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, brass-fitted, copper-fastened, angle-ironed,
sheathed in man-of-war copper and with a fin-keel of bronze, she had been
sold into the Solomon Islands' trade for the purpose of blackbirding or
nigger-running. Under the law, however, this traffic was dignified by
being called "recruiting."
The _Arangi_ was a labour-recruit ship that carried the new-caught,
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 hot-paraffined 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 deck-houses. The only breaks--and no beams had been cut for
them--were 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 store-room.
And on this small deck, in addition to the crew, were the "return"
niggers from three far-flung plantations. By "return" was meant that
their three years of contract labour was up, and that, according to
contract, they were being returned to their home villages on the wild
island of Malaita. Twenty of them--familiar, all, to Jerry--were 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 these--and they were all on deck,
chattering and piping in queer, almost elfish, falsetto voices--were the
two white men, Captain Van Horn and his Danish mate, Borckman, making a
total of seventy-nine souls.
"Thought your heart 'd failed you at the last moment," was Captain Van
Horn's greeting, a quick pleasure light glowing into his eyes as they
noted Jerry.
"It was sure near to doin' it," Tom Haggin answered. "It's only for you
I'd a done it, annyways. Jerry's the best of the litter, barrin'
Michael, of course, the two of them bein' all that's left and no better
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.
"They'll have to take my head first," the skipper chuckled.
"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 salt-water
village, acrost on the weather coast, where the _Arangi_ owes eighteen. I
recruited them for Aolo, and being salt-water men they put them on the
_Sandfly_ that was lost on the way to the Santa Cruz. They've got a jack-
pot over there on the weather coast--my 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 and
delivers."
"And they ain't--yet," Haggin snorted.
"No fear," was the cheerful retort.
"You talk like Arbuckle used to talk," Haggin censured. "Manny's the
time I've heard him string it off. Poor old Arbuckle. The most sure and
most precautious chap 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 horse-pistols, 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 cook-boy. 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 devil-devil medicine."
Tom Haggin thrust out his hand in abrupt good-bye, resolutely keeping his
eyes from dropping to Jerry in the other's arms.
"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 fare-
you-well overside. Don't take your eye off 'm till you're quit of the
last of 'm."
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 caress of
his free hand.
"Don't forget the agreement," Tom Haggin called back across the widening
water. "If aught happens you, Jerry's to come back to me."
"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 had become habit.
He plumped down on his bob tail, lifted golden muzzle skyward, and
emitted a long puppy-wail of dismay and grief.
"It's all right, Jerry, old man, brace up and be a man-dog," Van Horn
soothed him.
But Jerry was not to be reconciled. While this indubitably was a white-
skinned 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 brilliant-coloured 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 sheath-knife, filled clips of
cartridges, and a huge automatic pistol in a leather holster.
On the beach, Biddy, who had hushed her grief, lifted it again 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 away from the beach.
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 jungle-noises of tree-dwelling creatures, half-bird
and half-man, than of a man, all man, and therefore a god. This served
as an excellent counter-irritant. Indignation that a mere black should
laugh at him mastered Jerry, and the next moment his puppy teeth, sharp-
pointed 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
away--another inheritance from Terrence--avoided 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 Lee-Enfield
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 him off.
"Some nigger-chaser, that pup, _some_ nigger-chaser!" Van Horn confided
to Borckman, as he bent to pat Jerry and give him due reward of praise.
And Jerry, under this caressing hand of a god, albeit it did not wear
pants, forgot for a moment longer the fate that was upon him.
"He's a lion-dog--more 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 be some dog when he grows up to those feet of his."
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 South-east Trade smote the sails and pressed
the _Arangi_ down. And down the deck, slanted for the moment to forty-
five 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 a-lee!"
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 headsails and a
shifting of headsheets.
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 and crush 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
spring upward to meet in mid career this monstrous, menacing thing.
But, the succeeding fraction of a moment, so that Jerry, leaping, missed
even the shadow of it, the mainsail, with a second crash of 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
heaven-filling, sky-obscuring, down-impending sails. This was the first
dog he had seen leap with bared teeth, undismayed, to grapple with the
huge unknown.
With spontaneity of admiration, Van Horn swept Jerry from the deck and
gathered him into his arms.