k fella," he commanded.

The ancient obediently dipped his paddle and started pottering an erratic
course in the general direction of the cluster of lights that marked the
_Makambo_. But he was too feeble, panting and wheezing continually from
the exertion and pausing to rest off strokes between strokes. The
steward impatiently took the paddle away from him and bent to the work.

Half-way to the steamer the ancient ceased wheezing and spoke, nodding
his head at Michael.

"That fella dog he belong big white marster along schooner . . . You give
'm me ten stick tobacco," he added after due pause to let the information
sink in.

"I give 'm you bang alongside head," Daughtry assured him cheerfully.
"White marster along schooner plenty friend along me too much. Just now
he stop 'm along _Makambo_. Me take 'm dog along him along _Makambo_."

There was no further conversation from the ancient, and though he lived
long years after, he never mentioned the midnight passenger in the canoe
who carried Michael away with him. When he saw and heard the confusion
and uproar on the beach later that night when Captain Kellar turned
Tulagi upside-down in his search for Michael, the old one-legged one
remained discreetly silent. Who was he to seek trouble with the strange
ones, the white masters who came and went and roved and ruled?

In this the ancient was in nowise unlike the rest of his dark-skinned
Melanesian race. The whites were possessed of unguessed and unthinkable
ways and purposes. They constituted another world and were as a play of
superior beings on an exalted stage where was no reality such as black
men might know as reality, where, like the phantoms of a dream, the white
men moved and were as shadows cast upon the vast and mysterious curtain
of the Cosmos.

The gang-plank being on the port side, Dag Daughtry paddled around to the
starboard and brought the canoe to a stop under a certain open port.

"Kwaque!" he called softly, once, and twice.

At the second call the light of the port was obscured apparently by a
head that piped down in a thin squeak.

"Me stop 'm, marster."

"One fella dog stop 'm along you," the steward whispered up. "Keep 'm
door shut. You wait along me. Stand by! Now!"

With a quick catch and lift, he passed Michael up and into unseen hands
outstretched from the iron wall of the ship, and paddled ahead to an open
cargo port. Dipping into his tobacco pocket, he thrust a loose han