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Updated: June 27, 2025
This was the first dog he had seen leap with bared teeth, undismayed, to grapple with the huge unknown. With spontaneity of admiration, Van Horn swept Jerry from the deck and gathered him into his arms. Jerry quite forgot Meringe for the time being. As he well remembered, the hawk had been sharp of beak and claw. This air-flapping, thunder- crashing monster needed watching.
But whatever it was, it was mystery. Out of it, things that had not been, suddenly were. Chickens and puarkas and cats, that he had never seen before, had a way of abruptly appearing on Meringe Plantation.
He had learned the trick with many blacks at Meringe and on board the Eugenie, so that as often he succeeded as failed at it. His teeth came together in the slack of the white duck trousers. The consequent jerk on Captain Duncan's leg made that infuriated mariner lose his balance.
He knew that he was violating a taboo of life, just as he knew he was violating a taboo if he sprang into Meringe Lagoon where swam the dreadful crocodiles. Great love is always capable of expressing itself in sacrifice and self-immolation. And only for love, and for no lesser reason, could Jerry have made the leap. He struck on his side and head.
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.
They regained their legs, bristled and showed teeth at each other, and stalked stiff-leggedly, in a stately and dignified sort of way, as they drew intimidating semi-circles about each other. But they were fooling all the while, and were more than a trifle embarrassed. For in each of their brains were bright identification pictures of the plantation house and compound and beach of Meringe.
After another prolonged scrutiny, Kennan shook his head. "Blamed if I can see anything so indisputable as to leave conjecture out." "The tail," his wife gurgled. "Surely the natives do not bob the tails of their dogs. Do they, Johnny? Do black man stop along Malaita chop 'm off tail along dog." "No chop 'm off," Johnny agreed. "Mister Haggin along Meringe he chop 'm off.
And their father and mother were Terrence and Biddy of Meringe. And Jerry is our Sing Song Silly. And this dog sings. And he has a crinkled ear. And his name is Michael." "Impossible," said Harley. "It is when the impossible comes true that life proves worth while," she retorted. "And this is one of those worth-whiles of impossibles. I know it."
Johnny recognizes the dog as the same breed as the pair Haggin, of Meringe, must possess. But that was a long time ago. He must have been a little puppy. Of course he's a white man's dog." "And yet you've overlooked the crowning proof of it," Villa Kennan teased. "The dog carries the evidence around with him." Harley looked Jerry over carefully. "Indisputable evidence," she insisted.
Malaita the real, Malaita the concrete and ponderable, vanished and vanished for ever, as Meringe had vanished, as Skipper had vanished, into the nothingness. From Malaita the Ariel steered west of north to Ongtong Java and to Tasman great atolls that sweltered under the Line not quite awash in the vast waste of the West South Pacific.
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