CHAPTER VIII
When, in half an hour, Van Horn's sweat culminated in profusion, it
marked the breaking of the malarial attack. Great physical relief
was his, and the last mists of delirium ebbed from his brain. But
he was left limply weak, and, after tossing off the blankets and
recognizing Jerry, he fell into a refreshing natural sleep.
Not till two hours later did he awake and start to go on deck.
Half-way up the companion, he deposited Jerry on deck and went back
to the stateroom for a forgotten bottle of quinine. But he did not
immediately return to Jerry. The long drawer under Borckman's bunk
caught his eye. The wooden button that held it shut was gone, and
it was far out and hanging at an angle that jammed it and prevented
it from falling to the floor. The matter was serious. There was
little doubt in his mind, had the drawer, in the midst of the squall
of the previous night, fallen to the floor, that no Arangi and no
soul of the eighty souls on board would have been left. For the
drawer was filled with a heterogeneous mess of dynamite sticks,
boxes of fulminating caps, coils of fuses, lead sinkers, iron tools,
and many boxes of rifle, revolver and pistol cartridges. He sorted
and arranged the varied contents, and with a screwdriver and a
longer screw reattached the button.
In the meantime, Jerry was encountering new adventure not of the
pleasantest. While waiting for Skipper to return, Jerry chanced to
see the wild-dog brazenly lying on deck a dozen feet from his lair
in the trade-boxes. Instantly stiffly crouching, Jerry began to
stalk. Success seemed assured, for the wild-dog, with closed eyes,
was apparently asleep.
And at this moment the mate, two-legging it along the deck from
for'ard in the direction of the bottle stored between the yam sacks,
called, "Jerry," in a remarkably husky voice. Jerry flattened his
filbert-shaped ears and wagged his tail in acknowledgment, but
advertised his intention of continuing to stalk his enemy. And at
sound of the mate's voice the wild-dog flung quick-opened eyes in
Jerry's direction and flashed into his burrow, where he immediately
turned around, thrust his head out with a show of teeth, and snarled
triumphant defiance.
Baulked of his quarry by the inconsiderateness of the mate, Jerry
trotted back to the head of the companion to wait for Skipper. But
Borckman, whose brain was well a-crawl by virtue of the many nips,
clung to a petty idea after the fashion of drunken men. Twice
again, imperatively, he called Jerry to him, and twice again, with
flattened ears of gentleness and wagging tail, Jerry good-naturedly
expressed his disinclination. Next, he yearned his head over the
coming and into the cabin after Skipper.
Borckman remembered his first idea and continued to the bottle,
which he generously inverted skyward. But the second idea, petty as
it was, persisted; and, after swaying and mumbling to himself for a
time, after unseeingly making believe to study the crisp fresh
breeze that filled the Arangi's sails and slanted her deck, and,
after sillily attempting on the helmsman to portray eagle-like
vigilance in his drink-swimming eyes, he lurched amidships toward
Jerry.
Jerry's first intimation of Borckman's arrival was a cruel and
painful clutch on his flank and groin that made him cry out in pain
and whirl around. Next, as the mate had seen Skipper do in play,
Jerry had his jowls seized in a tooth-clattering shake that was
absolutely different from the Skipper's rough love-shake. His head
and body were shaken, his teeth clattered painfully, and with the
roughest of roughness he was flung part way down the slippery slope
of deck.
Now Jerry was a gentleman. All the soul of courtesy was in him, for
equals and superiors. After all, even in an inferior like the wild-
dog, he did not consciously press an advantage very far--never
extremely far. In his stalking and rushing of the wild-dog, he had
been more sound and fury than an overbearing bully. But with a
superior, with a two-legged white-god like Borckman, there was more
a demand upon his control, restraint, and inhibition of primitive
promptings. He did not want to play with the mate a game that he
ecstatically played with Skipper, because he had experienced no
similar liking for the mate, two-legged white-god that he was.
And still Jerry was all gentleness. He came back in a feeble
imitation rush of the whole-hearted rush that he had learned to make
on Skipper. He was, in truth, acting, play-acting, attempting to do
what he had no heart-prompting to do. He made believe to play, and
uttered simulated growls that failed of the verity of simulation.
He bobbed his tail good-naturedly and friendly, and growled
ferociously and friendly; but the keenness of the drunkenness of the
mate discerned the difference and aroused in him, vaguely, the
intuition of difference, of play-acting, of cheating. Jerry was
cheating--out of his heart of consideration. Borckman drunkenly
recognized the cheating without crediting the heart of good behind
it. On the instant he was antagonistic. Forgetting that he was
only a brute, he posited that this was no more than a brute with
which he strove to play in the genial comradely way that the Skipper
played.
Red war was inevitable--not first on Jerry's part, but on Borckman's
part. Borckman felt the abysmal urgings of the beast, as a beast,
to prove himself master of this four-legged beast. Jerry felt his
jowl and jaw clutched still more harshly and hardly, and, with
increase of harshness and hardness, he was flung farther down the
deck, which, on account of its growing slant due to heavier gusts of
wind, had become a steep and slippery hill.
He came back, clawing frantically up the slope that gave him little
footing; and he came back, no longer with poorly attempted
simulation of ferocity, but impelled by the first flickerings of
real ferocity. He did not know this. If he thought at all, he was
under the impression that he was playing the game as he had played
it with Skipper. In short, he was taking an interest in the game,
although a radically different interest from what he had taken with
Skipper.
This time his teeth flashed quicker and with deeper intent at the
jowl-clutching hand, and, missing, he was seized and flung down the
smooth incline harder and farther than before. He was growing
angry, as he clawed back, though he was not conscious of it. But
the mate, being a man, albeit a drunken one, sensed the change in
Jerry's attack ere Jerry dreamed there was any change in it. And
not only did Borckman sense it, but it served as a spur to drive him
back into primitive beastliness, and to fight to master this puppy
as a primitive man, under dissimilar provocation, might have fought
with the members of the first litter stolen from a wolf-den among
the rocks.
True, Jerry could trace as far back. His ancient ancestors had been
Irish wolf-hounds, and, long before that, the ancestors of the wolf-
hounds had been wolves. The note in Jerry's growls changed. The
unforgotten and ineffaceable past strummed the fibres of his throat.
His teeth flashed with fierce intent, in the desire of sinking as
deep in the man's hand as passion could drive. For Jerry by this
time was all passion. He had leaped back into the dark stark
rawness of the early world almost as swiftly as had Borckman. And
this time his teeth scored, ripping the tender and sensitive and
flesh of all the inside of the first and second joints of Borckman's
right hand. Jerry's teeth were needles that stung, and Borckman,
gaining the grasp on Jerry's jaw, flung him away and down so that
almost he hit the Arangi's tiny-rail ere his clawing feet stopped
him.
And Van Horn, having finished his rearrangement and repair of the
explosive-filled drawer under the mate's bunk, climbed up the
companion steps, saw the battle, paused, and quietly looked on.
But he looked across a million years, at two mad creatures who had
slipped the leach of the generations and who were back in the
darkness of spawning life ere dawning intelligence had modified the
chemistry of such life to softness of consideration. What stirred
in the brain crypts of Borckman's heredity, stirred in the brain-
crypts of Jerry's heredity. Time had gone backward for both. All
the endeavour and achievement of the ten thousand generations was
not, and, as wolf-dog and wild-man, the combat was between Jerry and
the mate. Neither saw Van Horn, who was inside the companionway
hatch, his eyes level with the combing.
To Jerry, Borckman was now no more a god than was he himself a mere,
smooth-coated Irish terrier. Both had forgotten the million years
stamped into their heredity more feebly, less eraseably, than what
had been stamped in prior to the million years. Jerry did not know
drunkenness, but he did know unfairness; and it was with raging
indignation that he knew it. Borckman fumbled his next counter to
Jerry's attack, missed, and had both hands slashed in quick
succession ere he managed to send the puppy sliding.
And still Jerry came back. As any screaming creature of the jungle,
he hysterically squalled his indignation. But he made no whimper.
Nor did he wince or cringe to the blows. He bored straight in,
striving, without avoiding a blow, to beat and meet the blow with
his teeth. So hard was he flung down the last time that his side
smashed painfully against the rail, and Van Horn cried out:
"Cut that out, Borckman! Leave the puppy alone!"
The mate turned in the startle of surprise at being observed. The
sharp, authoritative words of Van Horn were a call across the
million years. Borckman's anger-convulsed face ludicrously
attempted a sheepish, deprecating grin, and he was just mumbling,
"We was only playing," when Jerry arrived back, leaped in the air,
and sank his teeth into the offending hand.
Borckman immediately and insanely went back across the million
years. An attempted kick got his ankle scored for his pains. He
gibbered his own rage and hurt, and, stooping, dealt Jerry a
tremendous blow alongside the head and neck. Being in mid-leap when
he received the blow Jerry was twistingly somersaulted sidewise
before he struck the deck on his back. As swiftly as he could
scramble to footing and charge, he returned to the attack, but was
checked by Skipper's:
"Jerry! Stop it! Come here!"
He obeyed, but only by prodigious effort, his neck bristling and his
lips writhing clear of his teeth as he passed the mate. For the
first time there was a whimper in his throat; but it was not the
whimper of fear, nor of pain, but of outrage, and of desire to
continue the battle which he struggled to control at Skipper's
behest.
Stepping out on deck, Skipper picked him up and patted and soothed
him the while he expressed his mind to the mate.
"Borckman, you ought to be ashamed. You ought to be shot or have
your block knocked off for this. A puppy, a little puppy scarcely
weaned. For two cents I'd give you what-for myself. The idea of
it. A little puppy, a weanling little puppy. Glad your hands are
ripped. You deserved it. Hope you get blood-poisoning in them.
Besides, you're drunk. Go below and turn in, and don't you dare
come on deck until you're sober. Savve?"
And Jerry, far-journeyer across life and across the history of all
life that goes to make the world, strugglingly mastering the abysmal
slime of the prehistoric with the love that had come into existence
and had become warp and woof of him in far later time, his wrath of
ancientness still faintly reverberating in his throat like the
rumblings of a passing thunder-storm, knew, in the wide warm ways of
feeling, the augustness and righteousness of Skipper. Skipper was
in truth a god who did right, who was fair, who protected, and who
imperiously commanded this other and lesser god that slunk away
before his anger.
