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Jerry of the Islands-Part4_JACK LONDON(1876-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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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 thoroughexamination 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




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