CHAPTER XXI
The fine, three-topmast schooner Ariel, on a cruise around the
world, had already been out a year from San Francisco when Jerry
boarded her. As a world, and as a white-god world, she was to him
beyond compare. She was not small like the Arangi, nor was she
cluttered fore and aft, on deck and below, with a spawn of niggers.
The only black Jerry found on her was Johnny; while her spaciousness
was filled principally with two-legged white-gods.
He met them everywhere, at the wheel, on lookout, washing decks,
polishing brass-work, running aloft, or tailing on to sheets and
tackles half a dozen at a time. But there was a difference. There
were gods and gods, and Jerry was not long in learning that in the
hierarchy of the heaven of these white-gods on the Ariel, the
sailorizing, ship-working ones were far beneath the captain and his
two white-and-gold-clad officers. These, in turn, were less than
Harley Kennan and Villa Kennan; for them, it came quickly to him,
Harley Kennan commanded. Nevertheless, there was one thing he did
not learn and was destined never to learn, namely, the supreme god
over all on the Ariel. Although he never tried to know, being
unable to think to such a distance, he never came to know whether it
was Harley Kennan who commanded Villa, or Villa Kennan who commanded
Harley. In a way, without vexing himself with the problem, he
accepted their over-lordship of the world as dual. Neither out-
ranked the other. They seemed to rule co-equal, while all others
bowed before them.
It is not true that to feed a dog is to win a dog's heart. Never
did Harley or Villa feed Jerry; yet it was to them he elected to
belong, them he elected to love and serve rather than to the
Japanese steward who regularly fed him. For that matter, Jerry,
like any dog, was able to differentiate between the mere direct
food-giver and the food source. That is, subconsciously, he was
aware that not alone his own food, but the food of all on board
found its source in the man and woman. They it was who fed all and
ruled all. Captain Winters might give orders to the sailors, but
Captain Winters took orders from Harley Kennan. Jerry knew this as
indubitably as he acted upon it, although all the while it never
entered his head as an item of conscious knowledge.
And, as he had been accustomed, all his life, as with Mister Haggin,
Skipper, and even with Bashti and the chief devil devil doctor of
Somo, he attached himself to the high gods themselves, and from the
gods under them received deference accordingly. As Skipper, on the
Arangi, and Bashti in Somo, had promulgated taboos, so the man and
the woman on the Ariel protected Jerry with taboos. From Sano, the
Japanese steward, and from him alone, did Jerry receive food. Not
from any sailor in whaleboat or launch could he accept, or would he
be offered, a bit of biscuit or an invitation to go ashore for a
run. Nor did they offer it. Nor were they permitted to become
intimate, to the extent of romping and playing with him, nor even of
whistling to him along the deck.
By nature a "one-man" dog, all this was very acceptable to Jerry.
Differences of degree there were, of course; but no one more
delicately and definitely knew those differences than did Jerry
himself. Thus, it was permissible for the two officers to greet him
with a "Hello," or a "Good morning," and even to touch a hand in a
brief and friendly pat to his head. With Captain Winters, however,
greater familiarity obtained. Captain Winters could rub his ears,
shake hands with his, scratch his back, and even roughly catch him
by the jowls. But Captain Winters invariably surrendered him up
when the one man and the one woman appeared on deck.
When it came to liberties, delicious, wanton liberties, Jerry alone
of all on board could take them with the man and woman, and, on the
other hand, they were the only two to whom he permitted liberties.
Any indignity that Villa Kennan chose to inflict upon him he was
throbbingly glad to receive, such as doubling his ears inside out
till they stuck, at the same time making him sit upright, with
helpless forefeet paddling the air for equilibrium, while she blew
roguishly in his face and nostrils. As bad was Harley Kennan's
trick of catching him gloriously asleep on an edge of Villa's skirt
and of tickling the hair between his toes and making him kick
involuntarily in his sleep, until he kicked himself awake to hearing
of gurgles and snickers of laughter at his expense.
In turn, at night on deck, wriggling her toes at him under a rug to
simulate some strange and crawling creature of an invader, he would
dare to simulate his own befoolment and quite disrupt Villa's bed
with his frantic ferocious attack on the thing that he knew was only
her toes. In gales of laughter, intermingled with half-genuine
cries of alarm as almost his teeth caught her toes, she always
concluded by gathering him into her arms and laughing the last of
her laughter away into his flattened ears of joy and love. Who
else, of all on board the Ariel, would have dared such devilishness
with the lady-god's bed? This question it never entered his mind to
ask himself; yet he was fully aware of how exclusively favoured he
was.
Another of his deliberate tricks was one discovered by accident.
Thrusting his muzzle to meet her in love, he chanced to encounter
her face with his soft-hard little nose with such force as to make
her recoil and cry out. When, another time, in all innocence this
happened again, he became conscious of it and of its effect upon
her; and thereafter, when she grew too wildly wild, too wantonly
facetious in her teasing playful love of him, he would thrust his
muzzle at her face and make her throw her head back to escape him.
After a time, learning that if he persisted, she would settle the
situation by gathering him into her arms and gurgling into his ears,
he made it a point to act his part until such delectable surrender
and joyful culmination were achieved.
Never, by accident, in this deliberate game, did he hurt her chin or
cheek so severely as he hurt his own tender nose, but in the hurt
itself he found more of delight than pain. All of fun it was, all
through, and, in addition, it was love fun. Such hurt was more than
fun. Such pain was heart-pleasure.
All dogs are god-worshippers. More fortunate than most dogs, Jerry
won to a pair of gods that, no matter how much they commanded, loved
more. Although his nose might threaten grievously to hurt the cheek
of his adored god, rather than have it really hurt he would have
spilled out all the love-tide of his heart that constituted the life
of him. He did not live for food, for shelter, for a comfortable
place between the darknesses that rounded existence. He lived for
love. And as surely as he gladly lived for love, would he have died
gladly for love.
Not quickly, in Somo, had Jerry's memory of Skipper and Mister
Haggin faded. Life in the cannibal village had been too
unsatisfying. There had been too little love. Only love can erase
the memory of love, or rather, the hurt of lost love. And on board
the Ariel such erasement occurred quickly. Jerry did not forget
Skipper and Mister Haggin. But at the moments he remembered them
the yearning that accompanied the memory grew less pronounced and
painful. The intervals between the moments widened, nor did Skipper
and Mister Haggin take form and reality so frequently in his dreams;
for, after the manner of dogs, he dreamed much and vividly.
