A week Jerry spent in the bush, deterred¹ always from penetrating² to the mountains by the bushmen who ever guarded the runways.  And it would have gone hard with him in the matter of food, had he not, on the second day, encountered a lone³ small pig, evidently lost from its litter.  It was his first hunting adventure for a living, and it prevented him from travelling farther, for, true to his instinct, he remained by his kill until it was nearly devoured⁴.  
True, he ranged widely about the neighbourhood, finding no other food he could capture.  But always, until it was gone, he returned to the slain⁶ pig.  Yet he was not happy in his freedom.  He was too domesticated⁷, too civilized⁸.  Too many thousands of years had elapsed since his ancestors had run freely wild.  He was lonely.  He could not get along without man.  Too long had he, and the generations before him, lived in intimate relationship with the two-legged gods.  Too long had his kind loved man, served him for love, endured for love, died for love, and, in return, been partly appreciated, less understood, and roughly loved.
 
So great was Jerry’s loneliness that even a two-legged black-god was desirable, since white-gods had long since faded into the limbo⁹ of the past.  For all he might have known, had he been capable of conjecturing¹⁰, the only white-gods in existence had perished.  Acting¹¹ on the assumption that a black-god was better than no god, when he had quite finished the little pig, he deflected¹² his course to the left, down-hill, toward the sea.  He did this, again without reasoning, merely because, in the subtle processes of his brain, experience worked.  His experience had been to live always close by the sea; humans he had always encountered close by the sea; and down-hill had invariably led to the sea.
 
He came out upon the shore of the reef-sheltered lagoon¹⁴ where ruined grass houses told him men had lived.  The jungle ran riot through the place.  Six-inch trees, throated with rotten remnants of thatched roofs through which they had aspired¹⁵ toward the sun, rose about him.  Quick-growing trees had shadowed the kingposts so that the idols¹⁶ and totems, seated in carved shark jaws¹⁷, grinned greenly and monstrously¹⁸ at the futility¹⁹ of man through a rime²⁰ of moss²¹ and mottled fungus²².  A poor little sea-wall, never much at its best, sprawled²³ in ruin from the coconut²⁴ roots to the placid²⁵ sea.  Bananas, plantains, and breadfruit lay rotting on the ground.  Bones lay about, human bones, and Jerry nosed them out, knowing them for what they were, emblems²⁶ of the nothingness of life.  Skulls²⁷ he did not encounter, for the skulls that belonged to the scattered²⁸ bones ornamented²⁹ the devil devil houses in the upland bush villages.
 
The salt tang of the sea gladdened his nostrils³¹, and he snorted with the pleasure of the stench of the mangrove³² swamp.  But, another Crusoe chancing upon the footprint of another man Friday, his nose, not his eyes, shocked him electrically alert as he smelled the fresh contact of a living man’s foot with the ground.  It was a nigger’s foot, but it was alive, it was immediate³³; and, as he traced it a score of yards, he came upon another foot-scent³⁴, indubitably a white man’s.
 
Had there been an onlooker³⁵, he would have thought Jerry had gone suddenly mad.  He rushed frantically³⁶ about, turning and twisting his course, now his nose to the ground, now up in the air, whining³⁷ as frantically as he rushed, leaping abruptly³⁸ at right angles as new scents³⁹ reached him, scurrying⁴⁰ here and there and everywhere as if in a game of tag with some invisible playfellow.
 
But he was reading the full report which many men had written on the ground.  A white man had been there, he learned, and a number of blacks.  Here a black had climbed a coconut tree and cast down the nuts.  There a banana tree had been despoiled⁴¹ of its clustered fruit; and, beyond, it was evident that a similar event had happened to a breadfruit tree.  One thing, however, puzzled him—a scent new to him that was neither black man’s nor white man’s.  Had he had the necessary knowledge and the wit of eye-observance, he would have noted⁴² that the footprint was smaller than a man’s and that the toeprints were different from a Mary’s in that they were close together and did not press deeply into the earth.  What bothered him in his smelling was his ignorance of talcum powder.  Pungent⁴³ it was in his nostrils, but never, since first he had smelled out the footprints of man, had he encountered such a scent.  And with this were combined other and fainter scents that were equally strange to him.
 
Not long did he interest himself in such mystery.  A white man’s footprints he had smelled, and through the maze⁴⁴ of all the other prints he followed the one print down through a breach⁴⁵ of sea-wall to the sea-pounded coral sand lapped by the sea.  Here the latest freshness of many feet drew together where the nose of a boat had rested on the beach and where men had disembarked and embarked⁴⁶ again.  He smelled up all the story, and, his forelegs in the water till it touched his shoulders, he gazed out across the lagoon where the disappearing trail was lost to his nose.
 
Had he been half an hour sooner he would have seen a boat, without oars⁴⁷, gasoline-propelled, shooting across the quiet water.  What he did see was an Arangi.  True, it was far larger than the Arangi he had known, but it was white, it was long, it had masts, and it floated on the surface of the sea.  It had three masts, sky-lofty and all of a size; but his observation was not trained to note the difference between them and the one long and the one short mast of the Arangi.  The one floating world he had known was the white-painted Arangi.  And, since, without a quiver of doubt, this was the Arangi, then, on board, would be his beloved Skipper.  If Arangis could resurrect, then could Skippers resurrect, and in utter faith that the head of nothingness he had last seen on Bashti’s knees he would find again rejoined to its body and its two legs on the deck of the white-painted floating world, he waded⁴⁸ out to his depth, and, swimming dared the sea.
 
He greatly dared, for in venturing the water he broke one of the greatest and earliest taboos⁴⁹ he had learned.  In his vocabulary was no word for “crocodile”; yet in his thought, as potent⁵¹ as any utterable word, was an image of dreadful import—an image of a log awash that was not a log and that was alive, that could swim upon the surface, under the surface, and haul out across the dry land, that was huge-toothed, mighty-mawed, and certain death to a swimming dog.
 
But he continued the breaking of the taboo⁵⁰ without fear.  Unlike a man who can be simultaneously⁵² conscious of two states of mind, and who, swimming, would have known both the fear and the high courage with which he overrode⁵³ the fear, Jerry, as he swam, knew only one state of mind, which was that he was swimming to the Arangi and to Skipper.  At the moment preceding the first stroke of his paws in the water out of his depth, he had known all the terribleness of the taboo he deliberately⁵⁴ broke.  But, launched out, the decision made, the line of least resistance taken, he knew, single-thoughted, single-hearted, only that he was going to Skipper.
 
Little practised as he was in swimming, he swam with all his strength, whimpering in a sort of chant his eager love for Skipper who indubitably must be aboard the white yacht half a mile away.  His little song of love, fraught⁵⁵ with keenness of anxiety, came to the ears of a man and woman lounging in deck-chairs under the awning⁵⁶; and it was the quick-eyed woman who first saw the golden head of Jerry and cried out what she saw.
 
“Lower a boat, Husband-Man,” she commanded.  “It’s a little dog.  He mustn’t drown.”
 
“Dogs don’t drown that easily,” was “Husband-Man’s” reply.  “He’ll make it all right.  But what under the sun a dog’s doing out here . . . ”  He lifted his marine⁵⁷ glasses to his eyes and stared a moment.  “And a white man’s dog at that!”
 
Jerry beat the water with his paws and moved steadily⁵⁸ along, straining his eyes at the growing yacht until suddenly warned by a sensing of immediate danger.  The taboo smote⁵⁹ him.  This that moved toward him was the log awash that was not a log but a live thing of peril⁶⁰.  Part of it he saw above the surface moving sluggishly⁶¹, and ere that projecting part sank, he had an awareness⁶² that somehow it was different from a log awash.
 
Next, something brushed past him, and he encountered it with a snarl⁶³ and a splashing of his forepaws.  He was half-whirled about in the vortex of the thing’s passage caused by the alarmed flirt⁶⁴ of its tail.  Shark it was, and not crocodile, and not so timidly would it have sheered clear but for the fact that it was fairly full with a recent feed of a huge sea turtle too feeble with age to escape.
 
Although he could not see it, Jerry sensed that the thing, the instrument of nothingness, lurked⁶⁵ about him.  Nor did he see the dorsal⁶⁶ fin⁵ break surface............