The deck-full of blacks shrieked their merriment, and Jerry, his rage undiminished, his immediate antagonist out of the battle, mistaking himself as the object of the laughter of the blacks, turned upon them, charging and slashing the many legs that fled before him.  They dropped down the cabin and forecastle companionways, ran out the bowsprit, and sprang into the rigging till they were perched everywhere in the air like monstrous birds.  In the end, the deck belonged to Jerry, save for the boat’s crew; for he had already learned to differentiate.  Captain Van Horn was hilariously vocal of his praise, calling Jerry to him and giving him man-thumps of joyful admiration.  Next, the captain turned to his many passengers and orated in beche-de-mer English.

“Hey!  You fella boy!  I make ’m big fella talk.  This fella dog he belong along me.  One fella boy hurt ’m that fella dog—­my word!—­me cross too much along that fella boy.  I knock ’m seven bells outa that fella boy.  You take ’m care leg belong you.  I take ’m care dog belong me.  Savve?”

And the passengers, still perched in the air, with gleaming black eyes and with querulerus chirpings one to another, accepted the white man’s law.  Even Lerumie, variously lacerated by the barbed wire, did not scowl nor mutter threats.  Instead, and bringing a roar of laughter from his fellows and a twinkle into the skipper’s eyes, he rubbed questing fingers over his scratches and murmured:  “My word!  Some big fella dog that fella!”

It was not that Jerry was unkindly.  Like Biddy and Terrence, he was fierce and unafraid; which attributes were wrapped up in his heredity.  And, like Biddy and Terrence, he delighted in nigger-chasing, which, in turn, was a matter of training.  From his earliest puppyhood he had been so trained.  Niggers were niggers, but white men were gods, and it was the white-gods who had trained him to chase niggers and keep them in their proper lesser place in the world.  All the world was held in the hollow of the white man’s hands.  The niggers—­well, had not he seen them always compelled to remain in their lesser place?  Had he not seen them, on occasion, triced up to the palm-trees of the Meringe compound and their backs lashed to ribbons by the white-gods?  Small wonder that a high-born Irish terrier, in the arms of love of the white-god, should look at niggers through white-god’s eyes, and act toward niggers in the way that earned the white-god’s reward of praise.

It was a busy day for Jerry.  Everything about the Arangi was new and strange, and so crowded was she that exciting things were continually happening.  He had another encounter with the wild-dog, who treacherously attacked him in flank from ambuscade.  Trade boxes belonging to the blacks had been irregularly piled so that a small space was left between two boxes in the lower tier.  From this hole, as Jerry trotted past in response to a call from the skipper, the wild-dog sprang, scratched his sharp puppy-teeth into Jerry’s yellow-velvet hide, and scuttled back into his lair.