On the other hand, refreshed by the water and the meat, Jerry did not reciprocate so heartily in the love-making.  He was polite, and received his petting with soft-shining eyes, tail-waggings and the customary body-wrigglings; but he was restless, and continually listened to distant sounds and yearned away to be gone.  This was not lost upon the boy, who, before he curled himself down to sleep, securely tied to a tree the end of the cord that was about Jerry’s neck.

After straining against the cord for a time, Jerry surrendered and slept.  But not for long.  Skipper was too much with him.  He knew, and yet he did not know, the irretrievable ultimate disaster to Skipper.  So it was, after low whinings and whimperings, that he applied his sharp first-teeth to the sennit cord and chewed upon it till it parted.

Free, like a homing pigeon, he headed blindly and directly for the beach and the salt sea over which had floated the Arangi, on her deck Skipper in command.  Somo was largely deserted, and those that were in it were sunk in sleep.  So no one vexed him as he trotted through the winding pathways between the many houses and past the obscene kingposts of totemic heraldry, where the forms of men, carved from single tree trunks, were seated in the gaping jaws of carved sharks.  For Somo, tracing back to Somo its founder, worshipped the shark-god and the salt-water deities as well as the deities of the bush and swamp and mountain.

Turning to the right until he was past the sea-wall, Jerry came on down to the beach.  No Arangi was to be seen on the placid surface of the lagoon.  All about him was the debris of the feast, and he scented the smouldering odours of dying fires and burnt meat.  Many of the feasters had not troubled to return to their houses, but lay about on the sand, in the mid-morning sunshine, men, women, and children and entire families, wherever they had yielded to slumber.

Down by the water’s edge, so close that his fore-feet rested in the water, Jerry sat down, his heart bursting for Skipper, thrust his nose heavenward at the sun, and wailed his woe as dogs have ever wailed since they came in from the wild woods to the fires of men.

And here Lamai found him, hushed his grief against his breast with cuddling arms, and carried him back to the grass house by the brook.  Water he offered, but Jerry could drink no more.  Love he offered, but Jerry could not forget his torment of desire for Skipper.  In the end, disgusted with so unreasonable a puppy, Lamai forgot his love in his boyish savageness, clouted Jerry over the head, right side and left, and tied him as few whites men’s dogs have ever been tied.  For, in his way, Lamai was a genius.  He had never seen the thing done with any dog, yet he devised, on the spur of the moment, the invention of tying Jerry with a stick.  The stick was of bamboo, four feet long.  One end he tied shortly to Jerry’s neck, the other end, just as shortly to a tree.  All that Jerry’s teeth could reach was the stick, and dry and seasoned bamboo can defy the teeth of any dog.