And Michael, swept by the contagion of excitement, barked and barked again, as if it were a festival of the gods being celebrated.
"Say good-bye to your brother, Jerry," Villa Kennan prompted in Jerry's ear, as she held him, his quivering flanks between her two palms, on the rail where she had lifted him.
And Jerry, not understanding her speech, torn about with conflicting desires, acknowledged her speech with wriggling body, a quick back-toss of head, and a red flash of kissing tongue, and, the next moment, his head over the rail and lowered to see the swiftly diminishing Michael, was mouthing grief and woe very much akin to the grief and woe his mother, Biddy, had mouthed in the long ago, on the beach of Meringe, when he had sailed away with Skipper.
For Jerry had learned partings, and beyond all peradventure this was a parting, though little he dreamed that he would again meet Michael across the years and across the world, in a fabled valley of far California, where they would live out their days in the hearts and arms of the beloved gods.
Michael, his forefeet on the gunwale, barked to him in a puzzled, questioning sort of way, and Jerry whimpered back incommunicable understanding.

The lady-god pressed his two flanks together reassuringly, and he turned to her, his cool nose touched questioningly to her cheek.

She gathered his body close against her breast in one encircling arm, her free hand resting on the rail, half-closed, a pink- and-white heart of flower, fragrant and seducing.

Jerry's nose quested the way of it.

The aperture invited.