Jerry quite forgot Meringe for the time being. As he well remembered,
the hawk had been sharp of beak and claw. This air-flapping, thunder-
crashing 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 low growls at any display
of movement on its part.
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 rat-tat-tatting 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 sun like gems of
ivory.
Failing in every leap, Jerry achieved a judgment. In passing, it must be
noted that this judgment was only arrived at by a 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.
Therefore--although he did not stop to think that he was thinking--it 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 plantation-house 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
sheet-gear. But he no longer crouched to spring for it. That had been
the first lesson, and quickly mastered.
Having settled the mainsail, Jerry returned in mind to Meringe. But
there was no Meringe, no Biddy and Terrence and Michael on the beach; no
_Mister_ Haggin and Derby and Bob; no beach: no land with the palm-trees
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 fore-feet on the six-inch rail and
gazing, he saw only the ocean, broken-faced and turbulent, yet orderly
marching its white-crested seas before the drive of the trade.
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 close-hauled, with a good full, port-tacked to the
south-east 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 Malaita lifting life-shadowed
pink cloud-puffs above the sea-rim.
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 what was--in short, to
know and to adjust himself to his new environment.
His first discovery was delightful--a wild-dog 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 wild-dog
was what he was, a wild-dog, cringing and sneaking, his ears for ever
down, his tail for ever between his legs, for ever apprehending fresh
misfortune and ill-treatment 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 wild-dog was maturer than Jerry, larger-bodied, and wiser in
wickedness; but Jerry was blue-blooded, right-selected, and valiant. The
wild-dog 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 fear-selected. 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
corner.
But Jerry had been love-selected and courage-selected. His ancestors had
been deliberately and consciously chosen by men, who, somewhere in the
forgotten past, had taken the wild-dog 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 rat-like 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
up-standing and out-dashing ones, who flew into the face of danger and
battled and died, but who never gave ground. And, since it is the way of
kind to beget kind, Jerry was what Terrence was before him, and what
Terrence's forefathers had been for a long way back.
So it was that Jerry, when he chanced upon the wild-dog stowed shrewdly
away from the wind in the lee-corner 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 enemy--the wild-
dog that had not come in to the fires of man. With a wild paean of joy
that attracted Captain Van Horn's all-hearing ears and all-seeing 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 squallings of terror, pain, and abject humility.
And Jerry was a gentleman, which is to say he was a gentle dog. He had
been so selected. Because the thing did not fight back, because it was
abject and whining, because it was helpless under him, he abandoned the
attack, disengaging himself from the top of the 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, wild-doggy 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,
eh! _Some_ dog!"
As he stalked away, it must be admitted that Jerry displayed pride in
himself, his gait being a trifle stiff-legged, the cocking of his head
back over his shoulder at the whining wild-dog 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, two-legged though
they were; for he had moved and lived always under the aegis of the great
two-legged and be-trousered god, _Mister_ Haggin.
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 bothering about the future.
In his own way of acquiring knowledge, he quickly discovered, just as on
the plantation house-boys were different from field-boys, 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 scrubbing with brooms.
Just as Jerry had learned from _Mister_ Haggin that he must be more
tolerant of the house-boys than of the field-boys 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 white-god'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 them equality. At the best, he could be stand-offishly
considerate of them.
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
four-score 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, ever-impending, 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 eating-table, the billiard-table, 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 in their belts when they
left the house to go among their blacks.
Jerry knew these noise-making things for what they were--instruments 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
white-gods 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,
two-legged white-gods. 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 noise-way. 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 mother-of-pearl, which they had left hauled up on the beach
at the door of Meringe.
Many precautions by the white-gods had Jerry been aware of, and so,
sensing it almost in intangible ways, as a matter of course he accepted
this barbed-wire 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 trade-mirror and combed his kinky hair with a hand-carved comb of
wood.
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 side-long 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, with
the sense of sacrilege committed upon him, went instantly wild.
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 puppy-scream of indignation. He slashed ankle and foot as he
received the second kick in mid-air; and, although he slid clear down the
slope of deck into the scuppers, he left on the black skin the red
tracery of his puppy-needle teeth. Still screaming his indignation, he
clawed his way back up the steep wooden hill.
Lerumie, with another side-long 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 three strands of barbed wire on the lee rail.
The deck-full 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 man-thumps of joyful admiration. Next, the captain turned to his
many passengers and orated in _beche_-_de_-_mer_ English.
"Hey! You fella boy! I make 'm big fella talk. This fella dog he
belong along me. One fella boy hurt 'm that fella dog--my word!--me
cross too much along that fella boy. I knock 'm seven bells outa that
fella boy. You take 'm care leg belong you. I take 'm care dog belong
me. Savve?"
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 white-gods 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 niggers--well, had not he seen them
always compelled to remain in their lesser place? Had he not seen them,
on occasion, triced up to the palm-trees of the Meringe compound and
their backs lashed to ribbons by the white-gods? Small wonder that a
high-born Irish terrier, in the arms of love of the white-god, should
look at niggers through white-god's eyes, and act toward niggers in the
way that earned the white-god's reward of praise.
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 wild-dog, 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 wild-dog sprang, scratched his
sharp puppy-teeth into Jerry's yellow-velvet hide, and scuttled back into
his lair.
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 wild-dog fought to best
advantage--in 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 teeth and jaw.
There was no getting at the wild-dog, 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 wild-dog in
the end, had not Borckman, in passing, reached in and dragged Jerry out
by a hind-leg. Again came Captain Van Horn's call, and Jerry, obedient,
trotted on aft.
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 tea-cup, her received a snub on the nose from the mate's grimy
forefinger. Also, the mate did not offer him food.
Captain Van Horn gave him, first of all, a pannikin of oatmeal mush,
generously flooded with condensed cream and sweetened with a heaping
spoonful of sugar. After that, on occasion, he gave him morsels of
buttered bread and slivers of fried fish from which he first carefully
picked the tiny bones.
His beloved _Mister_ Haggin had never fed him from the table at meal
time, and Jerry was beside himself with the joy of this delightful
experience. And, being young, he allowed his eagerness to take
possession of him, so that soon he was unduly urging the captain for more
pieces of fish and of bread and butter. Once, he even barked his demand.
This put the idea into the captain's head, who began immediately to teach
him to "speak."
At the end of five minutes he had learned to speak softly, and to speak
only once--a low, mellow, bell-like bark of a single syllable. Also, in
this first five minutes, he had learned to "sit down," as distinctly
different from "lie down"; and that he must sit down whenever he spoke,
and that he must speak without jumping or moving from the sitting
position, and then must wait until the piece of food was passed to him.
Further, he had added three words to his vocabulary. For ever after,
"speak" would mean to him "speak," and "sit down" would mean "sit down"
and would not mean "lie down." The third addition to his vocabulary was
"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 two-
legged 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, Gott-fer-dang, a dog's brain
has to be like a man's. If he does things like a man, he's got to think
like a man."