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 waded 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 taboos he had learned. In his vocabulary was no word for
"crocodile"; yet in his thought, as potent 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 taboo without fear. Unlike a man
who can be simultaneously conscious of two states of mind, and who,
swimming, would have known both the fear and the high courage with which
he overrode 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 deliberately
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, fraught with keenness of anxiety, came to the ears of a man and
woman lounging in deck-chairs under the awning; 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 marine 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 steadily along, straining
his eyes at the growing yacht until suddenly warned by a sensing of
immediate danger. The taboo smote him. This that moved toward him was
the log awash that was not a log but a live thing of peril. Part of it
he saw above the surface moving sluggishly, and ere that projecting part
sank, he had an awareness that somehow