At seven in the morning, when Skipper rolled him out of the blanket and
got up, Jerry celebrated the new day by chasing the wild-dog 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 side-step 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 mist-wreaths from the
deck planking, Van Horn cuddled Jerry in his arms and called him
princeling, and prince, and a king, and a son of kings.
For Van Horn had often listened to the recitals of Jerry's pedigree by
Tom Haggin, over Scotch-and-sodas, when it was too pestilentially hot to
go to bed. And the pedigree was as royal-blooded as was possible for an
Irish terrier to possess, whose breed, beginning with the ancient Irish
wolf-hound, had been moulded and established by man in less than two
generations of men.
There was Terrence the Magnificent--descended, as Van Horn remembered,
from the American-bred Milton Droleen, out of the Queen of County Antrim,
Breda Muddler, which royal bitch, as every one who is familiar with the
stud book knows, goes back as far as the almost mythical Spuds, with
along the way no primrose dallyings with black-and-tan 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
love-god, 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 white-gods 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 wrong with
Skipper.
Skipper, beginning the babblings of delirium which alternated with silent
moments of control in order to get below and under blankets, descended
the ladder-like stairs, and Jerry, all-yearning, 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 wide-spread 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 combing
and to listen to the faint sounds of Skipper's progress for'ard.
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 wild-dog,
but no inducement lay there. Lerumie passed by unnoticed, although he
knew he could bully him and make him give deck space. The myriad scents
of the land entered his keen nostrils, but he 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 heart-rending woe,
an idea came to him. There is no explaining how this idea came. No more
can it be explained than can a human explain why, at luncheon to-day, 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 half-gods, 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 that animate it to definite acts toward definite
ends.
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 quick-thinkingness 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
white-god. 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 flat-laid ears and eyes that almost
spoke, to any human sensitive of understanding.
But Borckman saw in his way only a four-legged 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 four-legged animal to be thrust
aside while he continued his lordly two-legged progress toward the bottle
that could set maggots crawling in his brain and make him dream dreams
that he was prince, not peasant, that he was a master of matter rather
than a slave of matter.
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 beach-jut of
insensate rock. He half-sprawled on the slippery deck, regained his
balance, and stood still and looked at the white-god 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, two-legged, white-skinned, 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
express a reciprocal love.
But this roughness of Borckman was different. It was the other kind of
roughness in which resided no warm affection, no heart-touch 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 made his
appeal.
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, who chuckled at him and
derided him.
From the crest of the combing to the cabin floor was seven feet. He had,
only a few hours before, climbed the precipitous stairway; 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 love-heroic
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 self-immolation. And only for love, and for no lesser
reason, could Jerry have made the leap.
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 puppy was a side-splitting, ludicrous event.
Not until the fourth minute ticked off did returning consciousness enable
Jerry to crawl to his feet and with wide-spread 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 nigger-chaser. Without a turn of
head or roll of eye, aristocratically positing their non-existingness to
their faces, he trotted for'ard along the cabin floor and into the
stateroom where Skipper babbled maniacally in the bunk.
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 wildly-thrashing arms brushed him away and flung him
violently against the side of the bunk.
This was roughness that was not love-roughness. 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 trouble.
"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 gold-medal prize-winner in the
combing of his lovely daughter's lovely hair. . . . She's broken out!
Give her the wheel aft there! Jib and fore-topsail halyards! Full and
by, there! A good full! . . . Ah, she takes it like the beauty fairy
boat that she is upon the sea. . . I'll just lift that--sure, 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 cards, believe me!"
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 yellow hair of a loved daughter in a Harlem flat.
"Both dead," Skipper said in a change of delirium. He said it quietly,
as if announcing the time of day, then wailed: "But, oh, the bonnie,
bonnie braids of all the golden hair of her!"
He lay motionlessly for a space and sobbed out a breaking heart. This
was Jerry's chance. He crept inside the arm that tossed, snuggled
against Skipper's side, laid his head on Skipper'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. . ."