To return to his letter. In the course of the day's work he casually and
briefly mentioned a particular job he had just got off his hands. His
absence in England had been the cause of delay. The job had been to make
a punitive expedition to a neighbouring island, and, incidentally, to
recover the heads of some mutual friends of ours--a white-trader, his
white wife and children, and his white clerk. The expedition was
successful, and Mr. Woodford concluded his account of the episode with a
statement to the effect: "What especially struck me was the absence of
pain and terror in their faces, which seemed to express, rather, serenity
and repose"--this, mind you, of men and women of his own race whom he
knew well and who had sat at dinner with him in his own house.

Other friends, with whom I have sat at dinner in the brave, rollicking
days in the Solomons have since passed out--by the same way. My
goodness! I sailed in the teak-built ketch, the _Minota_, on a
blackbirding cruise to Malaita, and I took my wife along. The hatchet-
marks were still raw on the door of our tiny stateroom advertising an
event of a few months before. The event was the taking of Captain
Mackenzie's head, Captain Mackenzie, at that time, being master of the
Minota. As we sailed in to Langa-Langa, the British cruiser, the
_Cambrian_, steamed out from the shelling of a village.

It is not expedient to burden this preliminary to my story with further
details, which I do make asseveration I possess a-plenty. I hope I have
given some assurance that the adventures of my dog hero in this novel are
real adventures in a very real cannibal world. Bless you!--when I took
my wife along on the cruise of the _Minota_, we found on board a nigger-
chasing, adorable Irish terrier puppy, who was smooth-coated like Jerry,
and whose name was Peggy. Had it not been for Peggy, this book would