ng the port gang-plank, Michael was
coming on board through a starboard port-hole. This was because Michael
was inexperienced in the world, because he was expecting to meet Jerry on
board this boat since the last he had seen of him was on a boat, and
because he had made a friend.

Dag Daughtry was a steward on the _Makambo_, who should have known better
and who would have known better and done better had he not been
fascinated by his own particular and peculiar reputation. By luck of
birth possessed of a genial but soft disposition and a splendid
constitution, his reputation was that for twenty years he had never
missed his day's work nor his six daily quarts of bottled beer, even, as
he bragged, when in the German islands, where each bottle of beer carried
ten grains of quinine in solution as a specific against malaria.

The captain of the _Makambo_ (and, before that, the captains of the
_Moresby_, the _Masena_, the _Sir Edward Grace_, and various others of
the queerly named Burns Philp Company steamers had done the same) was
used to pointing him out proudly to the passengers as a man-thing novel
and unique in the annals of the sea. And at such times Dag Daughtry,
below on the for'ard deck, feigning unawareness as he went about his
work, would steal side-glances up at the bridge where the captain and his
passengers stared down on him, and his breast would swell pridefully,
because he knew that the captain was saying: "See him! that's Dag
Daughtry, the human tank. Never's been drunk or sober in twenty years,
and has never missed his six quarts of beer per diem. You wouldn't think
it, to look at him, but I assure you it's so. I can't understand. Gets
my admiration. Always does his time, his time-and-a-half and his double-
time over time. Why, a single glass of beer would give me heartburn and
spoil my next good meal. But he flourishes on it. Look at him! Look at
him!"

And so, knowing his captain's speech, swollen with pride in his own
prowess, Dag Daughtry would continue his ship-work with extra vigour and
punish a seventh quart for the day in advertisement of his remarkable
constitution. It was a queer sort of fame, as queer as some men are; and
Dag Daughtry found in it his justification of existence.

Wherefore he devoted his energy and the soul of him to the maintenance of
his reputation as a six-quart man. That was why he made, in odd moments
of off-duty, turtle-shell combs and hair ornaments for pr