Jerry lay on his side at first as he drank, until, with the

moisture, life flowed back into the parched channels of him, so
that, soon, still weak and shaky, he was up and braced on all his

four wide-spread legs and still eagerly lapping. The boy chuckled
and chirped his delight in the spectacle, and Jerry found surcease

and easement sufficient to enable him to speak with his tongue after
the heart-eloquent manner of dogs. He took his nose out of the

calabash and with his rose-ribbon strip of tongue licked Lamai's
hand. And Lamai, in ecstasy over this establishment of common

speech, urged the calabash back under Jerry's nose, and Jerry drank
again.

He continued to drink. He drank until his sun-shrunken sides stood
out like the walls of a balloon, although longer were the intervals

from the drinking in which, with his tongue of gratefulness, he
spoke against the black skin of Lamai's hand. And all went well,

and would have continued to go well, had not Lamai's mother,
Lenerengo, just awakened, stepped across her black litter of progeny

and raised her voice in shrill protest against her eldest born's
introducing of one more mouth and much more nuisance into the

household.
A squabble of human speech followed, of which Jerry knew no word but

of which he sensed the significance. Lamai was with him and for
him. Lamai's mother was against him. She shrilled and shrewed her

firm conviction that her son was a fool and worse because he had
neither the consideration nor the silly sense of a fool's solicitude

for a hard-worked mother. She appealed to the sleeping Lumai, who
awoke heavily and fatly, who muttered and mumbled easy terms of Somo

dialect to the effect that it was a most decent world, that all
puppy dogs and eldest-born sons were right delightful things to

possess, that he had never yet starved to death, and that peace and
sleep were the finest things that ever befell the lot of mortal man-

-and, in token thereof, back into the peace of sleep, he snuggled
his nose into the biceps of his arm for a pillow and proceeded to

snore.
But Lamai, eyes stubbornlysullen, with mutinous foot-stampings and

a perfect knowledge that all was clear behind him to leap and flee
away if his mother rushed upon him, persisted in retaining his puppy

dog. In the end, after an harangue upon the worthlessness of
Lamai's father, she went back to sleep.

Ideas beget ideas. Lamai had learned how astonishingly thirsty
Jerry had been. This engendered the idea that he might be equally

hungry. So he applied dry branches of wood to the smouldering coals
he dug out of the ashes of the cooking-fire, and builded a large

fire. Into this, as it gained strength, he placed many stones from
a convenient pile, each fire-blackened in token that it had been

similarly used many times. Next, hidden under the water of the
brook in a netted hand-bag, he brought to light the carcass of a fat

wood-pigeon he had snared the previous day. He wrapped the pigeon
in green leaves, and, surrounding it with the hot stones from the

fire, covered pigeon and stones with earth.
When, after a time, he removed the pigeon and stripped from it the

scorched wrappings of leaves, it gave forth a scent so savoury as to
prick up Jerry's ears and set his nostrils to quivering. When the

boy had torn the steaming carcass across and cooled it, Jerry's meal
began; nor did the meal cease till the last sliver of meat had been

stripped and tongued from the bones and the bones crunched and
crackled to fragments and swallowed. And throughout the meal Lamai

made love to Jerry, crooning over and over his little song, and
patting and caressing him.

On the other hand, refreshed by the water and the meat, Jerry did
not reciprocate so heartily in the love-making. He was polite, and

received his petting with soft-shining eyes, tail-waggings and the
customary body-wrigglings; but he was restless, and continually

listened to distant sounds and yearned away to be gone. This was
not lost upon the boy, who, before he curled himself down to sleep,

securely tied to a tree the end of the cord that was about Jerry's
neck.

After straining against the cord for a time, Jerry surrendered and
slept. But not for long. Skipper was too much with him. He knew,

and yet he did not know, the irretrievable ultimatedisaster to
Skipper. So it was, after low whinings and whimperings, that he

applied his sharp first-teeth to the sennit cord and chewed upon it
till it parted.

Free, like a homing pigeon, he headed blindly and directly for the
beach and the salt sea over which had floated the Arangi, on her

deck Skipper in command. Somo was largely deserted, and those that
were in it were sunk in sleep. So no one vexed him as he trotted

through the winding pathways between the many houses and past the
obscene kingposts of totemic heraldry, where the forms of men,

carved from single tree trunks, were seated in the gaping jaws of
carved sharks. For Somo, tracing back to Somo its founder,

worshipped the shark-god and the salt-water deities as well as the
deities of the bush and swamp and mountain.

Turning to the right until he was past the sea-wall, Jerry came on
down to the beach. No Arangi was to be seen on the placid surface

of the lagoon. All about him was the debris of the feast, and he
scented the smouldering odours of dying fires and burnt meat. Many

of the feasters had not troubled to return to their houses, but lay
about on the sand, in the mid-morning sunshine, men, women, and

children and entire families, wherever they had yielded to slumber.
Down by the water's edge, so close that his fore-feet rested in the

water, Jerry sat down, his heart bursting for Skipper, thrust his
nose heavenward at the sun, and wailed his woe as dogs have ever

wailed since they came in from the wild woods to the fires of men.
And here Lamai found him, hushed his grief against his breast with

cuddling arms, and carried him back to the grass house by the brook.
Water he offered, but Jerry could drink no more. Love he offered,

but Jerry could not forget his torment of desire for Skipper. In
the end, disgusted with so unreasonable a puppy, Lamai forgot his

love in his boyish savageness, clouted Jerry over the head, right
side and left, and tied him as few whites men's dogs have ever been

tied. For, in his way, Lamai was a genius. He had never seen the
thing done with any dog, yet he devised, on the spur of the moment,

the invention of tying Jerry with a stick. The stick was of bamboo,
four feet long. One end he tied shortly to Jerry's neck, the other

end, just as shortly to a tree. All that Jerry's teeth could reach
was the stick, and dry and seasoned bamboo can defy the teeth of any

dog.
CHAPTER XIV

For many days, tied by the stick, Jerry remained Lamai's prisoner.
It was not a happy time, for the house of Lumai was a house of

perpetual bickering and quarrelling. Lamai fought pitched battles
with his brothers and sisters for teasing Jerry, and these battles

invariably culminated in Lenerengo taking a hand and impartially
punishing all her progeny.

After that, as a matter of course and on general principles, she
would have it out with Lumai, whose soft voice always was for quiet

and repose, and who always, at the end of a tongue-lashing, took
himself off to the canoe house for a couple of days. Here,

Lenerengo was helpless. Into the canoe house of the stags no Mary
might venture. Lenerengo had never forgotten the fate of the last

Mary who had broken the taboo. It had occurred many years before,
when she was a girl, and the recollection was ever vivid of the

unfortunate woman hanging up in the sun by one arm for all of a day,
and for all of a second day by the other arm. After that she had

been feasted upon by the stags of the canoe house, and for long
afterward all women had talked softly before their husbands.

Jerry did discover liking for Lamai, but it was not strong nor
passionate. Rather was it out of gratitude, for only Lamai saw to