots and chatterings of cockatoos could be heard.

The whaleboat, manned with six of the boat's crew, was drawn alongside, and the fifteen Su'u boys and their

boxes were loaded in. Under the canvas flaps along the thwarts, ready to hand for the rowers, were laid five

of the LeeEnfields. On deck, another of 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 stood near Tambi, who steered with a long sweep. Jerry raised a low whine and yearned over

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, Noola, LangaLanga, and far Malu they were in wholesome

fear, did they lose the protection of their white masters, of being eaten by the Su'u folk, just as the Su'u boys

What increased the danger of the boat was the absence of a covering boat. The invariable custom of the larger

recruiting vessels was to send two boats on any shore errand. While one landed on the beach, the other lay off

a short distance to cover the retreat of the shore party, if trouble broke out. Too small to carry one boat on

deck, the Arangi could not conveniently tow two astern; so Van Horn, who was the most daring of the

Tambi, under Van Horn's lowuttered commands, steered a parallel course along the shore. Where the

mangroves ceased, and where high 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, widebranched trees rose

above the jungle at this spot, and the runway showed like the entrance of a tunnel into the dense, green wall

Van Horn, regarding the shore for some sign of life, lighted a cigar and put one hand to the waistline of his

loincloth to reassure himself of the presence of the stick of dynamite that was tucked between the loincloth

and his skin. The lighted cigar was for the purpose, if emergency arose, of igniting the fuse of the dynamite.

And the fuse was so short, with its end split to accommodate the inserted head of a safety match, that between

the time of touching it off with the live cigar to the time of the explosion not more than three seconds could

elapse. This required quick cool work on Van Horn's part, in case need arose. In three seconds he would have

to light the fuse and throw the sputtering stick with directed aim to its objective. However, he did not expect

Five minutes passed, and the silence of the shore remained profound. Jerry sniffed Skipper's bare leg as if to

assure him that he was beside him no matter what threatened from the hostile silence of the land, then stood

up with his forepaws on the gunwale and continued to sniff eagerly and audibly, to prick his neck hair, and to

"They're there, all right," Skipper confided to him; and Jerry, with a sideward glance of smiling eyes, with a

bobbing of his tail and a quick loveflattening of his ears, turned his nose shoreward again and resumed his

reading of the jungle tale that was wafted to him on the light fans of the stifling and almost stagnant air.

"Hey!" Van Horn suddenly shouted. "Hey, you fella boy stick 'm head out belong you!"

As if in a transformation scene, the apparently tenantless jungle spawned 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 bows and arrows, with long throwing spears, with warclubs, and

with longhandled tomahawks. In a flash, one of them leaped into the sunlight in the open space where

runway and water met. Save for decorations, he was naked as Adam before the Fall. A solitary white feather

uprose from his kinky, glossy, black hair. A polished bodkin of white petrified shell, with sharppointed

ends, thrust through a hole in the partition of his nostrils, extended five inches across his face. About his

neck, from a cord of twisted coconut sennit, hung an ivorywhite necklace of wildboar's tusks. A garter of

white cowrie shells encircled one leg just below the knee. A flaming scarlet flower was coquettishly stuck

over one ear, and through a hole in the other ear was threaded a pig's tail so recently severed that it still bled.

As this dandy of Melanesia leaped into the sunshine, the Snider rifle in his hands came into position, aimed

from his hip, the generous muzzle bearing directly on Van Horn. No less quick was Van Horn. With equal

speed he had snatched his rifle and brought it to bear from his hip. So they stood and faced each other, death

in their fingertips, forty feet apart. The million years between barbarism and civilization also yawned

between them across that narrow gulf of forty feet. The hardest thing for modern, evolved man to do is to

forget his ancient training. Easiest of all things is it for him to forget his modernity and 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 fraction

of an instant can turn a twentiethcentury philosopher into an apelike arborean pounding his chest, gnashing

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 remaining modern for as

long as he could with his will master the study of ebon black of skin and dazzling white of decoration that

A long ten seconds of silence endured. Even Jerry, he knew not why, stilled the growl in his throat. Five

score of headhunting cannibals on the fringe of the jungle, fifteen Su'u return blacks in the boat, seven black

boat's crew, and a solitary white man with a cigar in his mouth, a rifle at his hip, and an Irish terrier bristling

against his bare calf, kept the solemn pact of those ten seconds, and no one of them knew or guessed what the

One of the return boys, in the bow of the whaleboat, made the peace sign with his palm extended outward and

weaponless, and began to chirp in the unknown Su'u dialect. Van Horn held his aim and waited. The dandy

lowered his Snider, and breath came more easily to the chests of all who composed the picture.

"You big fella fool too much," Van Horn retorted harshly, dropping his gun into the sternsheets, motioning

to rowers and steersman to turn the boat around, and puffing his cigar as carelessly casual as if, the moment

"My word," he went on with fine irritable assumption. "What name you stick 'm gun along me? Me no

kaikai (eat) along you. Me kai kai along you, stomach belong me walk about. You kaikai along me,

stomach belong you walk about. You no like 'm kaikai Su'u boy belong along you? Su'u boy belong you all

the same brother along you. Long time 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

Sniderarmed dandy. At another signal from Van Horn the rowers backed water and forced the boat, stern in,

up to the solid ground of the runway. And each rower, his oar in position in case of attack, privily felt under

the canvas flap to make sure of the exact location of his concealed Lee Enfield.

"All right boy belong you walk about?" Van Horn queried of the dandy, who signified the affirmative in the

Solomon Islands fashion by halfclosing his eyes and nodding his head upward, in a queer, perky way;

"No fear," the dandy answered. "Suppose 'm Su'u fella boy, all right. Suppose 'm no fella Su'u boy, my word,

big trouble. Ishikola, big fella black marster along this place, him talk 'm me talk along you. Him say any

amount bad fella boy stop 'm along bush. Him say big fella white marster no walk about. Him say jolly good

Van Horn nodded in an offhand way, as if the information were of little value, although he knew that for

this time Su'u would furnish him no fresh recruits. One at a time, compelling the others to remain 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. And Van Horn, smoking his cigar in

lordly indifferent fashion, kept his apparently uninterested eyes glued to each boy who made his way aft, box

on shoulder, and stepped out on the land. One by one they disappeared into the runway tunnel, and when the

"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. Overhead all 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 profuse sweat. They

ate their deckspread supper languidly and ever and anon used their forearms to wipe the stinging sweat from

"I'm too rotten with fever," the mate grumbled. "I'd die if I left. Remember, I tried it two years ago. It takes

the cold weather to bring out the fever. I arrived in Sydney on my back. They had to take me to hospital in an

ambulance. I got worse and worse. The doctors told me 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 meant a quick finish. They packed me on

board in another ambulance. And that's all I saw of Australia for my holiday. I don't want to stay in the

He rolled, at a rough estimate, thirty grains of quinine in a cigarette paper, regarded the result sourly for a

moment, then swallowed it at a gulp. This reminded Van Horn, who reached for the bottle and took a similar

Borckman directed several of the boat's crew in the rigging up of a thin tarpaulin, like a curtain along the

shore side of the Arangi. This was a precaution against any bushwhacking bullet from the mangroves only a

Van Horn sent Tambi below to bring up the small phonograph and run off the dozen or so scratchy, screechy

records that had already been under the needle a thousand times. Between records, Van Horn recollected the

girl, and had her haled out of her dark hole in the lazarette to listen to the music. She obeyed in fear,

apprehensive that her time had come. She looked dumbly at the big fella white master, her eyes large with

fright; nor did the trembling of her body cease for a long time after he had made her lie down. The

phonograph meant nothing to her. She knew only fearfear of this terrible white man that she was certain

Jerry left the caressing hand of Skipper for a moment to go over and sniff her. This was an act of duty. He

was identifying her once again. No matter what happened, no matter what months or years might elapse, he

would know her again and for ever know her again. He returned to the free hand of Skipper that resumed its

The wet sultry heat grew more oppressive. The air was nauseous with the dank mucky odour that cooked out

of the mangrove swamp. Rowelled by the squeaky music to recollection of oldworld ports and places,

Borckman lay on his face on the hot planking, beat a tattoo with his naked toes, and gutturally muttered an

unending monologue of curses. But Van Horn, with Jerry panting under his hand, placidly and

philosophically continued to smoke, lighting a fresh cigar when the first gave out.

He roused abruptly at the faint wash of paddles which he was the first on board to hear. In fact, it was Jerry's

low growl and neck rippling of hair that had keyed Van Horn to hear. Pulling the stick of dynamite out from

the twist of his loin cloth and glancing at the cigar to be certain it was alight, he rose to his feet with leisurely

Van Horn, before speaking again, loosened his automatic pistol half out of its holster, and slipped the holster

"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

Tambi obeyed, exposing the lantern twenty feet away from where his captain stood. This gave Van Horn the

advantage over the approaching canoemen, for the lantern, suspended through the barbed wire across the

rail and well down, would clearly illuminate the occupants of the canoe while he was left in semidarkness

"Washeewashee!" he urged peremptorily, while those in the invisible canoe still hesitated.

Came the sound of paddles, and, next, emerging into the lantern's area of light, the high, black bow of a war

canoe, curved like a gondola, inlaid with silveryglistening motherofpearl; the long lean length of the

canoe which was without outrigger; the shining eyes and the blackshining bodies of the stark blacks who

knelt in the bottom and paddled; Ishikola, the old chief, squatting amidships and not paddling, an unlighted,

emptybowled, shortstemmed clay pipe upsidedown between his toothless gums; and, in the stern, as

coxswain, the dandy, all nakedness of blackness, all whiteness of decoration, save for the pig's tail in one ear

Less than ten blacks had been known to rush a blackbirder officered by no more than two white men, and

Van Horn's hand closed on the butt 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 mouth and puffed it lively alight.

"Hello, Ishikola, you blooming old blighter," was Van Horn's greeting to the old chief, as the dandy, with a

pry of his steering paddle against the side of the canoe and part under its bottom, brought the dugout

Ishikola smiled upward in the lantern light. He smiled with his right eye, which was all he had, the left having

Van Horn joked him in understandable terms about the latest wives he had added to his harem and what price

"My word, night he stop," the captain objected, then added, as a concession against the known rule that

visitors were not permitted aboard after nightfall: "You come on board, boy stop 'm along boat."

Van Horn gallantly helped the old man to clamber to the rail, straddle the barbed wire, and gain the deck.

Ishikola was a dirty old savage. One of his tambos (tambo being bechedemer and Melanesian for "taboo")

was that water unavoidable must never touch his skin. He who lived by the salt sea, in a land of tropic

downpour, religiously shunned contact with water. He never went swimming or wading, and always fled to

shelter from a shower. Not that this was true of the rest of his tribe. It was the peculiar tambo laid upon him

by the devildevil doctors. Other tribesmen the devildevil doctors tabooed against eating shark, or handling

turtle, or contacting with crocodiles or the fossil remains of crocodiles, or from ever being smirched by the

So Ishikola, whose tambo was water, was crusted with the filth of years. He was sealed like a leper, and,

weazenfaced and age shrunken, he hobbled horribly from an ancient spearthrust to the thigh that twisted

his torso droopingly out of the vertical. But his one eye gleamed brightly and wickedly, and Van Horn knew

Van Horn shook hands with himan honour he accorded only chiefs and motioned him to squat down on

deck on his hams close to the fearstruck girl, who began trembling again at recollection of having once

heard Ishikola offer five twenties of drinking coconuts for the meat of her for a dinner.

Jerry needs must sniff, for future identification purposes, this graceless, limping, naked, oneeyed old man.

And, when he had sniffed and registered the particular odour, Jerry must growl intimidatingly and win a

"My word, good fella kaikai 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 of shellmoney, strung on a thread of

twisted coconut fibres, was equivalent in cash to half a sovereign in English currency, to two dollars and a

"One fathom shellmoney 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 so small a

price over par as not to arouse suspicion among the blacks as to how highly he really valued the

Ishikola next averred that the girl had grown much thinner, and that he, as a practical judge of meat, did not

feel justified this time in bidding more than three twentystrings of drinking coconuts.

After these amenities, the white master and the black talked of many things, the one bluffing with the

whiteman's superiority of intellect and knowledge, the other feeling and guessing, primitive statesman that

he was, in an effort to ascertain the balance of human and political forces that bore upon his Su'u territory, ten

miles square, bounded by the sea and by landward lines of an inter tribal warfare that was older than the

oldest Su'u myth. Eternally, heads had been taken and bodies eaten, now on one side, now on the other, by

the temporarily victorious tribes. The boundaries had remained the same. Ishikola, in crude bechedemer,

tried to learn the Solomon Islands general situation in relation to Su'u, and Van Horn was not above playing

the unfair diplomatic game as it is unfairly played in all the chancellories of the world powers.

"My word," Van Horn concluded; "you bad fella too much along this place. Too many heads you fella take;

"What name, long time black fella belong Su'u take 'm heads, kaikai along long pig?" Ishikola countered.

"My word," Van Horn came back, "too much along this place. Bime by, close up, big fella warship stop 'm

"Big fella Cambrian, him fella name belong ship," Van Horn lied, too well aware that no British cruiser had

The conversation was becoming rather a farcical dissertation upon the relations that should obtain between

states, irrespective of size, when it was broken off by a cry from Tambi, who, with another lantern hanging

Van Horn, with a leap, was at the rail and peering down over the barbed wire. Ishikola, despite his twisted

The dandy, in the stern, with a careless look upward, tried with his foot to shove over the green leaves so as

to cover the outjutting butts of several rifles, but made the matter worse by exposing them more fully. He

bent to rake the leaves over with his hand, but sat swiftly upright when Van Horn roared at him:

Van Horn turned on Ishikola, and simulated wrath which he did not feel against the ancient and

"What name you come alongside, gun he stop along canoe belong you?" he demanded.

The old saltwater chief rolled his one eye and blinked a fair simulation of stupidity and innocence.

"My word, me cross along you too much," Van Horn continued. "Ishikola, you plenty bad fella boy. You get

The old fellow limped across the deck with more agility than he had displayed coming aboard, straddled the

barbed wire without assistance, and without assistance dropped into the canoe, cleverly receiving his weight

on his uninjured leg. He blinked up for forgiveness and in reassertion of innocence. Van Horn turned his face

aside to hide a grin, and then grinned outright when the old rascal, showing his empty pipe, wheedled up:

While Borckman went below for the tobacco, Van Horn orated to Ishikola on the sacred solemnity of truth

and promises. Next, he leaned across 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

When Ishikola attempted protest, he shut him off with, "My word, you gammon along me too much."

Still the canoe lingered. The dandy's toe strayed privily to feel out the butts of the Sniders under the green

The paddlers, without command from chief or dandy, involuntarily obeyed, and with deep, strong strokes sent

the canoe into the encircling darkness. Just as quickly Van Horn changed his position on deck to the tune of a

dozen yards, so that no hazarded bullet might reach him. He crouched low and listened to the wash of paddles

"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,

As he smoked he watched the abrupt misting of the stars by a rain squall that made to windward or to where

windward might vaguely be configured. While he gauged the minutes ere he must order Tambi below with

the phonograph and records, he noted the bushgirl gazing at him in dumb fear. He nodded consent with

halfclosed eyes and uptilting face, clinching his consent with a wave of hand toward the companionway.

She obeyed as a beaten dog, spiritbroken, might have obeyed, dragging herself to her feet, trembling afresh,

and with backward glances of her perpetual terror of the big white master that she was convinced would some

day eat her. In such fashion, stabbing Van Horn to the heart because of his inability to convey his kindness to

her across the abyss of the ages that separated them, she slunk away to the companionway and crawled down

After he had sent Tambi to follow her with the precious phonograph, Van Horn continued to smoke on while

Only for five minutes did the rain descend. Then, as the stars drifted back in the sky, the smell of steam

seemed to stench forth from deck and mangrove swamp, and the suffocating heat wrapped all about.

Van Horn knew better, but ill health, save for fever, had never concerned him; so he did not bother for a

"Yours the first watch," he told Borckman. "I'll have her under way in the morning, before I call you."

He tucked his head on the biceps of his right arm, with the hollow of the left snuggling Jerry in against his

And thus adventuring, white men and indigenous black men from day to day lived life in the Solomons,

bickering and trafficking, the whites striving to maintain their heads on their shoulders, the blacks striving, no

less singleheartedly, to remove the whites' heads from their shoulders and at the same time to keep their

And Jerry, who knew only the world of Meringe Lagoon, learning that these new worlds of the ship Arangi

and of the island of Malaita were essentially the same, regarded the perpetual game between the white and the

Daylight saw the Arangi under way, her sails drooping heavily in the dead air while the boat's crew toiled at

the oars of the whaleboat to tow her out through the narrow entrance. Once, when the ketch, swerved by

some vagrant current, came close to the break of the shoresurf, the blacks on board drew toward one another

in apprehension akin to that of startled sheep in a fold when a wild woods marauder howls outside. Nor was

there any need for Van Horn's shout to the whaleboat: "Washeewashee! Damn your hides!" The boat's crew

lifted themselves clear of the thwarts as they threw all their weight into each stroke. They knew what dire fate

was certain if ever the seawashed coral rock gripped the Arangi's keel. And they knew fear precisely of the

same sort as that of the fearstruck girl below in the lazarette. In the past more than one LangaLanga and

Somo boy had gone to make a Su'u feast day, just as Su'u boys, on occasion, had similarly served feasts at

"My word," Tambi, at the wheel, addressed Van Horn as the period of tension passed and the Arangi went

clear. "Brother belong my father, long time before he come boat's crew along this place. Big fella schooner

brother belong my father he come along. All finish this place Su'u. Brother belong my father Su'u boys

Van Horn recollected the Fair Hathaway of fifteen years before, looted and burned by the people of Su'u after

all hands had been killed. Truly, the Solomons at this beginning of the twentieth century were savage, and

He cast his eyes speculatively up the slopes of the island to the seaman's landmark, Mount Kolorat,

greenforested to its cloudcapped summit four thousand feet in the air. Even as he looked, thin

smokecolumns were rising along the slopes and lesser peaks, and more were 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 telegraphy of smokesignalling, the message was

being conveyed from village to village and tribe to tribe that a labourrecruiter was on the leeward coast.

All morning, under a brisk beam wind which had sprung up with the rising of the sun, the Arangi flew north,

her course continuously advertised by the increasing smoketalk that gossiped along the green summits. At

high noon, with Van Horn, everattended by Jerry, standing for'ard and conning, the Arangi headed into the

wind to thread the passage between two palmtufted islets. There was need for conning. Coral patches uprose

everywhere from the turquoise depths, running the gamut of green from deepest jade to palest tourmaline,

over which the sea filtered changing shades, creamed lazily, or burst into white fountains of sunflashed

The smoke columns along the heights became garrulous, and long before the Arangi was through the passage

the entire leeward coast, from the saltwater men of the shore to the remotest bush villagers, knew that the

labour recruiter was going in to LangaLanga. As the lagoon, formed by the chain of islets lying off shore,

opened out, Jerry began to smell the reefvillages. Canoes, many canoes, urged by paddles or sailed before

the wind by the weight of the freshening South East trade on spread fronds of coconut palms, moved across

the smooth surface of the lagoon. Jerry barked intimidatingly at those that came closest, bristling his neck and

making a ferocious simulation of an efficient protector of the white god who stood beside him. And after each

such warning, he would softly dab his cool damp muzzle against the sunheated skin of Skipper's leg.

Once inside the lagoon, the Arangi filled away with the wind abeam. At the end of a swift halfmile she

rounded to, with headsails trimming down and with a great flapping of main and mizzen, and dropped

anchor in fifty feet of water so clear that every huge fluted clamshell was visible on the coral floor. The

whaleboat was not necessary to put the LangaLanga return boys ashore. Hundreds of canoes lay twenty

deep along both sides of the Arangi, and each boy, with his box and bell, was clamoured for by scores of

In such height of excitement, Van Horn permitted no one on board. Melanesians, unlike cattle, are as prone to

stampede to attack as to retreat. Two of the boat's crew stood beside the LeeEnfields on the skylight.

Borckman, with half the boat's crew, went about the ship's work. Van Horn, Jerry at his heels, careful that no

one should get at his back, superintended the departure of the Langa Langa returns and kept a vigilant eye

on the remaining half of the boat's crew that guarded the barbedwire rails. And each Somo boy sat on his

tradebox to prevent it from being tossed into the waiting canoes by some LangaLanga boy.

In half an hour the riot departed ashore. Only several canoes lingered, and from one of these Van Horn

beckoned aboard Nauhau, the biggest chief of the stronghold of LangaLanga. Unlike most of the big

chiefs, Nauhau was young, and, unlike most of the Melanesians, he was handsome, even beautiful.

"Hello, King o' Babylon," was Van Horn's greeting, for so he had named him because of fancied Semitic

resemblance blended with the crude power that marked his visage and informed his bearing.

Born and trained to nakedness, Nauhau trod the deck boldly and unashamed. His sole gear of clothing was a

length of trunk strap buckled about his waist. Between this and his bare skin was thrust the naked blade of a

teninch ripping knife. His sole decoration was a white China soupplate, perforated and strung on coconut

sennit, suspended from about his neck so that it rested flat on his chest and halfconcealed the generous swell

of muscles. It was the greatest of treasures. No man of Malaita he had ever heard of possessed an unbroken

Nor was he any more ridiculous because of the soupplate than was he ludicrous because of his nakedness.

He was royal. His father had been a king before him, and he had proved himself greater than his father. Life

and death he bore in his hands and head. Often he had exercised it, chirping to his subjects in the tongue of

LangaLanga: "Slay here," and "Slay there"; "Thou shalt die," and "Thou shalt live." Because his father, a

year abdicated, had chosen foolishly to interfere with his son's government, he had called two boys and had

them twist a cord of coconut around his father's neck so that thereafter he never breathed again. Because his

favourite wife, mother of his eldest born, had dared out of silliness of affection to violate one of his kingly

tamboos, he had had her killed and had himself selfishly and religiously eaten the last of her even to the

Royal he was, by nature, by training, by deed. He carried himself with consciousness of royalty. He looked

royalas a magnificent stallion may look royal, as a lion on a painted tawny desert may look royal. He was

as splendid a brutean adumbration of the splendid 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 heavylidded, lazy, insolent way he looked out of his eyes.

Royal in courage was he, this moment on the Arangi, despite the fact that he knew he walked on dynamite.

As he had long since bitterly learned, any white man was as much dynamite as was the mysterious

deathdealing missile he sometimes employed. When a stripling, he had made one of the canoe force that

attacked the sandalwoodcutter that had been even smaller than the Arangi. He had never forgotten that

mystery. Two of the three white men he had seen slain and their heads removed on deck. The third, still

fighting, had but the minute before fled below. Then the cutter, along with all her wealth of hoopiron,

tobacco, knives and calico, had gone up into the air and fallen back into the sea in scattered and fragmented

nothingness. It had been dynamitethe MYSTERY. And he, who had been hurled uninjured through the air

by a miracle of fortune, had divined that white men in themselves were truly dynamite, compounded of the

same mystery as the substance with which they shot the swift darting schools of mullet, or blow up, in

extremity, themselves and the ships on which they voyaged the sea from far places. And yet on this unstable

and deathterrific substance of which he was well aware Van Horn was composed, he trod heavily with his

personality, daring, to the verge of detonation, to impact it with his insolence.

"My word," he began, "what name you make 'm boy belong me stop along you too much?" Which was a true

and correct charge that the boys which Van Horn had just returned had been away three years and a half

"You talk that fella talk I get cross too much along you," Van Horn bristled back, and then added,

diplomatically, dipping into a half case of tobacco sawed across and proffering a handful of stick tobacco:

"Plenty tobacco stop along me," he lied. "What name one fella boy go way no come back?" he demanded.

Van Horn pulled the long slender account book out of the twist of his loincloth, and, while he skimmed its

pages, impressed Nauhau with the dynamite of the white man's superior powers which enabled him to

remember correctly inside the scrawled sheets of a book instead of inside his head.

"Sati," Van Horn read, his finger marking the place, his eyes alternating watchfully between the writing and

the black chief before him, while the black chief himself speculated and studied the chance of getting behind

him and, with the single knifethrust he knew so well, of severing the other's spinal cord at the base of the

"Sati," Van Horn read. "Last monsoon begin about this time, him fella Sati get 'm sick belly belong him too

much; bime by him fella Sati finish altogether," he translated into bechedemer the written information:

"Plenty work him fella Sati, long time," Nauhau drove to the point. "What come along money belong him?"

"Altogether him make 'm six tens pounds and two fella pounds gold money," was his translation of sixtytwo

pounds of wages. "I pay advance father belong him one ten pounds and five fella pounds. Him finish

"What name stop four tens pounds and seven fella pounds?" Nauhau demanded, his tongue, but not his

"Too much hurry you fella Nauhau. 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?" Nauhau continued inflexibly.

"Give 'm you hell," Van Horn refused, and in the blue of his eyes the black chief sensed the impression of the

dynamite out of which white men seemed made, and felt his brain quicken to the vision of the bloody day he

"What name that old fella boy stop 'm along canoe?" Van Horn asked, pointing to an old man in a canoe

Van Horn motioned the old man in and on board, beckoned Borckman to take charge of the deck and of

Nauhau, and went below to get the money from his strongbox. When he returned, cavalierly ignoring the

Van Horn glanced for verification to Nauhau, who nodded affirmation in the reverse Solomon way;

whereupon Van Horn counted twentysix gold sovereigns into the hand of Sati's father.

Immediately thereafter Nauhau extended his hand and received the sum. Twenty gold pieces the chief

retained for himself, returning to 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 a chief 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; Nauhau, by virtue of kingship, had robbed Sati's father of Sati's labour before Van Horn's eyes.

But Nauhau was not above strutting. He declined a proffered present of tobacco, bought a case of stick

tobacco from Van Horn, paying him five pounds for it, and insisted on having it sawed open so that he could

"Plenty good boy stop along LangaLanga?" Van Horn, unperturbed, politely queried, in order to make

"Maybe I go ashore and walk about?" Van Horn challenged with tentative emphasis.

"Maybe too much trouble along you," Nauhau challenged back. "Maybe plenty bad fella boy kaikai along

Although Van Horn did not know it, at this challenge he experienced the hairpricking sensations in his scalp

When the whaleboat was alongside, he descended into it first, superiorly, then invited Nauhau to accompany

"My word, King o' Babylon," he muttered in the chief's ears as the boat's crew bent to the oars, "one fella boy

make 'm trouble, I shoot 'm hell outa you first thing. Next thing I shoot 'm hell outa LangaLanga. All the

time you me fella walk about, you walk about along me. You no like walk about along me, you finish close

And ashore, a white man alone, attended by an Irish terrier puppy with a heart flooded with love and by a

black king resentfully respectful of the dynamite of the white man, Van Horn went, swashbuckling

barelegged through a stronghold of three thousand souls, while his white mate, addicted to schnapps, held the

deck of the tiny craft at anchor off shore, and while his black boat's crew, oars in hands, held the whaleboat

sternon to the beach to receive the expected flying leap of the man they served but did not love, and whose

Van Horn had had no intention of going ashore, and that he went ashore at the black chief's insolent challenge

was merely a matter of business. For an hour he strolled about, his right hand never far from the butt of the

automatic that lay along his groin, his eyes never too far from the unwilling Nauhau 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 have seen, for LangaLanga and her sister islets, beautiful beads strung

Originally these islets had been mere sandbanks and coral reefs awash in the sea or shallowly covered by

the sea. Only a hunted, wretched creature, enduring incredible hardship, could have eked out a miserable

existence upon them. But such hunted, wretched creatures, survivors of village massacres, escapes from the

wrath of chiefs and from the longpig fate of the cookingpot, did come, and did endure. They, who knew

only the bush, learned the salt water and developed the saltwaterman breed. They learned the ways of the

fish and the shellfish, and they invented hooks and lines, nets and fishtraps, and all the diverse cunning

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 sandbanks with

coralrock stolen from the mainland on dark nights. Fine masonry, without mortar or cutting chisel, they

builded to withstand the ocean surge. Likewise stolen from the mainland, as mice steal from human

habitations when humans sleep, they stole canoeloads, and millions of canoeloads, of fat, rich soil.

Generations and centuries passed, and, behold, in place of naked sandbanks half awash were walled citadels,

perforated with launchingways for the long canoes, protected against the mainland by the lagoons that were

to them their narrow seas. Coconut palms, banana trees, and lofty breadfruit trees gave food and sunshelter.

Their gardens prospered. Their long, lean warcanoes ravaged the coasts and visited vengeance for their

forefathers upon the descendants of them that had persecuted and desired to eat.

Like the refugees and renegades who slunk away in the salt marshes of the Adriatic and builded the palaces

of powerful Venice on her deepsunk piles, so these wretched hunted blacks builded power until they

became masters of the mainland, controlling traffic and trade routes, compelling the bushmen for ever after

And here, amidst the fat success and insolence of the seapeople, Van Horn swaggered his way, taking his

chance, incapable of believing that he might swiftly die, knowing that he was building good future business

in the matter of recruiting labour for the plantations of other adventuring white men on far islands who dared

And when, at the end of an hour, Van Horn passed Jerry into the sternsheets of the whaleboat and followed,

he left on the beach a stunned and wondering royal black, who, more than ever before, was respectful of the

dynamitecompounded white men who brought to him stick tobacco, calico, knives and hatchets, and

Back on board, Van Horn immediately hove short, hoisted sail, broke out the anchor, and filled away for the

tenmile beat up the lagoon to windward that would fetch Somo. On the way, he stopped at Binu to greet

Chief Johnny and land a few Binu returns. Then it was on to Somo, and to the end of voyaging for ever of the

Quite the opposite to his treatment at LangaLanga was that accorded Van Horn at Somo. Once the return

boys were put ashore, and this was accomplished no later than threethirty in the afternoon, he invited Chief

Bashti on board. And Chief Bashti came, very nimble and active despite his great age, and very

goodnaturedso good natured, in fact, that he insisted on bringing three of his elderly wives on board

with him. This was unprecedented. Never had he permitted any of his wives to appear before a white man,

and Van Horn felt so honoured that he presented each of them with a gay clay pipe and a dozen sticks of

Late as the afternoon was, trade was brisk, and Bashti, who had taken the lion's share of the wages due to the

fathers of two boys who had died, bought liberally of the Arangi's stock. When Bashti promised plenty of

fresh recruits, Van Horn, used to the changeableness of the savage mind, urged signing them up right away.

Bashti demurred, and suggested next day. Van Horn insisted that there was no time like the present, and so

well did he insist that the old chief sent a canoe ashore to round up the boys who had been selected to go

"Now, what do you think?" Van Horn asked of Borckman, whose eyes were remarkably fishy. "I never saw

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

"When they're starting anything they always send the Marys into the bush," he said.

"You never can tell about these niggers," the captain grumbled. "They may be short on imagination, but once

in a while they do figure out something new. Now Bashti's the smartest old nigger I've ever seen. What's to

prevent his figuring out that very bet and playing it in reverse? Just because they've never had their women

around when trouble was on the carpet is no reason that they will always keep that practice."

"Not even Bashti's got the savvee to pull a trick like that," Borckman objected. "He's just feeling good and

liberal. Why, he's bought forty pounds of goods from you already. That's why he wants to sign on a new

batch of boys with us, and I'll bet he's hoping half of them die so's he can have the spending of their wages."

"All the same keep your eyes sharp on everything," he cautioned. "And remember, the two of us mustn't ever

be below at the same time. And no more schnapps, mind, until we're clear of the whole kit and caboodle."

Bashti was incredibly lean and prodigiously old. He did not know how old he was himself, although he did

know that no person in his 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 been born; and, unlike him, they were now decrepit, shaken

with palsy, bleareyed, toothless of mouth, deaf of ear, or paralysed. All his own faculties remained

unimpaired. He even boasted a dozen worn fangs of teeth, gumlevel, on which he could still chew.

Although he no longer had the physical endurance of youth, his thinking was as original and clear as it had

always been. It was due to his thinking that he found 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's boundaries. The scars on his withered body attested that he had fought to the fore.

As a Lawgiver, he had encouraged and achieved strength and efficiency within his tribe. As a statesman, he

had always kept one thought ahead of the thoughts of the neighbouring chiefs in the making of treaties and

And with his mind, still keenly alive, he had but just evolved a scheme whereby he might outwit Van Horn

and get the better of the vast British Empire about which he guessed little and know less.

For Somo had a history. It was that queer anomaly, a saltwater tribe that lived on the lagoon mainland

where only bushmen were supposed to live. Far back into the darkness of time, the folklore of Somo cast a

glimmering light. On a day, so far back that there was no way of estimating its distance, one, Somo, son of

Loti, who was the chief of the island fortress of Umbo, had quarrelled with his father and fled from his wrath

along with a dozen canoeloads of young men. For two monsoons they had engaged in an odyssey. It was in

the myth that they circumnavigated Malaita twice, and forayed as far as Ugi and San Cristobal across the

Women they had inevitably stolen after successful combats, and, in the end, being burdened with women and

progeny, Somo had descended upon the mainland shore, driven the bushmen back, and established the

saltwater fortress of Somo. Built it was, on its seafront, like any island fortress, with walled coralrock to

oppose the sea and chance marauders from the sea, and with launching ways through the walls for the long

canoes. To the rear, where it encroached on the jungle, it was like any scattered bush village. But Somo, the

wideseeing father of the new tribe, had established his boundaries far up in the bush on the shoulders of the

lesser mountains, and on each shoulder had planted a village. Only the greatly daring that fled to him had

Somo permitted to join the new tribe. The weaklings and cowards they had promptly eaten, and the

unbelievable tale of their many heads adorning the canoehouses was 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. Nor was he above continuing to better it. For a long time he had reasoned closely and carefully in

maturing the plan that itched in his brain for fulfilment. Three years before, the tribe of Ano Ano, miles down

the coast, had captured a recruiter, destroyed her and all hands, and gained a fabulous store of tobacco, calico,

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 landingparty

that followed had futilely pursued along the jungle runways. In the end it had contented itself with killing

forty fat pigs and chopping down a hundred coconut trees. Scarcely had the war vessel passed out to open

sea, when the people of Ano Ano were back from the bush to the village. Shell fire on flimsy grass houses is

not especially destructive. A few hours' labour of the women put that little matter right. As for the forty dead

pigs, the entire tribe fell upon the carcasses, roasted them under the ground with hot stones, and feasted. The

tender tips of the fallen palms were likewise eaten, while the thousands of coconuts were husked and split and

Thus, the penalty exacted had proved a picnic and a feastall of 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 British flag and killed pigs and cut down coconuts in

cancellation of blooddebts and headtakings, Bashti saw no valid reason why he should not profit as Ano

Ano had profited. The price to be paid at some possible future time was absurdly disproportionate to the

immediate wealth to be gained. Besides, it had been over two years since the last British war vessel had

And thus, Bashti, with a fine fresh idea inside his head, bowed his chief's head in consent that his people

could flock aboard and trade. Very few of them knew what his idea was or that he even had an idea.

Trade grew still brisker as more canoes came alongside and black men and women thronged the deck. Then

came the recruits, newcaught, young, savage things, timid as deer, yet yielding to stern parental and tribal

law and going down into the Arangi's cabin, one by one, their fathers and mothers and relatives

accompanying them in family groups, to confront the big fella white marster, who wrote their 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 with which he wrote, and who paid the first year's advance in trade goods to the heads of their respective

Old Bashti sat near, taking his customary heavy tithes out of each advance, his three old wives squatting

humbly at his feet and by their mere presence giving confidence to Van Horn, who was elated by the stroke

of business. At such rate his cruise on Malaita would be a short one, when he would sail away with a full

On deck, where Borckman kept a sharp eye out against danger, Jerry prowled about, sniffing the many legs of

the many blacks he had never encountered before. The wilddog had gone ashore with the return boys, and of

the return boys only one had come back. It was Lerumie, past whom Jerry repeatedly and stiffleggedly

bristled without gaining response of recognition. Lerumie coolly ignored him, went down below once and

purchased a trade handmirror, and, with a look of the eyes, assured old Bashti that all was ready and ripe to

On deck, Borckman gave this favourable moment. Nor would he have so given it had he not been guilty of

carelessness and of disobedience to his captain's orders. He did not leave the schnapps alone. Be did not sense

what was impending all about him. Aft, where he stood, the deck was almost deserted. Amidships and for'ard,

gamming with the boat's crew, the deck was crowded with blacks of both sexes. He made his way to the yam

sacks lashed abaft the mizzenmast and got his bottle. Just before he drank, with a shred of caution, he cast a

glance behind him. Near him stood a harmless Mary, middleaged, fat, squat, asymmetrical, unlovely, a

sucking child of two years astride her hip and taking nourishment. Surely no harm was to be apprehended

there. Furthermore, she was patently a weaponless Mary, for she wore no stitch of clothing that otherwise

might have concealed a weapon. Over against the rail, ten feet to one side, stood Lerumie, smirking into the

It was in the trade mirror that Lerumie saw Borckman bend to the yamsacks, return to the erect, throw his

head back, the mouth of the bottle glued to his lips, the bottom elevated skyward. Lerumie lifted his right

hand in signal to a woman in a canoe alongside. She bent swiftly for something that she tossed to Lerumie. It

was a longhandled tomahawk, the head of it an ordinary shingler's hatchet, the haft of it, nativemade, a

black and polished piece of hard wood, inlaid in rude designs with motherofpearl and wrapped with

coconut sennit to make a hand grip. The blade of the hatchet had been ground to razoredge.

As the tomahawk flew noiselessly through the air to Lerumie's hand, just as noiselessly, the next instant, it

flew through the air from his hand into the hand of the fat Mary with the nursing child who stood behind the

mate. She clutched the handle with both hands, while the child, astride her hip, held on to her with both small

Still she waited the stroke, for with Borckman's head thrown back was no time to strive to sever the spinal

cord at the neck. Many eyes beheld the impending tragedy. Jerry saw, but did not understand. With all his

hostility to niggers he had not divined the attack from the air. Tambi, who chanced to be near the skylight,

saw, and, seeing, reached for a LeeEnfield. Lerumie saw Tambi's action and hissed haste to the Mary.

Borckman, as unaware of this, his last second of life, as he had been of his first second of birth, lowered the

bottle and straightened forward his head. The keen edge sank home. What, in that flash 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, is

a mystery unsolvable to living man. No man, his spinal cord so severed, has ever given one word or whisper

of testimony as to what were his sensations and impressions. No less swift than the hatchet stroke was the

limp placidity into which Borckman's body melted to 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, although the remnant of its contents gurgled gently out upon the deck.

So quick was the occurrence of action, that the first shot from Tambi's musket 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 in the air and overboard, her fall

Scores of actions were simultaneous. From the canoes on both sides uprose a glittering, glistening rain of

motherofpearlhandled tomahawks 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 red war,

slashed the hand that reached for the tomahawk. Lerumie stood upright and loosed loudly, in a howl, all the

pent rage and hatred, of months which he had cherished against the puppy. Also, as he gained the

perpendicular and as Jerry flew at his legs, he launched a kick with all his might that caught and lifted Jerry

And in the next second, or fraction of second, as Jerry lifted and soared through the air, over the barbed wire

of the rail and overboard, while Sniders were being passed up overside from the canoes, Tambi fired his next

hasty shot. And Lerumie, the foot with which he had kicked not yet returned to the deck as again he was in

midaction of stooping to pick up the tomahawk, received the bullet squarely in the heart and pitched down

Ere Jerry struck the water, the glory of Tambi's marvellously lucky shot was over for Tambi; for, at the

moment he pressed trigger to the successful shot, a tomahawk bit across his skull at the base of the brain and

darkened from his eyes for ever the bright vision of the seawashed, sunblazoned tropic world. As swiftly,

all occurring almost simultaneously, did the rest of the boat's crew pass and the deck became a shambles.

It was to the reports of the Sniders and the noises of the death scuffle that Jerry's head emerged from the

water. A man's hand reached over a canoeside and dragged him in by the scruff of the neck, and, although

he snarled and struggled to bite his rescuer, he was not so much enraged as was he torn by the wildest

solicitude for Skipper. He knew, without thinking about it, that the Arangi had been boarded by the hazily

sensed supreme disaster of life that all life intuitively apprehends and that only man knows and calls by the

name of "death." Borckman he had seen struck down. Lerumie he had heard struck down. And now he was

hearing the explosions of 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 scrambled to his feet and

made two leaps: one upon the gunwale of the canoe; the next, despairing and hopeless, without consideration

His forefeet missed the rail by a yard, and he plunged down into the sea. He came up, swimming frantically,

swallowing and strangling salt water because he still yelped and wailed and barked his yearning to be on

But a boy of twelve, in another canoe, having witnessed the first black's adventure with Jerry, treated him

without ceremony, laying, first the flat, and next the edge, of a paddle upon his head while he still swam. And

the darkness of unconsciousness welled over his bright little lovesuffering brain, so that it was a limp and

In the meantime, down below in the Arangi's cabin, ere ever Jerry hit the water from Lerumie's kick, even

while he was in the air, Van Horn, in one great flashing profound fraction of an instant, had known his death.

Not for nothing had old Bashti lived longest of any living man in his tribe, and ruled wisest of all the long

line of rulers since Somo's time. Had he been placed more generously in earth space and time, he might well

have proved an Alexander, a Napoleon, or a swarthy Kahehameha. As it was, he performed well, and

splendidly well, in his limited little kingdom on the leeward coast of the dark cannibal island of Malaita.

And such a performance! In cool good nature in rigid maintenance of his chiefship rights, he had smiled at

Van Horn, given royal permission to his young men to sign on for three years of plantation slavery, and

exacted his share of each year's advance. Aora, who might be described as his prime minister and treasurer,

had received the tithes as fast as they were paid over, and filled them into large, finenetted bags of coconut

sennit. At Bashti's back, squatting on the bunkboards, a slim and smoothskinned maid of thirteen had

flapped the flies away from his royal head with the royal flyflapper. At his feet had squatted his three old

wives, the oldest of them, toothless and somewhat palsied, ever presenting to his hand, at his head nod, a

And Bashti, his keen old ears pitched for the first untoward sound from on deck, had continually nodded his

head and dipped his hand into the proffered basketnow for betelnut, and limebox, and the invariable

green leaf with which to wrap the mouthful; now for tobacco with which to fill his short clay pipe; and, again,

for matches with which to light the pipe which seemed not to draw well and which frequently went 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 moment when the Mary's axe, on deck, had struck Borckman down and when Tambi loosed the

first shot at her from his LeeEnfield. And Bashti's withered ancient hand, the back of it netted with a

complex of large upstanding veins from which the flesh had shrunk away, dipped out a huge pistol of such

remote vintage that one of Cromwell's round heads might well have carried it or that it might well have

voyaged with Quiros or La Perouse. It was a flintlock, as long as a man's forearm, and it had been loaded

Quick as Bashti had been, Van Horn was almost as quick, but not quite quick enough. Even as his hand leapt

to the modern automatic lying out of it's holster and loose on his knees, the pistol of the centuries went off.

Loaded with two slugs and a round bullet, its effect was that of a sawedoff shotgun. And Van Horn knew

the blaze and the black of death, even as "Gott fer dang!" died unuttered on his lips and as his fingers relaxed

Surcharged with black powder, the ancient weapon had other effect. It burst in Bashti's hand. While Aora,

with a knife produced apparently from nowhere, proceeded to hack off the white master's head, Bashti looked

quizzically at his right forefinger dangling by a strip of skin. He seized it with his left hand, with a quick pull

and twist wrenched it off, and grinningly tossed it, as a joke, into the pandanus basket which still his wife

with one hand held before him while with the other she clutched her forehead bleeding from a flying

Collaterally with this, three of the young recruits, joined by their fathers and uncles, had downed, and were

finishing off the only one of the boat's crew that was below. Bashti, who had lived so long that he was a

philosopher who minded pain little and the loss of a finger less, chuckled and chirped his satisfaction and

pride of achievement in the outcome, while his three old wives, who lived only at the nod of his head, fawned

under him on the floor in the abjectness of servile congratulation and worship. Long had they lived, and they

had lived long only by his kingly whim. They floundered and gibbered 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 time proved himself again.

And the lean, fearstricken girl, like a frightened rabbit in the mouth of its burrow, on hands and knees

peered forth upon the scene from the lazarette and knew that the cookingpot and the end of time had come

What happened aboard the Arangi Jerry never knew. He did 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 legs securely and tossed him

With great shouting and song, the pretty teakbuilt yacht was towed in by the long canoes and beached close

to where Jerry lay just beyond the confines of the coralstone walls. Fires blazed on the beach, lanterns were

lighted on board, and, amid a great feasting, the Arangi was gutted and stripped. Everything portable was

taken ashore, from her pigs of iron ballast to her running gear and sails. No one in Somo slept that night.

Even the tiniest of children toddled about the feasting fires or sprawled surfeited on the sands. At two in the

morning, at Bashti's command, the shell of the boat was fired. And Jerry, thirsting for water, having

whimpered and wailed himself to exhaustion, lying helpless, legtied, on his side, saw the floating world he

And by the light of her burning, old Bashti apportioned the loot. No one of the tribe was too mean to receive

nothing. Even the wretched bushslaves, who had trembled through all the time of their captivity from fear of

being eaten, received each a clay pipe and several sticks of tobacco. The main bulk of the trade goods, which

was not 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 work curing the many

heads over slow smudges; for, along with the boat's crew there were a round dozen of Noola return boys and

Not all these had been slain, however. Bashti had issued stern injunctions against wholesale slaughter. But

this was not because his 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 in the biggest canoe house, the

club house of the stags, where no Mary might come under penalty of death by torture, the captives were

Tied or trussed like fowls or pigs, they were tumbled on the hard packed earthen floor, beneath which,

shallowly buried, lay the remains of ancient chiefs, while, overhead, in wrappings of grass mats, swung all

that was left of several of Bashti's immediate predecessors, his father latest among them and so swinging for

two full generations. Here, too, since she was to be eaten and since the taboo had no bearing upon one

condemned to be cooked, the thin little Mary from the lazarette was tumbled trussed upon the floor among

the many blacks who had teased and mocked her for being fattened by Van Horn for the eating.

And to this canoe house Jerry was also brought to join the others on the floor. Agno, chief of the devil devil

doctors, had stumbled across him on the beach, and, despite the protestations of the boy who claimed him as

personal trove, had ordered him to the canoe house. Carried past the fires of the feasting, his keen nostrils had

told him of what the feast consisted. And, new as the experience was, he had bristled and snarled and

struggled against his bonds to be free. Likewise, at first, tossed down in the canoe house, he had bristled and

snarled at his fellow captives, not realizing their plight, and, since always he had been trained to look upon

niggers as the eternal enemy, considering them responsible for the catastrophe to the Arangi and 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 his rage at them. In vague ways it was borne in upon him that they, too, were not happy. Some had

been cruelly wounded, and kept up a moaning and groaning. Without any clearness of concept, nevertheless

Jerry had a realization that they were as painfully circumstanced as himself. And painful indeed was his own

circumstance. He lay on his side, the cords that bound his legs so tight as to bite into his tender flesh and shut

off the circulation. Also, he was perishing for water, and panted, drytongued, drymouthed, in the stagnant

A dolorous place it was, this canoe house, filled with groans and sighs, corpses beneath the floor and

composing the floor, creatures soon to be corpses upon the floor, corpses swinging in aerial sepulchre

overhead, long black canoes, highended like beaked predatory monsters, dimly looming in the light of a

slow fire where sat an ancient of the tribe of Somo at his interminable task of smokecuring a bushman's

head. He was withered, and blind, and senile, gibbering and mowing like some huge ape as ever he turned

and twisted, and twisted back again, the suspended head in the pungent smoke, and handful by handful added

Sixty feet in the clear, the dim fire occasionally lighted, through shadowy crossbeams, the ridgepole that

was covered with sennit of coconut that was braided in barbaric designs of black and white and that was

stained by the smoke of years almost to a monochrome of dirty brown. From the lofty crossbeams, on long

sennit strings, hung the heads of enemies taken aforetime in jungle raid and sea foray. The place breathed the

very atmosphere of decay and death, and the imbecile ancient, curing in the smoke the token of death, was

Toward daylight, with great shouting and heaving and pull and haul, scores of Somo men brought in another

of the big war canoes. They made way with foot and hand, kicking and thrusting dragging and shoving, the

bound captives to either side of the space which the canoe was to occupy. They were anything but gentle to

the meat with which they had been favoured by good fortune and the wisdom of Bashti.

For a time they sat about, all pulling at clay pipes and chirruping and laughing in queer thin falsettos at the

events of the night and the previous afternoon. Now one and now another stretched out and 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 wounded or the tootightly bound, and the

decrepit ancient who was not so old as Bashti. When the boy who had stunned Jerry with his paddle blade

and who claimed him as his own stole into the canoe house, the ancient did not hear him. Being blind, he did

not see him. He continued gibbering and chuckling dementedly, to twist the bushman's head back and forth

and to feed the smudge with punkwood. This was no nighttask for any man, nor even for him who had

forgotten how to do aught else. But the excitement of cutting out the Arangi had been communicated to his

addled brain, and, with vague reminiscent flashes of the strength of life triumphant, he shared deliriously in

this triumph of Somo by applying himself to the curing of the head that was in itself the concrete expression

But the twelveyearold lad who stole in and cautiously stepped over the sleepers and threaded his way

among the captives, did so with his heart in his mouth. He knew what taboos he was violating. Not old

enough even to leave his father's grass roof and sleep in the youths' canoe house, much less to sleep with the

young bachelors in their canoe house, he knew that he took his life, with all of its dimly guessed mysteries

and arrogances, in his hand thus to trespass into the sacred precinct of the fullmade, fullrealized, full

But he wanted Jerry and he got him. Only the lean little Mary, trussed for the cooking, staring through her

wide eyes of fear, saw the boy pick Jerry up by his tied legs and carry him out and away from the booty of

meat of which she was part. Jerry's heroic little heart of courage would have made him snarl and resent such

treatment of handling had he not been too exhausted and had not his mouth and throat been too dry for sound.

As it was, miserably and helplessly, not half himself, a puppet dreamer in a halfnightmare, he knew, as a

restless sleeper awakening between vexing dreams, that he was being transported headdownward out of the

canoe house that stank of death, through the village that was only less noisome, and up a path under lofty,

widespreading trees that were beginning languidly to stir with the first breathings of the morning wind.

The boy's name, as Jerry was to learn, was Lamai, and to Lamai's house Jerry was carried. It was not much of

a house, even as cannibal grasshouses go. On an earthen floor, hardpacked of the filth of years, lived

Lamai's father and mother and a spawn of four younger brothers and sisters. A thatched roof that leaked in

every heavy shower leaned to a wabbly ridgepole over the floor. The walls were even more pervious to a

driving rain. In fact, the house of Lamai, who was the father of Lumai, was the most miserable house in all

Lumai, the housemaster and family head, unlike most Malaitans, was fat. And of his fatness it would seem

had been begotten his good nature with its allied laziness. But as the fly in his ointment of jovial

irresponsibility was his wife, Lenerengothe prize shrew of Somo, who was as lean about the middle and all

the rest of her as her husband was rotund; who was as remarkably sharpspoken as he was softspoken; who

was as ceaselessly energetic as he was unceasingly idle; and who had been born with a taste for the world as

The boy merely peered into the house as he passed around it to the rear, and he saw his father and mother, at

opposite corners, sleeping without covering, and, in the middle of the floor, his four naked brothers and

sisters curled together in a tangle like a litter of puppies. All about the house, which in truth was scarcely

more than an animal lair, was an earthly paradise. The air was spicily and sweetly heavy 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 ripening fruit. And huge, golden

melons of the papaia, ready for the eating, globuled directly from the slender trunked trees not onetenth the

girth of the fruits they bore. And, for Jerry, most delightful of all, there was the gurgle and plash of a brooklet

that pursued its invisible way over mossy stones under a garmenture of tender and delicate ferns. No

conservatory of a king could compare with this wild wantonness of sungenerous vegetation.

Maddened by the sound of the water, Jerry had first to endure an embracing and hugging from the boy, who,

squatted on his hams, rocked back and forth and mumbled a strange little crooning song. And Jerry, lacking

articulate speech, had no way of telling him of the thirst of which he was perishing.

Next, Lamai tied him securely with a sennit cord about the neck and untied the cords that bit into his legs. So

numb was Jerry from lack of circulation, and so weak from lack of water through part of a tropic day and all

of a tropic night, that he stood up, tottered and fell, and, time and again, essaying to stand, floundered and

fell. And Lamai understood, or tentatively guessed. He caught up a coconut calabash attached to the end of a

stick of bamboo, dipped into the greenery of ferns, and presented to Jerry the calabash brimming with the

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, still weak and shaky, he was up and braced on all his four widespread legs and still

eagerly lapping. The boy chuckled and chirped his delight in the spectacle, and Jerry found surcease and

easement sufficient to enable him to speak with his tongue after the hearteloquent manner of dogs. He took

his nose out of the calabash and with his roseribbon strip of tongue licked Lamai's hand. And Lamai, in

ecstasy over this establishment of common speech, urged the calabash back under Jerry's nose, and Jerry

He continued to drink. He drank until his sunshrunken sides stood out like the walls of a balloon, although

longer were the intervals from the drinking in which, with his tongue of gratefulness, he spoke against 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 raised her voice in shrill protest

against her eldest born's introducing of one more mouth and much more nuisance into the household.

A squabble of human speech followed, of which Jerry knew no word but of which he sensed the significance.

Lamai was with him and for him. Lamai's mother was against him. She shrilled and shrewed her firm

conviction that her son was a fool and worse because he had neither the consideration nor the silly sense of a

fool's solicitude for a hardworked mother. She appealed to the sleeping Lumai, who awoke heavily and

fatly, who muttered and mumbled easy terms of Somo dialect to the effect that it was a most decent world,

that all puppy dogs and eldestborn sons were right delightful things to possess, that he had never yet starved

to death, and that peace and sleep 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 nose into the biceps of his arm for a pillow and

But Lamai, eyes stubbornly sullen, with mutinous footstampings and a perfect knowledge that all was clear

behind him to leap and flee away if his mother rushed upon him, persisted in retaining his puppy dog. In the

end, after an harangue upon the worthlessness of Lamai's father, she went back to sleep.

Ideas beget ideas. Lamai had learned how astonishingly thirsty Jerry had been. This engendered the idea that

he might be equally hungry. So he applied dry branches of wood to the smouldering coals he dug out of the

ashes of the cookingfire, and builded a large fire. Into this, as it gained strength, he placed many stones from

a convenient pile, each fireblackened in token that it had been similarly used many times. Next, hidden

under the water of the brook in a netted handbag, he brought to light the carcass of a fat woodpigeon he

had snared the previous day. He wrapped the pigeon in green leaves, and, surrounding it with the hot stones

When, after a time, he removed the pigeon and stripped from it the scorched wrappings of leaves, it gave

forth a scent so savoury as to prick up Jerry's ears and set his nostrils to quivering. When the boy had torn the

steaming carcass across and cooled it, Jerry's meal began; nor did the meal cease till the last sliver of meat

had been stripped and tongued from the bones and the bones crunched and crackled to fragments and

swallowed. And throughout the meal Lamai made love to Jerry, crooning over and over his little song, and

On the other hand, refreshed by the water and the meat, Jerry did not reciprocate so heartily in the

lovemaking. He was polite, and received his petting with softshining eyes, tailwaggings and the

customary bodywrigglings; but he was restless, and continually listened to distant sounds and yearned away

to be gone. This was not lost upon the boy, who, before he curled himself down to sleep, securely tied to a

After straining against the cord for a time, Jerry surrendered and slept. But not for long. Skipper was too

much with him. He knew, and yet he did not know, the irretrievable ultimate disaster to Skipper. So it was,

after low whinings and whimperings, that he applied his sharp firstteeth to the sennit cord and chewed upon

Free, like a homing pigeon, he headed blindly and directly for the beach and the salt sea over which had

floated the Arangi, on her deck Skipper in command. Somo was largely deserted, and those that were in it

were sunk in sleep. So no one vexed him as he trotted through the winding pathways between the many

houses and past the obscene kingposts of totemic heraldry, where the forms of men, carved from single tree

trunks, were seated in the gaping jaws of carved sharks. For Somo, tracing back to Somo its founder,

worshipped the sharkgod and the saltwater deities as well as the deities of the bush and swamp and

Turning to the right until he was past the seawall, Jerry came on down to the beach. No Arangi was to be

seen on the placid surface 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, but lay about on the sand, in the midmorning sunshine, men, women, and children and entire

Down by the water's edge, so close that his forefeet rested in the water, Jerry sat down, his heart bursting for

Skipper, thrust his nose heavenward at the sun, and wailed his woe as dogs have ever wailed since they came

And here Lamai found him, hushed his grief against his breast with cuddling 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 his love in his boyish savageness, clouted Jerry over the head, right side and left, and tied him as few

whites men's dogs have ever been tied. For, in his way, Lamai was a genius. He had never seen the thing

done with any dog, yet he devised, on the spur of the moment, the invention of tying Jerry with a stick. The

stick was of bamboo, four feet long. One end he tied shortly to Jerry's neck, the other end, just as shortly to a

tree. All that Jerry's teeth could reach was the stick, and dry and seasoned bamboo can defy the teeth of any

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 perpetual bickering and quarrelling. Lamai fought pitched battles with his brothers and

sisters for teasing Jerry, and these battles invariably culminated in Lenerengo taking a hand and impartially

After that, as a matter of course and on general principles, she would have it out with Lumai, whose soft

voice always was for quiet and repose, and who always, at the end of a tonguelashing, took himself off to

the canoe house for a couple of days. Here, Lenerengo was helpless. Into the canoe house of the stags no

Mary might venture. Lenerengo had never forgotten the fate of the last Mary who had broken the taboo. It

had occurred many years before, when she was a girl, and the recollection was ever vivid of the unfortunate

woman hanging up in the sun by one arm for all of a day, and for all of a second day by the other arm. After

that she had been feasted upon by the stags of the canoe house, and for long afterward all women had talked

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 received food and water. Yet this boy was no Skipper, no Mister Haggin. Nor

was he even a Derby or a Bob. He was that inferior mancreature, a nigger, and Jerry had been thoroughly

trained all his brief days to the law that the white men were the superior twolegged gods.

He did not fail to recognize, however, the intelligence and power that resided in the niggers. He did not

reason it out. He accepted it. They had power of command over other objects, could propel sticks and stones

through the air, could even tie him a prisoner to a stick that rendered him helpless. Inferior as they might be

It was the first time in his life that Jerry had been tied up, and he did not like it. Vainly he hurt his teeth, some

of which were loosening 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

But when the day came that he was freed, he failed to take advantage of it and scuttle away for the beach. It

chanced that Lenerengo released him. She did it deliberately, desiring to be quit of him. But when she untied

Jerry, he stopped to thank her, wagging his tail and smiling up at her with his hazelbrown eyes. She stamped

her foot at him to be gone, and uttered a harsh and intimidating cry. This Jerry did not understand, and so

unused was he to fear that he could not be frightened into running away. He ceased wagging his tail, and,

though he continued to look up at her, his eyes no longer smiled. Her action and noise he identified as

unfriendly, and he became alert and watchful, prepared for whatever hostile act she might next commit.

Again she cried out and stamped her foot. The only effect on Jerry was to make him transfer his watchfulness

to the foot. This slowness in getting away, now that she had released him, was too much for her short temper.

War broke on the instant, and that she might have killed Jerry in her rage was highly probable had not Lamai

appeared on the scene. The stick untied from Jerry's neck told the tale of her perfidy and incensed Lamai,

who sprang between and deflected the blow with a stone poipounder that might have brained Jerry.

Lamai was now the one in danger of grievous damage, and his mother had just knocked him down with a

clout alongside the head when poor Lumai, roused from sleep by the uproar, ventured out to make peace.

Lenerengo, as usual, forgot everything else in the fiercer pleasure of berating her spouse.

The conclusion of the affair was harmless enough. The children stopped their crying, Lamai retied Jerry with

the stick, Lenerengo harangued herself breathless, and Lumai departed with hurt feelings for the canoe house

That night, in the circle of his fellow stags, Lumai recited his sorrows and told the cause of themthe puppy

dog which had come on the Arangi. It chanced that Agno, chief of the devil devil doctors, or high priest,

heard the tale, and recollected that he 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 Lamai trembled and wept and squirmed abjectly at his feet, for the penalty was death.

It was too good an opportunity to get a hold over the boy for Agno to misplay it. A dead boy was worth

nothing to him, but a living boy whose life he carried in his hand would serve him well. Since no one else

knew of the broken taboo, he could afford to keep quiet. So he ordered Lamai forthright down to live in the

youths' canoe house, there to begin his novitiate in the long series of tasks, tests and ceremonies that would

graduate him into the bachelors' canoe house 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 in which his head was banged about and her hands were scratched. Then she carried him down

through the village on the way to deliver him at Agno's house. On the way, in the open centre of the village

where stood the kingposts, she left him lying on the ground in order to join in the hilarity of the population.

Not only was old Bashti a stern lawgiver, but he was a unique one. He had selected this day at the one time

to administer punishment to two quarrelling women, to give a lesson to all other women, and to make all his

subjects glad once again that they had him for ruler. Tiha and Wiwau, the two women, were squat and stout

and young, and had long been a scandal because of their incessant quarrelling. Bashti had set them a race to

run. But such a race. It was side splitting. Men, women, and children, beholding, howled with delight. Even

elderly matrons and greybeards with a foot in the grave screeched and shrilled their joy in the spectacle.

The halfmile course lay the length of the village, through its heart, from the beach where the Arangi had

been burned to the beach at the other end of the seawall. It had to be covered once in each direction by Tiha

and Wiwau, in each case one of them urging speed on the other and the other desiring speed that was

Only the mind of Bashti could have devised the show. First, two round coral stones, weighing fully forty

pounds each, were placed in Tiha's arms. She was compelled to clasp them tightly against her sides in order

that they might not roll to the ground. Behind her, Bashti placed Wiwau, who was armed with a bristle of

bamboo splints mounted on a light long shaft of bamboo. The splints were sharp as needles, being indeed the

needles used in tattooing, and on the end of the pole they were intended to be applied to Tiha's back in the

same way that men apply oxgoads to oxen. No serious damage, but much pain, could be inflicted, which

Wiwau prodded with the goad, and Tiha stumbled and wabbled in gymnastic efforts to make speed. Since,

when the farther beach had been reached, the positions would be reversed and Wiwau would carry the stones

back while Tiha prodded, and since Wiwau knew that for what she gave Tiha would then try to give more,

Wiwau exerted herself to give the utmost while yet she could. The perspiration ran down both their faces.

Each had her partisans in the crowd, who encouraged and heaped ridicule with every prod.

Ludicrous as it was, behind it lay iron savage law. The two stones were to be carried the entire course. The

woman who prodded must do so with conviction and dispatch. The woman who was prodded must not lose

her temper and fight her tormentor. As they had been duly forewarned by Bashti, the penalty for infraction of

the rules he had laid down was staking out on the reef at low tide to be eaten by the fishsharks.

As the contestants came opposite where Bashti and Aora his prime minister stood, they redoubled their

efforts, Wiwau goading enthusiastically, Tiha jumping with every thrust to the imminent danger of dropping

the stones. At their heels trooped the children of the village and all the village dogs, whooping and yelping

"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 goaded while she sank to her knees and with

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

But she never completed the threat. A warmly administered prod broke through her stoicism and started her

The shouting of the rabble ebbed away as the queer race ran on toward the beach. But in a few minutes it

could be heard flooding back, this time Wiwau panting with the weight of coral stone and Tiha, asmart with

Opposite Bashti, Wiwau lost one of the stones, and, in the effort to recover it, lost the other, which rolled a

dozen feet away from the first. Tiha became a whirlwind of avenging fury. And all Somo went wild. Bashti

held his lean sides with merriment while tears of purest joy ran down his prodigiously wrinkled cheeks.

And when all was over, quoth Bashti to his people: "Thus shall all women fight when they desire over much

Only he did not say it in this way. Nor did he say it in the Somo tongue. What he did say was in

"Any fella Mary he like 'm fight, all fella Mary along Somo fight 'm this fella way."

For some time after the conclusion of the race, Bashti stood talking with his head men, Agno among them.

Lenerengo was similarly engaged with several old cronies. As Jerry lay off to one side where she had

forgotten him, the wilddog he had bullied on the Arangi came 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 wilddog's nose touched him, he uttered a warning growl. Wilddog sprang back and whirled

away in headlong flight for a score of yards before he learned that he was not pursued.

Again he came back cautiously, as it was the instinct in him to stalk wild 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, and from

time to time glanced to right and to left as if in apprehension of some flank attack. A noisy outburst of boys'

laughter in the distance caused him to crouch suddenly down, his claws thrust into the ground for purchase,

his muscles tense springs for the leap he knew not in what direction, from the danger he knew not what that

might threaten him. Then he identified the noise, know that no harm impended, and resumed his stealthy

What might have happened there is no telling, for at that moment Bashti's eyes chanced to rest on the golden

puppy for the first time since the capture of the Arangi. In the rush of events Bashti had forgotten the puppy.

"What name that fella dog?" he cried out sharply, causing wilddog to crouch down again and attracting

She cringed in fear to the ground before the terrible old chief and quavered a recital of the facts. Her

goodfornothing boy Lamai had picked the dog from the water. It had been the cause of much trouble in her

house. But now Lamai had gone to live with the youths, and she was carrying the dog to Agno's house at

"Me kaikai along him," came the answer. "Him fat fella dog. Him good fella dog kaikai."

"Him good fella dog too much," he announced. "Better you eat 'm bush fella dog," he advised, pointing at

"Bush fella dog no good too much," was Bashti's judgment. "Bush fella dog too much fright. Plenty fella

bush dog too much fright. White marster's dog no fright. Bush dog no fight. White marster's dog fight like

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 haste to pause to give thanks. He hurled himself after wilddog, caught him in midflight,

and rolled him over and over in a cloud of dust. Ever wilddog strove to escape, and ever Jerry cornered him,

rolled him, and bit him, while Bashti applauded and called on his head men to behold.

By this time Jerry had become a raging little demon. Fired by all his wrongs, from the bloody day on the

Arangi and the loss of Skipper down to this latest tying of his legs, he was avenging himself on wilddog for

everything. The owner of wilddog, a return boy, made the mistake of trying to kick Jerry away. Jerry was

upon him in a flash scratching his calves with his teeth, in the suddenness of his onslaught getting between

"What name!" Bashti cried in a rage at the offender, who lay fear stricken where he had fallen, trembling for

But Bashti was already doubling with laughter at sight of wilddog running for his life down the street with

As they disappeared, Bashti expounded his idea. If men planted banana trees, it ran, what they would get

would be bananas. If they planted yams, yams would be produced, not sweet potatoes or plantains, but yams,

nothing but yams. The same with dogs. Since all black men's dogs were cowards, all the breeding of all black

men's dogs would produce cowards. White men's dogs were courageous fighters. When they were bred they

produced courageous fighters. Very well, and to the conclusion, namely, here was a white man's dog in their

possession. The height of foolishness would be to eat 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 be repeated over and over and spread until all Somo dogs would be strong and

Further, Bashti commanded his chief devil devil doctor to take charge of Jerry and guard him well. Also, he

sent his word forth to all the tribe that Jerry was taboo. No man, woman, or child was to throw spear or stone

Thenceforth, and until Jerry himself violated one of the greatest of taboos, he had a happy time in Agno's

gloomy grass house. For Bashti, unlike most chiefs, ruled his devil devil doctors with an iron hand. Other

chiefs, even Nauhau of LangaLanga, were ruled by their devil devil doctors. For that matter, the

population of Somo believed that Bashti was so ruled. But the Somo folk did not 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 as well as they did, and that he was no slave to

the dark superstitions and gross impostures with which they kept the people in submission. Also, he exposited

the theory, as ancient as priests and rulers, that priests and rulers must work together in the orderly

governance of the people. He was content that the people should believe that the gods, and the priests who

were the mouthpieces of the gods, had the last word, but he would have the priests know that in private the

last word was his. Little as they believed in their trickery, he told them, he believed less.

He knew taboo, and the truth behind taboo. He explained his personal 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 not like

clammeat. It was old Nino, high priest before Agno, with an ear open to the voice of the sharkgod, who

had so laid the taboo. But, he, Bashti, had privily commanded Nino to lay the taboo against clammeat upon

Still further, since he had lived longer than the oldest priest of them, his had been the appointing of every one

of them. He knew them, had made them, had placed them, and they lived by his pleasure. And they would

continue to take program from him, as they had always taken it, or else they would swiftly and suddenly pass.

He had but to remind them of the passing of Kori, the devil devil doctor who had believed himself stronger

than his chief, and who, for his mistake, had screamed in pain for a week ere what composed him had ceased

In Agno's large grass house was little light and much mystery. There was no mystery there for Jerry, who

merely knew things, or did not know things, and who never bothered about what he did not know. Dried

heads and other cured and mouldy portions of human carcasses impressed him no more than the dried

alligators and dried fish that contributed to the festooning of Agno's dark abode.

Jerry found himself well cared for. No children nor wives cluttered the devil devil doctor's house. Several old

women, a flyflapping girl of eleven, and two young men who had graduated from the canoe house of the

youths and who were studying priestcraft under the master, composed the household and waited upon Jerry.

Food of the choicest was his. After Agno had eaten firstcut of pig, Jerry was served second. Even the two

acolytes and the flyflapping maid ate after him, leaving the debris for the several old women. And, unlike

the mere bush dogs, who stole shelter from the rain under overhanging eaves, Jerry was given a dry place

under the roof where the heads of bushmen and of forgotten sandalwood traders hung down from above in

the midst of a dusty confusion of dried viscera of sharks, crocodile skulls, and skeletons of Solomons rats that

A number of times, all freedom being his, Jerry stole away across the 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 a bid to his

heart. Jerry never appeared openly, but from the thick fern 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 up his vain visits and

accepted the devil devil doctor's house as his home and the devil devil doctor as his master.

But he bore no love for this master. Agno, who had ruled by fear so long in his house of mystery, did not

know love. Nor was affection any part of him, nor was geniality. He had no sense of humour, and was as

frostily cruel as an icicle. Next to Bashti he stood in power, and all his days had been embittered in that he

was not first in power. He had no softness for Jerry. Because he feared Bashti he feared to harm Jerry.

The months passed, and Jerry got his firm, massive second teeth and increased in weight and size. He came

as near to being spoiled as is possible for a dog. Himself taboo, he quickly learned to lord 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

hated him he knew that; but also he gleaned the knowledge that Agno feared him and would not dare to

hurt him. But Agno was a chillblooded philosopher and bided his time, being different from Jerry in that he

From the edge of the lagoon, into the waters of which, remembering the crocodile taboo he had learned on

Meringe, he never ventured, Jerry ranged 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

sleepingmats or food calabashes. He might bully as he pleased, and be arrogant beyond decency, and there

was no one to say him nay. Even had Bashti's word gone forth that if Jerry were attacked by the full grown

bush dogs, it was the duty of the Somo folk to take his part and kick and stone and beat the bush dogs. And

And Jerry prospered. Fat to stupidity he might well have become, had it not been for his highstrung nerves

and his insatiable, eager curiosity. With the freedom of all Somo his, he was ever afoot over it, learning its

metes and bounds and the ways of the wild creatures that inhabited its swamps and forests and that did not

Many were his adventures. He fought two battles with the woodrats that 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 had killed,

unaware that it was an old and feeble rat. The second, in prime of vigour, had so punished him that he

crawled back, weak and sick to the devil devil doctor's house, where, for a week, under the dried emblems of

He stole upon the dugong and joyed to stampede that silly timid creature by sudden ferocious onslaughts

which he knew himself to be all sound and fury, but which tickled him and made him laugh with the

consciousness of playing a successful joke. He chased the unmigratory tropiducks from their

shrewdhidden nests, walked circumspectly among the crocodiles hauled out of water for slumber, and crept

under the jungleroof and spied upon the snowwhite saucy cockatoos, the fierce ospreys, the heavyflighted

buzzards, the lories and kingfishers, and the absurdly garrulous little pygmy parrots.

Thrice, beyond the boundaries of Somo, he encountered the little black bushmen who were more like ghosts

than men, so noiseless and unperceivable were they, and who, guarding the wildpig runways of the jungle,

missed spearing him on the three memorable occasions. As the woodrats had taught him discretion, so did

these twolegged lurkers in the jungle twilight. He had not fought with them, although they tried to spear

him. He quickly came to know that these were other folk than Somo folk, that his taboo did not extend to

them, and that, even of a sort, they were twolegged gods who carried flying death in their hands that reached

As he ran the jungle, so Jerry ran the village. No place was sacred to him. In the devil devil houses, where,

before the face of mystery men and women crawled in fear and trembling, he walked stifflegged and

bristling; for fresh heads were suspended there heads his eyes and keen nostrils identified as those of once

living blacks he had known on board the Arangi. In the biggest devil devil house he encountered the head of

Borckman, and snarled at it, without receiving response, in recollection of the fight he had fought with the

Once, however, in Bashti's house, he chanced upon all that remained on earth of Skipper. Bashti had lived

very long, had lived most wisely and thought much, and was thoroughly aware that, having lived far beyond

the span of man his own span was very short. And he was curious about it allthe 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 been the high place over hie priests and people. He was not afraid to die, but he

wondered if he might live again. He discounted the silly views of the tricky priests, and he was very much

For he had lived so long, and so luckily, that he had watched the waning to extinction of all the vigorous

appetites and desires. He had known wives and children, and the keenedge of youthful hunger. He had seen

his children grow to manhood and womanhood and become fathers and grandfathers, mothers and

grandmothers. But having known woman, and love, and fatherhood, and the bellydelights of eating, he had

passed on beyond. Food? Scarcely did he know its meaning, so little did he eat. Hunger, that bit him like a

spur when he was young and lusty, had long since ceased to stir and prod him. He ate out 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 layingyard. Here was left to him his last

lingering flesh thrill. As for the rest, he lived in his intellect, ruling his people, seeking out data from which to

induce laws that would make his people stronger and rivet his 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. The tribe persisted. Its members passed. The tribe was a memory of the history and habits of

all previous members, which the living members carried on until they passed and became history and

memory in the intangible sum that was the tribe. He, as a member, soon or late, and late was very near, must

pass. But pass to what? There was the rub. And so it was, on occasion, that he ordered all forth from his big

grass house, and, alone with his problem, lowered from the roof beams the mattingwrapped parcels of

heads of men he had once seen live and who had passed into the mysterious nothingness of death.

Not as a miser had he collected these heads, and not as a miser counting his secret hoard did he ponder these

heads, unwrapped, held in his two hands or lying on his knees. He wanted to know. He wanted to know what

he guessed they might know, now that they had long since gone into the darkness that rounds the end of life.

Various were the heads Bashti thus interrogatedin his hands, on his knees, in his dimlighted grasshouse,

while the overhead sun blazed down and the fading southeast sighed through the palmfronds and

breadfruit branches. There was the head of a Japanesethe only one he had ever seen or heard of. Before he

was born it had been taken by his father. Illcured it was, and battered and marred with ancientness and

rough usage. Yet he studied its features, decided that it had once had two lips as live as his own and a mouth

as vocal and hungry as his had often been in the past. Two eyes and a nose it had, a thatched crown of roof,

and a pair of ears like to his own. Two legs and a body it must once have had, and desires and lusts. Heats of

wrath and of love, so he decided, had also been its once on a time when it never thought to die.

A head that amazed him much, whose history went back before his father's and grandfather's time, was the

head of a Frenchman, although Bashti 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 his crews, and the bones of his two frigates, the

Astrolabe and the Boussole, on the shores of the cannibal Solomons. Another headfor Bashti was a

confirmed headcollectorwent back two centuries before La Perouse to Alvaro de Mendana, the Spaniard.

It was the head of one of Mendana's armourers, lost in a beach scrimmage to one of Bashti's remote

Still another head, the history of which was vague, was a white woman's head. What wife of what navigator

there was no telling. But earrings of gold and emerald still clung to the withered ears, and the hair, twothirds

of a fathom long, a shimmering silk of golden floss, flowed from the scalp that covered what had once been

the wit and will of her that Bashti reasoned had in her ancient time been quick with love in the arms of man.

Ordinary heads, of bushmen and saltwater men, and even of schnapps drinking white men like Borckman,

he relegated to the canoe houses and devil devil houses. For he was a connoisseur in the matter of heads.

There was a strange head of a German that lured him much. Redbearded it was, and redhaired, but even in

dried death there was an ironness of feature and a massive brow that hinted to him of mastery of secrets

beyond 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's head, a head that in its time had carried within its content profound

knowledge of the stars in the vasty heavens, of the way of stardirected ships upon the sea, and of the way of

the earth on its starry course through space that was a myriad million times beyond the slight concept of

Last of all, sharpest of bite in his thought, was the head of Van Horn. And it was the head of Van Horn that

lay on his knees under his contemplation when Jerry, who possessed the freedom of Somo, trotted into

Bashti's grass house, scented and identified the mortal remnant of Skipper, wailed first in woe over it, then

Bashti did not notice at first, for he was deep in interrogation of Van Horn's head. Only short months before

this head had been alive, he pondered, quick with wit, attached to a twolegged body that stood erect and that

swaggered about, a loincloth and a belted automatic around its middle, more powerful, therefrom, than

Bashti, but with less wit, for had not he, Bashti, with an ancient pistol, put darkness inside that skull where

wit resided, and removed that skull from the soddenly relaxed framework of flesh and bone on which it had

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 of a splinter of wood goes out when it is quite burnt to a powderfluff of ash? Had all

that made Van Horn passed like the flame of the splinter? Had he passed into the darkness for ever into which

the beast passed, into which passed the speared crocodile, the hooked bonita, the netted mullet, the slain pig

that was fat to eat? Was Van Horn's darkness as the darkness of the bluebottle fly that his flyflapping maid

smashed and disrupted in midflight of the air? as the darkness into which passed the mosquito that knew

the secret of flying, and that, despite its perfectness of flight, with almost an unthought action, he squashed

What was true of this white man's head, so recently alive and erectly dominant, Bashti knew was true of

himself. What had happened to this white man, after going through the dark gate of death, would happen to

him. Wherefore he questioned the head, as if its dumb lips might speak to him from out of the mystery and

tell him the meaning of life, and the meaning of death that inevitably laid life by the heels.

Jerry's longdrawn howl of woe at sight and scent of all that was left of Skipper, roused Bashti from his

reverie. He looked at the sturdy, goldenbrown puppy, and immediately included it in his reverie. 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 to death. Like the race of man it loved its kind,

and birthed and breastnourished its young. And passed. Ay, it passed; for many a dog, as well as a human,

had he, Bashti, devoured in his heydey of appetite and youth, when he knew only motion and strength, and

But from woe Jerry went on into anger. He stalked stifflegged, with a snarl writhen on his lips, and with

recurrent waves of hair bristling along his back and up his shoulders and neck. And he stalked not the head

of Skipper, where rested his love, but Bashti, who held the head on his knees. As the wild wolf in the upland

pasture stalks the mare mother with her newly delivered colt, so Jerry stalked Bashti. And Bashti, who had

never feared death all his long life and who had laughed a joke with his forefinger blown off by the bursting

flintlock pistol, smiled gleefully to himself, for his glee was intellectual and in admiration of this

halfgrown puppy whom he rapped on the nose with a short, hardwood stick and compelled to keep distance.

No matter how often and fiercely Jerry rushed him, he met the rush with the stick, and chuckled aloud,

understanding the puppy's courage, marvelling at the stupidity of life that impelled him continually to thrust

his nose to the hurt of the stick, and that drove him, by passion of remembrance of a dead man to dare the

This, too, was life, Bashti meditated, as he deftly rapped the screaming puppy away from him. Fourlegged

life it was, young and silly and hot, heartprompted, that was like any young man making love to his woman

in the twilight, or like any young man fighting to the death with any other young man over a matter of

passion, hurt pride, or thwarted desire. 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 marvel at the persistence of the vital

something within him that impelled him to leap forward always to the stick that hurt him and made him

recoil. The valour and motion, the strength and the unreasoning of youth he knew it to be, and he admired it

sadly, and envied it, willing to exchange for it all his lean grey wisdom if only he could find the way.

"Some dog, that dog, sure some dog," he might have uttered in Van Horn's fashion of speech. Instead, in

But age wearied sooner of the play, and Bashti put an end to it by rapping 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 speculative fancy. The stick, with a single sharp rap of it, had

effected the change. Where had gone the anger and wit of the puppy? Was that all it was, the flame of the

splinter that could be quenched by any chance gust of air? One instant Jerry had raged and suffered, snarled

and leaped, willed and directed his actions. The next instant he lay limp and crumpled in the little death of

unconsciousness. In a brief space, Bashti knew, consciousness, sensation, motion, and direction would flow

back into the wilted little carcass. But where, in the meanwhile, at the impact of the stick, had gone all the

Bashti sighed wearily, and wearily wrapped the heads in their grass mat coveringsall but Van Horn's; and

hoisted them up in the air to hang from the roofbeamsto hang as he debated, long after he was dead and

out if it, even as some of them had so hung from long before his father's and his grandfather's time. The head

of Van Horn he left lying on the floor, while he stole out himself to peer in through a crack and see what next

Jerry quivered at first, and in the matter of a minute struggled feebly 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 the channels of the inert

body and stiffen the legs to upstanding, and saw consciousness, the mystery of mysteries, flood back inside

the head of bone that was covered with hair, smoulder and glow in the opening eyes, and direct the lips to

writhe away from the teeth and the throat to vibrate to the snarl that had been interrupted when the stick

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 with his tongue the hard

cheeks, the closed lids of the eyes that his love could not open, the immobile lips that would not utter one of

Next, in profound desolation, Jerry set down before Skipper's head, pointed his nose toward the lofty

ridgepole, and howled mournfully and long. Finally, sick and subdued, he crept out of the house and away

to the house of his devil devil master, where, for the round of twentyfour hours, he waked and slept and

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. It was the token

of the ultimate catastrophe to life that was wrapped and twisted into every fibre of his heredity. One step

advanced beyond this, Jerry's uttermost, the folk of Somo, from the contemplation of death, had achieved

concepts of the spirits of the dead still living in immaterial and supersensuous realms.

And thereafter Jerry hated Bashti intensely, as a lord of life who possessed and laid on his knees the

nothingness of Skipper. Not that Jerry reasoned it out. All dim and vague it was, a sensation, an emotion, a

feeling, an instinct, an intuition, name it mistily as one will in the misty nomenclature of speech wherein

words cheat with the impression of definiteness and lie to the brain an understanding which the brain does not

Three months more passed; the northwest monsoon, after its half year of breath, had given way to the

southeast trade; and Jerry still continued to 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 selfconfident almost to

lordliness. But he had found no master. Agno had never won a heartthrob from him. For that matter, Agno

had never tried to win him. Nor, in his coldblooded way, had he ever betrayed his hatred of Jerry.

Not even the several old women, the two acolytes, and the fly flapping maid in Agno's house dreamed that

the devil devil doctor hated Jerry. Nor did Jerry dream it. To him Agno was a neutral sort of person, a person

who did not count. Those of the household Jerry recognized as slaves or servants to Agno, and he knew when

they fed him that the food he ate proceeded from Agno and was Agno's food. Save himself, taboo protected,

all of them feared Agno, and his house was truly a house of fear in which could bloom no love for a stray

puppy dog. The elevenyears' maid might have placed a bid for Jerry's affection, had she not been deterred at

the start by Agno, who reprimanded her sternly for presuming to touch or fondle a dog of such high taboo.

What delayed Agno's plot against Jerry for the halfyear of the monsoon was the fact that the season of

egglaying for the megapodes in Bashti's private layingyard did not begin until the period of the southeast

trades. And Agno, having early conceived his plot, with the patience that was characteristic of him was

Now the megapode of the Solomons is a distant cousin to the brush turkey of Australia. No larger than a large

pigeon, it lays an egg the size of a domestic duck's. The megapode, with no sense of fear, is so silly that it

would have been annihilated hundreds of centuries before had it not been preserved by the taboos of the

chiefs and priests. As it was, the chiefs were compelled to keep cleared patches of sand for it, and to fence out

the dogs. It buried its eggs 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 black dug out its eggs within two or three feet of it.

The layingyard was Bashti's. During the season, he lived almost entirely on megapode eggs. On rare

occasion he even had megapodes that were near to finishing their laying killed for his kaikai. This was no

more than a whim, however, prompted by pride in such exclusiveness of diet only possible to one in such

high place. In truth, he cared no more for megapode meat than for any other meat. All meat tasted alike to

him, for his taste for meat was one of the vanished pleasures in the limbo of memory.

But the eggs! He liked to eat them. They were the only article of food he liked to eat, They gave him

reminiscent thrills of the ancient fooddesires of his youth. Actually was he hungry when he had megapode

eggs, and the wellnigh dried founts of saliva and of internal digestive juices were stimulated to flow again at

contemplation of a megapode egg prepared for the eating. Wherefore, he alone of all Somo, barred rigidly by

taboo, ate megapode eggs. And, since the taboo was essentially religious, to Agno was deputed the

ecclesiastical task of guarding and cherishing and caring for the royal layingyard.

But Agno was no longer young. The acid bite of belly desire had long since deserted him, and he, too, ate

from a sense of duty, all meat tasting alike to him. Megapode eggs only stung his taste alive and stimulated

the flow of his juices. Thus it was that he broke the taboos he imposed, and, privily, before the eyes of no

So it was, as the laying season began, and when both Bashti and Agno were acutely eggyearning after six

months of abstinence, that Agno led Jerry along the taboo path through the mangroves, where they stepped

from root to root above the muck that ever steamed and stank in the stagnant air where the wind never

The path, which was not an ordinary path and which consisted, for a man, in wide strides from root to root,

and for a dog in fourlegged leaps 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

delight to Jerry, who, without reasoning about it, in a vague way felt the preliminary sensations that possibly

Agno, in a small way, might prove the master which his dog's soul continually sought.

Emerging from the swamp of mangroves, abruptly they came upon a patch of sand, still so salt and

inhospitable from the sea's deposit that no great trees rooted and interposed their branches between it and the

sun's heat. A primitive gate gave entrance, but Agno did not take Jerry through it. Instead, with weird little

chirrupings of encouragement and excitation, he persuaded Jerry to dig a tunnel beneath the rude palisade of

fence. He helped with his own hands, dragging out the sand in quantities, but imposing on Jerry the leaving

And, when Jerry was inside, Agno, passing through the gate, enticed and seduced him into digging out the

eggs. But Jerry had no taste of the eggs. Eight of them Agno sucked raw, and two of them he tucked whole

into his armpits to take back to his house of the devil devils. The shells of the eight he sucked he broke to

fragments as 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 on Jerry's jowls where his tongue could have erased it, but high

up about his eyes and above them, where it would remain and stand witness against him according to the plot

Even worse, in high priestly sacrilege, he encouraged Jerry to attack a megapode hen in the act of laying.

And, while Jerry slew it, knowing that the lust of killing, once started, would lead him to continue killing the

silly birds, Agno left the layingyard to hotfoot it through the mangrove swamp and present to Bashti an

ecclesiastical quandary. The taboo of the dog, as he expounded it, had prevented him from interfering with

the taboo dog when it ate the taboo egglayers. Which taboo might be the greater was beyond him. And

Bashti, who had not tasted a megapode egg in half a year, and who was keen for the one recrudescent thrill of

remote youth still left to him, led the way back across the mangrove swamp at so prodigious a pace as quite

And he arrived at the layingyard and caught Jerry, redpawed and redmouthed, in the midst of his fourth

kill of an egglayer, the raw yellow yolk of the portion of one egg, plastered by Agno to represent many

eggs, still about his eyes and above his eyes to the bulge of his forehead. 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 tail to Bashti in a bid for recognition, of prowess, and

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 to such commonness of humanity. Thus it is always with those in the high places, ever

temporising with their natural desires, ever masking their ordinariness under a show of disinterest. So it was

that Bashti displayed no vexation at the disappointment to his appetite. Agno was a shade less controlled, for

he could not quite chase away the eager light in his eyes. Bashti glimpsed it and mistook it for simple

curiosity of observation not guessing its real nature. Which goes to show two things of those in the high

place: one, that they may fool those beneath them; the other, that they may be fooled by those beneath them.

Bashti regarded Jerry quizzically, as if the matter were a joke, and shot a careless side glance to note the

"Must pay for breaking the taboo. It is a high taboo. It is my taboo. It was so placed by Somo, the ancient

father and first ruler of all of us, and it has been ever since the taboo of the chiefs. The dog must die."

He paused and considered the matter, while Jerry returned to digging the sand where the scent was

And Jerry did, uncovering two eggs, breaking them and lapping that portion of their precious contents which

was not spilled and wasted in the sand. Bashti's eyes were quite lacklustre as he asked

"Tomorrow, at midday," Agno answered. "Already are the dogs coming in. There will be at least fifty of

"Why now?" the chief demanded. "You will but have to carry him through the swamp. Let him trot back on

Across the swamp and approaching the canoe house, Jerry, trotting happily at the heels of the two men, heard

the wailing and sorrowing of many dogs that spelt unmistakable woe and pain. He developed instant

suspicion that was, however, without direct apprehension for himself. And at that moment, his ears cocked

forward and his nose questing for further information in the matter, Bashti seized him by the nape of the neck

No whimper, nor sound, nor sign of fear, came from Jerryonly choking growls of ferociousness,

intermingled with snarls of anger, and a belligerent upclawing of hindlegs. But a dog, clutched by the neck

from the back, can never be a match for two men, gifted with the intelligence and deftness of men, each of

His forelegs and hindlegs tied lengthwise and crosswise, he was carried headdownward the short distance

to the place of slaughter and cooking, and flung to the earth in the midst of the score or more of dogs

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 wilddogs, and so small was their courage that their thirst

and physical pain from cords drawn too tight across veins and arteries, and their dim apprehension of the fate

such treatment foreboded, led them to whimper and wail and howl their despair and suffering.

The next thirty hours were bad hours for Jerry. The word had gone forth immediately that the taboo on him

had been removed, and of the men and boys none was so low as to do him reverence. About him, till

nightfall, persisted a circle of teasers and tormenters. They harangued him for his fall, sneered and jeered at

him, rooted him about contemptuously with their feet, made a hollow in the sand out of which he could not

roll and desposited him in it on his back, his four 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 despise niggers, he learned in the course of these thirty hours an especially bitter and undying hatred.

His torturers stopped at nothing. Even they brought wilddog and set him upon Jerry. But it was contrary to

wilddog's nature to attack an enemy that could not move, even if the enemy was Jerry 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 utter helplessness was different. So the expected

show proved a failure. When Jerry snarled and growled, wilddog snarled and growled back and strutted and

bullied around him, him to persuasion of the blacks could induce but no sink his teeth into Jerry.

The killingground 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 which had

lain in the sun since early morning and had no water. At times, all joined in, the control of the quietest

breaking down before the wave of excitement and fear that swept spasmodically over all of them. This

howling, rising and falling, but never ceasing, continued throughout the night, and by morning all were

The sun blazing down upon them in the white sand and almost parboiling them, brought anything but relief.

The circle of torturers formed about Jerry again, and again was wreaked upon him all abusive contempt for

having lost his taboo. What drove Jerry the maddest were not the blows and physical torment, but the

laughter. No dog enjoys being laughed at, and Jerry, least of all, could restrain his wrath when they jeered

Although he had not howled once, his snarling and growling, combined with his thirst, had hoarsened his

throat and dried the mucous membranes of his mouth so that he was incapable, except under the sheerest

provocation, of further sound. His tongue hung out of his mouth, and the eight o'clock sun began slowly to

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 on his back, turned him over on his side, and presented to him a small calabash filled with

water. Jerry lapped it so fanatically that not for half a minute did he become aware that the boy had squeezed

into it many hot seeds of ripe red peppers. The circle shrieked with glee, and what Jerry's thirst had been

before was as nothing compared with this new thirst to which had been added the stinging agony of pepper.

Next in event, and a most important event it was to prove, came Nalasu. Nalasu was an old man of

threescore years, and he was blind, walking with a large staff with which he prodded his path. In his free

"They say the white master's dog is to be eaten," he said in the Somo speech. "Where is the white master's

Agno, who had just arrived, stood beside him as he bent over Jerry and examined him with his fingers. Nor

did Jerry offer to snarl or bite, although the blind man's hands came within reach of his teeth more than once.

For Jerry sensed no enmity in the fingers that passed so softly over him. Next, Nalasu felt over the pig, and

"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

"Nay," said Agno. "The white master's dog has broken the taboo. It must be eaten. Take any other dog and

"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 and stood listening.

"Take the dog, Nalasu," he said finally. "It is a good pig, and I shall myself eat it."

"But he has broken the taboo, your great taboo of the layingyard, and must go to the eating," Agno

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

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

"There is another law," Bashti grinned. "Long has it been since ever Somo built these walls that life may buy

"I know the law," Bashti held steadily on. "Somo made the law. Never has it been said that animal life may

"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."

"As you said, O Bashti, in your very great wisdom, he is the seed dog of strength and courage. Let him be

slain. When he comes from the fire, his body shall be divided into many small pieces so that every man may

eat of him and thereby get his portion of strength and courage. Better is it for Somo that its men be strong and

But Bashti held no anger against Jerry. He had lived too long and too philosophically to lay blame on a dog

for breaking a taboo which it did not know. Of course, dogs often were slain for breaking the taboos. But he

allowed this to be done because the dogs themselves in nowise interested him, and because their deaths

emphasized the sacredness of the taboo. Further, Jerry had more than slightly interested him. Often, since,

Jerry had attacked him because of Van Horn's head, he had pondered the incident. Baffling as it was, as all

manifestations of life were baffling, it had given him food for thought. Then there was his admiration for

Jerry's courage and that inexplicable something in him that prevented him crying out from the pain of the

stick. And, without thinking of it as beauty, the beauty of line and colour of Jerry had insensibly penetrated

There was another angle to Bashti's conduct. He wondered why his devil devil doctor so earnestly desired a

mere dog's death. There were many dogs. Then why this particular dog? That the weight of something was on

the other's mind was patent, although what it was Bashti could not gauge, guessunless it might be revenge

incubated the day he had prevented Agno from eating the dog. If such were the case, it was a state of mind he

could not tolerate in any of his tribespeople. But whatever was the motive, guarding as he always did against

the unknown, he thought it well to discipline his priest and demonstrate once again whose word was the last

"I have lived long and eaten many pigs. What man may dare say that the many pigs have entered into me and

He paused and cast a challenging eye around the circle of his audience; but no man spoke. Instead, some men

grinned sheepishly and were restless on their feet, while Agno's expression advertised sturdy unbelief that

"I have eaten much fish," Bashti continued. "Never has one scale of a fish grown out on my skin. Never has a

gill appeared on my throat. As you all know, by the looking, never have I sprouted one fin out of my

backbone.Nalasu, take the dog.Aga, carry the pig to my house. I shall eat it today.Agno, let the

Then, as he turned to go, he lapsed into bechedemer English and flung sternly over his shoulder, "My

As blind Nalasu slowly plodded away, with one hand tapping the path before him and with the other carrying

Jerry headdownward suspended by his tied legs, Jerry heard a sudden increase in the wild howling of the

But, unlike the boy Lamai, who had known no better, the old man did not carry Jerry all the way to his house.

At the first stream pouring down between the low hills of the rising land, he paused and put Jerry down to

drink. And Jerry knew only the delight of the wet coolness on his tongue, all about his mouth, and down his

throat. Nevertheless, in his subconsciousness was being planted the impression that, kinder than Lamai, than

When he had drunk till for the moment he could drink no more, he thanked Nalasu with his tonguenot

warmly nor ecstatically as had it been Skipper's hand, but with due gratefulness for the life giving draught.

The old man chuckled in a pleased way, rolled Jerry's parched body into the water, and, keeping his head

above the surface, rubbed the water into his dry skin and let him lie there for long blissful minutes.

From the stream to Nalasu's house, a goodly distance, Nalasu still carried him with bound legs, although not

headdownward but clasped in one arm against his chest. His idea was to love the dog to him. For Nalasu,

having sat in the lonely dark for many years, had thought far more about the world around him and knew it

far better than had he been able to see it. For his own special purpose he had need of a dog. Several bush dogs

he had tried, but they had shown little appreciation of his kindness and had invariably run away. The last had

remained longest because he had treated it with the greatest kindness, 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,

The invention Lamai had made of tying Jerry with a stick had been noised abroad in the village, and by a

stick, in Nalasu's house, Jerry found himself again tied. But with a difference. Never once was the blind man

impatient, while he spent hours each day in squatting on 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 fairly definite in Jerry's mind, after the devil devil doctor's tying him and

flinging him amongst the other helpless dogs on the killingground, that all mastership of Agno had ceased.

And Jerry, who had never been without a master since his first days in the world, felt the imperative need of a

So it was, when the day came that the stick was untied from him, that Jerry remained, voluntarily in Nalasu's

house. When the old man was satisfied there would be no running away, he began Jerry's training. By slow

First of all Jerry learned a new name for himself, which was Bao, and he was taught to respond to it from an

everincreasing distance no matter how softly it was uttered, and Nalasu continued to utter it more softly

until it no longer was a spoken word, but a whisper. Jerry's ears were keen, but Nalasu's, from long use, were

Further, Jerry's own hearing was trained to still greater acuteness. Hours at a time, sitting by Nalasu or

standing apart from him, he was taught to catch the slightest sounds or rustlings from the bush. Still further,

he was taught to differentiate between the bush noises and between the ways he growled warnings to Nalasu.

If a rustle took place that Jerry identified as a pig or a chicken, he did not growl at 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

therefore suspiciously, Jerry learned to growl loudly; if the noise were loud and careless, then Jerry's growl

It never entered Jerry's mind to question why he was taught all this. He merely did it because it was this latest

master's desire that he should. All this, and much more, at a cost of interminable time and patience, Nalasu

taught him, and much more he taught him, increasing his vocabulary so that, at a distance, they could hold

Thus, at fifty feet away, Jerry would "Whuff!" softly the information that there was a noise he did not know;

and Nalasu, with different sibilances, would hiss to him to stand still, to whuff more softly, or to keep silent,

or to come to him noiselessly, or to go into the bush and investigate the source of the strange noise, or,

Perhaps, if from the opposite direction Nalasu's sharp ears alone 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 quantity or 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, or

a woodrat, or a man, or a boyall in the softest of sounds that were scarcely more than breathexhalations,

Nalasu was a strange old man. He lived by himself in a small grass house on the edge of the village. The

nearest house was quite a distance away, while his own stood in a clearing in the thick jungle which

approached no where nearer than sixty feet. Also, this cleared space he kept continually free from the

fastgrowing vegetation. Apparently he had no friends. At least no visitors ever came to his dwelling. Years

had passed since he discouraged the last. Further, he had no kindred. His wife was long since dead, and his

three sons, not yet married, in a foray behind the bounds of Somo had lost their heads in the jungle runways

For a blind man he was very busy. He asked favour of no one and was selfsupporting. In his houseclearing

he grew yams, sweet potatoes, and taro. In another clearingbecause it was his policy to have no trees close

to his househe had plantains, bananas, and half a dozen coconut palms. Fruits and vegetables he exchanged

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 his tribespeople as to command a steady sale. Scarcely a day passed in which he did not

himself practise with bow and arrow. He shot only by direction of sound; and whenever a noise or rustle was

heard in the jungle, and when Jerry had informed him of its nature, he would shoot an arrow at it. Then it was

A curious thing about Nalasu was that he slept no more than three hours in the twentyfour, that he never

slept at night, and that his brief daylight sleep never took place in the house. Hidden in the thickest part of the

neighbouring jungle was a sort of nest to which led no path. He never entered nor left by the same way, so

that the tropic growth on the rich soil, being so rarely trod upon, ever obliterated the slightest sign of his

having passed that way. Whenever he slept, Jerry was trained to remain on guard and never to go to sleep.

Reason enough there was and to spare for Nalasu's infinite precaution. The oldest of his three sons had slain

one, Ao, in a quarrel. Ao had been one of six brothers of the family of Anno which dwelt in one of the upper

villages. According to Somo law, the Anno family was privileged to collect the blooddebt from the Nalasu

family, but had been balked of it by the deaths of Nalasu's three sons 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 known throughout the

tribe that the Annos would never be content until they had taken the blind man's life.

But Nalasu had been famous as a great fighter, as well as having been the progenitor of three such warlike

sons. Twice had the Annos sought to collect, the first time while Nalasu still retained his eyesight. Nalasu had

discovered their trap, circled about it, and in the rear encountered and slain Anno himself, the father, thus

Then had come his accident. While refilling manytimes used Snider cartridges, an explosion of black

powder put out both his eyes. Immediately thereafter, while he sat nursing his wounds, the Annos had

descended upon himjust what he had expected. And for which he had made due preparation. That night

two uncles and another brother stepped on poisoned thorns and died horribly. Thus the sum of lives owing

Thenceforth the Annos had feared the thorns too greatly to dare again, although ever their vindictiveness

smouldered and they lived in hope of the day when Nalasu's head should adorn their ridgepole. In the

meantime the state of affairs was not that of a truce but of a stalemate. The old man could not proceed against

them, and they were afraid to proceed against him. Nor did the day come until after Jerry's adoption, when

one of the Annos made an invention the like of which had never been known in all Malaita.

Meanwhile the months slipped by, the southeast trade blew itself out, the monsoon had begun to breathe,

and Jerry added to himself six months of time, weight, stature, and thickness of bone. An easy time his

halfyear with the blind man had been, despite the fact that Nalasu was a rigid disciplinarian who insisted on

training Jerry for longer 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. This man, who had slain four of the Annos, three of them after he had

gone blind, who had slain still more men in his savage youth, never raised his voice in anger to Jerry and

Mentally, the persistent education Jerry received, in this period of 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 for three

reasons: his own intelligence, the genius for teaching that was Nalasu's, and the long hours devoted to the

His shorthand vocabulary, for a dog, was prodigious. Almost might it be said that he and the man could talk

by the hour, although few and simple were the abstractions they could talk; very little of the immediate

concrete past, and scarcely anything of the immediate concrete future, entered into their conversations. Jerry

could no more tell him of Meringe, nor of the Arangi, than could he tell him of the great love he had borne

Skipper, or of his reason for hating Bashti. By the same token, Nalasu could not tell Jerry of the bloodfeud

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 on a 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 cross the jungle to the main path, to proceed down the main path toward the village till he came to

the great banyan tree, and then to return along the small path to Nalasu and Nalasu's house. All of which Jerry

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 groundfor Jerry could

count unerringly up to five; between the other clearing and the main path were four pigs; along the main path

he had passed a dog, more than five women, and two children; and on the small path home he had noted a

But he could not tell Nalasu his states of mind and heart that prevented him from being fully contented in his

present situation. For Nalasu was not a whitegod, but only a mere nigger god. And Jerry hated and despised

all niggers save for the two exceptions of Lamai and Nalasu. He tolerated them, and, for Nalasu, had even

At the best, they were only secondrate gods, and he could not forget the great whitegods such as Skipper

and Mister Haggin, and, of the same breed, Derby and Bob. They were something else, something other,

something better than all this black savagery in which he lived. They were above and beyond, in an

unattainable paradise which he vividly remembered, for which he yearned, but to which he did not know the

way, and which, dimly sensing the ending that comes to all things, might have passed into the ultimate

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 would he have fought to the death for Nalasu. And the old man

Came the day of the Annos, when one of them made the invention, which was thickplaited sandals to

armour the soles of their feet against the 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 under a cloudpalled sky that a treetrunk

could not be seen an eighth of an inch beyond one's nose. And the Annos descended on Nalasu's clearing, a

dozen of them, armed with Sniders, horse pistols, tomahawks and war clubs, walking gingerly, despite their

Jerry, sitting between Nalasu's knees and nodding sleepily, gave the first warning to Nalasu, who sat outside

his door, wideeyed, 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 heard nothing, at the same time whispering to Jerry for information

and commanding him to be softspoken; and Jerry, with whuffs and whiffs and all the shorthand

breathexhalations of speech he had been taught, told him that men approached, many men, more men than

Nalasu reached the bow beside him, strung an arrow, and waited. At last his own ears caught the slightest of

rustlings, now here, now there, advancing upon him in the circle of the compass. Still speaking for softness,

he demanded verification from Jerry, whose neck hair rose bristling under Nalasu's sensitive fingers, and

who, by this time, was reading the night air with his nose as well as his ears. And Jerry, as softly as Nalasu,

With the patience of age Nalasu sat on without movement, until, close at hand, on the very edge of the jungle,

sixty feet away, he located a 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 had gone home; and next he fitted a fresh arrow to the bow string.

Fifteen minutes of silence passed, the blind man as if carven of stone, the dog, trembling with eagerness

under the articulate touch of his fingers, obeying the bidding to make no sound. For Jerry, as well as Nalasu,

knew that death rustled and lurked in the encircling dark. Again came a softness of movement, nearer than

before; but the sped arrow missed. They heard its impact against a tree trunk beyond and a confusion of small

sounds caused by the target's hasty retreat. Next, after a time of silence, Nalasu told Jerry silently to retrieve

the arrow. He had been well trained and long trained, for with no sound even to Nalasu's ears keener than

seeing men's ears, he followed the direction of the arrow's impact against the tree and brought the arrow back

Again Nalasu waited, until the rustlings of a fresh drawingin of the circle could be heard, whereupon

Nalasu, Jerry accompanying him, picked up all his arrows and moved soundlessly halfway around the

circle. Even as they moved, a Snider exploded that was aimed in the general direction of the spot just vacated.

And the blind man and the dog, from midnight to dawn, successfully fought off twelve men equipped with

the thunder of gunpowder and the widespreading, deeppenetrating, 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 him and which he discharged over and over. But Jerry aided valiantly and well,

adding to Nalasu's acute hearing his own acuter hearing, circling noiselessly about the house and reporting

Much of their precious powder the Annos wasted, for the affair was like a game of invisible ghosts. Never

was anything seen save the flashes of the rifles. Never did they see Jerry, although they became quickly

aware of his movements close to them as he searched out the arrows. Once, as one of them felt for an arrow

which had narrowly missed him, he encountered Jerry's back with his hand and acknowledged the sharp slash

of Jerry's teeth with a wild yell of terror. They tried firing at the twang of Nalasu's bowstring, but every time

Nalasu fired he instantly changed position. Several times, warned of Jerry's nearness, they fired at him, and,

When day broke, in the quick tropic grey that marks the leap from dark to sun, the Annos retreated, while

Nalasu, withdrawn from the light into his house, still possessed eighty arrows, thanks to Jerry. The net result

to Nalasu was one dead man and no telling how many arrowpricked wounded men who dragged themselves

And half the day Nalasu crouched over Jerry, fondling and caressing him 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 was done, and talked with

"As an old man to an old man, I talk," was Bashti's beginning. "I am older than you, O Nalasu; I have ever

been unafraid. Yet never have I been braver than you. I would that every man of the tribe were as brave as

you. Yet do you give me great sorrow. Of what worth are your courage and cunning, when you have no seed

"Not so old as I am," Bashti interrupted. "Not too old to marry so that your seed will add strength to the

"I was married, and long married, and I fathered three brave sons. 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 at all. I am too old to marry. I am old enough to make ready to die, and a great

curiousness have I about what will happen to me when I am dead. Will I be for ever dead? Will I live again in

a land of dreamsa shadow of a dream myself that will still remember the days when I lived in the warm

world, the quick juices of hunger in my mouth, in the chest of the body of me the love of woman?"

"I too, have thought much on the matter," he said. "Yet do I arrive nowhere. I do not know. You do not know.

We will not know until we are dead, if it happens that we know 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 your

cunning and your courage live after you. I have a wife for younay, two wives, for your days are short and I

shall surely live to see you hang with my fathers from the canoehouse ridgepole."

"I will not pay for a wife," Nalasu protested. "I will not pay for any wife. I would not pay a stick of tobacco

"Worry not," Bashti went on placidly. "I shall pay you for the price of the wife, of the two wives. There is

Bubu. For half a case of tobacco shall I buy her for you. She is broad and square, roundlegged,

broadhipped, with generous breasts of richness. There is Nena. Her father sets a stiff price upon hera

whole case of tobacco. I will buy her for you as well. Your time is short. We must hurry."

"No, I say, and say again, no, no, no, no. Wives are nuisances. They are young things, and their heads are

filled with foolishness. Their tongues are loose with idleness of speech. I am old, I am quiet in my ways, the

fires of life have departed from me, I prefer to sit alone in the dark and think. Chattering young things about

me, with nothing but foam and spume in their heads, on their tongues, would drive me mad. Of a surety they

would drive me mad so mad that I will spit into every clam shell, make faces at the moon, and bite my

"And if you do, what of it? So long as your seed does not perish. I shall pay for the wives to their fathers and

"You will," Bashti insisted calmly. "Because if you do not you will have to pay me. It will be a sore, hard

debt. I will have every joint of you unhinged so that you will be like a jellyfish, like a fat pig with the bones

removed, and I will then stake you out in the midmost centre of the dogkilling ground to swell in pain under

the sun. And what is left of you I shall fling to the dogs to eat. Your seed shall not perish out of Somo. I,

"Well?" Bashti reiterated. "It is wives or staking out unhinged in the sun. You choose, but think well before

"At my age, with all the vexations of youngness so far behind me!" Nalasu complained.

"Choose. You will find there is vexation, and liveliness and much of it, in the centre of the dogkilling yard

when the sun cooks your sore joints till the grease of the leanness of you bubbles like the tender fat of a

"Then send me the wives," Nalasu managed to utter after a long pause. "But send them in three days, not in

"It is well," Bashti nodded gravely. "You have lived at all only because of those before you, now long in the

dark, who worked so that the tribe might live and you might come to be. You are. They paid the price for

you. It is your debt. You came into being with this debt upon you. You will pay the debt before you pass out

And had Bashti hastened delivery of the wives by one day, or by even two days, Nalasu would have entered

the feared, purgatory of matrimony. But Bashti kept his word, and on the third day was too busy, with a more

momentous problem, to deliver Bubu and Nena to the blind old man who apprehensively waited their

coming. For the morning of the third day all the summits of leeward Malaita smoked into speech. A warship

was on the coastso the tale ran; a big warship that was heading in through the reef islands at LangaLanga.

The tale grew. The warship was not stopping at LangaLanga. The warship was not stopping at Binu. It was

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 path that led from the village to the upland boundaries of

Somo. He read only fear and panic from the sounds, deduced that the village was fleeing to its mountain

He called Jerry to him and instructed him to scout to the great banyan tree, where Nalasu's path and the main

path joined, and to observe and report. And Jerry sat under the banyan tree and observed the flight of all

Somo. Men, women, and children, the young and the aged, babes at breast and patriarchs leaning on sticks

and staffs passed before his eyes, betraying the greatest haste and alarm. The village dogs were as frightened,

whimpering and whining as they ran. And the contagion of terror was strong upon Jerry. He knew the prod of

impulse to join in this rush away from some unthinkably catastrophic event that impended and that stirred his

intuitive apprehensions of death. But he mastered the impulse with his sense of loyalty to the blind man who

Back with Nalasu, sitting between his knees, he made his report. It was impossible for him to count more

than five, although he knew the fleeing population numbered many times more than five. So he signified five

men, and more; five women, and more five children, and more; five babies, and more; five dogs, and

moreeven of pigs did he announce five and more. Nalasu's ears told him that it was many, many times

more, and he asked for names. Jerry know the names of Bashti, of Agno, and of Lamai, and Lumai. He did

not pronounce them with the slightest of resemblance to their customary soundings, but pronounced them in

Nalasu named over many other names that Jerry knew by ear but could not himself evoke in sound, and he

answered yes to most of them by simultaneously nodding his head and advancing his right paw. To some

names he remained without movement in token that he did not know them. And to other names, which he

recognized, but the owners of which he had not seen, he answered no by advancing his left paw.

And Nalasu, beyond knowing that something terrible was impending something horribly more terrible than

any foray of neighbouring saltwater tribes, which Somo, behind her walls, could easily fend off, divined that

it was the longexpected punitive manofwar. Despite his threescore years, he had never experienced a

village shelling. He had heard vague talk of what had happened in the matter of shellfire in other villages,

but he had no conception of it save that it must be, bullets on a larger scale than Snider bullets that could be

But it was given to him to know shellfire before he died. Bashti, who had long waited the cruiser that was to

avenge the destruction of the Arangi and the taking of the heads of the two white men, and who had long

calculated the damage to be wrought, had given the command to his people to flee to the mountains. First in

the vanguard, borne by a dozen young men, went his matwrapped 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 at

his heels, made his first step to follow, when the air above him was rent by a prodigiousness of sound.

Nalasu sat down abruptly. It was his first shell, and it was a thousand times more terrible than he had

imagined. It was a rip snorting, skysplitting sound as of a cosmic fabric being torn asunder between the

hands of some powerful god. For all the world it was like the roughest tearing across of sheets that were thick

Not only did he sit down just outside his door, but he crouched his head to his knees and shielded it with the

arch of his arms. And Jerry, who had never heard shellfire, much less imagined what it was like, was

impressed with the awfulness of it. It was to him a natural catastrophe such as had happened to the Arangi

when she was flung down reeling on her side by the shouting wind. But, true to his nature, he did not crouch

down under the shriek of that first shell. On the contrary, he bristled his hair and snarled up with menacing

teeth at whatever the thing was which was so enormously present and yet invisible to his eyes.

Nalasu crouched closer when the shell burst beyond, and Jerry snarled and rippled his hair afresh. Each

repeated his actions with each fresh shell, for, while they screamed no more loudly, they burst in the jungle

more closely. And Nalasu, who had lived a long life most bravely in the midst of perils he had known, was

destined to die a coward out of his fear of the thing unknown, the chemically propelled missile of the white

masters. As the dropping shells burst nearer and nearer, what final selfcontrol he possessed left him. Such

was 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 house as if forsooth its grass thatch could protect his head from such huge

projectiles. He collided with the doorjamb, and, ere Jerry could follow him, whirled around in a part circle

into the centre of the floor just 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 fragments with it. Jerry, in the doorway, caught in the outdraught of the explosion, was flung a

score of feet away. All in the same fraction of an instant, earthquake, tidal wave, volcanic eruption, the

thunder of the heavens and the fireflashing of an electric bolt from the sky smote him and smote

He had no conception of how long he lay. Five minutes passed before his legs made their first spasmodic

movements, and, as he stumbled to his feet and rocked giddily, he had no thought of the passage of time. He

had no thought about time at all. As a matter of course, his own idea, on which he proceeded to act without

being aware of it, was that, a part of a second before, he had been struck a terrific blow magnified

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, staggering on

his hindlegs, dabbing with his forepaws at his nose headdownward between his forelegs, and even rubbing

his nose into the ground. He had no thought for anything save to remove the biting pain from his nose and

By a miracle he had escaped being struck by the flying splinters of iron, and, thanks to his strong heart, had

escaped being killed by the shock of the explosion. Not until the end of five minutes of mad struggling, in

which he behaved for all the world like a beheaded chicken, did he find life tolerable again. The maximum of

stifling and of agony passed, and, although he was still weak and giddy, he tottered in the direction of the

house and of Nalasu. And there was no house and no Nalasuonly 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 ultimate

nothingness. All the immediate world seemed doomed to nothingness. Life promised only somewhere else, in

the high hills and remote bush whither 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 so long had fed him, and for whom he had entertained a true

Retreat Jerry did, but he was not hasty in retreat. For a time he snarled at every shellscream in the air and

every shellburst in the bush. But after a time, while the awareness of them continued uncomfortably with

him, the hair on his neck remained laid down and he 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 trotted along the path at a regular and dignified pace. When he emerged upon the main

path, he found it deserted. The last refugee had passed. The path, always travelled from daylight to dark, and

which he had so recently seen glutted with humans, now in its emptiness affected him profoundly with the

impression of the endingness of all things in a perishing world. So it was that he did not sit down under the

With his nose he read the narrative of the flight. Only once did he encounter what advertised its terror. It was

an entire group 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 shark when he was a young boy; a dead Mary with a dead babe at her breast and a

dead child of three clutching her hand; and two dead pigs, huge and fat, which the woman had been herding

And Jerry's nose told him of how the stream of the fugitives had split and flooded past on each side and

flowed together again beyond. Incidents of the flight he did encounter: a partchewed joint of sugarcane

some child had dropped; a clay pipe, the stem short from successive breakages; a single feather from some

young man's hair, and a calabash, full of cooked yams and sweet potatoes, deposited carefully beside the trail

The shellfire ceased as Jerry trotted along; next he heard the riflefire from the landingparty, as it shot

down the domestic pigs on Somo's streets. He did not hear, however, the chopping down of the coconut trees,

For right here occurred with Jerry a wonderful thing that thinkers of the world have not explained. He

manifested in his dog's brain the free agency of life, by which all the generations of metaphysicians have

postulated God, and by which all the deterministic philosophers have been led by the nose despite their clear

denouncement of it as sheer illusion. What Jerry did he did. He did not know how or why he did it any more

than does the philosopher know how or why he decides on mush and cream for breakfast instead of two

What Jerry did was to yield in action to a brain impulse to do, not what seemed the easier and more usual

thing, but to do what seemed the harder and more unusual thing. Since it is easier to endure the known 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 to follow the tribe of Somo into its fastnesses. Yet what Jerry did was to diverge from

the line of retreat and to start northward, across the bounds of Somo, and continue northward into a strange

Had Nalasu not been struck down by the ultimate nothingness, Jerry would have remained. This is true, and

this, perhaps, to the one who 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 Nalasu lived, depart

from Somo if Nalasu died. He merely departed from Somo because Nalasu was dead, and the terrible

shellfire passed quickly into the past of his consciousness, while the present became vivid after the way of

the present. Almost on his toes did he tread the wild bushmen's trails, tense with apprehension of the lurking

death he know infested such paths, his ears cocked alertly for jungle sounds, his eyes following his ears to

No more doughty nor daring was Columbus, venturing all that he was to the unknown, than was Jerry in

venturing this jungledarkness of black Malaita. And this wonderful thing, this seeming great deed of free

will, he performed in much the same way that the itching of feet and tickle of fancy have led the feet of men

Though Jerry never laid eyes on Somo again, Bashti returned with his tribe the same day, grinning and

chuckling as he appraised the damage. Only a few grass houses had been damaged by the shells. Only a few

coconuts had been chopped down. And as for the slain pigs, lest they spoil, he made of their carcasses a great

feast. One shell had knocked a hole through his seawall. He enlarged it for a launchingways, faced the

sides of it with dryfitted coral rock, and gave orders for the building of an additional canoehouse. The only

vexation he suffered was the death of Nalasu and the disappearance of Jerryhis two experiments in

A week Jerry spent in the bush, deterred always from penetrating to 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 from its litter. It was his first hunting adventure for a living,

and it prevented him from travelling farther, for, true to his instinct, he remained by his kill until it was nearly

True, he ranged widely about the neighbourhood, finding no other food he could capture. But always, until it

was gone, he returned to the slain pig. Yet he was not happy in his freedom. He was too domesticated, too

civilized. Too many thousands of years had elapsed since his ancestors had run freely wild. He was lonely.

He could not get along without man. Too long had he, and the generations before 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 twolegged blackgod was desirable, since whitegods had long

since faded into the limbo of the past. For all he might have known, had he been capable of conjecturing, the

only whitegods in existence had perished. Acting on the assumption that a blackgod was better than no

god, when he had quite finished the little pig, he deflected his course to the left, downhill, 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 had always encountered close by the sea;

He came out upon the shore of the reefsheltered lagoon where ruined grass houses told him men had lived.

The jungle ran riot through the place. Sixinch trees, throated with rotten remnants of thatched roofs through

which they had aspired toward the sun, rose about him. Quickgrowing trees had shadowed the kingposts so

that the idols and totems, seated in carved shark jaws, grinned greenly and monstrously at the futility of man

through a rime of moss and mottled fungus. A poor little seawall, never much at its best, sprawled in ruin

from the coconut roots to the placid sea. Bananas, plantains, and breadfruit lay rotting on the ground. Bones

lay about, human bones, and Jerry nosed them out, knowing them for what they were, emblems of the

nothingness of life. Skulls he did not encounter, for the skulls that belonged to the scattered bones

The salt tang of the sea gladdened his nostrils, and he snorted with the pleasure of the stench of the mangrove

swamp. But, another Crusoe chancing upon the footprint of another man Friday, his nose, not his eyes,

shocked him electrically alert as he smelled the fresh contact of a living man's foot with the ground. It was a

nigger's foot, but it was alive, it was immediate; and, as he traced it a score of yards, he came upon another

Had there been an onlooker, he would have thought Jerry had gone suddenly mad. He rushed frantically

about, turning and twisting his course, now his nose to the ground, now up in the air, whining as frantically as

he rushed, leaping abruptly at right angles as new scents reached him, scurrying here and there and

But he was reading the full report which many men had written on the ground. A white man had been there,

he learned, and a number of blacks. Here a black had climbed a coconut tree and cast down the nuts. There a

banana tree had been despoiled of its clustered fruit; and, beyond, it was evident that a similar event had

happened to a breadfruit tree. One thing, however, puzzled hima scent new to him that was neither black

man's nor white man's. Had he had the necessary knowledge and the wit of eyeobservance, he would have

noted that the footprint was smaller than a man's and that the toeprints were different from a Mary's in that

they were close together and did not press deeply into the earth. What bothered him in his smelling was his

ignorance of talcum powder. Pungent it was in his nostrils, but never, since first he had smelled out the

footprints of man, had he encountered such a scent. And with this were combined other and fainter scents that

Not long did he interest himself in such mystery. A white man's footprints he had smelled, and through the

maze of all the other prints he followed the one print down through a breach of seawall to the seapounded

coral sand lapped by the sea. Here the latest freshness of many feet drew together where the nose of a boat

had rested on the beach and where men had disembarked and embarked again. He smelled up all the story,

and, his forelegs in the water till it touched his shoulders, he gazed out across the lagoon where the

Had he been half an hour sooner he would have seen a boat, without oars, gasolinepropelled, shooting

across the quiet water. What he did see was an Arangi. True, it was far larger than the Arangi he had known,

but it was white, it was long, it had masts, and it floated on the surface of the sea. It had three masts,

skylofty and all of a size; but his observation was not trained to note the difference between them and the

one long and the one short mast of the Arangi. The one floating world he had known was the white painted

Arangi. And, since, without a quiver of doubt, this was the Arangi, then, on board, would be his beloved

Skipper. If Arangis could resurrect, then could Skippers resurrect, and in utter faith that the head of

nothingness he had last seen on Bashti's knees he would find again rejoined to its body and its two legs on the

deck of the whitepainted floating world, he waded out to his depth, and, swimming dared the sea.

He greatly dared, for in venturing the water he broke one of the greatest and earliest taboos he had learned. In

his vocabulary was no word for "crocodile"; yet in his thought, as potent as any utterable word, was an image

of dreadful importan image of a log awash that was not a log and that was alive, that could swim upon the

surface, under the surface, and haul out across the dry land, that was hugetoothed, mightymawed, and

But he continued the breaking of the taboo without fear. Unlike a man who can be simultaneously conscious

of two states of mind, and who, swimming, would have known both the fear and the high courage with which

he overrode the fear, Jerry, as he swam, knew only one state of mind, which was that he was swimming to the

Arangi and to Skipper. At the moment preceding the first stroke of his paws in the water out of his depth, he

had known all the terribleness of the taboo he deliberately broke. But, launched out, the decision made, the

line of least resistance taken, he knew, singlethoughted, singlehearted, only that he 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 indubitably must be aboard the white yacht half a mile away. His little song of love,

fraught with keenness of anxiety, came to the ears of a man and woman lounging in deckchairs under the

awning; and it was the quickeyed woman who first saw the golden head of Jerry and cried out what she saw.

"Lower a boat, HusbandMan," she commanded. "It's a little dog. He mustn't drown."

"Dogs don't drown that easily," was "HusbandMan's" reply. "He'll make it all right. But what under the sun

a dog's doing out here . . . " He lifted his marine glasses to his eyes and stared a moment. "And a white man's

Jerry beat the water with his paws and moved steadily along, straining his eyes at the growing yacht until

suddenly warned by a sensing of immediate danger. The taboo smote him. This that moved toward him 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 that projecting part sank, he had an awareness that somehow it was different from a log

Next, something brushed past him, and he encountered it with a snarl and a splashing of his forepaws. He was

halfwhirled about in the vortex of the thing's passage caused by the alarmed flirt of its tail. Shark it was, and

not crocodile, and not so timidly would it have sheered clear but for the fact that it was fairly full with a

Although he could not see it, Jerry sensed that the thing, the instrument of nothingness, lurked about him. Nor

did he see the dorsal fin break surface and approach him from the rear. From the yacht he heard rifleshots in

quick succession. From the rear a panic splash came to his ears. That was all. The peril passed and was

forgotten. Nor did he connect the rifleshots with the passing of the peril. He did not know, and he was never

to know, that one, known to men as Harley Kennan, but known as "HusbandMan" by the woman he called

"WifeWoman," who owned the threetopmast schooner yacht Ariel, had saved his life by sending a

But Jerry was to know Harley Kennan, and quickly, for it was Harley Kennan, a bowline around his body

under his armpits, lowered by a couple of seamen down the generous freeboard of the Ariel, who gathered

in by the nape of the neck the smoothcoated Irish terrier that, treading water perpendicularly, had no eyes

for him so eagerly did he gaze at the 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 the deck. Instead, shaking himself

instinctively as he ran, he scurried along the deck for Skipper. The man and his wife laughed at the spectacle.

"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 a screw loose somewhere. Perhaps he's one of those creatures

who've slipped the ratchet off the motion cog. Maybe he can't stop running till he runs down."

In the meantime Jerry continued to run, up port side and down starboard side, from stern to bow and back

again, wagging his stump tail and laughing friendliness to the many twolegged gods he encountered. Had he

been able to think to such abstraction he would have been astounded at the number of whitegods. Thirty

there were at least of them, not counting other gods that were neither black nor white, but that still,

twolegged, upright and garmented, were beyond all peradventure gods. Likewise, had he been capable of

such generalization, he would have decided that the whitegods had not yet all of them passed into the

nothingness. As it was, he realized all this without being 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 unintelligibly to him, sniffed down the cabin companionway, sniffed down the engineroom

skylight and for the first time knew gasoline and engine oil; but sniff as he would, wherever he ran, no scent

Aft, at the wheel, he would have sat down and howled his heartbreak of disappointment, had not a

whitegod, evidently of command, in golddecorated white duck cap and uniform, spoken to him. Instantly,

always a gentleman, Jerry smiled with flattened ears of courtesy, wagged his tail, and approached. The hand

of this high god had almost caressed his head when the woman's voice came down the deck in speech that

Jerry did not understand. The words and terms of it were beyond him. But he sensed power of command in it,

which was verified by the quick withdrawal of the hand of the god in white and gold who had almost

caressed him. This god, stiffened electrically and pointed Jerry along the deck, and, with mouth

encouragements and urgings the import of which Jerry could only guess, directed him toward the one who so

Jerry wriggled his body in delight of obeying, and would loyally have presented his head to her outreaching

caress of hand, had not the strangeness and difference of her deterred him. He broke off in midapproach and

with a show of teeth snarled himself back and away from the windblown skirt of her. The only human

females he had known were naked Marys. This skirt, flapping in the wind like a sail, reminded him of the

menacing mainsail of the Arangi when it had jarred and crashed and swooped above his head. The noises her

mouth made were gentle and ingratiating, but the fearsome skirt still flapped in the breeze.

But her husband thrust out a rough, sure hand and drew Jerry in to him. And Jerry wriggled in ecstasy under

the god's caress, kissing the hand with a red flicker of tongue. Next, Harley Kennan directed him toward the

woman sitting up in the deckchair and bending forward, with hovering hands of greeting. Jerry obeyed. He

advanced with flattened ears and laughing mouth: but, just ere she could touch him, the wind fluttered the

"It's not you that he's afraid of, Villa," he said. "But of your skirt. Perhaps he's never seen a skirt before."

"You mean," Villa Kennan challenged, "that these headhunting cannibals ashore here keep records of

pedigrees and maintain kennels; for surely this absurd adventurer of a dog is as proper an Irish terrier as the

Harley Kennan laughed in acknowledgment. Villa Kennan laughed too; and Jerry knew that these were a pair

Of his own initiative, he approached the lady god again, attracted by the talcum powder and other minor

fragrances he had already identified as the strange scents encountered on the beach. But the unfortunate trade

wind again fluttered her skirt, and again he backed awaynot so far, this time, with much less of a bristle of

his neck and shoulder hair, and with no more of a snarl than a mere halfbaring of his fangs.

"He's afraid of your skirt," Harley insisted. "Look at him! He wants to come to you, but the skirt keeps him

Villa Kennan carried out the suggestion, and Jerry came circumspectly, bent his head to her hand and writhed

his back under it, the while he sniffed her feet, stockingclad and shoecovered, and knew them as the feet

"No doubt of it," Harley agreed. "He's whiteman selected, white man bred and born. He has a history. He

knows adventure from the groundroots up. If he could tell his story, we'd sit listening entranced for days.

Johnny, whom Kennan beckoned up to him, was a loan from the Resident Commissioner of the British

Solomons at Tulagi, who had come along as pilot and guide to Kennan rather than as philosopher and friend.

Johnny approached grinning, and Jerry's demeanour immediately changed. His body stiffened under Villa

Kennan's hand as he drew away from her and stalked stifflegged to the black. Jerry's ears did not flatten, nor

did he laugh fellowship with his mouth, as he 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. "He knows the colour line. He's a white man's dog that has been

"My word," spoke up Johnny. "Me know 'm that fella dog. Me know 'm papa and mamma belong along him.

Big fella white marster Mister Haggin stop along Meringe, mamma and papa stop along him that fella place."

"Of course," he cried. "The Commissioner told me all about it. The Arangi, that the Somo people captured,

sailed last from Meringe Plantation. Johnny recognizes the 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

"And yet you've overlooked the crowning proof of it," Villa Kennan teased. "The dog carries the evidence

"The tail," his wife gurgled. "Surely the natives do not bob the tails of their dogs.Do they, Johnny? Do

"No chop 'm off," Johnny agreed. "Mister Haggin along Meringe he chop 'm off. My word, he chop 'm that

"Then he's the sole survivor of the Arangi," Villa Kennan concluded. "Don't you agree, Mr. Sherlock Holmes

"I salute you, Mrs. S. Holmes," her husband acknowledged gallantly. "And all that remains is for you to lead

me directly to the head of La Perouse himself. The sailing directions record that he left it somewhere in these

Little did they guess that Jerry had lived on intimate terms with one Bashti, not many miles away along the

shore, who, in Somo, at that very moment, sat in his grass house pondering over a head on his withered knees

that had once been the head of the great navigator, the history of which had been forgotten by the sons of the

The fine, threetopmast schooner Ariel, on a cruise around the world, had already been out a year from San

Francisco when Jerry boarded her. As a world, and as a whitegod world, she was to him beyond compare.

She was not small like the Arangi, nor was she cluttered fore and aft, on deck and below, with a spawn of

niggers. The only black Jerry found on her was Johnny; while her spaciousness was filled principally with

He met them everywhere, at the wheel, on lookout, washing decks, polishing brasswork, running aloft, or

tailing on to sheets and tackles half a dozen at a time. But there was a difference. There were gods and gods,

and Jerry was not long in learning that in the hierarchy of the heaven of these whitegods on the Ariel, the

sailorizing, shipworking ones were far beneath the captain and his two whiteandgoldclad officers.

These, in turn, were less than Harley Kennan and Villa Kennan; for them, it came quickly to him, Harley

Kennan commanded. Nevertheless, there was one thing he did not learn and was destined never 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 vexing himself with the problem, he accepted their overlordship

of the world as dual. Neither out ranked the other. They seemed to rule coequal, while all others bowed

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 elected to belong, them he elected to love and serve rather than to the Japanese steward who regularly fed

him. For that matter, Jerry, like any dog, was able to differentiate between the mere direct foodgiver and the

food source. That is, subconsciously, he was aware that not alone his own food, but the food of all on board

found its source in the man and woman. They it was who fed all and ruled all. Captain Winters might give

orders to the sailors, but Captain Winters took orders from Harley Kennan. Jerry knew this as indubitably as

he acted upon it, although all the while it never entered his head as 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 under

them received deference accordingly. As Skipper, on the Arangi, and Bashti in Somo, had promulgated

taboos, so the man and the woman on the Ariel protected Jerry with taboos. From Sano, the Japanese steward,

and from him alone, did Jerry receive food. Not from any sailor in whaleboat or launch could he accept, or

would he be offered, a bit of biscuit or an invitation to go ashore for a run. Nor did they offer it. Nor were

they permitted to become intimate, to the extent of romping and playing with him, nor even of whistling to

By nature a "oneman" dog, all this was very acceptable to Jerry. Differences of degree there were, of course;

but no one more delicately and definitely knew those differences than did Jerry himself. Thus, it was

permissible for the two officers to greet him with a "Hello," or a "Good morning," and even to touch a hand

in a brief and friendly pat to his head. With Captain Winters, however, greater familiarity obtained. Captain

Winters could rub his ears, shake hands with his, scratch his back, and even roughly catch him by the jowls.

But Captain Winters invariably surrendered him up when the one man and the one woman appeared on deck.

When it came to liberties, delicious, wanton liberties, Jerry alone of all on board could take them with the

man and woman, and, on the other hand, they were the only two to whom he permitted liberties. Any

indignity that Villa Kennan chose to inflict upon him he was throbbingly glad to receive, such as doubling his

ears inside out till they stuck, at the same time making him sit upright, with helpless forefeet paddling the air

for equilibrium, while she blew roguishly in his face and nostrils. As bad was Harley Kennan's trick of

catching him gloriously asleep on an edge of Villa's skirt and of tickling the hair between his toes and making

him kick involuntarily in his sleep, until he kicked himself awake to hearing of gurgles and snickers of

In turn, at night on deck, wriggling her toes at him under a rug to simulate some strange and crawling

creature of an invader, he would dare to simulate his own befoolment and quite disrupt Villa's bed with his

frantic ferocious attack on the thing that he knew was only her toes. In gales of laughter, intermingled with

halfgenuine cries of alarm as almost his teeth caught her toes, she always concluded by gathering him into

her arms and laughing the last of her laughter away into his flattened ears of joy and love. Who else, of all on

board the Ariel, would have dared such devilishness with the ladygod's bed? This question it never entered

his mind to ask himself; yet he was fully aware of how exclusively favoured he was.

Another of his deliberate tricks was one discovered by accident. Thrusting his muzzle to meet her in love, he

chanced to encounter her face with his softhard little nose with such force as to make her recoil and cry out.

When, another time, in all innocence this happened again, he became conscious of it and of its effect upon

her; and thereafter, when she grew too wildly wild, too wantonly facetious in her teasing playful love of him,

he would thrust his muzzle at her face and make her throw her head back to escape him. After a time,

learning that if he persisted, she would settle the situation by gathering him into her arms and gurgling into

his ears, he made it a point to act his part until such delectable surrender and joyful culmination were

Never, by accident, in this deliberate game, did he hurt her chin or cheek so severely as he hurt his own

tender nose, but in the hurt itself he found more of delight than pain. All of fun it was, all through, and, in

addition, it was love fun. Such hurt was more than fun. Such pain was heartpleasure.

All dogs are godworshippers. 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 hurt the cheek of

his adored god, rather than have it really hurt he would have spilled out all the lovetide of his heart that

constituted the life of him. He did not live for food, for shelter, for a comfortable place between the

darknesses that rounded existence. He lived for love. And as surely as he gladly lived for love, would he have

Not quickly, in Somo, had Jerry's memory of Skipper and Mister Haggin faded. Life in the cannibal village

had been too unsatisfying. There had been too little love. Only love can erase the memory of love, or rather,

the hurt of lost love. And on board the Ariel such erasement occurred quickly. Jerry did not forget Skipper

and Mister Haggin. But at the moments he remembered them the yearning that accompanied the memory

grew less pronounced and painful. The intervals between the moments widened, nor did Skipper and Mister

Haggin take form and reality so frequently in his dreams; for, after the manner of dogs, he dreamed much and

Northward, along the leeward coast of Malaita, the Ariel worked her leisurely way, threading the

colourriotous lagoon that lay between the shorereefs and outerreefs, daring passages so narrow and

coralpatched that Captain Winters averred each day added a thousand grey hairs to his head, and dropping

anchor off every walled inlet of the outer reef and every mangrove swamp of the mainland that looked

promising of cannibal life. For Harley and Villa Kennan were in no hurry. So long as the way was interesting,

During this time Jerry learned a new name for himselfor, rather, an entire series of names for himself. This

was because of an aversion 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 find out his real name."

"Everything," her husband retorted. "Think of 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, keep him nameless, until we find out his original name."

"Must call him something," she objected. "Can't think of him without thinking something."

"Then call him many names, but never the same name twice. Call him 'Dog' today, and 'Mister Dog'

So it was, more by tone and emphasis and context of situation than by anything else, that Jerry came hazily to

identify himself with names such as: Dog, Mister Dog, Adventurer, Strong Useful One, Sing Song Silly,

Noname, and Quivering LoveHeart. These were a few of the many names lavished on him by Villa. Harley,

in turn, addressed him as: ManDog, Incorruptible One, Brass Tacks, Then Some, Sin of Gold, South Sea

Satrap, Nimrod, Young Nick, and LionSlayer. In brief, the man and woman competed with each other to

name him most without naming him ever the same. And Jerry, less by sound and syllable than by what of

their hearts vibrated in their throats, soon learned to know himself by any name they chose to address to him.

He no longer thought of himself as Jerry, but, instead, as any sound that sounded nice or was lovesounded.

His great disappointment (if "disappointment" may be considered to describe an unconsciousness of failure to

realize the expected) was in the matter of language. No one on board, not even Harley and Villa, talked

Nalasu's talk. All Jerry's large vocabulary, all his proficiency in the use of it, which would have set him apart

as a marvel beyond all other dogs in the mastery of speech, was wasted on those of the Ariel. They did not

speak, much less guess, the existence of the whiffwhuff shorthand language which Nalasu had taught him,

In vain Jerry tried it on the ladygod. Sitting squatted on his haunches, his head bowed forward and held

between her hands, he would talk and talk and elicit never a responsive word from her. With tiny whines and

thin whimperings, with whiffs and whuffs and growly sorts of noises down in his throat, he would try to tell

her somewhat of his tale. She was all meltingness of sympathy; she would hold her ear so near to the

articulate mouth of him as almost to drown him in the flowing fragrance of her hair; and yet her brain told her

"Bless me, HusbandMan!" she would cry out. "The Dog is talking. I know he is talking. He is telling me all

about himself. The story of his life is mine, could I but understand. It's right here pouring into my miserable

"I know it!" she would assure her husband. "I tell you he could tell the tale of all his adventures if only we

had understanding. No other dog has ever talked this way to me. There's a tale there. I feel its touches.

Sometimes almost do I know he is telling of joy, of love, of high elation, and combat. Again, it is indignation,

"Naturally," Harley agreed quietly. "A white man's dog, adrift among the anthropophagi of Malaita, would

experience all such sensations and, just as naturally, a white man's woman, a Wife Woman, a dear,

delightful Villa Kennan woman, can of herself imagine such a dog's experiences and deem his silly noises a

recital of them, failing to recognize them as projections of her own delicious, sensitive, sympathetic self. The

song of the sea from the lips of the shellPshaw! The song oneself makes of the sea and puts into the shell."

"Always the same," he gallantly cut her off. "Always right, especially when most wrong. Not in navigation,

of course, nor in affairs such as the multiplication table, where the brass tacks of reality stud the way of one's

ship among the rocks and shoals of the sea; but right, truth beyond truth to truth higher than truth, namely,

"Now you are laughing at me with your superior manwisdom," she retorted. "But I know" she paused for

the strength of words she needed, and words forsook her, so that her quick sweeping gesture of handtouch to

"We agreeI salute," he laughed gaily. "It was just precisely what I was saying. Our hearts can talk our

heads down almost any time, and, best all, our hearts are always right despite the statistic that they are mostly

Harley Kennan did not believe, and never did believe, his wife's report of the tales Jerry told. And through all

his days to the last one of them, he considered the whole matter a pleasant fancy, all poesy of sentiment, on

But Jerry, fourlegged, smoothcoated, Irish terrier that he was, had the gift of tongues. If he could not teach

languages, at least he could learn languages. Without effort, and quickly, practically with no teaching, he

began picking up the language of the Ariel. Unfortunately, it was not a whiffwhuff, dogpossible language

such as Nalasu had invented. While Jerry came to understand much that was spoken on the Ariel, he could

speak none of it. Three names, at least, he had for the ladygod: "Villa," "WifeWoman," "Missis Kennan,"

for so he heard her variously called. But he could not so call her. This was godlanguage entire, which only

gods could talk. It was unlike the language of Nalasu's devising, which had been a compromise between

In the same way he learned many names for the oneman god: "Mister Kennan," "Harley," "Captain

Kennan," and "Skipper." Only in the intimacy of the three of them alone did Jerry hear him called:

"HusbandMan," "My Man," "Patient One," "Dear Man," "Lover," and "This Woman's Delight." But in no

way could Jerry utter these names in address of the oneman nor the many names in address of the one

woman. Yet on a quiet night with no wind among the trees, often and often had he whispered to Nalasu, by

One day, bending over him, her hair (drying from a saltwater swim) flying about him, the onewoman, her

two hands holding his head and jowls so that his ribbon of kissing tongue just missed her nose in the empty

On another day she repeated this, at the same time singing most of the song to him softly in his ear. In the

midst of it Jerry surprised her. Equally true might be the statement that he surprised himself. Never, had he

consciously done such a thing before. And he did it without volition. He never intended to do it. For that

matter, 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 after a swim, or from kicking in his sleep when his feet were tickled, could

As her voice, in the song, made soft vibrations in his ears, it seemed to him that she grew dim and vague

before him, and that somehow, under the soft searching prod of her song, he was otherwhere. So much was

he otherwhere that he did the surprising thing. He sat down abruptly, almost cataleptically, drew his head

away from the clutch of her hands and out of the entanglement of her hair, and, his nose thrust upward at an

angle of fortyfive degrees, he began to quiver and to breathe audibly in rhythm to the rhythm of her singing.

With a quick jerk, cataleptically, his nose pointed to the zenith, his mouth opened, and a flood of sound

poured forth, running swiftly upward in crescendo and slowly falling as it died away.

This howl was the beginning, and it led to the calling him "Sing Song Silly." For Villa Kennan was quick to

seize upon the howling her singing induced and to develop it. Never did he hang back 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 the side of his head against hers, point his nose

past her ear, and almost immediately follow her when she began her low singing. Minor strains were

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 quickly learned 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 rise and fall, accelerate

Jerry enjoyed the singing much in the same way the opium eater enjoys his dreams. For dream he did,

vaguely and indistinctly, eyes wide open and awake, the ladygod's hair in a faintscented cloud about him,

her voice mourning with his, his consciousness drowning in the dreams of otherwhereness that came to him

of the singing and that was the singing. Memories of pain were his, but of pain so long forgotten that it was

no longer pain. Rather did it permeate him with a delicious sadness, and lift him away and out of the Ariel

For visions were his at such times. In the cold bleakness of night, it would seem he sat on a bare hill and

raised his howl to the stars, while out of the dark, from far away, would drift to him an answering howl. And

other howls, near and far, would drift along until the night was vocal with his kind. His kind it was. Without

Nalasu, in teaching him the whiffwhuff language, deliberately had gone into the intelligence of him; but

Villa, unwitting of what she was doing, went into the heart of him, and into the heart of his heredity, touching

As instance: dim shapes and shadowy forms would sometimes appear to him out of the night, and as they

flitted spectrally past he would hear, as in a dream, the hunting cries of the pack; and, as his pulse quickened,

his own hunting instinct would rouse until his controlled softhowling in the song broke into eager whinings.

His head would lower out of the entanglement of the woman's hair; his feet would begin making restless,

spasmodic movements as if running; and Presto, in a flash, he would be out and away, across the face of time,

out of reality and into the dream, himself running in the midst of those shadowy forms in the hunting

And as men have ever desired the dust of the poppy and the juice of the hemp, so Jerry desired the joys that

were his when Villa Kennan opened her arms to him, embraced him with her hair, and sang him across time

Not always, however, were such experiences his when they sang together. Usually, unaccompanied by

visions, he knew no more than vaguenesses of sensations, sadly sweet, ghosts of memories that they were. At

other times, incited by such sadness, images of Skipper and Mister Haggin would throng his mind; images,

too, of Terrence, and Biddy, and Michael, and the rest of the longvanished life at Meringe Plantation.

"My dear," Harley said to Villa at the conclusion of one such singing, "it's fortunate for him that you are not

an animal trainer, or, rather, I suppose, it would be better called 'trained animal showwoman'; for you'd be

"That in about one turn in a hundred does the animal love its work or is the animal loved by its trainer."

Villa heaved a great sigh of renunciation as she said, "Then I suppose I must abandon such promising and

lucrative career right now in the very moment you have discovered it for me. Just the same the billboards

"Villa Kennan the Thrushthroated Songstress, and Sing Song Silly the IrishTerrier Tenor," her husband

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 were happy and his love prompted him to be happy with them.

For Jerry had found, and in the uttermost, what his nature craved the love of a god. Recognizing the

duality of their lordship over the Ariel, he loved the pair of them; yet, somehow, perhaps because she had

penetrated deepest into his heart with her magic voice that transported him to the land of Otherwhere, he

loved the ladygod beyond all love he had ever known, not even excluding his love for Skipper.

One thing Jerry learned early on the Ariel, namely, that nigger chasing was not permitted. Eager to please

and serve his new gods, he took advantage of the first opportunity to worry a canoeload of blacks who came

visiting on board. The quick chiding of Villa and the command of Harley made him pause in amazement.

Fully believing he had been mistaken, he resumed his ragging of the particular black he had picked upon.

This time Harley's voice was peremptory, and Jerry came to him, his wagging tail and wriggling body all

eagerness of apology, as was his rosestrip of tongue that kissed the hand of forgiveness with which Harley

Next, Villa called him to her. Holding him close to her with her hands on his jowls, eye to eye and nose to

nose, she talked to him earnestly about the sin of niggerchasing. She told him that he was no common

bushdog, but a blooded Irish gentleman, and that no dog that was a gentleman ever did such things as chase

unoffending black men. 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 Ariel language he had already learned, and she

used it several times. "Naughty," to him, meant "must not," and was by way of expressing a taboo.

Since it was their way and their will, who was he, he might well have asked himself, to disobey their rule or

question it? If niggers were not to be chased, then chase them he would not, despite the fact that Skipper had

encouraged him to chase them. Not in such set terms did Jerry consider the matter; but in his own way he

Love of a god, with him, implied service. It pleased him to please with service. And the foundationstone of

service, in his case, was obedience. Yet it strained him sore for a time to refrain from snarl and snap when the

legs of strange and presumptuous blacks passed near him along the Ariel's white deck.

But there were times and times, as he was to learn, and the time came when Villa Kennan wanted a bath, a

real bath in fresh, rain descended, running water, and when Johnny, the black pilot from Tulagi, made a

mistake. The chart showed a mile of the Suli river where it emptied into the sea. Why it showed only a mile

was because no white man had ever explored it farther. When Villa proposed the bath, her husband advised

"No fella boy stop 'm along that place," he said. "No make 'm trouble along you. Bush fella boy stop 'm long

So it was that the launch went ashore, and, while its crew lolled in the shade of the beach coconuts, Villa,

Harley, and Jerry followed the river inland a quarter of a mile to the first likely pool.

"One can never be too sure," Harley said, taking his automatic pistol from its holster and placing it on top his

Villa stepped into the water to her knees, looked up at the dark jungle roof high overhead through which only

"An appropriate setting for a dark deed," she smiled, then scooped a handful of chill water against her

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 woodrat. It was not a very

fresh trail. He knew that well enough; but in the deeps of him were all his instincts of ancient

traininginstincts to hunt, to prowl, to pursue living things, in short, to play the game of getting his own

So it was, exercising faculties that were no longer necessary, but that were still alive in him and clamorous

for exercise, he followed the longsince passed woodrat with all the softfooted crouching craft of the

meatpursuer and with utmost fineness of reading the scent. The trail crossed a fresh trail, a trail very fresh,

very immediately fresh. As if a rope had been attached to it, his head was jerked abruptly to right angles with

his body. The unmistakable smell of 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 in the pigeonholes of his brain.

Forgotten was the stale woodrat as he followed the new trail. Curiosity and play impelled him. He had no

thought of apprehension for Villa and Harleynot even when he reached the spot where the black, evidently

startled by bearing their voices, had stood and debated, and so left a very strong scent. From this point the

trail swerved off toward the pool. Nervously alert, strung to extreme tension, but without alarm, still playing

From the pool came occasional cries and laughter, and each time they reached his ears Jerry experienced glad

little thrills. Had he been asked, and had he been able to express the sensations of emotion in terms of

thought, he would have said that the sweetest sound in the world was any sound of Villa Kennan's voice, and

that, next sweetest, was any sound of Harley Kennan's voice. Their voices thrilled him, always, reminding

With the first sight of the strange black, which occurred close to the pool, Jerry's suspicions were aroused. He

was not conducting himself as an ordinary black, not on evil intent, should conduct himself. Instead, he

betrayed all the actions of one who lurked in the perpetration of harm. He crouched on the jungle floor,

peering around a great root of a board tree. Jerry bristled and himself crouched as he watched.

Once, the black raised his rifle halfway to his shoulder; but, with an outburst of splashing and laughter, his

unconscious victims evidently removed themselves from his field of vision. His rifle was no oldfashioned

Snider, but a modern, repeating Winchester; and he showed habituation to firing it from his shoulder rather

Not satisfied with his position by the board tree, he lowered his gun to his side and crept closer to the pool.

Jerry crouched low and followed. So low did he crouch that his head, extended horizontally forward, was

much lower than his shoulders which were humped up queerly and composed the highest part of him. When

the black paused, Jerry paused, as if instantly frozen. When the black moved, he moved, but more swiftly,

cutting down the distance between them. And all the while the hair of his neck and shoulders bristled in

recurrent waves of ferocity and wrath. No golden dog this, ears flattened and tongue laughing in the arms of

the ladygod, no Sing Song Silly chanting ancient memories in the cloudentanglement of her hair; but a

Jerry intended to attack as soon as he had crept sufficiently near. He was unaware of the Ariel taboo against

niggerchasing. At that moment it had no place in his consciousness. All he knew was that harm threatened

So much had Jerry gained on his quarry, that when again the black squatted for his shot, Jerry deemed he was

near enough to rush. The rifle was coming to shoulder when he sprang forward. Swiftly as he sprang, he

made no sound, and his victim's first warning was when Jerry's body, launched like a projectile, smote the

black squarely between the shoulders. At the same moment his teeth entered the back of the neck, but too

near the base in the lumpy shoulder muscles to permit the fangs to penetrate to the spinal cord.

In the first fright of surprise, the black's finger pulled the trigger and his throat loosed an unearthly yell.

Knocked forward on his face, he rolled over and grappled with Jerry, who slashed cheek bone and cheek

and ribboned an ear; for it is the way of an Irish terrier to bite repeatedly and quickly rather than to hold a

When Harley Kennan, automatic in hand and naked as Adam, reached the spot, he found dog and man locked

together and tearing up the forest mould 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 his hind feet. No puppy claws were they, but the stout claws of a mature dog that were

stiffened by a backing of hard muscles. And they ripped naked chest and abdomen full length again and again

until the whole front of the man was streaming red. Harley Kennan did not dare chance a shot, so closely

were the combatants locked. Instead, stepping in close; he smashed down the butt of his automatic upon the

side of the man's head. Released by the relaxing of the stunned black's hands, Jerry flung himself in a flash

upon the exposed throat, and only Harley's hand on his neck and Harley's sharp command made him cease

and stand clear. He trembled with rage and continued to snarl ferociously, although he would desist long

enough to glance up with his eyes, flatten his ears, and wag his tail each time Harley uttered "Good boy."

"Good boy" he knew for praise; and he knew beyond any doubt, by Harley's repetition of it, that he had

"Do you know the beggar intended to bushwhack us," Harley told Villa, who, halfdressed and still

dressing, had joined him. "It wasn't fifty feet and he couldn't have missed. Look at the Winchester. No old

He nodded. "Just that. Sing Song Silly beat him to it." He bent, rolled the man over, and discovered the

lacerated back of the neck. "That's where he landed on him first, and he must have had his finger on the

trigger, drawing down on you and me, most likely me first, when Sing Song Silly broke up his calculations."

Villa was only half hearing, for she had Jerry in her arms and was calling him "Blessed Dog," the while she

But Jerry snarled again and was for leaping upon the black when he stirred restlessly and dizzily sat up.

But the black had eyes only for Jerry, staring at him in wondering amaze until he pieced the situation together

in his growing clarity of brain and realized that such a small chunky animal had spoiled his game.

"My word," he grinned to Harley, "that fella dog put 'm crimp along me any amount."

He felt out the wounds of his neck and face, while his eyes embraced the fact that the white master was in

"He doesn't seem to me to be a regular Malaitan," he told Villa. "In the first place, where would he get a rifle

like that? Then think of his nerve. He must have seen us 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 the bush"

But not until Johnny and the launch crew arrived breathless from their run, did he learn. Johnny's eyes

gloated when he beheld the 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."

Not for some time would Johnny answer this question, and then only when Kennan told him that there was no

harm done and that he intended to 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. Him plenty bad fella boy too much. Makawao he name stop along him. Bad fella boy too much. Him

"Him belong along Malaita first time. Long time before too much he recruit 'm along schooner go work along

"He's a return Queenslander," Harley interpreted to 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's anything in Johnny's gammon about twenty pounds reward for him. That's a big

Johnny continued his explanation which, reduced to flat and sober English, 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 the Australian government, he had recruited

on Buli Plantation for the purposeas was afterwards provedof getting arms and ammunition. For an

attempt to kill the manager he had received fifty lashes at Tulagi and served a year. Returned to Buli

Plantation to finish his labour service, he had contrived to kill the owner in the manager's absence and to

In the whaleboat with him he had taken all the weapons and ammunition of the plantation, the owner's head,

ten Malaita recruits, and two recruits from San Cristobalthe two last because they were saltwater men and

could handle the whaleboat. Himself and the ten Malaitans, being bushmen, were too ignorant of the sea to

On the way, he had raided the little islet of Ugi, sacked the store, and taken the head of the solitary trader, a

gentlesouled half caste from Norfolk Island who traced back directly to a Pitcairn ancestry straight from

the loins of McCoy of the Bounty. Arrived safely at Malaita, he and his fellows, no longer having any use for

"My word, him bad fella boy any amount," Johnny finished his tale. "Government House, Tulagi, damn glad

"You blessed Sing Song Silly," Villa, murmured in Jerry's ears. "If it hadn't been for you"

"Your head and mine would even now be galumping through the bush as Makawao hit the high places for

home," Harley concluded for her. "My word, some fella dog that, any amount," he added lightly. "And I gave

him merry Ned just the other day for niggerchasing, and he knew his business better than I did all the time."

"Any way," he said, with a smile, "there would have been one consolation if your head had gone up into the

"You dear and blessed HusbandMan," she murmured, a quick cloudiness 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

When the Ariel cleared from Malu, on the northwest coast of Malaita, Malaita sank down beneath the

searim astern and, so far as Jerry's life was concerned, remained sunk for everanother vanished world,

that, in his consciousness, partook of the ultimate nothingness that had befallen Skipper. For all Jerry might

have known, though he pondered it not, Malaita was a universe, beheaded and resting on the knees of some

brooding lesser god, himself vastly mightier than Bashti whose knees bore the brooding weight of Skipper's

sundried, smokecured head, this lesser god vexed and questing, feeling and guessing at the dual

twinmysteries of time and space and of motion and 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 accepted Malaita as another world that had ceased to be. He remembered it as he remembered

dreams. Himself a live thing, solid and substantial, possessed of weight and dimension, a reality

incontrovertible, he moved through the space and place of being, concrete, hard, quick, convincing, an

absoluteness of something surrounded by the shades and shadows of the 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, sank for ever beneath sealevels, themselves unreal and passing as the phantoms of a

dream. The totality of the minute, simple world of the humans, microscopic and negligible as it was in the

siderial universe, was as far beyond his guessing as is the siderial universe beyond the starriest guesses and

Jerry was never to see the dark island of savagery again, although often 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 Arangi and the maneating

orgy on the beach to his flight from the shellscattered house and flesh of Nalasu. These dream episodes

constituted for him another land of Otherwhere, mysterious, unreal, and evanescent as clouds drifting across

the sky or bubbles taking iridescent form and bursting on the surface of the sea. Froth and foam it was,

quickvanishing as he awoke, nonexistent as Skipper, Skipper's head on the withered knees of Bashti in the

lofty grass house. Malaita the real, Malaita the concrete and ponderable, vanished and vanished for ever, as

From Malaita the Ariel steered west of north to Ongtong Java and to Tasmangreat atolls that sweltered

under the Line not quite awash in the vast waste of the West South Pacific. After Tasman was another wide

seastretch to the high island of Bougainville. Thence, bearing generally southeast and making slow

progress in the dead beat to windward, the Ariel dropped anchor in nearly every harbour of the Solomons,

from Choiseul and Ronongo islands, to the islands of Kulambangra, Vangunu, Pavuvu, and New Georgia.

Last of all, so far as concerned the Solomons, her anchor rumbled down and bit into the coralsanded 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, who was committed to a grasshouse jail,

well guarded, to sit in legirons against the time of trial for his many crimes. And Johnny, the pilot, ere he

returned to the service of the Commissioner, received a fair portion of the twenty pounds of head money that

Kennan divided among the members of the launch crew who had raced through the jungle to the rescue the

day Jerry had taken Makawao by the back of the neck and startled him into pulling the trigger of his unaimed

"I'll tell you his name," the Commissioner said, as they sat on the wide veranda of his bungalow. "It's one of

Haggin's terriers Haggin of Meringe Lagoon. The dog's father is Terrence, the mother is Biddy. The dog's

own name is Jerry, for I was present at the christening before ever his eyes were open. Better yet, I'll show

you his brother. His brother's name is Michael. He's niggerchaser on the Eugenie, the twotopmast schooner

that rides abreast of you. Captain Kellar is the skipper. I'll have him bring Michael ashore. Beyond all doubt,

"When I get the time, and a sufficient margin of funds, I shall pay a visit to Chief Bashtioh, no British

cruiser program. I'll charter a couple of trading ketches, take my own black police force and as many white

men as I cannot prevent from volunteering. There won't be any shelling of grass houses. I'll land my shore

party down the coast and cut in and come down upon Somo from the rear, timing my vessels to arrive on

"I will answer slaughter with law," the Commissioner replied. "I will teach Somo law. I hope that no

accidents will 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 Christian burial. I

know that I shall get old Bashti by the scruff of the neck and sit him down while I pump law and

The Commissioner, asceticlooking, an Oxford graduate, narrow shouldered and elderly, tiredeyed and

bespectacled like the scholar he was, like the scientist he was, shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, if they are

not amenable to reason, there may be trouble, and some of them and some of us will get hurt. But, one way or

the other, the conclusion will be the same. Old Bashti will learn that it is expedient to maintain white men's

"But how will he learn?" Villa Kennan asked. "If he is shrewd enough not to fight you, and merely sits and

listens to your English law, it will be no more than a huge joke to him. He will no more than pay the price of

"On the contrary, my dear Mrs. Kennan. If he listens peaceably to the lecture, I shall fine him only a hundred

thousand coconuts, five tons of ivory nut, one hundred fathoms of shell money, and twenty fat pigs. If he

refuses to listen to the lecture and goes on the war path, then, unpleasantly for me, I assure you, I shall be

compelled to thrash him and his village, first: and, next, I shall triple the fine he must pay and lecture the law

"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 changes his mind and heart, and does pay, and listens to

So it was that Jerry came to hear his oldtime name on the lips of Villa and Harley, and saw once again his

"Say nothing," Harley muttered to Villa, as they made out, peering over the bow of the shorecoming

whaleboat, the rough coat, red wheaten in colour, of Michael. "We won't know anything about anything,

Jerry, feigning interest in digging a hole in the sand as if he were on a fresh scent, was unaware of Michael's

nearness. In fact, 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 in the bottom of the hole he had dug. So deep was it, that all he

showed of himself was his hindlegs, his rump, and an intelligent and stiffly 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 space of the Eugenie's deck, scampered down the beach in a hurlyburly of joy, scenting a

thousand intimate landscents as he ran, and describing a jerky and eccentric course as he made short dashes

and goodnatured snaps at the coconut crabs that scuttled across his path to the safety of the water or reared

up and menaced him with formidable claws and a spluttering and foaming of the shelllids of their mouths.

The beach was only so long. The end of it reached where rose the rugged wall of a headland, and while the

Commissioner introduced Captain Kellar to Mr. and Mrs. Kennan, Michael came tearing back across the

wethard sand. So interested was he in everything that he failed to notice the small rearend portion of Jerry

that was visible above the level surface of the beach. Jerry's ears had given him warning, and, the precise

instant that he backed hurriedly up and out of the hole, Michael collided with him. As Jerry was rolled, and as

Michael fell clear over him, both erupted into ferocious snarls and growls. They regained their legs, bristled

and showed teeth at each other, and stalked stiffleggedly, in a stately and dignified sort of way, as they drew

But they were fooling all the while, and were more than a trifle embarrassed. For in each of their brains were

bright identification pictures 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 proud and sedate while all their impulse was to rush together in a frantic ecstasy.

Michael it was, less travelled in the world than Jerry, by nature not so selfcontrolled, who threw the

playacting of dignity to the wind, and, with shrill whinings of emotion, with bodywrigglings of delight,

flashed out his tongue of love and shouldered his brother roughly in 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 ear retaining 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

"No doubt of it," said the Commissioner. "The very way their father and mother run. I have watched them

But, after ten days of comradeship, came the parting. It was Michael's first visit on the Ariel, and he and Jerry

had spent a frolicking halfhour on her white deck amid the sound and commotion of hoisting in boats,

making sail, and heaving out anchor. As the Ariel began to move through the water and heeled to the filling

of her canvas by the brisk tradewind, the Commissioner and Captain Kellar shook last farewells and

scrambled down the gangplank to their waiting whaleboats. At the last moment Captain Kellar had caught

Michael 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 solitary white men were standing up, heads bared in

graciousness of conduct to the furnacestab of the tropic sun, as they waved additional and final farewells.

And Michael, swept by the contagion of excitement, barked and barked again, as if it were a festival of the

"Say goodbye to your brother, Jerry," Villa Kennan prompted in Jerry's ear, as she held him, his quivering

And Jerry, not understanding her speech, torn about with conflicting desires, acknowledged her speech with

wriggling body, a quick back toss of head, and a red flash of kissing tongue, and, the next moment, his head

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 he had

For Jerry had learned partings, and beyond all peradventure this was a parting, though little he dreamed that

he would again meet Michael across the years and across the world, in a fabled valley of far California, where

Michael, his forefeet on the gunwale, barked to him in a puzzled, questioning sort of way, and Jerry

whimpered back incommunicable understanding. The ladygod pressed his two flanks together reassuringly,

and he turned to her, his cool nose touched questioningly to her cheek. She gathered his body close against

her breast in one encircling arm, her free hand resting on the rail, halfclosed, a pinkandwhite heart of

flower, fragrant and seducing. Jerry's nose quested the way of it. The aperture invited. With snuggling,

budging, and nudgingmovements he spread the fingers slightly wider as his nose penetrated into the sheer

He came to rest, his golden muzzle softenfolded to the eyes, and was very still, all forgetful of the Ariel

showing her copper to the sun under the press of the wind, all forgetful of Michael growing small in the

distance as the whaleboat grew small astern. No less still was Villa. Both were playing the game, although to

As long as he could possibly contain himself, Jerry maintained his stiffness. And then, his love bursting

beyond the control of him, he gave a sniffas prodigious a one as he had sniffed into the tunnel 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 ladygod now. She gurgled gleefully. Her fingers tightened, in a caress that almost hurt, on Jerry's

muzzle. Her other hand and arm crushed him against her till he gasped. Yet all the while his stump of tail

valiantly bobbed back and forth, and, when released from such blissful contact, his silky ears flattened back

and down as, with first a scarlet slash of tongue to cheek, he seized her hand between his teeth and dented the

And so, for Jerry, vanished Tulagi, its Commissioner's bungalow on top of the hill, its vessels riding to

anchor in the harbour, and Michael, his full bloodbrother. He had grown accustomed to such vanishments.

In such way had vanished as in the mirage of a dream, Meringe, Somo, and the Arangi. In such way had

vanished all the worlds and harbours and roadsteads and atoll lagoons where the Ariel had had lifted her laid