CHAPTER XVI
Three months more passed; the north-west monsoon, after its half-
year of breath, had given way to the south-east trade; and Jerry
still continued to live in the house of Agno and to have the run of
the village. He had put on weight, increased in size, and,
protected by the taboo, had become self-confident almost to
lordliness. But he had found no master. Agno had never won a
heart-throb from him. For that matter, Agno had never tried to win
him. Nor, in his cold-blooded way, had he ever betrayed his hatred
of Jerry.
Not even the several old women, the two acolytes, and the fly-
flapping maid in Agno's house dreamed that the devil devil doctor
hated Jerry. Nor did Jerry dream it. To him Agno was a neutral
sort of person, a person who did not count. Those of the household
Jerry recognized as slaves or servants to Agno, and he knew when
they fed him that the food he ate proceeded from Agno and was Agno's
food. Save himself, taboo protected, all of them feared Agno, and
his house was truly a house of fear in which could bloom no love for
a stray puppy dog. The eleven-years' maid might have placed a bid
for Jerry's affection, had she not been deterred at the start by
Agno, who reprimanded her sternly for presuming to touch or fondle a
dog of such high taboo.
What delayed Agno's plot against Jerry for the half-year of the
monsoon was the fact that the season of egg-laying for the megapodes
in Bashti's private laying-yard did not begin until the period of
the south-east trades. And Agno, having early conceived his plot,
with the patience that was characteristic of him was content to wait
the time.
Now the megapode of the Solomons is a distant cousin to the brush
turkey of Australia. No larger than a large pigeon, it lays an egg
the size of a domestic duck's. The megapode, with no sense of fear,
is so silly that it would have been annihilated hundreds of
centuries before had it not been preserved by the taboos of the
chiefs and priests. As it was, the chiefs were compelled to keep
cleared patches of sand for it, and to fence out the dogs. It
buried its eggs two feet deep, depending on the heat of the sun for
the hatching. And it would dig and lay, and continue to dig and
lay, while a black dug out its eggs within two or three feet of it.
The laying-yard was Bashti's. During the season, he lived almost
entirely on megapode eggs. On rare occasion he even had megapodes
that were near to finishing their laying killed for his kai-kai.
This was no more than a whim, however, prompted by pride in such
exclusiveness of diet only possible to one in such high place. In
truth, he cared no more for megapode meat than for any other meat.
All meat tasted alike to him, for his taste for meat was one of the
vanished pleasures in the limbo of memory.
But the eggs! He liked to eat them. They were the only article of
food he liked to eat, They gave him reminiscent thrills of the
ancient food-desires of his youth. Actually was he hungry when he
had megapode eggs, and the well-nigh dried founts of saliva and of
internal digestive juices were stimulated to flow again at
contemplation of a megapode egg prepared for the eating. Wherefore,
he alone of all Somo, barred rigidly by taboo, ate megapode eggs.
And, since the taboo was essentially religious, to Agno was deputed
the ecclesiastical task of guarding and cherishing and caring for
the royal laying-yard.
But Agno was no longer young. The acid bite of belly desire had
long since deserted him, and he, too, ate from a sense of duty, all
meat tasting alike to him. Megapode eggs only stung his taste alive
and stimulated the flow of his juices. Thus it was that he broke
the taboos he imposed, and, privily, before the eyes of no man,
woman, or child ate the eggs he stole from Bashti's private
preserve.
So it was, as the laying season began, and when both Bashti and Agno
were acutely egg-yearning after six months of abstinence, that Agno
led Jerry along the taboo path through the mangroves, where they
stepped from root to root above the muck that ever steamed and stank
in the stagnant air where the wind never penetrated.
The path, which was not an ordinary path and which consisted, for a
man, in wide strides from root to root, and for a dog in four-legged
leaps and plunges, was new to Jerry. In all his ranging of Somo,
because it was so unusual a path, he had never discovered it. The
unbending of Agno, thus to lead him, was a surprise and a delight to
Jerry, who, without reasoning about it, in a vague way felt the
preliminary sensations that possibly Agno, in a small way, might
prove the master which his dog's soul continually sought.
Emerging from the swamp of mangroves, abruptly they came upon a
patch of sand, still so salt and inhospitable from the sea's deposit
that no great trees rooted and interposed their branches between it
and the sun's heat. A primitive gate gave entrance, but Agno did
not take Jerry through it. Instead, with weird little chirrupings
of encouragement and excitation, he persuaded Jerry to dig a tunnel
beneath the rude palisade of fence. He helped with his own hands,
dragging out the sand in quantities, but imposing on Jerry the
leaving of the indubitable marks of a dog's paws and claws.
And, when Jerry was inside, Agno, passing through the gate, enticed
and seduced him into digging out the eggs. But Jerry had no taste
of the eggs. Eight of them Agno sucked raw, and two of them he
tucked whole into his arm-pits to take back to his house of the
devil devils. The shells of the eight he sucked he broke to
fragments as a dog might break them, and, to build the picture he
had long visioned, of the eighth egg he reserved a tiny portion
which he spread, not on Jerry's jowls where his tongue could have
erased it, but high up about his eyes and above them, where it would
remain and stand witness against him according to the plot he had
planned.
Even worse, in high priestly sacrilege, he encouraged Jerry to
attack a megapode hen in the act of laying. And, while Jerry slew
it, knowing that the lust of killing, once started, would lead him
to continue killing the silly birds, Agno left the laying-yard to
hot-foot it through the mangrove swamp and present to Bashti an
ecclesiastical quandary. The taboo of the dog, as he expounded it,
had prevented him from interfering with the taboo dog when it ate
the taboo egg-layers. Which taboo might be the greater was beyond
him. And Bashti, who had not tasted a megapode egg in half a year,
and who was keen for the one recrudescent thrill of remote youth
still left to him, led the way back across the mangrove swamp at so
prodigious a pace as quite to wind his high priest who was many
years younger than he.
And he arrived at the laying-yard and caught Jerry, red-pawed and
red-mouthed, in the midst of his fourth kill of an egg-layer, the
raw yellow yolk of the portion of one egg, plastered by Agno to
represent many eggs, still about his eyes and above his eyes to the
bulge of his forehead. In vain Bashti looked about for one egg, the
six months' hunger stronger than ever upon him in the thick of the
disaster. And Jerry, under the consent and encouragement of Agno,
wagged his tail to Bashti in a bid for recognition, of prowess, and
laughed with his red-dripping jowls and yellow plastered eyes.
Bashti did not rage as he would have done had he been alone. Before
the eyes of his chief priest he disdained to lower himself to such
commonness of humanity. Thus it is always with those in the high
places, ever temporising with their natural desires, ever masking
their ordinariness under a show of disinterest. So it was that
Bashti displayed no vexation at the disappointment to his appetite.
Agno was a shade less controlled, for he could not quite chase away
the eager light in his eyes. Bashti glimpsed it and mistook it for
simple curiosity of observation not guessing its real nature. Which
goes to show two things of those in the high place: one, that they
may fool those beneath them; the other, that they may be fooled by
those beneath them.
Bashti regarded Jerry quizzically, as if the matter were a joke, and
shot a careless side glance to note the disappointment in his
priest's eyes. Ah, ha, thought Bashti; I have fooled him.
"Which is the high taboo?" Agno queried in the Somo tongue.
"As you should ask. Of a surety, the megapode."
"And the dog?" was Agno's next query.
"Must pay for breaking the taboo. It is a high taboo. It is my
taboo. It was so placed by Somo, the ancient father and first ruler
of all of us, and it has been ever since the taboo of the chiefs.
The dog must die."
He paused and considered the matter, while Jerry returned to digging
the sand where the scent was auspicious. Agno made to stop him, but
Bashti interposed.
"Let be," he said. "Let the dog convict himself before my eyes."
And Jerry did, uncovering two eggs, breaking them and lapping that
portion of their precious contents which was not spilled and wasted
in the sand. Bashti's eyes were quite lack-lustre as he asked
"The feast of dogs for the men is to-day?"
"To-morrow, at midday," Agno answered. "Already are the dogs coming
in. There will be at least fifty of them."
"Fifty and one," was Bashti's verdict, as he nodded at Jerry.
The priest made a quick movement of impulse to capture Jerry.
"Why now?" the chief demanded. "You will but have to carry him
through the swamp. Let him trot back on his own legs, and when he
is before the canoe house tie his legs there."
Across the swamp and approaching the canoe house, Jerry, trotting
happily at the heels of the two men, heard the wailing and sorrowing
of many dogs that spelt unmistakable woe and pain. He developed
instant suspicion that was, however, without direct apprehension for
himself. And at that moment, his ears cocked forward and his nose
questing for further information in the matter, Bashti seized him by
the nape of the neck and held him in the air while Agno proceeded to
tie his legs.
No whimper, nor sound, nor sign of fear, came from Jerry--only
choking growls of ferociousness, intermingled with snarls of anger,
and a belligerent up-clawing of hind-legs. But a dog, clutched by
the neck from the back, can never be a match for two men, gifted
with the intelligence and deftness of men, each of them two-handed
with four fingers and an opposable thumb to each hand.
His fore-legs and hind-legs tied lengthwise and crosswise, he was
carried head-downward the short distance to the place of slaughter
and cooking, and flung to the earth in the midst of the score or
more of dogs similarly tied and helpless. Although it was mid-
afternoon, a number of them had so lain since early morning in the
hot sun. They were all bush dogs or wild-dogs, and so small was
their courage that their thirst and physical pain from cords drawn
too tight across veins and arteries, and their dim apprehension of
the fate such treatment foreboded, led them to whimper and wail and
howl their despair and suffering.
The next thirty hours were bad hours for Jerry. The word had gone
forth immediately that the taboo on him had been removed, and of the
men and boys none was so low as to do him reverence. About him,
till night-fall, persisted a circle of teasers and tormenters. They
harangued him for his fall, sneered and jeered at him, rooted him
about contemptuously with their feet, made a hollow in the sand out
of which he could not roll and desposited him in it on his back, his
four tied legs sticking ignominiously in the air above him.
And all he could do was growl and rage his helplessness. For,
unlike the other dogs, he would not howl or whimper his pain. A
year old now, the last six months had gone far toward maturing him,
and it was the nature of his breed to be fearless and stoical. And,
much as he had been taught by his white masters to hate and despise
niggers, he learned in the course of these thirty hours an
especially bitter and undying hatred.
His torturers stopped at nothing. Even they brought wild-dog and
set him upon Jerry. But it was contrary to wild-dog's nature to
attack an enemy that could not move, even if the enemy was Jerry who
had so often bullied him and rolled him on the deck. Had Jerry,
with a broken leg or so, still retained power of movement, then he
would have mauled him, perhaps to death. But this utter
helplessness was different. So the expected show proved a failure.
When Jerry snarled and growled, wild-dog snarled and growled back
and strutted and bullied around him, him to persuasion of the blacks
could induce but no sink his teeth into Jerry.
The killing-ground before the canoe house was a bedlam of horror.
From time to time more bound dogs were brought in and flung down.
There was a continuous howling, especially contributed to by those
which had lain in the sun since early morning and had no water. At
times, all joined in, the control of the quietest breaking down
before the wave of excitement and fear that swept spasmodically over
all of them. This howling, rising and falling, but never ceasing,
continued throughout the night, and by morning all were suffering
from the intolerable thirst.
The sun blazing down upon them in the white sand and almost
parboiling them, brought anything but relief. The circle of
torturers formed about Jerry again, and again was wreaked upon him
all abusive contempt for having lost his taboo. What drove Jerry
the maddest were not the blows and physical torment, but the
laughter. No dog enjoys being laughed at, and Jerry, least of all,
could restrain his wrath when they jeered him and cackled close in
his face.
Although he had not howled once, his snarling and growling, combined
with his thirst, had hoarsened his throat and dried the mucous
membranes of his mouth so that he was incapable, except under the
sheerest provocation, of further sound. His tongue hung out of his
mouth, and the eight o'clock sun began slowly to burn it.
It was at this time that one of the boys cruelly outraged him. He
rolled Jerry out of the hollow in which he had lain all night on his
back, turned him over on his side, and presented to him a small
calabash filled with water. Jerry lapped it so fanatically that not
for half a minute did he become aware that the boy had squeezed into
it many hot seeds of ripe red peppers. The circle shrieked with
glee, and what Jerry's thirst had been before was as nothing
compared with this new thirst to which had been added the stinging
agony of pepper.
Next in event, and a most important event it was to prove, came
Nalasu. Nalasu was an old man of three-score years, and he was
blind, walking with a large staff with which he prodded his path.
In his free hand he carried a small pig by its tied legs.
"They say the white master's dog is to be eaten," he said in the
Somo speech. "Where is the white master's dog? Show him to me."
Agno, who had just arrived, stood beside him as he bent over Jerry
and examined him with his fingers. Nor did Jerry offer to snarl or
bite, although the blind man's hands came within reach of his teeth
more than once. For Jerry sensed no enmity in the fingers that
passed so softly over him. Next, Nalasu felt over the pig, and
several times, as if calculating, alternated between Jerry and the
pig.
Nalasu stood up and voiced judgment:
"The pig is as small as the dog. They are of a size, but the pig
has more meat on it for the eating. Take the pig and I shall take
the dog."
"Nay," said Agno. "The white master's dog has broken the taboo. It
must be eaten. Take any other dog and leave the pig. Take a big
dog."
"I will have the white master's dog," Nalasu persisted. "Only the
white master's dog and no other."
The matter was at a deadlock when Bashti chanced upon the scene and
stood listening.
"Take the dog, Nalasu," he said finally. "It is a good pig, and I
shall myself eat it."
"But he has broken the taboo, your great taboo of the laying-yard,
and must go to the eating," Agno interposed quickly.
Too quickly, Bashti thought, while a vague suspicion arose in his
mind of he knew not what.
"The taboo must be paid in blood and cooking," Agno continued.
"Very well," said Bashti. "I shall eat the small pig. Let its
throat be cut and its body know the fire."
"I but speak the law of the taboo. Life must pay for the breaking."
"There is another law," Bashti grinned. "Long has it been since
ever Somo built these walls that life may buy life."
"But of life of man and life of woman," Agno qualified.
"I know the law," Bashti held steadily on. "Somo made the law.
Never has it been said that animal life may not buy animal life."
"It has never been practised," was the devil devil doctor's fling.
"And for reason enough," the old chief retorted. "Never before has
a man been fool enough to give a pig for a dog. It is a young pig,
and it is fat and tender. Take the dog, Nalasu. Take the dog now."
But the devil devil doctor was not satisfied.
"As you said, O Bashti, in your very great wisdom, he is the seed
dog of strength and courage. Let him be slain. When he comes from
the fire, his body shall be divided into many small pieces so that
every man may eat of him and thereby get his portion of strength and
courage. Better is it for Somo that its men be strong and brave
rather than its dogs."
But Bashti held no anger against Jerry. He had lived too long and
too philosophically to lay blame on a dog for breaking a taboo which
it did not know. Of course, dogs often were slain for breaking the
taboos. But he allowed this to be done because the dogs themselves
in nowise interested him, and because their deaths emphasized the
sacredness of the taboo. Further, Jerry had more than slightly
interested him. Often, since, Jerry had attacked him because of Van
Horn's head, he had pondered the incident. Baffling as it was, as
all manifestations of life were baffling, it had given him food for
thought. Then there was his admiration for Jerry's courage and that
inexplicable something in him that prevented him crying out from the
pain of the stick. And, without thinking of it as beauty, the
beauty of line and colour of Jerry had insensibly penetrated him
with a sense of pleasantness. It was good to look upon.
There was another angle to Bashti's conduct. He wondered why his
devil devil doctor so earnestly desired a mere dog's death. There
were many dogs. Then why this particular dog? That the weight of
something was on the other's mind was patent, although what it was
Bashti could not gauge, guess--unless it might be revenge incubated
the day he had prevented Agno from eating the dog. If such were the
case, it was a state of mind he could not tolerate in any of his
tribespeople. But whatever was the motive, guarding as he always
did against the unknown, he thought it well to discipline his priest
and demonstrate once again whose word was the last word in Somo.
Wherefore Bashti replied:
"I have lived long and eaten many pigs. What man may dare say that
the many pigs have entered into me and made me a pig?"
He paused and cast a challenging eye around the circle of his
audience; but no man spoke. Instead, some men grinned sheepishly
and were restless on their feet, while Agno's expression advertised
sturdy unbelief that there was anything pig-like about his chief.
"I have eaten much fish," Bashti continued. "Never has one scale of
a fish grown out on my skin. Never has a gill appeared on my
throat. As you all know, by the looking, never have I sprouted one
fin out of my backbone.--Nalasu, take the dog.--Aga, carry the pig
to my house. I shall eat it to-day.--Agno, let the killing of the
dogs begin so that the canoe-men shall eat at due time."
Then, as he turned to go, he lapsed into beche-de-mer English and
flung sternly over his shoulder, "My word, you make 'm me cross
along you."
