Tulagi upside-down in his search for Michael, the old one-legged one
remained discreetly silent. Who was he to seek trouble with the strange
ones, the white masters who came and went and roved and ruled?

In this the ancient was in nowise unlike the rest of his dark-skinned
Melanesian race. The whites were possessed of unguessed and unthinkable
ways and purposes. They constituted another world and were as a play of
superior beings on an exalted stage where was no reality such as black
men might know as reality, where, like the phantoms of a dream, the white
men moved and were as shadows cast upon the vast and mysterious curtain
of the Cosmos.

The gang-plank being on the port side, Dag Daughtry paddled around to the
starboard and brought the canoe to a stop under a certain open port.

"Kwaque!" he called softly, once, and twice.

At the second call the light of the port was obscured apparently by a
head that piped down in a thin squeak.

"Me stop 'm, marster."

"One fella dog stop 'm along you," the steward whispered up. "Keep 'm
door shut. You wait along me. Stand by! Now!"

With a quick catch and lift, he passed Michael up and into unseen hands
outstretched from the iron wall of the ship, and paddled ahead to an open
cargo port. Dipping into his tobacco pocket, he thrust a loose handful
of sticks into the ancient's hand and shoved the canoe adrift with no
thought of how its helpless occupant would ever reach shore.