Thenceforth the Annos had feared the thorns too greatly to dare again,
although ever their vindictiveness smouldered and they lived in hope of
the day when Nalasu's head should adorn their ridgepole. In the meantime
the state of affairs was not that of a truce but of a stalemate. The old
man could not proceed against them, and they were afraid to proceed
against him. Nor did the day come until after Jerry's adoption, when one
of the Annos made an invention the like of which had never been known in
all Malaita.

CHAPTER XVIII

Meanwhile the months slipped by, the south-east trade blew itself out,
the monsoon had begun to breathe, and Jerry added to himself six months
of time, weight, stature, and thickness of bone. An easy time his half-
year with the blind man had been, despite the fact that Nalasu was a
rigid disciplinarian who insisted on training Jerry for longer hours, day
in and day out, than falls to the lot of most dogs. Never did Jerry
receive from him a blow, never a harsh word. This man, who had slain
four of the Annos, three of them after he had gone blind, who had slain
still more men in his savage youth, never raised his voice in anger to
Jerry and ruled him by nothing severer than the gentlest of chidings.

Mentally, the persistent education Jerry received, in this period of late
puppyhood, fixed in him increased brain power for all his life. Possibly
no dog in all the world had ever been so vocal as he, and for three
reasons: his own intelligence, the genius for teaching that was Nalasu's,
and the long hours devoted to the teaching.

His shorthand vocabulary, for a dog, was prodigious. Almost might it be
said that he and the man could talk by the hour, although few and simple
were the abstractions they could talk; very little of the immediate
concrete past, and scarcely anything of the immediate concrete future,
entered into their conversations. Jerry could no more tell him of
Meringe, nor of the _Arangi_, than could he tell him of the great love he
had borne Skipper, or of his reason for hating Bashti. By the same
token, Nalasu could not tell Jerry of the blood-feud with the Annos, nor
of how he had lost his eyesight.

Practically all their conversation was confined to the instant present,
although they could compass a little of the very immediate past. Nalasu
would give Jerry a series of instructions, such as, going on a scout by
himself, to go to the nest, then circle about it