CHAPTER III


Jerry quite forgot Meringe for the time being. As he well remembered,
the hawk had been sharp of beak and claw. This air-flapping, thunder-
crashing monster needed watching. And Jerry, crouching for the spring
and ever struggling to maintain his footing on the slippery, heeling
deck, kept his eyes on the mainsail and uttered low growls at any display
of movement on its part.

The _Arangi_ was beating out between the coral patches of the narrow
channel into the teeth of the brisk trade wind. This necessitated
frequent tacks, so that, overhead, the mainsail was ever swooping across
from port tack to starboard tack and back again, making air-noises like
the swish of wings, sharply rat-tat-tatting its reef points and loudly
crashing its mainsheet gear along the traveller. Half a dozen times, as
it swooped overhead, Jerry leaped for it, mouth open to grip, lips
writhed clear of the clean puppy teeth that shone in the sun like gems of
ivory.

Failing in every leap, Jerry achieved a judgment. In passing, it must be
noted that this judgment was only arrived at by a definite act of
reasoning. Out of a series of observations of the thing, in which it had
threatened, always in the same way, a series of attacks, he had found
that it had not hurt him nor come in contact with him at all.
Therefore--although he did not stop to think that he was thinking--it was
not the dangerous, destroying thing he had first deemed it. It might be
well to be wary of it, though already it had taken its place in his
classification of things that appeared terrible but were not terrible.