down with their trade-boxes on their heads to depart on the _Arangi_, was
the time when nigger-chasing was not dangerous. Old scores could be
settled, and it was the last chance, for the blacks who departed on the
_Arangi_ never came back. As an instance, this very morning Biddy,
remembering a secret mauling at the hands of Lerumie, laid teeth into his
naked calf and threw him sprawling into the water, trade-box, earthly
possessions and all, and then laughed at him, sure in the protection of
_Mister_ Haggin who grinned at the episode.

Then, too, there was usually at least one bush-dog on the _Arangi_ at
which Jerry and Michael, from the beach, could bark their heads off.
Once, Terrence, who was nearly as large as an Airedale and fully as lion-
hearted--Terrence the Magnificent, as Tom Haggin called him--had caught
such a bush-dog trespassing on the beach and given him a delightful
thrashing, in which Jerry and Michael, and Patsy and Kathleen, who were
at the time alive, had joined with many shrill yelps and sharp nips.
Jerry had never forgotten the ecstasy of the hair, unmistakably doggy in
scent, which had filled his mouth at his one successful nip. Bush-dogs
were dogs--he recognized them as his kind; but they were somehow
different from his own lordly breed, different and lesser, just as the
blacks were compared with _Mister_ Haggin, Derby, and Bob.

But Jerry did not continue to gaze at the nearing _Arangi_. Biddy, wise
with previous bitter bereavements, had sat down on the edge of the sand,
her fore-feet in the water, and was mouthing her woe. That this
concerned him, Jerry knew, for her grief tore sharply, albeit vaguely, at
his sensitive, passionate heart. What it presaged he knew not, save that
it was disaster and catastrophe connected with him. As he looked back at
her, rough-coated and grief-stricken, he could see Terrence hovering
solicitously near her. He, too, was rough-coated, as was Michael, and as