Failing in every leap, Jerry achieved a judgment.  In passing, it must be noted that this judgment was only arrived at by a definite act of reasoning.  Out of a series of observations of the thing, in which it had threatened, always in the same way, a series of attacks, he had found that it had not hurt him nor come in contact with him at all.  Therefore—­although he did not stop to think that he was thinking—­it was not the dangerous, destroying thing he had first deemed it.  It might be well to be wary of it, though already it had taken its place in his classification of things that appeared terrible but were not terrible.  Thus, he had learned not to fear the roar of the wind among the palms when he lay snug on the plantation-house veranda, nor the onslaught of the waves, hissing and rumbling into harmless foam on the beach at his feet.

Many times, in the course of the day, alertly and nonchalantly, almost with a quizzical knowingness, Jerry cocked his head at the mainsail when it made sudden swooping movements or slacked and tautened its crashing sheet-gear.  But he no longer crouched to spring for it.  That had been the first lesson, and quickly mastered.

Having settled the mainsail, Jerry returned in mind to Meringe.  But there was no Meringe, no Biddy and Terrence and Michael on the beach; no Mister Haggin and Derby and Bob; no beach:  no land with the palm-trees near and the mountains afar off everlastingly lifting their green peaks into the sky.  Always, to starboard or to port, at the bow or over the stern, when he stood up resting his fore-feet on the six-inch rail and gazing, he saw only the ocean, broken-faced and turbulent, yet orderly marching its white-crested seas before the drive of the trade.

Had he had the eyes of a man, nearly two yards higher than his own from the deck, and had they been the trained eyes of a man, sailor-man at that, Jerry could have seen the low blur of Ysabel to the north and the blur of Florida to the south, ever taking on definiteness of detail as the Arangi sagged close-hauled, with a good full, port-tacked to the south-east trade.  And had he had the advantage of the marine glasses with which Captain Van Horn elongated the range of his eyes, he could have seen, to the east, the far peaks of Malaita lifting life-shadowed pink cloud-puffs above the sea-rim.

But the present was very immediate with Jerry.  He had early learned the iron law of the immediate, and to accept what was when it was, rather than to strain after far other things.  The sea was.  The land no longer was.  The Arangi certainly was, along with the life that cluttered her deck.  And he proceeded to get acquainted with what was—­in short, to know and to adjust himself to his new environment.