No pause for thanks did he make when he was dropped down upon the
deck. Instead, shaking himself instinctively as he ran, he scurried

along the deck for Skipper. The man and his wife laughed at the
spectacle.

"He acts as if he were demented with delight at being rescued," Mrs.
Kennan observed.

And Mr. Kennan: "It's not that. He must have a screw loose
somewhere. Perhaps he's one of those creatures who've slipped the

ratchet off the motion cog. Maybe he can't stop running till he
runs down."

In the meantime Jerry continued to run, up port side and down
starboard side, from stern to bow and back again, wagging his stump

tail and laughing friendliness to the many two-legged gods he
encountered. Had he been able to think to such abstraction he would

have been astounded at the number of white-gods. Thirty there were
at least of them, not counting other gods that were neither black

nor white, but that still, two-legged, upright and garmented, were
beyond all peradventure gods. Likewise, had he been capable of such

generalization, he would have decided that the white-gods had not
yet all of them passed into the nothingness. As it was, he realized

all this without being aware that he realized it.
But there was no Skipper. He sniffed down the forecastle hatch,

sniffed into the galley where two Chinese cooks jabbered
unintelligibly to him, sniffed down the cabin companionway, sniffed

down the engine-room skylight and for the first time knew gasoline
and engine oil; but sniff as he would, wherever he ran, no scent did

he catch of Skipper.
Aft, at the wheel, he would have sat down and howled his heartbreak

of disappointment, had not a white-god, evidently of command, in
gold-decorated white duck cap and uniform, spoken to him.

Instantly, always a gentleman, Jerry smiled with flattened ears of
courtesy, wagged his tail, and approached. The hand of this high

god had almost caressed his head when the woman's voice came down
the deck in speech that Jerry did not understand. The words and

terms of it were beyond him. But he sensed power of command in it,
which was verified by the quick withdrawal of the hand of the god in

white and gold who had almost caressed him. This god, stiffened
electrically and pointed Jerry along the deck, and, with mouth

encouragements and urgings the import of which Jerry could only
guess, directed him toward the one who so commanded by saying:

"Send him, please, along to me, Captain Winters."
Jerry wriggled his body in delight of obeying, and would loyally

have presented his head to her outreaching caress of hand, had not
the strangeness and difference of her deterred him. He broke off in

mid-approach and with a show of teeth snarled himself back and away
from the windblown skirt of her. The only human females he had

known were naked Marys. This skirt, flapping in the wind like a
sail, reminded him of the menacing mainsail of the Arangi when it

had jarred and crashed and swooped above his head. The noises her
mouth made were gentle and ingratiating, but the fearsome skirt

still flapped in the breeze.
"You ridiculous dog!" she laughed. "I'm not going to bite you."

But her husband thrust out a rough, sure hand and drew Jerry in to
him. And Jerry wriggled in ecstasy under the god's caress, kissing

the hand with a red flicker of tongue. Next, Harley Kennan directed
him toward the woman sitting up in the deck-chair and bending

forward, with hovering hands of greeting. Jerry obeyed. He
advanced with flattened ears and laughing mouth: but, just ere she

could touch him, the wind fluttered the skirt again and he backed
away with a snarl.

"It's not you that he's afraid of, Villa," he said. "But of your
skirt. Perhaps he's never seen a skirt before."

"You mean," Villa Kennan challenged, "that these head-hunting
cannibals ashore here keep records of pedigrees and maintain

kennels; for surely this absurdadventurer of a dog is as proper an
Irish terrier as the Ariel is an Oregon-pine-planked schooner."

Harley Kennan laughed in acknowledgment. Villa Kennan laughed too;
and Jerry knew that these were a pair of happy gods, and himself

laughed with them.
Of his own initiative, he approached the lady god again, attracted

by the talcum powder and other minor fragrances he had already
identified as the strange scents encountered on the beach. But the

unfortunate trade wind again fluttered her skirt, and again he
backed away--not so far, this time, with much less of a bristle of

his neck and shoulder hair, and with no more of a snarl than a mere
half-baring of his fangs.

"He's afraid of your skirt," Harley insisted. "Look at him! He
wants to come to you, but the skirt keeps him away. Tuck it under

you so that it won't flutter, and see what happens."
Villa Kennan carried out the suggestion, and Jerry came

circumspectly, bent his head to her hand and writhed his back under
it, the while he sniffed her feet, stocking-clad and shoe-covered,

and knew them as the feet which had trod uncovered the ruined ways
of the village ashore.

"No doubt of it," Harley agreed. "He's white-man selected, white-
man bred and born. He has a history. He knows adventure from the

ground-roots up. If he could tell his story, we'd sit listening
entranced for days. Depend on it, he's not known blacks all his

life. Let's try him on Johnny."
Johnny, whom Kennan beckoned up to him, was a loan from the Resident

Commissioner of the British Solomons at Tulagi, who had come along
as pilot and guide to Kennan rather than as philosopher and friend.

Johnny approached grinning, and Jerry's demeanour immediately
changed. His body stiffened under Villa Kennan's hand as he drew

away from her and stalked stiff-legged to the black. Jerry's ears
did not flatten, nor did he laugh fellowship with his mouth, as he

inspected Johnny and smelt his calves for future reference.
Cavalier he was to the extreme, and, after the briefest of

inspection, he turned back to Villa Kennan.
"What did I say?" her husband exulted. "He knows the colour line.

He's a white man's dog that has been trained to it."
"My word," spoke up Johnny. "Me know 'm that fella dog. Me know 'm

papa and mamma belong along him. Big fella white marster Mister
Haggin stop along Meringe, mamma and papa stop along him that fella

place."
Harley Kennan uttered a sharp exclamation.

"Of course," he cried. "The Commissioner told me all about it. The
Arangi, that the Somo people captured, sailed last from Meringe

Plantation. Johnny recognizes the dog as the same breed as the pair
Haggin, of Meringe, must possess. But that was a long time ago. He

must have been a little puppy. Of course he's a white man's dog."
"And yet you've overlooked the crowning proof of it," Villa Kennan

teased. "The dog carries the evidence around with him."
Harley looked Jerry over carefully.

"Indisputable evidence," she insisted.
After another prolonged scrutiny, Kennan shook his head.

"Blamed if I can see anything so indisputable as to leave conjecture
out."

"The tail," his wife gurgled. "Surely the natives do not bob the
tails of their dogs.--Do they, Johnny? Do black man stop along

Malaita chop 'm off tail along dog."
"No chop 'm off," Johnny agreed. "Mister Haggin along Meringe he

chop 'm off. My word, he chop 'm that fella tail, you bet."
"Then he's the sole survivor of the Arangi," Villa Kennan concluded.