Aft, at the wheel, he would have sat down and howled his heartbreak of disappointment, had not a white-god, evidently of command, in gold-decorated white duck cap and uniform, spoken to him.  Instantly, always a gentleman, Jerry smiled with flattened ears of courtesy, wagged his tail, and approached.  The hand of this high god had almost caressed his head when the woman’s voice came down the deck in speech that Jerry did not understand.  The words and terms of it were beyond him.  But he sensed power of command in it, which was verified by the quick withdrawal of the hand of the god in white and gold who had almost caressed him.  This god, stiffened electrically and pointed Jerry along the deck, and, with mouth encouragements and urgings the import of which Jerry could only guess, directed him toward the one who so commanded by saying: 

“Send him, please, along to me, Captain Winters.”

Jerry wriggled his body in delight of obeying, and would loyally have presented his head to her outreaching caress of hand, had not the strangeness and difference of her deterred him.  He broke off in mid-approach and with a show of teeth snarled himself back and away from the windblown skirt of her.  The only human females he had known were naked Marys.  This skirt, flapping in the wind like a sail, reminded him of the menacing mainsail of the Arangi when it had jarred and crashed and swooped above his head.  The noises her mouth made were gentle and ingratiating, but the fearsome skirt still flapped in the breeze.

“You ridiculous dog!” she laughed.  “I’m not going to bite you.”

But her husband thrust out a rough, sure hand and drew Jerry in to him.  And Jerry wriggled in ecstasy under the god’s caress, kissing the hand with a red flicker of tongue.  Next, Harley Kennan directed him toward the woman sitting up in the deck-chair and bending forward, with hovering hands of greeting.  Jerry obeyed.  He advanced with flattened ears and laughing mouth:  but, just ere she could touch him, the wind fluttered the skirt again and he backed away with a snarl.

“It’s not you that he’s afraid of, Villa,” he said.  “But of your skirt.  Perhaps he’s never seen a skirt before.”

“You mean,” Villa Kennan challenged, “that these head-hunting cannibals ashore here keep records of pedigrees and maintain kennels; for surely this absurd adventurer of a dog is as proper an Irish terrier as the Ariel is an Oregon-pine-planked schooner.”

Harley Kennan laughed in acknowledgment.  Villa Kennan laughed too; and Jerry knew that these were a pair of happy gods, and himself laughed with them.

Of his own initiative, he approached the lady god again, attracted by the talcum powder and other minor fragrances he had already identified as the strange scents encountered on the beach.  But the unfortunate trade wind again fluttered her skirt, and again he backed away—­not so far, this time, with much less of a bristle of his neck and shoulder hair, and with no more of a snarl than a mere half-baring of his fangs.