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