The deck was small because the Arangi was small. Originally a teak-built, gentleman’s yacht, brass-fitted, copper3-fastened, angle-ironed, sheathed4 in man-of-war copper and with a fin-keel of bronze, she had been sold into the Solomon Islands’ trade for the purpose of blackbirding or nigger-running. Under the law, however, this traffic was dignified5 by being called “recruiting.”
The Arangi was a labour-recruit ship that carried the new-caught, cannibal blacks from remote islands to labour on the new plantations6 where white men turned dank and pestilential swamp and jungle into rich and stately cocoanut groves8. The Arangi’s two masts were of Oregon cedar9, so scraped and hot-paraffined that they shone like tan opals in the glare of sun. Her excessive sail plan enabled her to sail like a witch, and, on occasion, gave Captain Van Horn, his white mate, and his fifteen black boat’s crew as much as they could handle. She was sixty feet over all, and the cross beams of her crown deck had not been weakened by deck-houses. The only breaks—and no beams had been cut for them—were the main cabin skylight and companionway, the booby hatch for’ard over the tiny forecastle, and the small hatch aft that let down into the store-room.
And on this small deck, in addition to the crew, were the “return” niggers from three far-flung plantations. By “return” was meant that their three years of contract labour was up, and that, according to contract, they were being returned to their home villages on the wild island of Malaita. Twenty of them—familiar, all, to Jerry—were from Meringe; thirty of them came from the Bay of a Thousand Ships, in the Russell Isles10; and the remaining twelve were from Pennduffryn on the east coast of Guadalcanar. In addition to these—and they were all on deck, chattering11 and piping in queer, almost elfish, falsetto voices—were the two white men, Captain Van Horn and his Danish mate, Borckman, making a total of seventy-nine souls.
“Thought your heart ’d failed you at the last moment,” was Captain Van Horn’s greeting, a quick pleasure light glowing into his eyes as they noted12 Jerry.
“It was sure near to doin’ it,” Tom Haggin answered. “It’s only for you I’d a done it, annyways. Jerry’s the best of the litter, barrin’ Michael, of course, the two of them bein’ all that’s left and no better than them that was lost. Now that Kathleen was a sweet dog, the spit of Biddy if she’d lived.—Here, take ’m.”
With a jerk of abruptness14, he deposited Jerry in Van Horn’s arms and turned away along the deck.
“An’ if bad luck comes to him I’ll never forgive you, Skipper,” he flung roughly over his shoulder.
“An’ not unlikely, my brave laddy buck16,” Haggin growled17. “Meringe owes Somo four heads, three from the dysentery, an’ another wan18 from a tree fallin’ on him the last fortnight. He was the son of a chief at that.”
“Yes, and there’s two heads more that the Arangi owes Somo,” Van Horn nodded. “You recollect19, down to the south’ard last year, a chap named Hawkins was lost in his whaleboat running the Arli Passage?” Haggin, returning along the deck, nodded. “Two of his boat’s crew were Somo boys. I’d recruited them for Ugi Plantation7. With your boys, that makes six heads the Arangi owes. But what of it? There’s one salt-water village, acrost on the weather coast, where the Arangi owes eighteen. I recruited them for Aolo, and being salt-water men they put them on the Sandfly that was lost on the way to the Santa Cruz. They’ve got a jack-pot over there on the weather coast—my word, the boy that could get my head would be a second Carnegie! A hundred and fifty pigs and shell money no end the village’s collected for the chap that gets me and delivers.”
“And they ain’t—yet,” Haggin snorted.
“No fear,” was the cheerful retort.
“You talk like Arbuckle used to talk,” Haggin censured21. “Manny’s the time I’ve heard him string it off. Poor old Arbuckle. The most sure and most precautious chap that ever handled niggers. He never went to sleep without spreadin’ a box of tacks22 on the floor, and when it wasn’t them it was crumpled24 newspapers. I remember me well, bein’ under the same roof at the time on Florida, when a big tomcat chased a cockroach25 into the papers. And it was blim, blam, blim, six times an’ twice over, with his two big horse-pistols, an’ the house perforated like a cullender. Likewise there was a dead tom-cat. He could shoot in the dark with never an aim, pullin’ trigger with the second finger and pointing with the first finger laid straight along the barrel.
“No, sir, my laddy buck. He was the bully26 boy with the glass eye. The nigger didn’t live that’d lift his head. But they got ’m. They got ’m. He lasted fourteen years, too. It was his cook-boy. Hatcheted ’m before breakfast. An’ it’s well I remember our second trip into the bush after what was left of ’m.”
“I saw his head after you’d turned it over to the Commissioner27 at Tulagi,” Van Horn supplemented.
“An’ the peaceful, quiet, everyday face of him on it, with almost the same old smile I’d seen a thousand times. It dried on ’m that way over the smokin’ fire. But they got ’m, if it did take fourteen years. There’s manny’s the head that goes to Malaita, manny’s the time untooken; but, like the old pitcher28, it’s tooken in the end.”
“But I’ve got their goat,” the captain insisted. “When trouble’s hatching, I go straight to them and tell them what. They can’t get the hang of it. Think I’ve got some powerful devil-devil medicine.”
Tom Haggin thrust out his hand in abrupt13 good-bye, resolutely29 keeping his eyes from dropping to Jerry in the other’s arms.
“Keep your eye on my return boys,” he cautioned, as he went over the side, “till you land the last mother’s son of ’m. They’ve got no cause to love Jerry or his breed, an’ I’d hate ill to happen ’m at a nigger’s hands. An’ in the dark of the night ’tis like as not he can do a fare-you-well overside. Don’t take your eye off ’m till you’re quit of the last of ’m.”
At sight of big Mister Haggin deserting him and being pulled away in the whaleboat, Jerry wriggled30 and voiced his anxiety in a low, whimpering whine31. Captain Van Horn snuggled him closer in his arm with a caress32 of his free hand.
“Don’t forget the agreement,” Tom Haggin called back across the widening water. “If aught happens you, Jerry’s to come back to me.”
“I’ll make a paper to that same and put it with the ship’s articles,” was Van Horn’s reply.
Among the many words possessed33 by Jerry was his own name; and in the talk of the two men he had recognised it repeatedly, and he was aware, vaguely34, that the talk was related to the vague and unguessably terrible thing that was happening to him. He wriggled more determinedly35, and Van Horn set him down on the deck. He sprang to the rail with more quickness than was to be expected of an awkward puppy of six months, and not the quick attempt of Van Horn to cheek him would have succeeded. But Jerry recoiled36 from the open water lapping the Arangi’s side. The taboo37 was upon him. It was the image of the log awash that was not a log but that was alive, luminous38 in his brain, that checked him. It was not reason on his part, but inhibition which had become habit.
He plumped down on his bob tail, lifted golden muzzle39 skyward, and emitted a long puppy-wail40 of dismay and grief.
But Jerry was not to be reconciled. While this indubitably was a white-skinned god, it was not his god. Mister Haggin was his god, and a superior god at that. Even he, without thinking about it at all, recognized that. His Mister Haggin wore pants and shoes. This god on the deck beside him was more like a black. Not only did he not wear pants, and was barefooted and barelegged, but about his middle, just like any black, he wore a brilliant-coloured loin-cloth, that, like a kilt, fell nearly to his sunburnt knees.
Captain Van Horn was a handsome man and a striking man, although Jerry did not know it. If ever a Holland Dutchman stepped out of a Rembrandt frame, Captain Van Horn was that one, despite the fact that he was New York born, as had been his knickerbocker ancestors before him clear back to the time when New York was not New York but New Amsterdam. To complete his costume, a floppy44 felt hat, distinctly Rembrandtish in effect, perched half on his head and mostly over one ear; a sixpenny, white cotton undershirt covered his torso; and from a belt about his middle dangled45 a tobacco pouch46, a sheath-knife, filled clips of cartridges47, and a huge automatic pistol in a leather holster.
On the beach, Biddy, who had hushed her grief, lifted it again when she heard Jerry’s wail. And Jerry, desisting a moment to listen, heard Michael beside her, barking his challenge, and saw, without being conscious of it, Michael’s withered48 ear with its persistent49 upward cock. Again, while Captain Van Horn and the mate, Borckman, gave orders, and while the Arangi’s mainsail and spanker began to rise up the masts, Jerry loosed all his heart of woe50 in what Bob told Derby on the beach was the “grandest vocal51 effort” he had ever heard from any dog, and that, except for being a bit thin, Caruso didn’t have anything on Jerry. But the song was too much for Haggin, who, as soon as he had landed, whistled Biddy to him and strode rapidly away from the beach.
At sight of her disappearing, Jerry was guilty of even more Caruso-like effects, which gave great joy to a Pennduffryn return boy who stood beside him. He laughed and jeered52 at Jerry with falsetto chucklings that were more like the jungle-noises of tree-dwelling creatures, half-bird and half-man, than of a man, all man, and therefore a god. This served as an excellent counter-irritant. Indignation that a mere black should laugh at him mastered Jerry, and the next moment his puppy teeth, sharp-pointed as needles, had scored the astonished black’s naked calf53 in long parallel scratches from each of which leaped the instant blood. The black sprang away in trepidation54, but the blood of Terrence the Magnificent was true in Jerry, and, like his father before him, he followed up, slashing55 the black’s other calf into a ruddy pattern.
At this moment, anchor broken out and headsails running up, Captain Van Horn, whose quick eye had missed no detail of the incident, with an order to the black helmsman turned to applaud Jerry.
“Go to it, Jerry!” he encouraged. “Get him! Shake him down! Sick him! Get him! Get him!”
The black, in defence, aimed a kick at Jerry, who, leaping in instead of away—another inheritance from Terrence—avoided the bare foot and printed a further red series of parallel lines on the dark leg. This was too much, and the black, afraid more of Van Horn than of Jerry, turned and fled for’ard, leaping to safety on top of the eight Lee-Enfield rifles that lay on top of the cabin skylight and that were guarded by one member of the boat’s crew. About the skylight Jerry stormed, leaping up and falling back, until Captain Van Horn called him off.
“Some nigger-chaser, that pup, some nigger-chaser!” Van Horn confided56 to Borckman, as he bent57 to pat Jerry and give him due reward of praise.
And Jerry, under this caressing58 hand of a god, albeit59 it did not wear pants, forgot for a moment longer the fate that was upon him.
“He’s a lion-dog—more like an Airedale than an Irish terrier,” Van Horn went on to his mate, still petting. “Look at the size of him already. Look at the bone of him. Some chest that. He’s got the endurance. And he’ll be some dog when he grows up to those feet of his.”
Jerry had just remembered his grief and was starting a rush across the deck to the rail to gaze at Meringe growing smaller every second in the distance, when a gust60 of the South-east Trade smote61 the sails and pressed the Arangi down. And down the deck, slanted62 for the moment to forty-five degrees, Jerry slipped and slid, vainly clawing at the smooth surface for a hold. He fetched up against the foot of the mizzenmast, while Captain Van Horn, with the sailor’s eye for the coral patch under his bow, gave the order “Hard a-lee!”
Borckman and the black steersman echoed his words, and, as the wheel spun63 down, the Arangi, with the swiftness of a witch, rounded into the wind and attained64 a momentary65 even keel to the flapping of her headsails and a shifting of headsheets.
Jerry, still intent on Meringe, took advantage of the level footing to recover himself and scramble66 toward the rail. But he was deflected67 by the crash of the mainsheet blocks on the stout68 deck-traveller, as the mainsail, emptied of the wind and feeling the wind on the other side, swung crazily across above him. He cleared the danger of the mainsheet with a wild leap (although no less wild had been Van Horn’s leap to rescue him), and found himself directly under the mainboom with the huge sail looming69 above him as if about to fall upon him and crush him.
It was Jerry’s first experience with sails of any sort. He did not know the beasts, much less the way of them, but, in his vivid recollection, when he had been a tiny puppy, burned the memory of the hawk20, in the middle of the compound, that had dropped down upon him from out of the sky. Under that colossal70 threatened impact he crouched72 down to the deck. Above him, falling upon him like a bolt from the blue, was a winged hawk unthinkably vaster than the one he had encountered. But in his crouch71 was no hint of cower73. His crouch was a gathering74 together, an assembling of all the parts of him under the rule of the spirit of him, for the spring upward to meet in mid43 career this monstrous75, menacing thing.
But, the succeeding fraction of a moment, so that Jerry, leaping, missed even the shadow of it, the mainsail, with a second crash of blocks on traveller, had swung across and filled on the other tack23.
Van Horn had missed nothing of it. Before, in his time, he had seen young dogs frightened into genuine fits by their first encounters with heaven-filling, sky-obscuring, down-impending sails. This was the first dog he had seen leap with bared teeth, undismayed, to grapple with the huge unknown.
With spontaneity of admiration76, Van Horn swept Jerry from the deck and gathered him into his arms.
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收听单词发音
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1
cluttered
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| v.杂物，零乱的东西零乱vt.( clutter的过去式和过去分词 )；乱糟糟地堆满，把…弄得很乱；（以…） 塞满… | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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copper
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| n.铜；铜币；铜器；adj.铜(制)的；(紫)铜色的 | |
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4
sheathed
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| adj.雕塑像下半身包在鞘中的；覆盖的；铠装的；装鞘了的v.将（刀、剑等）插入鞘( sheathe的过去式和过去分词 )；包，覆盖 | |
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dignified
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| a.可敬的，高贵的 | |
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plantations
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| n.种植园，大农场( plantation的名词复数 ) | |
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plantation
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| n.种植园，大农场 | |
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groves
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| 树丛，小树林( grove的名词复数 ) | |
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cedar
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| n.雪松，香柏(木) | |
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isles
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| 岛( isle的名词复数 ) | |
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11
chattering
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| n. （机器振动发出的）咔嗒声，(鸟等)鸣，啁啾 adj. 喋喋不休的，啾啾声的 动词chatter的现在分词形式 | |
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12
noted
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| adj.著名的，知名的 | |
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abrupt
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| adj.突然的，意外的；唐突的，鲁莽的 | |
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14
abruptness
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| n. 突然，唐突 | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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buck
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| n.雄鹿，雄兔；v.马离地跳跃 | |
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growled
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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18
wan
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| (wide area network)广域网 | |
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recollect
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| v.回忆，想起，记起，忆起，记得 | |
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hawk
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| n.鹰，骗子；鹰派成员 | |
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censured
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| v.指责，非难，谴责( censure的过去式 ) | |
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tacks
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| 大头钉( tack的名词复数 )； 平头钉； 航向； 方法 | |
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tack
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| n.大头钉；假缝，粗缝 | |
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24
crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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25
cockroach
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| n.蟑螂 | |
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26
bully
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| n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮 | |
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commissioner
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| n.（政府厅、局、处等部门）专员，长官，委员 | |
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28
pitcher
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| n.(有嘴和柄的)大水罐；(棒球)投手 | |
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resolutely
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| adj.坚决地，果断地 | |
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30
wriggled
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| v.扭动，蠕动，蜿蜒行进( wriggle的过去式和过去分词 )；（使身体某一部位）扭动；耍滑不做，逃避（应做的事等） | |
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31
whine
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| v.哀号，号哭；n.哀鸣 | |
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32
caress
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| vt./n.爱抚，抚摸 | |
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33
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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vaguely
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| adv.含糊地，暖昧地 | |
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determinedly
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| adv.决意地；坚决地，坚定地 | |
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36
recoiled
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| v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
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taboo
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| n.禁忌，禁止接近，禁止使用；adj.禁忌的；v.禁忌，禁制，禁止 | |
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38
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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39
muzzle
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| n.鼻口部；口套；枪(炮)口；vt.使缄默 | |
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40
wail
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| vt./vi.大声哀号，恸哭；呼啸，尖啸 | |
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41
brace
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| n. 支柱,曲柄,大括号; v. 绷紧,顶住,(为困难或坏事)做准备 | |
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42
soothed
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| v.安慰( soothe的过去式和过去分词 )；抚慰；使舒服；减轻痛苦 | |
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43
mid
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| adj.中央的，中间的 | |
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44
floppy
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| adj.松软的，衰弱的 | |
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45
dangled
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| 悬吊着( dangle的过去式和过去分词 )； 摆动不定； 用某事物诱惑…； 吊胃口 | |
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46
pouch
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| n.小袋，小包，囊状袋；vt.装...入袋中，用袋运输；vi.用袋送信件 | |
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47
cartridges
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| 子弹( cartridge的名词复数 )； （打印机的）墨盒； 录音带盒； （唱机的）唱头 | |
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48
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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49
persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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50
woe
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| n.悲哀，苦痛，不幸，困难；int.用来表达悲伤或惊慌 | |
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51
vocal
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| adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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52
jeered
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| v.嘲笑( jeer的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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53
calf
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| n.小牛，犊，幼仔，小牛皮 | |
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54
trepidation
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| n.惊恐，惶恐 | |
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55
slashing
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| adj.尖锐的；苛刻的；鲜明的；乱砍的v.挥砍( slash的现在分词 )；鞭打；割破；削减 | |
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56
confided
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| v.吐露（秘密，心事等）( confide的过去式和过去分词 )；（向某人）吐露（隐私、秘密等） | |
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57
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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58
caressing
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| 爱抚的，表现爱情的，亲切的 | |
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59
albeit
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| conj.即使；纵使；虽然 | |
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60
gust
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| n.阵风，突然一阵（雨、烟等），（感情的）迸发 | |
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61
smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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62
slanted
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| 有偏见的； 倾斜的 | |
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63
spun
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| v.纺，杜撰，急转身 | |
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64
attained
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| （通常经过努力）实现( attain的过去式和过去分词 )； 达到； 获得； 达到（某年龄、水平、状况） | |
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65
momentary
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| adj.片刻的，瞬息的；短暂的 | |
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66
scramble
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| v.爬行，攀爬，杂乱蔓延，碎片，片段，废料 | |
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67
deflected
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| 偏离的 | |
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69
looming
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| n.上现蜃景（光通过低层大气发生异常折射形成的一种海市蜃楼）v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的现在分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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70
colossal
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| adj.异常的，庞大的 | |
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71
crouch
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| v.蹲伏，蜷缩，低头弯腰；n.蹲伏 | |
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72
crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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73
cower
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| v.畏缩，退缩，抖缩 | |
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74
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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75
monstrous
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| adj.巨大的；恐怖的；可耻的，丢脸的 | |
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76
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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