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Jerry of the Islands-Part22_JACK LONDON(1876-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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lordliness. But he had found no master. Agno had never won a



heart-throb from him. For that matter, Agno had never tried to win

him. Nor, in his cold-blooded way, had he ever betrayed his hatred



of Jerry.

Not even the several old women, the two acolytes, and the fly-



flapping maid in Agno's house dreamed that the devil devil doctor

hated Jerry. Nor did Jerry dream it. To him Agno was a neutral



sort of person, a person who did not count. Those of the household

Jerry recognized as slaves or servants to Agno, and he knew when



they fed him that the food he ate proceeded from Agno and was Agno's

food. Save himself, taboo protected, all of them feared Agno, and



his house was truly a house of fear in which could bloom no love for

a stray puppy dog. The eleven-years' maid might have placed a bid



for Jerry's affection, had she not been deterred at the start by

Agno, who reprimanded her sternly for presuming to touch or fondle a



dog of such high taboo.

What delayed Agno's plot against Jerry for the half-year of the



monsoon was the fact that the season of egg-laying for the megapodes

in Bashti's private laying-yard did not begin until the period of



the south-east trades. And Agno, having early conceived his plot,

with the patience that was characteristic of him was content to wait



the time.

Now the megapode of the Solomons is a distant cousin to the brush



turkey of Australia. No larger than a large pigeon, it lays an egg

the size of a domestic duck's. The megapode, with no sense of fear,



is so silly that it would have been annihilated hundreds of

centuries before had it not been preserved by the taboos of the



chiefs and priests. As it was, the chiefs were compelled to keep

cleared patches of sand for it, and to fence out the dogs. It



buried its eggs two feet deep, depending on the heat of the sun for

the hatching. And it would dig and lay, and continue to dig and



lay, while a black dug out its eggs within two or three feet of it.

The laying-yard was Bashti's. During the season, he lived almost



entirely on megapode eggs. On rare occasion he even had megapodes

that were near to finishing their laying killed for his kai-kai.



This was no more than a whim, however, prompted by pride in such

exclusiveness of diet only possible to one in such high place. In



truth, he cared no more for megapode meat than for any other meat.

All meat tasted alike to him, for his taste for meat was one of the



vanished pleasures in the limbo of memory.

But the eggs! He liked to eat them. They were the only article of



food he liked to eat, They gave him reminiscent thrills of the

ancient food-desires of his youth. Actually was he hungry when he



had megapode eggs, and the well-nigh dried founts of saliva and of

internal digestive juices were stimulated to flow again at



contemplation of a megapode egg prepared for the eating. Wherefore,

he alone of all Somo, barred rigidly by taboo, ate megapode eggs.



And, since the taboo was essentially religious, to Agno was deputed

the ecclesiastical task of guarding and cherishing and caring for



the royal laying-yard.

But Agno was no longer young. The acid bite of belly desire had



long since deserted him, and he, too, ate from a sense of duty, all

meat tasting alike to him. Megapode eggs only stung his taste alive



and stimulated the flow of his juices. Thus it was that he broke

the taboos he imposed, and, privily, before the eyes of no man,



woman, or child ate the eggs he stole from Bashti's private

preserve.



So it was, as the laying season began, and when both Bashti and Agno

were acutely egg-yearning after six months of abstinence, that Agno



led Jerry along the taboo path through the mangroves, where they

stepped from root to root above the muck that ever steamed and stank



in the stagnant air where the wind never penetrated.

The path, which was not an ordinary path and which consisted, for a



man, in wide strides from root to root, and for a dog in four-legged

leaps and plunges, was new to Jerry. In all his ranging of Somo,



because it was so unusual a path, he had never discovered it. The

unbending of Agno, thus to lead him, was a surprise and a delight to



Jerry, who, without reasoning about it, in a vague way felt the

preliminary sensations that possibly Agno, in a small way, might



prove the master which his dog's soul continually sought.

Emerging from the swamp of mangroves, abruptly they came upon a



patch of sand, still so salt and inhospitable from the sea's deposit

that no great trees rooted and interposed their branches between it



and the sun's heat. A primitive gate gave entrance, but Agno did




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