And for the rest of the way to the steamer, Dag Daughtry grinned and chuckled at sight of his plunder and at sight of Kwaque, who fantastically titubated and ambled along, barrel-like, on his pipe-stems.
On board the steamer, which happened to be the _Cockspur_, Daughtry persuaded the captain to enter Kwaque on the ship's articles as steward's helper with a rating of ten shillings a month.

Also, he learned Kwaque's story.
It was all an account of a pig.

The two active young men were brothers who lived in the next village to his, and the pig had been theirs--so Kwaque narrated in atrocious beche-de-mer English.

He, Kwaque, had never seen the pig.

He had never known of its existence until after it was dead.