cease, and, seconds later, heard his cursings in
the barbed wire, he set up a shrill yelping and clawed and scratched
frantically at the blanket to get out. Something had happened to
Skipper. He knew that. It was all that he knew, for he had no thought
of himself in the chaos of the ruining world.

But he ceased his yelping to listen to a new noise--a thunderous slatting
of canvas accompanied by shouts and cries. He sensed, and sensed
wrongly, that it boded ill, for he did not know that it was the mainsail
being lowered on the run after Skipper had slashed the boom-tackle across
with his sheath-knife.

As the pandemonium grew, he added his own yelping to it until he felt a
fumbling hand without the blanket. He stilled and sniffed. No, it was
not Skipper. He sniffed again and recognized the person. It was
Lerumie, the black whom he had seen rolled on the beach by Biddy only the
previous morning, who, still were recently, had kicked him on his stub of
a tail, and who not more than a week before he had seen throw a rock at
Terrence.

The rope yarn had been parted, and Lerumie's fingers were feeling inside
the blanket for him. Jerry snarled his wickedest. The thing was
sacrilege. He, as a white man's dog, was taboo to all blacks. He had
early learned the law that no nigger must ever touch a white-god's dog.
Yet Lerumie, who was all of evil, at this moment when the world crashed
about their ears, was daring to touch him.

And when the fingers touched him, his teeth closed upon them. Next, he
was clouted by the black's free hand with such force as to tear his
clenched teeth down the fingers through skin and flesh until the fingers
went clear.

Raging like a tiny fiend, Jerry found himself picked up by the neck, half-
throttled, and flung through the air. And while flying through the air,
he continued to squall his rage. He fell into the sea and went under,
gulping a mouthful of salt water into his lungs, and came up strangling
but swimming. Swimming was one of the things he did not have to think
about. He had never had to learn to swim, any more than he had had to
learn to breathe. In fact, he had been compelled to learn to walk; but
he swam as a matter of course.

The wind screamed about him. Flying froth, driven on the wind's breath,
filled his mouth and nostrils and beat into his eyes, stinging and
blinding him. In the struggle to breathe he, all unlearned in the ways
of the sea, lifted his muzzl