What happened aboard the Arangi Jerry never knew.  He did know that it was a world destroyed, for he saw it destroyed.  The boy who had knocked him on the head with the paddle, tied his legs securely and tossed him out on the beach ere he forgot him in the excitement of looting the Arangi.  
With great shouting and song, the pretty teak-built yacht was towed in by the long canoes and beached close to where Jerry lay just beyond the confines of the coral-stone walls.  Fires blazed on the beach, lanterns were lighted on board, and, amid a great feasting, the Arangi was gutted¹ and stripped.  Everything portable was taken ashore², from her pigs of iron ballast to her running gear and sails.  No one in Somo slept that night.  Even the tiniest of children toddled³ about the feasting fires or sprawled⁴ surfeited⁵ on the sands.  At two in the morning, at Bashti’s command, the shell of the boat was fired.  And Jerry, thirsting for water, having whimpered and wailed⁶ himself to exhaustion⁷, lying helpless, leg-tied, on his side, saw the floating world he had known so short a time go up in flame and smoke.
 
And by the light of her burning, old Bashti apportioned⁸ the loot.  No one of the tribe was too mean to receive nothing.  Even the wretched bush-slaves, who had trembled through all the time of their captivity⁹ from fear of being eaten, received each a clay pipe and several sticks of tobacco.  The main bulk of the trade goods, which was not distributed, Bashti had carried up to his own large grass house.  All the wealth of gear was stored in the several canoe houses.  While in the devil devil houses the devil devil doctors set to work curing the many heads over slow smudges; for, along with the boat’s crew there were a round dozen of No-ola return boys and several Malu boys which Van Horn had not yet delivered.
 
Not all these had been slain¹⁰, however.  Bashti had issued stern injunctions against wholesale¹¹ slaughter¹².  But this was not because his heart was kind.  Rather was it because his head was shrewd.  Slain they would all be in the end.  Bashti had never seen ice, did not know it existed, and was unversed in the science of refrigeration.  The only way he knew to keep meat was to keep it alive.  And in the biggest canoe house, the club house of the stags, where no Mary might come under penalty of death by torture, the captives were stored.
 
Tied or trussed like fowls¹³ or pigs, they were tumbled on the hard-packed earthen floor, beneath which, shallowly buried, lay the remains¹⁴ of ancient chiefs, while, overhead, in wrappings of grass mats, swung all that was left of several of Bashti’s immediate¹⁵ predecessors¹⁶, his father latest among them and so swinging for two full generations.  Here, too, since she was to be eaten and since the taboo¹⁷ had no bearing upon one condemned¹⁸ to be cooked, the thin little Mary from the lazarette was tumbled trussed upon the floor among the many blacks who had teased and mocked her for being fattened¹⁹ by Van Horn for the eating.
 
And to this canoe house Jerry was also brought to join the others on the floor.  Agno, chief of the devil devil doctors, had stumbled across him on the beach, and, despite the protestations of the boy who claimed him as personal trove²⁰, had ordered him to the canoe house.  Carried past the fires of the feasting, his keen nostrils²¹ had told him of what the feast consisted.  And, new as the experience was, he had bristled²² and snarled²³ and struggled against his bonds to be free.  Likewise, at first, tossed down in the canoe house, he had bristled and snarled at his fellow captives, not realizing their plight²⁵, and, since always he had been trained to look upon niggers as the eternal enemy, considering them responsible for the catastrophe²⁶ to the Arangi and to Skipper.
 
For Jerry was only a little dog, with a dog’s limitations, and very young in the world.  But not for long did he throat his rage at them.  In vague ways it was borne in upon him that they, too, were not happy.  Some had been cruelly wounded, and kept up a moaning and groaning²⁷.  Without any clearness of concept, nevertheless Jerry had a realization²⁸ that they were as painfully circumstanced as himself.  And painful indeed was his own circumstance.  He lay on his side, the cords that bound his legs so tight as to bite into his tender flesh and shut off the circulation.  Also, he was perishing for water, and panted, dry-tongued, dry-mouthed, in the stagnant²⁹ heat.
 
A dolorous³⁰ place it was, this can............