Lieut. Tibbetts saluted. "They called me Conk at Sandhurst, sir," he suggested.
"Bones!" said Hamilton, definitely.
"Bones it is, skipper," said Mr. Tibbetts; "an' now all this beastly formality is over we'll have a bottle to celebrate things." And a bottle they had.
It was a splendid evening they spent, dining on chicken and palm-oil chop, rice pudding and sweet potatoes. Hamilton sang, "Who wouldn't be a soldier in the Army?" and—by request—in his shaky falsetto baritone, "My heart is in the Highlands"; and Lieut. Tibbetts gave a lifelike imitation of Frank Tinney, which convulsed, not alone his superior officer, but some two-and-forty men of the Houssas who were unauthorized spectators through various windows and door cracks and ventilating gauzes.
Bones was the son of a man who had occupied a position of some importance on the Coast, and though the young man's upbringing had been in England, he had the inestimable advantage of a very thorough grounding in the native dialect, not only from Tibbetts, senior, but from the two native servants with whom the boy had grown up.
"I suppose there is a telegraph line to headquarters?" asked Bones that night before they parted.
"Certainly, my dear lad," replied Hamilton. "We had it laid down when we heard you were coming."
"Don't flither!" pleaded Bones, giggling convulsively; "but the fact is I've got a couple of dozen tickets in the Cambridgeshire Sweepstake, an' a dear pal of mine—chap named Goldfinder, a rare and delicate bird—has sworn to wire me if I've drawn a horse. D'ye think I'll draw a horse?"
"I shouldn't think you could draw a cow," said Hamilton. "Go to bed."
"Look here, Ham——" began Lieut. Bones.