sprang between and deflected the blow with a stone poi-pounder that
might have brained Jerry.

Lamai was now the one in danger of grievous damage, and his mother had
just knocked him down with a clout alongside the head when poor Lumai,
roused from sleep by the uproar, ventured out to make peace. Lenerengo,
as usual, forgot everything else in the fiercer pleasure of berating her
spouse.

The conclusion of the affair was harmless enough. The children stopped
their crying, Lamai retied Jerry with the stick, Lenerengo harangued
herself breathless, and Lumai departed with hurt feelings for the canoe
house where stags could sleep in peace and Marys pestered not.

That night, in the circle of his fellow stags, Lumai recited his sorrows
and told the cause of them--the puppy dog which had come on the _Arangi_.
It chanced that Agno, chief of the devil devil doctors, or high priest,
heard the tale, and recollected that he had sent Jerry to the canoe house
along with the rest of the captives. Half an hour later he was having it
out with Lamai. Beyond doubt, the boy had broken the taboos, and privily
he told him so, until Lamai trembled and wept and squirmed abjectly at
his feet, for the penalty was death.

It was too good an opportunity to get a hold over the boy for Agno to
misplay it. A dead boy was worth nothing to him, but a living boy whose
life he carried in his hand would serve him well. Since no one else knew
of the broken taboo, he could afford to keep quiet. So he ordered Lamai
forthright down to live in the youths' canoe house, there to begin his
novitiate in the long series of tasks, tests and ceremonies that would
graduate him into the bachelors' canoe house and half way along toward
being a recognized man.

* * * * *

In the morning, obeying the devil devil doctor's commands, Lenerengo tied
Jerry's feet together, not without a struggle in which his head was
banged about and her hands were scratched. Then she carried him down
through the village on the way to deliver him at Agno's house. On the
way, in the open centre of the village where stood the kingposts, she
left him lying on the ground in order to join in the hilarity of the
population.

Not only was old Bashti a stern law-giver, but he was a unique one. He
had selected this day at the one time to administer punishment to two
quarrelling women, to give a lesson to all other women, and to make all
his subjects glad once again that they had him f