For many days, tied by the stick, Jerry remained Lamai’s prisoner.  It was not a happy time, for the house of Lumai was a house of perpetual bickering¹ and quarrelling.  Lamai fought pitched battles with his brothers and sisters for teasing Jerry, and these battles invariably culminated² in Lenerengo taking a hand and impartially³ punishing all her progeny⁴.  
After that, as a matter of course and on general principles, she would have it out with Lumai, whose soft voice always was for quiet and repose⁵, and who always, at the end of a tongue-lashing, took himself off to the canoe house for a couple of days.  Here, Lenerengo was helpless.  Into the canoe house of the stags no Mary might venture.  Lenerengo had never forgotten the fate of the last Mary who had broken the taboo⁶.  It had occurred many years before, when she was a girl, and the recollection was ever vivid of the unfortunate woman hanging up in the sun by one arm for all of a day, and for all of a second day by the other arm.  After that she had been feasted upon by the stags of the canoe house, and for long afterward⁷ all women had talked softly before their husbands.
 
Jerry did discover liking⁸ for Lamai, but it was not strong nor passionate⁹.  Rather was it out of gratitude¹⁰, for only Lamai saw to it that he received food and water.  Yet this boy was no Skipper, no Mister Haggin.  Nor was he even a Derby or a Bob.  He was that inferior man-creature, a nigger, and Jerry had been thoroughly¹¹ trained all his brief days to the law that the white men were the superior two-legged gods.
 
He did not fail to recognize, however, the intelligence and power that resided in the niggers.  He did not reason it out.  He accepted it.  They had power of command over other objects, could propel sticks and stones through the air, could even tie him a prisoner to a stick that rendered him helpless.  Inferior as they might be to the white-gods, still they were gods of a sort.
 
It was the first time in his life that Jerry had been tied up, and he did not like it.  Vainly he hurt his teeth, some of which were loosening under the pressure of the second teeth rising underneath¹².  The stick was stronger than he.  Although he did not forget Skipper, the poignancy¹³ of his loss faded with the passage of time, until uppermost in his mind was the desire to be free.
 
But when the day came that he was freed, he failed to take advantage of it and scuttle¹⁴ away for the beach.  It chanced that Lenerengo released him.  She did it deliberately¹⁵, desiring to be quit of him.  But when she untied¹⁶ Jerry, he stopped to thank her, wagging his tail and smiling up at her with his hazel-brown eyes.  She stamped her foot at him to be gone, and uttered a harsh and intimidating¹⁷ cry.  This Jerry did not understand, and so unused was he to fear that he could not be frightened into running away.  He ceased wagging his tail, and, though he continued to look up at her, his eyes no longer smiled.  Her action and noise he identified as unfriendly, and he became alert and watchful¹⁸, prepared for whatever hostile act she might next commit.
 
Again she cried out and stamped her foot.  The only effect on Jerry was to make him transfer his watchfulness¹⁹ to the foot.  This slowness in getting away, now that she had released him, was too much for her short temper.  She launched the kick, and Jerry, avoiding it, slashed²⁰ her ankle.
 
War broke on the instant, and that she might have killed Jerry in her rage was highly probable had not Lamai appeared on the scene.  The stick untied from Jerry’s neck told the tale of her perfidy²¹ and incensed²² Lamai, who sprang between and deflected²³ the blow with a stone poi-pounder that might have brained Jerry.
 
Lamai was now the one in danger of grievous damage, and his mother had just knocked him down with a clout²⁴ alongside the head when poor Lumai, roused from sleep by the uproar²⁵, ventured out to make peace.  Lenerengo, as usual, forgot everything else in the fiercer pleasure of berating²⁶ her spouse²⁷.
 
The conclusion of the affair was harmless enough.  The children stopped their crying, Lamai retied Jerry with the stick, Lenerengo harangued²⁸ herself breathless, and Lumai departed with hurt feelings for the canoe house where stags could sleep in peace and Marys pestered²⁹ not.
 
That night, in the circle of his fellow stags, Lumai recited his sorrows and told the cause of them—the puppy dog which had come on the Arangi.  It chanced that Agno, chief of the devil devil doctors, or high priest, heard the tale, and recollected³⁰ that he had sent Jerry to the canoe house along with the rest of the captives.  Half an hour later he was having it out with Lamai.  Beyond doubt, the boy had broken the taboos³¹, and privily³² he told him so, until Lamai trembled and wept and squirmed abjectly³³ at his feet, for the penalty was death.
 
It was too good an opportunity to get a hold over the boy for Agno to misplay it.  A dead boy was worth nothing to him, but a living boy whose life he carried in his hand would serve him well.  Since no one else knew of the broken taboo, he could afford to keep quiet.  So he ordered Lamai forthright³⁴ down to live in the youths’ canoe house, there to begin his novitiate in the long series of tasks, tests and ceremonies that would graduate him into the bachelors’ canoe house and half way along toward being a recognized man.
 
* * * * *
 
In the morning, obeying the devil devil doctor’s commands, Lenerengo tied Jerry’s feet together, not without a struggle in which his head was banged about............