Leaving this god as a god unliked and not understood, Jerry sadly trotted back to the companionway and yearned his head over the combing in the direction in which he had seen Skipper disappear.  What bit at his consciousness and was a painful incitement in it, was his desire to be with Skipper who was not right, and who was in trouble.  He wanted Skipper.  He wanted to be with him, first and sharply, because he loved him, and, second and dimly, because he might serve him.  And, wanting Skipper, in his helplessness and youngness in experience of the world, he whimpered and cried his heart out across the companion combing, and was too clean and direct in his sorrow to be deflected by an outburst of anger against the niggers, on deck and below, who chuckled at him and derided him.

From the crest of the combing to the cabin floor was seven feet.  He had, only a few hours before, climbed the precipitous stairway; but it was impossible, and he knew it, to descend the stairway.  And yet, at the last, he dared it.  So compulsive was the prod of his heart to gain to Skipper at any cost, so clear was his comprehension that he could not climb down the ladder head first, with no grippingness of legs and feet and muscles such as were possible in the ascent, that he did not attempt it.  He launched outward and down, in one magnificent and love-heroic leap.  He knew that he was violating a taboo of life, just as he knew he was violating a taboo if he sprang into Meringe Lagoon where swam the dreadful crocodiles.  Great love is always capable of expressing itself in sacrifice and self-immolation.  And only for love, and for no lesser reason, could Jerry have made the leap.

He struck on his side and head.  The one impact knocked the breath out of him; the other stunned him.  Even in his unconsciousness, lying on his side and quivering, he made rapid, spasmodic movements of his legs as if running for’ard to Skipper.  The boys looked on and laughed, and when he no longer quivered and churned his legs they continued to laugh.  Born in savagery, having lived in savagery all their lives and known naught else, their sense of humour was correspondingly savage.  To them, the sight of a stunned and possibly dead puppy was a side-splitting, ludicrous event.

Not until the fourth minute ticked off did returning consciousness enable Jerry to crawl to his feet and with wide-spread legs and swimming eyes adjust himself to the Arangi’s roll.  Yet with the first glimmerings of consciousness persisted the one idea that he must gain to Skipper.  Blacks?  In his anxiety and solicitude and love they did not count.  He ignored the chuckling, grinning, girding black boys, who, but for the fact that he was under the terrible aegis of the big fella white marster, would have delighted to kill and eat the puppy who, in the process of training, was proving a most capable nigger-chaser.  Without a turn of head or roll of eye, aristocratically positing their non-existingness to their faces, he trotted for’ard along the cabin floor and into the stateroom where Skipper babbled maniacally in the bunk.