a stunned and possibly dead puppy was a side-splitting, ludicrous event.

Not until the fourth minute ticked off did returning consciousness enable
Jerry to crawl to his feet and with wide-spread legs and swimming eyes
adjust himself to the _Arangi's_ roll. Yet with the first glimmerings of
consciousness persisted the one idea that he must gain to Skipper.
Blacks? In his anxiety and solicitude and love they did not count. He
ignored the chuckling, grinning, girding black boys, who, but for the
fact that he was under the terrible aegis of the big fella white marster,
would have delighted to kill and eat the puppy who, in the process of
training, was proving a most capable nigger-chaser. Without a turn of
head or roll of eye, aristocratically positing their non-existingness to
their faces, he trotted for'ard along the cabin floor and into the
stateroom where Skipper babbled maniacally in the bunk.

Jerry, who had never had malaria, did not understand. But in his heart
he knew great trouble in that Skipper was in trouble. Skipper did not
recognize him, even when he sprang into the bunk, walked across Skipper's
heaving chest, and licked the acrid sweat of fever from Skipper's face.
Instead, Skipper's wildly-thrashing arms brushed him away and flung him
violently against the side of the bunk.

This was roughness that was not love-roughness. Nor was it the roughness
of Borckman spurning him away with his foot. It was part of Skipper's
trouble. Jerry did not reason this conclusion. But, and to the point,
he acted upon it as if he had reasoned it. In truth, through inadequacy
of one of the most adequate languages in the world, it can only be said
that Jerry _sensed_ the new difference of this roughness.

He sat up, just out of range of one restless, beating arm, yearned to
come closer and lick again the face of the god who knew him not, and who,
he knew, loved him well, and palpitatingly shared and suffered all
Skipper's trouble.

"Eh, Clancey," Skipper babbled. "It's a fine job this day, and no better
crew to clean up after the dubs of motormen. . . . Number three jack,
Clancey. Get under the for'ard end." And, as the spectres of his
nightmare metamorphosed: "Hush, darling, talking to your dad like that,
telling him the combing of your sweet and golden hair. As if I couldn't,
that have combed it these seven years--better than your mother, darling,
better than your mother. I'm the one gold-medal prize-winne