nt his nose at the zenith, and vocalize his heart-rending woe,
an idea came to him. There is no explaining how this idea came. No more
can it be explained than can a human explain why, at luncheon to-day, he
selects green peas and rejects string beans, when only yesterday he
elected to choose string beans and to reject green peas. No more can it
be explained than can a human judge, sentencing a convicted criminal and
imposing eight years imprisonment instead of the five or nine years that
also at the same time floated upward in his brain, explain why he
categorically determined on eight years as the just, adequate punishment.
Since not even humans, who are almost half-gods, can fathom the mystery
of the genesis of ideas and the dictates of choice, appearing in their
consciousness as ideas, it is not to be expected of a more dog to know
the why of the ideas that animate it to definite acts toward definite
ends.

And so Jerry. Just as he must immediately howl, he was aware that the
idea, an entirely different idea, was there, in the innermost centre of
the quick-thinkingness of him, with all its compulsion. He obeyed the
idea as a marionette obeys the strings, and started forthwith down the
deck aft in quest of the mate.

He had an appeal to make to Borckman. Borckman was also a two-legged
white-god. Easily could Borckman lift him down the precipitous ladder,
which was to him, unaided, a taboo, the violation of which was pregnant
with disaster. But Borckman had in him little of the heart of love,
which is understanding. Also, Borckman was busy. Besides overseeing the
continuous adjustment, by trimming of sails and orders to the helmsman,
of the _Arangi_ to her way on the sea, and overseeing the boat's crew at
its task of washing deck and polishing brasswork, he was engaged in
steadily nipping from a stolen bottle of his captain's whiskey which he
had stowed away in the hollow between the two sacks of yams lashed on
deck aft the mizzenmast.

Borckman was on his way for another nip, after having thickly threatened
to knock seven bells and the ten commandments out of the black at the
wheel for faulty steering, when Jerry appeared before him and blocked the
way to his desire. But Jerry did not block him as he would have blocked
Lerumie, for instance. There was no showing of teeth, no bristling of
neck hair. Instead, Jerry was all placation and appeal, all softness of
pleading in a body denied speech that nevert