This, too, sank to Jerry's heart, adding weight to his sure intuition that dire fate, he knew not what, was upon him.
For his six months of life, Jerry knew a great deal and knew very little.
He knew, without thinking about it, without knowing that he knew, why Biddy, the wise as well as the brave, did not act upon all the message that her heart voiced to him, and spring into the water and swim after him.

She had protected him like a lioness when the big _puarka_ (which, in Jerry's vocabulary, along with grunts and squeals, was the combination of sound, or word, for "pig") had tried to devour him where he was cornered under the high-piled plantation house.

Like a lioness, when the cook-boy had struck him with a stick to drive him out of the kitchen, had Biddy sprung upon the black, receiving without wince or whimper one straight blow from the stick, and then downing him and mauling him among his pots and pans until dragged (for the first time snarling) away by the unchiding _Mister_ Haggin, who; however, administered sharp words to the cook-boy for daring to lift hand against a four-legged dog belonging to a god.
Jerry knew why his mother did not plunge into the water after him.

The salt sea, as well as the lagoons that led out of the salt sea, were taboo.

"Taboo," as word or sound, had no place in Jerry's vocabulary.
But its definition, or significance, was there in the quickest part of his consciousness.