ed him toward
the woman sitting up in the deck-chair and bending forward, with hovering
hands of greeting. Jerry obeyed. He advanced with flattened ears and
laughing mouth: but, just ere she could touch him, the wind fluttered the
skirt again and he backed away with a snarl.

"It's not you that he's afraid of, Villa," he said. "But of your skirt.
Perhaps he's never seen a skirt before."

"You mean," Villa Kennan challenged, "that these head-hunting cannibals
ashore here keep records of pedigrees and maintain kennels; for surely
this absurd adventurer of a dog is as proper an Irish terrier as the
_Ariel_ is an Oregon-pine-planked schooner."

Harley Kennan laughed in acknowledgment. Villa Kennan laughed too; and
Jerry knew that these were a pair of happy gods, and himself laughed with
them.

Of his own initiative, he approached the lady god again, attracted by the
talcum powder and other minor fragrances he had already identified as the
strange scents encountered on the beach. But the unfortunate trade wind
again fluttered her skirt, and again he backed away--not so far, this
time, with much less of a bristle of his neck and shoulder hair, and with
no more of a snarl than a mere half-baring of his fangs.

"He's afraid of your skirt," Harley insisted. "Look at him! He wants to
come to you, but the skirt keeps him away. Tuck it under you so that it
won't flutter, and see what happens."

Villa Kennan carried out the suggestion, and Jerry came circumspectly,
bent his head to her hand and writhed his back under it, the while he
sniffed her feet, stocking-clad and shoe-covered, and knew them as the
feet which had trod uncovered the ruined ways of the village ashore.

"No doubt of it," Harley agreed. "He's white-man selected, white-man
bred and born. He has a history. He knows adventure from the ground-
roots up. If he could tell his story, we'd sit listening entranced for
days. Depend on it, he's not known blacks all his life. Let's try him
on Johnny."

Johnny, whom Kennan beckoned up to him, was a loan from the Resident
Commissioner of the British Solomons at Tulagi, who had come along as
pilot and guide to Kennan rather than as philosopher and friend. Johnny
approached grinning, and Jerry's demeanour immediately changed. His body
stiffened under Villa Kennan's hand as he drew away from her and stalked
stiff-legged to the black. Jerry's ears did not flatten, nor did he
laugh fellowship with his mouth,