Again he came back cautiously, as it was the instinct in him to stalk wild game, crouching4 so close to the ground that almost his belly6 touched. He lifted and dropped his feet with the lithe7 softness of a cat, and from time to time glanced to right and to left as if in apprehension8 of some flank attack. A noisy outburst of boys’ laughter in the distance caused him to crouch5 suddenly down, his claws thrust into the ground for purchase, his muscles tense springs for the leap he knew not in what direction, from the danger he knew not what that might threaten him. Then he identified the noise, know that no harm impended9, and resumed his stealthy advance on the Irish terrier.
What might have happened there is no telling, for at that moment Bashti’s eyes chanced to rest on the golden puppy for the first time since the capture of the Arangi. In the rush of events Bashti had forgotten the puppy.
“What name that fella dog?” he cried out sharply, causing wild-dog to crouch down again and attracting Lenerengo’s attention.
She cringed in fear to the ground before the terrible old chief and quavered a recital10 of the facts. Her good-for-nothing boy Lamai had picked the dog from the water. It had been the cause of much trouble in her house. But now Lamai had gone to live with the youths, and she was carrying the dog to Agno’s house at Agno’s express command.
“What name that dog stop along you?” Bashti demanded directly of Agno.
“Me kai-kai along him,” came the answer. “Him fat fella dog. Him good fella dog kai-kai.”
Into Bashti’s alert old brain flashed an idea that had been long maturing.
“Him good fella dog too much,” he announced. “Better you eat ’m bush fella dog,” he advised, pointing at wild-dog.
Agno shook his head. “Bush fella dog no good kai-kai.”
“Bush fella dog no good too much,” was Bashti’s judgment11. “Bush fella dog too much fright. Plenty fella bush dog too much fright. White marster’s dog no fright. Bush dog no fight. White marster’s dog fight like hell. Bush dog run like hell. You look ’m eye belong you, you see.”
Bashti stepped over to Jerry and cut the cords that tied his legs. And Jerry, upon his feet in a surge, was for once in too great haste to pause to give thanks. He hurled12 himself after wild-dog, caught him in mid-flight, and rolled him over and over in a cloud of dust. Ever wild-dog strove to escape, and ever Jerry cornered him, rolled him, and bit him, while Bashti applauded and called on his head men to behold13.
By this time Jerry had become a raging little demon14. Fired by all his wrongs, from the bloody15 day on the Arangi and the loss of Skipper down to this latest tying of his legs, he was avenging16 himself on wild-dog for everything. The owner of wild-dog, a return boy, made the mistake of trying to kick Jerry away. Jerry was upon him in a flash scratching his calves17 with his teeth, in the suddenness of his onslaught getting between the black’s legs and tumbling him to the ground.
“What name!” Bashti cried in a rage at the offender18, who lay fear-stricken where he had fallen, trembling for what next words might fall from his chief’s lips.
But Bashti was already doubling with laughter at sight of wild-dog running for his life down the street with Jerry a hundred feet behind and tearing up the dust.
As they disappeared, Bashti expounded20 his idea. If men planted banana trees, it ran, what they would get would be bananas. If they planted yams, yams would be produced, not sweet potatoes or plantains, but yams, nothing but yams. The same with dogs. Since all black men’s dogs were cowards, all the breeding of all black men’s dogs would produce cowards. White men’s dogs were courageous22 fighters. When they were bred they produced courageous fighters. Very well, and to the conclusion, namely, here was a white man’s dog in their possession. The height of foolishness would be to eat it and to destroy for all time the courage that resided in it. The wise thing to do was to regard it as a seed dog, to keep it alive, so that in the coming generations of Somo dogs its courage would be repeated over and over and spread until all Somo dogs would be strong and brave.
Further, Bashti commanded his chief devil devil doctor to take charge of Jerry and guard him well. Also, he sent his word forth23 to all the tribe that Jerry was taboo24. No man, woman, or child was to throw spear or stone at him, strike him with club or tomahawk, or hurt him in any way.
* * * * *
Thenceforth, and until Jerry himself violated one of the greatest of taboos25, he had a happy time in Agno’s gloomy grass house. For Bashti, unlike most chiefs, ruled his devil devil doctors with an iron hand. Other chiefs, even Nau-hau of Langa-Langa, were ruled by their devil devil doctors. For that matter, the population of Somo believed that Bashti was so ruled. But the Somo folk did not know what went on behind the scenes, when Bashti, a sheer infidel, talked alone now with one doctor and now with another.
In these private talks he demonstrated that he knew their game as well as they did, and that he was no slave to the dark superstitions26 and gross impostures with which they kept the people in submission27. Also, he exposited the theory, as ancient as priests and rulers, that priests and rulers must work together in the orderly governance of the people. He was content that the people should believe that the gods, and the priests who were the mouth-pieces of the gods, had the last word, but he would have the priests know that in private the last word was his. Little as they believed in their trickery, he told them, he believed less.
He knew taboo, and the truth behind taboo. He explained his personal taboos, and how they came to be. Never must he eat clam-meat, he told Agno. It was so selected by himself because he did not like clam-meat. It was old Nino, high priest before Agno, with an ear open to the voice of the shark-god, who had so laid the taboo. But, he, Bashti, had privily28 commanded Nino to lay the taboo against clam-meat upon him, because he, Bashti, did not like clam-meat and had never liked clam-meat.
Still further, since he had lived longer than the oldest priest of them, his had been the appointing of every one of them. He knew them, had made them, had placed them, and they lived by his pleasure. And they would continue to take program from him, as they had always taken it, or else they would swiftly and suddenly pass. He had but to remind them of the passing of Kori, the devil devil doctor who had believed himself stronger than his chief, and who, for his mistake, had screamed in pain for a week ere what composed him had ceased to scream and for ever ceased to scream.
* * * * *
In Agno’s large grass house was little light and much mystery. There was no mystery there for Jerry, who merely knew things, or did not know things, and who never bothered about what he did not know. Dried heads and other cured and mouldy portions of human carcasses impressed him no more than the dried alligators30 and dried fish that contributed to the festooning of Agno’s dark abode31.
Jerry found himself well cared for. No children nor wives cluttered32 the devil devil doctor’s house. Several old women, a fly-flapping girl of eleven, and two young men who had graduated from the canoe house of the youths and who were studying priestcraft under the master, composed the household and waited upon Jerry. Food of the choicest was his. After Agno had eaten first-cut of pig, Jerry was served second. Even the two acolytes33 and the fly-flapping maid ate after him, leaving the debris34 for the several old women. And, unlike the mere29 bush dogs, who stole shelter from the rain under overhanging eaves, Jerry was given a dry place under the roof where the heads of bushmen and of forgotten sandalwood traders hung down from above in the midst of a dusty confusion of dried viscera of sharks, crocodile skulls36, and skeletons of Solomons rats that measured two-thirds of a yard in length from bone-tip of nose to bone-tip of tail.
A number of times, all freedom being his, Jerry stole away across the village to the house of Lumai. But never did he find Lamai, who, since Skipper, was the only human he had met that had placed a bid to his heart. Jerry never appeared openly, but from the thick fern of the brookside observed the house and scented37 out its occupants. No scent38 of Lamai did he ever obtain, and, after a time, he gave up his vain visits and accepted the devil devil doctor’s house as his home and the devil devil doctor as his master.
But he bore no love for this master. Agno, who had ruled by fear so long in his house of mystery, did not know love. Nor was affection any part of him, nor was geniality39. He had no sense of humour, and was as frostily cruel as an icicle. Next to Bashti he stood in power, and all his days had been embittered40 in that he was not first in power. He had no softness for Jerry. Because he feared Bashti he feared to harm Jerry.
The months passed, and Jerry got his firm, massive second teeth and increased in weight and size. He came as near to being spoiled as is possible for a dog. Himself taboo, he quickly learned to lord it over the Somo folk and to have his way and will in all matters. No one dared to dispute with him with stick or stone. Agno hated him—he knew that; but also he gleaned41 the knowledge that Agno feared him and would not dare to hurt him. But Agno was a chill-blooded philosopher and bided42 his time, being different from Jerry in that he possessed43 human prevision and could adjust his actions to remote ends.
From the edge of the lagoon44, into the waters of which, remembering the crocodile taboo he had learned on Meringe, he never ventured, Jerry ranged to the outlying bush villages of Bashti’s domain45. All made way for him. All fed him when he desired food. For the taboo was upon him, and he might unchidden invade their sleeping-mats or food calabashes. He might bully46 as he pleased, and be arrogant47 beyond decency48, and there was no one to say him nay49. Even had Bashti’s word gone forth that if Jerry were attacked by the full-grown bush dogs, it was the duty of the Somo folk to take his part and kick and stone and beat the bush dogs. And thus his own four-legged cousins came painfully to know that he was taboo.
And Jerry prospered50. Fat to stupidity he might well have become, had it not been for his high-strung nerves and his insatiable, eager curiosity. With the freedom of all Somo his, he was ever a-foot over it, learning its metes51 and bounds and the ways of the wild creatures that inhabited its swamps and forests and that did not acknowledge his taboo.
Many were his adventures. He fought two battles with the wood-rats that were almost of his size, and that, being mature and wild and cornered, fought him as he had never been fought before. The first he had killed, unaware52 that it was an old and feeble rat. The second, in prime of vigour53, had so punished him that he crawled back, weak and sick to the devil devil doctor’s house, where, for a week, under the dried emblems54 of death, he licked his wounds and slowly came back to life and health.
He stole upon the dugong and joyed to stampede that silly timid creature by sudden ferocious55 onslaughts which he knew himself to be all sound and fury, but which tickled56 him and made him laugh with the consciousness of playing a successful joke. He chased the unmigratory tropi-ducks from their shrewd-hidden nests, walked circumspectly57 among the crocodiles hauled out of water for slumber58, and crept under the jungle-roof and spied upon the snow-white saucy59 cockatoos, the fierce ospreys, the heavy-flighted buzzards, the lories and kingfishers, and the absurdly garrulous60 little pygmy parrots.
Thrice, beyond the boundaries of Somo, he encountered the little black bushmen who were more like ghosts than men, so noiseless and unperceivable were they, and who, guarding the wild-pig runways of the jungle, missed spearing him on the three memorable61 occasions. As the wood-rats had taught him discretion62, so did these two-legged lurkers in the jungle twilight63. He had not fought with them, although they tried to spear him. He quickly came to know that these were other folk than Somo folk, that his taboo did not extend to them, and that, even of a sort, they were two-legged gods who carried flying death in their hands that reached farther than their hands and bridged distance.
As he ran the jungle, so Jerry ran the village. No place was sacred to him. In the devil devil houses, where, before the face of mystery men and women crawled in fear and trembling, he walked stiff-legged and bristling64; for fresh heads were suspended there—heads his eyes and keen nostrils65 identified as those of once living blacks he had known on board the Arangi. In the biggest devil devil house he encountered the head of Borckman, and snarled67 at it, without receiving response, in recollection of the fight he had fought with the schnapps-addled mate on the deck of the Arangi.
Once, however, in Bashti’s house, he chanced upon all that remained on earth of Skipper. Bashti had lived very long, had lived most wisely and thought much, and was thoroughly68 aware that, having lived far beyond the span of man his own span was very short. And he was curious about it all—the meaning and purpose of life. He loved the world and life, into which he had been fortunately born, both as to constitution and to place, which latter, for him, had been the high place over hie priests and people. He was not afraid to die, but he wondered if he might live again. He discounted the silly views of the tricky69 priests, and he was very much alone in the chaos70 of the confusing problem.
For he had lived so long, and so luckily, that he had watched the
Join or Log In!
You need to log in to continue reading