as he inspected Johnny and smelt his
calves for future reference. Cavalier he was to the extreme, and, after
the briefest of inspection, he turned back to Villa Kennan.

"What did I say?" her husband exulted. "He knows the colour line. He's
a white man's dog that has been trained to it."

"My word," spoke up Johnny. "Me know 'm that fella dog. Me know 'm papa
and mamma belong along him. Big fella white marster Mister Haggin stop
along Meringe, mamma and papa stop along him that fella place."

Harley Kennan uttered a sharp exclamation.

"Of course," he cried. "The Commissioner told me all about it. The
_Arangi_, that the Somo people captured, sailed last from Meringe
Plantation. Johnny recognizes the dog as the same breed as the pair
Haggin, of Meringe, must possess. But that was a long time ago. He must
have been a little puppy. Of course he's a white man's dog."

"And yet you've overlooked the crowning proof of it," Villa Kennan
teased. "The dog carries the evidence around with him."

Harley looked Jerry over carefully.

"Indisputable evidence," she insisted.

After another prolonged scrutiny, Kennan shook his head.

"Blamed if I can see anything so indisputable as to leave conjecture
out."

"The tail," his wife gurgled. "Surely the natives do not bob the tails
of their dogs.--Do they, Johnny? Do black man stop along Malaita chop 'm
off tail along dog."

"No chop 'm off," Johnny agreed. "Mister Haggin along Meringe he chop 'm
off. My word, he chop 'm that fella tail, you bet."

"Then he's the sole survivor of the _Arangi_," Villa Kennan concluded.
"Don't you agree, Mr. Sherlock Holmes Kennan?"

"I salute you, Mrs. S. Holmes," her husband acknowledged gallantly. "And
all that remains is for you to lead me directly to the head of La Perouse
himself. The sailing directions record that he left it somewhere in
these islands."

Little did they guess that Jerry had lived on intimate terms with one
Bashti, not many miles away along the shore, who, in Somo, at that very
moment, sat in his grass house pondering over a head on his withered
knees that had once been the head of the great navigator, the history of
which had been forgotten by the sons of the chief who had taken it.

CHAPTER XXI

The fine, three-topmast schooner _Ariel_, on a cruise around the world,
had already been out a year from San Francisco when Jerry boarded her. As
a world, and as a white-god world, she was to hi