As a result, she, who had lived in the bush all her days and never so much as set foot in a canoe, rocked and rolled unendingly over the broad ocean in a perpetual nightmare of fear.  In the beche-de-mer that was current among the blacks of a thousand islands and ten thousand dialects, the Arangi’s procession of passengers assured her of her fate.  “My word, you fella Mary,” one would say to her, “short time little bit that big fella white marster kai-kai along you.”  Or, another:  “Big fella white marster kai-kai along you, my word, belly belong him walk about too much.”

Kai-kai was the beche-de-mer for “eat.”  Even Jerry knew that.  “Eat” did not obtain in his vocabulary; but kai-kai did, and it meant all and more than “eat,” for it served for both noun and verb.

But the girl never replied to the jeering of the blacks.  For that matter, she never spoke at all, not even to Captain Van Horn, who did not so much as know her name.

It was late afternoon, after discovering the girl in the lazarette, when Jerry again came on deck.  Scarcely had Skipper, who had carried him up the steep ladder, dropped him on deck than Jerry made a new discovery—­land.  He did not see it, but he smelled it.  His nose went up in the air and quested to windward along the wind that brought the message, and he read the air with his nose as a man might read a newspaper—­the salt smells of the seashore and of the dank muck of mangrove swamps at low tide, the spicy fragrances of tropic vegetation, and the faint, most faint, acrid tingle of smoke from smudgy fires.

The trade, which had laid the Arangi well up under the lee of this outjutting point of Malaita, was now failing, so that she began to roll in the easy swells with crashings of sheets and tackles and thunderous flappings of her sails.  Jerry no more than cocked a contemptuous quizzical eye at the mainsail anticking above him.  He knew already the empty windiness of its threats, but he was careful of the mainsheet blocks, and walked around the traveller instead of over it.

While Captain Van Horn, taking advantage of the calm to exercise the boat’s crew with the fire-arms and to limber up the weapons, was passing out the Lee-Enfields from their place on top the cabin skylight, Jerry suddenly crouched and began to stalk stiff-legged.  But the wild-dog, three feet from his lair under the trade-boxes, was not unobservant.  He watched and snarled threateningly.  It was not a nice snarl.  In fact, it was as nasty and savage a snarl as all his life had been nasty and savage.  Most small creatures were afraid of that snarl, but it had no deterrent effect on Jerry, who continued his steady stalking.  When the wild-dog sprang for the hole under the boxes, Jerry sprang after, missing his enemy by inches.  Tossing overboard bits of wood, bottles and empty tins, Captain Van Horn ordered the eight eager boat’s crew with rifles to turn loose.  Jerry was excited and delighted with the