Jerry of the Islands

ping, thunder-crashing monster needed watching. And Jerry, crouching for the spring and ever struggling to maintain his footi

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 a

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 classi

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

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 sto

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 advantag

, rather than to strain after far other things. The sea was. The land no longer was. The Arangi certainly was, along with the life th

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 resen

rom 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

ght 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

e 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 sw

ack, 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 satisfi

e stiff-legged, the cocking of his head back over his shoulder at the whining wild-dog having all the

n 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

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

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 th

ith 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

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

at 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 belong

ed 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 unlimi

ling sticks of exploding dynamite into a screeching mass of blacks who had come raiding from the Beyond in the long war canoes

his barbed-wire fence on the floating world as a mark of the persistence of danger. Disaster and death hovered close about, waiting the chanc

ng, 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

tanchions. 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

ck at the wheel, had not seen Jerry because of the intervening skylight. But his eyes had taken in the shoulder movement of Lerumie t

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 bla

, 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 sud

d 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

y hurt 'm that fella dog-my word!-me cross too much along that fella boy. I knock 'm seven bel

w. Even Lerumie, variously lacerated by the barbed wire, did not scowl nor mutter threats. Instead, and bringing a roar of laughter from his fel

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 occ

, 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. Fro

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

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, h

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

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

. 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 an

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 spo

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 "Micha

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 le