This howl was the beginning, and it led to the calling him "Sing
Song Silly." For Villa Kennan was quick to seize upon the howling

her singing induced and to develop it. Never did he hang back when
she sat down, extended her welcoming hands to him, and invited:

"Come on, Sing Song Silly." He would come to her, sit down with the
loved fragrance of her hair in his nostrils, lay the side of his

head against hers, point his nose past her ear, and almost
immediately follow her when she began her low singing. Minor

strains were especially provocative in getting him started, and,
once started, he would sing with her as long as she wished.

Singing it truly was. Apt in all ways of speech, he quickly learned
to soften and subdue his howl till it was mellow and golden. Even

could he manage it to die away almost to a whisper, and to rise and
fall, accelerate and retard, in obedience to her own voice and in

accord with it.
Jerry enjoyed the singing much in the same way the opium eater

enjoys his dreams. For dream he did, vaguely and indistinctly, eyes
wide open and awake, the lady-god's hair in a faint-scented cloud

about him, her voice mourning with his, his consciousness drowning
in the dreams of otherwhereness that came to him of the singing and

that was the singing. Memories of pain were his, but of pain so
long forgotten that it was no longer pain. Rather did it permeate

him with a delicioussadness, and lift him away and out of the Ariel
(lying at anchor in some coral lagoon) to that unreal place of

Otherwhere.
For visions were his at such times. In the cold bleakness of night,

it would seem he sat on a bare hill and raised his howl to the
stars, while out of the dark, from far away, would drift to him an

answering howl. And other howls, near and far, would drift along
until the night was vocal with his kind. His kind it was. Without

knowing it he knew it, this camaraderie of the land of Otherwhere.
Nalasu, in teaching him the whiff-whuff language, deliberately had

gone into the intelligence of him; but Villa, unwitting of what she
was doing, went into the heart of him, and into the heart of his

heredity, touching the profoundest chords of ancient memories and
making them respond.

As instance: dim shapes and shadowy forms would sometimes appear to
him out of the night, and as they flitted spectrally past he would

hear, as in a dream, the hunting cries of the pack; and, as his
pulse quickened, his own huntinginstinct would rouse until his

controlled soft-howling in the song broke into eager whinings. His
head would lower out of the entanglement of the woman's hair; his

feet would begin making restless, spasmodic movements as if running;
and Presto, in a flash, he would be out and away, across the face of

time, out of reality and into the dream, himself running in the
midst of those shadowy forms in the huntingfellowship of the pack.

And as men have ever desired the dust of the poppy and the juice of
the hemp, so Jerry desired the joys that were his when Villa Kennan

opened her arms to him, embraced him with her hair, and sang him
across time and space into the dream of his ancient kind.

Not always, however, were such experiences his when they sang
together. Usually, unaccompanied by visions, he knew no more than

vaguenesses of sensations, sadly sweet, ghosts of memories that they
were. At other times, incited by such sadness, images of Skipper

and Mister Haggin would throng his mind; images, too, of Terrence,
and Biddy, and Michael, and the rest of the long-vanished life at

Meringe Plantation.
"My dear," Harley said to Villa at the conclusion of one such

singing, "it's fortunate for him that you are not an animal trainer,
or, rather, I suppose, it would be better called 'trained animal

show-woman'; for you'd be topping the bill in all the music-halls
and vaudeville houses of the world."

"If I did," she replied, "I know he'd just love to do it with me--"
"Which would make it a very unusual turn," Harley caught her up.

"You mean . . .?"
"That in about one turn in a hundred does the animal love its work

or is the animal loved by its trainer."
"I thought all the cruelty had been done away with long ago," she

contended.
"So the audience thinks, and the audience is ninety-nine times

wrong."
Villa heaved a great sigh of renunciation as she said, "Then I

suppose I must abandon such promising and lucrative career right now
in the very moment you have discovered it for me. Just the same the

billboards would look splendid with my name in the hugest letters--"
"Villa Kennan the Thrush-throated Songstress, and Sing Song Silly

the Irish-Terrier Tenor," her husband pictured the head-lines for
her.

And with dancing eyes and lolling tongue Jerry joined in the
laughter, not because he knew what it was about, but because it

tokened they were happy and his love prompted him to be happy with
them.

For Jerry had found, and in the utmost">uttermost, what his nature craved--
the love of a god. Recognizing the duality of their lordship over

the Ariel, he loved the pair of them; yet, somehow, perhaps because
she had penetrated deepest into his heart with her magic voice that

transported him to the land of Otherwhere, he loved the lady-god
beyond all love he had ever known, not even excluding his love for

Skipper.
CHAPTER XXIII

One thing Jerry learned early on the Ariel, namely, that nigger-
chasing was not permitted. Eager to please and serve his new gods,

he took advantage of the first opportunity to worry a canoe-load of
blacks who came visiting on board. The quick chiding of Villa and

the command of Harley made him pause in amazement. Fully believing
he had been mistaken, he resumed his ragging of the particular black

he had picked upon. This time Harley's voice was peremptory, and
Jerry came to him, his wagging tail and wriggling body all eagerness

of apology, as was his rose-strip of tongue that kissed the hand of
forgiveness with which Harley patted him.

Next, Villa called him to her. Holding him close to her with her
hands on his jowls, eye to eye and nose to nose, she talked to him

earnestly about the sin of nigger-chasing. She told him that he was
no common bush-dog, but a blooded Irish gentleman, and that no dog

that was a gentleman ever did such things as chase unoffending black
men. To all of which he listened with unblinking serious eyes,

understanding little of what she said, yet comprehending all.
"Naughty" was a word in the Ariel language he had already learned,

and she used it several times. "Naughty," to him, meant "must not,"
and was by way of expressing a taboo.

Since it was their way and their will, who was he, he might well
have asked himself, to disobey their rule or question it? If

niggers were not to be chased, then chase them he would not, despite
the fact that Skipper had encouraged him to chase them. Not in such

set terms did Jerry consider the matter; but in his own way he
accepted the conclusions.

Love of a god, with him, implied service. It pleased him to please
with service. And the foundation-stone of service, in his case, was

obedience. Yet it strained him sore for a time to refrain from
snarl and snap when the legs of strange and presumptuous blacks

passed near him along the Ariel's white deck.
But there were times and times, as he was to learn, and the time

came when Villa Kennan wanted a bath, a real bath in fresh, rain-
descended, running water, and when Johnny, the black pilot from

Tulagi, made a mistake. The chart showed a mile of the Suli river
where it emptied into the sea. Why it showed only a mile was

because no white man had ever explored it farther. When Villa
proposed the bath, her husband advised with Johnny. Johnny shook

his head.
"No fella boy stop 'm along that place," he said. "No make 'm

trouble along you. Bush fella boy stop 'm long way too much."
So it was that the launch went ashore, and, while its crew lolled in