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 never have been written.  She was the chattel of the Minota’s splendid skipper.  So much did Mrs. London and I come to love her, that Mrs. London, after the wreck of the Minota, deliberately and shamelessly stole her from the Minota’s skipper.  I do further admit that I did, deliberately and shamelessly, compound my wife’s felony.  We loved Peggy so!  Dear royal, glorious little dog, buried at sea off the east coast of Australia !