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Jerry of the Islands-Part27_JACK LONDON(1876-1916)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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and all of a size; but his observation was not trained to note the

difference between them and the one long and the one short mast of



the Arangi. The one floating world he had known was the white-

painted Arangi. And, since, without a quiver of doubt, this was the



Arangi, then, on board, would be his beloved Skipper. If Arangis

could resurrect, then could Skippers resurrect, and in utter faith



that the head of nothingness he had last seen on Bashti's knees he

would find again rejoined to its body and its two legs on the deck



of the white-painted floating world, he waded out to his depth, and,

swimming dared the sea.



He greatly dared, for in venturing the water he broke one of the

greatest and earliest taboos he had learned. In his vocabulary was



no word for "crocodile"; yet in his thought, as potent as any

utterable word, was an image of dreadful import--an image of a log



awash that was not a log and that was alive, that could swim upon

the surface, under the surface, and haul out across the dry land,



that was huge-toothed, mighty-mawed, and certain death to a swimming

dog.



But he continued the breaking of the taboo without fear. Unlike a

man who can be simultaneouslyconscious of two states of mind, and



who, swimming, would have known both the fear and the high courage

with which he overrode the fear, Jerry, as he swam, knew only one



state of mind, which was that he was swimming to the Arangi and to

Skipper. At the moment preceding the first stroke of his paws in



the water out of his depth, he had known all the terribleness of the

taboo he deliberately broke. But, launched out, the decision made,



the line of least resistance taken, he knew, single-thoughted,

single-hearted, only that he was going to Skipper.



Little practised as he was in swimming, he swam with all his

strength, whimpering in a sort of chant his eager love for Skipper



who indubitably must be aboard the white yacht half a mile away.

His little song of love, fraught with keenness of anxiety, came to



the ears of a man and woman lounging in deck-chairs under the

awning; and it was the quick-eyed woman who first saw the golden



head of Jerry and cried out what she saw.

"Lower a boat, Husband-Man," she commanded. "It's a little dog. He



mustn't drown."

"Dogs don't drown that easily," was "Husband-Man's" reply. "He'll



make it all right. But what under the sun a dog's doing out here .

. . " He lifted his marine glasses to his eyes and stared a moment.



"And a white man's dog at that!"

Jerry beat the water with his paws and moved steadily along,



straining his eyes at the growing yacht until suddenly warned by a

sensing of immediate danger. The taboo smote him. This that moved



toward him was the log awash that was not a log but a live thing of

peril. Part of it he saw above the surface moving sluggishly, and



ere that projecting part sank, he had an awareness that somehow it

was different from a log awash.



Next, something brushed past him, and he encountered it with a snarl

and a splashing of his forepaws. He was half-whirled about in the



vortex of the thing's passage caused by the alarmed flirt of its

tail. Shark it was, and not crocodile, and not so timidly would it



have sheered clear but for the fact that it was fairly full with a

recent feed of a huge sea turtle too feeble with age to escape.



Although he could not see it, Jerry sensed that the thing, the

instrument of nothingness, lurked about him. Nor did he see the



dorsal fin break surface and approach him from the rear. From the

yacht he heard rifle-shots in quick succession. From the rear a



panic splash came to his ears. That was all. The peril passed and

was forgotten. Nor did he connect the rifle-shots with the passing



of the peril. He did not know, and he was never to know, that one,

known to men as Harley Kennan, but known as "Husband-Man" by the



woman he called "Wife-Woman," who owned the three-topmast schooner

yacht Ariel, had saved his life by sending a thirty-thirty Marlin



bullet through the base of a shark's fin.

But Jerry was to know Harley Kennan, and quickly, for it was Harley



Kennan, a bowline around his body under his arm-pits, lowered by a

couple of seamen down the generous freeboard of the Ariel, who



gathered in by the nape of the neck the smooth-coated Irish terrier

that, treading water perpendicularly, had no eyes for him so eagerly



did he gaze at the line of faces along the rail in quest of the one

face.






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