Meanwhile the months slipped by, the south-east 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 half-
year 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 ruled him by nothing severer than the gentlest of chidings.
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 teaching.
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 blood-feud with the Annos, nor
of how he had lost his eyesight.
Practically all their conversation was confined to the instant present,
although they could compass a little of the very immediate past. Nalasu
would give Jerry a series of instructions, such as, going 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 ground--for 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 cockatoo and two
boys.
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 white-god, 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 developed a placid and sweet
affection. Love him he did not and could not.
At the best, they were only second-rate gods, and he could not forget the
great white-gods 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 nothingness which had already overtaken Skipper
and the _Arangi_.
In vain did the old man play to gain Jerry's heart of love. He could not
bid against Jerry's many reservations and memories, although he did win
absolute faithfulness and loyalty. Not passionately, as he would have
fought to the death for Skipper, but devotedly would he have fought to
the death for Nalasu. And the old man never dreamed but what he had won
all of Jerry's heart.
* * * * *
Came the day of the Annos, when one of them made the invention, which was
thick-plaited 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
cloud-palled sky that a tree-trunk 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 thick sandals, because of fear of the
thorns which Nalasu no longer planted.
Jerry, sitting between Nalasu's knees and nodding sleepily, gave the
first warning to Nalasu, who sat outside his door, wide-eyed, ear-strung,
as he had sat through all the nights of the many years. He listened
still more tensely through long minutes in which he heard nothing, at the
same time whispering to Jerry for information and commanding him to be
soft-spoken; and Jerry, with whuffs and whiffs and all the short-hand
breath-exhalations of speech he had been taught, told him that men
approached, many men, more men than five.
Nalasu reached the bow beside him, strung an arrow, and waited. At last
his own ears caught the slightest of rustlings, now here, 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, informed him again that it was men, many men, more men
than five.
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 in his
mouth.
Again Nalasu waited, until the rustlings of a fresh drawing-in of the
circle could be heard, whereupon Nalasu, Jerry accompanying him, picked
up all his arrows and moved soundlessly half-way around the circle. Even
as they moved, a Snider exploded that was aimed in the 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
wide-spreading, deep-penetrating, mushroom bullets of soft lead. And the
blind man defended himself only with a bow and a hundred arrows. He
discharged many hundreds of arrows which Jerry retrieved for 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 where the attack pressed
closest.
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, once even, was his nose slightly powder burned.
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 arrow-pricked wounded men
who dragged themselves away.
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 him earnestly.
"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 to make your courage and cunning live
again?"
"I am an old man," Nalasu began.
"Not so old as I am," Bashti interrupted. "Not too old to marry so that
your seed will add strength to the tribe."
"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 dreams--a 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?"
Bashti shrugged his shoulders.
"I too, have thought much on the matter," he said. "Yet do I arrive
nowhere. I do not know. You do 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
you--nay, two wives, for your days are short and I shall surely live to
see you hang with my fathers from the canoe-house ridgepole."
"I will not pay for a wife," Nalasu protested. "I will not pay for any
wife. I would not pay a stick of tobacco or a cracked coconut for the
best woman in Somo."
"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, round-legged, broad-
hipped, with generous breasts of richness. There is Nena. Her father
sets a stiff price upon her--a whole case of tobacco. I will buy her for
you as well. Your time is short. We must hurry."
"I will not marry," the old blind man proclaimed hysterically.
"You will. I have spoken."
"No, I say, and say again, no, no, no, no. Wives 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 veins and howl."
"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 send them to you in three
days."
"I will have nothing to do with them," Nalasu asserted wildly.
"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 jelly-fish, like a fat pig with the
bones removed, and I will then stake you out in the midmost centre of the
dog-killing 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, Bashti, so tell you. In three days I shall send to you your
two wives. . . . "
He paused, and a long silence fell upon them.
"Well?" Bashti reiterated. "It is wives or staking out unhinged in the
sun. You choose, but think well before you choose the unhinging."
"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 dog-killing yard when the sun cooks your sore joints
till the grease of the leanness of you bubbles like the tender fat of a
cooked sucking-pig."
"Then send me the wives," Nalasu managed to utter after a long pause.
"But send them in three days, not in two, nor to-morrow."
"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 of being. It is the law. It is
very well."