Love of a god, with him, implied service.  It pleased him to please with service.  And the foundation-stone of service, in his case, was obedience.  Yet it strained him sore for a time to refrain from snarl and snap when the legs of strange and presumptuous blacks passed near him along the Ariel’s white deck.

But there were times and times, as he was to learn, and the time came when Villa Kennan wanted a bath, a real bath in fresh, rain-descended, running water, and when Johnny, the black pilot from Tulagi, made a mistake.  The chart showed a mile of the Suli river where it emptied into the sea.  Why it showed only a mile was because no white man had ever explored it farther.  When Villa proposed the bath, her husband advised with Johnny.  Johnny shook his head.

“No fella boy stop ’m along that place,” he said.  “No make ’m trouble along you.  Bush fella boy stop ’m long way too much.”

So it was that the launch went ashore, and, while its crew lolled in the shade of the beach coconuts, Villa, Harley, and Jerry followed the river inland a quarter of a mile to the first likely pool.

“One can never be too sure,” Harley said, taking his automatic pistol from its holster and placing it on top his heap of clothes.  “A stray bunch of blacks might just happen to surprise us.”

Villa stepped into the water to her knees, looked up at the dark jungle roof high overhead through which only occasional shafts of sunlight penetrated, and shuddered.

“An appropriate setting for a dark deed,” she smiled, then scooped a handful of chill water against her husband, who plunged in in pursuit.

For a time Jerry sat by their clothes and watched the frolic.  Then the drifting shadow of a huge butterfly attracted his attention, and soon he was nosing through the jungle on the trail of a wood-rat.  It was not a very fresh trail.  He knew that well enough; but in the deeps of him were all his instincts of ancient training—­instincts to hunt, to prowl, to pursue living things, in short, to play the game of getting his own meat though for ages man had got the meat for him and his kind.

So it was, exercising faculties that were no longer necessary, but that were still alive in him and clamorous for exercise, he followed the long-since passed wood-rat with all the soft-footed crouching craft of the meat-pursuer and with utmost fineness of reading the scent.  The trail crossed a fresh trail, a trail very fresh, very immediately fresh.  As if a rope had been attached to it, his head was jerked abruptly to right angles with his body.  The unmistakable smell of a black was in his nostrils.  Further, it was a strange black, for he did not identify it with the many he possessed filed away in the pigeon-holes of his brain.

Forgotten was the stale wood-rat as he followed the new trail.  Curiosity and play impelled him.  He had no thought of apprehension for Villa and Harley—­not even when he reached the spot where the black, evidently startled by bearing their voices, had stood and debated, and so left a very strong scent.  From this point the trail swerved off toward the pool.  Nervously alert, strung to extreme tension, but without alarm, still playing at the game of tracking, Jerry followed.