A scant twelve hours 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.