outrage, and of desire to continue the battle which
he struggled to control at Skipper's behest.

Stepping out on deck, Skipper picked him up and patted and soothed him
the while he expressed his mind to the mate.

"Borckman, you ought to be ashamed. You ought to be shot or have your
block knocked off for this. A puppy, a little puppy scarcely weaned. For
two cents I'd give you what-for myself. The idea of it. A little puppy,
a weanling little puppy. Glad your hands are ripped. You deserved it.
Hope you get blood-poisoning in them. Besides, you're drunk. Go below
and turn in, and don't you dare come on deck until you're sober. Savve?"

And Jerry, far-journeyer across life and across the history of all life
that goes to make the world, strugglingly mastering the abysmal slime of
the prehistoric with the love that had come into existence and had become
warp and woof of him in far later time, his wrath of ancientness still
faintly reverberating in his throat like the rumblings of a passing
thunder-storm, knew, in the wide warm ways of feeling, the augustness and
righteousness of Skipper. Skipper was in truth a god who did right, who
was fair, who protected, and who imperiously commanded this other and
lesser god that slunk away before his anger.

CHAPTER IX

Jerry and Skipper shared the long afternoon-watch together, the latter
being guilty of recurrent chuckles and exclamations such as: "Gott-fer-
dang, Jerry, believe _me_, you're some fighter and all dog"; or, "You're
a proper man's dog, you are, a lion dog. I bet the lion don't live that
could get your goat."

And Jerry, understanding none of the words, with the exception of his own
name, nevertheless knew that the sounds made by Skipper were broad of
praise and warm of love. And when Skipper stooped and rubbed his ears,
or received a rose-kiss on extended fingers, or caught him up in his
arms, Jerry's heart was nigh to bursting. For what greater ecstasy can
be the portion of any creature than that it be loved by a god? This was
just precisely Jerry's ecstasy. This was a god, a tangible, real, three-
dimensioned god, who went about and ruled his world in a loin-cloth and
on two bare legs, and who loved him with crooning noises in throat and
mouth and with two wide-spread arms that folded him in.

At four o'clock, measuring a glance at the afternoon sun and gauging the
speed of the _Arangi_ through the water in relation to the closeness of