d from Somo because Nalasu was dead,
and the terrible shell-fire passed quickly into the past of his
consciousness, while the present became vivid after the way of the
present. Almost on his toes did he tread the wild bushmen's trails,
tense with apprehension of the lurking death he know infested such paths,
his ears cocked alertly for jungle sounds, his eyes following his ears to
discern what made the sounds.

No more doughty nor daring was Columbus, venturing all that he was to the
unknown, than was Jerry in venturing this jungle-darkness of black
Malaita. And this wonderful thing, this seeming great deed of free will,
he performed in much the same way that the itching of feet and tickle of
fancy have led the feet of men over all the earth.

Though Jerry never laid eyes on Somo again, Bashti returned with his
tribe the same day, grinning and chuckling as he appraised the damage.
Only a few grass houses had been damaged by the shells. Only a few
coconuts had been chopped down. And as for the slain pigs, lest they
spoil, he made of their carcasses a great feast. One shell had knocked a
hole through his sea-wall. He enlarged it for a launching-ways, faced
the sides of it with dry-fitted coral rock, and gave orders for the
building of an additional canoe-house. The only vexation he suffered was
the death of Nalasu and the disappearance of Jerry--his two experiments
in primitive eugenics.

CHAPTER XX

A week Jerry spent in the bush, deterred always from penetrating to the
mountains by the bushmen who ever guarded the runways. And it would have
gone hard with him in the matter of food, had he not, on the second day,
encountered a lone small pig, evidently lost from its litter. It was his
first hunting adventure for a living, and it prevented him from
travelling farther, for, true to his instinct, he remained by his kill
until it was nearly devoured.

True, he ranged widely about the neighbourhood, finding no other food he
could capture. But always, until it was gone, he returned to the slain
pig. Yet he was not happy in his freedom. He was too domesticated, too
civilized. Too many thousands of years had elapsed since his ancestors
had run freely wild. He was lonely. He could not get along without man.
Too long had he, and the generations before him, lived in intimate
relationship with the two-legged gods. Too long had his kind loved man,
served him for love, endured for love, died for love, and,