And they aint yet, Haggin snorted.
No fear[27], was the cheerful retort.
You talk like Arbuckle used to talk, Haggin censured. Mannys the time Ive heard him string it off. Poor old Arbuckle. The most sure and most precautious chap that ever handled niggers. He never went to sleep without spreadin a box of tacks on the floor, and when it wasnt them it was crumpled newspapers. I remember me well, bein under the same roof at the time on Florida, when a big tomcat chased a cockroach into the papers. And it was blim, blam, blim, six times an twice over, with his two big horse-pistols, an the house perforated like a cullender. Likewise there was a dead tomcat. He could shoot in the dark with never an aim, pullin trigger with the second finger and pointing with the first finger laid straight along the barrel.
No, sir, my laddy buck. He was the bully boy with the glass eye. The nigger didnt live thatd lift his head. But they got m. They got m. He lasted fourteen years, too. It was his cook-boy. Hatcheted m before breakfast. An its well I remember our second trip into the bush after what was left of m.
I saw his head after youd turned it over to the Commissioner at Tulagi, Van Horn supplemented.
An the peaceful, quiet, everyday face of him on it, with almost the same old smile Id seen a thousand times. It dried on m that way over the smokin fire.
But they got m, if it did take fourteen years. Theres mannys the head that goes to Malaita, mannys the time untooken; but, like the old pitcher, its tooken in the end.
But Ive got their goat[28], the captain insisted.
When troubles hatching, I go straight to them and tell them what. They cant get the hang of it[29]. Think Ive got some powerful devil-devil medicine.
Tom Haggin thrust out his hand in abrupt goodbye, resolutely keeping his eyes from dropping to Jerry in the others arms.
Keep your eye on my return boys, he cautioned, as he went over the side, till you land the last mothers son of m. Theyve got no cause to love Jerry or his breed, an Id hate ill to happen m at a niggers hands.
An in the dark of the night tis like as not he can do a fare-you-well overside. Dont take your eye off m till youre quit of the last of m.
At sight of big Mister Haggin deserting him and being pulled away in the whaleboat, Jerry wriggled and voiced his anxiety in a low, whimpering whine.
Captain Van Horn snuggled him closer in his arm with a caress of his free hand.
Dont forget the agreement, Tom Haggin called back across the widening water. If aught happens you[30], Jerrys to come back to me.
Ill make a paper to that same and put it with the ships articles, was Van Horns reply.
Among the many words possessed by Jerry was his own name; and in the talk of the two men he had recognised it repeatedly, and he was aware, vaguely, that the talk was related to the vague and unguessably terrible thing that was happening to him. He wriggled more determinedly, and Van Horn set him down on the deck. He sprang to the rail with more quickness than was to be expected of an awkward puppy of six months, and not the quick attempt of Van Horn to cheek him would have succeeded. But Jerry recoiled from the open water lapping the Arangis side. The taboo was upon him. It was the image of the log awash that was not a log but that was alive, luminous in his brain, that checked him. It was not reason on his part, but inhibition which had become habit.
He plumped down on his bob tail, lifted golden muzzle skyward, and emitted a long puppy-wail of dismay and grief.
Its all right, Jerry, old man, brace up and be a man-dog, Van Horn soothed him.
But Jerry was not to be reconciled. While this indubitably was a white-skinned god, it was not his god. Mister Haggin was his god, and a superior god at that. Even he, without thinking about it at all, recognized that. His Mister Haggin wore pants and shoes. This god on the deck beside him was more like a black. Not only did he not wear pants, and was barefooted and barelegged, but about his middle, just like any black, he wore a brilliant-coloured loin-cloth, that, like a kilt, fell nearly to his sunburnt knees.
Captain Van Horn was a handsome man and a striking man, although Jerry did not know it. If ever a Holland Dutchman stepped out of a Rembrandt[31] frame, Captain Van Horn was that one, despite the fact that he was New York born, as had been his knickerbocker ancestors before him clear back to the time when New York was not New York but New Amsterdam[32]. To complete his costume, a floppy felt hat, distinctly Rembrandtish in effect, perched half on his head and mostly over one ear; a sixpenny, white cotton undershirt covered his torso; and from a belt about his middle dangled a tobacco pouch, a sheath-knife, filled clips of cartridges, and a huge automatic pistol in a leather holster.
On the beach, Biddy, who had hushed her grief, lifted it again when she heard Jerrys wail. And Jerry, desisting a moment to listen, heard Michael beside her, barking his challenge, and saw, without being conscious of it, Michaels withered ear with its persistent upward cock. Again, while Captain Van Horn and the mate, Borckman, gave orders, and while the Arangis mainsail and spanker began to rise up the masts, Jerry loosed all his heart of woe in what Bob told Derby on the beach was the grandest vocal effort he had ever heard from any dog, and that, except for being a bit thin, Caruso[33] didnt have anything on[34] Jerry. But the song was too much for Haggin, who, as soon as he had landed, whistled Biddy to him and strode rapidly away from the beach.
At sight of her disappearing, Jerry was guilty of even more Caruso-like effects, which gave great joy to a Pennduffryn return boy who stood beside him. He laughed and jeered at Jerry with falsetto chucklings that were more like the jungle-noises of tree-dwelling creatures, half-bird and half-man, than of a man, all man, and therefore a god. This served as an excellent counter-irritant. Indignation that a mere black should laugh at him mastered Jerry, and the next moment his puppy teeth, sharp-pointed as needles, had scored the astonished blacks naked calf in long parallel scratches from each of which leaped the instant blood. The black sprang away in trepidation, but the blood of Terrence the Magnificent was true in Jerry, and, like his father before him, he followed up, slashing the blacks other calf into a ruddy pattern.
At this moment, anchor broken out and headsails running up, Captain Van Horn, whose quick eye had missed no detail of the incident, with an order to the black helmsman turned to applaud Jerry.
Go to it, Jerry! he encouraged. Get him! Shake him down! Sick him![35] Get him! Get him!
The black, in defence, aimed a kick at Jerry, who, leaping in instead of away another inheritance from Terrence avoided the bare foot and printed a further red series of parallel lines on the dark leg. This was too much, and the black, afraid more of Van Horn than of Jerry, turned and fled forard, leaping to safety on top of the eight Lee-Enfield rifles that lay on top of the cabin skylight and that were guarded by one member of the boats crew. About the skylight Jerry stormed, leaping up and falling back, until Captain Van Horn called him off.