rs having intervened between her arrival and the _Makambo's_
departure, the Commissioner of the Solomons and Captain Kellar had been
of the opinion that the missing dog had been carried away on the steamer.
Knowing that the _Albatross_ would beat her to Sydney, the captain of the
_Albatross_ had undertaken to look up the dog. Was the dog, an Irish
terrier answering to the name of Michael, on board?

Captain Duncan truthfully admitted that it was, though he most
unveraciously shielded Dag Daughtry by repeating his yarn of the dog
coming on board of itself. How to return the dog to Captain Kellar?--was
the next question; for the _Albatross_ was bound on to New Zealand.
Captain Duncan settled the matter.

"The _Makambo_ will be back in Tulagi in eight weeks," he told the
lieutenant, "and I'll undertake personally to deliver the dog to its
owner. In the meantime we'll take good care of it. Our steward has sort
of adopted it, so it will be in good hands."

* * * * *

"Seems we don't either of us get the dog," Daughtry commented resignedly,
when Captain Duncan had explained the situation.

But when Daughtry turned his back and started off along the deck, his
constitutional obstinacy tightened his brows so that the Shortlands
planter, observing it, wondered what the captain had been rowing him
about.

* * * * *

Despite his six quarts a day and all his easy-goingness of disposition,
Dag Daughtry possessed certain integrities. Though he could steal a dog,
or a cat, without a twinge of conscience, he could not but be faithful to
his salt, being so made. He could not draw wages for being a ship
steward without faithfully performing the functions of ship steward.
Though his mind was firmly made up, during the several days of the
_Makambo_ in Sydney, lying alongside the Burns Philp Dock, he saw to
every detail of the cleaning up after the last crowd of outgoing
passengers, and to every detail of preparation for the next crowd of
incoming passengers who had tickets bought for the passage far away to
the coral seas and the cannibal isles.

In the midst of this devotion to his duty, he took a night off and part
of two afternoons. The night off was devoted to the public-houses which
sailors frequent, and where can be learned the latest gossip and news of
ships and of men who sail upon the sea. Such information did he gather,
over many bottles of beer, that the next afternoon, hiring a small launch
at a cost of ten shi