Three months more passed; the north-west monsoon¹, 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 taboo², 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 hatred³ of Jerry.  
Not even the several old women, the two acolytes⁴, 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 deterred⁵ 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 annihilated⁶ hundreds of centuries before had it not been preserved by the taboos⁷ 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 entirely⁸ 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 whim¹⁰, 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 limbo¹¹ 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 saliva¹³ and of internal digestive juices were stimulated¹⁴ to flow again at contemplation of a megapode egg prepared for the eating.  Wherefore, he alone of all Somo, barred rigidly¹⁵ by taboo, ate megapode eggs.  And, since the taboo was essentially¹⁶ 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 belly¹⁷ desire had long since deserted¹⁸ 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, privily¹⁹, 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 stank²¹ in the stagnant²² air where the wind never penetrated²³.
 
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 plunges²⁴, 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, abruptly²⁵ 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 primitive²⁶ gate gave entrance, but Agno did not take Jerry through it.  Instead, with weird²⁷ 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 imposing²⁸ 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, enticed²⁹ and seduced³⁰ 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 erased³¹ 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 slew³² it, knowing that the lust³³ of killing³⁴, once started, would lead him to continue killing the silly birds, Agno left the laying-yard to hot-foot it through the mangrove²⁰ swamp and present to Bashti an ecclesiastical quandary³⁵.  The taboo of the dog, as he expounded³⁶ it, had prevented him from interfering³⁷ 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 prodigious³⁸ 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 yolk³⁹ of the portion of one egg, plastered by Agno to represent many eggs, still about his eyes and above his eyes to the bulge⁴⁰ 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 disdained⁴¹ 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 queried⁴² in the Somo tongue.
 
“As you should ask.  Of a surety, the megapode.”
 
“And the dog?” was Agno’s next query⁴³.
 
“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 scent¹² was auspicious⁴⁴.  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 trot⁴⁵ 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, trotting⁴⁶ happily at the heels of the two men, heard the wailing⁴⁷ and sorrowing of many dogs that spelt unmistakable woe⁴⁹ and pain.  He developed instant suspicion that was, however, without direct apprehension⁵⁰ 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 growls⁵¹ of ferociousness⁵³, intermingled with snarls⁵⁵ of anger, and a belligerent⁵⁶ 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 int............