At sight of her disappearing, Jerry was guilty of even more Caruso-like
effects, which gave great joy to a Pennduffryn return boy who stood
beside him. He laughed and jeered at Jerry with falsetto chucklings that
were more like the jungle-noises of tree-dwelling creatures, half-bird
and half-man, than of a man, all man, and therefore a god. This served
as an excellent counter-irritant. Indignation that a mere black should
laugh at him mastered Jerry, and the next moment his puppy teeth, sharp-
pointed as needles, had scored the astonished black's naked calf in long
parallel scratches from each of which leaped the instant blood. The
black sprang away in trepidation, but the blood of Terrence the
Magnificent was true in Jerry, and, like his father before him, he
followed up, slashing the black's other calf into a ruddy pattern.

At this moment, anchor broken out and headsails running up, Captain Van
Horn, whose quick eye had missed no detail of the incident, with an order
to the black helmsman turned to applaud Jerry.

"Go to it, Jerry!" he encouraged. "Get him! Shake him down! Sick him!
Get him! Get him!"

The black, in defence, aimed a kick at Jerry, who, leaping in instead of
away--another inheritance from Terrence--avoided the bare foot and
printed a further red series of parallel lines on the dark leg. This was
too much, and the black, afraid more of Van Horn than of Jerry, turned
and fled for'ard, leaping to safety on top of the eight Lee-Enfield
rifles that lay on top of the cabin skylight and that were guarded by one
member of the boat's crew. About the skylight Jerry stormed, leaping up
and falling back, until Captain Van Horn called him off.

"Some nigger-chaser, that pup, _some_ nigger-chaser!" Van Horn confided