Jack London - Jerry of the Islands

This lasted for a short time, during which the strangling prevented him from answering Skipper’s cry, which continued to reach him. But when he could answer he burst forth in a joyous yelp. Skipper was coming to take him out of the stinging, biting sea that blinded his eyes and hurt him to breathe. Skipper was truly a god, his god, with a god’s power to save.

Soon he heard the rhythmic clack of the oars on the thole-pins, and the joy in his own yelp was duplicated by the joy in Skipper’s voice, which kept up a running encouragement, broken by objurgations to the rowers.

“All right, Jerry, old man. All right, Jerry. All right.—Washee-washee, you fella boy!—Coming, Jerry, coming. Stick it out, old man. Stay with it.—Washee-washee like hell!—Here we are, Jerry. Stay with it. Hang on, old boy, we’ll get you.—Easy... easy. ’Vast washee.”

And then, with amazing abruptness, Jerry saw the whaleboat dimly emerge from the gloom close upon him, was blinded by the stab of the torch full in his eyes, and, even as he yelped his joy, felt and recognized Skipper’s hand clutching him by the slack of the neck and lifting him into the air.

He landed wet and soppily against Skipper’s rain-wet chest, his tail bobbing frantically against Skipper’s containing arm, his body wriggling, his tongue dabbing madly all over Skipper’s chin and mouth and cheeks and nose. And Skipper did not know that he was himself wet, and that he was in the first shock of recurrent malaria precipitated by the wet and the excitement. He knew only that the puppy-dog, given him only the previous morning, was safe back in his arms.

While the boat’s crew bent to the oars, he steered with the sweep between his arm and his side in order that he might hold Jerry with the other arm.

“You little son of a gun,” he crooned, and continued to croon, over and over. “You little son of a gun.”

And Jerry responded with tongue-kisses, whimpering and crying as is the way of lost children immediately after they are found. Also, he shivered violently. But it was not from the cold. Rather was it due to his over-strung, sensitive nerves.

Again on board, Van Horn stated his reasoning to the mate.

“The pup didn’t just calmly walk overboard. Nor was he washed overboard. I had him fast and triced in the blanket with a rope yarn.”

He walked over, the centre of the boat’s crew and of the three-score return boys who were all on deck, and flashed his torch on the blanket still lying on the yams.

“That proves it. The rope-yarn’s cut. The knot’s still in it. Now what nigger is responsible?”

He looked about at the circle of dark faces, flashing the light on them, and such was the accusation and anger in his eyes, that all eyes fell before his or looked away.

“If only the pup could speak,” he complained. “He’d tell who it was.”

He bent suddenly down to Jerry, who was standing as close against his legs as he could, so close that his wet forepaws rested on Skipper’s bare feet.

“You know ’m, Jerry, you known the black fella boy,” he said, his words quick and exciting, his hand moving in questing circles toward the blacks.

Jerry was all alive on the instant, jumping about, barking with short yelps of eagerness.

“I do believe the dog could lead me to him,” Van Horn confided to the mate. “Come on, Jerry, find ’m, sick ’m, shake ’m down. Where is he, Jerry? Find ’m. Find ’m.”

All that Jerry knew was that Skipper wanted something. He must find something that Skipper wanted, and he was eager to serve. He pranced about aimlessly and willingly for a space, while Skipper’s urging cries increased his excitement. Then he was struck by an idea, and a most definite idea it was. The circle of boys broke to let him through as he raced for’ard along the starboard side to the tight-lashed heap of trade-boxes. He put his nose into the opening where the wild-dog laired, and sniffed. Yes, the wild-dog was inside. Not only did he smell him, but he heard the menace of his snarl.

He looked up to Skipper questioningly. Was it that Skipper wanted him to go in after the wild-dog? But Skipper laughed and waved his hand to show that he wanted him to search in other places for something else.

He leaped away, sniffing in likely places where experience had taught him cockroaches and rats might be. Yet it quickly dawned on him that it was not such things Skipper was after. His heart was wild with desire to serve, and, without clear purpose, he began sniffing legs of black boys.

This brought livelier urgings and encouragements from Skipper, and made him almost frantic. That was it. He must identify the boat’s crew and the return boys by their legs. He hurried the task, passing swiftly from boy to boy, until he came to Lerumie.

And then he forgot that Skipper wanted him to do something. All he knew was that it was Lerumie who had broken the taboo of his sacred person by laying hands on him, and that it was Lerumie who had thrown him overboard.

With a cry of rage, a flash of white teeth, and a bristle of short neck-hair, he sprang for the black. Lerumie fled down the deck, and Jerry pursued amid the laughter of all the blacks. Several times, in making the circuit of the deck, he managed to scratch the flying calves with his teeth. Then Lerumie took to the main rigging, leaving Jerry impotently to rage on the deck beneath him.

About this point the blacks grouped in a semi-circle at a respectful distance, with Van Horn to the fore beside Jerry. Van Horn centred his electric torch on the black in the rigging, and saw the long parallel scratches on the fingers of the hand that had invaded Jerry’s blanket. He pointed them out significantly to Borckman, who stood outside the circle so that no black should be able to come at his back.

Skipper picked Jerry up and soothed his anger with:

“Good boy, Jerry. You marked and sealed him. Some dog, you, some big man-dog.”

He turned back to Lerumie, illuminating him as he clung in the rigging, and his voice was harsh and cold as he addressed him.

“What name belong along you fella boy?” he demanded.

“Me fella Lerumie,” came the chirping, quavering answer.

“You come along Pennduffryn?”

“Me come along Meringe.”

Captain Van Horn debated the while he fondled the puppy in his arms. After all, it was a return boy. In a day, in two days at most, he would have him landed and be quit of him.

“My word,” he harangued, “me angry along you. Me angry big fella too much along you. Me angry along you any amount. What name you fella boy make ’m pickaninny dog belong along me walk about along water?”

Lerumie was unable to answer. He rolled his eyes helplessly, resigned to receive a whipping such as he had long since bitterly learned white masters were wont to administer.

Captain Van Horn repeated the question, and the black repeated the helpless rolling of his eyes.

“For two sticks tobacco I knock ’m seven bells outa you,” the skipper bullied. “Now me give you strong fella talk too much. You look ’m eye belong you one time along this fella dog belong me, I knock ’m seven bells and whole starboard watch outa you. Savve?”

“Me savve,” Lerumie, plaintively replied; and the episode was closed.

The return boys went below to sleep in the cabin. Borckman and the boat’s crew hoisted the mainsail and put the Arangi on her course. And Skipper, under a dry blanket from below, lay down to sleep with Jerry, head on his shoulder, in the hollow of his arm.

At seven in the morning, when Skipper rolled him out of the blanket and got up, Jerry celebrated the new day by chasing the wild-dog back into his hole and by drawing a snicker from the blacks on deck, when, with a growl and a flash of teeth, he made Lerumie side-step half a dozen feet and yield the deck to him.