time his half-year with the blind man had been,
despite the fact
that Nalasu was a rigid disciplinarian who insisted on training
Jerry for longer hours, day in and day out, than falls to the lot of
most dogs. Never did Jerry receive from him a blow, never a harsh
word. This man, who had slain four of the Annos, three of them
after he had gone blind, who had slain still more men in his savage
youth, never raised his voice in anger to Jerry and ruled him by
nothing severer than the gentlest of chidings.
Mentally, the
persistent education Jerry received, in this period of
late puppyhood, fixed in him increased brain power for all his life.
Possibly no dog in all the world had ever been so vocal as he, and
for three reasons: his own
intelligence, the
genius for teaching
that was Nalasu's, and the long hours
devoted to the teaching.
His shorthand
vocabulary, for a dog, was
prodigious. Almost might
it be said that he and the man could talk by the hour, although few
and simple were the abstractions they could talk; very little of the
immediate
concrete past, and scarcely anything of the immediate
concrete future, entered into their conversations. Jerry could no
more tell him of Meringe, nor of the Arangi, than could he tell him
of the great love he had borne Skipper, or of his reason for hating
Bashti. By the same token, Nalasu could not tell Jerry of the
blood-feud with the Annos, nor of how he had lost his eyesight.
Practically all their conversation was confined to the instant
present, although they could
compass a little of the very immediate
past. Nalasu would give Jerry a
series of instructions, such as,
going on a scout by himself, to go to the nest, then
circle about it
widely, to continue to the other
clearing where were the fruit
trees, to cross the
jungle to the main path, to proceed down the
main path toward the village till he came to the great banyan tree,
and then to return along the small path to Nalasu and Nalasu's
house. All of which Jerry would carry out to the letter, and,
arrived back, would make report. As, thus: at the nest nothing
unusual save that a buzzard was near it; in the other
clearing three
coconuts had fallen to the ground--for Jerry could count unerringly
up to five; between the other
clearing and the main path were four
pigs; along the main path he had passed a dog, more than five women,
and two children; and on the small path home he had noted a cockatoo
and two boys.
But he could not tell Nalasu his states of mind and heart that
prevented him from being fully
contented in his present situation.
For Nalasu was not a white-god, but only a mere nigger god. And
Jerry hated and despised all niggers save for the two exceptions of
Lamai and Nalasu. He tolerated them, and, for Nalasu, had even
developed a
placid and sweet
affection. Love him he did not and
could not.
At the best, they were only second-rate gods, and he could not
forget the great white-gods such as Skipper and Mister Haggin, and,
of the same breed, Derby and Bob. They were something else,
something other, something better than all this black savagery in
which he lived. They were above and beyond, in an unattainable
paradise which he
vividly remembered, for which he yearned, but to
which he did not know the way, and which, dimly sensing the ending
that comes to all things, might have passed into the ultimate
nothingness which had already overtaken Skipper and the Arangi.
In vain did the old man play to gain Jerry's heart of love. He
could not bid against Jerry's many reservations and memories,
although he did win
absolute faithfulness and
loyalty. Not
passionately, as he would have fought to the death for Skipper, but
devotedly would he have fought to the death for Nalasu. And the old
man never dreamed but what he had won all of Jerry's heart.
Came the day of the Annos, when one of them made the invention,
which was thick-plaited sandals to
armour the soles of their feet
against the poisoned thorns with which Nalasu had taken three of
their lives. The day, in truth, was the night, a black night, a
night so black under a cloud-palled sky that a tree-trunk could not
be seen an eighth of an inch beyond one's nose. And the Annos
descended on Nalasu's
clearing, a dozen of them, armed with Sniders,
horse pistols, tomahawks and war clubs, walking gingerly,
despitetheir thick sandals, because of fear of the thorns which Nalasu no
longer planted.
Jerry, sitting between Nalasu's knees and nodding
sleepily, gave the
first
warning to Nalasu, who sat outside his door, wide-eyed, ear-
strung, as he had sat through all the nights of the many years. He
listened still more tensely through long minutes in which he heard
nothing, at the same time whispering to Jerry for information and
commanding him to be soft-spoken; and Jerry, with whuffs and whiffs
and all the short-hand breath-exhalations of speech he had been
taught, told him that men approached, many men, more men than five.
Nalasu reached the bow beside him, strung an arrow, and waited. At
last his own ears caught the slightest of rustlings, now here, now
there, advancing upon him in the
circle of the
compass. Still
speaking for
softness, he demanded verification from Jerry, whose
neck hair rose bristling under Nalasu's
sensitive fingers, and who,
by this time, was
reading the night air with his nose as well as his
ears. And Jerry, as
softly as Nalasu, informed him again that it
was men, many men, more men than five.
With the
patience of age Nalasu sat on without
movement, until,
close at hand, on the very edge of the
jungle, sixty feet away, he
located a particular noise of a particular man. He stretched his
bow, loosed the arrow, and was rewarded by a gasp and a groan
strangely commingled. First he restrained Jerry from retrieving the
arrow, which he knew had gone home; and next he fitted a fresh arrow
to the bow string.
Fifteen minutes of silence passed, the blind man as if carven of
stone, the dog, trembling with
eagerness under the
articulate touch
of his fingers, obeying the bidding to make no sound. For Jerry, as
well as Nalasu, knew that death rustled and lurked in the encircling
dark. Again came a
softness of
movement, nearer than before; but
the sped arrow missed. They heard its
impact against a tree trunk
beyond and a
confusion of small sounds caused by the target's hasty
retreat. Next, after a time of silence, Nalasu told Jerry silently
to retrieve the arrow. He had been well trained and long trained,
for with no sound even to Nalasu's ears keener than
seeing men's
ears, he followed the direction of the arrow's
impact against the
tree and brought the arrow back in his mouth.
Again Nalasu waited, until the rustlings of a fresh drawing-in of
the
circle could be heard,
whereupon Nalasu, Jerry accompanying him,
picked up all his arrows and moved soundlessly
half-way around the
circle. Even as they moved, a Snider exploded that was aimed in the
general direction of the spot just vacated.
And the blind man and the dog, from
midnight to dawn, successfully
fought off twelve men equipped with the
thunder of
gunpowder and the
wide-sp
reading, deep-penetrating,
mushroom bullets of soft lead.
And the blind man defended himself only with a bow and a hundred
arrows. He discharged many hundreds of arrows which Jerry retrieved
for him and which he discharged over and over. But Jerry aided
valiantly and well, adding to Nalasu's acute
hearing his own acuter
hearing, circling
noiselessly about the house and reporting where
the attack pressed closest.
Much of their precious powder the Annos wasted, for the affair was
like a game of
invisible ghosts. Never was anything seen save the
flashes of the rifles. Never did they see Jerry, although they
became quickly aware of his
movements close to them as he searched
out the arrows. Once, as one of them felt for an arrow which had
narrowly missed him, he encountered Jerry's back with his hand and
acknowledged the sharp slash of Jerry's teeth with a wild yell of
terror. They tried firing at the twang of Nalasu's bowstring, but
every time Nalasu fired he
instantly changed position. Several
times, warned of Jerry's nearness, they fired at him, and, once
even, was his nose
slightly powder burned.
When day broke, in the quick
tropic grey that marks the leap from
dark to sun, the Annos retreated, while Nalasu,
withdrawn from the
light into his house, still possessed eighty arrows, thanks to
Jerry. The net result to Nalasu was one dead man and no telling how
many arrow-pricked wounded men who dragged themselves away.
And half the day Nalasu crouched over Jerry, fondling and caressing
him for what he had done. Then he went
abroad, Jerry with him, and
told of the battle. Bashti paid him a visit ere the day was done,
and talked with him earnestly.
"As an old man to an old man, I talk," was Bashti's
beginning. "I
am older than you, O Nalasu; I have ever been unafraid. Yet never
have I been braver than you. I would that every man of the tribe
were as brave as you. Yet do you give me great sorrow. Of what
worth are your courage and
cunning, when you have no seed to make
your courage and
cunning live again?"
"I am an old man," Nalasu began.
"Not so old as I am," Bashti interrupted. "Not too old to marry so
that your seed will add strength to the tribe."
"I was married, and long married, and I fathered three brave sons.
But they are dead. I shall not live so long as you. I think of my
young days as pleasant dreams remembered after sleep. More I think
of death, and the end. Of marriage I think not at all. I am too
old to marry. I am old enough to make ready to die, and a great
curiousness have I about what will happen to me when I am dead.
Will I be for ever dead? Will I live again in a land of dreams--a
shadow of a dream myself that will still remember the days when I
lived in the warm world, the quick juices of
hunger in my mouth, in
the chest of the body of me the love of woman?"
Bashti shrugged his shoulders.
"I too, have thought much on the matter," he said. "Yet do I arrive
nowhere. I do not know. You do not know. We will not know until
we are dead, if it happens that we know anything when what we are we
no longer are. But this we know, you and I: the tribe lives. The
tribe never dies. Wherefore, if there be meaning at all to our
living, we must make the tribe strong. Your work in the tribe is
not done. You must marry so that your
cunning and your courage live
after you. I have a wife for you--nay, two wives, for your days are
short and I shall surely live to see you hang with my fathers from
the canoe-house ridgepole."
"I will not pay for a wife," Nalasu protested. "I will not pay for
any wife. I would not pay a stick of
tobacco or a
cracked coconut
for the best woman in Somo."
"Worry not," Bashti went on
placidly. "I shall pay you for the
price of the wife, of the two wives. There is Bubu. For half a
case of
tobacco shall I buy her for you. She is broad and square,
round-legged, broad-hipped, with
generous breasts of richness.
There is Nena. Her father sets a stiff price upon her--a whole case
of
tobacco. I will buy her for you as well. Your time is short.
We must hurry."
"I will not marry," the old blind man proclaimed hysterically.
"You will. I have spoken."
"No, I say, and say again, no, no, no, no. Wives are nuisances.
They are young things, and their heads are filled with foolishness.
Their tongues are loose with
idleness of speech. I am old, I am
quiet in my ways, the fires of life have
departed from me, I prefer
to sit alone in the dark and think. Chattering young things about
me, with nothing but foam and spume in their heads, on their
tongues, would drive me mad. Of a surety they would drive me mad--
so mad that I will spit into every clam shell, make faces at the
moon, and bite my veins and howl."
"And if you do, what of it? So long as your seed does not
perish.
I shall pay for the wives to their fathers and send them to you in
three days."
"I will have nothing to do with them," Nalasu asserted wildly.
"You will," Bashti insisted
calmly. "Because if you do not you will
have to pay me. It will be a sore, hard debt. I will have every
joint of you unhinged so that you will be like a jelly-fish, like a
fat pig with the bones removed, and I will then stake you out in the
midmost centre of the dog-killing ground to swell in pain under the
sun. And what is left of you I shall fling to the dogs to eat.
Your seed shall not
perish out of Somo. I, Bashti, so tell you. In