Middy and Ensign | Page 3

lay into 'em with that very sharp-edged cutlash I touches up for you!"
"Now look here, Dick, you're chaffing," said the lad; "now just drop it."
"All right, sir," said the man, with a laugh twinkling at the corner of his lips.
"It is a very fine country though, isn't it, Dick?"
"Wonderful, sir. There's gold, and tin, and copper, and precious stones."
"Did you ever find any, Dick?"
"Well no, sir; but I've known them as has found gold in the rivers. The Chinees gets most on it."
"There now you're chaffing again, Dick," cried the lad. "Chinese indeed! Why we're not going to China."
"'Course we aint, sir, but the Chinees swarm in the place we're going to. I ant chaffing now; this here's all true--as true as that the chaps all wears a dagger sort of a thing with a crooked handle, and calls it a crease."
"Yes, I know they all wear the kris," said the lad.
"Yes, sir, and a plaid kilt, just like a Scotchman."
"What?"
"A plaid kilt, like a Scotchman, sir, and they calls it a say rong; and the big swell princes has it made of silk, and the common folks of cotton."
"Is this gammon, Dick?"
"Not a bit on it, sir. They wears that crease stuck in it; and they carries spears--limbings they calls 'em--and they can throw 'em a wonderful way."
"They poison the kris, don't they, Dick?"
"No, sir, I don't think they do," said the sailor. "I asked one man out there if they didn't; and he pulls his'n out of its sheath, and it was all dingy like, and as sharp as a razor, and he says in his barbarous lingo, as a man put into English for me, as his knife would kill a man without poison."
"What sort of wild beasts are there, Dick?"
"Tigers, sir."
"Honour bright, Dick?"
"Honour bright, sir; lots on 'em. They feeds 'em on Chinees."
"Feed them on Chinese, Dick?"
"Well sir, the tigers help theirselves to the coolies when they're at work."
"Anything else, Dick?"
"Lor, bless you! yes, sir; there's elephants."
"Are you sure?"
"Sure, sir. I've seen 'em, heaps o' times; and rhinosseress, and hippypotimies, and foreign birds, and snakes."
"Are there snakes, Dick?"
"Are there snakes! He says, are there snakes?" said Dick, apostrophising the sea. "Why the last time as ever I was there, they caught a boa-constrictor as was--"
"Don't make him too long, Dick," said the boy laughing.
"I won't make him too long," said the sailor solemnly. "Let's see, sir; this here ship's 'bout hundred and fifty foot long."
"Yes, Dick, but the boa-constrictor was longer than that," said the lad, laughing.
"I won't go to deceive you, Mister Roberts," said Dick, "no more than I did when I was learning you how to knot and splice. That there boa-constrictor was quite a hundred foot long."
"Get out!"
"Well, say fifty, sir."
"No, nor yet fifty, Dick."
"Well, sir, not to zaggerate about such things, if that there sarpent as I see with my own eyes--"
"Why you couldn't see it with anybody else's, Dick."
"No, sir, but I might have seen it wi' a spy glass. This there sarpent as I see it lying down stretched out straight was a good twenty-five foot."
"Perhaps that may have been, Dick," said Bob Roberts, thoughtfully.
"Yes, sir, it were all that; and when it was alive it must have been fifty foot at least."
"Why, Dick?"
"Cause they stretches out so, sir, just like worms in the garden at home do."
"Gammon, Dick. Serpents don't stretch."
"Don't stretch, sir! Just you wait till you get a thirty-footer twissen and twining round you, and see if they don't stretch."
"All right, Dick; and when he does, you come and pinch his tail, and make him open his mouth; and when he does that you pop in a bit of your nasty tobacco, and he'll leave off, and go like a shot."
The old sailor chuckled, and said something about Mister Bob Roberts being a nice boy, while the party in question walked aft to see the company of soldiers on deck put through half-an-hour's drill, making a point of staring hard and derisively at the young ensign, who saw the lad's looks, grew angry, from growing angry became confused, and incurred the captain's anger by giving the wrong order to the men, some of whom went right, knowing what he ought to have said, while others went wrong, and got the company hopelessly confused.
The result was that Ensign Long, of her Majesty's somethingth foot, was severely snubbed, just as Mr Linton the resident, and his daughter Rachel Linton, were looking on.
"I wouldn't have cared if they had not been there," said Ensign Long to himself; "but if I don't serve that little wretch of a middy out for this, my name is not Long."
CHAPTER TWO.
INTRODUCES MORE FRIENDS; WITH A FEW WORDS ON THE RIVER PARANG.
The men were dismissed, and gladly got rid of coatee, rifle, and belt, to