And, as he had been accustomed, all his life, as with Mister Haggin, Skipper, and even with Bashti and the chief devil devil doctor of Somo, he attached himself to the high gods themselves, and from the gods under them received deference accordingly.  As Skipper, on the Arangi, and Bashti in Somo, had promulgated taboos, so the man and the woman on the Ariel protected Jerry with taboos.  From Sano, the Japanese steward, and from him alone, did Jerry receive food.  Not from any sailor in whaleboat or launch could he accept, or would he be offered, a bit of biscuit or an invitation to go ashore for a run.  Nor did they offer it.  Nor were they permitted to become intimate, to the extent of romping and playing with him, nor even of whistling to him along the deck.

By nature a “one-man” dog, all this was very acceptable to Jerry.  Differences of degree there were, of course; but no one more delicately and definitely knew those differences than did Jerry himself.  Thus, it was permissible for the two officers to greet him with a “Hello,” or a “Good morning,” and even to touch a hand in a brief and friendly pat to his head.  With Captain Winters, however, greater familiarity obtained.  Captain Winters could rub his ears, shake hands with his, scratch his back, and even roughly catch him by the jowls.  But Captain Winters invariably surrendered him up when the one man and the one woman appeared on deck.

When it came to liberties, delicious, wanton liberties, Jerry alone of all on board could take them with the man and woman, and, on the other hand, they were the only two to whom he permitted liberties.  Any indignity that Villa Kennan chose to inflict upon him he was throbbingly glad to receive, such as doubling his ears inside out till they stuck, at the same time making him sit upright, with helpless forefeet paddling the air for equilibrium, while she blew roguishly in his face and nostrils.  As bad was Harley Kennan’s trick of catching him gloriously asleep on an edge of Villa’s skirt and of tickling the hair between his toes and making him kick involuntarily in his sleep, until he kicked himself awake to hearing of gurgles and snickers of laughter at his expense.

In turn, at night on deck, wriggling her toes at him under a rug to simulate some strange and crawling creature of an invader, he would dare to simulate his own befoolment and quite disrupt Villa’s bed with his frantic ferocious attack on the thing that he knew was only her toes.  In gales of laughter, intermingled with half-genuine cries of alarm as almost his teeth caught her toes, she always concluded by gathering him into her arms and laughing the last of her laughter away into his flattened ears of joy and love.  Who else, of all on board the Ariel, would have dared such devilishness with the lady-god’s bed?  This question it never entered his mind to ask himself; yet he was fully aware of how exclusively favoured he was.