sniff him and joyfully wag his
tail. But Skipper did not awake and a fine spray of rain, almost as thin
as mist, made Jerry curl up and press closely into the angle formed by
Skipper's head and shoulder. This did awake him, for he uttered "Jerry"
in a low, crooning voice, and Jerry responded with a touch of his cold
damp nose to the other's cheek. And then Skipper went to sleep again.
But not Jerry. He lifted the edge of the blanket with his nose and
crawled across the shoulder until he was altogether inside. This roused
Skipper, who, half-asleep, helped him to curl up.

Still Jerry was not satisfied, and he squirmed around until he lay in the
hollow of Skipper's arm, his head resting on Skipper's shoulder, when,
with a profound sigh of content, he fell asleep.

Several times the noises made by the boat's crew in trimming the sheets
to the shifting draught of air roused Van Horn, and each time,
remembering the puppy, he pressed him caressingly with his hollowed arm.
And each time, in his sleep, Jerry stirred responsively and snuggled
cosily to him.

For all that he was a remarkable puppy, Jerry had his limitations, and he
could never know the effect produced on the hard-bitten captain by the
soft warm contact of his velvet body. But it made the captain remember
back across the years to his own girl babe asleep on his arm. And so
poignantly did he remember, that he became wide awake, and many pictures,
beginning, with the girl babe, burned their torment in his brain. No
white man in the Solomons knew what he carried about with him, waking and
often sleeping; and it was because of these pictures that he had come to
the Solomons in a vain effort to erase them.

First, memory-prodded by the soft puppy in his arm, he saw the girl and
the mother in the little Harlem flat. Small, it was true, but
tight-packed with the happiness of three that made it heaven.

He saw the girl's flaxen-yellow hair darken to her mother's gold as it
lengthened into curls and ringlets until finally it became two thick long
braids. From striving not to see these many pictures he came even to
dwelling upon them in the effort so to fill his consciousness as to keep
out the one picture he did not want to see.

He remembered his work, the wrecking car, and the wrecking crew that had
toiled under him, and he wondered what had become of Clancey, his right-
hand man. Came the long day, when, routed from bed at three in the
morning to dig a