Chapter VI
At recognition of Skipper's voice, Jerry, floundering in the stiff and
crisping sea that sprang up with the easement of the wind, yelped eagerly
and yearningly, all his love for his new-found beloved eloquent in his
throat. But quickly all sounds died away as the Arangi drifted from
him. And then, in the loneliness of the dark, on the heaving breast of
the sea that he recognized as one more of the eternal enemies, he began
to whimper and cry plaintively like a lost child.
Further, by the dim, shadowy ways of intuition, he knew his weakness in
that merciless sea with no heart of warmth, that threatened the
unknowable thing, vaguely but terribly guessed, namely, death. As
regarded himself, he did not comprehend death. He, who had never known
the time when he was not alive, could not conceive of the time when he
would cease to be alive.
Yet it was there, shouting its message of warning through every tissue
cell, every nerve quickness and brain sensitivity of him--a totality of
sensation that foreboded the ultimate catastrophe of life about which he
knew nothing at all, but which, nevertheless, he felt to be the
conclusive supreme disaster. Although he did not comprehend it, he
apprehended it no less poignantly than do men who know and generalize far
more deeply and widely than mere four-legged dogs.
As a man struggles in the throes of nightmare, so Jerry struggled in the
vexed, salt-suffocating sea. And so he whimpered and cried, lost child, lost puppy-dog that he was, only half a year existent in the fair world sharp with joy and suffering. And he wanted Skipper. Skipper was a god.
* * * * *
On board the Arangi, relieved by the lowering of her mainsail, as the
fierceness went out of the wind and the cloudburst of tropic rain began
to fall, Van Horn and Borckman lurched toward each other in the
blackness.
"A double squall," said Van Horn. "Hit us to starboard and to port."
"Must a-split in half just before she hit us," the mate concurred.
"And kept all the rain in the second half--"
Van Horn broke off with an oath.
"Hey! What's the matter along you fella boy?" he shouted to the man at
the wheel.
For the ketch, under her spanker which had just then been flat-hauled, had come into the wind, emptying her after-sail and permitting her headsails to fill on the other tack. The Arangi was beginning to work back approximately over the course she had just traversed. And this meant that she was going back toward Jerry floundering in the sea. Thus, the balance, on which his life titubated, was inclined in his favour by the blunder of a black steersman.
Keeping the Arangi on the new tack, Van Horn set Borckman clearing the
mess of ropes on deck, himself, squatting in the rain, undertaking to
long-splice the tackle he had cut. As the rain thinned, so that the
crackle of it on deck became less noisy, he was attracted by a sound from
out over the water. He suspended the work of his hands to listen, and, when he recognized Jerry's wailing, sprang to his feet, galvanized into action.
"The pup's overboard!" he shouted to Borckman. "Back your jib to
wind'ard!"
He sprang aft, scattering a cluster of return boys right and left.
"Hey! You fella boat's crew! Come in spanker sheet! Flatten her down
good fella!"
He darted a look into the binnacle and took a hurried compass bearing of
the sounds Jerry was making.
"Hard down your wheel!" he ordered the helmsman, then leaped to the wheel
and put it down himself, repeating over and over aloud, "Nor'east by east
a quarter, nor'east by east a quarter."
Back and peering into the binnacle, he listened vainly for another wail
from Jerry in the hope of verifying his first hasty bearing. But not
long he waited. Despite the fact that by his manoeuvre the Arangi had
been hove to, he knew that windage and sea-driftage would quickly send
her away from the swimming puppy. He shouted Borckman to come aft and
haul in the whaleboat, while he hurried below for his electric torch and
a boat compass.