_Arangi_, which he could see growing larger and closer to
each lip-hissing stroke of the oars of the blacks.

Only an hour before, Jerry had come down from the plantation house to the
beach to see the _Arangi_ depart. Twice before, in his half-year of
life, had he had this delectable experience. Delectable it truly was,
running up and down the white beach of sand-pounded coral, and, under the
wise guidance of Biddy and Terrence, taking part in the excitement of the
beach and even adding to it.

There was the nigger-chasing. Jerry had been born to hate niggers. His
first experiences in the world as a puling puppy, had taught him that
Biddy, his mother, and his father Terrence, hated niggers. A nigger was
something to be snarled at. A nigger, unless he were a house-boy, was
something to be attacked and bitten and torn if he invaded the compound.
Biddy did it. Terrence did it. In doing it, they served their
God--_Mister_ Haggin. Niggers were two-legged lesser creatures who
toiled and slaved for their two-legged white lords, who lived in the
labour barracks afar off, and who were so much lesser and lower that they
must not dare come near the habitation of their lords.

And nigger-chasing was adventure. Not long after he had learned to
sprawl, Jerry had learned that. One took his chances. As long as
_Mister_ Haggin, or Derby, or Bob, was about, the niggers took their
chasing. But there were times when the white lords were not about. Then
it was "'Ware niggers!" One must dare to chase only with due precaution.
Because then, beyond the white lord's eyes, the niggers had a way, not
merely of scowling and muttering, but of attacking four-legged dogs with
stones and clubs. Jerry had seen his mother so mishandled, and, ere he
had learned discretion, alone in the high grass had been himself club-
mauled by Godarmy, the black who wore a china door-knob suspended on his
chest from his neck on a string of sennit braided from cocoanut fibre.
More. Jerry remembered another high-grass adventure, when he and his
brother Michael had fought Owmi, another black distinguishable for the
cogged wheels of an alarm clock on his chest. Michael had been so
severely struck on his head that for ever after his left ear had remained
sore and had withered into a peculiar wilted and twisted upward cock.

Still more. There had been his brother Patsy, and his sister Kathleen,
who had disappeared two months before, who had ceased and no