CHAPTER VII
At seven in the morning, when Skipper rolled him out of the blanket
and got up, Jerry celebrated the new day by chasing the wild-dog
back into his hole and by drawing a snicker from the blacks on deck,
when, with a growl and a flash of teeth, he made Lerumie side-step
half a dozen feet and yield the deck to him.
He shared breakfast with Skipper, who, instead of eating, washed
down with a cup of coffee fifty grains of quinine wrapped in a
cigarette paper, and who complained to the mate that he would have
to get under the blankets and sweat out the fever that was attacking
him. Despite his chill, and despite his teeth that were already
beginning to chatter while the burning sun extracted the moisture in
curling mist-wreaths from the deck planking, Van Horn cuddled Jerry
in his arms and called him princeling, and prince, and a king, and a
son of kings.
For Van Horn had often listened to the recitals of Jerry's pedigree
by Tom Haggin, over Scotch-and-sodas, when it was too pestilentially
hot to go to bed. And the pedigree was as royal-blooded as was
possible for an Irish terrier to possess, whose breed, beginning
with the ancient Irish wolf-hound, had been moulded and established
by man in less than two generations of men.
There was Terrence the Magnificent--descended, as Van Horn
remembered, from the American-bred Milton Droleen, out of the Queen
of County Antrim, Breda Muddler, which royal bitch, as every one who
is familiar with the stud book knows, goes back as far as the almost
mythical Spuds, with along the way no primrose dallyings with black-
and-tan Killeney Boys and Welsh nondescripts. And did not Biddy
trace to Erin, mother and star of the breed, through a long
descendant out of Breda Mixer, herself an ancestress of Breda
Muddler? Nor could be omitted from the purple record the later
ancestress, Moya Doolen.
So Jerry knew the ecstasy of loving and of being loved in the arms
of his love-god, although little he knew of such phrases as "king's
son" and "son of kings," save that they connoted love for him in the
same way that Lerumie's hissing noises connoted hate. One thing
Jerry knew without knowing that he knew, namely, that in the few
hours he had been with Skipper he loved him more than he had loved
Derby and Bob, who, with the exception of Mister Haggin, were the
only other white-gods he had ever known. He was not conscious of
this. He merely loved, merely acted on the prompting of his heart,
or head, or whatever organic or anatomical part of him that
developed the mysterious, delicious, and insatiable hunger called
"love."
Skipper went below. He went all unheeding of Jerry, who padded
softly at his heels until the companionway was reached. Skipper was
unheeding of Jerry because of the fever that wrenched his flesh and
chilled his bones, that made his head seem to swell monstrously,
that glazed the world to his swimming eyes and made him walk feebly
and totteringly like a drunken man or a man very aged. And Jerry
sensed that something was wrong with Skipper.
Skipper, beginning the babblings of delirium which alternated with
silent moments of control in order to get below and under blankets,
descended the ladder-like stairs, and Jerry, all-yearning,
controlled himself in silence and watched the slow descent with the
hope that when Skipper reached the bottom he would raise his arms
and lift him down. But Skipper was too far gone to remember that
Jerry existed. He staggered, with wide-spread arms to keep from
falling, along the cabin floor for'ard to the bunk in the tiny
stateroom.
Jerry was truly of a kingly line. He wanted to call out and beg to
be taken down. But he did not. He controlled himself, he knew not
why, save that he was possessed by a nebulous awareness that Skipper
must be considered as a god should be considered, and that this was
no time to obtrude himself on Skipper. His heart was torn with
desire, although he made no sound, and he continued only to yearn
over the companion combing and to listen to the faint sounds of
Skipper's progress for'ard.
But even kings and their descendants have their limitations, and at
the end of a quarter of an hour Jerry was ripe to cease from his
silence. With the going below of Skipper, evidently in great
trouble, the light had gone out of the day for Jerry. He might have
stalked the wild-dog, but no inducement lay there. Lerumie passed
by unnoticed, although he knew he could bully him and make him give
deck space. The myriad scents of the land entered his keen
nostrils, but he made no note of them. Not even the flopping,
bellying mainsail overhead, as the Arangi rolled becalmed, could
draw a glance of quizzical regard from him.
Just as it was tremblingly imperative that Jerry must suddenly squat
down, point his nose at the zenith, and vocalize his heart-rending
woe, an idea came to him. There is no explaining how this idea
came. No more can it be explained than can a human explain why, at
luncheon to-day, he selects green peas and rejects string beans,
when only yesterday he elected to choose string beans and to reject
green peas. No more can it be explained than can a human judge,
sentencing a convicted criminal and imposing eight years
imprisonment instead of the five or nine years that also at the same
time floated upward in his brain, explain why he categorically
determined on eight years as the just, adequate punishment. Since
not even humans, who are almost half-gods, can fathom the mystery of
the genesis of ideas and the dictates of choice, appearing in their
consciousness as ideas, it is not to be expected of a more dog to
know the why of the ideas that animate it to definite acts toward
definite ends.
And so Jerry. Just as he must immediately howl, he was aware that
the idea, an entirely different idea, was there, in the innermost
centre of the quick-thinkingness of him, with all its compulsion.
He obeyed the idea as a marionette obeys the strings, and started
forthwith down the deck aft in quest of the mate.
He had an appeal to make to Borckman. Borckman was also a two-
legged white-god. Easily could Borckman lift him down the
precipitous ladder, which was to him, unaided, a taboo, the
violation of which was pregnant with disaster. But Borckman had in
him little of the heart of love, which is understanding. Also,
Borckman was busy. Besides overseeing the continuous adjustment, by
trimming of sails and orders to the helmsman, of the Arangi to her
way on the sea, and overseeing the boat's crew at its task of
washing deck and polishing brasswork, he was engaged in steadily
nipping from a stolen bottle of his captain's whiskey which he had
stowed away in the hollow between the two sacks of yams lashed on
deck aft the mizzenmast.
Borckman was on his way for another nip, after having thickly
threatened to knock seven bells and the ten commandments out of the
black at the wheel for faulty steering, when Jerry appeared before
him and blocked the way to his desire. But Jerry did not block him
as he would have blocked Lerumie, for instance. There was no
showing of teeth, no bristling of neck hair. Instead, Jerry was all
placation and appeal, all softness of pleading in a body denied
speech that nevertheless was articulate, from wagging tail and
wriggling sides to flat-laid ears and eyes that almost spoke, to any
human sensitive of understanding.
But Borckman saw in his way only a four-legged creature of the brute
world, which, in his arrogant brutalness he esteemed more brute than
himself. All the pretty picture of the soft puppy, instinct with
communicativeness, bursting with tenderness of petition, was veiled
to his vision. What he saw was merely a four-legged animal to be
thrust aside while he continued his lordly two-legged progress
toward the bottle that could set maggots crawling in his brain and
make him dream dreams that he was prince, not peasant, that he was a
master of matter rather than a slave of matter.
And thrust aside Jerry was, by a rough and naked foot, as harsh and
unfeeling in its impact as an inanimate breaking sea on a beach-jut
of insensate rock. He half-sprawled on the slippery deck, regained
his balance, and stood still and looked at the white-god who had
treated him so cavalierly. The meanness and unfairness had brought
from Jerry no snarling threat of retaliation, such as he would have
offered Lerumie or any other black. Nor in his brain was any
thought of retaliation. This was no Lerumie. This was a superior
god, two-legged, white-skinned, like Skipper, like Mister Haggin and
the couple of other superior gods he had known. Only did he know
hurt, such as any child knows under the blow of a thoughtless or
unloving mother.
In the hurt was mingled a resentment. He was keenly aware that
there were two sorts of roughness. There was the kindly roughness
of love, such as when Skipper gripped him by the jowl, shook him
till his teeth rattled, and thrust him away with an unmistakable
invitation to come back and be so shaken again. Such roughness, to
Jerry, was heaven. In it was the intimacy of contact with a beloved
god who in such manner elected to express a reciprocal love.
But this roughness of Borckman was different. It was the other kind
of roughness in which resided no warm affection, no heart-touch of
love. Jerry did not quite understand, but he sensed the difference
and resented, without expressing in action, the wrongness and
unfairness of it. So he stood, after regaining balance, and soberly
regarded, in a vain effort to understand, the mate with a bottle-
bottom inverted skyward, the mouth to his lips, the while his throat
made gulping contractions and noises. And soberly he continued to
regard the mate when he went aft and threatened to knock the "Song
of Songs" and the rest of the Old Testament out of the black
helmsman whose smile of teeth was as humbly gentle and placating as
Jerry's had been when he made his appeal.
Leaving this god as a god unliked and not understood, Jerry sadly
trotted back to the companionway and yearned his head over the
combing in the direction in which he had seen Skipper disappear.
What bit at his consciousness and was a painful incitement in it,
was his desire to be with Skipper who was not right, and who was in
trouble. He wanted Skipper. He wanted to be with him, first and
sharply, because he loved him, and, second and dimly, because he
might serve him. And, wanting Skipper, in his helplessness and
youngness in experience of the world, he whimpered and cried his
heart out across the companion combing, and was too clean and direct
in his sorrow to be deflected by an outburst of anger against the
niggers, on deck and below, who chuckled at him and derided him.
From the crest of the combing to the cabin floor was seven feet. He
had, only a few hours before, climbed the precipitous stairway; but
it was impossible, and he knew it, to descend the stairway. And
yet, at the last, he dared it. So compulsive was the prod of his
heart to gain to Skipper at any cost, so clear was his comprehension
that he could not climb down the ladder head first, with no
grippingness of legs and feet and muscles such as were possible in
the ascent, that he did not attempt it. He launched outward and
down, in one magnificent and love-heroic leap. He knew that he was
violating a taboo of life, just as he knew he was violating a taboo
if he sprang into Meringe Lagoon where swam the dreadful crocodiles.
Great love is always capable of expressing itself in sacrifice and
self-immolation. And only for love, and for no lesser reason, could
Jerry have made the leap.
He struck on his side and head. The one impact knocked the breath
out of him; the other stunned him. Even in his unconsciousness,
lying on his side and quivering, he made rapid, spasmodic movements
of his legs as if running for'ard to Skipper. The boys looked on
and laughed, and when he no longer quivered and churned his legs
they continued to laugh. Born in savagery, having lived in savagery
all their lives and known naught else, their sense of humour was
correspondingly savage. To them, the sight of a stunned and
possibly dead puppy was a side-splitting, ludicrous event.
Not until the fourth minute ticked off did returning consciousness
enable Jerry to crawl to his feet and with wide-spread legs and
swimming eyes adjust himself to the Arangi's roll. Yet with the
first glimmerings of consciousness persisted the one idea that he
must gain to Skipper. Blacks? In his anxiety and solicitude and
love they did not count. He ignored the chuckling, grinning,
girding black boys, who, but for the fact that he was under the
terrible aegis of the big fella white marster, would have delighted
to kill and eat the puppy who, in the process of training, was
proving a most capable nigger-chaser. Without a turn of head or
roll of eye, aristocratically positing their non-existingness to
their faces, he trotted for'ard along the cabin floor and into the
stateroom where Skipper babbled maniacally in the bunk.
Jerry, who had never had malaria, did not understand. But in his
heart he knew great trouble in that Skipper was in trouble. Skipper
did not recognize him, even when he sprang into the bunk, walked
across Skipper's heaving chest, and licked the acrid sweat of fever
from Skipper's face. Instead, Skipper's wildly-thrashing arms
brushed him away and flung him violently against the side of the
bunk.
This was roughness that was not love-roughness. Nor was it the
roughness of Borckman spurning him away with his foot. It was part
of Skipper's trouble. Jerry did not reason this conclusion. But,
and to the point, he acted upon it as if he had reasoned it. In
truth, through inadequacy of one of the most adequate languages in
the world, it can only be said that Jerry sensed the new difference
of this roughness.
He sat up, just out of range of one restless, beating arm, yearned
to come closer and lick again the face of the god who knew him not,
and who, he knew, loved him well, and palpitatingly shared and
suffered all Skipper's trouble.
"Eh, Clancey," Skipper babbled. "It's a fine job this day, and no
better crew to clean up after the dubs of motormen. . . . Number
three jack, Clancey. Get under the for'ard end." And, as the
spectres of his nightmare metamorphosed: "Hush, darling, talking to
your dad like that, telling him the combing of your sweet and golden
hair. As if I couldn't, that have combed it these seven years--
better than your mother, darling, better than your mother. I'm the
one gold-medal prize-winner in the combing of his lovely daughter's
lovely hair. . . . She's broken out! Give her the wheel aft there!
Jib and fore-topsail halyards! Full and by, there! A good full! .
. . Ah, she takes it like the beauty fairy boat that she is upon the
sea. . . I'll just lift that--sure, the limit. Blackey, when you
pay as much to see my cards as I'm going to pay to see yours, you're
going to see some cards, believe me!"
And so the farrago of unrelated memories continued to rise vocal on
Skipper's lips to the heave of his body and the beat of his arms,
while Jerry, crouched against the side of the bunk mourned and
mourned his grief and inability to be of help. All that was
occurring was beyond him. He knew no more of poker hands than did
he know of getting ships under way, of clearing up surface car
wrecks in New York, or of combing the long yellow hair of a loved
daughter in a Harlem flat.
"Both dead," Skipper said in a change of delirium. He said it
quietly, as if announcing the time of day, then wailed: "But, oh,
the bonnie, bonnie braids of all the golden hair of her!"
He lay motionlessly for a space and sobbed out a breaking heart.
This was Jerry's chance. He crept inside the arm that tossed,
snuggled against Skipper's side, laid his head on Skipper's
shoulder, his cool nose barely touching Skipper's cheek, and felt
the arm curl about him and press him closer. The hand bent from the
wrist and caressed him protectingly, and the warm contact of his
velvet body put a change in Skipper's sick dreams, for he began to
mutter in cold and bitter ominousness: "Any nigger that as much as
bats an eye at that puppy. . ."
