Dag Daughtry strolled along the beach, Michael at his heels or running circles of delight around him at every repetition of that strange low lip- noise, and paused just outside the circle of lantern light where dusky forms laboured with landing cargo from the whaleboats and where the Commissioner's clerk and the _Makambo's_ super-cargo still wrangled over the bill of lading.

When Michael would have gone forward, the man withstrained him with the same inarticulate, almost inaudible kiss.
For Daughtry did not care to be seen on such dog-stealing enterprises and was planning how to get on board the steamer unobserved.

He edged around outside the lantern shine and went on along the beach to the native village.

As he had foreseen, all the able-bodied men were down at the boat-landing working cargo.

The grass houses seemed lifeless, but at last, from one of them, came a challenge in the querulous, high-pitched tones of age: "What name ?" "Me walk about plenty too much," he replied in the beche-de-mer English of the west South Pacific.