pen hand and
kissed it with a tongue that flashed out between white gleaming teeth
like a rose-red jewel. And the next moment he was in Skipper's arms,
jowl against cheek, and the tongue was again flashing out in all the
articulateness possible for a creature denied speech. It was a veritable
love-feast, as dear to one as to the other.

"Gott-fer-dang!" Captain Van Horn crooned. "You're nothing but a bunch
of high-strung sensitiveness, with a golden heart in the middle and a
golden coat wrapped all around. Gott-fer-dang, Jerry, you're gold, pure
gold, inside and out, and no dog was ever minted like you in all the
world. You're heart of gold, you golden dog, and be good to me and love
me as I shall always be good to you and love you for ever and for ever."

And Captain Van Horn, who ruled the _Arangi_ in bare legs, a loin cloth,
and a sixpenny under-shirt, and ran cannibal blacks back and forth in the
blackbird trade with an automatic strapped to his body waking and
sleeping and with his head forfeit in scores of salt-water villages and
bush strongholds, and who was esteemed the toughest skipper in the
Solomons where only men who are tough may continue to live and esteem
toughness, blinked with sudden moisture in his eyes, and could not see
for the moment the puppy that quivered all its body of love in his arms
and kissed away the salty softness of his eyes.

CHAPTER V

And swift tropic night smote the _Arangi_, as she alternately rolled in
calms and heeled and plunged ahead in squalls under the lee of the
cannibal island of Malaita. It was a stoppage of the south-east trade
wind that made for variable weather, and that made cooking on the exposed
deck galley a misery and sent the return boys, who had nothing to wet but
their skins, scuttling below.

The first watch, from eight to twelve, was the mate's; and Captain Van
Horn, forced below by the driving wet of a heavy rain squall, took Jerry
with him to sleep in the tiny stateroom. Jerry was weary from the
manifold excitements of the most exciting day in his life; and he was
asleep and kicking and growling in his sleep, ere Skipper, with a last
look at him and a grin as he turned the lamp low, muttered aloud: "It's
that wild-dog, Jerry. Get him. Shake him. Shake him hard."

So soundly did Jerry sleep, that when the rain, having robbed the
atmosphere of its last breath of wind, ceased and left the stateroom a
steaming, suffocating furnace, he did