Chapter XIV
For many days, tied by the stick, Jerry remained Lamai's prisoner. It
was not a happy time, for the house of Lumai was a house of perpetual
bickering and quarrelling. Lamai fought pitched battles with his
brothers and sisters for teasing Jerry, and these battles invariably
culminated in Lenerengo taking a hand and impartially punishing all her
progeny.
After that, as a matter of course and on general principles, she would
have it out with Lumai, whose soft voice always was for quiet and repose, and who always, at the end of a tongue-lashing, took himself off to the canoe house for a couple of days. Here, Lenerengo was helpless. Into the canoe house of the stags no Mary might venture. Lenerengo had never forgotten the fate of the last Mary who had broken the taboo. It had occurred many years before, when she was a girl, and the recollection was ever vivid of the unfortunate woman hanging up in the sun by one arm for all of a day, and for all of a second day by the other arm. After that she had been feasted upon by the stags of the canoe house, and for long afterward all women had talked softly before their husbands.
Jerry did discover liking for Lamai, but it was not strong nor
passionate. Rather was it out of gratitude, for only Lamai saw to it
that he received food and water. Yet this boy was no Skipper, no Mister
Haggin. Nor was he even a Derby or a Bob. He was that inferior
man-creature, a nigger, and Jerry had been thoroughly trained all his
brief days to the law that the white men were the superior two-legged
gods.
He did not fail to recognize, however, the intelligence and power that
resided in the niggers. He did not reason it out. He accepted it. They
had power of command over other objects, could propel sticks and stones
through the air, could even tie him a prisoner to a stick that rendered
him helpless. Inferior as they might be to the white-gods, still they
were gods of a sort.
It was the first time in his life that Jerry had been tied up, and he did
not like it. Vainly he hurt his teeth, some of which were loosening
under the pressure of the second teeth rising underneath. The stick was
stronger than he. Although he did not forget Skipper, the poignancy of
his loss faded with the passage of time, until uppermost in his mind was
the desire to be free.
But when the day came that he was freed, he failed to take advantage of
it and scuttle away for the beach. It chanced that Lenerengo released
him. She did it deliberately, desiring to be quit of him. But when she
untied Jerry, he stopped to thank her, wagging his tail and smiling up at
her with his hazel-brown eyes. She stamped her foot at him to be gone, and uttered a harsh and intimidating cry. This Jerry did not understand, and so unused was he to fear that he could not be frightened into running away. He ceased wagging his tail, and, though he continued to look up at her, his eyes no longer smiled. Her action and noise he identified as unfriendly, and he became alert and watchful, prepared for whatever hostile act she might next commit.
Again she cried out and stamped her foot. The only effect on Jerry was
to make him transfer his watchfulness to the foot. This slowness in
getting away, now that she had released him, was too much for her short
temper. She launched the kick, and Jerry, avoiding it, slashed her
ankle.
War broke on the instant, and that she might have killed Jerry in her
rage was highly probable had not Lamai appeared on the scene. The stick
untied from Jerry's neck told the tale of her perfidy and incensed Lamai, who sprang between and deflected the blow with a stone poi-pounder that might have brained Jerry.
Lamai was now the one in danger of grievous damage, and his mother had
just knocked him down with a clout alongside the head when poor Lumai, roused from sleep by the uproar, ventured out to make peace. Lenerengo, as usual, forgot everything else in the fiercer pleasure of berating her spouse.
The conclusion of the affair was harmless enough. The children stopped
their crying, Lamai retied Jerry with the stick, Lenerengo harangued
herself breathless, and Lumai departed with hurt feelings for the canoe
house where stags could sleep in peace and Marys pestered not.