es, but lay about on the sand, in
the mid-morning sunshine, men, women, and children and entire families,
wherever they had yielded to slumber.

Down by the water's edge, so close that his fore-feet rested in the
water, Jerry sat down, his heart bursting for Skipper, thrust his nose
heavenward at the sun, and wailed his woe as dogs have ever wailed since
they came in from the wild woods to the fires of men.

And here Lamai found him, hushed his grief against his breast with
cuddling arms, and carried him back to the grass house by the brook.
Water he offered, but Jerry could drink no more. Love he offered, but
Jerry could not forget his torment of desire for Skipper. In the end,
disgusted with so unreasonable a puppy, Lamai forgot his love in his
boyish savageness, clouted Jerry over the head, right side and left, and
tied him as few whites men's dogs have ever been tied. For, in his way,
Lamai was a genius. He had never seen the thing done with any dog, yet
he devised, on the spur of the moment, the invention of tying Jerry with
a stick. The stick was of bamboo, four feet long. One end he tied
shortly to Jerry's neck, the other end, just as shortly to a tree. All
that Jerry's teeth could reach was the stick, and dry and seasoned bamboo
can defy the teeth of any dog.

CHAPTER XIV

For many days, tied by the stick, Jerry remained Lamai's prisoner. It
was not a happy time, for the house of Lumai was a house of perpetual
bickering and quarrelling. Lamai fought pitched battles with his
brothers and sisters for teasing Jerry, and these battles invariably
culminated in Lenerengo taking a hand and impartially punishing all her
progeny.

After that, as a matter of course and on general principles, she would
have it out with Lumai, whose soft voice always was for quiet and repose,
and who always, at the end of a tongue-lashing, took himself off to the
canoe house for a couple of days. Here, Lenerengo was helpless. Into
the canoe house of the stags no Mary might venture. Lenerengo had never
forgotten the fate of the last Mary who had broken the taboo. It had
occurred many years before, when she was a girl, and the recollection was
ever vivid of the unfortunate woman hanging up in the sun by one arm for
all of a day, and for all of a second day by the other arm. After that
she had been feasted upon by the stags of the canoe house, and for long
afterward all women had talked softly before their husbands.