nning of cloud-stuff overhead. The old ache was in
his throat, the old harsh dryness in mouth and eyes. And he knew--what
no other man knew--why he was in the Solomons, skipper of the teak-built
yacht _Arangi_, running niggers, risking his head, and drinking more
Scotch whiskey than was good for any man.

Not since that night had he looked with warm eyes on any woman. And he
had been noted by other whites as notoriously cold toward pickanninnies
white or black.

But, having visioned the ultimate horror of memory, Van Horn was soon
able to fall asleep again, delightfully aware, as he drowsed off, of
Jerry's head on his shoulder. Once, when Jerry, dreaming of the beach at
Meringe and of _Mister_ Haggin, Biddy, Terrence, and Michael, set up a
low whimpering, Van Horn roused sufficiently to soothe him closer to him,
and to mutter ominously: "Any nigger that'd hurt that pup. . . "

At midnight when the mate touched him on the shoulder, in the moment of
awakening and before he was awake Van Horn did two things automatically
and swiftly. He darted his right hand down to the pistol at his hip, and
muttered: "Any nigger that'd hurt that pup . . ."

"That'll be Kopo Point abreast," Borckman explained, as both men stared
to windward at the high loom of the land. "She hasn't made more than ten
miles, and no promise of anything steady."

"There's plenty of stuff making up there, if it'll ever come down," Van
Horn said, as both men transferred their gaze to the clouds drifting with
many breaks across the dim stars.

Scarcely had the mate fetched a blanket from below and turned in on deck,
than a brisk steady breeze sprang up from off the land, sending the
_Arangi_ through the smooth water at a nine-knot clip. For a time Jerry
tried to stand the watch with Skipper, but he soon curled up and dozed
off, partly on the deck and partly on Skipper's bare feet.

When Skipper carried him to the blanket and rolled him in, he was quickly
asleep again; and he was quickly awake, out of the blanket, and padding
after along the deck as Skipper paced up and down. Here began another
lesson, and in five minutes Jerry learned it was the will of Skipper that
he should remain in the blanket, that everything was all right, and that
Skipper would be up and down and near him all the time.

At four the mate took charge of the deck.

"Reeled off thirty miles," Van Horn told him. "But now it is baffling
again. Keep an eye for squalls under t